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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sally Dows and Other Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sally Dows and Other Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2006 [EBook #2705]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALLY DOWS AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+SALLY DOWS
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+SALLY DOWS
+
+THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMP
+
+THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA
+
+
+
+
+SALLY DOWS.
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+THE LAST GUN AT SNAKE RIVER.
+
+
+What had been in the cool gray of that summer morning a dewy country
+lane, marked only by a few wagon tracks that never encroached upon its
+grassy border, and indented only by the faint footprints of a crossing
+fox or coon, was now, before high noon, already crushed, beaten down,
+and trampled out of all semblance of its former graciousness. The heavy
+springless jolt of gun-carriage and caisson had cut deeply through the
+middle track; the hoofs of crowding cavalry had struck down and shredded
+the wayside vines and bushes to bury them under a cloud of following
+dust, and the short, plunging double-quick of infantry had trodden out
+this hideous ruin into one dusty level chaos. Along that rudely widened
+highway useless muskets, torn accoutrements, knapsacks, caps, and
+articles of clothing were scattered, with here and there the larger
+wrecks of broken-down wagons, roughly thrown aside into the ditch to
+make way for the living current. For two hours the greater part of
+an army corps had passed and repassed that way, but, coming or going,
+always with faces turned eagerly towards an open slope on the right
+which ran parallel to the lane. And yet nothing was to be seen there.
+For two hours a gray and bluish cloud, rent and shaken with explosion
+after explosion, but always closing and thickening after each discharge,
+was all that had met their eyes. Nevertheless, into this ominous cloud
+solid moving masses of men in gray or blue had that morning melted away,
+or emerged from it only as scattered fragments that crept, crawled,
+ran, or clung together in groups, to be followed, and overtaken in the
+rolling vapor.
+
+But for the last half hour the desolated track had stretched empty and
+deserted. While there was no cessation of the rattling, crackling, and
+detonations on the fateful slope beyond, it had still been silent. Once
+or twice it had been crossed by timid, hurrying wings, and frightened
+and hesitating little feet, or later by skulkers and stragglers from
+the main column who were tempted to enter it from the hedges and bushes
+where they had been creeping and hiding. Suddenly a prolonged yell from
+the hidden slope beyond--the nearest sound that had yet been heard from
+that ominous distance--sent them to cover again. It was followed by
+the furious galloping of horses in the lane, and a handsome, red-capped
+officer, accompanied by an orderly, dashed down the track, wheeled,
+leaped the hedge, rode out on the slope and halted. In another instant a
+cloud of dust came whirling down the lane after him. Out of it strained
+the heavy shoulders and tightened chain-traces of six frantic horses
+dragging the swaying gun that in this tempest of motion alone seemed
+passive and helpless with an awful foreknowledge of its power. As in
+obedience to a signal from the officer they crashed through the hedge
+after him, a sudden jolt threw an artilleryman from the limber before
+the wheel. A driver glanced back on the tense chain and hesitated. “Go
+on!” yelled the prostrate man, and the wheel went over him. Another and
+another gun followed out of the dust cloud, until the whole battery had
+deployed on the slope. Before the drifting dust had fairly settled, the
+falling back of the panting horses with their drivers gave a momentary
+glimpse of the nearest gun already in position and of the four erect
+figures beside it. The yell that seemed to have evoked this sudden
+apparition again sounded nearer; a blinding flash broke from the
+gun, which was instantly hidden by the closing group around it, and
+a deafening crash with the high ringing of metal ran down the lane. A
+column of white, woolly smoke arose as another flash broke beside it.
+This was quickly followed by another and another, with a response from
+the gun first fired, until the whole slope shook and thundered. And the
+smoke, no longer white and woolly, but darkening and thickening as with
+unburnt grains of gunpowder, mingled into the one ominous vapor, and
+driving along the lane hid even the slope from view.
+
+The yelling had ceased, but the grinding and rattling heard through the
+detonation of cannon came nearer still, and suddenly there was a shower
+of leaves and twigs from the lower branches of a chestnut-tree near the
+broken hedge. As the smoke thinned again a rising and falling medley of
+flapping hats, tossing horses' heads and shining steel appeared for an
+instant, advancing tumultuously up the slope. But the apparition was as
+instantly cloven by flame from the two nearest guns, and went down in a
+gush of smoke and roar of sound. So level was the delivery and so close
+the impact that a space seemed suddenly cleared between, in which
+the whirling of the shattered remnants of the charging cavalry was
+distinctly seen, and the shouts and oaths of the inextricably struggling
+mass became plain and articulate. Then a gunner serving the nearest
+piece suddenly dropped his swab and seized a carbine, for out of
+the whirling confusion before them a single rider was seen galloping
+furiously towards the gun.
+
+The red-capped young officer rode forward and knocked up the gunner's
+weapon with his sword. For in that rapid glance he had seen that the
+rider's reins were hanging loosely on the neck of his horse, who was
+still dashing forwards with the frantic impetus of the charge, and
+that the youthful figure of the rider, wearing the stripes of a
+lieutenant,--although still erect, exercised no control over the animal.
+The face was boyish, blond, and ghastly; the eyes were set and glassy.
+It seemed as if Death itself were charging the gun.
+
+Within a few feet of it the horse swerved before a brandished rammer,
+and striking the cheeks of the gun-carriage pitched his inanimate rider
+across the gun. The hot blood of the dead man smoked on the hotter brass
+with the reek of the shambles, and be-spattered the hand of the gunner
+who still mechanically served the vent. As they lifted the dead body
+down the order came to “cease firing.” For the yells from below had
+ceased too; the rattling and grinding were receding with the smoke
+farther to the left. The ominous central cloud parted for a brief moment
+and showed the unexpected sun glittering down the slope upon a near and
+peaceful river.
+
+The young artillery officer had dismounted and was now gently examining
+the dead man. His breast had been crushed by a fragment of shell; he
+must have died instantly. The same missile had cut the chain of a locket
+which slipped from his opened coat. The officer picked it up with a
+strange feeling--perhaps because he was conscious himself of wearing a
+similar one, perhaps because it might give him some clue to the man's
+identity. It contained only the photograph of a pretty girl, a tendril
+of fair hair, and the word “Sally.” In the breast-pocket was a sealed
+letter with the inscription, “For Miss Sally Dows. To be delivered if I
+fall by the mudsill's hand.” A faint smile came over the officer's face;
+he was about to hand the articles to a sergeant, but changed his mind
+and put them in his pocket.
+
+Meantime the lane and woods beyond, and even the slope itself, were
+crowding with supports and waiting troops. His own battery was still
+unlimbered, waiting orders. There was a slight commotion in the lane.
+
+“Very well done, captain. Smartly taken and gallantly held.”
+
+It was the voice of a general officer passing with his staff. There was
+a note of pleasant relief in its tone, and the middle-aged, care-drawn
+face of its owner was relaxed in a paternal smile. The young captain
+flushed with pleasure.
+
+“And you seem to have had close work too,” added the general, pointing
+to the dead man.
+
+The young officer hurriedly explained. The general nodded, saluted, and
+passed on. But a youthful aide airily lingered.
+
+“The old man's feeling good, Courtland,” he said. “We've rolled 'em up
+all along the line. It's all over now. In point of fact, I reckon you've
+fired the last round in this particular fratricidal engagement.”
+
+The last round! Courtland remained silent, looking abstractedly at the
+man it had crushed and broken at his feet.
+
+“And I shouldn't wonder if you got your gold-leaf for to-day's work.
+But who's your sunny Southern friend here?” he added, following his
+companion's eyes.
+
+Courtland repeated his story a little more seriously, which, however,
+failed to subdue the young aide's levity. “So he concluded to stop
+over,” he interrupted cheerfully. “But,” looking at the letter and
+photograph, “I say--look here! 'Sally Dows?' Why, there was another man
+picked up yesterday with a letter to the same girl! Doc Murphy has it.
+And, by Jove! the same picture too!--eh? I say, Sally must have gathered
+in the boys, and raked down the whole pile! Look here, Courty! you might
+get Doc Murphy's letter and hunt her up when this cruel war is over. Say
+you're 'fulfilling a sacred trust!' See? Good idea, old man! Ta-ta!” and
+he trotted quickly after his superior.
+
+Courtland remained with the letter and photograph in his hand, gazing
+abstractedly after him. The smoke had rolled quite away from the fields
+on the left, but still hung heavily down the south on the heels of the
+flying cavalry. A long bugle call swelled up musically from below. The
+freed sun caught the white flags of two field hospitals in the woods
+and glanced tranquilly on the broad, cypress-fringed, lazy-flowing,
+and cruel but beautiful Southern river, which had all unseen crept so
+smilingly that morning through the very heart of the battle.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The two o'clock express from Redlands to Forestville, Georgia, had
+been proceeding with the languid placidity of the river whose banks it
+skirted for more than two hours. But, unlike the river, it had stopped
+frequently; sometimes at recognized stations and villages, sometimes at
+the apparition of straw-hatted and linen-coated natives in the solitude
+of pine woods, where, after a decent interval of cheery conversation
+with the conductor and engineer, it either took the stranger on board,
+or relieved him of his parcel, letter, basket, or even the verbal
+message with which he was charged. Much of the way lay through
+pine-barren and swampy woods which had never been cleared or cultivated;
+much through decayed settlements and ruined villages that had remained
+unchanged since the War of the Rebellion, now three years past. There
+were vestiges of the severity of a former military occupation; the
+blackened timbers of railway bridges still unrepaired; and along the
+line of a certain memorable march, sections of iron rails taken from
+the torn-up track, roasted in bonfires and bent while red-hot around the
+trunks of trees, were still to be seen. These mementos of defeat seemed
+to excite neither revenge nor the energy to remove them; the dull apathy
+which had succeeded the days of hysterical passion and convulsion still
+lingered; even the slow improvement that could be detected was marked
+by the languor of convalescence. The helplessness of a race, hitherto
+dependent upon certain barbaric conditions or political place and power,
+unskilled in invention, and suddenly confronted with the necessity of
+personal labor, was visible everywhere. Eyes that but three short years
+before had turned vindictively to the North, now gazed wistfully to that
+quarter for help and direction. They scanned eagerly the faces of their
+energetic and prosperous neighbors--and quondam foes--upon the verandas
+of Southern hotels and the decks of Southern steamboats, and were even
+now watching from a group in the woods the windows of the halted train,
+where the faces appeared of two men of manifestly different types, but
+still alien to the country in dress, features, and accent.
+
+Two negroes were slowly loading the engine tender from a woodpile. The
+rich brown smoke of the turpentine knots was filling the train with its
+stinging fragrance. The elder of the two Northern passengers, with sharp
+New England angles in his face, impatiently glanced at his watch.
+
+“Of all created shiftlessness, this beats everything! Why couldn't we
+have taken in enough wood to last the ten miles farther to the terminus
+when we last stopped? And why in thunder, with all this firing up, can't
+we go faster?”
+
+The younger passenger, whose quiet, well-bred face seemed to indicate
+more discipline of character, smiled.
+
+“If you really wish to know and as we've only ten miles farther to
+go--I'll show you WHY. Come with me.”
+
+He led the way through the car to the platform and leaped down. Then he
+pointed significantly to the rails below them. His companion started.
+The metal was scaling off in thin strips from the rails, and in some
+places its thickness had been reduced a quarter of an inch, while in
+others the projecting edges were torn off, or hanging in iron shreds,
+so that the wheels actually ran on the narrow central strip. It seemed
+marvelous that the train could keep the track.
+
+“NOW you know why we don't go more than five miles an hour, and--are
+thankful that we don't,” said the young traveler quietly.
+
+“But this is disgraceful!--criminal!” ejaculated the other nervously.
+
+“Not at their rate of speed,” returned the younger man. “The crime would
+be in going faster. And now you can understand why a good deal of the
+other progress in this State is obliged to go as slowly over their
+equally decaying and rotten foundations. You can't rush things here as
+we do in the North.”
+
+The other passenger shrugged his shoulders as they remounted the
+platform, and the train moved on. It was not the first time that the two
+fellow-travelers had differed, although their mission was a common
+one. The elder, Mr. Cyrus Drummond, was the vice-president of a large
+Northern land and mill company, which had bought extensive tracts of
+land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the consulting
+surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's opinions were a good
+deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a self-satisfied and righteous
+ignorance of the actual conditions and limitations of the people with
+whom he was to deal; while the younger man, who had served through the
+war with distinction, retained a soldier's respect and esteem for his
+late antagonists, with a conscientious and thoughtful observation of
+their character. Although he had resigned from the army, the fact that
+he had previously graduated at West Point with high honors had given
+him preferment in this technical appointment, and his knowledge of the
+country and its people made him a valuable counselor. And it was a fact
+that the country people had preferred this soldier with whom they had
+once personally grappled to the capitalist they had never known during
+the struggle.
+
+The train rolled slowly through the woods, so slowly that the fragrant
+pine smoke from the engine still hung round the windows of the cars.
+Gradually the “clearings” became larger; they saw the distant white
+wooden colonnades of some planter's house, looking still opulent and
+pretentious, although the fence of its inclosure had broken gaps, and
+the gate sagged on its single hinge.
+
+Mr. Drummond sniffed at this damning record of neglect and indifference.
+“Even if they were ruined, they might still have spent a few cents for
+nails and slats to enable them to look decent before folks, and not
+parade their poverty before their neighbors,” he said.
+
+“But that's just where you misunderstand them, Drummond,” said
+Courtland, smiling. “They have no reason to keep up an attitude towards
+their neighbors, who still know them as 'Squire' so-and-so, 'Colonel'
+this and that, and the 'Judge,'--owners of their vast but crippled
+estates. They are not ashamed of being poor, which is an accident.”
+
+“But they are of working, which is DELIBERATION,” interrupted Drummond.
+“They are ashamed to mend their fences themselves, now that they have no
+slaves to do it for them.”
+
+“I doubt very much if some of them know how to drive a nail, for the
+matter of that,” said Courtland, still good-humoredly, “but that's
+the fault of a system older than themselves, which the founders of the
+Republic retained. We cannot give them experience in their new condition
+in one day, and in fact, Drummond, I am very much afraid that for our
+purposes--and I honestly believe for THEIR good--we must help to keep
+them for the present as they are.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Drummond sarcastically, “you would like to reinstate
+slavery?”
+
+“No. But I should like to reinstate the MASTER. And not for HIS sake
+alone, but for freedom's sake and OURS. To be plain: since I have taken
+up this matter for the company, I have satisfied myself from personal
+observation that the negro--even more than his master--cannot handle his
+new condition. He is accustomed to his old traditional task-master, and
+I doubt if he will work fairly for any other--particularly for those who
+don't understand him. Don't mistake me: I don't propose to go back to
+the whip; to that brutal institution, the irresponsible overseer; to
+the buying and selling, and separation of the family, nor any of the
+old wrongs; but I propose to make the old master OUR OVERSEER, and
+responsible to US. He is not a fool, and has already learned that it
+is more profitable to pay wages to his old slaves and have the power
+of dismissal, like any other employer, than be obliged, under the old
+system of enforced labor and life servitude, to undergo the cost of
+maintaining incompetence and idleness. The old sentiment of slave-owning
+has disappeared before natural common-sense and selfishness. I am
+satisfied that by some such process as this utilizing of the old master
+and the new freedom we will be better able to cultivate our lands than
+by buying up their estates, and setting the old owners adrift, with a
+little money in their pockets, as an idle, discontented class to
+revive old political dogmas, and foment new issues, or perhaps set up a
+dangerous opposition to us.
+
+“You don't mean to say that those infernal niggers would give the
+preference to their old oppressors?”
+
+“Dollar for dollar in wages--yes! And why shouldn't they? Their old
+masters understand them better--and treat them generally better. They
+know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real
+liking. We show it at every turn. But we are nearing Redlands, and Major
+Reed will, I have no doubt, corroborate my impressions. He insists upon
+our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can
+ill afford to entertain company. But he will be offended if we refuse.”
+
+“He is a friend of yours, then?” asked Drummond.
+
+“I fought against his division at Stony Creek,” said Courtland grimly.
+“He never tires of talking of it to me--so I suppose I am.”
+
+A few moments later the train glided beside the Redlands platform. As
+the two travelers descended a hand was laid on Courtland's shoulder, and
+a stout figure in the blackest and shiniest of alpaca jackets, and the
+whitest and broadest of Panama hats, welcomed him. “Glad to see yo',
+cun'nel. I reckoned I'd waltz over and bring along the boy,” pointing to
+a grizzled negro servant of sixty who was bowing before them, “to
+tote yo'r things over instead of using a hack. I haven't run much on
+horseflesh since the wah--ha! ha! What I didn't use up for remounts I
+reckon yo'r commissary gobbled up with the other live stock, eh?” He
+laughed heartily, as if the recollections were purely humorous, and
+again clapped Courtland on the back.
+
+“Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Drummond, Major Reed,” said Courtland,
+smiling.
+
+“Yo' were in the wah, sir?”
+
+“No--I”--returned Drummond, hesitating, he knew not why, and angry at
+his own embarrassment.
+
+“Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company,” interposed Courtland
+cheerfully, “was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war.”
+
+Major Reed bowed a little more formally. “Most of us heah, sir, were
+in the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me by
+joining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, I'll introduce
+you to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks.” Drummond would
+have declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtland
+changed his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into the
+presence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlord
+and barkeeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by Major
+Reed as “the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours at
+Stony Creek!”
+
+Major Reed's house was but a few minutes' walk down the dusty lane,
+and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds and
+foreshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoed
+gate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of the
+usual Southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of the
+horse-chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless black
+shadows haunting the veranda and outer offices--former slaves and still
+attached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudes
+at the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush,
+broom, duster, or home implement they had been lazily using, in their
+fixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by a
+gallery to the wing of the mansion, “Aunt Martha,” the cook, gazed also,
+with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with the
+scrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead centre.
+
+Drummond, whose gorge had risen at these evidences of hopeless
+incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of
+Mrs. Reed--a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in
+her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness
+and antagonism of the typical “Southern rights” woman; nor of her two
+daughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed a
+part of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and good
+fellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast with
+his cypress-shadowed family and their venomous possibilities. Perhaps
+there might have been a light vein of Southern insincerity in his good
+humor. “Paw,” said Miss Octavia, with gloomy confidence to Courtland,
+but with a pretty curl of the hereditary lip, “is about the only
+'reconstructed' one of the entire family. We don't make 'em much about
+yer. But I'd advise yo' friend, Mr. Drummond, if he's coming here
+carpet-bagging, not to trust too much to paw's 'reconstruction.' It
+won't wash.” But when Courtland hastened to assure her that Drummond
+was not a “carpet-bagger,” was not only free from any of the political
+intrigue implied under that baleful title, but was a wealthy Northern
+capitalist simply seeking investment, the young lady was scarcely more
+hopeful. “I suppose he reckons to pay paw for those niggers yo' stole?”
+ she suggested with gloomy sarcasm.
+
+“No,” said Courtland, smiling; “but what if he reckoned to pay those
+niggers for working for your father and him?”
+
+“If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reed--a
+So'th'n gentleman--is going to keep shop, he ain't such a fool as to
+believe niggers will work when they ain't obliged to. THAT'S been tried
+over at Mirandy Dows's, not five miles from here, and the niggers are
+half the time hangin' round here takin' holiday. She put up new quarters
+for 'em, and tried to make 'em eat together at a long table like those
+low-down folks up North, and did away with their cabins and their melon
+patches, and allowed it would get 'em out of lying round too much, and
+wanted 'em to work over-time and get mo' pay. And the result was that
+she and her niece, and a lot of poor whites, Irish and Scotch, that she
+had to pick up ''long the river,' do all the work. And her niece Sally
+was mo' than half Union woman during the wah, and up to all No'th'n
+tricks and dodges, and swearin' by them; and yet, for all that--the
+thing won't work.”
+
+“But isn't that partly the reason? Isn't her failure a great deal due to
+this lack of sympathy from her neighbors? Discontent is easily sown,
+and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the Fifteenth
+Amendment did not quite knock off ALL his chains.”
+
+“Yes, but that is nothing to HER. For if there ever was a person in this
+world who reckoned she was just born to manage everything and everybody,
+it is Sally Dows!”
+
+“Sally Dows!” repeated Courtland, with a slight start.
+
+“Yes, Sally Dows, of Pineville.”
+
+“You say she was half Union, but did she have any relations
+or--or--friends--in the war--on your side? Any--who--were killed in
+battle?”
+
+“They were all killed, I reckon,” returned Miss Reed darkly. “There was
+her cousin, Jule Jeffcourt, shot in the cemetery with her beau, who,
+they say, was Sally's too; there were Chet Brooks and Joyce Masterton,
+who were both gone on her and both killed too; and there was old Captain
+Dows himself, who never lifted his head again after Richmond was taken,
+and drank himself to death. It wasn't considered healthy to be Miss
+Sally's relations in those times, or to be even wantin' to be one.”
+
+Colonel Courtland did not reply. The face of the dead young officer
+coming towards him out of the blue smoke rose as vividly as on that
+memorable day. The picture and letter he had taken from the dead man's
+breast, which he had retained ever since; the romantic and fruitless
+quest he had made for the fair original in after days; and the strange
+and fateful interest in her which had grown up in his heart since then,
+he now knew had only been lulled to sleep in the busy preoccupation of
+the last six months, for it all came back to him with redoubled force.
+His present mission and its practical object, his honest zeal in its
+pursuit, and the cautious skill and experience he had brought to it,
+all seemed to be suddenly displaced by this romantic and unreal fantasy.
+Oddly enough it appeared now to be the only reality in his life, the
+rest was an incoherent, purposeless dream.
+
+“Is--is--Miss Sally married?” he asked, collecting himself with an
+effort.
+
+“Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunt's! I reckon that's the only
+thing she cares for.”
+
+Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. “Well, I think
+that after luncheon I'll pay my respects to her family. From what you
+have just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. I
+suppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to Miss
+Dows?”
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Nevertheless, as Colonel Courtland rode deliberately towards Dows'
+Folly, as the new experiment was locally called, although he had not
+abated his romantic enthusiasm in the least, he was not sorry that he
+was able to visit it under a practical pretext. It was rather late now
+to seek out Miss Sally Dows with the avowed intent of bringing her a
+letter from an admirer who had been dead three years, and whose memory
+she had probably buried. Neither was it tactful to recall a sentiment
+which might have been a weakness of which she was ashamed. Yet,
+clear-headed and logical as Courtland was in his ordinary affairs, he
+was nevertheless not entirely free from that peculiar superstition which
+surrounds every man's romance. He believed there was something more than
+a mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorable
+conditions for making her acquaintance. For the rest--if there was any
+rest--he would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself a
+cool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows was
+concerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any of her previous
+admirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane that
+led to the Dows plantation.
+
+Here a better kept roadway and fence, whose careful repair would
+have delighted Drummond, seemed to augur well for the new enterprise.
+Presently, even the old-fashioned local form of the fence, a slanting
+zigzag, gave way to the more direct line of post and rail in the
+Northern fashion. Beyond it presently appeared a long low frontage of
+modern buildings which, to Courtland's surprise, were entirely new in
+structure and design. There was no reminiscence of the usual Southern
+porticoed gable or columned veranda. Yet it was not Northern either. The
+factory-like outline of facade was partly hidden in Cherokee rose and
+jessamine.
+
+A long roofed gallery connected the buildings and became a veranda to
+one. A broad, well-rolled gravel drive led from the open gate to the
+newest building, which seemed to be the office; a smaller path diverged
+from it to the corner house, which, despite its severe simplicity, had a
+more residential appearance. Unlike Reed's house, there were no lounging
+servants or field hands to be seen; they were evidently attending to
+their respective duties. Dismounting, Courtland tied his horse to a post
+at the office door and took the smaller path to the corner house.
+
+The door was open to the fragrant afternoon breeze wafted through the
+rose and jessamine. So also was a side door opening from the hall into
+a long parlor or sitting-room that ran the whole width of the house.
+Courtland entered it. It was prettily furnished, but everything had the
+air of freshness and of being uncharacteristically new. It was empty,
+but a faint hammering was audible on the rear wall of the house, through
+the two open French windows at the back, curtained with trailing vines,
+which gave upon a sunlit courtyard. Courtland walked to the window. Just
+before it, on the ground, stood a small light ladder, which he gently
+put aside to gain a better view of the courtyard as he put on his hat,
+and stepped out of the open window.
+
+In this attitude he suddenly felt his hat tipped from his head, followed
+almost instantaneously by a falling slipper, and the distinct impression
+of a very small foot on the crown of his head. An indescribable
+sensation passed over him. He hurriedly stepped back into the room, just
+as a small striped-stockinged foot was as hastily drawn up above the top
+of the window with the feminine exclamation, “Good gracious me!”
+
+Lingering for an instant, only to assure himself that the fair speaker
+had secured her foothold and was in no danger of falling, Courtland
+snatched up his hat, which had providentially fallen inside the room,
+and retreated ingloriously to the other end of the parlor. The voice
+came again from the window, and struck him as being very sweet and
+clear:--
+
+“Sophy, is that YOU?”
+
+Courtland discreetly retired to the hall. To his great relief a voice
+from the outside answered, “Whar, Miss Sally?”
+
+“What did yo' move the ladder for? Yo' might have killed me.”
+
+“Fo' God, Miss Sally, I didn't move no ladder!”
+
+“Don't tell me, but go down and get my slipper. And bring up some more
+nails.”
+
+Courtland waited silently in the hall. In a few moments he heard a heavy
+footstep outside the rear window. This was his opportunity. Re-entering
+the parlor somewhat ostentatiously, he confronted a tall negro girl
+who was passing through the room carrying a tiny slipper in her hand.
+“Excuse me,” he said politely, “but I could not find any one to announce
+me. Is Miss Dows at home?”
+
+The girl instantly whipped the slipper behind her. “Is yo' wanting Miss
+Mirandy Dows,” she asked with great dignity, “oah Miss Sally Dows--her
+niece? Miss Mirandy's bin gone to Atlanta for a week.”
+
+“I have a letter for Miss Miranda, but I shall be very glad if Miss
+Sally Dows will receive me,” returned Courtland, handing the letter and
+his card to the girl.
+
+She received it with a still greater access of dignity and marked
+deliberation. “It's clean gone outer my mind, sah, ef Miss Sally is in
+de resumption of visitahs at dis houah. In fac', sah,” she continued,
+with intensified gravity and an exaggeration of thoughtfulness as the
+sounds of Miss Sally's hammering came shamelessly from the wall, “I
+doahn know exac'ly ef she's engaged playin' de harp, practicin' de
+languages, or paintin' in oil and watah colors, o' givin' audiences to
+offishals from de Court House. It might be de houah for de one or de
+odder. But I'll communicate wid her, sah, in de budwoh on de uppah
+flo'.” She backed dexterously, so as to keep the slipper behind her, but
+with no diminution of dignity, out of a side door. In another moment the
+hammering ceased, followed by the sound of rapid whispering without; a
+few tiny twigs and leaves slowly rustled to the ground, and then there
+was complete silence. He ventured to walk to the fateful window again.
+
+Presently he heard a faint rustle at the other end of the room, and he
+turned. A sudden tremulousness swept along his pulses, and then they
+seemed to pause; he drew a deep breath that was almost a sigh, and
+remained motionless.
+
+He had no preconceived idea of falling in love with Miss Sally at first
+sight, nor had he dreamed such a thing possible. Even the girlish face
+that he had seen in the locket, although it had stirred him with a
+singular emotion, had not suggested that. And the ideal he had evolved
+from it was never a potent presence. But the exquisitely pretty face
+and figure before him, although it might have been painted from his own
+fancy of her, was still something more and something unexpected. All
+that had gone before had never prepared him for the beautiful girl who
+now stood there. It was a poor explanation to say that Miss Sally was
+four or five years older than her picture, and that later experiences,
+enlarged capacity, a different life, and new ambition had impressed her
+youthful face with a refined mobility; it was a weird fancy to imagine
+that the blood of those who had died for her had in some vague,
+mysterious way imparted an actual fascination to her, and he dismissed
+it. But even the most familiar spectator, like Sophy, could see that
+Miss Sally had the softest pink complexion, the silkiest hair, that
+looked as the floss of the Indian corn might look if curled, or golden
+spider threads if materialized, and eyes that were in bright gray
+harmony with both; that the frock of India muslin, albeit home-made,
+fitted her figure perfectly, from the azure bows on her shoulders to the
+ribbon around her waist; and that the hem of its billowy skirt showed a
+foot which had the reputation of being the smallest foot south of Mason
+and Dixon's Line! But it was something more intangible than this which
+kept Courtland breathless and silent.
+
+“I'm not Miss Miranda Dows,” said the vision with a frankness that was
+half childlike and half practical, as she extended a little hand, “but I
+can talk 'fahm' with yo' about as well as aunty, and I reckon from what
+Major Reed says heah,” holding up the letter between her fingers, “as
+long as yo' get the persimmons yo' don't mind what kind o' pole yo'
+knock 'em down with.”
+
+The voice that carried this speech was so fresh, clear, and sweet that I
+am afraid Courtland thought little of its bluntness or its conventional
+transgressions. But it brought him his own tongue quite unemotionally
+and quietly. “I don't know what was in that note, Miss Dows, but I can
+hardly believe that Major Reed ever put my present felicity quite in
+that way.”
+
+Miss Sally laughed. Then with a charming exaggeration she waved her
+little hand towards the sofa.
+
+“There! Yo' naturally wanted a little room for that, co'nnle, but now
+that yo' 've got it off,--and mighty pooty it was, too,--yo' can sit
+down.” And with that she sank down at one end of the sofa, prettily drew
+aside a white billow of skirt so as to leave ample room for Courtland
+at the other, and clasping her fingers over her knees, looked demurely
+expectant.
+
+“But let me hope that I am not disturbing you unseasonably,” said
+Courtland, catching sight of the fateful little slipper beneath her
+skirt, and remembering the window. “I was so preoccupied in thinking of
+your aunt as the business manager of these estates that I quite forget
+that she might have a lady's hours for receiving.”
+
+“We haven't got any company hours,” said Miss Sally, “and we haven't
+just now any servants for company manners, for we're short-handed in the
+fields and barns. When yo' came I was nailing up the laths for the vines
+outside, because we couldn't spare carpenters from the factory. But,”
+ she added, with a faint accession of mischief in her voice, “yo' came to
+talk about the fahm?”
+
+“Yes,” said Courtland, rising, “but not to interrupt the work on it.
+Will you let me help you nail up the laths on the wall? I have some
+experience that way, and we can talk as we work. Do oblige me!”
+
+The young girl looked at him brightly.
+
+“Well, now, there's nothing mean about THAT. Yo' mean it for sure?”
+
+“Perfectly. I shall feel so much less as if I was enjoying your company
+under false pretenses.”
+
+“Yo' just wait here, then.”
+
+She jumped from the sofa, ran out of the room, and returned presently,
+tying the string of a long striped cotton blouse--evidently an extra one
+of Sophy's--behind her back as she returned. It was gathered under her
+oval chin by a tape also tied behind her, while her fair hair was tucked
+under the usual red bandana handkerchief of the negro housemaid. It is
+scarcely necessary to add that the effect was bewitching.
+
+“But,” said Miss Sally, eying her guest's smartly fitting frock-coat,
+“yo' 'll spoil yo'r pooty clothes, sure! Take off yo'r coat--don't mind
+me--and work in yo'r shirtsleeves.”
+
+Courtland obediently flung aside his coat and followed his active
+hostess through the French window to the platform outside. Above them a
+wooden ledge or cornice, projecting several inches, ran the whole length
+of the building. It was on this that Miss Sally had evidently found a
+foothold while she was nailing up a trellis-work of laths between it and
+the windows of the second floor. Courtland found the ladder, mounted
+to the ledge, followed by the young girl, who smilingly waived his
+proffered hand to help her up, and the two gravely set to work. But in
+the intervals of hammering and tying up the vines Miss Sally's tongue
+was not idle. Her talk was as fresh, as quaint, as original as herself,
+and yet so practical and to the purpose of Courtland's visit as to
+excuse his delight in it and her own fascinating propinquity. Whether
+she stopped to take a nail from between her pretty lips when she spoke
+to him, or whether holding on perilously with one hand to the trellis
+while she gesticulated with the hammer, pointing out the divisions of
+the plantation from her coign of vantage, he thought she was as clear
+and convincing to his intellect as she was distracting to his senses.
+
+She told him how the war had broken up their old home in Pineville,
+sending her father to serve in the Confederate councils of Richmond,
+and leaving her aunt and herself to manage the property alone; how the
+estate had been devastated, the house destroyed, and how they had
+barely time to remove a few valuables; how, although SHE had always been
+opposed to secession and the war, she had not gone North, preferring to
+stay with her people, and take with them the punishment of the folly she
+had foreseen. How after the war and her father's death she and her aunt
+had determined to “reconstruct THEMSELVES” after their own fashion on
+this bit of property, which had survived their fortunes because it had
+always been considered valueless and unprofitable for negro labor. How
+at first they had undergone serious difficulty, through the incompetence
+and ignorance of the freed laborer, and the equal apathy and prejudice
+of their neighbors. How they had gradually succeeded with the adoption
+of new methods and ideas that she herself had conceived, which she now
+briefly and clearly stated. Courtland listened with a new, breathless,
+and almost superstitious interest: they were HIS OWN THEORIES--perfected
+and demonstrated!
+
+“But you must have had capital for this?”
+
+Ah, yes! that was where they were fortunate. There were some French
+cousins with whom she had once stayed in Paris, who advanced enough to
+stock the estate. There were some English friends of her father's, old
+blockade runners, who had taken shares, provided them with more capital,
+and imported some skilled laborers and a kind of steward or agent to
+represent them. But they were getting on, and perhaps it was better for
+their reputation with their neighbors that they had not been BEHOLDEN to
+the “No'th.” Seeing a cloud pass over Courtland's face, the young lady
+added with an affected sigh, and the first touch of feminine coquetry
+which had invaded their wholesome camaraderie:--
+
+“Yo' ought to have found us out BEFORE, co'nnle.”
+
+For an impulsive moment Courtland felt like telling her then and there
+the story of his romantic quest; but the reflection that they were
+standing on a narrow ledge with no room for the emotions, and that Miss
+Sally had just put a nail in her mouth and a start might be dangerous,
+checked him. To this may be added a new jealousy of her previous
+experiences, which he had not felt before. Nevertheless, he managed to
+say with some effusion:--
+
+“But I hope we are not too late NOW. I think my principals are quite
+ready and able to buy up any English or French investor now or to come.”
+
+“Yo' might try yo' hand on that one,” said Miss Sally, pointing to a
+young fellow who had just emerged from the office and was crossing the
+courtyard. “He's the English agent.”
+
+He was square-shouldered and round-headed, fresh and clean looking in
+his white flannels, but with an air of being utterly distinct and alien
+to everything around him, and mentally and morally irreconcilable to it.
+As he passed the house he glanced shyly at it; his eye brightened and
+his manner became self-conscious as he caught sight of the young girl,
+but changed again when he saw her companion. Courtland likewise was
+conscious of a certain uneasiness; it was one thing to be helping Miss
+Sally ALONE, but certainly another thing to be doing so under the eye
+of a stranger; and I am afraid that he met the stony observation of the
+Englishman with an equally cold stare. Miss Sally alone retained her
+languid ease and self-possession. She called out, “Wait a moment, Mr.
+Champney,” slipped lightly down the ladder, and leaning against it with
+one foot on its lowest rung awaited his approach.
+
+“I reckoned yo' might be passing by,” she said, as he came forward.
+“Co'nnle Courtland,” with an explanatory wave of the hammer towards her
+companion, who remained erect and slightly stiffened on the cornice,
+“is no relation to those figures along the frieze of the Redlands Court
+House, but a No'th'n officer, a friend of Major Reed's, who's come down
+here to look after So'th'n property for some No'th'n capitalists. Mr.
+Champney,” she continued, turning and lifting her eyes to Courtland as
+she indicated Champney with her hammer, “when he isn't talking English,
+seeing English, thinking English, dressing English, and wondering why
+God didn't make everything English, is trying to do the same for
+HIS folks. Mr. Champney, Co'nnle Courtland. Co'nnle Courtland, Mr.
+Champney!” The two men bowed formally. “And now, Co'nnle, if yo'll
+come down, Mr. Champney will show yo' round the fahm. When yo' 've got
+through yo'll find me here at work.”
+
+Courtland would have preferred, and half looked for her company
+and commentary on this round of inspection, but he concealed his
+disappointment and descended. It did not exactly please him that
+Champney seemed relieved, and appeared to accept him as a bona fide
+stranger who could not possibly interfere with any confidential
+relations that he might have with Miss Sally. Nevertheless, he met the
+Englishman's offer to accompany him with polite gratitude, and they left
+the house together.
+
+In less than an hour they returned. It had not even taken that time for
+Courtland to discover that the real improvements and the new methods
+had originated with Miss Sally; that she was virtually the controlling
+influence there, and that she was probably retarded rather than assisted
+by the old-fashioned and traditional conservatism of the company of
+which Champney was steward. It was equally plain, however, that the
+young fellow was dimly conscious of this, and was frankly communicative
+about it.
+
+“You see, over there they work things in a different way, and, by Jove!
+they can't understand that there is any other, don't you know? They're
+always wigging me as if I could help it, although I've tried to explain
+the nigger business, and all that, don't you know? They want Miss Dows
+to refer her plans to me, and expect me to report on them, and then
+they'll submit them to the Board and wait for its decision. Fancy Miss
+Dows doing that! But, by Jove! they can't conceive of her AT ALL over
+there, don't you know?”
+
+“Which Miss Dows do you mean?” asked Courtland dryly.
+
+“Miss Sally, of course,” said the young fellow briskly. “SHE manages
+everything--her aunt included. She can make those niggers work when no
+one else can, a word or smile from her is enough. She can make terms
+with dealers and contractors--her own terms, too--when they won't look
+at MY figures. By Jove! she even gets points out of those traveling
+agents and inventors, don't you know, who come along the road with
+patents and samples. She got one of those lightning-rod and wire-fence
+men to show her how to put up an arbor for her trailing roses. Why, when
+I first saw YOU up on the cornice, I thought you were some other chap
+that she'd asked--don't you know--that is, at first, of course!--you
+know what I mean--ha, by Jove!--before we were introduced, don't you
+know.”
+
+“I think I OFFERED to help Miss Dows,” said Courtland with a quickness
+that he at once regretted.
+
+“So did HE, don't you know? Miss Sally does not ASK anybody. Don't you
+see? a fellow don't like to stand by and see a young lady like her doing
+such work.” Vaguely aware of some infelicity in his speech, he awkwardly
+turned the subject: “I don't think I shall stay here long, myself.”
+
+“You expect to return to England?” asked Courtland.
+
+“Oh, no! But I shall go out of the company's service and try my own
+hand. There's a good bit of land about three miles from here that's in
+the market, and I think I could make something out of it. A fellow ought
+to settle down and be his own master,” he answered tentatively, “eh?”
+
+“But how will Miss Dows be able to spare you?” asked Courtland, uneasily
+conscious that he was assuming an indifference.
+
+“Oh, I'm not much use to her, don't you know--at least not HERE. But
+I might, if I had my own land and if we were neighbors. I told you SHE
+runs the place, no matter who's here, or whose money is invested.”
+
+“I presume you are speaking now of young Miss Dows?” said Courtland
+dryly.
+
+“Miss Sally--of course--always,” said Champney simply. “She runs the
+shop.”
+
+“Were there not some French investors--relations of Miss Dows? Does
+anybody represent THEM?” asked Courtland pointedly.
+
+Yet he was not quite prepared for the naive change in his companion's
+face. “No. There was a sort of French cousin who used to be a good deal
+to the fore, don't you know? But I rather fancy he didn't come here to
+look after the PROPERTY,” returned Champney with a quick laugh. “I think
+the aunt must have written to his friends, for they 'called him off,'
+and I don't think Miss Sally broke her heart about him. She's not that
+sort of girl--eh? She could have her pick of the State if she went in
+for that sort of thing--eh?”
+
+Although this was exactly what Courtland was thinking, it pleased him
+to answer in a distrait sort of fashion, “Certainly, I should think so,”
+ and to relapse into an apparently business abstraction.
+
+“I think I won't go in,” continued Champney as they neared the house
+again. “I suppose you'll have something more to say to Miss Dows. If
+there's anything else you want of ME, come to the office. But SHE'LL
+know. And--er--er--if you're--er--staying long in this part of the
+country, ride over and look me up, don't you know? and have a smoke
+and a julep; I have a boy who knows how to mix them, and I've some old
+brandy sent me from the other side. Good-by.”
+
+More awkward in his kindliness than in his simple business confidences,
+but apparently equally honest in both, he shook Courtland's hand and
+walked away. Courtland turned towards the house. He had seen the farm
+and its improvements; he had found some of his own ideas practically
+discounted; clearly there was nothing left for him to do but to thank
+his hostess and take his leave. But he felt far more uneasy than when
+he had arrived; and there was a singular sense of incompleteness in
+his visit that he could not entirely account for. His conversation with
+Champney had complicated--he knew not why--his previous theories of Miss
+Dows, and although he was half conscious that this had nothing to do
+with the business that brought him there, he tried to think that it had.
+If Miss Sally was really--a--a--distracting element to contiguous man,
+it was certainly something to be considered in a matter of business of
+which she would take a managerial part. It was true that Champney had
+said she was “not that sort of girl,” but this was the testimony of one
+who was clearly under her influence. He entered the house through the
+open French window. The parlor was deserted. He walked through the front
+hall and porch; no one was there. He lingered a few moments, a slight
+chagrin beginning to mingle with his uneasiness. She might have been on
+the lookout for him. She or Sophy must have seen him returning. He would
+ring for Sophy, and leave his thanks and regrets for her mistress.
+He looked for a bell, touched it, but on being confronted with Sophy,
+changed his mind and asked to SEE Miss Dows. In the interval between her
+departure and the appearance of Miss Sally he resolved to do the very
+thing which he had dismissed from his thoughts but an hour before as
+ill-timed and doubtful. He had the photograph and letter in his pocket;
+he would make them his excuse for personally taking leave of her.
+
+She entered with her fair eyebrows lifted in a pretty surprise.
+
+“I declare to goodness, I thought yo' 'd ridden over to the red barn and
+gone home from there. I got through my work on the vines earlier than
+I thought. One of Judge Garret's nephews dropped in in time to help me
+with the last row. Yo' needn't have troubled yo'self to send up for me
+for mere company manners, but Sophy says yo' looked sort of 'anxious and
+particular' when yo' asked for me--so I suppose yo' want to see me for
+something.”
+
+Mentally objurgating Sophy, and with an unpleasant impression in his
+mind of the unknown neighbor who had been helping Miss Sally in his
+place, he nevertheless tried to collect himself gallantly.
+
+“I don't know what my expression conveyed to Sophy,” he said with a
+smile, “but I trust that what I have to tell you may be interesting
+enough to make you forget my second intrusion.” He paused, and still
+smiling continued: “For more than three years, Miss Dows, you have more
+or less occupied my thoughts; and although we have actually met to-day
+only for the first time, I have during that time carried your image
+with me constantly. Even this meeting, which was only the result of an
+accident, I had been seeking for three years. I find you here under your
+own peaceful vine and fig-tree, and yet three years ago you came to me
+out of the thunder-cloud of battle.”
+
+“My good gracious!” said Miss Sally.
+
+She had been clasping her knee with her linked fingers, but separated
+them and leaned backward on the sofa with affected consternation, but
+an expression of growing amusement in her bright eyes. Courtland saw the
+mistake of his tone, but it was too late to change it now. He handed
+her the locket and the letter, and briefly, and perhaps a little more
+seriously, recounted the incident that had put him in possession of
+them. But he entirely suppressed the more dramatic and ghastly details,
+and his own superstition and strange prepossession towards her.
+
+Miss Sally took the articles without a tremor, or the least deepening
+or paling of the delicate, faint suffusion of her cheek. When she had
+glanced over the letter, which appeared to be brief, she said, with
+smiling, half-pitying tranquillity:--
+
+“Yes!--it WAS that poor Chet Brooks, sure! I heard that he was killed
+at Snake River. It was just like him to rush in and get killed the first
+pop! And all for nothing, too,--pure foolishness!”
+
+Shocked, yet relieved, but uneasy under both sensations, Courtland went
+on blindly:
+
+“But he was not the only one, Miss Dows. There was another man picked up
+who also had your picture.”
+
+“Yes--Joyce Masterton. They sent it to me. But you didn't kill HIM,
+too?”
+
+“I don't know that I personally killed either,” he said a little coldly.
+He paused, and continued with a gravity which he could not help feeling
+very inconsistent and even ludicrous: “They were brave men, Miss Dows.”
+
+“To have worn my picture?” said Miss Sally brightly.
+
+“To have THOUGHT they had so much to live for, and yet to have willingly
+laid down their lives for what they believed was right.”
+
+“Yo' didn't go huntin' me for three years to tell ME, a So'th'n girl,
+that So'th'n men know how to fight, did yo', co'nnle?” returned the
+young lady, with the slightest lifting of her head and drooping of her
+blue-veined lids in a divine hauteur. “They were always ready enough for
+that, even among themselves. It was much easier for these pooah boys to
+fight a thing out than think it out, or work it out. Yo' folks in the
+No'th learned to do all three; that's where you got the grip on us. Yo'
+look surprised, co'nnle.”
+
+“I didn't expect you would look at it--quite in--in--that way,” said
+Courtland awkwardly.
+
+“I am sorry I disappointed yo' after yo' 'd taken such a heap o'
+trouble,” returned the young lady with a puzzling assumption of humility
+as she rose and smoothed out her skirts, “but I couldn't know exactly
+what yo' might be expecting after three years; if I HAD, I might have
+put on mo'ning.” She stopped and adjusted a straying tendril of her hair
+with the sharp corner of the dead man's letter. “But I thank yo', all
+the same, co'nnle. It was real good in yo' to think of toting these
+things over here.” And she held out her hand frankly.
+
+Courtland took it with the sickening consciousness that for the last
+five minutes he had been an unconscionable ass. He could not prolong the
+interview after she had so significantly risen. If he had only taken
+his leave and kept the letter and locket for a later visit, perhaps when
+they were older friends! It was too late now. He bent over her hand for
+a moment, again thanked her for her courtesy, and withdrew. A moment
+later she heard the receding beat of his horse's hoofs on the road.
+
+She opened the drawer of a brass-handled cabinet, and after a moment's
+critical survey of her picture in the dead man's locket, tossed it and
+the letter into the recesses of the drawer. Then she stopped, removed
+her little slipper from her foot, looked at THAT, too, thoughtfully, and
+called “Sophy!”
+
+“Miss Sally?” said the girl, reappearing at the door.
+
+“Are you sure you did not move that ladder?”
+
+“I 'clare to goodness, Miss Sally, I never teched it!”
+
+Miss Sally directed a critical glance at her handmaiden's red-coifed
+head. “No,” she said to herself softly, “it felt nicer than wool,
+anyway!”
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+In spite of the awkward termination of his visit,--or perhaps BECAUSE of
+it,--Courtland called again at the plantation within the week. But this
+time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda
+Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time
+politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given
+way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts. Mr. Drummond, delighted
+with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally,
+while Courtland was now discreet enough to divide his attentions between
+her and her aunt, with the result that he was far from participating in
+Champney's conviction of Miss Miranda's unimportance. To the freedmen
+she still represented the old implacable task-mistress, and it was
+evident that they superstitiously believed that she still retained a
+vague power of overriding the Fourteenth Amendment at her pleasure,
+and was only to be restrained by the mediation of the good-humored
+and sensible Miss Sally. Courtland was quick to see the value of this
+influence in the transition state of the freedmen, and pointed it out
+to his principal. Drummond's previous doubts and skepticism, already
+weakened by Miss Sally's fascinations, vanished entirely at this
+prospect of beneficially utilizing these lingering evils of slavery. He
+was convinced, he was even enthusiastic. The foreign investors were men
+to be bought out; the estate improved and enlarged by the company,
+and the fair owners retained in the management and control. Like most
+prejudiced men, Drummond's conversion was sudden and extreme, and, being
+a practical man, was at once acted upon. At a second and third interview
+the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtland's
+first visit, the Dows' plantation and part of Major Reed's were merged
+in the “Drummond Syndicate,” and placed beyond financial uncertainty.
+Courtland remained to represent the company as superintendent at
+Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney
+retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a
+plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to
+secure.
+
+During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally,
+and easy and unrestrained access to her presence. He had never again
+erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to
+the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine
+himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet,
+neighborly intercourse with her. Much of this was the result of his own
+self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the
+deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it. At times he caught
+the young girl's eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity. A
+strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and
+dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young
+people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental
+inclination be still in abeyance. Courtland knew that Miss Sally
+remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past. She
+might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered
+it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to
+themselves. It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more
+practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the
+excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment
+her mischievously smiling eyes. Once she went farther. Courtland had
+just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm
+buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro
+field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office,
+when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed
+her bright gray eyes on his serious face.
+
+“I vow and protest, co'nnle,” she said, dropping into one of the quaint
+survivals of an old-time phraseology peculiar to her people, “I never
+allowed yo' could just give yo'self up to business, soul and body, as
+yo' do, when I first met yo' that day.”
+
+“Why, what did you think me?” he asked quickly.
+
+Miss Sally, who had a Southern aptitude for gesture, took one little
+hand from behind her, twirled it above her head with a pretty air of
+disposing of some airy nothing in a presumably masculine fashion, and
+said, “Oh, THAT.”
+
+“I am afraid I did not impress you then as a very practical man,” he
+said, with a faint color.
+
+“I thought you roosted rather high, co'nnle, to pick up many worms in
+the mo'ning. But,” she added with a dazzling smile, “I reckon from what
+yo' said about the photograph, yo' thought I wasn't exactly what yo'
+believed I ought to be, either.”
+
+He would have liked to tell her then and there that he would have been
+content if those bright, beautiful eyes had never kindled with anything
+but love or womanly aspiration; that that soft, lazy, caressing voice
+had never been lifted beyond the fireside or domestic circle; that the
+sunny, tendriled hair and pink ears had never inclined to anything but
+whispered admiration; and that the graceful, lithe, erect figure, so
+independent and self-contained, had been satisfied to lean only upon his
+arm for support. He was conscious that this had been in his mind when he
+first saw her; he was equally conscious that she was more bewilderingly
+fascinating to him in her present inaccessible intelligence and
+practicality.
+
+“I confess,” he said, looking into her eyes with a vague smile, “I did
+not expect you would be so forgetful of some one who had evidently cared
+for you.”
+
+“Meaning Mr. Chet Brooks, or Mr. Joyce Masterton, or both. That's like
+most yo' men, co'nnle. Yo' reckon because a girl pleases yo' she ought
+to be grateful all her life--and yo'rs, too! Yo' think different
+now! But yo' needn't act up to it quite so much.” She made a little
+deprecating gesture with her disengaged hand as if to ward off any
+retaliating gallantry. “I ain't speaking for myself, co'nnle. Yo' and me
+are good enough friends. But the girls round here think yo' 're a trifle
+too much taken up with rice and niggers. And looking at it even in yo'r
+light, co'nnle, it ain't BUSINESS. Yo' want to keep straight with Major
+Reed, so it would be just as well to square the major's woman folks.
+Tavy and Gussie Reed ain't exactly poisonous, co'nnle, and yo' might see
+one or the other home from church next Sunday. The Sunday after that,
+just to show yo' ain't particular, and that yo' go in for being a
+regular beau, yo' might walk home with ME. Don't be frightened--I've got
+a better gown than this. It's a new one, just come home from Louisville,
+and I'll wear it for the occasion.”
+
+He did not dare to say that the quaint frock she was then wearing--a
+plain “checked” household gingham used for children's pinafores, with
+its ribbons of the same pattern, gathered in bows at the smart apron
+pockets--had become a part of her beauty, for he was already hopelessly
+conscious that she was lovely in anything, and he might be impelled to
+say so. He thanked her gravely and earnestly, but without gallantry or
+effusion, and had the satisfaction of seeing the mischief in her eyes
+increase in proportion to his seriousness, and heard her say with
+affected concern: “Bear up, co'nnle! Don't let it worry yo' till the
+time comes,” and took his leave.
+
+On the following Sunday he was present at the Redlands Episcopal Church,
+and after the service stood with outward composure but some inward
+chafing among the gallant youth who, after the local fashion, had ranged
+themselves outside the doors of the building. He was somewhat surprised
+to find Mr. Champney, evidently as much out of place as himself, but
+less self-contained, waiting in the crowd of expectant cavaliers.
+Although convinced that the young Englishman had come only to see Miss
+Sally, he was glad to share his awkward isolation with another stranger,
+and greeted him pleasantly. The Dows' pew, being nearer to the entrance
+than the Reeds', gave up its occupants first. Colonel Courtland lifted
+his hat to Miss Miranda and her niece at the same moment that Champney
+moved forward and ranged himself beside them. Miss Sally, catching
+Courtland's eye, showed the whites of her own in a backward glance of
+mischievous significance to indicate the following Reeds. When they
+approached, Courtland joined them, and finding himself beside Miss
+Octavia entered into conversation. Apparently the suppressed passion
+and sardonic melancholy of that dark-eyed young lady spurred him to a
+lighter, gayer humor even in proportion as Miss Sally's good-natured
+levity and sunny practicality always made him serious. They presently
+fell to the rear with other couples, and were soon quite alone.
+
+A little haughty, but tall and erect in her well-preserved black
+grenadine dress, which gave her the appearance of a youthful but
+implacable widow, Miss Reed declared she had not seen the co'nnle for
+“a coon's age,” and certainly had not expected to have the honor of his
+company as long as there were niggers to be elevated or painted to look
+like white men. She hoped that he and paw and Sally Dows were happy!
+They hadn't yet got so far as to put up a nigger preacher in the place
+of Mr. Symes, their rector, but she understood that there was some talk
+of running Hannibal Johnson--Miss Dows' coachman--for county judge next
+year! No! she had not heard that the co'nnle HIMSELF had thought of
+running for the office! He might laugh at her as much as he liked--he
+seemed to be in better spirits than when she first saw him--only she
+would like to know if it was “No'th'n style” to laugh coming home
+from church? Of course if it WAS she would have to adopt it with the
+Fourteenth Amendment. But, just now, she noticed the folks were staring
+at them, and Miss Sally Dows had turned round to look. Nevertheless,
+Miss Octavia's sallow cheek nearest the colonel--the sunny side--had
+taken a faint brunette's flush, and the corners of her proud mouth were
+slightly lifted.
+
+“But, candidly, Miss Reed, don't you think that you would prefer to
+have old Hannibal, whom you know, as county judge, than a stranger and a
+Northern man like ME?”
+
+Miss Reed's dark eyes glanced sideways at the handsome face and elegant
+figure beside her. Something like a saucy smile struggled to her thin
+lips.
+
+“There mightn't be much to choose, Co'nnle.”
+
+“I admit it. We should both acknowledge our mistress, and be like wax in
+her hands.”
+
+“Yo' ought to make that pooty speech to Sally Dows, she's generally
+mistress around here. But,” she added, suddenly fixing her eyes on him,
+“how does it happen that yo' ain't walking with her instead of that
+Englishman? Yo' know that it's as plain as day that he took that land
+over there just to be near her, when he was no longer agent.”
+
+But Courtland was always master of himself and quite at ease regarding
+Miss Sally when not in that lady's presence. “You forget,” he said
+smilingly, “that I'm still a stranger and knew little of the local
+gossip; and if I did know it, I am afraid we didn't bargain to buy up
+with the LAND Mr. Champney's personal interest in the LANDLADY.”
+
+“Yo' 'd have had your hands full, for I reckon she's pooty heavily
+mortgaged in that fashion, already,” returned Miss Reed with mere
+badinage than spitefulness in the suggestion. “And Mr. Champney was run
+pooty close by a French cousin of hers when he was here. Yo' haven't got
+any French books to lend me, co'nnle--have yo'? Paw says you read a heap
+of French, and I find it mighty hard to keep up MY practice since I
+left the Convent at St. Louis, for paw don't knew what sort of books to
+order, and I reckon he makes awful mistakes sometimes.”
+
+The conversation here turning upon polite literature, it appeared that
+Miss Octavia's French reading, through a shy, proud innocence and
+an imperfect knowledge of the wicked subtleties of the language, was
+somewhat broad and unconventional for a young lady. Courtland promised
+to send her some books, and even ventured to suggest some American and
+English novels not intensely “No'th'n” nor “metaphysical”--according
+to the accepted Southern beliefs. A new respect and pitying interest
+in this sullen, solitary girl, cramped by tradition, and bruised rather
+than enlightened by sad experiences, came over him. He found himself
+talking quite confidentially to the lifted head, arched eyebrows, and
+aquiline nose beside him, and even thinking what a handsome high-bred
+BROTHER she might have been to some one. When they had reached the
+house, in compliance with the familiar custom, he sat down on one of
+the lower steps of the veranda, while she, shaking out her skirt, took a
+seat a step or two above him. This enabled him, after the languid local
+fashion, to lean on his elbow and gaze up into the eyes of the young
+lady, while she with equal languor looked down upon him. But in the
+present instance Miss Reed leaned forward suddenly, and darting a sharp
+quick glance into his very consciousness said:--
+
+“And yo' mean to say, co'nnle, there's nothing between yo' and Sally
+Dows?”
+
+Courtland neither flushed, trembled, grew confused, nor prevaricated.
+
+“We are good friends, I think,” he replied quietly, without evasion or
+hesitation.
+
+Miss Reed looked at him thoughtfully, “I reckon that is so--and no more.
+And that's why yo' 've been so lucky in everything,” she said slowly.
+
+“I don't think I quite understand,” returned Courtland, smiling. “Is
+this a paradox--or a consolation?”
+
+“It's the TRUTH,” said Miss Reed gravely. “Those who try to be anything
+more to Sally Dows lose their luck.”
+
+“That is--are rejected by her. Is she really so relentless?” continued
+Courtland gayly.
+
+“I mean that they lose their luck in everything. Something is sure to
+happen. And SHE can't help it either.”
+
+“Is this a Sibylline warning, Miss Reed?”
+
+“No. It's nigger superstition. It came from Mammy Judy, Sally's old
+nurse. It's part of their regular Hoo-doo. She bewitched Miss Sally when
+she was a baby, so that everybody is bound to HER as long as they care
+for her, and she isn't bound to THEM in any way. All their luck goes to
+her as soon as the spell is on them,” she added darkly.
+
+“I think I know the rest,” returned Courtland with still greater
+solemnity. “You gather the buds of the witch-hazel in April when the
+moon is full. You then pluck three hairs from the young lady's right
+eyebrow when she isn't looking”--
+
+“Yo' can laugh, co'nnle, for yo' 're lucky--because yo' 're free.”
+
+“I'm not so sure of that,” he said gallantly, “for I ought to be riding
+at this moment over to the Infirmary to visit my Sunday sick. If being
+made to pleasantly forget one's time and duty is a sign of witchcraft
+I am afraid Mammy Judy's enchantments were not confined to only one
+Southern young lady.”
+
+The sound of quick footsteps on the gravel path caused them both to look
+up. A surly looking young fellow, ostentatiously booted and spurred,
+and carrying a heavy rawhide riding-whip in his swinging hand, was
+approaching them. Deliberately, yet with uneasy self-consciousness,
+ignoring the presence of Courtland, he nodded abruptly to Miss Reed,
+ascended the steps, brushed past them both without pausing, and entered
+the house.
+
+“Is that yo'r manners, Mr. Tom?” called the young lady after him,
+a slight flush rising to her sallow cheek. The young man muttered
+something from the hall which Courtland did not catch. “It's Cousin Tom
+Higbee,” she explained half disdainfully. “He's had some ugliness with
+his horse, I reckon; but paw ought to teach him how to behave. And--I
+don't think he likes No'th'n men,” she added gravely.
+
+Courtland, who had kept his temper with his full understanding of the
+intruder's meaning, smiled as he took Miss Reed's hand in parting.
+“That's quite enough explanation, and I don't know why it shouldn't be
+even an apology.”
+
+Yet the incident left little impression on him as he strolled back to
+Redlands. It was not the first time he had tasted the dregs of former
+sectional hatred in incivility and discourtesy, but as it seldom came
+from his old personal antagonists--the soldiers--and was confined to the
+callow youth, previous non-combatants and politicians, he could afford
+to overlook it. He did not see Miss Sally during the following week.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+On the next Sunday he was early at church. But he had perhaps
+accented the occasion by driving there in a light buggy behind a fast
+thoroughbred, possibly selected more to the taste of a smart cavalry
+officer than an agricultural superintendent. He was already in a side
+pew, his eyes dreamily fixed on the prayer-book ledge before him, when
+there was a rustle at the church door, and a thrill of curiosity and
+admiration passed over the expectant congregation. It was the entrance
+of the Dows party, Miss Sally well to the fore. She was in her new
+clothes, the latest fashion in Louisville, the latest but two in Paris
+and New York.
+
+It was over twenty years ago. I shall not imperil the effect of that
+lovely vision by recalling to the eye of to-day a fashion of yesterday.
+Enough, that it enabled her to set her sweet face and vapory golden hair
+in a horseshoe frame of delicate flowers, and to lift her oval chin
+out of a bewildering mist of tulle. Nor did a certain light polonaise
+conceal the outlines of her charming figure. Even those who were
+constrained to whisper to each other that “Miss Sally” must “be now
+going on twenty-five,” did so because she still carried the slender
+graces of seventeen. The organ swelled as if to welcome her; as she took
+her seat a ray of sunlight, that would have been cruel and searching to
+any other complexion, drifted across the faint pink of her cheeks,
+and nestling in her nebulous hair became itself transfigured. A few
+stained-glass Virtues on the windows did not come out of this effulgence
+as triumphantly, and it was small wonder that the devotional eyes of the
+worshipers wandered from them to the face of Sally Dows.
+
+When the service was over, as the congregation filed slowly into the
+aisle, Courtland slipped mutely behind her. As she reached the porch he
+said in an undertone:
+
+“I brought my horse and buggy. I thought you might possibly allow me
+to drive”--But he was stopped by a distressful knitting of her golden
+brows. “No,” she said quickly, but firmly, “you must not--it won't do.”
+ As Courtland hesitated in momentary perplexity, she smiled sweetly:
+“We'll walk round by the cemetery, if you like; it will take about as
+long as a drive.” Courtland vanished, gave hurried instructions and a
+dollar to a lounging negro, and rejoined Miss Sally as the delighted and
+proud freedman drove out of the gate. Miss Sally heaved a slight sigh
+as the gallant equipage passed. “It was a mighty pooty turnout, co'nnle,
+and I'd have just admired to go, but it would have been rather hard on
+the other folks. There's the Reeds and Maxwells and Robertsons that are
+too pooah to keep blood horses, and too proud to ride behind anything
+else. It wouldn't be the right thing for us to go whirling by,
+scattering our dust over them.” There was something so subtly pleasant
+in this implied partnership of responsibility, that Courtland forgot
+the abrupt refusal and thought only of the tact that prompted it.
+Nevertheless, here a spell seemed to fall upon his usually ready speech.
+Now that they were together for the first time in a distinctly social
+fashion, he found himself vacantly, meaninglessly silent, content to
+walk beside this charming, summery presence, brushed by its delicate
+draperies, and inhaling its freshness. Presently it spoke.
+
+“It would take more than a thousand feet of lumber to patch up the
+cowsheds beyond the Moseley pasture, and an entirely new building with
+an improved dairy would require only about two thousand more. All the
+old material would come in good for fencing, and could be used with
+the new post and rails. Don't yo' think it would be better to have an
+out-and-out new building?”
+
+“Yes, certainly,” returned Courtland a little confusedly. He had
+not calculated upon this practical conversation, and was the more
+disconcerted as they were passing some of the other couples, who had
+purposely lingered to overhear them.
+
+“And,” continued the young girl brightly, “the freight question is
+getting to be a pretty serious one. Aunt Miranda holds some shares in
+the Briggsville branch line, and thinks something could be done with
+the directors for a new tariff of charges if she put a pressure on them;
+Tyler says that there was some talk of their reducing it one sixteenth
+per cent. before we move this year's crop.”
+
+Courtland glanced quickly at his companion's face. It was grave, but
+there was the faintest wrinkling of the corner of the eyelid nearest
+him. “Had we not better leave these serious questions until to-morrow?”
+ he said, smiling.
+
+Miss Sally opened her eyes demurely. “Why, yo' seemed SO quiet, I
+reckoned yo' must be full of business this morning; but if yo' prefer
+company talk, we'll change the subject. They say that yo' and Miss Reed
+didn't have much trouble to find one last Sunday. She don't usually talk
+much, but she keeps up a power of thinking. I should reckon,” she added,
+suddenly eying him critically, “that yo' and she might have a heap o'
+things to say to each other. She's a good deal in yo' fashion,
+co'nnle, she don't forget, but”--more slowly--“I don't know that THAT'S
+altogether the best thing for YO'!”
+
+Courtland lifted his eyes with affected consternation. “If this is in
+the light of another mysterious warning, Miss Dows, I warn you that my
+intellect is already tottering with them. Last Sunday Miss Reed thrilled
+me for an hour with superstition and Cassandra-like prophecy. Don't
+things ever happen accidentally here, and without warning?”
+
+“I mean,” returned the young lady with her usual practical directness,
+“that Tave Reed remembers a good many horrid things about the wah that
+she ought to forget, but don't. But,” she continued, looking at him
+curiously, “she allows she was mighty cut up by her cousin's manner to
+yo'.”
+
+“I am afraid that Miss Reed was more annoyed than I was,” said
+Courtland. “I should be very sorry if she attached any importance to
+it,” he added earnestly.
+
+“And YO' don't?” continued Miss Sally.
+
+“No. Why should I?” She noticed, however, that he had slightly drawn
+himself up a little more erect, and she smiled as he continued, “I dare
+say I should feel as he does if I were in his place.”
+
+“But YO' wouldn't do anything underhanded,” she said quietly. As he
+glanced at her quickly she added dryly: “Don't trust too much to people
+always acting in yo' fashion, co'nnle. And don't think too much nor too
+little of what yo' hear here. Yo' 're just the kind of man to make a
+good many silly enemies, and as many foolish friends. And I don't know
+which will give yo' the most trouble. Only don't yo' underrate EITHER,
+or hold yo' head so high, yo' don't see what's crawlin' around yo'.
+That's why, in a copperhead swamp, a horse is bitten oftener than a
+hog.”
+
+She smiled, yet with knitted brows and such a pretty affectation of
+concern for her companion that he suddenly took heart.
+
+“I wish I had ONE friend I could call my own,” he said boldly, looking
+straight into her eyes. “I'd care little for other friends, and fear no
+enemies.”
+
+“Yo' 're right, co'nnle,” she said, ostentatiously slanting her parasol
+in a marvelous simulation of hiding a purely imaginative blush on a
+cheek that was perfectly infantine in its unchanged pink; “company talk
+is much pootier than what we've been saying. And--meaning me--for I
+reckon yo' wouldn't say that of any other girl but the one yo' 're
+walking with--what's the matter with me?”
+
+He could not help smiling, though he hesitated. “Nothing! but others
+have been disappointed.”
+
+“And that bothers YO'?”
+
+“I mean I have as yet had no right to put your feelings to any test,
+while”--
+
+“Poor Chet had, yo' were going to say! Well, here we are at the
+cemetery! I reckoned yo' were bound to get back to the dead again before
+we'd gone far, and that's why I thought we might take the cemetery on
+our way. It may put me in a more proper frame of mind to please yo'.”
+
+As he raised his eyes he could not repress a slight start. He had not
+noticed before that they had passed through a small gateway on diverging
+from the road, and was quite unprepared to find himself on the edge of a
+gentle slope leading to a beautiful valley, and before him a long vista
+of tombs, white head-stones and low crosses, edged by drooping cypress
+and trailing feathery vines. Some vines had fallen and been caught in
+long loops from bough to bough, like funeral garlands, and here and
+there the tops of isolated palmettos lifted a cluster of hearse-like
+plumes. Yet in spite of this dominance of sombre but graceful shadow,
+the drooping delicacy of dark-tasseled foliage and leafy fringes,
+and the waving mourning veils of gray, translucent moss, a glorious
+vivifying Southern sun smiled and glittered everywhere as through tears.
+The balm of bay, southernwood, pine, and syringa breathed through the
+long alleys; the stimulating scent of roses moved with every zephyr,
+and the closer odors of jessamine, honeysuckle, and orange flowers hung
+heavily in the hollows. It seemed to Courtland like the mourning of
+beautiful and youthful widowhood, seductive even in its dissembling
+trappings, provocative in the contrast of its own still strong virility.
+Everywhere the grass grew thick and luxuriant; the quick earth was
+teeming with the germination of the dead below.
+
+They moved slowly along side by side, speaking only of the beauty of the
+spot and the glory of that summer day, which seemed to have completed
+its perfection here. Perhaps from the heat, the overpowering perfume,
+or some unsuspected sentiment, the young lady became presently as silent
+and preoccupied as her companion. She began to linger and loiter behind,
+hovering like a butterfly over some flowering shrub or clustered sheaf
+of lilies, until, encountered suddenly in her floating draperies, she
+might have been taken for a somewhat early and far too becoming ghost.
+It seemed to him, also, that her bright eyes were slightly shadowed by
+a gentle thoughtfulness. He moved close to her side with an irresistible
+impulse of tenderness, but she turned suddenly, and saying, “Come!”
+ moved at a quicker pace down a narrow side path. Courtland followed. He
+had not gone far before he noticed that the graves seemed to fall into
+regular lines, the emblems became cheaper and more common; wooden head
+and foot stones of one monotonous pattern took the place of carved
+freestone or marble, and he knew that they had reached that part of the
+cemetery reserved for those who had fallen in the war. The long lines
+drawn with military precision stretched through the little valley, and
+again up the opposite hill in an odd semblance of hollow squares, ranks,
+and columns. A vague recollection of the fateful slope of Snake River
+came over him. It was intensified as Miss Sally, who was still preceding
+him, suddenly stopped before an isolated mound bearing a broken marble
+shaft and a pedestal with the inscription, “Chester Brooks.” A few
+withered garlands and immortelles were lying at its base, but encircling
+the broken shaft was a perfectly fresh, unfaded wreath.
+
+“You never told me he was buried here!” said Courtland quickly, half
+shocked at the unexpected revelation. “Was he from this State?”
+
+“No, but his regiment was,” said Miss Sally, eying the wreath
+critically.
+
+“And this wreath, is it from you?” continued Courtland gently.
+
+“Yes, I thought yo' 'd like to see something fresh and pooty, instead of
+those stale ones.”
+
+“And were they also from you?” he asked even more gently.
+
+“Dear no! They were left over from last anniversary day by some of the
+veterans. That's the only one I put there--that is--I got Mr. Champney
+to leave it here on his way to his house. He lives just yonder, yo'
+know.”
+
+It was impossible to resist this invincible naivete. Courtland bit
+his lip as the vision arose before him of this still more naif English
+admirer bringing hither, at Miss Sally's bidding, the tribute which
+she wished to place on the grave of an old lover to please a THIRD
+man. Meantime, she had put her two little hands behind her back in the
+simulated attitude of “a good girl,” and was saying half smilingly, and
+he even thought half wistfully:--
+
+“Are yo' satisfied?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+“Then let's go away. It's mighty hot here.”
+
+They turned away, and descending the slope again re-entered the thicker
+shade of the main avenue. Here they seemed to have left the sterner
+aspect of Death. They walked slowly; the air was heavy with the hot
+incense of flowers; the road sinking a little left a grassy bank on one
+side. Here Miss Sally halted and listlessly seated herself, motioning
+Courtland to do the same. He obeyed eagerly. The incident of the wreath
+had troubled him, albeit with contending sensations. She had given it to
+please HIM; why should HE question the manner, or torment himself with
+any retrospective thought? He would have given worlds to have been able
+to accept it lightly or gallantly,--with any other girl he could; but
+he knew he was trembling on the verge of a passionate declaration; the
+magnitude of the stake was too great to be imperiled by a levity
+of which she was more a mistress than himself, and he knew that his
+sentiment had failed to impress her. His pride kept him from appealing
+to her strangely practical nature, although he had recognized and
+accepted it, and had even begun to believe it an essential part of the
+strong fascination she had over him. But being neither a coward nor a
+weak, hesitating idealist, when he deliberately took his seat beside
+her he as deliberately made up his mind to accept his fate, whatever it
+might be, then and there.
+
+Perhaps there was something of this in his face. “I thought yo' were
+looking a little white, co'nnle,” she said quietly, “and I reckoned
+we might sit down a spell, and then take it slowly home. Yo' ain't
+accustomed to the So'th'n sun, and the air in the hollow WAS swampy.” As
+he made a slight gesture of denial, she went on with a pretty sisterly
+superiority: “That's the way of yo' No'th'n men. Yo' think yo' can
+do everything just as if yo' were reared to it, and yo' never make
+allowance for different climates, different blood, and different
+customs. That's where yo' slip up.”
+
+But he was already leaning towards her with his dark earnest eyes fixed
+upon her in a way she could no longer mistake. “At the risk of slipping
+up again, Miss Dows,” he said gently, dropping into her dialect with
+utterly unconscious flattery, “I am going to ask you to teach me
+everything YOU wish, to be all that YOU demand--which would be far
+better. You have said we were good friends; I want you to let me hope to
+be more. I want you to overlook my deficiencies and the differences of
+my race and let me meet you on the only level where I can claim to be
+the equal of your own people--that of loving you. Give me only the same
+chance you gave the other poor fellow who sleeps yonder--the same chance
+you gave the luckier man who carried the wreath for you to put upon his
+grave.”
+
+She had listened with delicately knitted brows, the faintest touch of
+color, and a half-laughing, half-superior disapprobation. When he had
+finished, she uttered a plaintive little sigh. “Yo' oughtn't to have
+said that, co'nnle, but yo' and me are too good friends to let even THAT
+stand between us. And to prove it to yo' I'm going to forget it right
+away--and so are yo'.”
+
+“But I cannot,” he said quickly; “if I could I should be unworthy of
+even your friendship. If you must reject it, do not make me feel the
+shame of thinking you believe me capable of wanton trifling. I know that
+this avowal is abrupt to you, but it is not to me. You have known
+me only for three months, but these three months have been to me the
+realization of three years' dreaming!” As she remained looking at him
+with bright, curious eyes, but still shaking her fair head distressedly,
+he moved nearer and caught her hand in the little pale lilac thread
+glove that was, nevertheless, too wide for her small fingers, and said
+appealingly: “But why should YOU forget it? Why must it be a forbidden
+topic? What is the barrier? Are you no longer free? Speak, Miss
+Dows--give me some hope. Miss Dows!--Sally!”
+
+She had drawn herself away, distressed, protesting, her fair head turned
+aside, until with a slight twist and narrowing of her hand she succeeded
+in slipping it from the glove which she left a prisoner in his eager
+clasp. “There! Yo' can keep the glove, co'nnle,” she said, breathing
+quickly. “Sit down! This is not the place nor the weather for husking
+frolics! Well!--yo' want to know WHY yo' mustn't speak to me in that
+way. Be still, and I'll tell yo'.”
+
+She smoothed down the folds of her frock, sitting sideways on the bank,
+one little foot touching the road. “Yo' mustn't speak that way to me,”
+ she went on slowly, “because it's as much as yo' company's wo'th, as
+much as OUR property's wo'th, as much maybe as yo' life's wo'th! Don't
+lift yo' comb, co'nnle; if you don't care for THAT, others may. Sit
+still, I tell yo'! Well, yo' come here from the No'th to run this
+property for money--that's square and fair business; THAT any fool here
+can understand--it's No'th'n style; it don't interfere with these fools'
+family affairs; it don't bring into their blood any No'th'n taint;
+it don't divide their clannishness; it don't separate father and son,
+sister and brother; and even if yo' got a foothold here and settled
+down, they know they can always outvote yo' five to one! But let these
+same fools know that yo' 're courtin' a So'th'n girl known to be 'Union'
+during the wah, that girl who has laughed at their foolishness; let them
+even THINK that he wants that girl to mix up the family and the race and
+the property for him, and there ain't a young or old fool that believes
+in So'th'n isolation as the price of So'th'n salvation that wouldn't
+rise against yo'! There isn't one that wouldn't make shipwreck of yo'r
+syndicate and yo'r capital and the prosperity of Redlands for the next
+four years to come, and think they were doing right! They began to
+suspect yo' from the first! They suspected yo' when yo' never went
+anywhere, but stuck close to the fahm and me. That's why I wanted yo'
+to show yourself among the girls; they wouldn't have minded yo' flirting
+with them with the chance of yo' breaking yo' heart over Tave Reed or
+Lympy Morris! They're fools enough to believe that a snub or a jilt
+from a So'th'n girl would pay them back for a lost battle or a ruined
+plantation!”
+
+For the first time Miss Sally saw Courtland's calm blood fly to his
+cheek and kindle in his eye. “You surely do not expect ME to tolerate
+this blind and insolent interference!” he said, rising to his feet.
+
+She lifted her ungloved hand in deprecation. “Sit still, co'nnle. Yo'
+'ve been a soldier, and yo' know what duty is. Well! what's yo' duty to
+yo' company?”
+
+“It neither includes my private affairs nor regulates the beating of my
+heart. I will resign.”
+
+“And leave me and Aunt Miranda and the plantation?”
+
+“No! The company will find another superintendent to look after your
+aunt's affairs and carry out our plans. And you, Sally--you will let me
+find you a home and fortune North? There is work for me there; there is
+room for you among my people.”
+
+She shook her head slowly with a sweet but superior smile. “No, co'nnle!
+I didn't believe in the wah, but the least I could do was to stand by my
+folks and share the punishment that I knew was coming from it. I despise
+this foolishness as much as yo', but I can't run away from it. Come,
+co'nnle, I won't ask yo' to forget this; mo', I'll even believe yo'
+MEANT it, but yo' 'll promise me yo' won't speak of it again as long
+as yo' are with the company and Aunt Miranda and me! There mustn't be
+more--there mustn't even SEEM to be more--between us.”
+
+“But then I may hope?” he said, eagerly grasping her hand.
+
+“I promise nothing, for yo' must not even have THAT excuse for speaking
+of this again, either from anything I do or may seem to do.” She
+stopped, released her hand, as her eyes were suddenly fixed on the
+distance. Then she said with a slight smile, but without the least
+embarrassment or impatience: “There's Mr. Champney coming here now. I
+reckon he's looking to see if that wreath is safe.”
+
+Courtland looked up quickly. He could see the straw hat of the young
+Englishman just above the myrtle bushes in a path intersecting the
+avenue. A faint shadow crossed his face. “Let me know one thing more,”
+ he said hurriedly. “I know I have no right to ask the question, but
+has--has--has Mr. Champney anything to do with your decision?”
+
+She smiled brightly. “Yo' asked just now if yo' could have the same
+chance he and Chet Brooks had. Well, poor Chet is dead, and Mr.
+Champney--well!--wait and see.” She lifted her voice and called, “Mr.
+Champney!” The young fellow came briskly towards them; his face betrayed
+a slight surprise, but no discomfiture, as he recognized her companion.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Champney,” said Miss Sally plaintively, “I've lost my glove
+somewhere near pooah Brooks's tomb in the hollow. Won't you go and fetch
+it, and come back here to take me home? The co'nnle has got to go and
+see his sick niggers in the hospital.” Champney lifted his hat, nodded
+genially to Courtland, and disappeared below the cypresses on the slope.
+“Yo' mustn't be mad,” she said, turning in explanation to her companion,
+“but we have been here too long already, and it's better that I should
+be seen coming home with him than yo'.”
+
+“Then this sectional interference does not touch him?” said Courtland
+bitterly.
+
+“No. He's an Englishman; his father was a known friend of the
+Confederacy, and bought their cotton bonds.”
+
+She stopped, gazing into Courtland's face with a pretty vague impatience
+and a slight pouting of her lip.
+
+“Co'nnle!”
+
+“Miss Sally.”
+
+“Yo' say yo' had known me for three years before yo' saw me. Well, we
+met once before we ever spoke to each other!”
+
+Courtland looked in her laughing eyes with admiring wonder. “When?” he
+asked.
+
+“The first day yo' came! Yo' moved the ladder when I was on the cornice,
+and I walked all ever yo' head. And, like a gentleman, yo' never said a
+word about it. I reckon I stood on yo' head for five minutes.”
+
+“Not as long as that,” said Courtland laughing, “if I remember rightly.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Sally with dancing eyes. “I, a So'th'n girl, actually
+set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!”
+
+“Let that satisfy your friends then.”
+
+“No! I want to apologize. Sit down, co'nnle.”
+
+“But, Miss Sally”--
+
+“Sit down, quick!”
+
+He did so, seating himself sideways on the bank. Miss Sally stood beside
+him.
+
+“Take off yo' hat, sir.”
+
+He obeyed smilingly. Miss Sally suddenly slipped behind him. He felt the
+soft touch of her small hands on his shoulders; warm breath stirred the
+roots of his hair, and then--the light pressure on his scalp of what
+seemed the lips of a child.
+
+He leaped to his feet, yet before he could turn completely round--a
+difficulty the young lady had evidently calculated upon--he was too
+late! The floating draperies of the artful and shameless Miss Sally were
+already disappearing among the tombs in the direction of the hollow.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The house occupied by the manager of the Drummond Syndicate in
+Redlands--the former residence of a local lawyer and justice of the
+peace--was not large, but had an imposing portico of wooden Doric
+columns, which extended to the roof and fronted the main street. The
+all-pervading creeper closely covered it; the sidewalk before it was
+shaded by a row of broad-leaved ailantus. The front room, with French
+windows opening on the portico, was used by Colonel Courtland as a
+general office; beyond this a sitting-room and dining-room overlooked
+the old-fashioned garden with its detached kitchen and inevitable negro
+cabin. It was a close evening; there were dark clouds coming up in the
+direction of the turnpike road, but the leaves of the ailantus hung
+heavy and motionless in the hush of an impending storm. The sparks of
+lazily floating fireflies softly expanded and went out in the gloom of
+the black foliage, or in the dark recesses of the office, whose windows
+were widely open, and whose lights Courtland had extinguished when he
+brought his armchair to the portico for coolness. One of these sparks
+beyond the fence, although alternately glowing and paling, was still so
+persistent and stationary that Courtland leaned forward to watch it more
+closely, at which it disappeared, and a voice from the street said:--
+
+“Is that you, Courtland?”
+
+“Yes. Come in, won't you?”
+
+The voice was Champney's, and the light was from his cigar. As he
+opened the gate and came slowly up the steps of the portico the usual
+hesitation of his manner seemed to have increased. A long sigh trilled
+the limp leaves of the ailantus and as quickly subsided. A few heavy
+perpendicular raindrops crashed and spattered through the foliage like
+molten lead.
+
+“You've just escaped the shower,” said Courtland pleasantly. He had not
+seen Champney since they parted in the cemetery six weeks before.
+
+“Yes!--I--I thought I'd like to have a little talk with you, Courtland,”
+ said Champney. He hesitated a moment before the proffered chair, and
+then added, with a cautious glance towards the street, “Hadn't we better
+go inside?”
+
+“As you like. But you'll find it wofully hot. We're quite alone here;
+there's nobody in the house, and this shower will drive any loungers
+from the street.” He was quite frank, although their relations to each
+other in regard to Miss Sally were still so undefined as to scarcely
+invite his confidence.
+
+Howbeit Champney took the proffered chair and the glass of julep which
+Courtland brought him.
+
+“You remember my speaking to you of Dumont?” he said hesitatingly, “Miss
+Dows' French cousin, you know? Well--he's coming here: he's got property
+here--those three houses opposite the Court House. From what I hear,
+he's come over with a lot of new-fangled French ideas on the nigger
+question--rot about equality and fraternity, don't you know--and the
+highest education and highest offices for them. You know what the
+feeling is here already? You know what happened at the last election at
+Coolidgeville--how the whites wouldn't let the niggers go to the polls
+and the jolly row that was kicked up over it? Well, it looks as if that
+sort of thing might happen HERE, don't you know, if Miss Dows takes up
+these ideas.”
+
+“But I've reason to suppose--I mean,” said Courtland correcting himself
+with some deliberation, “that any one who knows Miss Dows' opinions
+knows that these are not her views. Why should she take them up?”
+
+“Because she takes HIM up,” returned Champney hurriedly; “and even
+if she didn't believe in them herself, she'd have to share the
+responsibility with him in the eyes of every unreconstructed rowdy like
+Tom Higbee and the rest of them. They'd make short work of her niggers
+all the same.”
+
+“But I don't see why she should be made responsible for the opinions of
+her cousin, nor do I exactly knew what 'taking him up' means,” returned
+Courtland quietly.
+
+Champney moistened his dry lips with the julep and uttered a nervous
+laugh. “Suppose we say her husband--for that's what his coming back here
+means. Everybody knows that; you would, too, if you ever talked with her
+about anything but business.”
+
+A bright flash of lightning that lit up the faces of the two men would
+have revealed Champney's flushed features and Courtland's lack of color
+had they been looking at each other. But they were not, and the long
+reverberating crash of thunder which followed prevented any audible
+reply from Courtland, and covered his agitation.
+
+For without fully accepting Champney's conclusions he was cruelly
+shocked at the young man's utterance of them. He had scrupulously
+respected the wishes of Miss Sally and had faithfully--although never
+hopelessly--held back any expression of his own love since their
+conversation in the cemetery. But while his native truthfulness and
+sense of honor had overlooked the seeming insincerity of her attitude
+towards Champney, he had never justified his own tacit participation
+in it, and the concealment of his own pretensions before his possible
+rival. It was true that she had forbidden him to openly enter the
+lists with her admirers, but Champney's innocent assumption of his
+indifference to her and his consequent half confidences added poignancy
+to his story. There seemed to be only one way to extricate himself,
+and that was by a quarrel. Whether he did or did not believe Champney's
+story, whether it was only the jealous exaggeration of a rival, or
+Miss Sally was actually deceiving them both, his position had become
+intolerable.
+
+“I must remind you, Champney,” he said, with freezing deliberation,
+“that Miss Miranda Dows and her niece now represent the Drummond Company
+equally with myself, and that you cannot expect me to listen to any
+reflections upon the way they choose to administer their part in its
+affairs, either now, or to come. Still less do I care to discuss the
+idle gossip which can affect only the PRIVATE interests of these ladies,
+with which neither you nor I have any right to interfere.”
+
+But the naivete of the young Englishman was as invincible as Miss
+Sally's own, and as fatal to Courtland's attitude. “Of course I haven't
+any RIGHT, you know,” he said, calmly ignoring the severe preamble of
+his companion's speech, “but I say! hang it all! even if a fellow has
+no chance HIMSELF, he don't like to see a girl throw herself and her
+property away on a man like that.”
+
+“One moment, Champney,” said Courtland, under the infection of his
+guest's simplicity, abandoning his former superior attitude. “You say
+you have no chance. Do you want me to understand that you are regularly
+a suitor of Miss Dows?”
+
+“Y-e-e-s,” said the young fellow, but with the hesitation of
+conscientiousness rather than evasion. “That is--you know I WAS. But
+don't you see, it couldn't be. It wouldn't do, you know. If those
+clannish neighbors of hers--that Southern set--suspected that Miss
+Sally was courted by an Englishman, don't you know--a poacher on their
+preserves--it would be all up with her position on the property and her
+influence over them. I don't mind telling you that's one reason why I
+left the company and took that other plantation. But even that didn't
+work; they had their suspicions excited already.”
+
+“Did Miss Dows give that as a reason for declining your suit?” asked
+Courtland slowly.
+
+“Yes. You know what a straightforward girl she is. She didn't come no
+rot about 'not expecting anything of the kind,' or about 'being a sister
+to me,' and all that, for, by Jove! she's always more like a fellow's
+sister, don't you know, than his girl. Of course, it was hard lines for
+me, but I suppose she was about right.” He stopped, and then added with
+a kind of gentle persistency: “YOU think she was about right, don't
+you?”
+
+With what was passing in Courtland's mind the question seemed so
+bitterly ironical that at first he leaned half angrily forward, in an
+unconscious attempt to catch the speaker's expression in the darkness.
+“I should hardly venture to give an opinion,” he said, after a pause.
+“Miss Dows' relations with her neighbors are so very peculiar. And from
+what you tell me of her cousin it would seem that her desire to placate
+them is not always to be depended upon.”
+
+“I'm not finding fault with HER, you know,” said Champney hastily. “I'm
+not such a beastly cad as that; I wouldn't have spoken of my affairs at
+all, but you asked, you know. I only thought, if she was going to get
+herself into trouble on account of that Frenchman, you might talk to
+her--she'd listen to you, because she'd know you only did it out of
+business reasons. And they're really business reasons, you know. I
+suppose you don't think much of my business capacity, colonel, and you
+wouldn't go much on my judgment--especially now; but I've been here
+longer than you and”--he lowered his voice slightly and dragged his
+chair nearer Courtland--“I don't like the looks of things here. There's
+some devilment plotting among those rascals. They're only awaiting an
+opportunity; a single flash would be enough to set them in a blaze, even
+if the fire wasn't lit and smouldering already like a spark in a bale of
+cotton. I'd cut the whole thing and clear out if I didn't think it would
+make it harder for Miss Dows, who would be left alone.”
+
+“You're a good fellow, Champney,” said Courtland, laying his hand on
+the young man's shoulder with a sudden impulse, “and I forgive you for
+overlooking any concern that I might have. Indeed,” he added, with an
+odd seriousness and a half sigh, “it's not strange that you should. But
+I must remind you that the Dowses are strictly the agents and tenants of
+the company I represent, and that their rights and property under that
+tenancy shall not be interfered with by others as long as I am here.
+I have no right, however,” he added gravely, “to keep Miss Dows from
+imperiling them by her social relations.”
+
+Champney rose and shook hands with him awkwardly. “The shower seems to
+be holding up,” he said, “and I'll toddle along before it starts afresh.
+Good-night! I say--you didn't mind my coming to you this way, did you?
+By Jove! I thought you were a little stand-offish at first. But you know
+what I meant?”
+
+“Perfectly, and I thank you.” They shook hands again. Champney stepped
+from the portico, and, reaching the gate, seemed to vanish as he had
+come, out of the darkness.
+
+The storm was not yet over; the air had again become close and
+suffocating. Courtland remained brooding in his chair. Whether he could
+accept Champney's news as true or not, he felt that he must end this
+suspense at once. A half-guilty consciousness that he was thinking more
+of it in reference to his own passion than his duty to the company
+did not render his meditations less unpleasant. Yet while he could
+not reconcile Miss Sally's confidences in the cemetery concerning the
+indifference of her people to Champney's attentions with what Champney
+had just told him of the reasons she had given HIM for declining them,
+I am afraid he was not shocked by her peculiar ethics. A lover seldom
+finds fault with his mistress for deceiving his rival, and is as little
+apt to consider the logical deduction that she could deceive him also,
+as Othello was to accept Brabantio's warning, The masculine sense of
+honor which might have resented the friendship of a man capable of such
+treachery did not hesitate to accept the love of a woman under the same
+conditions. Perhaps there was an implied compliment in thus allowing her
+to take the sole ethical responsibility, which few women would resist.
+
+In the midst of this gloomy abstraction Courtland suddenly raised his
+head and listened.
+
+“Cato.”
+
+“Yes, sah.”
+
+There was a sound of heavy footsteps in the hall coming from the rear of
+the house, and presently a darker bulk appeared in the shadowed doorway.
+It was his principal overseer--a strong and superior negro, selected
+by his fellow-freedmen from among their number in accordance with
+Courtland's new regime.
+
+“Did you come here from the plantation or the town?”
+
+“The town, sah.”
+
+“I think you had better keep out of the town in the evenings for the
+present,” said Courtland in a tone of quiet but positive authority.
+
+“Are dey goin' to bring back de ole 'patter rollers,' * sah?” asked the
+man with a slight sneer.
+
+     * The “patrol” or local police who formerly had the
+     surveillance of slaves.
+
+“I don't know,” returned Courtland calmly, ignoring his overseer's
+manner. “But if they did you must comply with the local regulations
+unless they conflict with the Federal laws, when you must appeal to the
+Federal authorities. I prefer you should avoid any trouble until you are
+sure.”
+
+“I reckon they won't try any games on me,” said the negro with a short
+laugh.
+
+Courtland looked at him intently.
+
+“I thought as much! You're carrying arms, Cato! Hand them over.”
+
+The overseer hesitated for a moment, and then unstrapped a revolver from
+his belt, and handed it to Courtland.
+
+“Now how many of you are in the habit of going round the town armed like
+this?”
+
+“Only de men who've been insulted, sah.”
+
+“And how have YOU been insulted?”
+
+“Marse Tom Highee down in de market reckoned it was high time fancy
+niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars
+had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said
+he'd cut my haht out.”
+
+“And do you think your carrying a revolver will prevent him and his
+friends performing that operation if you provoked them?”
+
+“You said we was to pertect ourse'fs, sah,” returned the negro gloomily.
+“What foh den did you drill us to use dem rifles in de armory?”
+
+“To defend yourselves TOGETHER under orders if attacked, not to singly
+threaten with them in a street row. Together, you would stand some
+chance against those men; separately they could eat you up, Cato.”
+
+“I wouldn't trust too much to some of dem niggers standing together,
+sah,” said Gate darkly. “Dey'd run before de old masters--if they didn't
+run to 'em. Shuah!”
+
+A fear of this kind had crossed Courtland's mind before, but he made no
+present comment. “I found two of the armory rifles in the men's cabins
+yesterday,” he resumed quietly. “See that it does not occur again! They
+must not be taken from the armory except to defend it.”
+
+“Yes, sah.”
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then it was broken by a sudden gust that
+swept through the columns of the portico, stirring the vines. The broad
+leaves of the ailantus began to rustle; an ominous pattering followed;
+the rain had recommenced. And as Courtland rose and walked towards the
+open window its blank panes and the interior of the office were suddenly
+illuminated by a gleam of returning lightning.
+
+He entered the office, bidding Cato follow, and lit the lamp above
+his desk. The negro remained standing gloomily but respectfully by the
+window.
+
+“Cato, do you know anything of Mr. Dumont--Miss Dows' cousin?”
+
+The negro's white teeth suddenly flashed in the lamplight. “Ya! ha! I
+reckon, sah.”
+
+“Then he's a great friend of your people?”
+
+“I don't know about dat, sah. But he's a pow'ful enemy of de Reeds and
+de Higbees!”
+
+“On account of his views, of course?”
+
+“'Deed no!” said Cato with an astounded air. “Jess on account of de
+vendetta!”
+
+“The vendetta?”
+
+“Yes, sah. De old blood quo'll of de families. It's been goin' on over
+fifty years, sah. De granfader, fader, and brudder of de Higbees was
+killed by de granfader, fader, and brudder of de Doomonts. De Reeds
+chipped in when all de Higbees was played out, fo' dey was relations,
+but dey was chawed up by some of de Dowses, first cousins to de
+Doomonts.”
+
+“What? Are the Dows in this vendetta?”
+
+“No, sah. No mo'. Dey's bin no man in de family since Miss Sally's fader
+died--dat's let de Dows out fo' ever. De las' shootin' was done by
+Marse Jack Doomont, who crippled Marse Tom Higbee's brudder Jo, and
+den skipped to Europe. Dey say he's come back, and is lying low over at
+Atlanty. Dar'll be lively times of he comes here to see Miss Sally.”
+
+“But he may have changed his ideas while living abroad, where this sort
+of thing is simple murder.”
+
+The negro shook his head grimly. “Den he wouldn't come, sah. No, sah. He
+knows dat Tom Higbee's bound to go fo' him or leave de place, and Marse
+Jack wouldn't mind settlin' HIM too as well as his brudder, for de
+scores is agin' de Doomonts yet. And Marse Jack ain't no slouch wid a
+scatter gun.”
+
+At any other time the imminence of this survival of a lawless barbarism
+of which he had heard so much would have impressed Courtland; now he was
+only interested in it on account of the inconceivable position in which
+it left Miss Sally. Had she anything to do with this baleful cousin's
+return, or was she only to be a helpless victim of it?
+
+A white, dazzling, and bewildering flash of lightning suddenly lit
+up the room, the porch, the dripping ailantus, and the flooded street
+beyond. It was followed presently by a crash of thunder, with what
+seemed to be a second fainter flash of lightning, or rather as if the
+first flash had suddenly ignited some inflammable substance. With the
+long reverberation of the thunder still shaking the house, Courtland
+slipped quickly out of the window and passed down to the gate.
+
+“Did it strike anything, sah?” said the startled negro, as Courtland
+returned.
+
+“Not that I can see,” said his employer shortly. “Go inside, and call
+Zoe and her daughter from the cabin and bring them in the hall. Stay
+till I come. Go!--I'll shut the windows myself.”
+
+“It must have struck somewhere, sah, shuah! Deh's a pow'ful smell of
+sulphur right here,” said the negro as he left the room.
+
+Courtland thought so too, but it was a kind of sulphur that he had
+smelled before--on the battlefield! For when the door was closed behind
+his overseer he took the lamp to the opposite wall and examined it
+carefully. There was the distinct hole made by a bullet which had missed
+Cato's head at the open window by an inch.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+In an instant Courtland had regained complete possession of himself. His
+distracting passion--how distracting he had never before realized--was
+gone! His clear sight--no longer distorted by sentiment--had come back;
+he saw everything in its just proportion--his duty, the plantation, the
+helpless freedman threatened by lawless fury; the two women--no longer
+his one tantalizing vision, but now only a passing detail of the work
+before him. He saw them through no aberrating mist of tenderness or
+expediency--but with the single directness of the man of action.
+
+The shot had clearly been intended for Cato. Even if it were an act
+of mere personal revenge, it showed a confidence and security in the
+would-be assassin that betokened cooperation and an organized plan.
+He had availed himself of the thunderstorm, the flash and long
+reverberating roll of sound--an artifice not unknown to border
+ambush--to confuse discovery at the instant. Yet the attack might be
+only an isolated one; or it might be the beginning of a general raid
+upon the Syndicate's freedmen. If the former he could protect Cato from
+its repetition by guarding him in the office until he could be conveyed
+to a place of safety; if the latter, he must at once collect the negroes
+at their quarters, and take Cato with him. He resolved upon the latter
+course. The quarters were half a mile from the Dows' dwelling--which was
+two miles away.
+
+He sat down and wrote a few lines to Miss Dows stating that, in view
+of some threatened disturbances in the town, he thought it advisable
+to keep the negroes in their quarters, whither he was himself going. He
+sent her his housekeeper and the child, as they had both better remain
+in a place of security until he returned to town. He gave the note to
+Zoe, bidding her hasten by the back garden across the fields. Then he
+turned to Cato.
+
+“I am going with you to the quarters tonight,” he said quietly, “and you
+can carry your pistol back to the armory yourself.” He handed him the
+weapon. The negro received it gratefully, but suddenly cast a searching
+glance at his employer. Courtland's face, however, betrayed no change.
+When Zoe had gone, he continued tranquilly, “We will go by the back way
+through the woods.” As the negro started slightly, Courtland continued
+in the same even tone: “The sulphur you smelled just now, Cato, was the
+smoke of a gun fired at YOU from the street. I don't propose that the
+shot shall be repeated under the same advantages.”
+
+The negro became violently agitated. “It was dat sneakin' hound, Tom
+Higbee,” he said huskily.
+
+Courtland looked at him sharply. “Then there was something more than
+WORDS passed between him and you, Cato. What happened? Come, speak out!”
+
+“He lashed me with his whip, and I gib him one right under the yeah, and
+drupped him,” said Cato, recovering his courage with his anger at the
+recollection. “I had a right to defend myse'f, sah.”
+
+“Yes, and I hope you'll be able to do it, now,” said Courtland calmly,
+his face giving no sign of his conviction that Cato's fate was doomed by
+that single retaliating blow, “but you'll be safer at the quarters.”
+ He passed into his bedroom, took a revolver from his bedhead and a
+derringer from the drawer, both of which he quickly slipped beneath his
+buttoned coat, and returned.
+
+“When we are in the fields, clear of the house, keep close by my side,
+and even try to keep step with me. What you have to say, say NOW; there
+must be no talking to betray our position--we must go silently, and
+you'll have enough to do to exercise your eyes and ears. I shall stand
+between you and any attack, but I expect you to obey orders without
+hesitation.” He opened the back door, motioned to Cato to pass out,
+followed him, locked the door behind them, and taking the negro's arm
+walked beside the low palings to the end of the garden, where they
+climbed the fence and stood upon the open field beyond.
+
+Unfortunately, it had grown lighter with the breaking of the heavy
+clouds, and gusty gleams of moonlight chased each other over the
+field, or struck a glitter from standing rain-pools between the little
+hillocks. To cross the open field and gain the fringe of woods on the
+other side was the nearest way to the quarters, but for the moment was
+the most exposed course; to follow the hedge to the bottom of the field
+and the boundary fence and then cross at right angles, in its shadow,
+would be safer, but they would lose valuable time. Believing that Cato's
+vengeful assailant was still hovering near with his comrades, Courtland
+cast a quick glance down the shadowy line of Osage hedge beside them.
+Suddenly Cato grasped his arm and pointed in the same direction, where
+the boundary fence he had noticed--a barrier of rough palings--crossed
+the field. With the moon low on the other side of it, it was a mere
+black silhouette, broken only by bright silver openings and gaps along
+its surface that indicated the moonlit field beyond. At first Courtland
+saw nothing else. Then he was struck by the fact that these openings
+became successively and regularly eclipsed, as with the passing of some
+opaque object behind them. It was a file of men on the other side of
+the fence, keeping in its shelter as they crossed the field towards his
+house. Roughly calculating from the passing obscurations, there must
+have been twelve or fifteen in all.
+
+He could no longer doubt their combined intentions, nor hesitate how to
+meet them. He must at once make for the quarters with Cato, even if he
+had to cross that open field before them. He knew that they would avoid
+injuring him personally, in the fear of possible Federal and political
+complications, and he resolved to use that fear to insure Cato's safety.
+Placing his hands on the negro's shoulders, he shoved him forwards,
+falling into a “lock step” so close behind him that it became impossible
+for the most expert marksman to fire at one without imperiling the
+other's life. When half way across the field he noticed that the shadows
+seen through the openings of the fence had paused. The ambushed men
+had evidently seen the double apparition, understood it, and, as he
+expected, dared not fire. He reached the other side with Cato in safety,
+but not before he saw the fateful shadows again moving, and this time in
+their own direction. They were evidently intending to pursue them. But
+once within the woods Courtland knew that his chances were equal.
+He breathed more freely. Cato, now less agitated, had even regained
+something of his former emotional combativeness which Courtland had
+checked. Although far from confident of his henchman's prowess in an
+emergency, the prospect of getting him safe into the quarters seemed
+brighter.
+
+It was necessary, also, to trust to his superior wood-craft and
+knowledge of the locality, and Courtland still walking between him and
+his pursuers and covering his retreat allowed him to lead the way. It
+lay over ground that was beginning to slope gently; the underbrush
+was presently exchanged for springy moss, the character of the trees
+changed, the black trunks of cypresses made the gloom thicker. Trailing
+vines and parasites brushed their faces, a current of damp air seemed to
+flow just above the soil in which their lower limbs moved sluggishly as
+through stagnant water. As yet there was no indication of pursuit. But
+Courtland felt that it was not abandoned. Indeed, he had barely time
+to check an exclamation from the negro, before the dull gallop of
+horse-hoofs in the open ahead of them was plain to them both. It was a
+second party of their pursuers, mounted, who had evidently been sent
+to prevent their final egress from the woods, while those they had just
+evaded were no doubt slowly and silently following them on foot. They
+were to be caught between two fires!
+
+“What is there to the left of us?” whispered Courtland quickly.
+
+“De swamp.”
+
+Courtland set his teeth together. His dull-witted companion had
+evidently walked them both into the trap! Nevertheless, his resolve was
+quickly made. He could already see through the thinning fringe of timber
+the figures of the mounted men in the moonlight.
+
+“This should be the boundary line of the plantation? This field beside
+us is ours?” he said interrogatively.
+
+“Yes,” returned the negro, “but de quarters is a mile furder.”
+
+“Good! Stay here until I come back or call you; I'm going to talk to
+these fellows. But if you value your life, don't YOU speak nor stir.”
+
+He strode quickly through the intervening trees and stepped out into the
+moonlight. A suppressed shout greeted him, and half a dozen mounted
+men, masked and carrying rifles, rode down towards him, but he remained
+quietly waiting there, and as the nearest approached him, he made a step
+forward and cried, “Halt!”
+
+The men pulled up sharply and mechanically at that ring of military
+imperiousness.
+
+“What are you doing here?” said Courtland.
+
+“We reckon that's OUR business, co'nnle.”
+
+“It's mine, when you're on property that I control.”
+
+The man hesitated and looked interrogatively towards his fellows. “I
+allow you've got us there, co'nnle,” he said at last with the lazy
+insolence of conscious power, “but I don't mind telling you we're wanting
+a nigger about the size of your Cato. We hain't got anything agin YOU,
+co'nnle; we don't want to interfere with YOUR property, and YOUR ways,
+but we don't calculate to have strangers interfere with OUR ways and
+OUR customs. Trot out your nigger--you No'th'n folks don't call HIM
+'property,' you know--and we'll clear off your land.”
+
+“And may I ask what you want of Cato?” said Courtland quietly.
+
+“To show him that all the Federal law in h-ll won't protect him when
+he strikes a white man!” burst out one of the masked figures, riding
+forward.
+
+“Then you compel me to show YOU,” said Courtland immovably, “what any
+Federal citizen may do in the defense of Federal law. For I'll kill the
+first man that attempts to lay hands upon him on my property. Some of
+you, who have already tried to assassinate him in cold blood, I have met
+before in less dishonorable warfare than this, and THEY know I am able
+to keep my word.”
+
+There was a moment's silence; the barrel of the revolver he was holding
+at his side glistened for an instant in the moonlight, but he did not
+move. The two men rode up to the first speaker and exchanged words. A
+light laugh followed, and the first speaker turned again to Courtland
+with a mocking politeness.
+
+“Very well, co'nnle, if that's your opinion, and you allow we can't
+follow our game over your property, why, we reckon we'll have to give
+way TO THOSE WHO CAN. Sorry to have troubled YOU. Good-night.”
+
+He lifted his hat ironically, waved it to his followers, and the next
+moment the whole party were galloping furiously towards the high road.
+
+For the first time that evening a nervous sense of apprehension passed
+over Courtland. The impending of some unknown danger is always more
+terrible to a brave man than the most overwhelming odds that he can
+see and realize. He felt instinctively that they had uttered no vague
+bravado to cover up their defeat; there was still some advantage on
+which they confidently reckoned--but what? Was it only a reference to
+the other party tracking them through the woods on which their enemies
+now solely relied? He regained Cato quickly; the white teeth of the
+foolishly confident negro were already flashing his imagined triumph to
+his employer. Courtland's heart grew sick as he saw it.
+
+“We're not out of the woods yet, Cato,” he said dryly; “nor are they.
+Keep your eyes and ears open, and attend to me. How long can we keep
+in the cover of these woods, and still push on in the direction of the
+quarters?”
+
+“There's a way roun' de edge o' de swamp, sah, but we'd have to go back
+a spell to find it.”
+
+“Go on!”
+
+“And dar's moccasins and copperheads lying round here in de trail! Dey
+don't go for us ginerally--but,” he hesitated, “white men don't stand
+much show.”
+
+“Good! Then it is as bad for those who are chasing us as for me. That
+will do. Lead on.”
+
+They retraced their steps cautiously, until the negro turned into a
+lighter by-way. A strange mephitic odor seemed to come from sodden
+leaves and mosses that began to ooze under their feet. They had picked
+their way in silence for some minutes; the stunted willows and cypress
+standing farther and farther apart, and the openings with clumps of
+sedge were frequent. Courtland was beginning to fear this exposure
+of his follower, and had moved up beside him, when suddenly the negro
+caught his arm, and trembled violently. His lips were parted over
+his teeth, the whites of his eyes glistened, he seemed gasping and
+speechless with fear.
+
+“What's the matter, Cato?” said Courtland glancing instinctively at the
+ground beneath. “Speak, man!--have you been bitten?”
+
+The word seemed to wring an agonized cry from the miserable man.
+
+“Bitten! No; but don't you hear 'em coming, sah! God Almighty! don't you
+hear dat?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“De dogs! de houns!--DE BLOODHOUNS! Dey've set 'em loose on me!”
+
+It was true! A faint baying in the distance was now distinctly audible
+to Courtland. He knew now plainly the full, cruel purport of the
+leader's speech,--those who could go anywhere were tracking their game!
+
+Every trace of manhood had vanished from the negro's cowering frame.
+Courtland laid his hand assuringly, appealingly, and then savagely on
+his shoulder.
+
+“Come! Enough of this! I am here, and will stand by you, whatever comes.
+These dogs are no more to be feared than the others. Rouse yourself,
+man, and at least help ME make a fight of it.”
+
+“No! no!” screamed the terrified man. “Lemme go! Lemme go back to de
+Massas! Tell 'em I'll come! Tell 'em to call de houns off me, and I'll
+go quiet! Lemme go!” He struggled violently in his companion's grasp.
+
+In all Courtland's self-control, habits of coolness, and discipline, it
+is to be feared there was still something of the old Berserker temper.
+His face was white, his eyes blazed in the darkness; only his voice kept
+that level distinctness which made it for a moment more terrible than
+even the baying of the tracking hounds to the negro's ear. “Cato,” he
+said, “attempt to run now, and, by God! I'll save the dogs the trouble
+of grappling your living carcass! Come here! Up that tree with you!”
+ pointing to a swamp magnolia. “Don't move as long as I can stand here,
+and when I'm down--but not till then--save yourself--the best you can.”
+
+He half helped, half dragged, the now passive African to the solitary
+tree; as the bay of a single hound came nearer, the negro convulsively
+scrambled from Courtland's knee and shoulder to the fork of branches a
+dozen feet from the ground. Courtland drew his revolver, and, stepping
+back a few yards into the open, awaited the attack.
+
+It came unexpectedly from behind. A sudden yelp of panting cruelty and
+frenzied anticipation at Courtland's back caused him to change front
+quickly, and the dripping fangs and snaky boa-like neck of a gray weird
+shadow passed him. With an awful supernaturalness of instinct, it kept
+on in an unerring line to the fateful tree. But that dread directness of
+scent was Courtland's opportunity. His revolver flashed out in an aim as
+unerring. The brute, pierced through neck and brain, dashed on against
+the tree in his impetus, and then rolled over against it in a quivering
+bulk. Again another bay coming from the same direction told Courtland
+that his pursuers had outflanked him, and the whole pack were crossing
+the swamp. But he was prepared; again the same weird shadow, as spectral
+and monstrous as a dream, dashed out into the brief light of the open,
+but this time it was stopped, and rolled over convulsively before it had
+crossed. Flushed, with the fire of fight in his veins, Courtland turned
+almost furiously from the fallen brutes at his feet to meet the onset of
+the more cowardly hunters whom he knew were at his heels. At that moment
+it would have fared ill with the foremost. No longer the calculating
+steward and diplomatic manager, no longer the cool-headed arbiter of
+conflicting interests, he was ready to meet them, not only with the
+intrepid instincts of a soldier, but with an aroused partisan fury equal
+to their own. To his surprise no one followed; the baying of a third
+hound seemed to be silenced and checked; the silence was broken only by
+the sound of distant disputing voices and the uneasy trampling of hoofs.
+This was followed by two or three rifle shots in the distance, but not
+either in the direction of the quarters nor the Dows' dwelling-house.
+There evidently was some interruption in the pursuit,--a diversion of
+some kind had taken place,--but what he knew not. He could think of
+no one who might have interfered on his behalf, and the shouting and
+wrangling seemed to be carried on in the accents of the one sectional
+party. He called cautiously to Cato. The negro did not reply. He crossed
+to the tree and shook it impatiently. Its boughs were empty; Cato
+was gone! The miserable negro must have taken advantage of the first
+diversion in his favor to escape. But where, and how, there was nothing
+left to indicate.
+
+As Courtland had taken little note of the trail, he had no idea of his
+own whereabouts. He knew he must return to the fringe of cypress to be
+able to cross the open field and gain the negro quarters, where it was
+still possible that Cato had fled. Taking a general direction from the
+few stars visible above the opening, he began to retrace his steps. But
+he had no longer the negro's woodcraft to guide him. At times his feet
+were caught in trailing vines which seemed to coil around his ankles
+with ominous suggestiveness; at times the yielding soil beneath his
+tread showed his perilous proximity to the swamp, as well as the fact
+that he was beginning to incline towards that dread circle which is the
+hopeless instinct of all lost and straying humanity. Luckily the edge of
+the swamp was more open, and he would be enabled to correct his changed
+course again by the position of the stars. But he was becoming chilled
+and exhausted by these fruitless efforts, and at length, after a more
+devious and prolonged detour, which brought him back to the swamp again,
+he resolved to skirt its edge in search of some other mode of issuance.
+Beyond him, the light seemed stronger, as of a more extended opening
+or clearing, and there was even a superficial gleam from the end of the
+swamp itself, as if from some ignis fatuus or the glancing of a pool of
+unbroken water. A few rods farther brought him to it and a full view of
+the unencumbered expanse. Beyond him, far across the swamp, he could see
+a hillside bathed in the moonlight with symmetrical lines of small white
+squares dotting its slopes and stretching down into a valley of gleaming
+shafts, pyramids, and tombs. It was the cemetery; the white squares
+on the hillside were the soldiers' graves. And among them even at that
+distance, uplifting solemnly, like a reproachful phantom, was the broken
+shaft above the dust of Chester Brooks.
+
+With the view of that fateful spot, which he had not seen since his last
+meeting there with Sally Dows, a flood of recollection rushed upon him.
+In the white mist that hung low along the farther edge of the swamp he
+fancied he could see again the battery smoke through which the ghostly
+figure of the dead rider had charged his gun three years before; in
+the vapory white plumes of a funereal plant in the long avenue he was
+reminded of the light figure of Miss Sally as she appeared at their last
+meeting. In another moment, in his already dazed condition, he might
+have succumbed to some sensuous memory of her former fascinations, but
+he threw it off savagely now, with a quick and bitter recalling of her
+deceit and his own weakness. Turning his back upon the scene with a
+half-superstitious tremor, he plunged once more into the trackless
+covert. But he was conscious that his eyesight was gradually growing dim
+and his strength falling. He was obliged from time to time to stop and
+rally his sluggish senses, that seemed to grow heavier under some deadly
+exhalation that flowed around him. He even seemed to hear familiar
+voices,--but that must be delusion. At last he stumbled. Throwing out an
+arm to protect himself, he came heavily down upon the ooze, striking
+a dull, half-elastic root that seemed--it must have been another
+delusion--to move beneath him, and even--so confused were his senses
+now--to strike back angrily upon his prostrate arm. A sharp pain
+ran from his elbow to shoulder and for a moment stung him to full
+consciousness again. There were voices surely,--the voices of their
+former pursuers! If they were seeking to revenge themselves upon him for
+Cato's escape, he was ready for them. He cocked his revolver and stood
+erect. A torch flashed through the wood. But even at that moment a film
+came over his eyes; he staggered and fell.
+
+An interval of helpless semi-consciousness ensued. He felt himself
+lifted by strong arms and carried forward, his arm hanging uselessly at
+his side. The dank odor of the wood was presently exchanged for the free
+air of the open field; the flaming pine-knot torches were extinguished
+in the bright moonlight. People pressed around him, but so indistinctly
+he could not recognize them. All his consciousness seemed centred in
+the burning, throbbing pain of his arm. He felt himself laid upon the
+gravel; the sleeve cut from his shoulder, the cool sensation of the hot
+and bursting skin bared to the night air, and then a soft, cool, and
+indescribable pressure upon a wound he had not felt before. A voice
+followed,--high, lazily petulant, and familiar to him, and yet one he
+strove in vain to recall.
+
+“De Lawdy-Gawd save us, Miss Sally! Wot yo' doin' dah? Chile! Chile! Yo'
+'ll kill yo'se'f, shuah!”
+
+The pressure continued, strange and potent even through his pain, and
+was then withdrawn. And a voice that thrilled him said:--
+
+“It's the only thing to save him! Hush, ye chattering black crow! Say
+anything about this to a living soul, and I'll have yo' flogged! Now
+trot out the whiskey bottle and pour it down him.”
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at
+Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall
+whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the
+freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a
+dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and
+the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the
+coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in
+iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows'
+housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their
+eyes met.
+
+“Broken?” he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old
+deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.
+
+“Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite,” responded the negress.
+
+“Snake bite!” repeated Courtland with languid interest, “what snake?”
+
+“Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which,” she replied.
+“But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone.
+Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de
+lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed.”
+
+Some faint chord of memory was touched by the girl's peculiar
+vocabulary.
+
+“Ah,” said Courtland quickly, “you're Miss Dows' Sophy. Then you can
+tell me”--
+
+“Nuffin, sah absomlutely nuffin!” interrupted the girl, shaking her head
+with impressive official dignity. “It's done gone fo'bid by de doctor!
+Yo' 're to lie dar and shut yo'r eye, honey,” she added, for the moment
+reverting unconsciously to the native maternal tenderness of her race,
+“and yo' 're not to bodder yo'se'f ef school keeps o' not. De medical
+man say distinctly, sah,” she concluded, sternly recalling her duty
+again, “no conversation wid de patient.”
+
+But Courtland had winning ways with all dependents. “But you will answer
+me ONE question, Sophy, and I'll not ask another. Has”--he hesitated
+in his still uncertainty as to the actuality of his experience and its
+probable extent--“has--Cato--escaped?”
+
+“If yo' mean dat sassy, bull-nigger oberseer of yo'se, cunnle, HE'S
+safe, yo' bet!” returned Sophy sharply. “Safe in his own quo'tahs night
+afo' las', after braggin' about the bloodhaowns he killed; and safe ober
+the county line yes'day moan'in, after kicking up all dis rumpus. If
+dar is a sassy, highfalutin' nigger I jiss 'spises--its dat black nigger
+Cato o' yo'se! Now,”--relenting--“yo' jiss wink yo' eye, honey,
+and don't excite yo'se'f about sach black trash; drap off to sleep
+comfor'ble. Fo' you do'an get annuder word out o' Sophy, shuah!”
+
+As if in obedience, Courtland closed his eyes. But even in his weak
+state he was conscious of the blood coming into his cheek at Sophy's
+relentless criticism of the man for whom he had just periled his life
+and position. Much of it he felt was true; but how far had he been a
+dupe in his quixotic defense of a quarrelsome blusterer and cowardly
+bully? Yet there was the unmistakable shot and cold-blooded attempt at
+Cato's assassination! And there were the bloodhounds sent to track the
+unfortunate man! That was no dream--but a brutal inexcusable fact!
+
+The medical practitioner of Redlands he remembered was conservative,
+old-fashioned, and diplomatic. But his sympathies had been broadened by
+some army experiences, and Courtland trusted to some soldierly and frank
+exposition of the matter from him. Nevertheless, Dr. Maynard was first
+healer, and, like Sophy, professionally cautious. The colonel had better
+not talk about it now. It was already two days old; the colonel had been
+nearly forty-eight hours in bed. It was a regrettable affair, but the
+natural climax of long-continued political and racial irritation--and
+not without GREAT provocation! Assassination was a strong word; could
+Colonel Courtland swear that Cato was actually AIMED AT, or was it not
+merely a demonstration to frighten a bullying negro? It might have been
+necessary to teach him a lesson--which the colonel by this time ought
+to know could only be taught to these inferior races by FEAR. The
+bloodhounds! Ah, yes!--well, the bloodhounds were, in fact, only a
+part of that wholesome discipline. Surely Colonel Courtland was not so
+foolish as to believe that, even in the old slave-holding days, planters
+sent dogs after runaways to mangle and destroy THEIR OWN PROPERTY? They
+might as well, at once, let them escape! No, sir! They were used only
+to frighten and drive the niggers out of swamps, brakes, and
+hiding-places--as no nigger had ever dared to face 'em. Cato might lie
+as much as he liked, but everybody knew WHO it was that killed Major
+Reed's hounds. Nobody blamed the colonel for it,--not even Major
+Reed,--but if the colonel had lived a little longer in the South, he'd
+have known it wasn't necessary to do that in self-preservation, as the
+hounds would never have gone for a white man. But that was not a matter
+for the colonel to bother about NOW. He was doing well; he had slept
+nearly thirty hours; there was no fever, he must continue to doze off
+the exhaustion of his powerful stimulant, and he, the doctor, would
+return later in the afternoon.
+
+Perhaps it was his very inability to grasp in that exhausted state the
+full comprehension of the doctor's meaning, perhaps because the physical
+benumbing of his brain was stronger than any mental excitement, but he
+slept again until the doctor reappeared. “You're doing well enough now,
+colonel,” said the physician, after a brief examination of his patient,
+“and I think we can afford to wake you up a bit, and even let you move
+your arm. You're luckier than poor Tom Higbee, who won't be able to
+set his leg to the floor for three weeks to come. I haven't got all the
+buckshot out of it yet that Jack Dumont put there the other night.”
+
+Courtland started slightly. Jack Dumont! That was the name of Sally Dows
+cousin of whom Champney had spoken! He had resolutely put aside from his
+returning memory the hazy recollection of the young girl's voice--the
+last thing he had heard that night--and the mystery that seemed to
+surround it. But there was no delusion in this cousin--his rival,
+and that of the equally deceived Champney. He controlled himself and
+repeated coldly:--
+
+“Jack Dumont!”
+
+“Yes. But of course you knew nothing of all that, while you were off
+in the swamp there. Yet, by Jingo! it was Dumont's shooting Higbee that
+helped YOU to get off your nigger a darned sight more than YOUR killing
+the dogs.”
+
+“I don't understand,” returned Courtland coldly.
+
+“Well, you see, Dumont, who had taken up No'th'n principles, I reckon,
+more to goad the Higbees and please Sally Dows than from any conviction,
+came over here that night. Whether he suspected anything was up, or
+wanted to dare Higbee for bedevilment, or was only dancing attendance on
+Miss Sally, no one knows. But he rode slap into Highee's party, called
+out, 'If you're out hunting, Tom, here's a chance for your score!'
+meaning their old vendetta feud, and brings his shot-gun up to his
+shoulder. Higbee wasn't quick enough, Dumont lets fly, drops Higbee, and
+then gallops off chased by the Reeds to avenge Higbee, and followed
+by the whole crowd to see the fun, which was a little better than
+nigger-driving. And that let you and Cato out, colonel.”
+
+“And Dumont?”
+
+“Got clean away to Foxboro' Station, leaving another score on his side
+for the Reeds and Higbees to wipe out as best they can. You No'th'n men
+don't believe in these sort of things, colonel, but taken as a straight
+dash and hit o' raiding, that stroke of Sally Dows' cousin was mighty
+fine!”
+
+Courtland controlled himself with difficulty. The doctor had spoken
+truly. The hero of this miserable affair was HER cousin--HIS RIVAL! And
+to him--perhaps influenced by some pitying appeal of Miss Sally for the
+man she had deceived--Courtland owed his life! He instinctively drew a
+quick, sharp breath.
+
+“Are you in pain?”
+
+“Not at all. When can I get up?”
+
+“Perhaps to-morrow.”
+
+“And this arm?”
+
+“Better not use it for a week or two.” He stopped, and, glancing
+paternally at the younger man, added gravely but kindly: “If you'll
+take my unprofessional advice, Colonel Courtland, you'll let this matter
+simmer down. It won't hurt you and your affairs here that folks have had
+a taste of your quality, and the nigger a lesson that his fellows won't
+forget.”
+
+“I thank you,” returned Courtland coldly; “but I think I already
+understand my duty to the company I represent and the Government I have
+served.”
+
+“Possibly, colonel,” said the doctor quietly; “but you'll let an older
+man remind you and the Government that you can't change the habits or
+relations of two distinct races in a few years. Your friend, Miss Sally
+Dows--although not quite in my way of thinking--has never attempted
+THAT.”
+
+“I am fully aware that Miss Dows possesses diplomatic accomplishments
+and graces that I cannot lay claim to,” returned Courtland bitterly.
+
+The doctor lifted his eyebrows slightly and changed the subject.
+
+When he had gone, Courtland called for writing materials. He had already
+made up his mind, and one course alone seemed proper to him. He wrote to
+the president of the company, detailing the circumstances that had just
+occurred, admitting the alleged provocation given by his overseer,
+but pointing out the terrorism of a mob-law which rendered his
+own discipline impossible. He asked that the matter be reported to
+Washington, and some measures taken for the protection of the freedmen,
+in the mean time he begged to tender his own resignation, but he would
+stay until his successor was appointed, or the safety of his employees
+secured. Until then, he should act upon his own responsibility and
+according to his judgment. He made no personal charges, mentioned no
+names, asked for no exemplary prosecution or trial of the offenders, but
+only demanded a safeguard against a repetition of the offense. His next
+letter, although less formal and official, was more difficult. It was
+addressed to the commandant of the nearest Federal barracks, who was an
+old friend and former companion-in-arms. He alluded to some conversation
+they had previously exchanged in regard to the presence of a small
+detachment of troops at Redlands during the elections, which Courtland
+at the time, however, had diplomatically opposed. He suggested it now
+as a matter of public expediency and prevention. When he had sealed
+the letters, not caring to expose them to the espionage of the local
+postmaster or his ordinary servants, he intrusted them to one of Miss
+Sally's own henchmen, to be posted at the next office, at Bitter Creek
+Station, ten miles distant.
+
+Unfortunately, this duty accomplished, the reaction consequent on
+his still weak physical condition threw him back upon himself and his
+memory. He had resolutely refused to think of Miss Sally; he had
+been able to withstand the suggestions of her in the presence of her
+handmaid--supposed to be potent in nursing and herb-lore--whom she
+had detached to wait upon him, and he had returned politely formal
+acknowledgments to her inquiries. He had determined to continue this
+personal avoidance as far as possible until he was relieved, on
+the ground of that BUSINESS expediency which these events had made
+necessary. She would see that he was only accepting the arguments with
+which she had met his previous advances. Briefly, he had recourse to
+that hopeless logic by which a man proves to himself that he has no
+reason for loving a certain woman, and is as incontestably convinced
+by the same process that he has. And in the midst of it he weakly fell
+asleep, and dreamed that he and Miss Sally were walking in the cemetery;
+that a hideous snake concealed among some lilies, over which the young
+girl was bending, had uplifted its triangular head to strike. That he
+seized it by the neck, struggled with it until he was nearly exhausted,
+when it suddenly collapsed and shrunk, leaving in his palm the limp,
+crushed, and delicately perfumed little thread glove which he remembered
+to have once slipped from her hand.
+
+When he awoke, that perfume seemed to be still in the air, distinct
+from the fresh but homelier scents of the garden which stole through the
+window. A sense of delicious coolness came with the afternoon breeze,
+that faintly trilled the slanting slats of the blind with a slumberous
+humming as of bees. The golden glory of a sinking southern sun was
+penciling the cheap paper on the wall with leafy tracery and glowing
+arabesques. But more than that, the calm of some potent influence--or
+some unseen presence--was upon him, which he feared a movement might
+dispel. The chair at the foot of his bed was empty. Sophy had gone
+out. He did not turn his head to look further; his languid eyes falling
+aimlessly upon the carpet at his bedside suddenly dilated. For they fell
+also on the “smallest foot in the State.”
+
+He started to his elbow, but a soft hand was laid gently yet firmly upon
+his shoulder, and with a faint rustle of muslin skirts Miss Sally rose
+from an unseen chair at the head of his bed, and stood beside him.
+
+“Don't stir, co'nnle, I didn't sit where I could look in yo'r face for
+fear of waking yo'. But I'll change seats now.” She moved to the chair
+which Sophy had vacated, drew it slightly nearer the bed, and sat down.
+
+“It was very kind of you--to come,” said Courtland hesitatingly, as with
+a strong effort he drew his eyes away from the fascinating vision, and
+regained a certain cold composure, “but I am afraid my illness has been
+greatly magnified. I really am quite well enough to be up and about my
+business, if the doctor would permit it. But I shall certainly manage to
+attend to my duty to-morrow, and I hope to be at your service.
+
+“Meaning that yo' don't care to see me NOW, co'nnle,” she said lightly,
+with a faint twinkle in her wise, sweet eyes. “I thought of that, but as
+my business wouldn't wait, I brought it to yo'.” She took from the folds
+of her gown a letter. To his utter amazement it was the one he had given
+his overseer to post to the commandant that morning. To his greater
+indignation the seal was broken.
+
+“Who has dared?” he demanded, half rising.
+
+Her little hand was thrust out half deprecatingly. “No one yo' can
+fight, co'nnle; only ME. I don't generally open other folks' letters,
+and I wouldn't have done it for MYSELF; I did for yo'.”
+
+“For me?”
+
+“For yo'. I reckoned what yo' MIGHT do, and I told Sam to bring ME the
+letters first. I didn't mind what yo' wrote to the company--for they'll
+take care of yo', and their own eggs are all in the same basket. I
+didn't open THAT one, but I did THIS when I saw the address. It was as
+I expected, and yo' 'd given yo'self away! For if yo' had those soldiers
+down here, yo' 'd have a row, sure! Don't move, co'nnle, YO' may not
+care for that, it's in YO'R line. But folks will say that the soldiers
+weren't sent to prevent RIOTING, but that Co'nnle Courtland was using
+his old comrades to keep order on his property at Gov'ment expense. Hol'
+on! Hol' on! co'nnle,” said the little figure, rising and waving its
+pretty arms with a mischievous simulation of terrified deprecation.
+“Don't shoot! Of course yo' didn't mean THAT, but that's about the way
+that So'th'n men will put it to yo'r Gov'ment. For,” she continued, more
+gently, yet with the shrewdest twinkle in her gray eyes, “if yo' really
+thought the niggers might need Federal protection, yo' 'd have let ME
+write to the commandant to send an escort--not to YO, but to CATO--that
+HE might be able to come back in safety. Yo' 'd have had yo'r soldiers;
+I'd have had back my nigger, which”--demurely--“yo' don't seem to worry
+yo'self much about, co'nnle; and there isn't a So'th'n man would have
+objected. But,” still more demurely, and affectedly smoothing out her
+crisp skirt with her little hands, “yo' haven't been troubling me much
+with yo'r counsel lately.”
+
+A swift and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland. For the
+first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was,
+perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly
+now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected
+and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her
+frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born
+daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their
+dexterity, tact, and expediency rose here incarnate, with the added
+grace of womanhood. A strange sense of relief--perhaps a dawning of
+hope--stole over him.
+
+“But how will this insure Cato's safety hereafter, or give protection to
+the others?” he said, fixing his eyes upon her.
+
+“The future won't concern YO' much, co'nnle, if as yo' say here yo'r
+resignation is sent in, and yo'r successor appointed,” she replied, with
+more gravity than she had previously shown.
+
+“But you do not think I will leave YOU in this uncertainty,” he said
+passionately. He stopped suddenly, his brow darkened. “I forgot,” he
+added coldly, “you will be well protected. Your--COUSIN--will give you
+the counsel of race--and--closer ties.”
+
+To his infinite astonishment, Miss Sally leaned forward in her chair
+and buried her laughing face in both of her hands. When her dimples
+had become again visible, she said with an effort, “Don't yo' think,
+co'nnle, that as a peacemaker my cousin was even a bigger failure than
+yo'self?”
+
+“I don't understand,” stammered Courtland.
+
+“Don't yo' think,” she continued, wiping her eyes demurely, “that if a
+young woman about my size, who had got perfectly tired and sick of
+all this fuss made about yo', because yo' were a No'th'n man, managing
+niggers--if that young woman wanted to show her people what sort of a
+radical and abolitionist a SO'TH'N man of their own sort might become,
+she'd have sent for Jack Dumont as a sample? Eh? Only, I declare
+to goodness, I never reckoned that he and Higbee would revive the
+tomfooling of the vendetta, and take to shootin' each other at once.”
+
+“And your sending for your cousin was only a feint to protect me?” said
+Courtland faintly.
+
+“Perhaps he didn't have to be SENT for, co'nnle,” she said, with a
+slight touch of coquetry. “Suppose we say, I LET HIM COME. He'd be
+hanging round, for he has property here, and wanted to get me to take it
+up with mine in the company. I knew what his new views and ideas were,
+and I thought I'd better consult Champney--who, being a foreigner, and
+an older resident than yo', was quite neutral. He didn't happen to tell
+YO' anything about it--did he, co'nnle?” she added with a grave mouth,
+but an indescribable twinkle in her eyes.
+
+Courtland's face darkened. “He did--and he further told me, Miss Dows,
+that he himself was your suitor, and that you had refused him because of
+the objections of your people.”
+
+She raised her eyes to his swiftly and dropped them.
+
+“And yo' think I ought to have accepted him?” she said slowly.
+
+“No! but--you know--you told me”--he began hurriedly. But she had
+already risen, and was shaking out the folds of her dress.
+
+“We're not talking BUSINESS co'nnle--and business was my only excuse for
+coming here, and taking Sophy's place. I'll send her in to yo', now.”
+
+“But, Miss Dows!--Miss Sally!”
+
+She stopped--hesitated--a singular weakness for so self-contained a
+nature--and then slowly produced from her pocket a second letter--the
+one that Courtland had directed to the company. “I didn't read THIS
+letter, as I just told yo' co'nnle, for I reckon I know what's in it,
+but I thought I'd bring it with me too, in case YO' CHANGED YO'R MIND.”
+
+He raised himself on his pillow as she turned quickly away; but in that
+single vanishing glimpse of her bright face he saw what neither he nor
+any one else had ever seen upon the face of Sally Dows--a burning blush!
+
+“Miss Sally!” He almost leaped from the bed, but she was gone. There was
+another rustle at the door--the entrance of Sophy.
+
+“Call her back, Sophy, quick!” he said.
+
+The negress shook her turbaned head. “Not much, honey! When Miss Sally
+say she goes--she done gone, shuah!”
+
+“But, Sophy!” Perhaps something in the significant face of the girl
+tempted him; perhaps it was only an impulse of his forgotten youth.
+“Sophy!” appealingly--“tell me!--is Miss Sally engaged to her cousin?”
+
+“Wat dat?” said Sophy in indignant scorn. “Miss Sally engaged to dat
+Dumont! What fo'? Yo' 're crazy! No!”
+
+“Nor Champney? Tell me, Sophy, has she a LOVER?”
+
+For a moment the whites of Sophy's eyes were uplifted in speechless
+scorn. “Yo' ask dat! Yo' lyin' dar wid dat snake-bit arm! Yo' lyin' dar,
+and Miss Sally--who has only to whistle to call de fust quality in de
+State raoun her--coming and going here wid you, and trotting on yo'r
+arrants--and yo' ask dat! Yes! she has a lover, and what's me', she
+CAN'T HELP IT; and yo' 're her lover; and what's me', YO' can't help it
+either! And yo' can't back out of it now--bo'fe of yo'--nebber! Fo' yo'
+'re hers, and she's yo'rs--fo' ebber. For she sucked yo' blood.”
+
+“What!” gasped Courtland, aghast at what he believed to be the sudden
+insanity of the negress.
+
+“Yes! Whar's yo'r eyes? whar's yo'r years? who's yo' dat yo' didn't see
+nor heah nuffin? When dey dragged yo' outer de swamp dat night--wid de
+snake-bite freshen yo'r arm--didn't SHE, dat poh chile!--dat same Miss
+Sally--frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de
+wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her
+own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood
+and one soul! Go way, white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down
+dar! Hol' on, co'nnle, for massy's sake. Well, dar--I'll call her back!”
+
+And she did!
+
+
+“Look here--don't you know--it rather took me by surprise,” said
+Champney, a few days later, with a hearty grip of the colonel's
+uninjured hand; “but I don't bear malice, old fellow, and, by Jove! it
+was SUCH a sensible, all-round, business-like choice for the girl to
+make that no wonder we never thought of it before. Hang it all, you see
+a fellow was always so certain it would be something out of the way and
+detrimental, don't you know, that would take the fancy of a girl like
+that--somebody like that cousin of hers or Higbee, or even ME, by Jove
+that we never thought of looking beyond our noses--never thought of the
+BUSINESS! And YOU all the time so cold and silent and matter-of-fact
+about it! But I congratulate you! You've got the business down on a safe
+basis now, and what's more, you've got the one woman who can run it.”
+
+They say he was a true prophet. At least the Syndicate affairs
+prospered, and in course of time even the Reeds and the Higbees
+participated in the benefits. There were no more racial disturbances;
+only the districts polled a peaceful and SMALLER Democratic majority at
+the next election. There were not wanting those who alleged that Colonel
+Courtland had simply become MRS. COURTLAND'S SUPERINTENDENT; that she
+had absorbed him as she had every one who had come under her influence,
+and that she would not rest until she had made him a Senator (to
+represent Mrs. Courtland) in the councils of the nation. But when I last
+dined with them in Washington, ten years ago, I found them both very
+happy and comfortable, and I remember that Mrs. Courtland's remarks upon
+Federal and State interests, the proper education of young girls, and
+the management of the family, were eminently wise and practical.
+
+
+
+
+THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay a line of bluffs terminates
+in a promontory, at whose base, formed by the crumbling debris of the
+cliff above, there is a narrow stretch of beach, salt meadow, and scrub
+oak. The abrupt wall of rock behind it seems to isolate it as completely
+from the mainland as the sea before it separates it from the opposite
+shore. In spite of its contiguity to San Francisco,--opposite also, but
+hidden by the sharp re-entering curve of coast,--the locality was wild,
+uncultivated, and unfrequented. A solitary fisherman's cabin half hidden
+in the rocks was the only trace of habitation. White drifts of sea-gulls
+and pelican across the face of the cliff, gray clouds of sandpipers
+rising from the beach, the dripping flight of ducks over the salt
+meadows, and the occasional splash of a seal from the rocks, were the
+only signs of life that could be seen from the decks of passing ships.
+And yet the fisherman's cabin was occupied by Zephas Bunker and
+his young wife, and he had succeeded in wresting from the hard soil
+pasturage for a cow and goats, while his lateen-sailed fishing-boat
+occasionally rode quietly in the sheltered cove below.
+
+Three years ago Zephas Bunker, an ex-whaler, had found himself stranded
+on a San Francisco wharf and had “hired out” to a small Petaluma farmer.
+At the end of a year he had acquired little taste for the farmer's
+business, but considerable for the farmer's youthful daughter, who,
+equally weary of small agriculture, had consented to elope with him
+in order to escape it. They were married at Oakland; he put his scant
+earnings into a fishing-boat, discovered the site for his cabin, and
+brought his bride thither. The novelty of the change pleased her,
+although perhaps it was but little advance on her previous humble
+position. Yet she preferred her present freedom to the bare restricted
+home life of her past; the perpetual presence of the restless sea was a
+relief to the old monotony of the wheat field and its isolated drudgery.
+For Mary's youthful fancy, thinly sustained in childhood by the lightest
+literary food, had neither been stimulated nor disillusioned by her
+marriage. That practical experience which is usually the end of girlish
+romance had left her still a child in sentiment. The long absences
+of her husband in his fishing-boat kept her from wearying of or even
+knowing his older and unequal companionship; it gave her a freedom her
+girlhood had never known, yet added a protection that suited her still
+childish dependency, while it tickled her pride with its equality. When
+not engaged in her easy household duties in her three-roomed cottage, or
+the care of her rocky garden patch, she found time enough to indulge her
+fancy over the mysterious haze that wrapped the invisible city so near
+and yet unknown to her; in the sails that slipped in and out of the
+Golden Gate, but of whose destination she knew nothing; and in the long
+smoke trail of the mail steamer which had yet brought her no message.
+Like all dwellers by the sea, her face and her thoughts were more
+frequently turned towards it; and as with them, it also seemed to her
+that whatever change was coming into her life would come across that
+vast unknown expanse. But it was here that Mrs. Bunker was mistaken.
+
+It had been a sparkling summer morning. The waves were running before
+the dry northwest trade winds with crystalline but colorless brilliancy.
+Sheltered by the high, northerly bluff, the house and its garden were
+exposed to the untempered heat of the cloudless sun refracted from the
+rocky wall behind it. Some tarpaulin and ropes lying among the rocks
+were sticky and odorous; the scrub oaks and manzanita bushes gave out
+the aroma of baking wood; occasionally a faint pot-pourri fragrance from
+the hot wild roses and beach grass was blown along the shore; even the
+lingering odors of Bunker's vocation, and of Mrs. Bunker's cooking, were
+idealized and refined by the saline breath of the sea at the doors and
+windows. Mrs. Bunker, in the dazzling sun, bending over her peas
+and lettuces with a small hoe, felt the comfort of her brown holland
+sunbonnet. Secure in her isolation, she unbuttoned the neck of her gown
+for air, and did not put up the strand of black hair that had escaped
+over her shoulder. It was very hot in the lee of the bluff, and very
+quiet in that still air. So quiet that she heard two distinct reports,
+following each other quickly, but very faint and far. She glanced
+mechanically towards the sea. Two merchant-men in midstream were shaking
+out their wings for a long flight, a pilot boat and coasting schooner
+were rounding the point, but there was no smoke from their decks. She
+bent over her work again, and in another moment had forgotten it. But
+the heat, with the dazzling reflection from the cliff, forced her to
+suspend her gardening, and stroll along the beach to the extreme limit
+of her domain. Here she looked after the cow that had also strayed
+away through the tangled bush for coolness. The goats, impervious to
+temperature, were basking in inaccessible fastnesses on the cliff
+itself that made her eyes ache to climb. Over an hour passed, she was
+returning, and had neared her house, when she was suddenly startled to
+see the figure of a man between her and the cliff. He was engaged in
+brushing his dusty clothes with a handkerchief, and although he saw her
+coming, and even moved slowly towards her, continued his occupation
+with a half-impatient, half-abstracted air. Her feminine perception was
+struck with the circumstance that he was in deep black, with scarcely a
+gleam of white showing even at his throat, and that he wore a tall black
+hat. Without knowing anything of social customs, it seemed to her that
+his dress was inconsistent with his appearance there.
+
+“Good-morning,” he said, lifting his hat with a preoccupied air. “Do you
+live here?”
+
+“Yes,” she said wonderingly.
+
+“Anybody else?”
+
+“My husband.”
+
+“I mean any other people? Are there any other houses?” he said with a
+slight impatience.
+
+“No.”
+
+He looked at her and then towards the sea. “I expect some friends who
+are coming for me in a boat. I suppose they can land easily here?”
+
+“Didn't you yourself land here just now?” she said quickly.
+
+He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a
+hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, “No, I came over the
+cliff.”
+
+“Down the cliff?” she repeated incredulously.
+
+“Yes,” he said, glancing at his clothes; “it was a rough scramble, but
+the goats showed me the way.”
+
+“And you were up on the bluff all the time?” she went on curiously.
+
+“Yes. You see--I”--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the
+beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of
+its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, “Yes, I was there.”
+
+Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss
+this lack of explanation. He was a very good-looking man of middle age,
+with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men
+had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven. She had never seen
+any one like him before. She thought he looked like an illustration of
+some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.
+
+“Won't you come in and rest yourself?” she said, motioning to the cabin.
+
+“Thank you,” he said, still half absently. “Perhaps I'd better. It may
+be some time yet before they come.”
+
+She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly
+furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed
+to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some
+water on the table before him. He thanked her again very gently, poured
+out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water. But when she
+glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it,
+and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast
+of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea. There was
+something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might
+be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the
+eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.
+
+His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his
+preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her,
+only excited her interest the more. And then there was such an odd
+sadness in his eyes.
+
+“Are you anxious for your folks' coming?” she said at last, following
+his outlook.
+
+“I--oh no!” he returned, quickly recalling himself, “they'll be sure to
+come--sooner or later. No fear of that,” he added, half smilingly, half
+wearily.
+
+Mrs. Bunker passed into the kitchen, where, while apparently attending
+to her household duties, she could still observe her singular guest.
+Left alone, he seated himself mechanically in the chair, and gazed
+fixedly at the fireplace. He remained a long time so quiet and unmoved,
+in spite of the marked ostentatious clatter Mrs. Bunker found it
+necessary to make with her dishes, that an odd fancy that he was
+scarcely a human visitant began to take possession of her. Yet she was
+not frightened. She remembered distinctly afterwards that, far from
+having any concern for herself, she was only moved by a strange and
+vague admiration of him.
+
+But her prolonged scrutiny was not without effect. Suddenly he raised
+his dark eyes, and she felt them pierce the obscurity of her kitchen
+with a quick, suspicious, impatient penetration, which as they met hers
+gave way, however, to a look that she thought was gently reproachful.
+Then he rose, stretched himself to his full height, and approaching the
+kitchen door leaned listlessly against the door-post.
+
+“I don't suppose you are ever lonely here?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Of course not. You have yourself and husband. Nobody interferes with
+you. You are contented and happy together.”
+
+Mrs. Bunker did not say, what was the fact, that she had never before
+connected the sole companionship of her husband with her happiness.
+Perhaps it had never occurred to her until that moment how little it had
+to do with it. She only smiled gratefully at the change in her guest's
+abstraction.
+
+“Do you often go to San Francisco?” he continued.
+
+“I have never been there at all. Some day I expect we will go there to
+live.”
+
+“I wouldn't advise you to,” he said, looking at her gravely. “I don't
+think it will pay you. You'll never be happy there as here. You'll never
+have the independence and freedom you have here. You'll never be
+your own mistress again. But how does it happen you never were in San
+Francisco?” he said suddenly.
+
+If he would not talk of himself, here at least was a chance for Mrs.
+Bunker to say something. She related how her family had emigrated from
+Kansas across the plains and had taken up a “location” at Contra Costa.
+How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man
+who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as
+unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at
+times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked
+to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally. Even his
+dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs. Bunker to put up her hair and button
+her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.
+
+“Then your husband's name is Bunker?” he said when she paused at last.
+“That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for
+generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan. Well, Mrs. Bunker, YOUR
+family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your
+father calls himself a Free-States man. You ought to know something of
+farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who
+emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers.”
+
+All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being. And
+Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family
+was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not
+end there. He talked of her husband's business--he explained the vast
+fishing resources of the bay and coast. He showed her how the large
+colony of Italian fishermen were inimical to the interests of California
+and to her husband--particularly as a native American trader. He told
+her of the volcanic changes of the bay and coast line, of the formation
+of the rocky ledge on which she lived. He pointed out to her its value
+to the Government for defensive purposes, and how it naturally commanded
+the entrance of the Golden Gate far better than Fort Point, and that it
+ought to be in its hands. If the Federal Government did not buy it of
+her husband, certainly the State of California should. And here he fell
+into an abstraction as deep and as gloomy as before. He walked to the
+window, paced the floor with his hand in his breast, went to the door,
+and finally stepped out of the cabin, moving along the ledge of rocks to
+the shore, where he stood motionless.
+
+Mrs. Bunker had listened to him with parted lips and eyes of eloquent
+admiration. She had never before heard anyone talk like THAT--she had
+not believed it possible that any one could have such knowledge. Perhaps
+she could not understand all he said, but she would try to remember it
+after he had gone. She could only think now how kind it was of him that
+in all this mystery of his coming, and in the singular sadness that was
+oppressing him, he should try to interest her. And thus looking at him,
+and wondering, an idea came to her.
+
+She went into her bedroom and took down her husband's heavy pilot
+overcoat and sou'wester, and handed them to her guest.
+
+“You'd better put them on if you're going to stand there,” she said.
+
+“But I am not cold,” he said wonderingly.
+
+“But you might be SEEN,” she said simply. It was the first suggestion
+that had passed between them that his presence there was a secret. He
+looked at her intently, then he smiled and said, “I think you're right,
+for many reasons,” put the pilot coat over his frock coat, removed
+his hat with the gesture of a bow, handed it to her, and placed the
+sou'wester in its stead. Then for an instant he hesitated as if about
+to speak, but Mrs. Bunker, with a delicacy that she could not herself
+comprehend at the moment, hurried back to the cabin without giving him
+an opportunity.
+
+Nor did she again intrude upon his meditations. Hidden in his disguise,
+which to her eyes did not, however, seem to conceal his characteristic
+figure, he wandered for nearly an hour under the bluff and along the
+shore, returning at last almost mechanically to the cabin, where,
+oblivious of his surroundings, he reseated himself in silence by
+the table with his cheek resting on his hand. Presently, her quick,
+experienced ear detected the sound of oars in their row-locks; she could
+plainly see from her kitchen window a small boat with two strangers
+seated at the stern being pulled to the shore. With the same strange
+instinct of delicacy, she determined not to go out lest her presence
+might embarrass her guest's reception of his friends. But as she turned
+towards the living room she found he had already risen and was removing
+his hat and pilot coat. She was struck, however, by the circumstance
+that not only did he exhibit no feeling of relief at his deliverance,
+but that a half-cynical, half-savage expression had taken the place of
+his former melancholy. As he went to the door, the two gentlemen hastily
+clambered up the rocks to greet him.
+
+“Jim reckoned it was you hangin' round the rocks, but I couldn't tell at
+that distance. Seemed you borrowed a hat and coat. Well--it's all fixed,
+and we've no time to lose. There's a coasting steamer just dropping down
+below the Heads, and it will take you aboard. But I can tell you you've
+kicked up a h-ll of a row over there.” He stopped, evidently at some
+sign from her guest. The rest of the man's speech followed in a hurried
+whisper, which was stopped again by the voice she knew. “No. Certainly
+not.” The next moment his tall figure was darkening the door of the
+kitchen; his hand was outstretched. “Good-by, Mrs. Bunker, and many
+thanks for your hospitality. My friends here,” he turned grimly to the
+men behind him, “think I ought to ask you to keep this a secret even
+from your husband. I DON'T! They also think that I ought to offer you
+money for your kindness. I DON'T! But if you will honor me by keeping
+this ring in remembrance of it”--he took a heavy seal ring from his
+finger--“it's the only bit of jewelry I have about me--I'll be very
+glad. Good-by!” She felt for a moment the firm, soft pressure of his
+long, thin fingers around her own, and then--he was gone. The sound of
+retreating oars grew fainter and fainter and was lost. The same reserve
+of delicacy which now appeared to her as a duty kept her from going to
+the window to watch the destination of the boat. No, he should go as he
+came, without her supervision or knowledge.
+
+Nor did she feel lonely afterwards. On the contrary, the silence and
+solitude of the isolated domain had a new charm. They kept the memory of
+her experience intact, and enabled her to refill it with his presence.
+She could see his tall figure again pausing before her cabin, without
+the incongruous association of another personality; she could hear his
+voice again, unmingled with one more familiar. For the first time, the
+regular absence of her husband seemed an essential good fortune instead
+of an accident of their life. For the experience belonged to HER, and
+not to him and her together. He could not understand it; he would have
+acted differently and spoiled it. She should not tell him anything of
+it, in spite of the stranger's suggestion, which, of course, he had only
+made because he didn't know Zephas as well as she did. For Mrs. Bunker
+was getting on rapidly; it was her first admission of the conjugal
+knowledge that one's husband is inferior to the outside estimate of
+him. The next step--the belief that he was deceiving HER as he was
+THEM--would be comparatively easy.
+
+Nor should she show him the ring. The stranger had certainly never said
+anything about that! It was a heavy ring, with a helmeted head carved on
+its red carnelian stone, and what looked like strange letters around it.
+It fitted her third finger perfectly; but HIS fingers were small, and
+he had taken it from his little finger. She should keep it herself. Of
+course, if it had been money, she would have given it to Zephas; but the
+stranger knew that she wouldn't take money. How firmly he had said that
+“I don't!” She felt the warm blood fly to her fresh young face at the
+thought of it. He had understood her. She might be living in a
+poor cabin, doing all the housework herself, and her husband only a
+fisherman, but he had treated her like a lady.
+
+And so the afternoon passed. The outlying fog began to roll in at the
+Golden Gate, obliterating the headland and stretching a fleecy bar
+across the channel as if shutting out from vulgar eyes the way that he
+had gone. Night fell, but Zephas had not yet come. This was unusual,
+for he was generally as regular as the afternoon “trades” which blew
+him there. There was nothing to detain him in this weather and at this
+season. She began to be vaguely uneasy; then a little angry at this new
+development of his incompatibility. Then it occurred to her, for the
+first time in her wifehood, to think what she would do if he were lost.
+Yet, in spite of some pain, terror, and perplexity at the possibility,
+her dominant thought was that she would be a free woman to order her
+life as she liked.
+
+It was after ten before his lateen sail flapped in the little cove. She
+was waiting to receive him on the shore. His good-humored hirsute face
+was slightly apologetic in expression, but flushed and disturbed with
+some new excitement to which an extra glass or two of spirits had
+apparently added intensity. The contrast between his evident
+indulgence and the previous abstemiousness of her late guest struck her
+unpleasantly. “Well--I declare,” she said indignantly, “so THAT'S what
+kept you!”
+
+“No,” he said quickly; “there's been awful times over in 'Frisco!
+Everybody just wild, and the Vigilance Committee in session. Jo
+Henderson's killed! Shot by Wynyard Marion in a duel! He'll be lynched,
+sure as a gun, if they ketch him.”
+
+“But I thought men who fought duels always went free.”
+
+“Yes, but this ain't no common duel; they say the whole thing was
+planned beforehand by them Southern fire-eaters to get rid o' Henderson
+because he's a Northern man and anti-slavery, and that they picked out
+Colonel Marion to do it because he was a dead shot. They got him to
+insult Henderson, so he was bound to challenge Marion, and that giv'
+Marion the chyce of weppings. It was a reg'lar put up job to kill him.”
+
+“And what's all this to do with you?” she asked, with irritation.
+
+“Hold on, won't you! and I'll tell you. I was pickin' up nets off
+Saucelito about noon, when I was hailed by one of them Vigilance tugs,
+and they set me to stand off and on the shore and watch that Marion
+didn't get away, while they were scoutin' inland. Ye see THE DUEL TOOK
+PLACE JUST OVER THE BLUFF THERE--BEHIND YE--and they allowed that
+Marion had struck away north for Mendocino to take ship there. For after
+overhaulin' his second's boat, they found out that they had come away
+from Saucelito ALONE. But they sent a tug around by sea to Mendocino to
+head him off there, while they're closin' in around him inland. They're
+bound to catch him sooner or later. But you ain't listenin', Mollie?”
+
+She was--in every fibre--but with her head turned towards the window,
+and the invisible Golden Gate through which the fugitive had escaped.
+For she saw it all now--that glorious vision--her high-bred, handsome
+guest and Wynyard Marion were one and the same person. And this rough,
+commonplace man before her--her own husband--had been basely set to
+capture him!
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+During that evening and the next Mrs. Bunker, without betraying her
+secret, or exciting the least suspicion on the part of her husband,
+managed to extract from him not only a rough description of Marion which
+tallied with her own impressions, but a short history of his career. He
+was a famous politician who had held high office in the South; he was an
+accomplished lawyer; he had served in the army; he was a fiery speaker;
+he had a singular command of men. He was unmarried, but there were queer
+stories of his relations with some of the wives of prominent officials,
+and there was no doubt that he used them in some of his political
+intrigues. He, Zephas, would bet something that it was a woman who had
+helped him off! Did she speak?
+
+Yes, she had spoken. It made her sick to sit there and hear such
+stories! Because a man did not agree with some people in politics it
+was perfectly awful to think how they would abuse him and take away his
+character! Men were so awfully jealous, too; if another man happened to
+be superior and fine-looking there wasn't anything bad enough for them
+to say about him! No! she wasn't a slavery sympathizer either, and
+hadn't anything to do with man politics, although she was a Southern
+woman, and the MacEwans had come from Kentucky and owned slaves. Of
+course, he, Zephas, whose ancestors were Cape Cod Quakers and had always
+been sailors, couldn't understand. She did not know what he meant by
+saying “what a long tail our cat's got,” but if he meant to call her
+a cat, and was going to use such language to her, he had better have
+stayed in San Francisco with his Vigilance friends. And perhaps it would
+have been better if he had stayed there before he took her away from her
+parents at Martinez. Then she wouldn't have been left on a desert rock
+without any chance of seeing the world, or ever making any friends or
+acquaintances!
+
+It was their first quarrel. Discreetly made up by Mrs. Bunker in some
+alarm at betraying herself; honestly forgiven by Zephas in a rude,
+remorseful consciousness of her limited life. One or two nights later,
+when he returned, it was with a mingled air of mystery and satisfaction.
+“Well, Mollie,” he said cheerfully, “it looks as if your pets were not
+as bad as I thought them.”
+
+“My pets!” repeated Mrs. Bunker, with a faint rising of color.
+
+“Well, I call these Southern Chivs your pets, Mollie, because you stuck
+up for them so the other night. But never mind that now. What do you
+suppose has happened? Jim Rider, you know, the Southern banker and
+speculator, who's a regular big Injin among the 'Chivs,' he sent Cap
+Simmons down to the wharf while I was unloadin' to come up and see him.
+Well, I went, and what do y'u think? He told me he was gettin' up an
+American Fishin' Company, and wanted me to take charge of a first-class
+schooner on shares. Said he heard of me afore, and knew I was an
+American and a white man, and just the chap ez could knock them
+Eytalians outer the market.”
+
+“Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Bunker quickly, but emphatically, “the fishing
+interest ought to be American and protected by the State, with regular
+charters and treaties.”
+
+“I say, Mollie,” said her astonished but admiring husband, “you've been
+readin' the papers or listenin' to stump speakin' sure.”
+
+“Go on,” returned Mrs. Bunker impatiently, “and say what happened next.”
+
+“Well,” returned Zephas, “I first thought, you see, that it had suthin'
+to do with that Marion business, particklerly ez folks allowed he was
+hidin' somewhere yet, and they wanted me to run him off. So I thought
+Rider might as well know that I wasn't to be bribed, so I ups and tells
+him how I'd been lyin' off Saucelito the other day workin' for the
+other side agin him. With that he laughs, says he didn't want any better
+friends than me, but that I must be livin' in the backwoods not to
+know that Wynyard Marion had escaped, and was then at sea on his way
+to Mexico or Central America. Then we agreed to terms, and the long and
+short of it is, Mollie, that I'm to have the schooner with a hundred and
+fifty dollars a month, and ten per cent. shares after a year! Looks like
+biz, eh, Mollie, old girl? but you don't seem pleased.”
+
+She had put aside the arm with which he was drawing her to him, and
+had turned her white face away to the window. So HE had gone--this
+stranger--this one friend of her life--she would never see him again,
+and all that would ever come of it was this pecuniary benefit to her
+husband, who had done nothing. He would not even offer her money, but he
+had managed to pay his debt to her in this way that their vulgar poverty
+would appreciate. And this was the end of her dream!
+
+“You don't seem to take it in, Mollie,” continued the surprised Zephas.
+“It means a house in 'Frisco and a little cabin for you on the schooner
+when you like.”
+
+“I don't want it! I won't have it! I shall stay here,” she burst out
+with a half-passionate, half-childish cry, and ran into her bedroom,
+leaving the astonished Zephas helpless in his awkward consternation.
+
+“By Gum! I must take her to 'Frisco right off, or she'll be havin' the
+high strikes here alone. I oughter knowed it would come to this!” But
+although he consulted “Cap” Simmons the next day, who informed him it
+was all woman's ways when “struck,” and advised him to pay out all the
+line he could at such delicate moments, she had no recurrence of the
+outbreak. On the contrary, for days and weeks following she seemed
+calmer, older, and more “growed up;” although she resisted changing her
+seashore dwelling for San Francisco, she accompanied him on one or two
+of his “deep sea” trips down the coast, and seemed happier on their
+southern limits. She had taken to reading the political papers and
+speeches, and some cheap American histories. Captain Bunker's crew,
+profoundly convinced that their skipper's wife was a “woman's rights”
+ fanatic, with the baleful qualities of “sea lawyer” superadded, marveled
+at his bringing her.
+
+It was on returning home from one of these trips that they touched
+briefly at San Francisco, where the Secretary of the Fishing Company
+came on board. Mrs. Bunker was startled to recognize in him one of the
+two gentlemen who had taken Mr. Marion off in the boat, but as he did
+not appear to recognize her even after an awkward introduction by her
+husband, she would have recovered her equanimity but for a singular
+incident. As her husband turned momentarily away, the Secretary, with a
+significant gesture, slipped a letter into her hand. She felt the blood
+rush to her face as, with a smile, he moved away to follow her husband.
+She came down to the little cabin and impatiently tore open the
+envelope, which bore no address. A small folded note contained the
+following lines:--
+
+
+“I never intended to burden you with my confidence, but the discretion,
+tact, and courage you displayed on our first meeting, and what I know
+of your loyalty since, have prompted me to trust myself again to your
+kindness, even though you are now aware whom you have helped, and the
+risks you ran. My friends wish to communicate with me and to forward to
+me, from time to time, certain papers of importance, which, owing to the
+tyrannical espionage of the Government, would be discovered and stopped
+in passing through the express or post-office. These papers will be left
+at your house, but here I must trust entirely to your wit and judgment
+as to the way in which they should be delivered to my agent at the
+nearest Mexican port. To facilitate your action, your husband will
+receive directions to pursue his course as far south as Todos Santos,
+where a boat will be ready to take charge of them when he is sighted. I
+know I am asking a great favor, but I have such confidence in you that I
+do not even ask you to commit yourself to a reply to this. If it can
+be done I know that you will do it; if it cannot, I will understand and
+appreciate the reason why. I will only ask you that when you are ready
+to receive the papers you will fly a small red pennant from the little
+flagstaff among the rocks. Believe me, your friend and grateful debtor,
+
+“W. M.”
+
+
+Mrs. Bunker cast a hasty glance around her, and pressed the letter
+to her lips. It was a sudden consummation of her vaguest, half-formed
+wishes, the realization of her wildest dreams! To be the confidante of
+the gallant but melancholy hero in his lonely exile and persecution was
+to satisfy all the unformulated romantic fancies of her girlish reading;
+to be later, perhaps, the Flora Macdonald of a middle-aged Prince
+Charlie did not, however, evoke any ludicrous associations in her mind.
+Her feminine fancy exalted the escaped duelist and alleged assassin into
+a social martyr. His actual small political intrigues and ignoble aims
+of office seemed to her little different from those aspirations of
+royalty which she had read about--as perhaps they were. Indeed, it is to
+be feared that in foolish little Mrs. Bunker, Wynyard Marion had found
+the old feminine adoration of pretension and privilege which every
+rascal has taken advantage of since the flood.
+
+Howbeit, the next morning after she had returned and Zephas had sailed
+away, she flew a red bandana handkerchief on the little flagstaff before
+the house. A few hours later, a boat appeared mysteriously from around
+the Point. Its only occupant--a common sailor--asked her name, and
+handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been
+at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some
+ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her
+husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to
+deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly
+to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a note to Marion, which, with
+a new and amazing diffidence, she composed and altered a dozen times, at
+last addressing the following in a large, school-girl hand: “Sir, I obey
+your commands to the last. Whatever your oppressors or enemies may do,
+you can always rely and trust upon She who in deepest sympathy signs
+herself ever, Mollie Rosalie MacEwan.” The substitution of her maiden
+name in full seemed in her simplicity to be a delicate exclusion of
+her husband from the affair, and a certain disguise of herself to alien
+eyes. The superscription, “To Mrs. Marion MacEwan from Mollie Bunker, to
+be called for by hand at Todos Santos,” also struck her as a marvel of
+ingenuity. The package was safely and punctually delivered by Zephas,
+who brought back a small packet directed to her, which on private
+examination proved to contain a letter addressed to “J. E. Kirby, to
+be called for,” with the hurried line: “A thousand thanks, W. M.” Mrs.
+Bunker drew a long, quick breath. He might have written more; he might
+have--but the wish remained still unformulated. The next day she ran up
+a signal; the same boat and solitary rower appeared around the Point,
+and took the package. A week later, when her husband was ready for sea,
+she again hoisted her signal. It brought a return package for Mexico,
+which she inclosed and readdressed, and gave to her husband. The
+recurrence of this incident apparently struck a bright idea from the
+simple Zephas.
+
+“Look here, Mollie, why don't you come YOURSELF and see your aunt. I
+can't go into port without a license, and them port charges cost a heap
+o' red tape, for they've got a Filibuster scare on down there just
+now, but you can go ashore in the boat and I'll get permission from the
+Secretary to stand off and wait for you there for twenty-four hours.”
+ Mrs. Bunker flushed and paled at the thought. She could see him! The
+letter would be sufficient excuse, the distrust suggested by her husband
+would give color to her delivering it in person. There was perhaps a
+brief twinge of conscience in taking this advantage of Zephas' kindness,
+but the next moment, with that peculiar logic known only to the sex, she
+made the unfortunate man's suggestion a condonation of her deceit. SHE
+hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her. He had only himself to
+thank.
+
+Meantime the political excitement in which she had become a partisan
+without understanding or even conviction, presently culminated with the
+Presidential campaign and the election of Abraham Lincoln. The intrigues
+of Southern statesmen were revealed in open expression, and echoed in
+California by those citizens of Southern birth and extraction who
+had long, held place, power, and opinion there. There were rumors
+of secession, of California joining the South, or of her founding an
+independent Pacific Empire. A note from “J. E. Kirby” informed Mrs.
+Bunker that she was to carefully retain any correspondence that might be
+in her hands until further orders, almost at the same time that Zephas
+as regretfully told her that his projected Southern trip had been
+suspended. Mrs. Bunker was disappointed, and yet, in some singular
+conditions of her feelings, felt relieved that her meeting with Marion
+was postponed. It is to be feared that some dim conviction, unworthy
+a partisan, that in the magnitude of political events her own petty
+personality might be overlooked by her hero tended somewhat to her
+resignation.
+
+Meanwhile the seasons had changed. The winter rains had set in; the
+trade winds had shifted to the southeast, and the cottage, although
+strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good
+fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but
+was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long
+nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles,
+or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were
+brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of
+dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly
+lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. At such
+times, in her accepted solitude, Mrs. Bunker gave herself up to strange
+moods and singular visions; the more audacious and more striking it
+seemed to her from their very remoteness, and the difficulty she was
+beginning to have in materializing them. The actual personality of
+Wynyard Marion, as she knew it in her one interview, had become very
+shadowy and faint in the months that passed, yet when the days were
+heavy she sometimes saw herself standing by his side in some vague
+tropical surroundings, and hailed by the multitude as the faithful wife
+and consort of the great Leader, President, Emperor--she knew not what!
+Exactly how this was to be managed, and the manner of Zephas' effacement
+from the scene, never troubled her childish fancy, and, it is but fair
+to say, her woman's conscience. In the logic before alluded to, it
+seemed to her that all ethical responsibility for her actions rested
+with the husband who had unduly married her. Nor were those visions
+always roseate. In the wild declamation of that exciting epoch which
+filled the newspapers there was talk of short shrift with traitors. So
+there were days when the sudden onset of a squall of hail against her
+window caused her to start as if she had heard the sharp fusillade of
+that file of muskets of which she had sometimes read in history.
+
+One day she had a singular fright. She had heard the sound of oars
+falling with a precision and regularity unknown to her. She was startled
+to see the approach of a large eight-oared barge rowed by men in
+uniform, with two officers wrapped in cloaks in the stern sheets, and
+before them the glitter of musket barrels. The two officers appeared to
+be conversing earnestly, and occasionally pointing to the shore and the
+bluff above. For an instant she trembled, and then an instinct of revolt
+and resistance followed. She hurriedly removed the ring, which she
+usually wore when alone, from her finger, slipped it with the packet
+under the mattress of her bed, and prepared with blazing eyes to face
+the intruders. But when the boat was beached, the two officers, with
+scarcely a glance towards the cottage, proceeded leisurely along the
+shore. Relieved, yet it must be confessed a little piqued at their
+indifference, she snatched up her hat and sallied forth to confront
+them.
+
+“I suppose you don't know that this is private property?” she said
+sharply.
+
+The group halted and turned towards her. The orderly, who was following,
+turned his face aside and smiled. The younger officer demurely lifted
+his cap. The elder, gray, handsome, in a general's uniform, after a
+moment's half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure,
+gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.
+
+“I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of
+that. We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a
+possible view of fortifying the bluff. It is very doubtful if you will
+be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government
+will not fail to make it good to you.” He turned carelessly to the aide
+beside him. “I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?”
+
+“I don't know about that, general. They say that Marion, after he killed
+Henderson, escaped down this way,” said the young man.
+
+“Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?”
+
+“They say that Mrs. Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for
+him. The story of the escape is all out now.”
+
+They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs. Bunker, only the
+younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn't
+as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.
+
+She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed.
+Who was this Mrs. Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary
+devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was
+equally well known that he went in the ship alone. If they had heard
+that some woman was with him here--why should they have supposed it was
+Mrs. Fairfax? Zephas might know something--but he was away. The thought
+haunted her that day and the next. On the third came a more startling
+incident.
+
+She had been wandering along the edge of her domain in a state of
+restlessness which had driven her from the monotony of the house when
+she heard the barking of the big Newfoundland dog which Zephas had
+lately bought for protection and company. She looked up and saw the boat
+and its solitary rower at the landing. She ran quickly to the house to
+bring the packet. As she entered she started back in amazement. For the
+sitting-room was already in possession of a woman who was seated calmly
+by the table.
+
+The stranger turned on Mrs. Bunker that frankly insolent glance and
+deliberate examination which only one woman can give another. In that
+glance Mrs. Bunker felt herself in the presence of a superior, even if
+her own eyes had not told her that in beauty, attire, and bearing the
+intruder was of a type and condition far beyond her own, or even that of
+any she had known. It was the more crushing that there also seemed to be
+in this haughty woman the same incongruousness and sharp contrast to the
+plain and homely surroundings of the cottage that she remembered in HIM.
+
+“Yo' aw Mrs. Bunker, I believe,” she said in languid Southern accents.
+“How de doh?”
+
+“I am Mrs. Bunker,” said Mrs. Bunker shortly.
+
+“And so this is where Cunnle Marion stopped when he waited fo' the
+boat to take him off,” said the stranger, glancing lazily around, and
+delaying with smiling insolence the explanation she knew Mrs. Bunker was
+expecting. “The cunnle said it was a pooh enough place, but I don't see
+it. I reckon, however, he was too worried to judge and glad enough to
+get off. Yo' ought to have made him talk--he generally don't want much
+prompting to talk to women, if they're pooty.”
+
+“He didn't seem in a hurry to go,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly. The
+next moment she saw her error, even before the cruel, handsome smile of
+her unbidden guest revealed it.
+
+“I thought so,” she said lazily; “this IS the place and here's where the
+cunnle stayed. Only yo' oughtn't have given him and yo'self away to the
+first stranger quite so easy. The cunnle might have taught yo' THAT the
+two or three hours he was with yo'.”
+
+“What do you want with me?” demanded Mrs. Bunker angrily.
+
+“I want a letter yo' have for me from Cunnle Marion.”
+
+“I have nothing for you,” said Mrs. Bunker. “I don't know who you are.”
+
+“You ought to, considering you've been acting as messenger between the
+cunnle and me,” said the lady coolly.
+
+“That's not true,” said Mrs. Bunker hotly, to combat an inward sinking.
+
+The lady rose with a lazy, languid grace, walked to the door and called
+still lazily, “O Pedro!”
+
+The solitary rower clambered up the rocks and appeared on the cottage
+threshold.
+
+“Is this the lady who gave you the letters for me and to whom you took
+mine?”
+
+“Si, senora.”
+
+“They were addressed to a Mr. Kirby,” said Mrs. Bunker sullenly. “How
+was I to know they were for Mrs. Kirby?”
+
+“Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby, and myself are all the same. You don't suppose
+the cunnle would give my real name and address? Did you address yo'r
+packet to HIS real name or to some one else. Did you let your husband
+know who they were for?”
+
+Oddly, a sickening sense of the meanness of all these deceits and
+subterfuges suddenly came over Mrs. Bunker. Without replying she went
+to her bedroom and returned with Colonel Marion's last letter, which she
+tossed into her visitor's lap.
+
+“Thank yo', Mrs. Bunker. I'll be sure to tell the cunnle how careful yo'
+were not to give up his correspondence to everybody. It'll please him
+mo' than to hear yo' are wearing his ring--which everybody knows--before
+people.”
+
+“He gave it to me--he--he knew I wouldn't take money,” said Mrs. Bunker
+indignantly.
+
+“He didn't have any to give,” said the lady slowly, as she removed the
+envelope from her letter and looked up with a dazzling but cruel smile.
+“A So'th'n gentleman don't fill up his pockets when he goes out to
+fight. He don't tuck his maw's Bible in his breast-pocket, clap his dear
+auntie's locket big as a cheese plate over his heart, nor let his sole
+leather cigyar case that his gyrl gave him lie round him in spots when
+he goes out to take another gentleman's fire. He leaves that to Yanks!”
+
+“Did you come here to insult my husband?” said Mrs. Bunker in the rage
+of desperation.
+
+“To insult yo' husband! Well--I came here to get a letter that his wife
+received from his political and natural enemy and--perhaps I DID!” With
+a side glance at Mrs. Bunker's crimson cheek she added carelessly, “I
+have nothing against Captain Bunker; he's a straightforward man and
+must go with his kind. He helped those hounds of Vigilantes because he
+believes in them. We couldn't bribe him if we wanted to. And we don't.”
+
+If she only knew something of this woman's relations to Marion--which
+she only instinctively suspected--and could retaliate upon her, Mrs.
+Bunker felt she would have given up her life at that moment.
+
+“Colonel Marion seems to find plenty that he can bribe,” she said
+roughly, “and I've yet to know who YOU are to sit in judgment on them.
+You've got your letter, take it and go! When he wants to send you
+another through me, somebody else must come for it, not you. That's
+all!”
+
+She drew back as if to let the intruder pass, but the lady, without
+moving a muscle, finished the reading of her letter, then stood
+up quietly and began carefully to draw her handsome cloak over her
+shoulders. “Yo' want to know who I am, Mrs. Bunker,” she said, arranging
+the velvet collar under her white oval chin. “Well, I'm a So'th'n woman
+from Figinya, and I'm Figinyan first, last, and all the time.” She shook
+out her sleeves and the folds of her cloak. “I believe in State rights
+and slavery--if you know what that means. I hate the North, I hate the
+East, I hate the West. I hate this nigger Government, I'd kill that man
+Lincoln quicker than lightning!” She began to draw down the fingers of
+her gloves, holding her shapely hands upright before her. “I'm hard and
+fast to the Cause. I gave up house and niggers for it.” She began to
+button her gloves at the wrist with some difficulty, tightly setting
+together her beautiful lips as she did so. “I gave up my husband for
+it, and I went to the man who loved it better and had risked more for it
+than ever he had. Cunnle Marion's my friend. I'm Mrs. Fairfax,
+Josephine Hardee that was; HIS disciple and follower. Well, maybe those
+puritanical No'th'n folks might give it another name!”
+
+She moved slowly towards the door, but on the threshold paused, as
+Colonel Marion had, and came back to Mrs. Bunker with an outstretched
+hand. “I don't see that yo' and me need quo'll. I didn't come here for
+that. I came here to see yo'r husband, and seeing YO' I thought it was
+only right to talk squarely to yo', as yo' understand I WOULDN'T talk to
+yo'r husband. Mrs. Bunker, I want yo'r husband to take me away--I want
+him to take me to the cunnle. If I tried to go in any other way I'd
+be watched, spied upon and followed, and only lead those hounds on his
+track. I don't expect yo' to ASK yo' husband for me, but only not to
+interfere when I do.”
+
+There was a touch of unexpected weakness in her voice and a look of pain
+in her eyes which was not unlike what Mrs. Bunker had seen and pitied in
+Marion. But they were the eyes of a woman who had humbled her, and Mrs.
+Bunker would have been unworthy her sex if she had not felt a cruel
+enjoyment in it. Yet the dominance of the stranger was still so strong
+that she did not dare to refuse the proffered hand. She, however,
+slipped the ring from her finger and laid it in Mrs. Fairfax's palm.
+
+“You can take that with you,” she said, with a desperate attempt to
+imitate the other's previous indifference. “I shouldn't like to deprive
+you and YOUR FRIEND of the opportunity of making use of it again. As for
+MY husband, I shall say nothing of you to him as long as you say nothing
+to him of me--which I suppose is what you mean.”
+
+The insolent look came back to Mrs. Fairfax's face. “I reckon yo' 're
+right,” she said quietly, putting the ring in her pocket as she fixed
+her dark eyes on Mrs. Bunker, “and the ring may be of use again.
+Good-by, Mrs. Bunker.”
+
+She waved her hand carelessly, and turning away passed out of the house.
+A moment later the boat and its two occupants pushed from the shore, and
+disappeared round the Point.
+
+Then Mrs. Bunker looked round the room, and down upon her empty finger,
+and knew that it was the end of her dream. It was all over now--indeed,
+with the picture of that proud, insolent woman before her she wondered
+if it had ever begun. This was the woman she had allowed herself to
+think SHE might be. This was the woman HE was thinking of when he sat
+there; this was the Mrs. Fairfax the officers had spoken of, and who
+had made her--Mrs. Bunker--the go-between for their love-making! All
+the work that she had done for him, the deceit she had practiced on her
+husband, was to bring him and this woman together! And they both knew
+it, and had no doubt laughed at her and her pretensions!
+
+It was with a burning cheek that she thought how she had intended to go
+to Marion, and imagined herself arriving perhaps to find that shameless
+woman already there. In her vague unformulated longings she had never
+before realized the degradation into which her foolish romance might
+lead her. She saw it now; that humiliating moral lesson we are all apt
+to experience in the accidental display of our own particular vices in
+the person we hate, she had just felt in Mrs. Fairfax's presence. With
+it came the paralyzing fear of her husband's discovery of her secret.
+Secure as she had been in her dull belief that he had in some way
+wronged her by marrying her, she for the first time began to doubt if
+this condoned the deceit she had practiced on him. The tribute Mrs.
+Fairfax had paid him--this appreciation of his integrity and honesty
+by an enemy and a woman like herself--troubled her, frightened her, and
+filled her with her first jealousy! What if this woman should tell him
+all; what if she should make use of him as Marion had of her! Zephas was
+a strong Northern partisan, but was he proof against the guileful
+charms of such a devil? She had never thought before of questioning his
+fidelity to her; she suddenly remembered now some rough pleasantries of
+Captain Simmons in regard to the inconstancy of his calling. No! there
+was but one thing for her to do: she would make a clean breast to him;
+she would tell him everything she had done except the fatal fancy that
+compelled her to it! She began to look for his coming now with alternate
+hope and fear--with unabated impatience! The night that he should have
+arrived passed slowly; morning came, but not Zephas. When the mist had
+lifted she ran impatiently to the rocks and gazed anxiously towards the
+lower bay. There were a few gray sails scarce distinguishable above
+the grayer water--but they were not his. She glanced half mechanically
+seaward, and her eyes became suddenly fixed. There was no mistake! She
+knew the rig!--she could see the familiar white lap-streak as the vessel
+careened on the starboard tack--it was her husband's schooner slowly
+creeping out of the Golden Gate!
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+Her first wild impulse was to run to the cove, for the little dingey
+always moored there, and to desperately attempt to overtake him. But
+the swift consciousness of its impossibility was followed by a dull,
+bewildering torpor, that kept her motionless, helplessly following the
+vessel with straining eyes, as if they could evoke some response from
+its decks. She was so lost in this occupation that she did not see that
+a pilot-boat nearly abreast of the cove had put out a two-oared gig,
+which was pulling quickly for the rocks. When she saw it, she trembled
+with the instinct that it brought her intelligence. She was right;
+it was a brief note from her husband, informing her that he had been
+hurriedly dispatched on a short sea cruise; that in order to catch the
+tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain
+everything on his return. Her relief was only partial; she was already
+experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble
+one. He could easily have “fetched” the bluff in tacking out of the Gate
+and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat. The next day she
+locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where
+the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took up passengers to San
+Francisco. Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this last trip;
+indeed, did not know that he had gone out of the Bay. Mrs. Bunker was
+seized with a desperate idea. She called upon the Secretary of the
+Fishing Trust. That gentle man was business-like, but neither expansive
+nor communicative. Her husband had NOT been ordered out to sea by them;
+she ought to know that Captain Bunker was now his own master, choosing
+his own fishing grounds, and his own times and seasons. He was not
+aware of any secret service for the Company in which Captain Bunker was
+engaged. He hoped Mrs. Bunker would distinctly remember that the little
+matter of the duel to which she referred was an old bygone affair,
+and never anything but a personal matter, in which the Fishery had no
+concern whatever, and in which HE certainly should not again engage. He
+would advise Mrs. Bunker, if she valued her own good, and especially her
+husband's, to speedily forget all about it. These were ugly times, as
+it was. If Mrs. Bunker's services had not been properly rewarded or
+considered it was certainly a great shame, but really HE could not be
+expected to make it good. Certain parties had cost him trouble enough
+already. Besides, really, she must see that his position between her
+husband, whom he respected, and a certain other party was a delicate
+one. But Mrs. Bunker heard no more. She turned and ran down the
+staircase, carrying with her a burning cheek and blazing eye that
+somewhat startled the complacent official.
+
+She did not remember how she got home again. She had a vague
+recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the
+people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived
+by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in
+knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the
+bulletin boards that had such strange legends as “The Crisis,” “Details
+of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government,” “The Assassin of
+Henderson to the Fore Again,” “Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier.”
+ Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied
+they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried
+treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her
+benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had
+happened long ago. When she reached her house, late that night, the
+familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with
+it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it,
+that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that
+with their meeting she would know it no more. For through all her
+childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one
+steadfast resolution. She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst.
+Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet
+him.
+
+And so the days and nights slowly passed. The solitude which her
+previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions
+now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery. Had she
+been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have
+suffered less. Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest
+knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she
+accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her
+wrongdoing. Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs. Fairfax--and SHE
+could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs. Bunker knew now
+that she herself had never had one--and was alone! Mrs. Fairfax had
+broken openly with her husband; but SHE had DECEIVED hers, and the
+experience and reckoning were still to come. In her miserable confession
+it was not strange that this half child, half woman, sometimes looked
+towards that gray sea, eternally waiting for her,--that sea which had
+taken everything from her and given her nothing in return,--for an
+obliterating and perhaps exonerating death!
+
+The third day of her waiting isolation was broken upon by another
+intrusion. The morning had been threatening, with an opaque, motionless,
+livid arch above, which had taken the place of the usual flying scud and
+shaded cloud masses of the rainy season. The whole outlying ocean, too,
+beyond the bar, appeared nearer, and even seemed to be lifted higher
+than the Bay itself, and was lit every now and then with wonderful
+clearness by long flashes of breaking foam like summer lightning. She
+knew that this meant a southwester, and began, with a certain mechanical
+deliberation, to set her little domain in order against the coming gale.
+She drove the cows to the rude shed among the scrub oaks, she collected
+the goats and young kids in the corral, and replenished the stock of
+fuel from the woodpile. She was quite hidden in the shrubbery when she
+saw a boat making slow headway against the wind towards the little cove
+where but a moment before she had drawn up the dingey beyond the reach
+of breaking seas. It was a whaleboat from Saucelito containing a few
+men. As they neared the landing she recognized in the man who seemed to
+be directing the boat the second friend of Colonel Marion--the man who
+had come with the Secretary to take him off, but whom she had never
+seen again. In her present horror of that memory she remained hidden,
+determined at all hazards to avoid a meeting. When they had landed,
+one of the men halted accidentally before the shrubbery where she was
+concealed as he caught his first view of the cottage, which had been
+invisible from the point they had rounded.
+
+“Look here, Bragg,” he said, turning to Marion's friend, in a voice
+which was distinctly audible to Mrs. Bunker. “What are we to say to
+these people?”
+
+“There's only one,” returned the other. “The man's at sea. His wife's
+here. She's all right.”
+
+“You said she was one of us?”
+
+“After a fashion. She's the woman who helped Marion when he was here. I
+reckon he made it square with her from the beginning, for she forwarded
+letters from him since. But you can tell her as much or as little as you
+find necessary when you see her.”
+
+“Yes, but we must settle that NOW,” said Bragg sharply, “and I propose
+to tell her NOTHING. I'm against having any more petticoats mixed up
+with our affairs. I propose to make an examination of the place without
+bothering our heads about her.”
+
+“But we must give some reason for coming here, and we must ask her to
+keep dark, or we'll have her blabbing to the first person she meets,”
+ urged the other.
+
+“She's not likely to see anybody before night, when the brig will be in
+and the men and guns landed. Move on, and let Jim take soundings off
+the cove, while I look along the shore. It's just as well that there's
+a house here, and a little cover like this”--pointing to the
+shrubbery--“to keep the men from making too much of a show until after
+the earthworks are up. There are sharp eyes over at the Fort.”
+
+“There don't seem to be any one in the house now,” returned the other
+after a moment's scrutiny of the cottage, “or the woman would surely
+come out at the barking of the dog, even if she hadn't seen us. Likely
+she's gone to Saucelito.”
+
+“So much the better. Just as well that she should know nothing until
+it happens. Afterwards we'll settle with the husband for the price of
+possession; he has only a squatter's rights. Come along; we'll have
+bad weather before we get back round the Point again, but so much the
+better, for it will keep off any inquisitive longshore cruisers.”
+
+They moved away. But Mrs. Bunker, stung through her benumbed and
+brooding consciousness, and made desperate by this repeated revelation
+of her former weakness, had heard enough to make her feverish to hear
+more. She knew the intricacies of the shrubbery thoroughly. She knew
+every foot of shade and cover of the clearing, and creeping like a cat
+from bush to bush she managed, without being discovered, to keep
+the party in sight and hearing all the time. It required no great
+discernment, even for an inexperienced woman like herself, at the end of
+an hour, to gather their real purpose. It was to prepare for the secret
+landing of an armed force, disguised as laborers, who, under the outward
+show of quarrying in the bluff, were to throw up breastworks, and
+fortify the craggy shelf. The landing was fixed for that night, and was
+to be effected by a vessel now cruising outside the Heads.
+
+She understood it all now. She remembered Marion's speech about the
+importance of the bluff for military purposes; she remembered the visit
+of the officers from the Fort opposite. The strangers were stealing a
+march upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It was
+perhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension that
+she took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there was
+little to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terrible
+catastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, of
+which any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least those
+officers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers of
+the Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed with
+an inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?
+
+But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to San
+Francisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself,
+rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security of
+success. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was getting
+up--but she would try.
+
+She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous
+dread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished round
+the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her
+husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was a
+heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not until
+she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind
+and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. She
+had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few
+points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff
+bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while
+it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from
+swamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never
+impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up
+its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast
+gaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering free
+from any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threatening
+seas on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her very
+weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all
+the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but
+persistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headway
+to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current
+sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now
+sluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, she
+was delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of her
+cottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it. She was, in fact,
+on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of the
+gale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination in
+a semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed. She was
+moving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, above
+its green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, and
+whose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from the
+rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the
+wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated
+by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden
+fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it
+was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging
+frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the
+boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to
+capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began
+to drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could
+hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above
+her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms
+moving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitless
+effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards
+the Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.
+
+She knew now what it all meant. This was what she had come for; this
+was the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer to
+wait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she had
+longed for but had not dared to seek. It was not her fault; they could
+not blame HER. He would come back and never know what had happened--nor
+even know how she had tried to atone for her deceit. And he would find
+his house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not die
+yet, at least not until she had warned the Fort. She seized the oars
+again with frenzied strength; the boat had stopped under the unwonted
+strain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of it
+over her bow, struck down Mrs. Bunker under half a ton of blue water
+that wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, swept
+them over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of the
+boat.
+
+*****
+
+“Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down.”
+
+“Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!”
+
+“Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook. Now then,
+hold har-rd!”
+
+The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound of
+rasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousers
+around her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.
+
+When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in a
+soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery
+corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge
+she had remembered. But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish
+lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew of
+mingled artillerymen and infantry.
+
+“And where did ye drift from, darlint?”
+
+Mrs. Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.
+
+“I didn't drift. I was going to the Fort.”
+
+“The Fort, is it?”
+
+“Yes. I want to see the general.”
+
+“Wadn't the liftenant do ye? Or shure there's the adjutant; he's a foine
+man.”
+
+“Silence, Flanigan,” said the young officer sharply. Then turning to
+Mrs. Bunker he said, “Don't mind HIM, but let his wife take you to the
+canteen, when we get in, and get you some dry clothes.”
+
+But Mrs. Bunker, spurred to convalescence at the indignity, protested
+stiffly, and demanded on her arrival to be led at once to the general's
+quarters. A few officers, who had been attracted to the pier by the
+rescue, acceded to her demand.
+
+She recognized the gray-haired, handsome man who had come ashore at her
+house. With a touch of indignation at her treatment, she briefly told
+her story. But the general listened coldly and gravely with his eyes
+fixed upon her face.
+
+“You say you recognized in the leader of the party a man you had seen
+before. Under what circumstances?”
+
+Mrs. Bunker hesitated with burning cheeks. “He came to take Colonel
+Marion from our place.”
+
+“When you were hiding him,--yes, we've heard the story. Now, Mrs.
+Bunker, may I ask you what you, as a Southern sympathizer, expect to
+gain by telling me this story?”
+
+But here Mrs. Bunker burst out. “I am not a Southern sympathizer! Never!
+Never! Never! I'm a Union woman,--wife of a Northern man. I helped that
+man before I knew who he was. Any Christian, Northerner or Southerner,
+would have done the same!”
+
+Her sincerity and passion were equally unmistakable. The general rose,
+opened the door of the adjoining room, said a few words to an orderly on
+duty, and returned. “What you are asking of me, Mrs. Bunker, is almost
+as extravagant and unprecedented as your story. You must understand, as
+well as your husband, that if I land a force on your property it will be
+to TAKE POSSESSION of it in the name of the Government, for Government
+purposes.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Bunker eagerly; “I know that. I am willing; Zephas
+will be willing.”
+
+“And,” continued the general, fixing his eyes on her face, “you will
+also understand that I may be compelled to detain you here as a hostage
+for the safety of my men.”
+
+“Oh no! no! please!” said Mrs. Bunker, springing up with an imploring
+feminine gesture; “I am expecting my husband. He may be coming back at
+any moment; I must be there to see him FIRST! Please let me go back,
+sir, with your men; put me anywhere ashore between them and those men
+that are coming. Lock me up; keep me a prisoner in my own home; do
+anything else if you think I am deceiving you; but don't keep me here to
+miss him when he comes!”
+
+“But you can see him later,” said the general.
+
+“But I must see him FIRST,” said Mrs. Bunker desperately. “I must see
+him first, for--for--HE KNOWS NOTHING OF THIS. He knows nothing of my
+helping Colonel Marion; he knows nothing of--how foolish I have been,
+and--he must not know it from others! There!” It was out at last. She
+was sobbing now, but her pride was gone. She felt relieved, and did not
+even notice the presence of two or three other officers, who had entered
+the room, exchanged a few hurried words with their superior, and were
+gazing at her in astonishment.
+
+The general's brow relaxed, and he smiled. “Very well, Mrs. Bunker;
+it shall be as you like, then. You shall go and meet your husband with
+Captain Jennings here,”--indicating one of the officers,--“who will take
+charge of you and the party.”
+
+“And,” said Mrs. Bunker, looking imploringly through her wet but pretty
+lashes at the officer, “he won't say anything to Zephas, either?”
+
+“Not a syllable,” said Captain Jennings gravely. “But while the tug is
+getting ready, general, hadn't Mrs. Bunker better go to Mrs. Flanigan?”
+
+“I think not,” said the general, with a significant look at the officer
+as he gallantly offered his arm to the astonished Mrs. Bunker, “if she
+will allow me the pleasure of taking her to my wife.”
+
+There was an equally marked respect in the manner of the men and
+officers as Mrs. Bunker finally stepped on board the steam tug that was
+to convey the party across the turbulent bay. But she heeded it
+not, neither did she take any concern of the still furious gale, the
+difficult landing, the preternatural activity of the band of sappers,
+who seemed to work magic with their picks and shovels, the shelter tents
+that arose swiftly around her, the sheds and bush inclosures that were
+evoked from the very ground beneath her feet; the wonderful skill,
+order, and discipline that in a few hours converted her straggling
+dominion into a formal camp, even to the sentinel, who was already
+calmly pacing the rocks by the landing as if he had being doing it for
+years! Only one thing thrilled her--the sudden outburst, fluttering and
+snapping of the national flag from her little flagstaff. He would see
+it--and perhaps be pleased!
+
+And indeed it seemed as if the men had caught the infection of her
+anxiety, for when her strained eyes could no longer pierce the murky
+twilight settling over the Gate, one came running to her to say that the
+lookout had just discovered through his glass a close-reefed schooner
+running in before the wind. It was her husband, and scarcely an hour
+after night had shut in the schooner had rounded to off the Point,
+dropped her boat, and sped away to anchorage. And then Mrs. Bunker,
+running bareheaded down the rocks, breaking in upon the hurried
+explanation of the officer of the guard, threw herself upon her
+husband's breast, and sobbed and laughed as if her heart would break!
+
+Nor did she scarcely hear his hurried comment to the officer and
+unconscious corroboration of her story: how a brig had raced them from
+the Gate, was heading for the bar, but suddenly sheered off and put
+away to sea again, as if from some signal from the headland. “Yes--the
+bluff,” interrupted Captain Jennings bitterly, “I thought of that, but
+the old man said it was more diplomatic just now to PREVENT an attempt
+than even to successfully resist it.”
+
+But when they were alone again in their little cottage, and Zephas'
+honest eyes--with no trace of evil knowledge or suspicion in their
+homely, neutral lightness--were looking into hers with his usual
+simple trustfulness, Mrs. Bunker trembled, whimpered, and--I grieve
+to say--basely funked her boasted confession. But here the Deity which
+protects feminine weakness intervened with the usual miracle. As he
+gazed at his wife's troubled face, an apologetic cloud came over his
+rugged but open brow, and a smile of awkward deprecating embarrassment
+suffused his eyes. “I declare to goodness, Mollie, but I must tell you
+suthin, although I guess I didn't kalkilate to say a word about it. But,
+darn it all, I can't keep it in. No! Lookin' inter that innercent
+face o' yourn”--pressing her flushing cheeks between his cool brown
+hands--“and gazing inter them two truthful eyes”--they blinked at this
+moment with a divine modesty--“and thinkin' of what you've just did for
+your kentry--like them revolutionary women o' '76--I feel like a darned
+swab of a traitor myself. Well! what I want ter tell you is this: Ye
+know, or ye've heard me tell o' that Mrs. Fairfax, as left her husband
+for that fire-eatin' Marion, and stuck to him through thick and thin,
+and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus
+they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself.
+Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard.
+
+“'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.
+
+“'That's me, ma'am,' I says.
+
+“'You're a Northern man and you go with your kind,' sez she; 'but you're
+a white man, and thar's no cur blood in you.' But you ain't listenin',
+Mollie; you're dead tired, lass,”--with a commiserating look at her now
+whitening face,--“and I'll haul in line and wait. Well, to cut it short,
+she wanted me to take her down the coast a bit to where she could
+join Marion. She said she'd been shook by his friends, followed by
+spies--and, blame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down
+and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them
+Chivalry folks--ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and
+their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer
+their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind--was jes the
+kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder
+thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o'
+Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her I didn't want the jewelry and
+dimons she offered me, but if she would come down to the wharf, after
+dark, I'd smuggle her aboard, and I'd allow to the men that she was YOUR
+AUNTIE ez I was givin' a free passage to! Lord! dear! think o' me takin'
+the name o' Mollie Bunker's aunt in vain for that sort o' woman! Think
+o' me,” continued Captain Bunker with a tentative chuckle, “sort o'
+pretendin' to hand yo'r auntie to Kernel Marion for--for his lady love!
+I don't wonder ye's half frighted and half laffin',” he added, as his
+wife uttered a hysterical cry; “it WAS awful! But it worked, and I got
+her off, and wot's more I got her shipped to Mazatlan, where she'll join
+Marion, and the two are goin' back to Virginy, where I guess they won't
+trouble Californy again. Ye know now, deary,” he went on, speaking with
+difficulty through Mrs. Bunker's clinging arms and fast dripping tears,
+“why I didn't heave to to say 'good-by.' But it's all over now--I've
+made a clean breast of it, Mollie--and don't you cry!”
+
+But it was NOT all over. For a moment later Captain Bunker began to
+fumble in his waistcoat pocket with the one hand that was not clasping
+his wife's waist. “One thing more, Mollie; when I left her and refused
+to take any of her dimons, she put a queer sort o' ring into my hand,
+and told me with a kind o' mischievious, bedevilin' smile, that I
+must keep it to remember her by. Here it is--why, Mollie lass! are you
+crazy?”
+
+She had snatched it from his fingers and was running swiftly from the
+cottage out into the tempestuous night. He followed closely, until
+she reached the edge of the rocks. And only then, in the struggling,
+fast-flying moonlight, she raised a passionate hand, and threw it far
+into the sea!
+
+As he led her back to the cottage she said she was jealous, and honest
+Captain Bunker, with his arm around her, felt himself the happiest man
+in the world!
+
+*****
+
+From that day the flag flew regularly over the rocky shelf, and, in
+time, bugles and morning drumbeats were wafted from it to the decks of
+passing ships. For the Federal Government had adjudged the land for its
+own use, paid Captain Bunker a handsome sum for its possession, and
+had discreetly hidden the little cottage of Mrs. Bunker and its history
+forever behind bastion and casemate.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMP
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+The tiny lights that had been far scattered and intermittent as
+fireflies all along the dark stream at last dropped out one by one,
+leaving only the three windows of “Parks' Emporium” to pierce the
+profoundly wooded banks of the South Fork. So all-pervading was the
+darkness that the mere opening of the “Emporium” front door shot out an
+illuminating shaft which revealed the whole length of the little main
+street of “Buckeye,” while the simple passing of a single figure before
+one of the windows momentarily eclipsed a third of the settlement. This
+undue pre-eminence given to the only three citizens of Buckeye who were
+still up at ten o 'clock seemed to be hardly justified by their outward
+appearance, which was that of ordinary long-bearded and long-booted
+river bar miners. Two sat upon the counter with their hands upon their
+knees, the third leaned beside the open window.
+
+It was very quiet. The faint, far barking of a dog, or an occasional
+subdued murmur from the river shallows, audible only when the wind rose
+slightly, helped to intensify their solitude. So supreme had it become
+that when the man at the window at last continued his conversation
+meditatively, with his face towards it, he seemed to be taking all
+Nature into his confidence.
+
+“The worst thing about it is, that the only way we can keep her out of
+the settlement is by the same illegal methods which we deplore in other
+camps. We have always boasted that Buckeye could get along without
+Vigilance Committees or Regulators.”
+
+“Yes, and that was because we started it on the principle of original
+selection, which we are only proposing to continue,” replied one of
+the men on the counter. “So there's nothing wrong about our sending a
+deputation to wait upon her, to protest against her settling here, and
+give her our reasons.”
+
+“Yes, only it has all the impudence without the pluck of the Regulators.
+You demand what you are afraid to enforce. Come, Parks, you know she has
+all the rights on her side. Look at it squarely. She proposes to open
+a store and sell liquor and cigars, which she serves herself, in the
+broken-down tienda which was regularly given to her people by the
+Spanish grantee of the land we're squatting on. It's not her fault but
+ours if we've adopted a line of rules, which don't agree with hers, to
+govern the settlers on HER land, nor should she be compelled to follow
+them. Nor because we justify OUR squatting here, on the ground that the
+Spanish grant isn't confirmed yet, can we forbid her squatting under the
+same right.”
+
+“But look at the moral question, Brace. Consider the example; the
+influence of such a shop, kept by such a woman, on the community! We
+have the right to protect ourselves--the majority.”
+
+“That's the way the lynchers talk,” returned Brace. “And I'm not so sure
+about there being any moral question yet. You are assuming too much.
+There is no reason why she shouldn't run the tienda as decently--barring
+the liquor sale, which, however, is legal, and for which she can get a
+license--as a man could, and without interfering with our morals.”
+
+“Then what is the use of our rules?”
+
+“They were made for those who consented to adopt them, as we all did.
+They still bind US, and if we don't choose to buy her liquor or cigars
+that will dispose of her and her tienda much more effectually than your
+protest. It's a pity she's a lone unprotected woman. Now if she only had
+a husband”--
+
+“She carries a dagger in her garter.”
+
+This apparently irrelevant remark came from the man who had not yet
+spoken, but who had been listening with the languid unconcern of one
+who, relinquishing the labor of argument to others, had consented to
+abide by their decision. It was met with a scornful smile from each of
+the disputants, perhaps even by an added shrug of the shoulders from
+the woman's previous defender! HE was evidently not to be taken in by
+extraneous sentiment. Nevertheless, both listened as the speaker,
+slowly feeling his knees as if they were his way to a difficult subject,
+continued with the same suggestion of stating general fact, but waiving
+any argument himself. “Clarkson of Angels allows she's got a free,
+gaudy, picter-covered style with the boys, but that she can be
+gilt-edged when she wants to. Rowley Meade--him ez hed his skelp pulled
+over his eyes at one stroke, foolin' with a she bear over on Black
+Mountain--allows it would be rather monotonous in him attemptin' any
+familiarities with her. Bulstrode's brother, ez was in Marysville, said
+there was a woman--like to her, but not her--ez made it lively for the
+boys with a game called 'Little Monte,' and he dropped a hundred dollars
+there afore he came away. They do say that about seven men got shot in
+Marysville on account o' this one, or from some oneasiness that happened
+at her shop. But then,” he went on slowly and deferentially as the faces
+of the two others were lowered and became fixed, “SHE says she tired o'
+drunken rowdies,--there's a sameness about 'em, and it don't sell her
+pipes and cigars, and that's WHY she's coming here. Thompson over at Dry
+Creek sez that THAT'S where our reputation is playin' us! 'We've got her
+as a reward o' virtoo, and be d----d to us.' But,” cautiously, “Thompson
+ain't drawed a sober breath since Christmas.”
+
+The three men looked in each other's faces in silence. The same thought
+occurred to each; the profane Thompson was right, and the woman's advent
+was the logical sequence of their own ethics. Two years previously,
+the Buckeye Company had found gold on the South Fork, and had taken up
+claims. Composed mainly of careful, provident, and thoughtful men,--some
+of cultivation and refinement,--they had adopted a certain orderly
+discipline for their own guidance solely, which, however, commended
+itself to later settlers, already weary of the lawlessness and reckless
+freedom which usually attended the inception of mining settlements.
+Consequently the birth of Buckeye was accompanied with no dangerous
+travail; its infancy was free from the diseases of adolescent
+communities. The settlers, without any express prohibition, had tacitly
+dispensed with gambling and drinking saloons; following the unwritten
+law of example, had laid aside their revolvers, and mingled together
+peacefully when their labors were ended, without a single peremptory
+regulation against drinking and playing, or carrying lethal weapons.
+Nor had there been any test of fitness or qualification for citizenship
+through previous virtue. There were one or two gamblers, a skillful
+duelist, and men who still drank whiskey who had voluntarily sought the
+camp. Of some such antecedents was the last speaker. Probably with two
+wives elsewhere, and a possible homicidal record, he had modestly held
+aloof from obtrusive argument.
+
+“Well, we must have a meeting and put the question squarely to the boys
+to-morrow,” said Parks, gazing thoughtfully from the window. The remark
+was followed by another long silence. Beyond, in the darkness, Buckeye,
+unconscious of the momentous question awaiting its decision, slept on
+peacefully.
+
+“I brought the keg of whiskey and brandy from Red Gulch to-day that
+Doctor Duchesne spoke of,” he resumed presently. “You know he said we
+ought to have some in common stock that he could always rely upon in
+emergencies, and for use after the tule fever. I didn't agree with him,
+and told him how I had brought Sam Denver through an attack with quinine
+and arrowroot, but he laughed and wanted to know if we'd 'resolved'
+that everybody should hereafter have the Denver constitution. That's
+the trouble with those old army surgeons,--they never can get over the
+'heroics' of their past. Why he told Parson Jennings that he'd rather
+treat a man for jim-jams than one that was dying for want of stimulants.
+However, the liquor is here, and one of the things we must settle
+tomorrow is the question if it ought not to be issued only on Duchesne's
+prescription. When I made that point to him squarely, he grinned again,
+and wanted to know if I calculated to put the same restriction on the
+sale of patent medicines and drugs generally.”
+
+“'N powder 'n shot,” contributed the indifferent man.
+
+“Perhaps you'd better take a look at the liquor, Saunders,” said Parks,
+dismissing the ethical question. “YOU know more about it than we do. It
+ought to be the best.”
+
+Saunders went behind the counter, drew out two demijohns, and, possibly
+from the force of habit, selected THREE mugs from the crockery and
+poured some whiskey into each, before he could check himself.
+
+“Perhaps we had better compare tastes,” said Brace blandly. They all
+sipped their liquor slowly and in silence. The decision was favorable.
+“Better try some with water to see how it mixes,” said Saunders,
+lazily filling the glasses with a practiced hand. This required more
+deliberation, and they drew their chairs to the table and sat down. A
+slight relaxation stole over the thoughtful faces of Brace and Parks,
+a gentle perspiration came over the latter's brow, but the features and
+expression of Saunders never changed. The conversation took a broader
+range; politics and philosophy entered into it; literature and poetry
+were discussed by Parks and Brace, Saunders still retaining the air of
+a dispassionate observer, ready to be convinced, but abstaining from
+argument--and occasionally replenishing the glasses. There was felt to
+be no inconsistency between their present attitude and their previous
+conversation; rather it proved to them that gentlemen could occasionally
+indulge in a social glass together without frequenting a liquor saloon.
+This was stated with some degree of effusion by Parks and assented
+to with singular enthusiasm by Brace; Saunders nodding. It was also
+observed with great penetration by Brace that in having really
+GOOD, specially selected liquor like that, the great danger of the
+intoshikat'n 'fx--he corrected himself with great deliberation, “the
+intoxicating effects”--of adulterated liquors sold in drinking saloons
+was obviated. Mr. Brace thought also that the vitiated quality of the
+close air of a crowded saloon had a great deal to do with it--the excess
+of carbon--hic--he begged their pardon--carbonic acid gas undoubtedly
+rendered people “slupid and steepy.” “But here, from the open window,”
+ he walked dreamily to it and leaned out admiringly towards the dark
+landscape that softly slumbered without, “one could drink in only health
+and poetry.”
+
+“Wot's that?” said Saunders, looking up.
+
+“I said health and poetry,” returned Brace with some dignity. “I
+repeat”--
+
+“No. I mean wot's that noise? Listen.”
+
+They listened so breathlessly that the soft murmur of the river seemed
+to flow in upon them. But above it quite distinctly came the regular
+muffled beat of horse-hoofs in the thick dust and the occasional rattle
+of wheels over rocky irregularities. But still very far and faint,
+and fading like the noises in a dream. Brace drew a long breath; Parks
+smiled and softly closed his eyes. But Saunders remained listening.
+
+“That was over OUR road, near the turnpike!” he said musingly. “That's
+queer; thar ain't any of the boys away to-night, and that's a wagon.
+It's some one comin' here. Hark to that! There it is again.”
+
+It was the same sound but more distinct and nearer, and then was lost
+again.
+
+“They're dragging through the river sand that's just abreast o'
+Mallory's. Stopped there, I reckon. No! pushin' on again. Hear
+'em grinding along the gravel over Hamilton's trailin's? Stopped
+agin--that's before Somerville's shanty. What's gone o' them now? Maybe
+they've lost the trail and got onto Gray's slide through the woods. It's
+no use lookin'; ye couldn't see anything in this nigger dark. Hol' on!
+If they're comin' through the woods, ye'll hear 'em again jest off here.
+Yes! by thunder! here they are.”
+
+This time the clatter and horse-hoofs were before them, at the very
+door. A man's voice cried, “Whoa!” and there was a sudden bound on the
+veranda. The door opened; for an instant the entrance appeared to be
+filled with a mass of dazzling white flounces, and a figure which from
+waist to crown was impenetrably wrapped and swathed in black lace.
+Somewhere beneath its folds a soft Spanish, yet somewhat childish voice
+cried, “Tente. Hol' on,” turned and vanished. This was succeeded by the
+apparition of a silent, swarthy Mexican, who dropped a small trunk at
+their feet and vanished also. Then the white-flounced and black-laced
+figure reappeared as the departing wagon rattled away, glided to
+the centre of the room, placed on the trunk a small foot, whose
+low-quartered black satin slipper seemed to be held only by the toe,
+threw back with both hands the black lace mantilla, which was pinned by
+a rose over her little right ear, and with her hands slightly extended
+and waving softly said, “Mira caballeros! 'Ere we are again, boys! Viva!
+Aow ees your mother? Aow ees that for high? Behold me! just from Pike!”
+
+Parks and Brace, who had partly risen, fell back hopelessly in their
+chairs again and gazed at the figure with a feeble smile of vacuous
+pain and politeness. At which it advanced, lowered its black eyes
+mischievously over the table and the men who sat there, poured out a
+glass of the liquor, and said: “I look towards you, boys! Don't errise.
+You are just a leetle weary, eh? A leetle. Oh yes! a leetle tired of
+crookin' your elbow--eh? Don't care if the school keep!--eh? Don't want
+any pie! Want to go 'ome, eh?”
+
+But here Mr. Parks rose with slight difficulty, but unflinching dignity,
+and leaned impressively over the table, “May I ashk--may I be
+permitted to arsk, madam, to what we may owe the pleasure of thish--of
+this--visit?”
+
+Her face and attitude instantly changed. Her arms dropped and caught up
+the mantilla with a quick but not ungraceful sweep, and in apparently a
+single movement she was draped, wrapped, and muffled from waist to crown
+as before. With a slight inclination of her head, she said in quite
+another voice: “Si, senor. I have arrive here because in your whole
+great town of Booki there is not so much as one”--she held up a small
+brown finger--“as much as ONE leetle light or fire like thees; be-cause
+in this grand pueblo there is not one peoples who have not already sleep
+in his bed but thees! Bueno! I have arrive all the same like a leetle
+bird, like the small fly arrive to the light! not to YOU--only to THE
+LIGHT! I go not to my casa for she is dark, and tonight she have nothing
+to make the fire or bed. I go not to the 'otel--there is not ONE”--the
+brown finger again uplifted--“'otel in Booki! I make the 'otel--the
+Fonda--in my hoose manana--to-morrow! Tonight I and Sanchicha make the
+bed for us 'ere. Sanchicha, she stands herself now over in the street.
+We have mooch sorrow we have to make the caballeros mooch tr-rouble to
+make disposition of his house. But what will you?”
+
+There was another awkward silence, and then Saunders, who had been
+examining the intruder with languid criticism, removed his pipe from his
+mouth and said quietly:--
+
+“That's the woman you're looking for--Jovita Mendez!”
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+The rest of that interview has not been recorded. Suffice it that a few
+minutes later Parks, Brace, and Saunders left the Emporium, and passed
+the night in the latter's cabin, leaving the Emporium in possession
+of Miss Mendez and her peon servant; that at the earliest dawn the two
+women and their baggage were transferred to the old adobe house, where,
+however, a Mexican workman had already arrived, and with a basketful of
+red tiles was making it habitable. Buckeye, which was popularly supposed
+to sleep with one eye on the river, and always first repaired there in
+the morning to wash and work, was only awake to the knowledge of the
+invasion at noon. The meeting so confidently spoken of the night
+before had NOT been called. Messrs. Parks and Brace were suffering from
+headaches--undoubtedly a touch of tule chill. Saunders, at work with his
+partner in Eagle Bar, was as usual generous with apparently irrelevant
+facts on all subjects--but that of the strangers. It would seem as if
+the self-constituted Committee of Safety had done nothing.
+
+And nothing whatever seemed to happen! Thompson of Angels, smoking a
+meditative pipe at noon on the trail noticed the repairing of the old
+adobe house, casually spoke of it on his return to his work, without
+apparent concern or exciting any comment. The two Billinger brothers saw
+Jovita Mendez at the door of her house an hour later, were themselves
+seen conversing with her by Jim Barker, but on returning to their claim,
+neither they nor Barker exhibited any insurrectionary excitement. Later
+on, Shuttleworth was found in possession of two bundles of freshly
+rolled corn-husk cigarettes, and promised to get his partner some the
+next day, but that gentleman anticipated him. By nightfall nearly
+all Buckeye had passed in procession before the little house without
+exhibiting any indignation or protest. That night, however, it seemed as
+if the events for which the Committee was waiting were really impending.
+The adult female population of Buckeye consisted of seven women--wives
+of miners. That they would submit tamely to the introduction of a young,
+pretty, and presumably dangerous member of their own sex was not to
+be supposed. But whatever protest they made did not pass beyond their
+conjugal seclusion, and was apparently not supported by their husbands.
+Two or three of them, under the pretext of sympathy of sex, secured
+interviews with the fair intruder, the result of which was not, however,
+generally known. But a few days later Mrs. “Bob” Carpenter--a somewhat
+brick-dusty blonde--was observed wearing some black netting and a
+heavily flounced skirt, and Mrs. Shuttleworth in her next visit to
+Fiddletown wore her Paisley shawl affixed to her chestnut hair by a
+bunch of dog-roses, and wrapped like a plaid around her waist. The seven
+ladies of Buckeye, who had never before met, except on domestic errands
+to each other's houses or on Sunday attendance at the “First Methodist
+Church” at Fiddletown, now took to walking together, or in their
+husbands' company, along the upper bank of the river--the one boulevard
+of Buckeye. The third day after Miss Mendez' arrival they felt the
+necessity of immediate shopping expeditions to Fiddletown. This
+operation had hitherto been confined to certain periods, and restricted
+to the laying in of stores of rough household stuffs; but it now
+apparently included a wider range and more ostentatious quality. Parks'
+Emporium no longer satisfied them, and this unexpected phase of
+the situation was practically brought home to the proprietor in the
+necessity of extending the more inoffensive and peaceful part of his
+stock. And when, towards the end of the week, a cartload of pretty
+fixtures, mirrors, and furniture arrived at the tienda, there was
+a renewed demand at the Emporium for articles not in stock, and the
+consequent diverting of custom to Fiddletown. Buckeye found itself face
+to face with a hitherto undreamt of and preposterous proposition. It
+seemed that the advent of the strange woman, without having yet produced
+any appreciable effect upon the men, had already insidiously inveigled
+the adult female population into ostentatious extravagance.
+
+At the end of a week the little adobe house was not only rendered
+habitable, but was even made picturesque by clean white curtains at
+its barred windows, and some bright, half-Moorish coloring of beams and
+rafters. Nearly the whole ground floor was given up to the saloon of
+the tienda, which consisted of a small counter at one side, containing
+bottles and glasses, and another, flanking it, with glass cases,
+containing cigars, pipes, and tobacco, while the centre of the room was
+given up to four or five small restaurant tables. The staff of Jovita
+was no longer limited to Sanchicha, but had been augmented by a little
+old man of indefinite antiquity who resembled an Aztec idol, and an
+equally old Mexican, who looked not unlike a brown-tinted and veined
+tobacco leaf himself, and might have stood for a sign. But the genius
+of the place, its omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita!
+Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity and attention; all-embracing
+in her courtesies; frank of speech and eye; quick at repartee and
+deftly handling the slang of the day and the locality with a childlike
+appreciation and an infantine accent that seemed to redeem it from
+vulgarity or unfeminine boldness! Few could resist the volatile
+infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted,
+and good-humor the rule laid down for her guests. If it occasionally
+required some mental agility to respond to her banter, a Californian
+gathering was, however, seldom lacking in humor. Yet she was always the
+principal performer to an admiring audience. Perhaps there was security
+in this multitude of admirers; perhaps there was a saving grace in this
+humorous trifling. The passions are apt to be serious and solitary, and
+Jovita evaded them with a jest,--which, if not always delicate or witty,
+was effective in securing the laughter of the majority and the jealousy
+of none.
+
+At the end of the week another peculiarity was noticed. There was a
+perceptible increase of the Mexican population, who had always hitherto
+avoided Buckeye. On Sunday an Irish priest from El Pasto said mass in a
+patched-up corner of the old Mission ruin opposite Rollinson's Ford. A
+few lounging “Excelsior” boys were equally astonished to see Jovita's
+red rose crest and black mantilla glide by, and followed her unvarying
+smile and jesting salutation up to the shadow of the crumbling portal.
+At vespers nearly all Buckeye, hitherto virtuously skeptical and
+good-humoredly secure in Works without Faith, made a point of attending;
+it was alleged by some to see if Jovita's glossy Indian-inky eyes would
+suffer aberration in her devotions. But the rose-crested head was never
+lifted from the well-worn prayer-book or the brown hands which held
+a certain poor little cheap rosary like a child's string of battered
+copper coins. Buckeye lounged by the wall through the service with
+respectful tolerance and uneasy shifting legs, and came away. But the
+apparently simple event did not end there. It was unconsciously charged
+with a tremendous import to the settlement. For it was discovered the
+next day by Mrs. “Bob” Carpenter and Nan Shuttleworth that the Methodist
+Church at Fiddletown was too far away, and Buckeye ought to have a
+preacher of its own. Seats were fitted up in the loft of Carpenter's
+store-house, where the Reverend Henry McCorkle held divine service,
+and instituted a Bible class. At the end of two weeks it appeared
+that Jovita's invasion--which was to bring dissipation and ruin to
+Buckeye--had indirectly brought two churches! A chilling doubt like a
+cold mist settled along the river. As the two rival processions passed
+on the third Sunday, Jo Bateman, who had been in the habit of reclining
+on that day in his shirtsleeves under a tree, with a novel in his hand,
+looked gloomily after them. Then knocking the ashes from his pipe, he
+rose, shook hands with his partners, said apologetically that he had
+lately got into the habit of RESPECTING THE SABBATH, and was too old
+to change again, and so shook the red dust of Buckeye from his feet and
+departed.
+
+As yet there had not been the slightest evidence of disorderly conduct
+on the part of the fair proprietress of the tienda, nor her customers,
+nor any drunkenness or riotous disturbance that could be at all
+attributed to her presence. There was, it is true, considerable
+hilarity, smoking, and some gambling there until a late hour, but
+this could not be said to interfere with the rest and comfort of other
+people. A clue to the mystery of so extraordinary a propriety was given
+by Jovita herself. One day she walked into Parks' Emporium and demanded
+an interview with the proprietor.
+
+“You have made the rules for thees Booki?”
+
+“Yes--that is--I and my friends have.”
+
+“And when one shall not have mind the rule--when one have say, 'No! damn
+the rule,' what shall you make to him? Shall you aprison him?”
+
+Mr. Parks hastened to say with a superior, yet engaging smile that it
+never had been necessary, as the rules were obligatory upon the honor
+and consent of all--and were never broken. “Except,” he added, still
+more engagingly, “she would remember, in her case--with their consent.”
+
+“And your caballeros break not the rules?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then they shall not break the rules of me--at MY TIENDA! Look! I have
+made the rule that I shall not have a caballero drunk at my house; I
+have made the rule that I shall not sell him the aguardiente when he
+have too mooch. I have made the rule that when he gamble too mooch, when
+he put up too mooch money, I say 'No!' I will not that he shall! I make
+one more rule: that he shall not quarrel nor fight in my house. When he
+quarrel and fight, I say 'Go! Vamos! Get out!'”
+
+“And very good rules they are too, Miss Mendez.”
+
+Jovita fixed her shining black eyes on the smiling Parks. “And when he
+say, 'No, nevarre, damn the rules!' When he come drunk, remain drunk,
+play high and fight, YOU will not poonish him? YOU will not take him
+out?”
+
+“Well, you see, the fact is, I have not the power.”
+
+“Are you not the Alcalde?”
+
+“No. There is a Justice of the Peace at Fiddletown, but even he could
+do nothing to enforce your rules. But if anything should happen, you can
+make a complaint to him.”
+
+“Bueno. You have not the power; I have. I make not the complaint to
+Fiddletown. I make the complaint to Jose Perez, to Manuel, to Antonio,
+to Sanchicha--she is a strong one! I say 'Chook him out.' They chook him
+out! they remove him! He does not r-r-remain. Enough. Bueno. Gracias,
+senor, good-a-by!”
+
+She was gone. For the next four days Parks was in a state of some
+anxiety--but it appeared unnecessarily so. Whether the interview had
+become known along the river did not transpire, but there seemed to be
+no reason for Miss Mendez to enforce her rules. It was said that once,
+when Thompson of Angels was a little too noisy, he had been quietly
+conducted by his friends from the tienda without the intervention of
+Jose. The frequenters of the saloon became its police.
+
+Yet the event--long protracted--came at last! It was a dry, feverish,
+breezeless afternoon, when the short, echoless explosion of a revolver
+puffed out on the river, followed by another, delivered so rapidly that
+they seemed rolled into one. There was no mistaking that significant
+repetition. ONE shot might have been an accident; TWO meant intention.
+The men dropped their picks and shovels and ran--ran as they never
+before ran in Buckeye--ran mechanically, blindly groping at their belts
+and pockets for the weapons that hung there no longer; ran aimlessly,
+as to purpose, but following instinctively with hurried breath and
+quivering nostrils the cruel scent of powder and blood. Ran
+until, reaching the tienda, the foremost stumbled over the body of
+Shuttleworth; came upon the half-sitting, half-leaning figure of
+Saunders against its adobe wall! The doors were barred and closed, and
+even as the crowd charged furiously forward, a window was sharply shut
+above, in their very face.
+
+“Stand back, gentlemen! Lift him up. What's the row? What is it,
+Saunders? Who did it? Speak, man!”
+
+But Saunders, who was still supporting himself against the wall, only
+looked at them with a singular and half-apologetic smile, and then
+leaned forward as if to catch the eye of Shuttleworth, who was
+recovering consciousness in the uplifted arms of his companions. But
+neither spoke.
+
+“It's some d----d Greaser inside!” said Thompson, with sudden ferocity.
+“Some of her cursed crew! Break down the doors, boys!”
+
+“Stop!”
+
+It was the voice of Shuttleworth, speaking with an effort. He was
+hard hit, somewhere in the groin; pain and blood were coming with
+consciousness and movement, and his face was ghastly. Yet there was
+the same singular smile of embarrassment which Saunders had worn, and a
+touch of invincible disgust in his voice as he stammered quickly, “Don't
+be d----d fools! It's no one in THERE. It's only me and HIM! He'll tell
+you that. Won't you, Saunders?”
+
+“Yes,” said Saunders, leaning anxiously forward, with a brightening
+face. “D--n it all--can't you see? It's only--only us.”
+
+“You and me, that's all,” repeated Shuttleworth, with a feverish laugh.
+“Only our d----d foolishness! Think of it, boys! He gave me the lie, and
+I drew!”
+
+“Both of us full, you know--reg'lar beasts,” said Saunders, sinking back
+against the wall. “Kick me, somebody, and finish me off.”
+
+“I don't see any weapons here,” said Brace gravely, examining the
+ground.
+
+“They're inside,” said Shuttleworth with tremulous haste. “We began it
+in there--just like hogs, you know! Didn't we, Saunders?” bitterly.
+
+“You bet,” said Saunders faintly. “Reg'lar swine.”
+
+Parks looked graver still, and as he passed a handkerchief around the
+wounded man's thigh, said: “But I don't see where you got your pistols,
+and how you got out here.”
+
+“Clinched, you know; sorter rolled over out here--and--and--oh, d--n
+it--don't talk!”
+
+“He means,” said Shuttleworth still feebly, “that we--we--grabbed
+ANOTHER MAN'S six-shooter and--and--he that is--and they--he--he and
+me grabbed each other, and--don't you see--?” but here, becoming more
+involved and much weaker, he discreetly fainted away.
+
+And that was all Buckeye ever knew of the affair! For they refused
+to speak of it again, and Dr. Duchesne gravely forbade any further
+interrogation. Both men's revolvers were found undischarged in their
+holsters, hanging in their respective cabins. The balls which were
+afterwards extracted from the two men singularly disappeared; Dr.
+Duchesne asserting with a grim smile that they had swallowed them.*
+
+     * It was a frontier superstition that the ball extracted
+     from a gunshot wound, if swallowed by the wounded man,
+     prevented inflammation or any supervening complications.
+
+Nothing could be ascertained of the facts at the tienda, which at
+that hour of the day appeared to have been empty of customers, and was
+occupied only by Miss Mendez and her retainers. All surmises as to the
+real cause of the quarrel and the reason for the reticence of the two
+belligerents were suddenly and unexpectedly stopped by their departure
+from Buckeye as soon as their condition permitted, on the alleged
+opinion of Dr. Duchesne that the air of the river was dangerous to their
+convalescence. The momentary indignation against the tienda which the
+two combatants had checked, eventually subsided altogether. After all,
+the fight had taken place OUTSIDE; it was not even proven that
+the provocation had been given AT the tienda! Its popularity was
+undiminished.
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+It was the end of the rainy season, and a wet night. Brace and Parks
+were looking from the window over the swollen river, with faces quite as
+troubled as the stream below. Nor was the prospect any longer the same.
+In the past two years Buckeye had grown into a city. They could now
+count a half dozen church spires from the window of the three-storied
+brick building which had taken the place of the old wooden Emporium, but
+they could also count the brilliantly lit windows of an equal number of
+saloons and gambling-houses which glittered through the rain, or, to
+use the words of a local critic, “Shone seven nights in the week to the
+Gospel shops' ONE!” A difficulty had arisen which the two men had never
+dreamed of, and a struggle had taken place between the two rival powers,
+which was developing a degree of virulence and intolerance on both sides
+that boded no good to Buckeye. The disease which its infancy had escaped
+had attacked its adult growth with greater violence. The new American
+saloons which competed with Jovita Mendez' Spanish venture had
+substituted a brutal masculine sincerity for her veiled feminine
+methods. There was higher play, deeper drinking, darker passion. Yet the
+opposition, after the fashion of most reformers, were casting back to
+the origin of the trouble in Jovita, and were confounding principles
+and growth. “If it had not been for her the rule would never have been
+broken.” “If there was to be a cleaning out of the gambling houses, she
+must go first!”
+
+The sounds of a harp and a violin played in the nearest saloon struggled
+up to them with the opening and shutting of its swinging baize inner
+doors. There was boisterous chanting from certain belated revelers in
+the next street which had no such remission. The brawling of the stream
+below seemed to be echoed in the uneasy streets; the quiet of the old
+days had departed with the sedate, encompassing woods that no longer
+fringed the river bank; the restful calm of Nature had receded before
+the dusty outskirts of the town.
+
+“It's mighty unfortunate, too,” said Brace moodily, “that Shuttleworth
+and Saunders, who haven't been in the place since their row, have come
+over from Fiddletown to-day, and are banging around town. They haven't
+said anything that I know of, but their PRESENCE is quite enough to
+revive the old feeling against her shop. The Committee,” he added
+bitterly, “will be sure to say that not only the first gambling, but the
+first shooting in Buckeye took place there. If they get up that story
+again--no matter how quiet SHE has become since--no matter what YOU may
+say as mayor--it will go hard with her. What's that now?”
+
+They listened breathlessly. Above the brawling of the river, the
+twanging of the harp-player, and the receding shouts of the revelers,
+they could hear the hollow wooden sidewalks resounding with the dull,
+monotonous trampling of closely following feet. Parks rose with a white
+face.
+
+“Brace!”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Will you stand by me--and HER?”
+
+“Stand by YOU AND HER? Eh? What? Good God! Parks!--you don't mean to say
+you--it's gone as far as THAT?”
+
+“Will you or won't you?”
+
+The sound of the trampling had changed to a shuffling on the pavement
+below, and then footsteps began to ascend the stairs.
+
+Brace held out his hand quickly and grasped that of Parks as the door
+opened to half a dozen men. They were evidently the ringleaders of
+the crowd below. There was no hesitation or doubt in their manner;
+the unswerving directness which always characterized those illegal
+demonstrations lent it something of dignity. Nevertheless, Carpenter,
+the spokesman, flushed slightly before Parks' white, determined face.
+
+“Come, Parks, you know what we're after,” he said bluntly. “We didn't
+come here to parley. We knew YOUR sentiments and what YOU think is your
+duty. We know what we consider OURS--and so do you. But we're here to
+give you a chance, either as mayor, or, if you prefer it, as the oldest
+citizen here, to take a hand in our business to-night. We're not ashamed
+of what we're going to do, and we're willing to abide by it; so there's
+no reason why we shouldn't speak aboveboard of it to you. We even invite
+you to take part in our last 'call' tonight at the Hall.”
+
+“Go!” whispered Brace quickly, “YOU'LL GAIN TIME!”
+
+Parks' face changed, and he turned to Carpenter. “Enough,” he said
+gravely. “I reserve what I have to say of these proceedings till I
+join you there.” He stopped, whispered a few words to Brace, and then
+disappeared as the men descended the stairs, and, joining the crowd
+on the pavement, proceeded silently towards the Town Hall. There was
+nothing in the appearance of that decorous procession to indicate its
+unlawful character or the recklessness with which it was charged.
+
+There were thirty or forty men already seated in the Hall. The meeting
+was brief and to the point. The gambling saloons were to be “cleaned
+out” that night, the tables and appliances thrown into the street and
+burnt, the doors closed, and the gamblers were to be conducted to the
+outskirts of the town and forbidden to enter it again on pain of death.
+
+“Does this yer refer to Jovita Mendez' saloon?” asked a voice.
+
+To their surprise the voice was not Parks' but Shuttleworth's. It was
+also a matter to be noted that he stood a little forward of the crowd,
+and that there was a corresponding movement of a dozen or more men from
+Fiddletown who apparently were part of the meeting.
+
+The chairman (No. 10) said there was to be no exception, and certainly
+not for the originator of disorder in Buckeye! He was surprised that the
+question should be asked by No. 72, who was an old resident of Buckeye,
+and who, with No. 73, had suffered from the character of that woman's
+saloon.
+
+“That's jest it,” said Shuttleworth, “and ez I reckon that SAUNDERS AND
+ME did all the disorder there was, and had to turn ourselves out o'
+town on account of it, I don't see jest where SHE could come into this
+affair. Only,” he turned and looked around him, “in one way! And that
+way, gentlemen, would be for her to come here and boot one half o' this
+kempany out o' town, and shoot the other half! You hear me!--that's so!”
+ He stopped, tugged a moment at his cravat and loosened his shirt-collar
+as if it impeded his utterance, and went on. “I've got to say suthin'
+to you gentlemen about me and Saunders and this woman; I've got to
+say suthin' that's hard for a white man to say, and him a married man,
+too--I've got to say that me and Saunders never had no QU'OLL, never had
+NO FIGHT at her shop: I've got to say that me and Saunders got shot by
+Jovita Mendez for INSULTIN' HER--for tryin' to treat her as if she was
+the common dirt of the turnpike--and served us right! I've got to say
+that Saunders and me made a bet that for all her airs she wasn't no
+better than she might be, and we went there drunk to try her--and that
+we got left, with two shots into us like hounds as we were! That's
+so!--wasn't it, Saunders?”
+
+“With two shots inter us like hounds ez we were,” repeated Saunders with
+deliberate precision.
+
+“And I've got to say suthin' more, gen'lemen,” continued Shuttleworth,
+now entirely removing his coat and vest, and apparently shaking himself
+free from any extraneous trammels. “I've got to say this--I've got to
+say that thar ain't a man in Buckeye, from Dirty Dick over yon to the
+mayor of this town, ez hasn't tried the same thing on and got left--got
+left, without shootin' maybe, more's the pity, but got left all the
+same! And I've got to say,” lifting his voice, “THAT EF THAT'S WHAT YOU
+CALL DISORDERLINESS IN HER--if that's what yo'r turnin' this woman out
+o' town for--why”--
+
+He stopped, absolutely breathless and gasping. For there was a momentary
+shock of surprise and shame, and then he was overborne by peal after
+peal of inextinguishable laughter. But it was the laughter that
+precipitated doubt, enlightened justice, cleared confusion, and--saved
+them!
+
+In vain a few struggled to remind them that the question of the OTHER
+saloons was still unaffected. It was lost in the motion enthusiastically
+put and carried that the Committee should instantly accompany Saunders
+and Shuttleworth to Jovita's saloon to make an apology in their
+presence. Five minutes later they halted hilariously before its door.
+But it was closed, dark, and silent!
+
+Their sudden onset and alarm brought Sanchicha to the half-opened door.
+“Ah, yes! the Senorita? Bueno! She had just left for Fiddletown with
+the Senor Parks, the honorable mayor. They had been married only a few
+moments before by the Reverend Mr. McCorkle!”
+
+
+
+
+THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+It was bitterly cold. When night fell over Lakeville, Wisconsin, the
+sunset, which had flickered rather than glowed in the western sky, took
+upon itself a still more boreal tremulousness, until at last it seemed
+to fade away in cold blue shivers to the zenith. Nothing else stirred;
+in the crisp still air the evening smoke of chimneys rose threadlike
+and vanished. The stars were early, pale, and pitiless; when the later
+moonlight fell, it appeared only to whiten the stiffened earth like
+snow, except where it made a dull, pewter-like film over the three
+frozen lakes which encompassed the town.
+
+The site of the town itself was rarely beautiful, and its pioneers
+and founders had carried out the suggestions they had found there with
+loving taste and intelligence.
+
+Themselves old voyageurs, trappers, and traders, they still loved Nature
+too well to exclude her from the restful homes they had achieved after
+years of toiling face to face with her. So a strip of primeval forest on
+the one side, and rolling level prairie on the other, still came up to
+the base of the hill, whereon they had built certain solid houses, which
+a second generation had beautified and improved with modern taste,
+but which still retained their old honesty of foundation and wholesome
+rustic space. These yet stood among the old trees, military squares,
+and broad sloping avenues of the town. Seen from the railway by day, the
+regularity of streets and blocks was hidden by environing trees; there
+remained only a picturesque lifting of rustic gardens, brown roofs,
+gables, spires, and cupolas above the mirroring lake: seen from the
+railway this bitter night, the invisible terraces and streets were now
+pricked out by symmetrical lines and curves of sparkling lights, which
+glittered through the leafless boughs and seemed to encircle the hill
+like a diadem.
+
+Central in the chiefest square, and yet preserving its old lordly
+isolation in a wooded garden, the homestead of Enoch Lane stood with all
+its modern additions and improvements. Already these included not only
+the latest phases of decoration, but various treasures brought by the
+second generation from Europe, which they were wont to visit, but from
+which they always contentedly returned to their little provincial town.
+Whether there was some instinctive yearning, like the stirred sap of
+great forests, in their wholesome pioneer blood, or whether there was
+some occult fascination in the pretty town-crested hill itself, it was
+still certain that the richest inhabitants always preferred to live in
+Lakeville. Even the young, who left it to seek their fortune elsewhere,
+came back to enjoy their success under the sylvan vaults of this vast
+ancestral roof. And that was why, this 22d of December, 1870, the whole
+household of Gabriel Lane was awaiting the arrival from California of
+his brother, Sylvester Lane, at the old homestead which he had left
+twenty years ago.
+
+“And you don't know how he looks?” said Kitty Lane to her father.
+
+“I do, perfectly; rather chubby, with blue eyes, curly hair, fair skin,
+and blushes when you speak to him.”
+
+“Papa!”
+
+“Eh?--Oh, well, he USED to. You see that was twenty-five years ago, when
+he left here for boarding-school. He ran away from there, as I told you;
+went to sea, and finally brought up at San Francisco.”
+
+“And you haven't had any picture, or photograph of him, since?”
+
+“No--that is--I say!--you haven't, any of you, got a picture of
+Sylvester, have you?” he turned in a vague parenthetical appeal to the
+company of relatives and friends collected in the drawing-room after
+dinner.
+
+“Cousin Jane has; she knows all about him!”
+
+But it appeared that Cousin Jane had only heard Susan Marckland say
+that Edward Bingham had told her that he was in California when
+“Uncle Sylvester” had been nearly hanged by a Vigilance Committee for
+protecting a horse thief or a gambler, or some such person. This was
+felt to be ineffective as a personal description.
+
+“He's sure to wear a big beard; they all do when they first come back,”
+ said Amos Gunn, with metropolitan oraculousness.
+
+“He has a big curling mustache, long silken hair, and broad shoulders,”
+ said Marie du Page.
+
+There was such piquant conviction in the manner of the speaker, who was
+also a very pretty girl, that they all turned towards her, and Kitty
+quickly said,--
+
+“But YOU'VE never seen him?”
+
+“No--but--” She stopped, and, lifting one shoulder, threw her spirited
+head sideways, in a pretty deprecatory way, with elevated eyebrows and
+an expression intended to show the otherwise untranslatable character of
+her impression. But it showed quite as pleasantly the other fact, that
+she was the daughter of a foreigner, an old French military explorer,
+and that she had retained even in Anglo-Saxon Lakeville some of the
+Gallic animation.
+
+“Well, how many of you girls are going with me to meet him at the
+station?” said Gabriel, dismissing with masculine promptness the lesser
+question. “It's time to be off.”
+
+“I'd like to go,” said Kitty, “and so would Cousin Jane; but really,
+papa, you see if YOU don't know him, and WE don't either, and you've got
+to satisfy yourself that it's the right man, and then introduce YOURSELF
+and then us--and all this on the platform before everybody--it makes it
+rather embarrassing for us. And then, as he's your younger brother and
+we're supposed to be his affectionate nieces, you know, it would make
+HIM feel SO ridiculous!”
+
+“And if he were to KISS you,” said Marie tragically, “and then turn out
+not to be him!”
+
+“So,” continued Kitty, “you'd better take Cousin John, who was more in
+Uncle Sylvester's time, to represent the Past of the family, and perhaps
+Mr. Gunn”--
+
+“To represent the future, I suppose?” interrupted Gabriel in a wicked
+whisper.
+
+“To represent a name that most men of the world in New York and
+San Francisco know,” went on Kitty, without a blush. “It would make
+recognition and introduction easier. And take an extra fur with you,
+dear--not for HIM but for yourself. I suppose he's lived so much in the
+open air as to laugh at our coddling.”
+
+“I don't know about that,” said her father thoughtfully; “the last
+telegram I have from him, en route, says he's half frozen, and wants a
+close carriage sent to the station.”
+
+“Of course,” said Marie impatiently, “you forget the poor creature comes
+from burning canyons and hot golden sands and perpetual sunshine.”
+
+“Very well; but come along, Marie, and see how I've prepared his room,”
+ and as her father left the drawing-room Kitty carried off her old
+schoolfellow upstairs.
+
+The room selected for the coming Sylvester had been one of the elaborate
+guest-chambers, but was now stripped of its more luxurious furniture and
+arranged with picturesque yet rural extravagance. A few rare buffalo,
+bear, and panther skins were disposed over the bare floor, and even
+displayed gracefully over some elaborately rustic chairs. The
+handsome French bedstead had been displaced for a small wrought-iron
+ascetic-looking couch covered with a gorgeously striped Mexican blanket.
+The fireplace had been dismantled of its steel grate, and the hearth
+extended so as to allow a pile of symmetrically heaped moss-covered
+hickory logs to take its place. The walls were covered with trophies
+of the chase, buck-horns and deer-heads, and a number of Indian arrows
+stood in a sheaf in the corners beside a few modern guns and rifles.
+
+“Perfectly lovely,” said Marie, “but”--with a slight shiver of her
+expressive shoulders--“a little cold and outdoorish, eh?”
+
+“Nonsense,” returned Kitty dictatorially, “and if he IS cold, he can
+easily light those logs. They always build their open fires under a
+tree. Why, even Mr. Gunn used to do that when he was camping out in
+the Adirondacks last summer. I call it perfectly comfortable and SO
+natural.” Nevertheless, they had both tucked their chilly hands under
+the fleecy shawls they had snatched from the hall for this hyperborean
+expedition.
+
+“You have taken much pains for him, Kaitee,” said Marie, with her
+faintest foreign intonation. “You will like this strange uncle--you?”
+
+“He is a wonderful man, Marie; he's been everywhere, seen everything,
+and done everything out there. He's fought duels, been captured by
+Indians and tied to a stake to be tortured. He's been leader of a
+Vigilance Committee, and they say that he has often shot and killed men
+himself. I'm afraid he's been rather wicked, you know. He's lived alone
+in the woods like a hermit without seeing a soul, and then, again, he's
+been a chief among the Indians, with Heaven knows how many Indian wives!
+They called him 'The Pale-faced Thunderbolt,' my dear, and 'The Young
+Man who Swallows the Lightning,' or something like that.”
+
+“And what can he want here?” asked Marie.
+
+“To see us, my dear,” said Kitty loftily; “and then, too, he has to
+settle something about HIS share of the property; for you know grandpa
+left a share of it to him. Not that he's ever bothered himself about it,
+for he's rich,--a kind of Monte Cristo, you know,--with a gold mine and
+an island off the coast, to say nothing of a whole county that he owns,
+that is called after him, and millions of wild cattle that he rides
+among and lassos! It's dreadfully hard to do. You know you take a long
+rope with a slipknot, and you throw it around your head so, and”--
+
+“Hark!” said Marie, with a dramatic start, and her finger on her small
+mouth, “he comes!”
+
+There was the clear roll of wheels along the smooth, frozen carriage
+sweep towards the house, the sharp crisp click of hoofs on stone, the
+opening of heavy doors, the sudden sparkling invasion of frigid air, the
+uplifting of voices in greeting,--but all familiar! There were Gabriel
+Lane's cheery, hopeful tones, the soprano of Cousin Jane and Cousin
+Emma, the baritone of Mr. Gunn, and the grave measured oratorical
+utterance of Parson Dexter, who had joined the party at the station; but
+certainly the accents of no STRANGER. Had he come? Yes, for his name
+was just then called, and the quick ear of Marie had detected a light,
+lounging, alien footstep cross the cold strip of marble vestibule. The
+two girls exchanged a rapid glance; each looked into the mirror, and
+then interrogatively at the other, nodded their heads affirmatively, and
+descended to the drawing-room. A group had already drawn round the fire,
+and a small central figure, who, with its back turned towards them,
+was still enwrapped in an enormous overcoat of rich fur, was engaged in
+presenting an alternate small varnished leather boot to the warmth of
+the grate. As they entered the room the heavy fur was yielded up with
+apparent reluctance, and revealed to the astonished girls a man of
+ordinary stature with a slight and elegant figure set off by a traveling
+suit of irreproachable cut. His light reddish-yellow hair, mustache,
+and sunburned cheek, which seemed all of one color and outline, made it
+impossible to detect the gray of the one or the hollowness of the other,
+and gave no indication of his age. Yet there was clearly no mistake.
+Here was Gabriel Lane seizing their nervously cold fingers and
+presenting them to their “Uncle Sylvester.”
+
+Far from attempting to kiss Kitty, the stranger for an instant seemed
+oblivious of the little hand she offered him in the half-preoccupied
+bow he gave her. But Marie was not so easily passed over, and, with her
+audacious face challenging his, he abstractedly imparted to the shake of
+her hand something of the fervor that he should have shown his relative.
+And, then, still warming his feet on the fender, he seemed to have
+forgotten them both.
+
+“Accustomed as you have been, sir,” said the Reverend Mr. Dexter,
+seizing upon an awkward silence, and accenting it laboriously, “perhaps
+I should say INURED as you have been to the exciting and stirring
+incidents of a lawless and adventurous community, you doubtless find
+in a pastoral, yet cultivated and refined, seclusion like Lakeville a
+degree of”--
+
+“Oh, several degrees,” said Uncle Sylvester, blandly flicking bits
+of buffalo hair from his well-fitting trousers; “it's colder, you
+know--much colder.”
+
+“I was referring to a less material contrast,” continued Mr. Dexter,
+with a resigned smile; “yet, as to the mere question of cold, I am
+told, sir, that in California there are certain severe regions of
+altitude--although the mean temperature”--
+
+“I suppose out in California you fellows would say our temperature was a
+darned sight MEANER, eh?” broke in Amos Gunn, with a confidential
+glance at the others, as if offering a humorous diversion suited to
+the Californian taste. Uncle Sylvester did not, however, smile. Gazing
+critically at Gunn, he said thoughtfully: “I think not; I've even known
+men killed for saying less than that,” and turned to the clergyman. “You
+are quite right; some of the higher passes are very cold. I was lost in
+one of them in '56 with a small party. We were seventy miles from
+any settlement, we had had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours; our
+campfire, melting the snow, sank twelve feet below the surface.” The
+circle closed eagerly around him, Marie, Kitty, and Cousin Jane pressing
+forward with excited faces; even the clergyman assumed an expression of
+profound interest. “A man by the name of Thompson, I think,” continued
+Uncle Sylvester, thoughtfully gazing at the fire, “was frozen a few
+yards away. Towards morning, having been fifty-eight hours without
+food, our last drop of whiskey exhausted, and the fire extinguished, we
+found”--
+
+“Yes, yes!” said half a dozen voices.
+
+“We found,” continued Uncle Sylvester, rubbing his hands cheerfully, “we
+found it--exceedingly cold. Yes--EXCEEDINGLY cold!”
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+“But you escaped!” said Kitty breathlessly.
+
+“I think so. I think we all escaped--that is, except Thompson, if
+his name WAS Thompson; it might have been Parker,” continued Uncle
+Sylvester, gazing with a certain languid astonishment on the eager faces
+around him.
+
+“But HOW did you escape?”
+
+“Oh, somehow! I don't remember exactly. I don't think,” he went on
+reflectively, “that we had to eat Thompson--if it was HIM--at least not
+then. No”--with a faint effort of recollection--“that would have been
+another affair. Yes,” assuringly to the eager, frightened eyes of Cousin
+Jane, “you are quite right, that was something altogether different.
+Dear me; one quite mixes up these things. Eh?”
+
+A servant had entered, and after a hurried colloquy with Gabriel, the
+latter turned to Uncle Sylvester--
+
+“Excuse me, but I think there must be some mistake! We brought up your
+luggage with you--two trunks--in the station wagon. A man has just
+arrived with three more, which he says are yours.”
+
+“There should be five in all, I think,” said Uncle Sylvester
+thoughtfully.
+
+“Maybe there are, sir, I didn't count exactly,” said the servant.
+
+“All right,” said Uncle Sylvester cheerfully, turning to his brother.
+“You can put them in my room or on the landing, except two marked 'L' in
+a triangle. They contain some things I picked up for you and the girls.
+We'll look them over in the morning. And, if you don't mind, I'll excuse
+myself now and go to bed.”
+
+“But it's only half past ten,” said Gabriel remonstratingly. “You don't,
+surely, go to bed at half past ten?”
+
+“I do when I travel. Travel is SO exhausting. Good-night! Don't let
+anybody disturb themselves to come with me.”
+
+He bowed languidly to the company, and disappeared with a yawn
+gracefully disguised into a parting smile.
+
+“Well!” said Cousin Jane, drawing a long breath.
+
+“I don't believe it's your Uncle Sylvester at all!” said Marie
+vivaciously. “It's some trick that Gabriel is playing upon us. And he's
+not even a good actor--he forgets his part.”
+
+“And, then, five trunks for one single man! Heavens! what can he have in
+them” said Cousin Emma.
+
+“Perhaps his confederates, to spring out upon us at night, after
+everybody's asleep.”
+
+“Are you sure you remembered him, papa?” said Kitty sotto voce.
+
+“Certainly. And, my dear child, he knows all the family history as well
+as you do; and”--continued her father with a slight laugh that did not,
+however, conceal a certain seriousness that was new to him--“I only wish
+I understood as much about the property as he does. By the way, Amos,”
+ he broke off suddenly, turning to the young man, “he seemed to know your
+people.”
+
+“Most men in the financial world do,” said Gunn a little superciliously.
+
+“Yes; but he asked me if you hadn't a relative of some kind in Southern
+California or Mexico.”
+
+A slight flush--so slight that only the keen, vivaciously observant eyes
+of Marie noticed it--passed over the young man's face.
+
+“I believe it is a known fact that our branch of the family never
+emigrated from their native town,” he said emphatically. “The Gunns were
+rather peculiar and particular in that respect.”
+
+“Then there were no offshoots from the old STOCK,” said Gabriel.
+
+Nevertheless, this pet joke of Gabriel's did not dissipate the
+constraint and disappointment left upon the company by Uncle Sylvester's
+unsatisfying performance and early withdrawal, and they separated soon
+after, Kitty and Marie being glad to escape upstairs together. On the
+landing they met two of the Irish housemaids in a state of agitated
+exhaustion. It appeared that the “sthrange gintleman” had requested that
+his bed be remade from bedclothes and bedding ALWAYS CARRIED WITH HIM
+IN HIS TRUNKS! From their apologetic tone it was evident that he had
+liberally rewarded them. “Shure, Miss,” protested Norah, in deprecation
+of Kitty's flashing eye, “there's thim that's lived among shnakes and
+poysin riptiles and faverous disayses that's particklar av the beds
+and sheets they lie on. Hisht! Howly Mother! it's something else he's
+wanting now!”
+
+The door of Uncle Sylvester's room had slowly opened, and a blue
+pyjama'd sleeve appeared, carefully depositing the sheaf of bows and
+arrows outside the door. “I say, Norah, or Bridget there, some of
+you take those infernal things away. And look out, will you, for the
+arrowheads are deadly poison. The fool who got 'em didn't know they were
+African, and not Indian at all! And hold on!” The hand vanished, and
+presently reappeared holding two rifles. “And take these away, too!
+They're loaded, capped, and NOT on the half-cock! A jar, a fall, the
+slightest shock is enough to send them off!”
+
+“I'm dreadfully sorry that you should find it so uncomfortable in our
+house, Uncle Sylvester,” said Kitty, with a flushed cheek and vibrating
+voice.
+
+“Oh, it's you--is it?” said Uncle Sylvester's voice cheerfully.
+“I thought it was Bridget out there. No, I don't intend to find it
+uncomfortable. That's why I'm putting these things outside. But, for
+Heaven's sake, don't YOU touch them. Leave that to the ineffable ass who
+put them there. Good-night!”
+
+The door closed; the whispering voices of the girls faded from the
+corridor; the lights were lowered in the central hall, only the red
+Cyclopean eye of an enormous columnar stove, like a lighthouse, gleamed
+through the darkness. Outside, the silent night sparkled, glistened, and
+finally paled. Towards morning, having invested the sturdy wooden outer
+walls of the house and filmed with delicate tracery every available
+inch of window pane, it seemed stealthily to invade the house itself,
+stilling and chilling it as it drew closer around its central heart
+of warmth and life. Only once the frigid stillness was broken by the
+opening of a door and steps along the corridor. This was preceded by an
+acrid smell of burning bark.
+
+It was subtle enough to permeate the upper floor and the bedroom of
+Marie du Page, who was that night a light and nervous sleeper. Peering
+from her door, she could see, on the lower corridor, the extraordinary
+spectacle of Uncle Sylvester, robed in a gorgeous Japanese dressing-gown
+of quilted satin trimmed with the fur of the blue fox, candle in hand,
+leisurely examining the wall of the passage. Presently, drawing out a
+footrule from his pocket, he actually began to measure it! Miss Du
+Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it,
+firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle
+Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, or an impostor.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+“It doesn't seem as if Uncle Sylvester was any the more comfortable
+for having his own private bedding with him,” said Kitty Lane, entering
+Marie's room early the next morning. “Bridget found him curled up in his
+furs like a cat asleep on the drawing-room sofa this morning.”
+
+Marie started; she remembered her last night's vision. But some
+instinct--she knew not what--kept her from revealing it at this moment.
+She only said a little ironically:--
+
+“Perhaps he missed the wild freedom of his barbaric life in a small
+bedroom.”
+
+“No. Bridget says he said something about being smoked out of his room
+by a ridiculous wood fire. The idea! As if a man brought up in the woods
+couldn't stand a little smoke. No--that's his excuse! Marie!--do you
+know what I firmly believe?”
+
+“No,” said Marie quickly.
+
+“I firmly believe that poor man is ashamed of his past rough life,
+and does everything he can to forget it. That's why he affects those
+ultra-civilized and effeminate ways, and goes to the other extreme, as
+people always do.”
+
+“Then you think he's really reformed, and isn't likely to take an
+impulse to rob and murder anybody again?”
+
+“Why, Marie, what nonsense!”
+
+Nevertheless, Uncle Sylvester appeared quite fresh and cheerful at
+breakfast. It seemed that he had lit the fire before undressing, but
+the green logs were piled so far into the room that the smoke nearly
+suffocated him. Fearful of alarming the house by letting the smoke
+escape through the door, he opened the window, and when it had partly
+dispersed, sought refuge himself from the arctic air of his bedroom
+in the drawing-room. So far the act did not seem inconsistent with his
+sanity, or even intelligence and consideration for others. But Marie
+fixed upon him a pair of black, audacious eyes.
+
+“Did you ever walk in your sleep, Mr. Lane?”
+
+“No; but”--thoughtfully breaking an egg--“I have ridden, I think.”
+
+“In your sleep? Oh, do tell us all about it!” said Cousins Jane and Emma
+in chorus.
+
+Uncle Sylvester cast a resigned glance out of the window. “Oh,
+yes--certainly; it isn't much. You see at one time I was in the habit of
+making long monotonous journeys, and they were often exhausting, and,”
+ he added, becoming wearied as if at the recollection, “always dreadfully
+tiresome. As the trail was sometimes very uncertain and dangerous, I
+rode a very surefooted mule that could go anywhere where there was space
+big enough to set her small hoofs upon. One night I was coming down the
+slope of a mountain towards a narrow valley and river that were crossed
+by an old, abandoned flume, of which nothing was now left but the
+upright trestle-work and long horizontal string-piece. As the trail was
+very difficult and the mule's pace was slow, I found myself dozing at
+times, and at last I must have fallen asleep. I think I must have been
+awakened by a singular regularity in the movement of the mule--or else
+it was the monotony of step that had put me to sleep and the cessation
+of it awakened me. You see, at first I was not certain that I wasn't
+really dreaming. For the trail seemed to have disappeared; the wall of
+rock on one side had vanished also, and there appeared to be nothing
+ahead of me but the opposite hillside.”
+
+Uncle Sylvester stopped to look out of the window at a passing carriage.
+Then he went on. “The moon came out, and I saw what had happened. The
+mule, either of her own free will, or obeying some movement I had given
+the reins in my sleep, had swerved from the trail, got on top of
+the flume, and was actually walking across the valley on the narrow
+string-piece, a foot wide, half a mile long, and sixty feet from the
+ground. I knew,” he continued, examining his napkin thoughtfully, “that
+she was perfectly surefooted, and that if I kept quiet she could make
+the passage, but I suddenly remembered that midway there was a break and
+gap of twenty feet in the continuous line, and that the string-piece was
+too narrow to allow her to turn round and retrace her steps.”
+
+“Good heavens!” said Cousin Jane.
+
+“I beg your pardon?” said Uncle Sylvester politely.
+
+“I only said, 'Good heavens!' Well?” she added impatiently.
+
+“Well?” repeated Uncle Sylvester vaguely. “Oh, that's all. I only wanted
+to explain what I meant by saying I had ridden in my sleep.”
+
+“But,” said Cousin Jane, leaning across the table with grim
+deliberation and emphasizing each word with the handle of her knife,
+“how--did--you--and--that--mule get down?”
+
+“Oh, with slings and ropes, you know--so,” demonstrating by placing his
+napkin-ring in a sling made of his napkin.
+
+“And I suppose you carried the slings and ropes with you in your five
+trunks!” gasped Cousin Jane.
+
+“No. Fellows on the river brought 'em in the morning. Mighty spry chaps,
+those river miners.”
+
+“Very!” said Cousin Jane.
+
+Breakfast over, they were not surprised that their sybaritic guest
+excused himself from an inspection of the town in the frigid morning
+air, and declined joining a skating party to the lake on the ground that
+he could keep warmer indoors with half the exertion. An hour later found
+him standing before the fire in Gabriel Lane's study, looking languidly
+down on his elder brother.
+
+“Then, as far as I can see,” he said quietly, “you have made ducks and
+drakes of your share of the property, and that virtually you are in the
+hands of this man Gunn and his father.”
+
+“You're putting it too strongly,” said Gabriel deprecatingly. “In the
+first place, my investments with Gunn's firm are by no means failures,
+and they only hold as security a mortgage on the forest land below the
+hill. It's scarcely worth the money. I would have sold it long ago, but
+it had been a fancy of father's to keep it wild land for the sake of old
+times and the healthiness of the town.”
+
+“There used to be a log cabin there, where the old man had a habit of
+camping out whenever he felt cramped by civilization up here, wasn't
+there?” said Uncle Sylvester meditatively.
+
+“Yes,” said Gabriel impatiently; “it's still there--but to return to Mr.
+Gunn. He has taken a fancy to Kitty, and even if I could not lift the
+mortgage, there's some possibility that the land would still remain in
+the family.”
+
+“I think I'll drive over this afternoon and take a look at the old
+shanty if this infernal weather lets up.”
+
+“Yes; but just now, my dear Sylvester, let us attend to business. I want
+to show you those investments.”
+
+“Oh, certainly; trot 'em out,” said his brother, plucking up a
+simulation of interest as he took a seat at the table.
+
+From a drawer of his desk Gabriel brought out a bundle of prospectuses
+and laid them before Uncle Sylvester.
+
+A languid smile of recognition lit up the latter's face. “Ah! yes,” he
+said, glancing at them. “The old lot: 'Carmelita,' 'Santa Maria,' and
+'Preciosa!' Just as I imagined--and yet who'd have thought of seeing
+them HERE! A good deal rouged and powdered, Miss Carmelita, since I
+first knew you! Considerably bolstered up by miraculous testimony to
+your powers, my dear Santa Maria, since the day I found you out, to my
+cost! And you too, Preciosa!--a precious lot of money I dropped on you
+in the old days!”
+
+“You are joking,” said Gabriel, with an uneasy smile. “You don't mean to
+imply that this stock is old and worthless?”
+
+“There isn't a capital in America or Europe where for the last five
+years it hasn't been floated with a new character each time. My dear
+Gabriel, that stock isn't worth the paper it is printed on.”
+
+“But it is impossible that an experienced financier like Gunn could be
+deceived!”
+
+“I'm sorry to hear THAT.”
+
+“Come, Sylvester! confess you've taken a prejudice against Gunn from
+your sudden dislike of his son! And what have you against him?”
+
+“I couldn't say exactly,” said Uncle Sylvester reflectively. “It may be
+his eyes, or only his cravat! But,” rising cheerfully and placing his
+hand lightly on his brother's shoulder, “don't YOU worry yourself about
+that stock, old man; I'LL see that somebody else has the worry and you
+the cash. And as to the land and--Kitty--well, you hold on to them both
+until you find out which the young man is really after.”
+
+“And then?” said Gabriel, with a smile.
+
+“Don't give him either! But, I say, haven't we had enough business this
+morning? Let's talk of something else. Who's the French girl?”
+
+“Marie? She's the daughter of Jules du Page--don't you
+remember?--father's friend. When Jules died, it was always thought
+that father, who had half adopted her as a child, would leave her
+some legacy. But you know that father died without making a will, and
+that--rich as he was--his actual assets were far less than we had reason
+to expect. Kitty, who felt the disappointment as keenly as her friend, I
+believe would have divided her own share with her. It's odd, by the way,
+that father could have been so deceived in the amount of his capital,
+or how he got rid of his money in a way that we knew nothing of. Do you
+know, Sylvester, I've sometimes suspected”--
+
+“What?” said Uncle Sylvester suddenly.
+
+The bored languor of his face had abruptly vanished. Every muscle was
+alert; his gray eyes glittered.
+
+“That he advanced money to Du Page, who lost it, or that they speculated
+together,” returned Gabriel, who, following Uncle Sylvester's voice
+only, had not noticed the change of expression.
+
+“That would seem to be a weakness of the Lane family,” said Uncle
+Sylvester grimly, with a return of his former carelessness. “But that is
+not YOUR own opinion--that's a suggestion of some one else?”
+
+“Well,” said Gabriel, with a laugh and a slight addition of color, “it
+WAS Gunn's theory. As a man of the world and a practical financier, you
+know.”
+
+“And you've talked with HIM about it?”
+
+“Yes. It was a matter of general wonder years ago.”
+
+“Very likely--but, just now, don't you think we've had enough financial
+talk?” said Uncle Sylvester, with a bored contraction of his eyebrows.
+“Come,” looking around the room, “you've changed the interior of the old
+house.”
+
+“Yes. Unfortunately, just after father's death it was put in the hands
+of a local architect or builder, one of father's old friends, but not
+a very skillful workman, who made changes while the family were away.
+That's why your present bedroom, which was father's old study, had a
+slice taken off it to make the corridor larger, and why the big chimney
+and hearthstone are still there, although the fireplace is modernized.
+That was Flint's stupidity.”
+
+“Whose stupidity?” asked Uncle Sylvester, trimming his nails.
+
+“Flint's--the old architect.”
+
+“Why didn't you make him change it back again?”
+
+“He left Lakeville shortly after, and I brought an architect from St.
+Louis after I returned from Europe. But nothing could be done to your
+room without taking down the chimney, so it remained as Flint left it.”
+
+“That reminds me, Gabriel, I'm afraid I spoke rather cavalierly to
+Kitty, last night, about the arrangements of the room. The fact is, I've
+taken a fancy to it, and should like to fit it up myself. Have I your
+permission?”
+
+“Certainly, my dear Sylvester.”
+
+“I've some knickknacks in my trunks, and I'll do it at once.”
+
+“As you like.”
+
+“And you'll see that I am not disturbed; and you'll explain it to Kitty,
+with my apologies?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then I'm off.”
+
+Gabriel glanced at his brother with a perplexed smile. Here was the
+bored traveler, explorer, gold-seeker, soldier of fortune, actually as
+pleased as a girl over the prospect of arranging his room! He called
+after him, “Sylvester!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I say, if you could, you know, just try to interest these people
+to-night with some of your adventures--something told SERIOUSLY, you
+know, as if you really were in earnest--I'd be awfully obliged to you.
+The fact is,--you'll excuse me,--but they think you don't come up to
+your reputation.”
+
+“They want a story?”
+
+“Yes,--one of your experiences.”
+
+“I'll give them one. Ta-ta!”
+
+For the rest of the day Uncle Sylvester was invisible, although his
+active presence in his room was betrayed by the sound of hammering and
+moving of furniture. As the remainder of the party were skating on
+the lake, this eccentricity was not remarked except by one,--Marie du
+Page,--who on pretense of a slight cold had stayed at home. But with her
+suspicions of the former night, she had determined to watch the singular
+relative of her friend. Added to a natural loyalty to the Lanes, she
+was moved by a certain curiosity and fascination towards this
+incomprehensible man.
+
+The house was very quiet when she stole out of her room and passed
+softly along the corridor; she examined the wall carefully to discover
+anything that might have excited the visitor's attention. There were a
+few large engravings hanging there; could he have designed to replace
+them by some others? Suddenly she was struck with the distinct
+conviction that the wall of the corridor did not coincide with the wall
+of his room as represented by the line of the door. There was certainly
+a space between the two walls unaccounted for. This was undoubtedly what
+had attracted HIS attention; but what BUSINESS was it of his?
+
+She reflected that she had seen in the wall of the conservatory an old
+closed staircase, now used as shelves for dried herbs and seeds, which
+she had been told was the old-time communication between the garden
+and Grandfather Lane's study,--the room now occupied by the stranger.
+Perhaps it led still farther, and thus accounted for the space.
+Determined to satisfy herself, she noiselessly descended to the
+conservatory. There, surely, was the staircase,--a narrow flight of
+wooden steps encumbered with packages of herbs,--losing itself in upper
+darkness. By the aid of a candle she managed to grope and pick her way
+up step by step. Then she paused. The staircase had abruptly ended on
+the level of the study, now cut off from it by the new partition. She
+was in a stifling inclosure, formed by the walls, scarcely eighteen
+inches wide. It was made narrower by a singular excrescence on the old
+wall, which seemed to have been a bricked closet, now half destroyed
+and in ruins. She turned to descend, when a strange sound from Uncle
+Sylvester's room struck her ear. It was the sound of tapping on the
+floor close to the partition, within a foot of where she was standing.
+At the same moment there was a decided movement of the plank of the
+flooring beneath the partition: it began to slide slowly, and then was
+gradually withdrawn into the room. With prompt presence of mind, she
+instantly extinguished her candle and drew herself breathlessly against
+the partition.
+
+When the plank was entirely withdrawn, a ray of light slipped through
+the opening, revealing the bare rafters of the floor, and a hand and arm
+inserted under the partition, groping as if towards the bricked closet.
+As the fingers of the exploring hand were widely extended, Marie had no
+difficulty in recognizing on one of them a peculiar signet ring which
+Uncle Sylvester wore. A swift impulse seized her. To the audacious Marie
+impulse and action were the same thing. Bending stealthily over the
+aperture, she suddenly snatched the ring from the extended finger. The
+hand was quickly withdrawn with a start and uncontrolled exclamation,
+and she availed herself of that instant to glide rapidly down the
+stairs.
+
+She regained her room stealthily, having the satisfaction a moment later
+of hearing Uncle Sylvester's door open and the sound of his footsteps in
+the corridor. But he was evidently unable to discover any outer ingress
+to the inclosure, or believed the loss of his ring an accident, for he
+presently returned. Meantime, what was she to do?
+
+Tell Kitty of her discovery, and show the ring? No--not yet! Oddly
+enough, now that she had the ring, taken from his wicked finger in
+the very act, she found it as difficult as ever to believe in his
+burglarious design. She must wait. The mischief--if there had been
+mischief--was done; the breaking in of the bricked closet was, from the
+appearance of the ruins, a bygone act. Could it have been some youthful
+escapade of Uncle Sylvester's, the scene of which he was revisiting as
+criminals are compelled to do? And had there been anything taken from
+the closet--or was its destruction a part of the changes in the old
+house? How could she find out without asking Kitty? There was one way.
+She remembered that Mr. Gunn had once shown a great deal of interest
+to Kitty about the old homestead, and even of old Mr. Lane's woodland
+cabin. She would ask HIM. It was a friendly act, for Kitty had not of
+late been very kind to him.
+
+The opportunity presented itself at dusk, as Mr. Gunn, somewhat
+abstracted, stood apart at the drawing-room window. Marie hoped he had
+enjoyed himself while skating; her stupid cold had kept her indoors. She
+had amused herself rambling about the old homestead; it was such a queer
+place, so full of old nooks and corners and unaccountable spaces. Just
+the place, she would think, where old treasures might have been stored.
+Eh?
+
+Mr. Gunn had not spoken--he had only coughed. But in the darkness his
+eyes were fixed angrily on her face. Without observing it, she went on.
+She knew he was interested in the old house; she had heard him talk
+to Kitty about it: had Kitty ever said anything about some old secret
+hoarding place?
+
+No, certainly not! And she was mistaken, he never was interested in
+the house! He could not understand what had put that idea in her head!
+Unless it was this ridiculous, shady stranger in the guise of an uncle
+whom they had got there. It was like his affectation!
+
+“Oh, dear, no,” said Marie, with unmistakable truthfulness, “HE did not
+say anything. But,” with sudden inconsistent aggression, “is THAT the
+way you speak to Kitty of her uncle?”
+
+Really he didn't know--he was joking only, and he was afraid he must
+just now ask her to excuse him. He had received letters that made it
+possible that he might be called suddenly to New York at any moment.
+Marie stared. It was evident that he had proposed to Kitty and been
+rejected! But she was no nearer her discovery.
+
+Nor was there the least revelation in the calm, half-bored, yet
+good-humored presence of the wicked uncle at dinner. So indifferent
+did he seem, not only to his own villainy but even to the loss it had
+entailed, that she had a wild impulse to take the ring from her pocket
+and display it on her own finger before him then and there. But the
+conviction that he would in some way be equal to the occasion prevented
+her. The dinner passed off with some constraint, no doubt emanating from
+the conscious Kitty and Gunn. Nevertheless, when they had returned to
+the drawing-room, Gabriel rubbed his hands expectantly.
+
+“I prevailed on Sylvester this morning to promise to tell us some of his
+experiences--something COMPLETE and satisfactory this time. Eh?”
+
+Uncle Sylvester, warming his cold blood before the fire, looked
+momentarily forgetful and--disappointing. Cousins Jane and Emma shrugged
+their shoulders.
+
+“Eh,” said Uncle Sylvester absently, “er--er--oh yes! Well” (more
+cheerfully), “about what, eh?”
+
+“Let it be,” said Marie pointedly, fixing her black magnetic eyes on the
+wicked stranger, “let it be something about the DISCOVERY of gold, or a
+buried TREASURE HOARD, or a robbery.”
+
+To her intense disgust Uncle Sylvester, far from being discomfited or
+confused, actually looked pleased, and his gray eyes thawed slightly.
+
+“Certainly,” he said. “Well, then! Down on the San Joaquin River there
+was an old chap--one of the earliest settlers--in fact, he'd come on
+from Oregon before the gold discovery. His name, dear me!”--continued
+Uncle Sylvester, with an effort of memory and apparently beginning
+already to lose his interest in the story--“was--er--Flint.”
+
+As Uncle Sylvester paused here, Cousin Jane broke in impatiently. “Well,
+that's not an uncommon name. There was an old carpenter here in your
+father's time who was called Flint.”
+
+“Yes,” said Uncle Sylvester languidly. “But there is, or was, something
+uncommon about it--and that's the point of the story, for in the old
+time Flint and Gunn were of the same stock.”
+
+“Is this a Californian joke?” said Gunn, with a forced smile on his
+flushed face. “If so, spare me, for it's an old one.”
+
+“It's much older HISTORY, Mr. Gunn,” said Uncle Sylvester blandly,
+“which I remember from a boy. When the first Flint traded near Sault
+Sainte Marie, the Canadian voyageurs literally translated his name into
+Pierre a Fusil, and he went by that name always. But when the English
+superseded the French in numbers and language the name was literally
+translated back again into 'Peter Gunn,' which his descendants bear.”
+
+“A labored form of the old joke,” said Gunn, turning contemptuously
+away.
+
+“But the story,” said Cousins Jane and Emma. “The story of the gold
+discovery--never mind the names.”
+
+“Excuse me,” said Uncle Sylvester, placing his hand in the breast of his
+coat with a delightful exaggeration of offended dignity. “But, doubts
+having been cast upon my preliminary statement, I fear I must decline
+proceeding further.” Nevertheless, he smiled unblushingly at Miss Du
+Page as he followed Gunn from the room.
+
+The next morning those who had noticed the strained relations of Miss
+Kitty and Mr. Gunn were not surprised that the latter was recalled on
+pressing business to New York by the first train; but it was a matter of
+some astonishment to Gabriel Lane and Marie du Page that Uncle Sylvester
+should have been up early, and actually accompanied that gentleman
+as far as the station! Indeed, the languid explorer and gold-seeker
+exhibited remarkable activity, and, clad in a rough tourist suit,
+announced, over the breakfast-table, his intention of taking a long
+tramp through the woods, which he had not revisited since a boy. To this
+end he had even provided himself with a small knapsack, and for once
+realized Kitty's ideal of his character.
+
+“Don't go too far,” said Gabriel, “for, although the cold has moderated,
+the barometer is falling fast, and there is every appearance of snow.
+Take care you are not caught in one of our blizzards.”
+
+“But YOU are all going on the lake to skate!” protested Uncle Sylvester.
+
+“Yes; for the very reason that it may be our last chance; but should it
+snow we shall be nearer home than you may be.”
+
+Nevertheless, when it came on to snow, as Gabriel had predicted, the
+skating party was by no means so near home as he had imagined. A shrewd
+keenness and some stimulating electric condition of the atmosphere had
+tempted the young people far out on the lake, and they had ignored the
+first fall of fine grayish granulations that swept along the icy surface
+like little puffs of dust or smoke. Then the fall grew thicker, the gray
+sky contracted, the hurrying flakes, dashed against them by a fierce
+northwester, were larger, heavier, and seemed an almost palpable force
+that held them back. Their skates, already clogged with drift, were
+beginning to be useless. The bare wind-swept spaces were becoming rarer;
+they could only stumble on blindly towards the nearest shore. Nor when
+they reached it were they yet safe; they could scarcely stand against
+the still increasing storm that was fast obliterating the banks and
+stretch of meadow beyond. Their only hope of shelter was the range of
+woods that joined the hill. Holding hands in single file, the
+little party, consisting of Kitty, Marie, and Cousins Jane and
+Emma--stout-hearted Gabriel leading and Cousin John bringing up the
+rear--at last succeeded in reaching it, and were rejoiced to find
+themselves near old Lane's half-ruined cabin. To their added joy and
+astonishment, whiffs of whirling smoke were issuing from the crumbling
+chimney. They ran to the crazy door, pushed aside its weak fastening,
+and found--Uncle Sylvester calmly enjoying a pipe before a blazing fire.
+A small pickaxe and crowbar were lying upon a mound of freshly turned
+earth beside the chimney, where the rotten flooring had been torn up.
+
+The tumultuous entrance of the skating party required no explanation;
+but when congratulations had been exchanged, the wet snow shaken off,
+and they had drawn round the fire, curious eyes were cast upon the
+solitary occupant and the pile of earth and debris before him.
+
+“I believe,” said Gabriel laughingly, “that you have been so bored here
+that you have actually played at gold-hunting for amusement.”
+
+Uncle Sylvester took the pipe from his mouth and nodded.
+
+“It's a common diversion of yours,” said Marie audaciously.
+
+Uncle Sylvester smiled sweetly.
+
+“And have you been successful THIS TIME?” asked Marie.
+
+“I got the color.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+Uncle Sylvester rose and placed himself with his back to the fire,
+gently surveying the assembled group.
+
+“I was interrupted in a story of gold-digging last evening,” he said
+blandly. “How far had I got?”
+
+“You were down on the San Joaquin River in the spring of '50, with a
+chap named Flint,” chorused Cousins Jane and Emma promptly.
+
+“Ah! yes,” said Uncle Sylvester. “Well, in those days there was a
+scarcity of money in the diggings. Gold dust there was in plenty, but no
+COIN. You can fancy it was a bother to weigh out a pinch of dust every
+time you wanted a drink of whiskey or a pound of flour; but there was
+no other legal tender. Pretty soon, however, a lot of gold and silver
+pieces found their way into circulation in our camp and the camps around
+us. They were foreign--old French and English coins. Here's one of
+them that I kept.” He took from his pocket a gold coin and handed it to
+Gabriel.
+
+Lane rose to his feet with an exclamation:
+
+“Why, this is like the louis-d'or that grandfather saved through the war
+and gave to father.”
+
+Uncle Sylvester took the coin back, placed it in his left eye, like a
+monocle, and winked gravely at the company.
+
+“It is the SAME!” he went on quietly. “I was interested, for I had a
+good memory, and I remembered that, as a boy, grandfather had shown
+me one of those coins and told me he was keeping them for old Jules du
+Page, who didn't believe in banks and bank-notes. Well, I traced them to
+a trader called Flint, who was shipping gold dust from Stockton to Peter
+Gunn & Sons, in New York.”
+
+“To whom?” asked Gabriel quickly.
+
+“Old Gunn--the father of your friend!” said Uncle Sylvester blandly. “We
+talked the matter over on our way to the station this morning. Well, to
+return. Flint only said that he had got them from a man called Thompson,
+who had got them from somebody else in exchange for goods. A year or
+two afterwards this same Thompson happened to be frozen up with me in
+Starvation Camp. When he thought he was dying he confessed that he had
+been bribed by Flint to say what he had said, but that he believed the
+coins were stolen. Meantime, Flint had disappeared. Other things claimed
+my attention. I had quite forgotten him, until one night, five years
+afterwards, I blundered into a deserted mining-camp, by falling asleep
+on my mule, who carried me across a broken flume, but--I think I told
+you that story already.”
+
+“You never finished it,” said Cousin Jane sharply.
+
+“Let me do so now, then. I was really saved by some Indians, who took me
+for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm. The
+first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the
+boys as 'Old Fusil,' or 'Fusel Oil,' who went into delirium tremens at
+the sight of me. Well, who do you suppose he turned out to be? Flint!
+Flint played out and ruined! Cast off and discarded by his relations in
+New York--the foundation of whose fortunes he had laid by the villainy
+they had accepted and condoned. For Flint, as the carpenter of the old
+homestead, had discovered the existence of a bricked closet in the wall
+of father's study, partitioned it off so that he could break into it
+without detection and rifle it at his leisure, and who had thus carried
+off that part of grandfather's hoard which father had concealed there.
+He knew it could never be missed by the descendants. But, through haste
+or ignorance, he DID NOT TOUCH THE PAPERS and documents also hidden
+there. And THEY told of the existence of grandfather's second cache, or
+hiding-place, beneath this hearth, and were left for me to discover.”
+
+He coolly relit his pipe, fixed his eyes on Marie without apparently
+paying attention to the breathless scrutiny of the others, and went on:
+“Flint, alias Pierre a Fusil, alias Gunn, died a maniac. I resolved to
+test the truth of his story. I came here. I knew the old homestead, as
+a boy who had wandered over every part of it, far better than you,
+Gabriel, or any one. The elder Gunn had only heard of it through the
+criminal disclosure of his relative, and only wished to absorb it
+through his son in time, and thus obliterate all trace of Flint's
+outrage. I recognized the room perfectly--thanks to our dear Kitty, who
+had taken up the carpet, which thus disclosed the loose plank before the
+closet that was hidden by the partition. Under pretext of rearranging
+the room--for which Kitty will forgive me--I spent the day behind a
+locked door, making my way through the partition. There I found the
+rifled closet, but the papers intact. They contained a full description
+of the sum taken by Flint, and also of a larger sum buried in a cask
+beside this chimney. I had just finished unearthing it a few moments
+before you came. I had at first hoped to offer it to the family as a
+Christmas gift to-morrow, but”--He stopped and sucked slowly at his
+pipe.
+
+“We anticipated you,” said Gabriel laughing.
+
+“No,” said Uncle Sylvester coolly. “But because it don't happen to
+belong to YOU at all! According to the paper I have in my pocket, which
+is about as legal a document as I ever saw, it is father's free gift to
+Miss Marie du Page.”
+
+Kitty threw her arms around her white and breathless friend with
+a joyful cry, and honest Gabriel's face shone with unselfish
+gratification.
+
+“For yourself, my dear Gabriel, you must be satisfied with the fact that
+Messrs. Peter Gunn & Sons will take back your wildcat stock at the price
+you paid for it. It is the price they pay for their share in this little
+transaction, as I had the honor of pointing out to Mr. Gunn on our way
+to the station this morning.”
+
+“Then you think that young Mr. Gunn knew that Flint was his relation,
+and that he had stolen father's money,” said Kitty, “and that Mr. Gunn
+only wanted to”--She stopped, with flashing eyes.
+
+“I think he would have liked to have made an arrangement, my dear,
+that would keep the secret and the property in the family,” said Uncle
+Sylvester. “But I don't think he suspected the existence of the second
+treasure here.”
+
+“And then, sir,” said Cousin Jane, “it appears that all these wretched,
+unsatisfactory scraps of stories you were telling us were nothing after
+all but”--
+
+“My way of telling THIS one,” said Uncle Sylvester.
+
+As the others were eagerly gathering around the unearthed treasure,
+Marie approached him timidly, all her audacity gone, tears in her eyes,
+and his ring held hesitatingly between her fingers. “How can I thank
+you--and how CAN you ever forgive me?”
+
+“Well,” said Uncle Sylvester, gazing at her critically, “you might keep
+the ring to think over it.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Sally Dows and Other Stories, by Bret Harte
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