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+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sally Dows, by Bret Harte****
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+Title:  Sally Dows
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+Author:  Bret Harte
+
+July, 2001  [Etext #2705]
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+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sally Dows, by Bret Harte****
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+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+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," be 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 this Project Gutenberg etext of Sally Dows.
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