initial commit of ebook 2711HEADmain

1 files changed, 3544 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/2711.txt b/2711.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36acad2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/2711.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3544 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phyllis of the Sierras, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Phyllis of the Sierras
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2006 [EBook #2711]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pines
+begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files,
+there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the
+weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned
+aside for rest and breath again. The tired eyes of many a dusty
+passenger on the old overland coach have gazed wistfully on those sylvan
+openings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wilderness
+in their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, and followed one
+of these diverging paths, he would have come upon some rude wagon track,
+or "logslide," leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous
+saw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. The
+woodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing over
+some unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throb
+of an invisible engine in the covert.
+
+Such, at least, was the experience of a young fellow of five-and-twenty,
+who, knapsack on back and stick in hand, had turned aside from the
+highway and entered the woods one pleasant afternoon in July. But he
+was evidently a deliberate pedestrian, and not a recent deposit of
+the proceeding stage-coach; and although his stout walking-shoes were
+covered with dust, he had neither the habitual slouch and slovenliness
+of the tramp, nor the hurried fatigue and growing negligence of an
+involuntary wayfarer. His clothes, which were strong and serviceable,
+were better fitted for their present usage than the ordinary garments
+of the Californian travellers, which were too apt to be either above or
+below their requirements. But perhaps the stranger's greatest claim to
+originality was the absence of any weapon in his equipment. He carried
+neither rifle nor gun in his hand, and his narrow leathern belt was
+empty of either knife or revolver.
+
+A half-mile from the main road, which seemed to him to have dropped out
+of sight the moment he had left it, he came upon a half-cleared area,
+where the hastily-cut stumps of pines, of irregular height, bore an odd
+resemblance to the broken columns of some vast and ruined temple. A few
+fallen shafts, denuded of their bark and tessellated branches, sawn into
+symmetrical cylinders, lay beside the stumps, and lent themselves to the
+illusion. But the freshly-cut chips, so damp that they still clung in
+layers to each other as they had fallen from the axe, and the stumps
+themselves, still wet and viscous from their drained life-blood, were
+redolent of an odor of youth and freshness.
+
+The young man seated himself on one of the logs and deeply inhaled the
+sharp balsamic fragrance--albeit with a slight cough and a later hurried
+respiration. This, and a certain drawn look about his upper lip,
+seemed to indicate, in spite of his strength and color, some pulmonary
+weakness. He, however, rose after a moment's rest with undiminished
+energy and cheerfulness, readjusted his knapsack, and began to lightly
+pick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whir
+of machinery became more audible, with the lazy, monotonous command
+of "Gee thar," from some unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow,
+deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxen emerged from the bushes,
+followed by the clanking chain of the "skids" of sawn planks, which they
+were ponderously dragging with that ostentatious submissiveness peculiar
+to their species. They had nearly passed him when there was a sudden
+hitch in the procession. From where he stood he could see that a
+projecting plank had struck a pile of chips and become partly imbedded
+in it. To run to the obstruction and, with a few dexterous strokes and
+the leverage of his stout stick, dislodge the plank was the work not
+only of the moment but of an evidently energetic hand. The teamster
+looked back and merely nodded his appreciation, and with a "Gee up! Out
+of that, now!" the skids moved on.
+
+"Much obliged, there!" said a hearty voice, as if supplementing the
+teamster's imperfect acknowledgment.
+
+The stranger looked up. The voice came from the open, sashless,
+shutterless window of a rude building--a mere shell of boards and beams
+half hidden in the still leafy covert before him. He had completely
+overlooked it in his approach, even as he had ignored the nearer
+throbbing of the machinery, which was so violent as to impart a decided
+tremor to the slight edifice, and to shake the speaker so strongly that
+he was obliged while speaking to steady himself by the sashless frame
+of the window at which he stood. He had a face of good-natured and alert
+intelligence, a master's independence and authority of manner, in spite
+of his blue jean overalls and flannel shirt.
+
+"Don't mention it," said the stranger, smiling with equal but more
+deliberate good-humor. Then, seeing that his interlocutor still
+lingered a hospitable moment in spite of his quick eyes and the jarring
+impatience of the machinery, he added hesitatingly, "I fancy I've
+wandered off the track a bit. Do you know a Mr. Bradley--somewhere
+here?"
+
+The stranger's hesitation seemed to be more from some habitual
+conscientiousness of statement than awkwardness. The man in the window
+replied, "I'm Bradley."
+
+"Ah! Thank you: I've a letter for you--somewhere. Here it is." He
+produced a note from his breast-pocket. Bradley stooped to a sitting
+posture in the window. "Pitch it up." It was thrown and caught cleverly.
+Bradley opened it, read it hastily, smiled and nodded, glanced behind
+him as if to implore further delay from the impatient machinery, leaned
+perilously from the window, and said,--
+
+"Look here! Do you see that silver-fir straight ahead?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A little to the left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along the
+edge of the canyon until you see my house. Ask for my wife--that's Mrs.
+Bradley--and give her your letter. Stop!" He drew a carpenter's pencil
+from his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheet
+and tossed it back to the stranger. "See you at tea! Excuse me--Mr.
+Mainwaring--we're short-handed--and--the engine--" But here he
+disappeared suddenly.
+
+Without glancing at the note again, the stranger quietly replaced it
+in his pocket, and struck out across the fallen trunks towards the
+silver-fir. He quickly found the trail indicated by Bradley, although it
+was faint and apparently worn by a single pair of feet as a shorter and
+private cut from some more travelled path. It was well for the stranger
+that he had a keen eye or he would have lost it; it was equally
+fortunate that he had a mountaineering instinct, for a sudden profound
+deepening of the blue mist seen dimly through the leaves before him
+caused him to slacken his steps. The trail bent abruptly to the right;
+a gulf fully two thousand feet deep was at his feet! It was the Great
+Canyon.
+
+At the first glance it seemed so narrow that a rifle-shot could have
+crossed its tranquil depths; but a second look at the comparative size
+of the trees on the opposite mountain convinced him of his error. A
+nearer survey of the abyss also showed him that instead of its walls
+being perpendicular they were made of successive ledges or terraces to
+the valley below. Yet the air was so still, and the outlines so clearly
+cut, that they might have been only the reflections of the mountains
+around him cast upon the placid mirror of a lake. The spectacle arrested
+him, as it arrested all men, by some occult power beyond the mere
+attraction of beauty or magnitude; even the teamster never passed
+it without the tribute of a stone or broken twig tossed into its
+immeasurable profundity.
+
+Reluctantly leaving the spot, the stranger turned with the trail that
+now began to skirt its edge. This was no easy matter, as the undergrowth
+was very thick, and the foliage dense to the perilous brink of the
+precipice. He walked on, however, wondering why Bradley had chosen so
+circuitous and dangerous a route to his house, which naturally would
+be some distance back from the canyon. At the end of ten minutes'
+struggling through the "brush," the trail became vague, and, to all
+appearances, ended. Had he arrived? The thicket was as dense as before;
+through the interstices of leaf and spray he could see the blue void of
+the canyon at his side, and he even fancied that the foliage ahead of
+him was more symmetrical and less irregular, and was touched here and
+there with faint bits of color. To complete his utter mystification,
+a woman's voice, very fresh, very youthful, and by no means unmusical,
+rose apparently from the circumambient air. He looked hurriedly to the
+right and left, and even hopelessly into the trees above him.
+
+"Yes," said the voice, as if renewing a suspended conversation, "it
+was too funny for anything. There were the two Missouri girls from
+Skinner's, with their auburn hair ringleted, my dear, like the old
+'Books of Beauty'--in white frocks and sashes of an unripe greenish
+yellow, that puckered up your mouth like persimmons. One of them was
+speechless from good behavior, and the other--well! the other was
+so energetic she called out the figures before the fiddler did, and
+shrieked to my vis-a-vis to dance up to the entire stranger--meaning ME,
+if you please."
+
+The voice appeared to come from the foliage that overhung the canyon,
+and the stranger even fancied he could detect through the shimmering
+leafy veil something that moved monotonously to and fro. Mystified and
+impatient, he made a hurried stride forward, his foot struck a wooden
+step, and the next moment the mystery was made clear. He had almost
+stumbled upon the end of a long veranda that projected over the abyss
+before a low, modern dwelling, till then invisible, nestling on its
+very brink. The symmetrically-trimmed foliage he had noticed were the
+luxuriant Madeira vines that hid the rude pillars of the veranda; the
+moving object was a rocking-chair, with its back towards the intruder,
+that disclosed only the brown hair above, and the white skirts and small
+slippered feet below, of a seated female figure. In the mean time, a
+second voice from the interior of the house had replied to the figure in
+the chair, who was evidently the first speaker:--
+
+"It must have been very funny; but as long as Jim is always bringing
+somebody over from the mill, I don't see how I can go to those places.
+You were lucky, my dear, to escape from the new Division Superintendent
+last night; he was insufferable to Jim with his talk of his friend the
+San Francisco millionaire, and to me with his cheap society airs. I do
+hate a provincial fine gentleman."
+
+The situation was becoming embarrassing to the intruder. At the
+apparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he had
+previously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fled
+utterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at the
+idea of overhearing a private conversation, he stepped hurriedly on the
+veranda.
+
+"Well? go on!" said the second voice impatiently. "Well, who else was
+there? WHAT did you say? I don't hear you. What's the matter?"
+
+The seated figure had risen from her chair, and turned a young and
+pretty face somewhat superciliously towards the stranger, as she said in
+a low tone to her unseen auditor, "Hush! there is somebody here."
+
+The young man came forward with an awkwardness that was more boyish than
+rustic. His embarrassment was not lessened by the simultaneous entrance
+from the open door of a second woman, apparently as young as and
+prettier than the first.
+
+"I trust you'll excuse me for--for--being so wretchedly stupid," he
+stammered, "but I really thought, you know, that--that--I was following
+the trail to--to--the front of the house, when I stumbled in--in here."
+
+Long before he had finished, both women, by some simple feminine
+intuition, were relieved and even prepossessed by his voice and manner.
+They smiled graciously. The later-comer pointed to the empty chair. But
+with his habit of pertinacious conscientiousness the stranger continued,
+"It was regularly stupid, wasn't it?--and I ought to have known better.
+I should have turned back and gone away when I found out what an ass I
+was likely to be, but I was--afraid--you know, of alarming you by the
+noise."
+
+"Won't you sit down?" said the second lady, pleasantly.
+
+"Oh, thanks! I've a letter here--I"--he transferred his stick and hat
+to his left hand as he felt in his breast-pocket with his right. But the
+action was so awkward that the stick dropped on the veranda. Both women
+made a movement to restore it to its embarrassed owner, who, however,
+quickly anticipated them. "Pray don't mind it," he continued, with
+accelerated breath and heightened color. "Ah, here's the letter!" He
+produced the note Bradley had returned to him. "It's mine, in
+fact--that is, I brought it to Mr. Bradley. He said I was to give it
+to--to--to--Mrs. Bradley." He paused, glancing embarrassedly from the
+one to the other.
+
+"I'm Mrs. Bradley," said the prettiest one, with a laugh. He handed her
+the letter. It ran as follows:--
+
+"DEAR BRADLEY--Put Mr. Mainwaring through as far as he wants to go, or
+hang him up at The Lookout, just as he likes. The Bank's behind him, and
+his hat's chalked all over the Road; but he don't care much about being
+on velvet. That ain't his style--and you'll like him. He's somebody's
+son in England. B."
+
+Mrs. Bradley glanced simply at the first sentence. "Pray sit down, Mr.
+Mainwaring," she said gently; "or, rather, let me first introduce my
+cousin--Miss Macy."
+
+"Thanks," said Mainwaring, with a bow to Miss Macy, "but
+I--I--I--think," he added conscientiously, "you did not notice that your
+husband had written something across the paper."
+
+Mrs. Bradley smiled, and glanced at her husband's indorsement--"All
+right. Wade in." "It's nothing but Jim's slang," she said, with a laugh
+and a slightly heightened color. "He ought not to have sent you by that
+short cut; it's a bother, and even dangerous for a stranger. If you had
+come directly to US by the road, without making your first call at
+the mill," she added, with a touch of coquetry, "you would have had a
+pleasanter walk, and seen US sooner. I suppose, however, you got off the
+stage at the mill?"
+
+"I was not on the coach," said Mainwaring, unfastening the strap of his
+knapsack. "I walked over from Lone Pine Flat."
+
+"Walked!" echoed both women in simultaneous astonishment.
+
+"Yes," returned Mainwaring simply, laying aside his burden and taking
+the proffered seat. "It's a very fine bit of country."
+
+"Why, it's fifteen miles," said Mrs. Bradley, glancing horror-stricken
+at her cousin. "How dreadful! And to think Jim could have sent you a
+horse to Lone Pine. Why, you must be dead!"
+
+"Thanks, I'm all right! I rather enjoyed it, you know."
+
+"But," said Miss Macy, glancing wonderingly at his knapsack, "you must
+want something, a change--or some refreshment--after fifteen miles."
+
+"Pray don't disturb yourself," said Mainwaring, rising hastily, but not
+quickly enough to prevent the young girl from slipping past him into the
+house, whence she rapidly returned with a decanter and glasses.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Mainwaring would prefer to go into Jim's room and wash his
+hands and put on a pair of slippers?" said Mrs. Bradley, with gentle
+concern.
+
+"Thanks, no. I really am not tired. I sent some luggage yesterday by the
+coach to the Summit Hotel," he said, observing the women's eyes still
+fixed upon his knapsack. "I dare say I can get them if I want them.
+I've got a change here," he continued, lifting the knapsack as if with a
+sudden sense of its incongruity with its surroundings, and depositing it
+on the end of the veranda.
+
+"Do let it remain where it is," said Mrs. Bradley, greatly amused, "and
+pray sit still and take some refreshment. You'll make yourself ill
+after your exertions," she added, with a charming assumption of matronly
+solicitude.
+
+"But I'm not at all deserving of your sympathy," said Mainwaring, with
+a laugh. "I'm awfully fond of walking, and my usual constitutional isn't
+much under this."
+
+"Perhaps you were stronger than you are now," said Mrs. Bradley, gazing
+at him with a frank curiosity that, however, brought a faint deepening
+of color to his cheek.
+
+"I dare say you're right," he said suddenly, with an apologetic smile.
+"I quite forgot that I'm a sort of an invalid, you know, travelling
+for my health. I'm not very strong here," he added, lightly tapping
+his chest, that now, relieved of the bands of his knapsack, appeared
+somewhat thin and hollow in spite of his broad shoulders. His voice,
+too, had become less clear and distinct.
+
+Mrs. Bradley, who was still watching him, here rose potentially. "You
+ought to take more care of yourself," she said. "You should begin by
+eating this biscuit, drinking that glass of whiskey, and making yourself
+more comfortable in Jim's room until we can get the spare room fixed a
+little."
+
+"But I am not to be sent to bed--am I?" asked Mainwaring, in half-real,
+half-amused consternation.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs. Bradley, with playful precision.
+"But for the present we'll let you off with a good wash and a nap
+afterwards in that rocking-chair, while my cousin and I make some
+little domestic preparations. You see," she added with a certain proud
+humility, "we've got only one servant--a Chinaman, and there are many
+things we can't leave to him."
+
+The color again rose in Mainwaring's cheek, but he had tact enough to
+reflect that any protest or hesitation on his part at that moment would
+only increase the difficulties of his gentle entertainers. He allowed
+himself to be ushered into the house by Mrs. Bradley, and shown to her
+husband's room, without perceiving that Miss Macy had availed herself of
+his absence to run to the end of the veranda, mischievously try to
+lift the discarded knapsack to her own pretty shoulder, but, failing,
+heroically stagger with it into the passage and softly deposit it at his
+door. This done, she pantingly rejoined her cousin in the kitchen.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bradley, emphatically. "DID you ever? Walking fifteen
+miles for pleasure--and with such lungs!"
+
+"And that knapsack!" added Louise Macy, pointing to the mark in her
+little palm where the strap had imbedded itself in the soft flesh.
+
+"He's nice, though; isn't he?" said Mrs. Bradley, tentatively.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Macy, "he isn't, certainly, one of those provincial
+fine gentlemen you object to. But DID you see his shoes? I suppose they
+make the miles go quickly, or seem to measure less by comparison."
+
+"They're probably more serviceable than those high-heeled things that
+Captain Greyson hops about in."
+
+"But the Captain always rides--and rides very well--you know," said
+Louise, reflectively. There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I suppose Jim will tell us all about him," said Mrs. Bradley,
+dismissing the subject, as she turned her sleeves back over her white
+arms, preparatory to grappling certain culinary difficulties.
+
+"Jim," observed Miss Macy, shortly, "in my opinion, knows nothing more
+than his note says. That's like Jim."
+
+"There's nothing more to know, really," said Mrs. Bradley, with a
+superior air. "He's undoubtedly the son of some Englishman of fortune,
+sent out here for his health."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Miss Macy had heard a step in the passage. It halted at last, half
+irresolutely, before the open door of the kitchen, and the stranger
+appeared with an embarrassed air.
+
+But in his brief absence he seemed to have completely groomed himself,
+and stood there, the impersonation of close-cropped, clean, and
+wholesome English young manhood. The two women appreciated it with
+cat-like fastidiousness.
+
+"I beg your pardon; but really you're going to let a fellow do something
+for you," he said, "just to keep him from looking like a fool. I really
+can do no end of things, you know, if you'll try me. I've done some
+camping-out, and can cook as well as the next man."
+
+The two women made a movement of smiling remonstrance, half coquettish,
+and half superior, until Mrs. Bradley, becoming conscious of her bare
+arms and the stranger's wandering eyes, colored faintly, and said with
+more decision:--
+
+"Certainly not. You'd only be in the way. Besides, you need rest more
+than we do. Put yourself in the rocking-chair in the veranda, and go to
+sleep until Mr. Bradley comes."
+
+Mainwaring saw that she was serious, and withdrew, a little ashamed at
+his familiarity into which his boyishness had betrayed him. But he had
+scarcely seated himself in the rocking-chair before Miss Macy appeared,
+carrying with both hands a large tin basin of unshelled peas.
+
+"There," she said pantingly, placing her burden in his lap, "if you
+really want to help, there's something to do that isn't very fatiguing.
+You may shell these peas."
+
+"SHELL them--I beg pardon, but how?" he asked, with smiling earnestness.
+
+"How? Why, I'll show you--look."
+
+She frankly stepped beside him, so close that her full-skirted dress
+half encompassed him and the basin in a delicious confusion, and,
+leaning over his lap, with her left hand picked up a pea-cod, which,
+with a single movement of her charming little right thumb, she broke at
+the end, and stripped the green shallow of its tiny treasures.
+
+He watched her with smiling eyes; her own, looking down on him, were
+very bright and luminous. "There; that's easy enough," she said, and
+turned away.
+
+"But--one moment, Miss--Miss--?"
+
+"Macy," said louise.
+
+"Where am I to put the shells?"
+
+"Oh! throw them down there--there's room enough."
+
+She was pointing to the canyon below. The veranda actually projected
+over its brink, and seemed to hang in mid air above it. Mainwaring
+almost mechanically threw his arm out to catch the incautious girl, who
+had stepped heedlessly to its extreme edge.
+
+"How odd! Don't you find it rather dangerous here?" he could not help
+saying. "I mean--you might have had a railing that wouldn't intercept
+the view and yet be safe?"
+
+"It's a fancy of Mr. Bradley's," returned the young girl carelessly.
+"It's all like this. The house was built on a ledge against the side of
+the precipice, and the road suddenly drops down to it."
+
+"It's tremendously pretty, all the same, you know," said the young man
+thoughtfully, gazing, however, at the girl's rounded chin above him.
+
+"Yes," she replied curtly. "But this isn't working. I must go back to
+Jenny. You can shell the peas until Mr. Bradley comes home. He won't be
+long."
+
+She turned away, and re-entered the house. Without knowing why, he
+thought her withdrawal abrupt, and he was again feeling his ready color
+rise with the suspicion of either having been betrayed by the young
+girl's innocent fearlessness into some unpardonable familiarity, which
+she had quietly resented, or of feeling an ease and freedom in the
+company of these two women that were inconsistent with respect, and
+should be restrained.
+
+He, however, began to apply himself to the task given to him with his
+usual conscientiousness of duty, and presently acquired a certain manual
+dexterity in the operation. It was "good fun" to throw the cast-off
+husks into the mighty unfathomable void before him, and watch them
+linger with suspended gravity in mid air for a moment--apparently
+motionless--until they either lost themselves, a mere vanishing black
+spot in the thin ether, or slid suddenly at a sharp angle into unknown
+shadow. How deuced odd for him to be sitting here in this fashion! It
+would be something to talk of hereafter, and yet,--he stopped--it was
+not at all in the line of that characteristic adventure, uncivilized
+novelty, and barbarous freedom which for the last month he had sought
+and experienced. It was not at all like his meeting with the grizzly
+last week while wandering in a lonely canyon; not a bit in the line of
+his chance acquaintance with that notorious ruffian, Spanish Jack, or
+his witnessing with his own eyes that actual lynching affair at Angels.
+No! Nor was it at all characteristic, according to his previous ideas of
+frontier rural seclusion--as for instance the Pike County cabin of the
+family where he stayed one night, and where the handsome daughter asked
+him what his Christian name was. No! These two young women were very
+unlike her; they seemed really quite the equals of his family and
+friends in England,--perhaps more attractive,--and yet, yes, it was
+this very attractiveness that alarmed his inbred social conservatism
+regarding women. With a man it was very different; that alert, active,
+intelligent husband, instinct with the throbbing life of his saw-mill,
+creator and worker in one, challenged his unqualified trust and
+admiration.
+
+He had become conscious for the last minute or two of thinking rapidly
+and becoming feverishly excited; of breathing with greater difficulty,
+and a renewed tendency to cough. The tendency increased until he
+instinctively put aside the pan from his lap and half rose. But even
+that slight exertion brought on an accession of coughing. He put his
+handkerchief to his lips, partly to keep the sound from disturbing the
+women in the kitchen, partly because of a certain significant taste
+in his mouth which he unpleasantly remembered. When he removed the
+handkerchief it was, as he expected, spotted with blood. He turned
+quickly and re-entered the house softly, regaining the bedroom without
+attracting attention. An increasing faintness here obliged him to lie
+down on the bed until it should pass.
+
+Everything was quiet. He hoped they would not discover his absence from
+the veranda until he was better; it was deucedly awkward that he should
+have had this attack just now--and after he had made so light of his
+previous exertions. They would think him an effeminate fraud, these two
+bright, active women and that alert, energetic man. A faint color came
+into his cheek at the idea, and an uneasy sense that he had been in some
+way foolishly imprudent about his health. Again, they might be alarmed
+at missing him from the veranda; perhaps he had better have remained
+there; perhaps he ought to tell them that he had concluded to take their
+advice and lie down. He tried to rise, but the deep blue chasm before
+the window seemed to be swelling up to meet him, the bed slowly sinking
+into its oblivious profundity. He knew no more.
+
+He came to with the smell and taste of some powerful volatile spirit,
+and the vague vision of Mr. Bradley still standing at the window of
+the mill and vibrating with the machinery; this changed presently to a
+pleasant lassitude and lazy curiosity as he perceived Mr. Bradley smile
+and apparently slip from the window of the mill to his bedside. "You're
+all right now," said Bradley, cheerfully.
+
+He was feeling Mainwaring's pulse. Had he really been ill and was
+Bradley a doctor?
+
+Bradley evidently saw what was passing in his mind. "Don't be alarmed,"
+he said gayly. "I'm not a doctor, but I practise a little medicine and
+surgery on account of the men at the mill, and accidents, you know.
+You're all right now; you've lost a little blood: but in a couple of
+weeks in this air we'll have that tubercle healed, and you'll be as
+right as a trivet."
+
+"In a couple of weeks!" echoed Mainwaring, in faint astonishment. "Why,
+I leave here to-morrow."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind" said Mrs. Bradley, with smiling
+peremptoriness, suddenly slipping out from behind her husband.
+"Everything is all perfectly arranged. Jim has sent off messengers to
+your friends, so that if you can't come to them, they can come to you.
+You see you can't help yourself! If you WILL walk fifteen miles with
+such lungs, and then frighten people to death, you must abide by the
+consequences."
+
+"You see the old lady has fixed you," said Bradley, smiling; "and she's
+the master here. Come, Mainwaring, you can send any other message you
+like, and have who and what you want here; but HERE you must stop for a
+while."
+
+"But did I frighten you really?" stammered Mainwaring, faintly, to Mrs.
+Bradley.
+
+"Frighten us!" said Mrs. Bradley. "Well, look there!"
+
+She pointed to the window, which commanded a view of the veranda. Miss
+Macy had dropped into the vacant chair, with her little feet stretched
+out before her, her cheeks burning with heat and fire, her eyes partly
+closed, her straw hat hanging by a ribbon round her neck, her brown
+hair clinging to her ears and forehead in damp tendrils, and an enormous
+palm-leaf fan in each hand violently playing upon this charming picture
+of exhaustion and abandonment.
+
+"She came tearing down to the mill, bare-backed on our half-broken
+mustang, about half an hour ago, to call me 'to help you,'" explained
+Bradley. "Heaven knows how she managed to do it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER II.
+
+
+The medication of the woods was not overestimated by Bradley. There was
+surely some occult healing property in that vast reservoir of balmy and
+resinous odors over which The Lookout beetled and clung, and from which
+at times the pure exhalations of the terraced valley seemed to rise.
+Under its remedial influence and a conscientious adherence to the rules
+of absolute rest and repose laid down for him, Mainwaring had no return
+of the hemorrhage. The nearest professional medical authority, hastily
+summoned, saw no reason for changing or for supplementing Bradley's
+intelligent and simple treatment, although astounded that the patient
+had been under no more radical or systematic cure than travel and
+exercise. The women especially were amazed that Mainwaring had taken
+"nothing for it," in their habitual experience of an unfettered
+pill-and-elixir-consuming democracy. In their knowledge of the thousand
+"panaceas" that filled the shelves of the general store, this singular
+abstention of their guest seemed to indicate a national peculiarity.
+
+His bed was moved beside the low window, from which he could not only
+view the veranda but converse at times with its occupants, and even
+listen to the book which Miss Macy, seated without, read aloud to him.
+In the evening Bradley would linger by his couch until late, beguiling
+the tedium of his convalescence with characteristic stories and
+information which he thought might please the invalid. For Mainwaring,
+who had been early struck with Bradley's ready and cultivated
+intelligence, ended by shyly avoiding the discussion of more serious
+topics, partly because Bradley impressed him with a suspicion of his
+own inferiority, and partly because Mainwaring questioned the taste of
+Bradley's apparent exhibition of his manifest superiority. He learned
+accidentally that this mill-owner and backwoodsman was a college-bred
+man; but the practical application of that education to the ordinary
+affairs of life was new to the young Englishman's traditions, and grated
+a little harshly on his feelings. He would have been quite content if
+Bradley had, like himself and fellows he knew, undervalued his training,
+and kept his gifts conservatively impractical. The knowledge also that
+his host's education naturally came from some provincial institution
+unlike Oxford and Cambridge may have unconsciously affected his general
+estimate. I say unconsciously, for his strict conscientiousness would
+have rejected any such formal proposition.
+
+Another trifle annoyed him. He could not help noticing also that
+although Bradley's manner and sympathy were confidential and almost
+brotherly, he never made any allusion to Mainwaring's own family or
+connections, and, in fact, gave no indication of what he believed was
+the national curiosity in regard to strangers. Somewhat embarrassed by
+this indifference, Mainwaring made the occasion of writing some letters
+home an opportunity for laughingly alluding to the fact that he had made
+his mother and his sisters fully aware of the great debt they owed the
+household of The Lookout.
+
+"They'll probably all send you a round robin of thanks, except, perhaps,
+my next brother, Bob."
+
+Bradley contented himself with a gesture of general deprecation, and did
+not ask WHY Mainwaring's young brother should contemplate his death with
+satisfaction. Nevertheless, some time afterwards Miss Macy remarked
+that it seemed hard that the happiness of one member of a family should
+depend upon a calamity to another. "As for instance?" asked Mainwaring,
+who had already forgotten the circumstance. "Why, if you had died and
+your younger brother succeeded to the baronetcy, and become Sir Robert
+Mainwaring," responded Miss Macy, with precision. This was the first and
+only allusion to his family and prospective rank. On the other hand,
+he had--through naive and boyish inquiries, which seemed to amuse his
+entertainers--acquired, as he believed, a full knowledge of the history
+and antecedents of the Bradley household. He knew how Bradley had
+brought his young wife and her cousin to California and abandoned a
+lucrative law practice in San Francisco to take possession of this
+mountain mill and woodland, which he had acquired through some
+professional service.
+
+"Then you are a barrister really?" said Mainwaring, gravely.
+
+Bradley laughed. "I'm afraid I've had more practice--though not as
+lucrative a one--as surgeon or doctor."
+
+"But you're regularly on the rolls, you know; you're entered as
+Counsel, and all that sort of thing?" continued Mainwaring, with great
+seriousness.
+
+"Well, yes," replied Bradley, much amused. "I'm afraid I must plead
+guilty to that."
+
+"It's not a bad sort of thing," said Mainwaring, naively, ignoring
+Bradley's amusement. "I've got a cousin who's gone in for the law. Got
+out of the army to do it--too. He's a sharp fellow."
+
+"Then you DO allow a man to try many trades--over there," said Miss
+Macy, demurely.
+
+"Yes, sometimes," said Mainwaring, graciously, but by no means certain
+that the case was at all analogous.
+
+Nevertheless, as if relieved of certain doubts of the conventional
+quality of his host's attainments, he now gave himself up to a very
+hearty and honest admiration of Bradley. "You know it's awfully kind of
+him to talk to a fellow like me who just pulled through, and never got
+any prizes at Oxford, and don't understand the half of these things," he
+remarked confidentially to Mrs. Bradley. "He knows more about the things
+we used to go in for at Oxford than lots of our men, and he's never been
+there. He's uncommonly clever."
+
+"Jim was always very brilliant," returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently,
+and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "I
+wish he were more practical."
+
+"Practical! Oh, I say, Mrs. Bradley! Why, a fellow that can go in among
+a lot of workmen and tell them just what to do--an all-round chap
+that can be independent of his valet, his doctor, and his--banker! By
+Jove--THAT'S practical!"
+
+"I mean," said Mrs. Bradley, coldly, "that there are some things that
+a gentleman ought not to be practical about nor independent of. Mr.
+Bradley would have done better to have used his talents in some more
+legitimate and established way."
+
+Mainwaring looked at her in genuine surprise. To his inexperienced
+observation Bradley's intelligent energy and, above all, his
+originality, ought to have been priceless in the eyes of his wife--the
+American female of his species. He felt that slight shock which most
+loyal or logical men feel when first brought face to face with the easy
+disloyalty and incomprehensible logic of the feminine affections. Here
+was a fellow, by Jove, that any woman ought to be proud of, and--and--he
+stopped blankly. He wondered if Miss Macy sympathized with her cousin.
+
+Howbeit, this did not affect the charm of their idyllic life at The
+Lookout. The precipice over which they hung was as charming as ever
+in its poetic illusions of space and depth and color; the isolation of
+their comfortable existence in the tasteful yet audacious habitation,
+the pleasant routine of daily tasks and amusements, all tended to make
+the enforced quiet and inaction of his convalescence a lazy recreation.
+He was really improving; more than that, he was conscious of a certain
+satisfaction in this passive observation of novelty that was healthier
+and perhaps TRUER than his previous passion for adventure and that
+febrile desire for change and excitement which he now felt was a part
+of his disease. Nor were incident and variety entirely absent from this
+tranquil experience. He was one day astonished at being presented by
+Bradley with copies of the latest English newspapers, procured from
+Sacramento, and he equally astonished his host, after profusely thanking
+him, by only listlessly glancing at their columns. He estopped a
+proposed visit from one of his influential countrymen; in the absence
+of his fair entertainers at their domestic duties, he extracted infinite
+satisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularly
+detached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at the
+window he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, that
+al-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredly
+conscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors were
+invariably dragged thither by Miss Macy, and goaded into characteristic
+exhibition within sight and hearing of her guest, with a too evident
+view, under the ostentatious excuse of extending his knowledge of
+national character or mischievously shocking him.
+
+"When you are strong enough to stand Captain Gashweiler's opinions of
+the Established Church and Chinamen," said Miss Macy, after one of these
+revelations, "I'll get Jim to bring him here, for really he swears
+so outrageously that even in the broadest interests of international
+understanding and good-will neither Mrs. Bradley nor myself could be
+present."
+
+On another occasion she provokingly lingered before his window for a
+moment with a rifle slung jauntily over her shoulder. "If you hear a
+shot or two don't excite yourself, and believe we're having a lynching
+case in the woods. It will be only me. There's some creature--confess,
+you expected me to say 'critter'--hanging round the barn. It may be a
+bear. Good-by." She missed the creature,--which happened to be really a
+bear,--much to Mainwaring's illogical satisfaction. "I wonder why," he
+reflected, with vague uneasiness, "she doesn't leave all that sort of
+thing to girls like that tow-headed girl at the blacksmith's."
+
+It chanced, however, that this blacksmith's tow-headed daughter, who, it
+may be incidentally remarked, had the additional eccentricities of large
+black eyes and large white teeth, came to the fore in quite another
+fashion. Shortly after this, Mainwaring being able to leave his room and
+join the family board, Mrs. Bradley found it necessary to enlarge
+her domestic service, and arranged with her nearest neighbor, the
+blacksmith, to allow his daughter to come to The Lookout for a few
+days to "do the chores" and assist in the housekeeping, as she had on
+previous occasions. The day of her advent Bradley entered Mainwaring's
+room, and, closing the door mysteriously, fixed his blue eyes, kindling
+with mischief, on the young Englishman.
+
+"You are aware, my dear boy," he began with affected gravity, "that you
+are now living in a land of liberty, where mere artificial distinctions
+are not known, and where Freedom from her mountain heights generally
+levels all social positions. I think you have graciously admitted that
+fact."
+
+"I know I've been taking a tremendous lot of freedom with you and yours,
+old man, and it's a deuced shame," interrupted Mainwaring, with a faint
+smile.
+
+"And that nowhere," continued Bradley, with immovable features, "does
+equality exist as perfectly as above yonder unfathomable abyss, where
+you have also, doubtless, observed the American eagle proudly soars and
+screams defiance."
+
+"Then that was the fellow that kept me awake this morning, and made me
+wonder if I was strong enough to hold a gun again."
+
+"That wouldn't have settled the matter," continued Bradley,
+imperturbably. "The case is simply this: Miss Minty Sharpe, that
+blacksmith's daughter, has once or twice consented, for a slight
+emolument, to assist in our domestic service for a day or two, and she
+comes back again to-day. Now, under the aegis of that noble bird whom
+your national instincts tempt you to destroy, she has on all previous
+occasions taken her meals with us, at the same table, on terms of
+perfect equality. She will naturally expect to do the same now. Mrs.
+Bradley thought it proper, therefore, to warn you, that, in case your
+health was not quite equal to this democratic simplicity, you could
+still dine in your room."
+
+"It would be great fun--if Miss Sharpe won't object to my presence."
+
+"But it must not be 'great fun,'" returned Bradley, more seriously; "for
+Miss Minty's perception of humor is probably as keen as yours, and she
+would be quick to notice it. And, so far from having any objection
+to you, I am inclined to think that we owe her consent to come to her
+desire of making your acquaintance."
+
+"She will find my conduct most exemplary," said Mainwaring, earnestly.
+
+"Let us hope so," concluded Bradley, with unabated gravity. "And, now
+that you have consented, let me add from my own experience that Miss
+Minty's lemon-pies alone are worthy of any concession."
+
+The dinner-hour came. Mainwaring, a little pale and interesting, leaning
+on the arm of Bradley, crossed the hall, and for the first time entered
+the dining-room of the house where he had lodged for three weeks. It
+was a bright, cheerful apartment, giving upon the laurels of the rocky
+hillside, and permeated, like the rest of the house, with the wholesome
+spice of the valley--an odor that, in its pure desiccating property,
+seemed to obliterate all flavor of alien human habitation, and even to
+dominate and etherealize the appetizing smell of the viands before
+them. The bare, shining, planed, boarded walls appeared to resent any
+decoration that might have savored of dust, decay, or moisture. The four
+large windows and long, open door, set in scanty strips of the plainest
+spotless muslin, framed in themselves pictures of woods and rock and sky
+of limitless depth, color, and distance, that made all other adornment
+impertinent. Nature, invading the room at every opening, had banished
+Art from those neutral walls.
+
+"It's like a picnic, with comfort," said Mainwaring, glancing round him
+with boyish appreciation. Miss Minty was not yet there; the Chinaman
+was alone in attendance. Mainwaring could not help whispering, half
+mischievously, to Louise, "You draw the line at Chinamen, I suppose?"
+
+"WE don't, but HE does," answered the young girl. "He considers us his
+social inferiors. But--hush!"
+
+Minty Sharpe had just entered the room, and was advancing with smiling
+confidence towards the table. Mainwaring was a little startled; he had
+seen Minty in a holland sun-bonnet and turned up skirt crossing
+the veranda, only a moment before; in the brief instant between the
+dishing-up of dinner and its actual announcement she had managed to
+change her dress, put on a clean collar, cuffs, and a large jet brooch,
+and apply some odorous unguent to her rebellious hair. Her face,
+guiltless of powder or cold cream, was still shining with the healthy
+perspiration of her last labors as she promptly took the vacant chair
+beside Mainwaring.
+
+"Don't mind me, folks," she said cheerfully, resting her plump elbow on
+the table, and addressing the company generally, but gazing with frank
+curiosity into the face of the young man at her side. "It was a keen
+jump, I tell yer, to get out of my old duds inter these, and look
+decent inside o' five minutes. But I reckon I ain't kept yer waitin'
+long--least of all this yer sick stranger. But you're looking pearter
+than you did. You're wonderin' like ez not where I ever saw ye before?"
+she continued, laughing. "Well, I'll tell you. Last week! I'd kem over
+yer on a chance of seein' Jenny Bradley, and while I was meanderin' down
+the veranda I saw you lyin' back in your chair by the window drowned
+in sleep, like a baby. Lordy! I mout hev won a pair o' gloves, but I
+reckoned you were Loo's game, and not mine."
+
+The slightly constrained laugh which went round the table after Miss
+Minty's speech was due quite as much to the faint flush that had
+accented Mainwaring's own smile as to the embarrassing remark itself.
+Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macy exchanged rapid glances. Bradley, who alone
+retained his composure, with a slight flicker of amusement in the corner
+of his eye and nostril, said quickly: "You see, Mainwaring, how nature
+stands ready to help your convalescence at every turn. If Miss Minty
+had only followed up her healing opportunity, your cure would have been
+complete."
+
+"Ye mout hev left some o' that pretty talk for HIM to say," said Minty,
+taking up her knife and fork with a slight shrug, "and you needn't call
+me MISS Minty either, jest because there's kempeny present."
+
+"I hope you won't look upon me as company, Minty, or I shall be obliged
+to call you 'Miss' too," said Mainwaring, unexpectedly regaining his
+usual frankness.
+
+Bradley's face brightened; Miss Minty raised her black eyes from her
+plate with still broader appreciation.
+
+"There's nothin' mean about that," she said, showing her white teeth.
+"Well, what's YOUR first name?"
+
+"Not as pretty as yours, I'm afraid. It's Frank."
+
+"No it ain't, it's Francis! You reckon to be Sir Francis some day," she
+said gravely. "You can't play any Frank off on me. You wouldn't do it on
+HER," she added, indicating Louise with her elbow.
+
+A momentous silence followed. The particular form that Minty's vulgarity
+had taken had not been anticipated by the two other women. They had,
+not unreasonably, expected some original audacity or gaucherie from the
+blacksmith's daughter, which might astonish yet amuse their guest, and
+condone for the situation forced upon them. But they were not prepared
+for a playfulness that involved themselves in a ridiculous indiscretion.
+Mrs. Bradley's eyes sought her husband's meaningly; Louise's pretty
+mouth hardened. Luckily the cheerful cause of it suddenly jumped up
+from the table, and saying that the stranger was starving, insisted upon
+bringing a dish from the other side and helping him herself plentifully.
+Mainwaring rose gallantly to take the dish from her hand, a slight
+scuffle ensued which ended in the young man being forced down in his
+chair by the pressure of Minty's strong plump hand on his shoulder.
+"There," she said, "ye kin mind your dinner now, and I reckon we'll give
+the others a chance to chip into the conversation," and at once applied
+herself to the plate before her.
+
+The conversation presently became general, with the exception that
+Minty, more or less engrossed by professional anxiety in the quality
+of the dinner and occasional hurried visits to the kitchen, briefly
+answered the few polite remarks which Mainwaring felt called upon to
+address to her. Nevertheless, he was conscious, malgre her rallying
+allusions to Miss Macy, that he felt none of the vague yet half pleasant
+anxiety with which Louise was beginning to inspire him. He felt at
+ease in Minty's presence, and believed, rightly or wrongly, that she
+understood him as well as he understood her. And there were certainly
+points in common between his two hostesses and their humbler though
+proud dependent. The social evolution of Mrs. Bradley and Louise
+Macy from some previous Minty was neither remote nor complete; the
+self-sufficient independence, ease, and quiet self-assertion were alike
+in each. The superior position was still too recent and accidental for
+either to resent or criticise qualities that were common to both. At
+least, this was what he thought when not abandoning himself to the
+gratification of a convalescent appetite; to the presence of two pretty
+women, the sympathy of a genial friend, the healthy intoxication of the
+white sunlight that glanced upon the pine walls, the views that mirrored
+themselves in the open windows, and the pure atmosphere in which The
+Lookout seemed to swim. Wandering breezes of balm and spice lightly
+stirred the flowers on the table, and seemed to fan his hair and
+forehead with softly healing breath. Looking up in an interval of
+silence, he caught Bradley's gray eyes fixed upon him with a subdued
+light of amusement and affection, as of an elder brother regarding a
+schoolboy's boisterous appetite at some feast. Mainwaring laid down
+his knife and fork with a laughing color, touched equally by Bradley's
+fraternal kindliness and the consciousness of his gastronomical powers.
+
+"Hang it, Bradley; look here! I know my appetite's disgraceful, but what
+can a fellow do? In such air, with such viands and such company! It's
+like the bees getting drunk on Hybla and Hymettus, you know. I'm not
+responsible!"
+
+"It's the first square meal I believe you've really eaten in six
+months," said Bradley, gravely. "I can't understand why your doctor
+allowed you to run down so dreadfully."
+
+"I reckon you ain't as keerful of yourself, you Britishers, ez us," said
+Minty. "Lordy! Why there's Pop invests in more patent medicines in one
+day than you have in two weeks, and he'd make two of you. Mebbe your
+folks don't look after you enough."
+
+"I'm a splendid advertisement of what YOUR care and your medicines have
+done," said Mainwaring, gratefully, to Mrs. Bradley; "and if you ever
+want to set up a 'Cure' here, I'm ready with a ten-page testimonial."
+
+"Have a care, Mainwaring," said Bradley, laughing, "that the ladies
+don't take you at your word. Louise and Jenny have been doing their
+best for the last year to get me to accept a flattering offer from
+a Sacramento firm to put up a hotel for tourists on the site of The
+Lookout. Why, I believe that they have already secretly in their
+hearts concocted a flaming prospectus of 'Unrivalled Scenery' and
+'Health-giving Air,' and are looking forward to Saturday night hops on
+the piazza."
+
+"Have you really, though?" said Mainwaring, gazing from the one to the
+other.
+
+"We should certainly see more company than we do now, and feel a little
+less out of the world," said Louise, candidly. "There are no neighbors
+here--I mean the people at the Summit are not," she added, with a slight
+glance towards Minty.
+
+"And Mr. Bradley would find it more profitable--not to say more suitable
+to a man of his position--than this wretched saw-mill and timber
+business," said Mrs. Bradley, decidedly.
+
+Mainwaring was astounded; was it possible they considered it more
+dignified for a lawyer to keep a hotel than a saw-mill? Bradley, as if
+answering what was passing in his mind, said mischievously, "I'm
+not sure, exactly, what my position is, my dear, and I'm afraid I've
+declined the hotel on business principles. But, by the way, Mainwaring,
+I found a letter at the mill this morning from Mr. Richardson. He is
+about to pay us the distinguished honor of visiting The Lookout, solely
+on your account, my dear fellow."
+
+"But I wrote him that I was much better, and it wasn't necessary for him
+to come," said Mainwaring.
+
+"He makes an excuse of some law business with me. I suppose he considers
+the mere fact of his taking the trouble to come here, all the way from
+San Francisco, a sufficient honor to justify any absence of formal
+invitation," said Bradley, smiling.
+
+"But he's only--I mean he's my father's banker," said Mainwaring,
+correcting himself, "and--you don't keep a hotel."
+
+"Not yet," returned Bradley, with a mischievous glance at the two women,
+"but The Lookout is elastic, and I dare say we can manage to put him
+up."
+
+A silence ensued. It seemed as if some shadow, or momentary darkening
+of the brilliant atmosphere; some film across the mirror-like expanse of
+the open windows, or misty dimming of their wholesome light, had arisen
+to their elevation. Mainwaring felt that he was looking forward with
+unreasoning indignation and uneasiness to this impending interruption
+of their idyllic life; Mrs. Bradley and Louise, who had become a
+little more constrained and formal under Minty's freedom, were less
+sympathetic; even the irrepressible Minty appeared absorbed in the
+responsibilities of the dinner.
+
+Bradley alone preserved his usual patient good-humor. "We'll take
+our coffee on the veranda, and the ladies will join us by and by,
+Mainwaring; besides, I don't know that I can allow you, as an invalid,
+to go entirely through Minty's bountiful menu at present. You shall have
+the sweets another time."
+
+When they were alone on the veranda, he said, between the puffs of his
+black brier-wood pipe,--a pet aversion of Mrs. Bradley,--"I wonder how
+Richardson will accept Minty!"
+
+"If I can, I think he MUST," returned Mainwaring, dryly. "By Jove, it
+will be great fun to see him; but"--he stopped and hesitated--"I don't
+know about the ladies. I don't think, you know, that they'll stand Minty
+again before another stranger."
+
+Bradley glanced quickly at the young man; their eyes met, and they both
+joined in a superior and, I fear, disloyal smile. After a pause Bradley,
+as if in a spirit of further confidence, took his pipe from his mouth
+and pointed to the blue abyss before them.
+
+"Look at that profundity, Mainwaring, and think of it ever being bullied
+and overawed by a long veranda-load of gaping, patronizing tourists,
+and the idiotic flirting females of their species. Think of a lot of
+over-dressed creatures flouting those severe outlines and deep-toned
+distances with frippery and garishness. You know how you have been
+lulled to sleep by that delicious, indefinite, far-off murmur of
+the canyon at night--think of it being broken by a crazy waltz or a
+monotonous german--by the clatter of waiters and the pop of champagne
+corks. And yet, by thunder, those women are capable of liking both and
+finding no discord in them!"
+
+"Dancing ain't half bad, you know," said Mainwaring, conscientiously,
+"if a chap's got the wind to do it; and all Americans, especially the
+women, dance better than we do. But I say, Bradley, to hear you talk,
+a fellow wouldn't suspect you were as big a Vandal as anybody, with a
+beastly, howling saw-mill in the heart of the primeval forest. By Jove,
+you quite bowled me over that first day we met, when you popped your
+head out of that delirium tremens shaking mill, like the very genius of
+destructive improvement."
+
+"But that was FIGHTING Nature, not patronizing her; and it's a business
+that pays. That reminds me that I must go back to it," said Bradley,
+rising and knocking the ashes from his pipe.
+
+"Not AFTER dinner, surely!" said Mainwaring, in surprise. "Come now,
+that's too much like the bolting Yankee of the travellers' books."
+
+"There's a heavy run to get through tonight. We're working against
+time," returned Bradley. Even while speaking he had vanished within the
+house, returned quickly--having replaced his dark suit by jean trousers
+tucked in heavy boots, and a red flannel shirt over his starched white
+one--and, nodding gayly to Mainwaring, stepped from the lower end of the
+veranda. "The beggar actually looks pleased to go," said Mainwaring to
+himself in wonderment.
+
+"Oh! Jim," said Mrs. Bradley, appearing at the door.
+
+"Yes," said Bradley, faintly, from the bushes.
+
+"Minty's ready. You might take her home."
+
+"All right. I'll wait."
+
+"I hope I haven't frightened Miss Sharpe away," said Mainwaring. "She
+isn't going, surely?"
+
+"Only to get some better clothes, on account of company. I'm afraid
+you are giving her a good deal of trouble, Mr. Mainwaring," said Mrs.
+Bradley, laughing.
+
+"She wished me to say good-by to you for her, as she couldn't come on
+the veranda in her old shawl and sun-bonnet," added Louise, who had
+joined them. "What do you really think of her, Mr. Mainwaring? I call
+her quite pretty, at times. Don't you?"
+
+Mainwaring knew not what to say. He could not understand why they
+could have any special interest in the girl, or care to know what he, a
+perfect stranger, thought of her. He avoided a direct reply, however, by
+playfully wondering how Mrs. Bradley could subject her husband to Miss
+Minty's undivided fascinations.
+
+"Oh, Jim always takes her home--if it's in the evening. He gets along
+with these people better than we do," returned Mrs. Bradley,
+dryly. "But," she added, with a return of her piquant Quaker-like
+coquettishness, "Jim says we are to devote ourselves to you to-night--in
+retaliation, I suppose. We are to amuse you, and not let you get
+excited; and you are to be sent to bed early."
+
+It is to be feared that these latter wise precautions--invaluable for
+all defenceless and enfeebled humanity--were not carried out: and it
+was late when Mainwaring eventually retired, with brightened eyes and a
+somewhat accelerated pulse. For the ladies, who had quite regained that
+kindly equanimity which Minty had rudely interrupted, had also added
+a delicate and confidential sympathy in their relations with
+Mainwaring,--as of people who had suffered in common,--and he
+experienced these tender attentions at their hands which any two women
+are emboldened by each other's saving presence to show any single member
+of our sex. Indeed, he hardly knew if his satisfaction was the more
+complete when Mrs. Bradley, withdrawing for a few moments, left him
+alone on the veranda with Louise and the vast, omnipotent night.
+
+For a while they sat silent, in the midst of the profound and
+measureless calm. Looking down upon the dim moonlit abyss at their feet,
+they themselves seemed a part of this night that arched above it; the
+half-risen moon appeared to linger long enough at their side to enwrap
+and suffuse them with its glory; a few bright stars quietly ringed
+themselves around them, and looked wonderingly into the level of their
+own shining eyes. For some vague yearning to humanity seemed to draw
+this dark and passionless void towards them. The vast protecting
+maternity of Nature leant hushed and breathless over the solitude. Warm
+currents of air rose occasionally from the valley, which one might have
+believed were sighs from its full and overflowing breast, or a grateful
+coolness swept their cheeks and hair when the tranquil heights around
+them were moved to slowly respond. Odors from invisible bay and
+laurel sometimes filled the air; the incense of some rare and remoter
+cultivated meadow beyond their ken, or the strong germinating breath
+of leagues of wild oats, that had yellowed the upland by day. In the
+silence and shadow, their voices took upon themselves, almost without
+their volition, a far-off confidential murmur, with intervals of meaning
+silence--rather as if their thoughts had spoken for themselves, and they
+had stopped wonderingly to listen. They talked at first vaguely to this
+discreet audience of space and darkness, and then, growing bolder, spoke
+to each other and of themselves. Invested by the infinite gravity of
+nature, they had no fear of human ridicule to restrain their youthful
+conceit or the extravagance of their unimportant confessions.
+They talked of their tastes, of their habits, of their friends
+and acquaintances. They settled some points of doctrine, duty, and
+etiquette, with the sweet seriousness of youth and its all-powerful
+convictions. The listening vines would have recognized no flirtation or
+love-making in their animated but important confidences; yet when Mrs.
+Bradley reappeared to warn the invalid that it was time to seek his
+couch, they both coughed slightly in the nervous consciousness of some
+unaccustomed quality in their voices, and a sense of interruption far
+beyond their own or the innocent intruder's ken.
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Bradley, in the sitting-room as Mainwaring's steps
+retreated down the passage to his room.
+
+"Well," said Louise with a slight yawn, leaning her pretty shoulders
+languidly against the door-post, as she shaded her moonlight-accustomed
+eyes from the vulgar brilliancy of Mrs. Bradley's bedroom candle.
+"Well--oh, he talked a great deal about 'his people' as he called them,
+and I talked about us. He's very nice. You know in some things he's
+really like a boy."
+
+"He looks much better."
+
+"Yes; but he is far from strong yet."
+
+Meantime, Mainwaring had no other confidant of his impressions than his
+own thoughts. Mingled with his exaltation, which was the more seductive
+that it had no well-defined foundation for existing, and implied
+no future responsibility, was a recurrence of his uneasiness at the
+impending visit of Richardson the next day. Strangely enough, it had
+increased under the stimulus of the evening. Just as he was really
+getting on with the family, he felt sure that this visitor would import
+some foreign element into their familiarity, as Minty had done. It was
+possible they would not like him: now he remembered there was
+really something ostentatiously British and insular about this
+Richardson--something they would likely resent. Why couldn't this fellow
+have come later--or even before? Before what? But here he fell asleep,
+and almost instantly slipped from this veranda in the Sierras, six
+thousand miles away, to an ancient terrace, overgrown with moss and
+tradition, that overlooked the sedate glory of an English park. Here he
+found himself, restricted painfully by his inconsistent night-clothes,
+endeavoring to impress his mother and sisters with the singular
+virtues and excellences of his American host and hostesses--virtues and
+excellences that he himself was beginning to feel conscious had become
+more or less apocryphal in that atmosphere. He heard his mother's voice
+saying severely, "When you learn, Francis, to respect the opinions and
+prejudices of your family enough to prevent your appearing before them
+in this uncivilized aboriginal costume, we will listen to what you have
+to say of the friends whose habits you seem to have adopted;" and he
+was frantically indignant that his efforts to convince them that his
+negligence was a personal oversight, and not a Californian custom,
+were utterly futile. But even then this vision was brushed away by the
+bewildering sweep of Louise's pretty skirt across the dreamy picture,
+and her delicate features and softly-fringed eyes remained the last to
+slip from his fading consciousness.
+
+The moon rose higher and higher above the sleeping house and softly
+breathing canyon. There was nothing to mar the idyllic repose of the
+landscape; only the growing light of the last two hours had brought out
+in the far eastern horizon a dim white peak, that gleamed faintly among
+the stars, like a bridal couch spread between the hills fringed with
+fading nuptial torches. No one would have believed that behind that
+impenetrable shadow to the west, in the heart of the forest, the
+throbbing saw-mill of James Bradley was even at that moment eating its
+destructive way through the conserved growth of Nature and centuries,
+and that the refined proprietor of house and greenwood, with the glow of
+his furnace fires on his red shirt, and his alert, intelligent eyes, was
+the genie of that devastation, and the toiling leader of the shadowy,
+toiling figures around him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER III.
+
+
+Amid the beauty of the most uncultivated and untrodden wilderness there
+are certain localities where the meaner and mere common processes
+of Nature take upon themselves a degrading likeness to the slovenly,
+wasteful, and improvident processes of man. The unrecorded land-slip
+disintegrating a whole hillside will not only lay bare the delicate
+framework of strata and deposit to the vulgar eye, but hurl into the
+valley a debris so monstrous and unlovely as to shame even the hideous
+ruins left by dynamite, hydraulic, or pick and shovel; an overflown and
+forgotten woodland torrent will leave in some remote hollow a disturbed
+and ungraceful chaos of inextricable logs, branches, rock, and soil that
+will rival the unsavory details of some wrecked or abandoned settlement.
+Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain natural
+dust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected the
+cast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field--the sweepings
+of the sylvan household. It was remarkable that Nature, so kindly
+considerate of mere human ruins, made no attempt to cover up or disguise
+these monuments of her own mortality: no grass grew over the unsightly
+landslides, no moss or ivy clothed the stripped and bleached skeletons
+of overthrown branch and tree; the dead leaves and withered husks rotted
+in their open grave uncrossed by vine and creeper. Even the animals,
+except the lower organizations, shunned those haunts of decay and ruin.
+
+It was scarcely a hundred yards from one of those dreary receptacles
+that Mr. Bradley had taken leave of Miss Minty Sharpe. The cabin
+occupied by her father, herself, and a younger brother stood, in fact,
+on the very edge of the little hollow, which was partly filled with
+decayed wood, leaves, and displacements of the crumbling bank, with
+the coal dust and ashes which Mr. Sharpe had added from his forge, that
+stood a few paces distant at the corner of a cross-road. The occupants
+of the cabin had also contributed to the hollow the refuse of their
+household in broken boxes, earthenware, tin cans, and cast-off clothing;
+and it is not improbable that the site of the cabin was chosen with
+reference to this convenient disposal of useless and encumbering
+impedimenta. It was true that the locality offered little choice in
+the way of beauty. An outcrop of brown granite--a portent of higher
+altitudes--extended a quarter of a mile from the nearest fringe of dwarf
+laurel and "brush" in one direction; in the other an advanced file of
+Bradley's woods had suffered from some long-forgotten fire, and still
+raised its blackened masts and broken stumps over the scorched and arid
+soil, swept of older underbrush and verdure. On the other side of the
+road a dark ravine, tangled with briers and haunted at night by owls and
+wild cats, struggled wearily on, until blundering at last upon the edge
+of the Great Canyon, it slipped and lost itself forever in a single
+furrow of those mighty flanks. When Bradley had once asked Sharpe why he
+had not built his house in the ravine, the blacksmith had replied: "That
+until the Lord had appointed his time, he reckoned to keep his head
+above ground and the foundations thereof." Howbeit, the ravine, or the
+"run," as it was locally known, was Minty's only Saturday afternoon
+resort for recreation or berries. "It was," she had explained, "pow'ful
+soothin', and solitary."
+
+She entered the house--a rude, square building of unpainted
+boards--containing a sitting-room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. A glance
+at these rooms, which were plainly furnished, and whose canvas-colored
+walls were adorned with gorgeous agricultural implement
+circulars, patent medicine calendars, with polytinted chromos and
+cheaply-illuminated Scriptural texts, showed her that a certain neatness
+and order had been preserved during her absence; and, finding the house
+empty, she crossed the barren and blackened intervening space between
+the back door and her father's forge, and entered the open shed. The
+light was fading from the sky; but the glow of the forge lit up the
+dusty road before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledge
+beyond. A small curly-headed boy, bearing a singular likeness to a
+smudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanically
+blowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while her
+father--a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expression
+of countenance--was with equal want of interest mechanically hammering
+at a horseshoe. Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into a
+querulous drawling chant of some vague religious character:
+
+     "O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
+     For the Lord bids you turn--ah!
+     O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
+     Why will you die?"
+
+The musical accent adapted itself to the monotonous fall of the
+sledge-hammer; and at every repetition of the word "turn" he suited the
+action to the word by turning the horseshoe with the iron in his left
+hand. A slight grunt at the end of every stroke, and the simultaneous
+repetition of "turn" seemed to offer him amusement and relief. Minty,
+without speaking, crossed the shop, and administered a sound box on her
+brother's ear. "Take that, and let me ketch you agen layin' low when my
+back's turned, to put on your store pants."
+
+"The others had fetched away in the laig," said the boy, opposing a knee
+and elbow at acute angle to further attack.
+
+"You jest get and change 'em," said Minty.
+
+The sudden collapse of the bellows broke in upon the soothing refrain of
+Mr. Sharpe, and caused him to turn also.
+
+"It's Minty," he said, replacing the horseshoe on the coals, and setting
+his powerful arms and the sledge on the anvil with an exaggerated
+expression of weariness.
+
+"Yes; it's me," said Minty, "and Creation knows it's time I DID come, to
+keep that boy from ruinin' us with his airs and conceits."
+
+"Did ye bring over any o' that fever mixter?"
+
+"No. Bradley sez you're loading yerself up with so much o' that bitter
+bark--kuinine they call it over there--that you'll lift the ruff off
+your head next. He allows ye ain't got no ague; it's jest wind and
+dyspepsy. He sez yer's strong ez a hoss."
+
+"Bradley," said Sharpe, laying aside his sledge with an aggrieved manner
+which was, however, as complacent as his fatigue and discontent, "ez one
+of them nat'ral born finikin skunks ez I despise. I reckon he began
+to give p'ints to his parents when he was about knee-high to Richelieu
+there. He's on them confidential terms with hisself and the Almighty
+that he reckons he ken run a saw-mill and a man's insides at the same
+time with one hand tied behind him. And this finikin is up to his
+conceit: he wanted to tell me that that yer handy brush dump outside our
+shanty was unhealthy. Give a man with frills like that his own way and
+he'd be a sprinkling odor cologne and peppermint all over the country."
+
+"He set your shoulder as well as any doctor," said Minty.
+
+"That's bone-settin', and a nat'ral gift," returned Sharpe, as
+triumphantly as his habitual depression would admit; "it ain't conceit
+and finikin got out o' books! Well," he added, after a pause, "wot's
+happened?"
+
+Minty's face slightly changed. "Nothin'; I kem back to get some things,"
+she said shortly, moving away.
+
+"And ye saw HIM?"
+
+"Ye-e-s," drawled Minty, carelessly, still retreating.
+
+"Bixby was along here about noon. He says the stranger was suthin' high
+and mighty in his own country, and them 'Frisco millionaires are quite
+sweet on him. Where are ye goin'?"
+
+"In the house."
+
+"Well, look yer, Minty. Now that you're here, ye might get up a batch
+o' hot biscuit for supper. Dinner was that promiscous and experimental
+to-day, along o' Richelieu's nat'ral foolin', that I think I could git
+outside of a little suthin' now, if only to prop up a kind of innard
+sinkin' that takes me. Ye ken tell me the news at supper."
+
+Later, however, when Mr. Sharpe had quitted his forge for the night and,
+seated at his domestic board, was, with a dismal presentiment of future
+indigestion, voraciously absorbing his favorite meal of hot saleratus
+biscuits swimming in butter, he had apparently forgotten his curiosity
+concerning Mainwaring and settled himself to a complaining chronicle of
+the day's mishaps. "Nat'rally, havin' an extra lot o' work on hand and
+no time for foolin', what does that ornery Richelieu get up and do this
+mornin'? Ye know them ridiklus specimens that he's been chippin' outer
+that ledge that the yearth slipped from down the run, and litterin' up
+the whole shanty with 'em. Well, darn my skin! if he didn't run a heap
+of 'em, mixed up with coal, unbeknowned to me, in the forge, to make
+what he called a 'fire essay' of 'em. Nat'rally, I couldn't get a
+blessed iron hot, and didn't know what had gone of the fire, or the coal
+either, for two hours, till I stopped work and raked out the coal. That
+comes from his hangin' round that saw-mill in the woods, and listenin'
+to Bradley's high-falutin' talk about rocks and strata and sich."
+
+"But Bradley don't go a cent on minin', Pop," said Minty. "He sez the
+woods is good enough for him; and there's millions to be made when the
+railroad comes along, and timber's wanted."
+
+"But until then he's got to keep hisself, to pay wages, and keep the
+mill runnin'. Onless it's, ez Bixby says, that he hopes to get that
+Englishman to rope in some o' them 'Frisco friends of his to take a
+hand. Ye didn't have any o' that kind o' talk, did ye?"
+
+"No; not THAT kind o' talk," said Minty.
+
+"Not THAT kind o' talk!" repeated her father with aggrieved curiosity,
+"Wot kind, then?"
+
+"Well," said Minty, lifting her black eyes to her father's; "I ain't
+no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college
+education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned
+style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses.
+We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class
+view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take
+advantage of a lazy, gawky boy--for it ain't anything else, though he's
+good meanin' enough--that happened to fall sick in MY house, and coax
+and cosset him, and wrap him in white cotton, and mother him, and sister
+him, and Aunt Sukey him, and almost dry-nuss him gin'rally, jist to get
+him sweet on me and on mine, and take the inside track of others--I'D be
+an Injin! And if you'd allow it, Pop, you'd be wuss nor a nigger!"
+
+"Sho!" said her father, kindling with that intense gratification with
+which the male receives any intimation of alien feminine weakness. "It
+ain't that, Minty, I wanter know!"
+
+"It's jist that, Pop; and I ez good ez let 'em know I seed it. I ain't a
+fool, if some folks do drop their eyes and pertend to wipe the laugh out
+of their noses with a handkerchief when I let out to speak. I mayn't be
+good enough kempany--"
+
+"Look yer, Minty," interrupted the blacksmith, sternly, half rising
+from his seat with every trace of his former weakness vanished from his
+hardset face; "do you mean to say that they put on airs to ye--to MY
+darter?"
+
+"No," said Minty quickly; "the men didn't; and don't you, a man, mix
+yourself up with women's meannesses. I ken manage 'em, Pop, with one
+hand."
+
+Mr. Sharpe looked at his daughter's flashing black eyes. Perhaps an
+uneasy recollection of the late Mrs. Sharpe's remarkable capacity in
+that respect checked his further rage.
+
+"No. Wot I was sayin'," resumed Minty, "ez that I mayn't be thought by
+others good enough to keep kempany with baronetts ez is to be--though
+baronetts mightn't object--but I ain't mean enough to try to steal away
+some ole woman's darling boy in England, or snatch some likely young
+English girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by your
+leave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went to
+sea,--and it would be like his peartness,--and he fell sick in some
+foreign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand away
+from us?"
+
+Probably owing to the affair of the specimens, the elder Sharpe did not
+seem to regard the possible mesalliance of Richelieu with extraordinary
+disfavor. "That boy is conceited enough with hair ile and fine clothes
+for anything," he said plaintively. "But didn't that Louise Macy hev a
+feller already--that Captain Greyson? Wot's gone o' him?"
+
+"That's it," said Minty: "he kin go out in the woods and whistle now.
+But all the same, she could hitch him in again at any time if the other
+stranger kicked over the traces. That's the style over there at The
+Lookout. There ain't ez much heart in them two women put together ez
+would make a green gal flush up playin' forfeits. It's all in their
+breed, Pop. Love ain't going to spile their appetites and complexions,
+give 'em nose-bleed, nor put a drop o' water into their eyes in all
+their natural born days. That's wot makes me mad. Ef I thought that Loo
+cared a bit for that child I wouldn't mind; I'd just advise her to make
+him get up and get--pack his duds out o' camp, and go home and not come
+back until he had a written permit from his mother, or the other baronet
+in office."
+
+"Looks sorter ef some one orter interfere," said the blacksmith,
+reflectively. "'Tain't exackly a case for a vigilance committee, tho'
+it's agin public morals, this sorter kidnappin' o' strangers. Looks ez
+if it might bring the country into discredit in England."
+
+"Well, don't YOU go and interfere and havin' folks say ez my nose
+was put out o' jint over there," said Minty, curtly. "There's another
+Englishman comin' up from 'Frisco to see him to-morrow. Ef he ain't
+scooped up by Jenny Bradley he'll guess there's a nigger in the fence
+somewhere. But there, Pop, let it drop. It's a bad aig, anyway," she
+concluded, rising from the table, and passing her hands down her frock
+and her shapely hips, as if to wipe off further contamination of the
+subject. "Where's Richelieu agin?"
+
+"Said he didn't want supper, and like ez not he's gone over to see that
+fammerly at the Summit. There's a little girl thar he's sparkin', about
+his own age."
+
+"His own age!" said Minty, indignantly. "Why, she's double that, if
+she's a day. Well--if he ain't the triflinest, conceitednest little limb
+that ever grew! I'd like to know where he got it from--it wasn't mar's
+style."
+
+Mr. Sharpe smiled darkly. Richelieu's precocious gallantry evidently was
+not considered as gratuitous as his experimental metallurgy. But as his
+eyes followed his daughter's wholesome, Phyllis-like figure, a new idea
+took possession of him: needless to say, however, it was in the line
+of another personal aggrievement, albeit it took the form of religious
+reflection.
+
+"It's curous, Minty, wot's foreordained, and wot ain't. Now, yer's one
+of them high and mighty fellows, after the Lord, ez comes meanderin'
+around here, and drops off--ez fur ez I kin hear--in a kind o' faint at
+the first house he kems to, and is taken in and lodged and sumptuously
+fed; and, nat'rally, they gets their reward for it. Now wot's to hev
+kept that young feller from coming HERE and droppin' down in my forge,
+or in this very room, and YOU a tendin' him, and jist layin' over them
+folks at The Lookout?"
+
+"Wot's got hold o' ye, Pop? Don't I tell ye he had a letter to Jim
+Bradley?" said Minty, quickly, with an angry flash of color in her
+cheek.
+
+"That ain't it," said Sharpe confidently; "it's cos he WALKED.
+Nat'rally, you'd think he'd RIDE, being high and mighty, and that's
+where, ez the parson will tell ye, wot's merely fi-nite and human wisdom
+errs! Ef that feller had ridden, he'd have had to come by this yer
+road, and by this yer forge, and stop a spell like any other. But it
+was foreordained that he should walk, jest cos it wasn't generally
+kalkilated and reckoned on. So, YOU had no show."
+
+For a moment, Minty seemed struck with her father's original theory.
+But with a vigorous shake of her shoulders she threw it off. Her eyes
+darkened.
+
+"I reckon you ain't thinking, Pop--" she began.
+
+"I was only sayin' it was curous," he rejoined quietly. Nevertheless,
+after a pause, he rose, coughed, and going up to the young girl, as she
+leaned over the dresser, bent his powerful arm around her, and, drawing
+her and the plate she was holding against his breast, laid his bearded
+cheek for an instant softly upon her rebellious head. "It's all right,
+Minty," he said; "ain't it, pet?" Minty's eyelids closed gently under
+the familiar pressure. "Wot's that in your hair, Minty?" he said
+tactfully, breaking an embarrassing pause.
+
+"Bar's grease, father," murmured Minty, in a child's voice--the grown-up
+woman, under that magic touch, having lapsed again into her father's
+motherless charge of ten years before.
+
+"It's pow'ful soothin', and pretty," said her father.
+
+"I made it myself--do you want some?" asked Minty.
+
+"Not now, girl!" For a moment they slightly rocked each other in that
+attitude--the man dexterously, the woman with infinite tenderness--and
+then they separated.
+
+Late that night, after Richelieu had returned, and her father wrestled
+in his fitful sleep with the remorse of his guilty indulgence at supper,
+Minty remained alone in her room, hard at work, surrounded by the
+contents of one of her mother's trunks and the fragments of certain
+ripped-up and newly-turned dresses. For Minty had conceived the bold
+idea of altering one of her mother's gowns to the fashion of a certain
+fascinating frock worn by Louise Macy. It was late when her self-imposed
+task was completed. With a nervous trepidation that was novel to
+her, Minty began to disrobe herself preparatory to trying on her new
+creation. The light of a tallow candle and a large swinging lantern,
+borrowed from her father's forge, fell shyly on her milky neck and
+shoulders, and shone in her sparkling eyes, as she stood before her
+largest mirror--the long glazed door of a kitchen clock which she had
+placed upon her chest of drawers. Had poor Minty been content with the
+full, free, and goddess-like outlines that it reflected, she would have
+been spared her impending disappointment. For, alas! the dress of her
+model had been framed upon a symmetrically attenuated French corset, and
+the unfortunate Minty's fuller and ampler curves had under her simple
+country stays known no more restraining cincture than knew the Venus
+of Milo. The alteration was a hideous failure, it was neither Minty's
+statuesque outline nor Louise Macy's graceful contour. Minty was no
+fool, and the revelation of this slow education of the figure and
+training of outline--whether fair or false in art--struck her quick
+intelligence with all its full and hopeless significance. A bitter light
+sprang to her eyes; she tore the wretched sham from her shoulders, and
+then wrapping a shawl around her, threw herself heavily and sullenly on
+the bed. But inaction was not a characteristic of Minty's emotion; she
+presently rose again, and, taking an old work-box from her trunk, began
+to rummage in its recesses. It was an old shell-incrusted affair, and
+the apparent receptacle of such cheap odds and ends of jewelry as she
+possessed; a hideous cameo ring, the property of the late Mrs. Sharpe,
+was missing. She again rapidly explored the contents of the box, and
+then an inspiration seized her, and she darted into her brother's
+bedroom.
+
+That precocious and gallant Lovelace of ten, despite all sentiment, had
+basely succumbed to the gross materialism of youthful slumber. On a
+cot in the corner, half hidden under the wreck of his own careless and
+hurried disrobing, with one arm hanging out of the coverlid, Richelieu
+lay supremely unconscious. On the forefinger of his small but dirty hand
+the missing cameo was still glittering guiltily. With a swift movement
+of indignation Minty rushed with uplifted palm towards the tempting
+expanse of youthful cheek that lay invitingly exposed upon the pillow.
+Then she stopped suddenly.
+
+She had seen him lying thus a hundred times before. On the pillow near
+him an indistinguishable mass of golden fur--the helpless bulk of a
+squirrel chained to the leg of his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, who
+had followed his tyrannous caprices with the long-suffering devotion
+of her sex; on the shelf above him a loathsome collection of flies
+and tarantulas in dull green bottles: a slab of ginger-bread for light
+nocturnal refection, and her own pot of bear's grease. Perhaps it was
+the piteous defencelessness of youthful sleep, perhaps it was some
+lingering memory of her father's caress; but as she gazed at him with
+troubled eyes, the juvenile reprobate slipped back into the baby-boy
+that she had carried in her own childish arms such a short time ago,
+when the maternal responsibility had descended with the dead mother's
+ill-fitting dresses upon her lank girlish figure and scant virgin
+breast--and her hand fell listlessly at her side.
+
+The sleeper stirred slightly and awoke. At the same moment, by some
+mysterious sympathy, a pair of beady bright eyes appeared in the bulk
+of fur near his curls, the cat stretched herself, and even a vague
+agitation was heard in the bottles on the shelf. Richelieu's blinking
+eyes wandered from the candle to his sister, and then the guilty hand
+was suddenly withdrawn under the bedclothes.
+
+"No matter, dear," said Minty; "it's mar's, and you kin wear it when you
+like, if you'll only ask for it."
+
+Richelieu wondered if he was dreaming! This unexpected mildness--this
+inexplicable tremor in his sister's voice: it must be some occult
+influence of the night season on the sisterly mind, possibly akin to a
+fear of ghosts! He made a mental note of it in view of future favors,
+yet for the moment he felt embarrassedly gratified. "Ye ain't wantin'
+anything, Minty," he said affectionately; "a pail o' cold water from the
+far spring--no nothin'?" He made an ostentatious movement as if to
+rise, yet sufficiently protracted to prevent any hasty acceptance of his
+prodigal offer.
+
+"No, dear," she said, still gazing at him with an absorbed look in her
+dark eyes.
+
+Richelieu felt a slight creepy sensation under that lonely far-off gaze.
+"Your eyes look awful big at night, Minty," he said. He would have added
+"and pretty," but she was his sister, and he had the lofty fraternal
+conviction of his duty in repressing the inordinate vanity of the sex.
+"Ye're sure ye ain't wantin' nothin'?"
+
+"Not now, dear." She paused a moment, and then said deliberately: "But
+you wouldn't mind turnin' out after sun-up and runnin' an errand for me
+over to The Lookout?"
+
+Richelieu's eyes sparkled so suddenly that even in her absorption
+Minty noticed the change. "But ye're not goin' to tarry over there, ner
+gossip--you hear? Yer to take this yer message. Yer to say 'that it will
+be onpossible for me to come back there, on account--on account of--'"
+
+"Important business," suggested Richelieu; "that's the perlite style."
+
+"Ef you like." She leaned over the bed and put her lips to his forehead,
+still damp with the dews of sleep, and then to his long-lashed lids.
+"Mind Nip!"--the squirrel--he practically suggested. For an instant
+their blond curls mingled on the pillow. "Now go to sleep," she said
+curtly.
+
+But Richelieu had taken her white neck in the short strangulatory hug of
+the small boy, and held her fast. "Ye'll let me put on my best pants?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And wear that ring?"
+
+"Yes"--a little sadly.
+
+"Then yer kin count me in, Minty; and see here"--his voice sank to a
+confidential whisper--"mebbee some day ye'll be beholden to ME for a lot
+o' real jewelry."
+
+She returned slowly to her room, and, opening the window, looked out
+upon the night. The same moon that had lent such supererogatory grace to
+the natural beauty of The Lookout, here seemed to have failed; as Minty
+had, in disguising the relentless limitations of Nature or the cruel
+bonds of custom. The black plain of granite, under its rays, appeared
+only to extend its poverty to some remoter barrier; the blackened stumps
+of the burnt forest stood bleaker against the sky, like broken and
+twisted pillars of iron. The cavity of the broken ledge where Richelieu
+had prospected was a hideous chasm of bluish blackness, over which a
+purple vapor seemed to hover; the "brush dump" beside the house showed
+a cavern of writhing and distorted objects stiffened into dark rigidity.
+She had often looked upon the prospect: it had never seemed so hard and
+changeless; yet she accepted it, as she had accepted it before.
+
+She turned away, undressed herself mechanically, and went to bed. She
+had an idea that she had been very foolish; that her escape from
+being still more foolish was something miraculous, and in some measure
+connected with Providence, her father, her little brother, and her dead
+mother, whose dress she had recklessly spoiled. But that she had even so
+slightly touched the bitterness and glory of renunciation--as written
+of heroines and fine ladies by novelists and poets--never entered the
+foolish head of Minty Sharpe, the blacksmith's daughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER IV.
+
+
+It was a little after daybreak next morning that Mainwaring awoke from
+the first unrefreshing night he had passed at The Lookout. He was so
+feverish and restless that he dressed himself at sunrise, and cautiously
+stepped out upon the still silent veranda. The chairs which he and
+Louise Macy had occupied were still, it seemed to him, conspicuously
+confidential with each other, and he separated them, but as he looked
+down into the Great Canyon at his feet he was conscious of some
+undefinable change in the prospect. A slight mist was rising from the
+valley, as if it were the last of last night's illusions; the first
+level sunbeams were obtrusively searching, and the keen morning air had
+a dryly practical insistence which irritated him, until a light footstep
+on the farther end of the veranda caused him to turn sharply.
+
+It was the singular apparition of a small boy, bearing a surprising
+resemblance to Minty Sharpe, and dressed in an unique fashion. On a
+tumbled sea of blond curls a "chip" sailor hat, with a broad red ribbon,
+rode jauntily. But here the nautical suggestion changed, as had the
+desire of becoming a pirate which induced it. A red shirt, with a white
+collar, and a yellow plaid ribbon tie, that also recalled Minty Sharpe,
+lightly turned the suggestion of his costume to mining. Short black
+velvet trousers, coming to his knee, and ostentatiously new short-legged
+boots, with visible straps like curling ears, completed the entirely
+original character of his lower limbs.
+
+Mainwaring, always easily gentle and familiar with children and his
+inferiors, looked at him with an encouraging smile. Richelieu--for it
+was he--advanced gravely and held out his hand, with the cameo ring
+apparent. Mainwaring, with equal gravity, shook it warmly, and removed
+his hat. Richelieu, keenly observant, did the same.
+
+"Is Jim Bradley out yet?" asked Richelieu, carelessly.
+
+"No; I think not. But I'm Frank Mainwaring. Will I do?"
+
+Richelieu smiled. The dimples, the white teeth, the dark, laughing eyes,
+were surely Minty's?
+
+"I'm Richelieu," he rejoined with equal candor.
+
+"Richelieu?"
+
+"Yes. That Frenchman--the Lord Cardinal--you know. Mar saw Forrest do
+him out in St. Louis."
+
+"Do him?"
+
+"Yes, in the theayter."
+
+With a confused misconception of his meaning, Mainwaring tried to
+recall the historical dress of the great Cardinal and fit it to the
+masquerader--if such he were--before him. But Richelieu relieved him by
+adding,--
+
+"Richelieu Sharpe."
+
+"Oh, that's your NAME!" said Mainwaring, cheerfully. "Then you're Miss
+Minty's brother. I know her. How jolly lucky!"
+
+They both shook hands again. Richelieu, eager to get rid of the burden
+of his sister's message, which he felt was in the way of free-and-easy
+intercourse with this charming stranger, looked uneasily towards the
+house.
+
+"I say," said Mainwaring, "if you're in a hurry, you'd better go in
+there and knock. I hear some one stirring in the kitchen."
+
+Richelieu nodded, but first went back to the steps of the veranda,
+picked up a small blue knotted handkerchief, apparently containing some
+heavy objects, and repassed Mainwaring.
+
+"What! have you cut it, Richelieu, with your valuables? What have you
+got there?"
+
+"Specimins," said Richelieu, shortly, and vanished.
+
+He returned presently. "Well, Cardinal, did you see anybody?" asked
+Mainwaring.
+
+"Mrs. Bradley; but Jim's over to the mill. I'm goin' there."
+
+"Did you see Miss Macy?" continued Mainwaring, carelessly.
+
+"Loo?"
+
+"Loo!--well; yes."
+
+"No. She's philanderin' with Captain Greyson."
+
+"Philandering with Greyson?" echoed Mainwaring, in wonder.
+
+"Yes; on horseback on the ridge."
+
+"You mean she's riding out with Mr.--with Captain Greyson?"
+
+"Yes; ridin' AND philanderin'," persisted Richelieu.
+
+"And what do you call philandering?"
+
+"Well; I reckon you and she oughter know," returned Richelieu, with a
+precocious air.
+
+"Certainly," said Mainwaring, with a faint smile. Richelieu really was
+like Minty.
+
+There was a long silence. This young Englishman was becoming exceedingly
+uninteresting. Richelieu felt that he was gaining neither profit nor
+amusement, and losing time. "I'm going," he said.
+
+"Good morning," said Mainwaring, without looking up.
+
+Richelieu picked up his specimens, thoroughly convinced of the
+stranger's glittering deceitfulness, and vanished.
+
+It was nearly eight o'clock when Mrs. Bradley came from the house. She
+apologized, with a slightly distrait smile, for the tardiness of the
+household. "Mr. Bradley stayed at the mill all night, and will not be
+here until breakfast, when he brings your friend Mr. Richardson with
+him"--Mainwaring scarcely repressed a movement of impatience--"who
+arrives early. It's unfortunate that Miss Sharpe can't come to-day."
+
+In his abstraction Mainwaring did not notice that Mrs. Bradley slightly
+accented Minty's formal appellation, and said carelessly,--
+
+"Oh, that's why her brother came over here so early!"
+
+"Did YOU see him?" asked Mrs. Bradley, almost abruptly.
+
+"Yes. He is an amusing little beggar; but I think he shares his sister's
+preference for Mr. Bradley. He deserted me here in the veranda for him
+at the mill."
+
+"Louise will keep you company as soon as she has changed her dress,"
+continued Mrs. Bradley. "She was out riding early this morning with a
+friend. She's very fond of early morning rides."
+
+"AND philandering," repeated Mainwaring to himself. It was quite natural
+for Miss Macy to ride out in the morning, after the fashion of
+the country, with an escort; but why had the cub insisted on the
+"philandering"? He had said, "AND philandering," distinctly. It was a
+nasty thing for him to say. Any other fellow but he, Mainwaring, might
+misunderstand the whole thing. Perhaps he ought to warn her--but no! he
+could not repeat the gossip of a child, and that child the brother of
+one of her inferiors. But was Minty an inferior? Did she and Minty talk
+together about this fellow Greyson? At all events, it would only revive
+the awkwardness of the preceding day, and he resolved to say nothing.
+
+He was rewarded by a half-inquiring, half-confiding look in Louise's
+bright eyes, when she presently greeted him on the veranda. "She had
+quite forgotten," she said, "to tell him last night of her morning's
+engagement; indeed, she had half forgotten IT. It used to be a favorite
+practice of hers, with Captain Greyson; but she had lately given it up.
+She believed she had not ridden since--since--"
+
+"Since when?" asked Mainwaring.
+
+"Well, since you were ill," she said frankly.
+
+A quick pleasure shone in Mainwaring's cheek and eye; but Louise's
+pretty lids did not drop, nor her faint, quiet bloom deepen. Breakfast
+was already waiting when Mr. Richardson arrived alone.
+
+He explained that Mr. Bradley had some important and unexpected business
+which had delayed him, but which, he added, "Mr. Bradley says may
+prove interesting enough to you to excuse his absence this morning."
+Mainwaring was not displeased that his critical and observant host was
+not present at their meeting. Louise Macy was, however, as demurely
+conscious of the different bearing of the two compatriots. Richardson's
+somewhat self-important patronage of the two ladies, and that
+Californian familiarity he had acquired, changed to a certain uneasy
+deference towards Mainwaring; while the younger Englishman's slightly
+stiff and deliberate cordiality was, nevertheless, mingled with a
+mysterious understanding that appeared innate and unconscious. Louise
+was quick to see that these two men, more widely divergent in quality
+than any two of her own countrymen, were yet more subtly connected
+by some unknown sympathy than the most equal of Americans. Minty's
+prophetic belief of the effect of the two women upon Richardson was
+certainly true as regarded Mrs. Bradley. The banker--a large material
+nature--was quickly fascinated by the demure, puritanic graces of that
+lady, and was inclined to exhibit a somewhat broad and ostentatious
+gallantry that annoyed Mainwaring. When they were seated alone on
+the veranda, which the ladies had discreetly left to them, Richardson
+said,--
+
+"Odd I didn't hear of Bradley's wife before. She seems a spicy, pretty,
+comfortable creature. Regularly thrown away with him up here."
+
+Mainwaring replied coldly that she was "an admirable helpmeet of a very
+admirable man," not, however, without an uneasy recollection of her
+previous confidences respecting her husband. "They have been most
+thoroughly good and kind to me; my own brother and sister could not have
+done more. And certainly not with better taste or delicacy," he added,
+markedly.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said Richardson, hurriedly. "I wrote to Lady
+Mainwaring that you were taken capital care of by some very honest
+people; and that--"
+
+"Lady Mainwaring already knows what I think of them, and what she owes
+to their kindness," said Mainwaring, dryly.
+
+"True, true," said Richardson, apologetically. "Of course you must have
+seen a good deal of them. I only know Bradley in a business way. He's
+been trying to get the Bank to help him to put up some new mills here;
+but we didn't see it. I dare say he is good company--rather amusing,
+eh?"
+
+Mainwaring had the gift of his class of snubbing by the polite and
+forgiving oblivion of silence. Richardson shifted uneasily in his chair,
+but continued with assumed carelessness:--
+
+"No; I only knew of this cousin, Miss Macy. I heard of her when she
+was visiting some friends in Menlo Park last year. Rather an attractive
+girl. They say Colonel Johnson, of Sacramento, took quite a fancy
+to her--it would have been a good match, I dare say, for he is very
+rich--but the thing fell through in some way. Then, they say, SHE wanted
+to marry that Spaniard, young Pico, of the Amador Ranche; but his family
+wouldn't hear of it. Somehow, she's deuced unlucky. I suppose she'll
+make a mess of it with Captain Greyson she was out riding with this
+morning."
+
+"Didn't the Bank think Bradley's mills a good investment?" asked
+Mainwaring quietly, when Richardson paused.
+
+"Not with him in it; he is not a business man, you know."
+
+"I thought he was. He seems to me an energetic man, who knows his work,
+and is not afraid to look after it himself."
+
+"That's just it. He has got absurd ideas of co-operating with his
+workmen, you know, and doing everything slowly and on a limited scale.
+The only thing to be done is to buy up all the land on this ridge, run
+off the settlers, freeze out all the other mills, and put it into a big
+San Francisco company on shares. That's the only way we would look at
+it."
+
+"But you don't consider the investment bad, even from HIS point of
+view?"
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"And you only decline it because it isn't big enough for the Bank?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Richardson," said Mainwaring, slowly rising, putting his hands in his
+trousers pockets, and suddenly looking down upon the banker from the
+easy level of habitual superiority, "I wish you'd attend to this thing
+for me. I desire to make some return to Mr. Bradley for his kindness. I
+wish to give him what help he wants--in his own way--you understand. I
+wish it, and I believe my father wishes it, too. If you'd like him to
+write to you to that effect--"
+
+"By no means, it's not at all necessary," said Richardson, dropping with
+equal suddenness into his old-world obsequiousness. "I shall certainly
+do as you wish. It is not a bad investment, Mr. Mainwaring, and as you
+suggest, a very proper return for their kindness. And, being here, it
+will come quite naturally for me to take up the affair again."
+
+"And--I say, Richardson."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"As these ladies are rather short-handed in their domestic service, you
+know, perhaps you'd better not stay to luncheon or dinner, but go on to
+the Summit House--it's only a mile or two farther--and come back here
+this evening. I shan't want you until then."
+
+"Certainly!" stammered Richardson. "I'll just take leave of the ladies!"
+
+"It's not at all necessary," said Mainwaring, quietly; "you would only
+disturb them in their household duties. I'll tell them what I've done
+with you, if they ask. You'll find your stick and hat in the passage,
+and you can leave the veranda by these steps. By the way, you had better
+manage at the Summit to get some one to bring my traps from here to be
+forwarded to Sacramento to-morrow. I'll want a conveyance, or a horse
+of some kind, myself, for I've given up walking for a while; but we can
+settle about that to-night. Come early. Good morning?"
+
+He accompanied his thoroughly subjugated countryman--who, however, far
+from attempting to reassert himself, actually seemed easier and more
+cheerful in his submission--to the end of the veranda, and watched
+him depart. As he turned back, he saw the pretty figure of Louise Macy
+leaning against the doorway. How graceful and refined she looked in that
+simple morning dress! What wonder that she was admired by Greyson, by
+Johnson, and by that Spaniard!--no, by Jove, it was SHE that wanted to
+marry him!
+
+"What have you sent away Mr. Richardson for?" asked the young girl, with
+a half-reproachful, half-mischievous look in her bright eyes.
+
+"I packed him off because I thought it was a little too hard on you and
+Mrs. Bradley to entertain him without help."
+
+"But as he was OUR guest, you might have left that to us," said Miss
+Macy.
+
+"By Jove! I never thought of that," said Mainwaring, coloring in
+consternation. "Pray forgive me, Miss Macy--but you see I knew the man,
+and could say it, and you couldn't."
+
+"Well, I forgive you, for you look really so cut up," said Louise,
+laughing. "But I don't know what Jenny will say of your disposing of her
+conquest so summarily." She stopped and regarded him more attentively.
+"Has he brought you any bad news? if so, it's a pity you didn't send him
+away before. He's quite spoiling our cure."
+
+Mainwaring thought bitterly that he had. "But it's a cure for all that,
+Miss Macy," he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "and being a cure,
+you see, there's no longer an excuse for my staying here. I have been
+making arrangements for leaving here to-morrow."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Do you think it soon, Miss Macy?" asked Mainwaring, turning pale in
+spite of himself.
+
+"I quite forgot--that you were here as an invalid only, and that we owe
+our pleasure to the accident of your pain."
+
+She spoke a little artificially, he thought, yet her cheeks had not lost
+their pink bloom, nor her eyes their tranquillity. Had he heard Minty's
+criticism he might have believed that the organic omission noticed by
+her was a fact.
+
+"And now that your good work as Sister of Charity is completed, you'll
+be able to enter the world of gayety again with a clear conscience,"
+said Mainwaring, with a smile that he inwardly felt was a miserable
+failure. "You'll be able to resume your morning rides, you know, which
+the wretched invalid interrupted."
+
+Louise raised her clear eyes to his, without reproach, indignation, or
+even wonder. He felt as if he had attempted an insult and failed.
+
+"Does my cousin know you are going so soon?" she asked finally.
+
+"No, I did not know myself until to-day. You see," he added hastily,
+while his honest blood blazoned the lie in his cheek, "I've heard of
+some miserable business affairs that will bring me back to England
+sooner that I expected."
+
+"I think you should consider your health more important than any mere
+business," said Louise. "I don't mean that you should remain HERE," she
+added with a hasty laugh, "but it would be a pity, now that you have
+reaped the benefit of rest and taking care of yourself, that you should
+not make it your only business to seek it elsewhere."
+
+Mainwaring longed to say that within the last half hour, living or dying
+had become of little moment to him; but he doubted the truth or efficacy
+of this timeworn heroic of passion. He felt, too, that anything he said
+was a mere subterfuge for the real reason of his sudden departure. And
+how was he to question her as to that reason? In escaping from these
+subterfuges--he was compelled to lie again. With an assumption of
+changing the subject, he said calmly, "Richardson thought he had met you
+before--in Menlo Park, I think."
+
+Amazed at the evident irrelevance of the remark, Louise said coldly,
+that she did not remember having seen him before.
+
+"I think it was at a Mr. Johnson's--or WITH a Mr. Johnson--or perhaps at
+one of those Spanish ranches--I think he mentioned some name like Pico!"
+
+Louise looked at him wonderingly for an instant, and then gave way to
+a frank, irrepressible laugh, which lent her delicate but rather set
+little face all the color he had missed. Partially relieved by her
+unconcern, and yet mortified that he had only provoked her sense of the
+ludicrous, he tried to laugh also.
+
+"Then, to be quite plain," said Louise, wiping her now humid eyes, "you
+want me to understand that you really didn't pay sufficient attention
+to hear correctly! Thank you; that's a pretty English compliment, I
+suppose."
+
+"I dare say you wouldn't call it 'philandering'?"
+
+"I certainly shouldn't, for I don't know what 'philandering' means."
+
+Mainwaring could not reply, with Richelieu, "You ought to know"; nor did
+he dare explain what he thought it meant, and how he knew it. Louise,
+however, innocently solved the difficulty.
+
+"There's a country song I've heard Minty sing," she said. "It runs--
+
+     Come, Philander, let us be a-marchin',
+     Every one for his true love a-sarchin'
+     Choose your true love now or never. . . .
+
+Have you been listening to her also?"
+
+"No," said Mainwaring, with a sudden incomprehensible, but utterly
+irrepressible, resolution; "but I'M 'a-marchin',' you know, and perhaps
+I must 'choose my true love now or never.' Will you help me, Miss Macy?"
+
+He drew gently near her. He had become quite white, but also very manly,
+and it struck her, more deeply, thoroughly, and conscientiously sincere
+than any man who had before addressed her. She moved slightly away, as
+if to rest herself by laying both hands upon the back of the chair.
+
+"Where do you expect to begin your 'sarchin''?" she said, leaning on
+the chair and tilting it before her; "or are you as vague as usual as to
+locality? Is it at some 'Mr. Johnson' or 'Mr. Pico,' or--"
+
+"Here," he interrupted boldly.
+
+"I really think you ought to first tell my cousin that you are going
+away to-morrow," she said, with a faint smile. "It's such short notice.
+She's just in there." She nodded her pretty head, without raising her
+eyes, towards the hall.
+
+"But it may not be so soon," said Mainwaring.
+
+"Oh, then the 'sarchin'' is not so important?" said Louise, raising
+her head, and looking towards the hall with some uneasy but indefinable
+feminine instinct.
+
+She was right; the sitting-room door opened, and Mrs. Bradley made her
+smiling appearance.
+
+"Mr. Mainwaring was just looking for you," said Louise, for the first
+time raising her eyes to him. "He's not only sent off Mr. Richardson,
+but he's going away himself to-morrow."
+
+Mrs. Bradley looked from the one to the other in mute wonder. Mainwaring
+cast an imploring glance at Louise, which had the desired effect. Much
+more seriously, and in a quaint, business-like way, the young girl took
+it upon herself to explain to Mrs. Bradley that Richardson had brought
+the invalid some important news that would, unfortunately, not only
+shorten his stay in America, but even compel him to leave The Lookout
+sooner than he expected, perhaps to-morrow. Mainwaring thanked her with
+his eyes, and then turned to Mrs. Bradley.
+
+"Whether I go to-morrow or next day," he said with simple and earnest
+directness, "I intend, you know, to see you soon again, either here or
+in my own home in England. I do not know," he added with marked gravity,
+"that I have succeeded in convincing you that I have made your family
+already well known to my people, and that"--he fixed his eyes with a
+meaning look on Louise--"no matter when, or in what way, you come to
+them, your place is made ready for you. You may not like them, you know:
+the governor is getting to be an old man--perhaps too old for young
+Americans--but THEY will like YOU, and you must put up with that. My
+mother and sisters know Miss Macy as well as I do, and will make her one
+of the family."
+
+The conscientious earnestness with which these apparent
+conventionalities were uttered, and some occult quality of quiet
+conviction in the young man's manner, brought a pleasant sparkle to the
+eyes of Mrs. Bradley and Louise.
+
+"But," said Mrs. Bradley, gayly, "our going to England is quite beyond
+our present wildest dreams; nothing but a windfall, an unexpected
+rise in timber, or even the tabooed hotel speculation, could make it
+possible."
+
+"But I shall take the liberty of trying to present it to Mr. Bradley
+tonight in some practical way that may convince even his critical
+judgment," said Mainwaring, still seriously. "It will be," he added more
+lightly, "the famous testimonial of my cure which I promised you."
+
+"And you will find Mr. Bradley so sceptical that you will be obliged to
+defer your going," said Mrs. Bradley, triumphantly. "Come, Louise, we
+must not forget that we have still Mr. Mainwaring's present comfort to
+look after; that Minty has basely deserted us, and that we ourselves
+must see that the last days of our guest beneath our roof are not
+remembered for their privation."
+
+She led Louise away with a half-mischievous suggestion of maternal
+propriety, and left Mainwaring once more alone on the veranda.
+
+He had done it! Certainly she must have understood his meaning, and
+there was nothing left for him to do but to acquaint Bradley with his
+intentions to-night, and press her for a final answer in the morning.
+There would be no indelicacy then in asking her for an interview more
+free from interruption than this public veranda. Without conceit, he
+did not doubt what the answer would be. His indecision, his sudden
+resolution to leave her, had been all based upon the uncertainty of HIS
+own feelings, the propriety of HIS declaration, the possibility of some
+previous experience of hers that might compromise HIM. Convinced by
+her unembarrassed manner of her innocence, or rather satisfied of her
+indifference to Richardson's gossip, he had been hurried by his feelings
+into an unexpected avowal. Brought up in the perfect security of his
+own social position, and familiarly conscious--without vanity--of
+its importance and power in such a situation, he believed, without
+undervaluing Louise's charms or independence, that he had no one else
+than himself to consult. Even the slight uneasiness that still pursued
+him was more due to his habitual conscientiousness of his own intention
+than to any fear that she would not fully respond to it. Indeed, with
+his conservative ideas of proper feminine self-restraint, Louise's calm
+passivity and undemonstrative attitude were a proof of her superiority;
+had she blushed overmuch, cried, or thrown herself into his arms, he
+would have doubted the wisdom of so easy a selection. It was true he had
+known her scarcely three weeks; if he chose to be content with that, his
+own accessible record of three centuries should be sufficient for her,
+and condone any irregularity.
+
+Nevertheless, as an hour slipped away and Louise did not make her
+appearance, either on the veranda or in the little sitting-room off the
+hall, Mainwaring became more uneasy as to the incompleteness of their
+interview. Perhaps a faint suspicion of the inadequacy of her response
+began to trouble him; but he still fatuously regarded it rather as
+owing to his own hurried and unfinished declaration. It was true that
+he hadn't said half what he intended to say; it was true that she might
+have misunderstood it as the conventional gallantry of the situation,
+as--terrible thought!--the light banter of the habitual love-making
+American, to which she had been accustomed; perhaps even now she
+relegated him to the level of Greyson, and this accounted for her
+singular impassiveness--an impassiveness that certainly was singular
+now he reflected upon it--that might have been even contempt. The last
+thought pricked his deep conscientiousness; he walked hurriedly up and
+down the veranda, and then, suddenly re-entering his room, took up a
+sheet of note-paper, and began to write to her:--
+
+
+"Can you grant me a few moments' interview alone? I cannot bear you
+should think that what I was trying to tell you when we were interrupted
+was prompted by anything but the deepest sincerity and conviction,
+or that I am willing it should be passed over lightly by you or be
+forgotten. Pray give me a chance of proving it, by saying you will see
+me. F. M."
+
+
+But how should he convey this to her? His delicacy revolted against
+handing it to her behind Mrs. Bradley's back, or the prestidigitation of
+slipping it into her lap or under her plate before them at luncheon; he
+thought for an instant of the Chinaman, but gentlemen--except in that
+"mirror of nature" the stage--usually hesitate to suborn other people's
+servants, or entrust a woman's secret to her inferiors. He remembered
+that Louise's room was at the farther end of the house, and its low
+window gave upon the veranda, and was guarded at night by a film of
+white and blue curtains that were parted during the day, to allow
+a triangular revelation of a pale blue and white draped interior.
+Mainwaring reflected that the low inside window ledge was easily
+accessible from the veranda, would afford a capital lodgment for the
+note, and be quickly seen by the fair occupant of the room on entering.
+He sauntered slowly past the window; the room was empty, the moment
+propitious. A slight breeze was stirring the blue ribbons of the
+curtain; it would be necessary to secure the note with something; he
+returned along the veranda to the steps, where he had noticed a small
+irregular stone lying, which had evidently escaped from Richelieu's bag
+of treasure specimens, and had been overlooked by that ingenuous child.
+It was of a pretty peacock-blue color, and, besides securing a paper,
+would be sure to attract her attention. He placed his note on the inside
+ledge, and the blue stone atop, and went away with a sense of relief.
+
+Another half hour passed without incident. He could hear the voices
+of the two women in the kitchen and dining-room. After a while they
+appeared to cease, and he heard the sound of an opening door. It
+then occurred to him that the veranda was still too exposed for a
+confidential interview, and he resolved to descend the steps, pass
+before the windows of the kitchen where Louise might see him, and
+penetrate the shrubbery, where she might be induced to follow him. They
+would not be interrupted nor overheard there.
+
+But he had barely left the veranda before the figure of Richelieu,
+who had been patiently waiting for Mainwaring's disappearance, emerged
+stealthily from the shrubbery. He had discovered his loss on handing his
+"fire assays" to the good-humored Bradley for later examination, and he
+had retraced his way, step by step, looking everywhere for his missing
+stone with the unbounded hopefulness, lazy persistency, and lofty
+disregard for time and occupation known only to the genuine boy.
+He remembered to have placed his knotted bag upon the veranda, and,
+slipping off his stiff boots slowly and softly, slid along against the
+wall of the house, looking carefully on the floor, and yet preserving
+a studied negligence of demeanor, with one hand in his pocket, and his
+small mouth contracted into a singularly soothing and almost voiceless
+whistle--Richelieu's own peculiar accomplishment. But no stone appeared.
+Like most of his genus he was superstitious, and repeated to himself the
+cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"--presumed
+to be of great efficacy in such cases--with religious fervor. He had
+laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open
+window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in.
+And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and
+aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy and sickening
+enormity of Man.
+
+There was HIS stone--HIS, RICHELIEU'S, OWN SPECIMEN, carefully gathered
+by himself and none other--and now stolen, abstracted, "skyugled,"
+"smouged," "hooked" by this "rotten, skunkified, long-legged,
+splay-footed, hoss-laughin', nigger-toothed, or'nary despot" And,
+worse than all, actually made to do infamous duty as a "love token"--a
+"candy-gift!"--a "philanderin' box" to HIS, Richelieu's, girl--for
+Louise belonged to that innocent and vague outside seraglio of
+Richelieu's boyish dreams--and put atop of a letter to her! and
+Providence permitted such an outrage! "Wot was he, Richelieu, sent to
+school for, and organized wickedness in the shape of gorilla Injins like
+this allowed to ride high horses rampant over Californey!" He looked
+at the heavens in mute appeal. And then--Providence not immediately
+interfering--he thrust his own small arm into the window, regained his
+priceless treasure, and fled swiftly.
+
+A fateful silence ensued. The wind slightly moved the curtain outward,
+as if in a playful attempt to follow him, and then subsided. A moment
+later, apparently re-enforced by other winds, or sympathizing with
+Richelieu, it lightly lifted the unlucky missive and cast it softly from
+the window. But here another wind, lying in wait, caught it cleverly,
+and tossed it, in a long curve, into the abyss. For an instant it seemed
+to float lazily, as on the mirrored surface of a lake, until, turning
+upon its side, it suddenly darted into utter oblivion.
+
+When Mainwaring returned from the shrubbery, he went softly to the
+window. The disappearance of the letter and stone satisfied him of the
+success of his stratagem, and for the space of three hours relieved his
+anxiety. But at the end of that time, finding no response from Louise,
+his former uneasiness returned. Was she offended, or--the first doubt of
+her acceptance of him crossed his mind!
+
+A sudden and inexplicable sense of shame came upon him. At the same
+moment, he heard his name called from the steps, turned--and beheld
+Minty.
+
+Her dark eyes were shining with a pleasant light, and her lips parted on
+her white teeth with a frank, happy smile. She advanced and held out her
+hand. He took it with a mingling of disappointment and embarrassment.
+
+"You're wondering why I kem on here, arter I sent word this morning that
+I kelkilated not to come. Well, 'twixt then and now suthin' 's happened.
+We've had fine doin's over at our house, you bet! Pop don't know which
+end he's standin' on; and I reckon that for about ten minutes I didn't
+know my own name. But ez soon ez I got fairly hold o' the hull thing,
+and had it put straight in my mind, I sez to myself, Minty Sharpe, sez
+I, the first thing for you to do now, is to put on yer bonnet and shawl,
+and trapse over to Jim Bradley's and help them two womenfolks get dinner
+for themselves and that sick stranger. And," continued Minty, throwing
+herself into a chair and fanning her glowing face with her apron, "yer I
+am!"
+
+"But you have not told me WHAT has happened," said Mainwaring, with a
+constrained smile, and an uneasy glance towards the house.
+
+"That's so," said Minty, with a brilliant laugh. "I clean forgot the
+hull gist of the thing. Well, we're rich folks now--over thar' on Barren
+Ledge! That onery brother of mine, Richelieu, hez taken some of his
+specimens over to Jim Bradley to be tested. And Bradley, just to please
+that child, takes 'em; and not an hour ago Bradley comes running, likety
+switch, over to Pop to tell him to put up his notices, for the hull of
+that ledge where the forge stands is a mine o' silver and copper. Afore
+ye knew it, Lordy! half the folks outer the Summit and the mill was
+scattered down thar all over it. Richardson--that stranger ez knows
+you--kem thar too with Jim, and he allows, ef Bradley's essay is right,
+it's worth more than a hundred thousand dollars ez it stands!"
+
+"I suppose I must congratulate you, Miss Sharpe," said Mainwaring with
+an attempt at interest, but his attention still preoccupied with the
+open doorway.
+
+"Oh, THEY know all about it!" said Minty, following the direction of his
+abstracted eyes with a slight darkening of her own, "I jest kem out o'
+the kitchen the other way, and Jim sent 'em a note; but I allowed I'd
+tell YOU myself. Specially ez you are going away to-morrow."
+
+"Who said I was going away to-morrow?" asked Mainwaring, uneasily.
+
+"Loo Macy!"
+
+"Ah--she did? But I may change my mind, you know!" he continued, with a
+faint smile.
+
+Minty shook her curls decisively. "I reckon SHE knows," she said dryly,
+"she's got law and gospel for wot she says. But yer she comes. Ask her!
+Look yer, Loo," she added, as the two women appeared at the doorway,
+with a certain exaggeration of congratulatory manner that struck
+Mainwaring as being as artificial and disturbed as his own, "didn't Sir
+Francis yer say he was going to-morrow?"
+
+"That's what I understood!" returned Louise, with cold astonishment,
+letting her clear indifferent eyes fall upon Mainwaring. "I do not know
+that he has changed his mind."
+
+"Unless, as Miss Sharpe is a great capitalist now, she is willing to use
+her powers of persuasion," added Mrs. Bradley, with a slight acidulous
+pointing of her usual prim playfulness.
+
+"I reckon Minty Sharpe's the same ez she allus wos, unless more so,"
+returned Minty, with an honest egotism that carried so much conviction
+to the hearer as to condone its vanity. "But I kem yer to do a day's
+work, gals, and I allow to pitch in and do it, and not sit yer swoppin'
+compliments and keeping HIM from packin' his duds. Onless," she stopped,
+and looked around at the uneasy, unsympathetic circle with a faint
+tremulousness of lip that belied the brave black eyes above it, "onless
+I'm in yer way."
+
+The two women sprang forward with a feminine bewildering excess of
+protestation; and Mainwaring, suddenly pierced through his outer selfish
+embarrassment to his more honest depths, stammered quickly--
+
+"Look here, Miss Sharpe, if you think of running away again, after
+having come all the way here to make us share the knowledge of your good
+fortune and your better heart, by Jove! I'll go back with you."
+
+But here the two women effusively hurried her away from the dangerous
+proximity of such sympathetic honesty, and a moment later Mainwaring
+heard her laughing voice, as of old, ringing in the kitchen. And then,
+as if unconsciously responding to the significant common sense that lay
+in her last allusion to him, he went to his room and grimly began his
+packing.
+
+He did not again see Louise alone. At their informal luncheon the
+conversation turned upon the more absorbing topic of the Sharpes'
+discovery, its extent, and its probable effect upon the fortunes of
+the locality. He noticed, abstractedly, that both Mrs. Bradley and her
+cousin showed a real or assumed scepticism of its value. This did
+not disturb him greatly, except for its intended check upon Minty's
+enthusiasm. He was more conscious, perhaps,--with a faint touch of
+mortified vanity,--that his own contemplated departure was of lesser
+importance than this local excitement. Yet in his growing conviction
+that all was over--if, indeed, it had ever begun--between himself and
+Louise, he was grateful to this natural diversion of incident which
+spared them both an interval of embarrassing commonplaces. And, with
+the suspicion of some indefinable insincerity--either of his own or
+Louise's--haunting him, Minty's frank heartiness and outspoken loyalty
+gave him a strange relief. It seemed to him as if the clear cool breath
+of the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfast
+truth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poetic
+fancy would have been consistent or even coexistent with any gleam of
+tenderness or self-forgetfulness in Louise's equally pretty orbs, I
+leave the satirical feminine reader to determine.
+
+It was late when Bradley at last returned, bringing further and more
+complete corroboration of the truth of Sharpe's good fortune. Two
+experts had arrived, one from Pine Flat and another from the Summit, and
+upon this statement Richardson had offered to purchase an interest in
+the discovery that would at once enable the blacksmith to develop his
+mine. "I shouldn't wonder, Mainwaring," he added cheerfully, "if he'd
+put you into it, too, and make your eternal fortune."
+
+"With larks falling from the skies all round you, it's a pity YOU
+couldn't get put into something," said Mrs. Bradley, straightening her
+pretty brows.
+
+"I'm not a gold-miner, my dear," said Bradley, pleasantly.
+
+"Nor a gold-finder," returned his wife, with a cruel little depression
+of her pink nostrils, "but you can work all night in that stupid mill
+and then," she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, "spend
+the whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discovery
+that his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understand
+and profit by. I suppose that next you will be hunting up a site on the
+OTHER SIDE of the Canyon, where somebody else can put up a hotel and
+ruin your own prospects."
+
+A sensitive shadow of pain quickly dimmed Bradley's glance--not the
+first or last time evidently, for it was gradually bringing out a
+background of sadness in his intelligent eyes. But the next moment he
+turned kindly to Mainwaring, and began to deplore the necessity of his
+early departure, which Richardson had already made known to him with
+practical and satisfying reasons.
+
+"I hope you won't forget, my dear fellow, that your most really urgent
+business is to look after your health; and if, hereafter, you'll only
+remember the old Lookout enough to impress that fact upon you, I shall
+feel that any poor service I have rendered you has been amply repaid."
+
+Mainwaring, notwithstanding that he winced slightly at this fateful
+echo of Louise's advice, returned the grasp of his friend's hand with an
+honest pressure equal to his own. He longed now only for the coming of
+Richardson, to complete his scheme of grateful benefaction to his host.
+
+The banker came fortunately as the conversation began to flag; and Mrs.
+Bradley's half-coquettish ill-humor of a pretty woman, and Louise's
+abstracted indifference, were becoming so noticeable as to even impress
+Minty into a thoughtful taciturnity. The graciousness of his reception
+by Mrs. Bradley somewhat restored his former ostentatious gallantry, and
+his self-satisfied, domineering manner had enough masculine power in it
+to favorably affect the three women, who, it must be confessed, were a
+little bored by the finer abstractions of Bradley and Mainwaring.
+After a few moments, Mainwaring rose and, with a significant glance at
+Richardson to remind him of his proposed conference with Bradley, turned
+to leave the room. He was obliged to pass Louise, who was sitting by the
+table. His attention was suddenly arrested by something in her hand with
+which she was listlessly playing. It was the stone which he had put on
+his letter to her.
+
+As he had not been present when Bradley arrived, he did not know that
+this fateful object had been brought home by his host, who, after
+receiving it from Richelieu, had put it in his pocket to illustrate
+his story of the discovery. On the contrary, it seemed that Louise's
+careless exposure of his foolish stratagem was gratuitously and
+purposely cruel. Nevertheless, he stopped and looked at her.
+
+"That's a queer stone you have there," he said, in a tone which she
+recognized as coldly and ostentatiously civil.
+
+"Yes," she replied, without looking up; "it's the outcrop of that mine."
+She handed it to him as if to obviate any further remark. "I thought you
+had seen it before."
+
+"The outcrop," he repeated dryly. "That is--it--it--it is the indication
+or sign of something important that's below it--isn't it?"
+
+Louise shrugged her shoulders sceptically. "It don't follow. It's just
+as likely to cover rubbish, after you've taken the trouble to look."
+
+"Thanks," he said, with measured gentleness, and passed quietly out of
+the room.
+
+The moon had already risen when Bradley, with his brierwood pipe,
+preceded Richardson upon the veranda. The latter threw his large frame
+into Louise's rocking-chair near the edge of the abyss; Bradley, with
+his own chair tilted against the side of the house after the national
+fashion, waited for him to speak. The absence of Mainwaring and the
+stimulus of Mrs. Bradley's graciousness had given the banker a certain
+condescending familiarity, which Bradley received with amused and
+ironical tolerance that his twinkling eyes made partly visible in the
+darkness.
+
+"One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Bradley, was that old
+affair of the advance you asked for from the Bank. We did not quite see
+our way to it then, and, speaking as a business man, it isn't really a
+matter of business now; but it has lately been put to me in a light that
+would make the doing of it possible--you understand? The fact of the
+matter is this: Sir Robert Mainwaring, the father of the young
+fellow you've got in your house, is one of our directors and
+largest shareholders, and I can tell you--if you don't suspect it
+already--you've been lucky, Bradley--deucedly lucky--to have had him in
+your house and to have rendered him a service. He's the heir to one
+of the largest landed estates in his country, one of the oldest county
+families, and will step into the title some day. But, ahem!" he coughed
+patronizingly, "you knew all that! No? Well, that charming wife of
+yours, at least, does; for she's been talking about it. Gad, Bradley, it
+takes those women to find out anything of that kind, eh?"
+
+The light in Bradley's eyes and his pipe went slowly out together.
+
+"Then we'll say that affair of the advance is as good as settled. It's
+Sir Robert's wish, you understand, and this young fellow's wish,--and if
+you'll come down to the Bank next week we'll arrange it for you; I
+think you'll admit they're doing the handsome to you and yours. And
+therefore," he lowered his voice confidentially, "you'll see, Bradley,
+that it will only be the honorable thing in you, you know, to look upon
+the affair as finished, and, in fact, to do all you can"--he drew his
+chair closer--"to--to--to drop this other foolishness."
+
+"I don't think I quite understand you!" said Bradley, slowly.
+
+"But your wife does, if you don't," returned Richardson, bluntly; "I
+mean this foolish flirtation between Louise Macy and Mainwaring, which
+is utterly preposterous. Why, man, it can't possibly come to anything,
+and it couldn't be allowed for a moment. Look at his position and hers.
+I should think, as a practical man, it would strike you--"
+
+"Only one thing strikes me, Richardson," interrupted Bradley, in a
+singularly distinct whisper, rising, and moving nearer the speaker; "it
+is that you're sitting perilously near the edge of this veranda. For, by
+the living God, if you don't take yourself out of that chair and out of
+this house, I won't be answerable for the consequences!"
+
+"Hold on there a minute, will you?" said Mainwaring's voice from the
+window.
+
+Both men turned towards it. A long leg was protruding from Mainwaring's
+window; it was quickly followed by the other leg and body of the
+occupant, and the next moment Mainwaring come towards the two men, with
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Not so loud," he said, looking towards the house.
+
+"Let that man go," said Bradley, in a repressed voice. "You and I,
+Mainwaring, can speak together afterwards."
+
+"That man must stay until he hears what I have got to say," said
+Mainwaring, stepping between them. He was very white and grave in
+the moonlight, but very quiet; and he did not take his hands from his
+pockets. "I've listened to what he said because he came here on MY
+business, which was simply to offer to do you a service. That was all,
+Bradley, that I told him to do. This rot about what he expects of you in
+return is his own impertinence. If you'd punched his head when he began
+it, it would have been all right. But since he has begun it, before he
+goes I think he ought to hear me tell you that I have already OFFERED
+myself to Miss Macy, and she has REFUSED me! If she had given me the
+least encouragement, I should have told you before. Further, I want to
+say that, in spite of that man's insinuations, I firmly believe that no
+one is aware of the circumstance except Miss Macy and myself."
+
+"I had no idea of intimating that anything had happened that was not
+highly honorable and creditable to you and the young lady," began
+Richardson hurriedly.
+
+"I don't know that it was necessary for you to have any ideas on the
+subject at all," said Mainwaring, sternly; "nor that, having been shown
+how you have insulted this gentleman and myself, you need trouble us an
+instant longer with your company. You need not come back. I will manage
+my other affairs myself."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Mainwaring--but--you may be sure that I shall certainly
+take the first opportunity to explain myself to Sir Robert," returned
+Richardson as, with an attempt at dignity, he strode away.
+
+There was an interval of silence.
+
+"Don't be too hard upon a fellow, Bradley," said Mainwaring as Bradley
+remained dark and motionless in the shadow. "It is a poor return I'm
+making you for your kindness, but I swear I never thought of anything
+like--like--this."
+
+"Nor did I," said Bradley, bitterly.
+
+"I know it, and that's what makes it so infernally bad for me. Forgive
+me, won't you? Think of me, old fellow, as the wretchedest ass you ever
+met, but not such a cad as this would make me!" As Mainwaring stepped
+out from the moonlight towards him with extended hand, Bradley grasped
+it warmly.
+
+"Thanks--there--thanks, old fellow! And, Bradley--I say--don't
+say anything to your wife, for I don't think she knows it. And,
+Bradley--look here--I didn't like to be anything but plain before that
+fellow; but I don't mind telling YOU, now that it's all over, that I
+really think Louise--Miss Macy--didn't altogether understand me either."
+
+With another shake of the hand they separated for the night. For a long
+time after Mainwaring had gone, Bradley remained gazing thoughtfully
+into the Great Canyon. He thought of the time when he had first come
+there, full of life and enthusiasm, making an ideal world of his pure
+and wholesome eyrie on the ledge. What else he thought will, probably,
+never be known until the misunderstanding of honorable and chivalrous
+men by a charming and illogical sex shall incite the audacious pen of
+some more daring romancer.
+
+When he returned to the house, he said kindly to his wife, "I have been
+thinking to-day about your hotel scheme, and I shall write to Sacramento
+to-night to accept that capitalist's offer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPER V.
+
+
+The sun was just rising. In two years of mutation and change it had seen
+the little cottage clinging like a swallow's nest to the rocky caves of
+a great Sierran canyon give way to a straggling, many-galleried hotel,
+and a dozen blackened chimneys rise above the barren tableland where
+once had stood the lonely forge. To that conservative orb of light and
+heat there must have been a peculiar satisfaction in looking down a few
+hours earlier upon the battlements and gables of Oldenhurst, whose base
+was deeply embedded in the matured foundations and settled traditions
+of an English county. For the rising sun had for ten centuries found
+Oldenhurst in its place, from the heavy stone terrace that covered the
+dead-and-forgotten wall, where a Roman sentinel had once paced, to
+the little grating in the cloistered quadrangle, where it had seen a
+Cistercian brother place the morning dole. It had daily welcomed the
+growth of this vast and picturesque excrescence of the times; it had
+smiled every morning upon this formidable yet quaint incrustation
+of power and custom, ignoring, as Oldenhurst itself had ignored, the
+generations who possessed it, the men who built it, the men who carried
+it with fire and sword, the men who had lied and cringed for it, the
+King who had given it to a favorite, the few brave hearts who had died
+for it in exile, and the one or two who had bought and paid for it. For
+Oldenhurst had absorbed all these and more until it had become a story
+of the past, incarnate in stone, greenwood, and flower; it had even
+drained the life-blood from adjacent hamlets, repaying them with tumuli
+growths like its own, in the shape of purposeless lodges, quaintly
+incompetent hospitals and schools, and churches where the inestimable
+blessing and knowledge of its gospel were taught and fostered. Nor had
+it dealt more kindly with the gentry within its walls, sending some to
+the scaffold, pillorying others in infamous office, reducing a few to
+poverty, and halting its later guests with gout and paralysis. It had
+given them in exchange the dubious immortality of a portrait gallery,
+from which they stared with stony and equal resignation; it had
+preserved their useless armor and accoutrements; it had set up their
+marble effigies in churches or laid them in cross-legged attitudes to
+trip up the unwary, until in death, as in life, they got between the
+congregation and the Truth that was taught there. It had allowed an
+Oldenhurst crusader, with a broken nose like a pugilist, on the strength
+of his having been twice to the Holy Land, to hide the beautifully
+illuminated Word from the lowlier worshipper on the humbler benches; it
+had sent an iconoclastic Bishop of the Reformation to a nearer minster
+to ostentatiously occupy the place of the consecrated image he had
+overthrown. Small wonder that crowding the Oldenhurst retainers
+gradually into smaller space, with occasional Sabbath glimpses of the
+living rulers of Oldenhurst already in railed-off exaltation, it had
+forced them to accept Oldenhurst as a synonym of eternity, and left the
+knowledge of a higher Power to what time they should be turned out
+to their longer sleep under the tender grass of the beautiful outer
+churchyard.
+
+And even so, while every stone of the pile of Oldenhurst and every tree
+in its leafy park might have been eloquent with the story of vanity,
+selfishness, and unequal justice, it had been left to the infinite mercy
+of Nature to seal their lips with a spell of beauty that left mankind
+equally dumb; earth, air, and moisture had entered into a gentle
+conspiracy to soften, mellow, and clothe its external blemishes of
+breach and accident, its irregular design, its additions, accretions,
+ruins, and lapses with a harmonious charm of outline and color; poets,
+romancers, and historians had equally conspired to illuminate the
+dark passages and uglier inconsistencies of its interior life with the
+glamour of their own fancy. The fragment of menacing keep, with its
+choked oubliettes, became a bower of tender ivy; the grim story of its
+crimes, properly edited by a contemporary bard of the family, passed
+into a charming ballad. Even the superstitious darkness of its religious
+house had escaped through fallen roof and shattered wall, leaving only
+the foliated and sun-pierced screen of front, with its rose-window and
+pinnacle of cross behind. Pilgrims from all lands had come to see
+it; fierce Republicans had crossed the seas to gaze at its mediaeval
+outlines, and copy them in wood and stucco on their younger soil.
+Politicians had equally pointed to it as a convincing evidence of their
+own principles and in refutation of each other; and it had survived
+both. For it was this belief in its own perpetuity that was its strength
+and weakness. And that belief was never stronger than on this bright
+August morning, when it was on the verge of dissolution. A telegram
+brought to Sir Robert Mainwaring had even then as completely shattered
+and disintegrated Oldenhurst, in all it was and all it meant, as if the
+brown-paper envelope had been itself charged with the electric fluid.
+
+Sir Robert Mainwaring, whose family had for three centuries possessed
+Oldenhurst, had received the news of his financial ruin; and the vast
+pile which had survived the repeated invasion of superstition, force,
+intrigue, and even progress, had succumbed to a foe its founders and
+proprietors had loftily ignored and left to Jews and traders. The
+acquisition of money, except by despoilment, gift, royal favor, or
+inheritance, had been unknown at Oldenhurst. The present degenerate
+custodian of its fortunes, staggering under the weight of its
+sentimental mortmain already alluded to, had speculated in order to
+keep up its material strength, that was gradually shrinking through
+impoverished land and the ruined trade it had despised. He had invested
+largely in California mines, and was the chief shareholder in a San
+Francisco Bank. But the mines had proved worthless, the Bank had that
+morning suspended payment, owing to the failure of a large land and
+timber company on the Sierras which it had imprudently "carried."
+The spark which had demolished Oldenhurst had been fired from the new
+telegraph-station in the hotel above the great Sierran canyon.
+
+There was a large house-party at Oldenhurst that morning. But it had
+been a part of the history of the Mainwarings to accept defeat gallantly
+and as became their blood. Sir Percival,--the second gentleman on the
+left as you entered the library,--unhorsed, dying on a distant moor,
+with a handful of followers, abandoned by a charming Prince and a
+miserable cause, was scarcely a greater hero than this ruined but
+undaunted gentleman of eighty, entering the breakfast-room a few
+hours later as jauntily as his gout would permit, and conscientiously
+dispensing the hospitalities of his crumbling house. When he had
+arranged a few pleasure parties for the day and himself thoughtfully
+anticipated the different tastes of his guests, he turned to Lady
+Mainwaring.
+
+"Don't forget that somebody ought to go to the station to meet the
+Bradleys. Frank writes from St. Moritz that they are due here to-day."
+
+Lady Mainwaring glanced quickly at her husband, and said sotto voce, "Do
+you think they'll care to come NOW? They probably have heard all about
+it."
+
+"Not how it affects me," returned Sir Robert, in the same tone; "and
+as they might think that because Frank was with them on that California
+mountain we would believe it had something to do with Richardson
+involving the Bank in that wretched company, we must really INSIST upon
+their coming."
+
+"Bradley!" echoed the Hon. Captain FitzHarry, overhearing the name
+during a late forage on the sideboard, "Bradley!--there was an awfully
+pretty American at Biarritz, travelling with a cousin, I think--a Miss
+Mason or Macy. Those sort of people, you know, who have a companion
+as pretty as themselves; bring you down with the other barrel if one
+misses--eh? Very clever, both of them, and hardly any accent."
+
+"Mr. Bradley was a very dear friend of Frank's, and most kind to him,"
+said Lady Mainwaring, gravely.
+
+"Didn't know there WAS a Mr. Bradley, really. He didn't come to the
+fore, then," said the unabashed Captain. "Deuced hard to follow up those
+American husbands!"
+
+"And their wives wouldn't thank you, if you did," said Lady Griselda
+Armiger, with a sweet smile.
+
+"If it is the Mrs. Bradley I mean," said Lady Canterbridge from the
+lower end of the table, looking up from her letter, "who looks a little
+like Mrs. Summertree, and has a pretty cousin with her who has very good
+frocks, I'm afraid you won't be able to get her down here. She's booked
+with engagements for the next six weeks. She and her cousin made all the
+running at Grigsby Royal, and she has quite deposed that other American
+beauty in Northforeland's good graces. She regularly affiche'd him, and
+it is piteous to see him follow her about. No, my dear; I don't believe
+they'll come to any one of less rank than a Marquis. If they did, I'm
+sure Canterbridge would have had them at Buckenthorpe already."
+
+"I wonder if there was ever anything in Frank's admiration of this Miss
+Macy?" said Lady Mainwaring a few moments later, lingering beside her
+husband in his study.
+
+"I really don't know," said Sir Robert, abstractedly: "his letters were
+filled with her praises, and Richardson thought--"
+
+"Pray don't mention that man's name again," said Lady Mainwaring, with
+the first indication of feeling she had shown. "I shouldn't trust him."
+
+"But why do you ask?" returned her husband.
+
+Lady Mainwaring was silent for a moment. "She is very rich, I believe,"
+she said slowly. "At least, Frank writes that some neighbors of theirs
+whom he met in the Engadine told him they had sold the site of that
+absurd cottage where he was ill for some extravagant sum."
+
+"My dear Geraldine," said the old man, affectionately, taking his wife's
+hand in his own, that now for the first time trembled, "if you have any
+hope based upon what you are thinking of now, let it be the last and
+least. You forget that Paget told us that with the best care he could
+scarcely ensure Frank's return to perfect health. Even if God in his
+mercy spared him long enough to take my place, what girl would be
+willing to tie herself to a man doomed to sickness and poverty? Hardly
+the one you speak of, my dear."
+
+Lady Canterbridge proved a true prophet. Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macy
+did not come, regretfully alleging a previous engagement made on the
+continent with the Duke of Northforeland and the Marquis of Dungeness;
+but the unexpected and apocryphal husband DID arrive. "I myself have not
+seen my wife and cousin since I returned from my visit to your son
+in Switzerland. I am glad they were able to amuse themselves without
+waiting for me at a London hotel, though I should have preferred to
+have met them here." Sir Robert and Lady Mainwaring were courteous but
+slightly embarrassed. Lady Canterbridge, who had come to the station in
+bored curiosity, raised her clear blue eyes to his. He did not look like
+a fool, a complaisant or fashionably-cynical husband--this well-dressed,
+well-mannered, but quietly and sympathetically observant man. Did he
+really care for his selfish wife? was it perfect trust or some absurd
+Transatlantic custom? She did not understand him. It wearied her and she
+turned her eyes indifferently away. Bradley, a little irritated, he knew
+not why, at the scrutiny of this tall, handsome, gentlemanly-looking
+woman, who, however, in spite of her broad shoulders and narrow hips
+possessed a refined muliebrity superior to mere womanliness of outline,
+turned slightly towards Sir Robert. "Lady Canterbridge, Frank's cousin,"
+explained Sir Robert, hesitatingly, as if conscious of some vague
+awkwardness. Bradley and Lady Canterbridge both bowed,--possibly the
+latter's salutation was the most masculine,--and Bradley, eventually
+forgetting her presence, plunged into an earnest, sympathetic, and
+intelligent account of the condition in which he found the invalid at
+St. Moritz. The old man at first listened with an almost perfunctory
+courtesy and a hesitating reserve; but as Bradley was lapsing into
+equal reserve and they drove up to the gates of the quadrangle, he
+unexpectedly warmed with a word or two of serious welcome. Looking up
+with a half-unconscious smile, Bradley met Lady Canterbridge's examining
+eyes.
+
+The next morning, finding an opportunity to be alone with him, Bradley,
+with a tactful mingling of sympathy and directness informed his host
+that he was cognizant of the disaster that had overtaken the Bank, and
+delicately begged him to accept any service he could render him. "Pardon
+me," he said, "if I speak as plainly to you as I would to your son: my
+friendship for him justifies an equal frankness to any one he loves; but
+I should not intrude upon your confidence if I did not believe that my
+knowledge and assistance might be of benefit to you. Although I did not
+sell my lands to Richardson or approve of his methods," he continued, "I
+fear it was some suggestion of mine that eventually induced him to form
+the larger and more disastrous scheme that ruined the Bank. So you see,"
+he added lightly, "I claim a right to offer you my services." Touched
+by Bradley's sincerity and discreet intelligence, Sir Robert was equally
+frank. During the recital of his Californian investments--a chronicle
+of almost fatuous speculation and imbecile enterprise--Bradley was
+profoundly moved at the naive ignorance of business and hopeless
+ingenuousness of this old habitue of a cynical world and an intriguing
+and insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild for
+acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave
+visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticated
+simplicity: what he had considered as the "boyishness" of immaturity was
+the taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon this
+blood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had for centuries waxed and
+fattened.
+
+Bradley was true to his promise of assistance, and with the aid of two
+or three of his brother-millionaires, whose knowledge of the resources
+of the locality was no less powerful and convincing than the security
+of their actual wealth, managed to stay the immediate action of the
+catastrophe until the affairs of the Sierran Land and Timber Company
+could be examined and some plan of reconstruction arranged.
+
+During this interval of five months, in which the credit of Sir Robert
+Mainwaring was preserved with the secret of his disaster, Bradley was a
+frequent and welcome visitor to Oldenhurst. Apart from his strange and
+chivalrous friendship for the Mainwarings--which was as incomprehensible
+to Sir Robert as Sir Robert's equally eccentric and Quixotic
+speculations had been to Bradley--he began to feel a singular and weird
+fascination for the place. A patient martyr in the vast London house he
+had taken for his wife and cousin's amusement, he loved to escape the
+loneliness of its autumn solitude or the occasional greater loneliness
+of his wife's social triumphs. The handsome, thoughtful man who
+sometimes appeared at the foot of his wife's table or melted away like
+a well-bred ghost in the hollow emptiness of her brilliant receptions,
+piqued the languid curiosity of a few. A distinguished personage, known
+for his tactful observance of convenances that others forgot, had made a
+point of challenging this gentlemanly apparition, and had followed it up
+with courteous civilities, which led to exchange of much respect but no
+increase of acquaintance. He had even spent a week at Buckenthorpe, with
+Canterbridge in the coverts and Lady Canterbridge in the music-room and
+library. He had returned more thoughtful, and for some time after
+was more frequent in his appearances at home, and more earnest in his
+renewed efforts to induce his wife to return to America with him.
+
+"You'll never be happy anywhere but in California, among those common
+people," she replied; "and while I was willing to share your poverty
+THERE," she added dryly, "I prefer to share your wealth among civilized
+ladies and gentlemen. Besides," she continued, "we must consider Louise.
+She is as good as engaged to Lord Dunshunner, and I do not intend that
+you shall make a mess of her affairs here as you did in California."
+
+It was the first time he had heard of Lord Dunshunner's proposals; it
+was the first allusion she had ever made to Louise and Mainwaring.
+
+Meantime, the autumn leaves had fallen silently over the broad terraces
+of Oldenhurst with little changes to the fortunes of the great house
+itself. The Christmas house-party included Lady Canterbridge, whose
+husband was still detained at Homburg in company with Dunshunner;
+and Bradley, whose wife and cousin lingered on the continent. He was
+slightly embarrassed when Lady Canterbridge turned to him one afternoon
+as they were returning from the lake and congratulated him abruptly upon
+Louise's engagement.
+
+"Perhaps you don't care to be congratulated," she said, as he did not
+immediately respond, "and you had as little to do with it as with that
+other? It is a woman's function."
+
+"What other?" echoed Bradley.
+
+Lady Canterbridge slightly turned her handsome head towards him as she
+walked unbendingly at his side. "Tell me how you manage to keep
+your absolute simplicity so fresh. Do you suppose it wasn't known at
+Oldenhurst that Frank had quite compromised himself with Miss Macy over
+there?"
+
+"It certainly was not known 'over there,'" said Bradley, curtly.
+
+"Don't be angry with me."
+
+Such an appeal from the tall, indifferent woman at his side, so
+confidently superior to criticism, and uttered in a low tone, made him
+smile, albeit uneasily.
+
+"I only meant to congratulate you," she continued carelessly.
+"Dunshunner is not a bad sort of fellow, and will come into a good
+property some day. And then, society is so made up of caprice, just
+now, that it is well for your wife's cousin to make the most of her
+opportunities while they last. She is very popular now; but next
+season--" Seeing that Bradley remained silent, she did not finish
+the sentence, but said with her usual abruptness, "Do you know a Miss
+Araminta Eulalie Sharpe?"
+
+Bradley started. Could any one recognize honest Minty in the hopeless
+vulgarity which this fine lady had managed to carelessly import into her
+name? His eye kindled.
+
+"She is an old friend of mine, Lady Canterbridge."
+
+"How fortunate! Then I can please you by giving you good news of her.
+She is the coming sensation. They say she is very rich, but quite one of
+the people, you know: in fact, she makes no scruples of telling you her
+father was a blacksmith, I think, and takes the dear old man with her
+everywhere. FitzHarry raves about her, and says her naivete is something
+too delicious. She is regularly in with some of the best people already.
+Lady Dungeness has taken her up, and Northforeland is only waiting for
+your cousin's engagement to be able to go over decently. Shall I ask
+her to Buckenthorpe?--come, now, as an apology for my rudeness to your
+cousin?" She was very womanly now in spite of her high collar, her
+straight back, and her tightly-fitting jacket, as she stood there
+smiling. Suddenly, her smile faded; she drew her breath in quickly.
+
+She had caught a glimpse of his usually thoughtful face and eyes, now
+illuminated with some pleasant memory.
+
+"Thank you," he said smilingly, yet with a certain hesitation, as
+he thought of The Lookout and Araminta Eulalie Sharpe, and tried to
+reconcile them with the lady before him. "I should like it very much."
+
+"Then you have known Miss Sharpe a long time?" continued Lady
+Canterbridge as they walked on.
+
+"While we were at The Lookout she was our nearest neighbor."
+
+"And I suppose your wife will consider it quite proper for you to
+see her again at my house?" said Lady Canterbridge, with a return of
+conventional levity.
+
+"Oh! quite," said Bradley.
+
+They had reached the low Norman-arched side-entrance to the quadrangle.
+As Bradley swung open the bolt-studded oaken door to let her pass, she
+said carelessly,--
+
+"Then you are not coming in now?"
+
+"No; I shall walk a little longer."
+
+"And I am quite forgiven?"
+
+"I am thanking you very much," he said, smiling directly into her blue
+eyes. She lowered them, and vanished into the darkness of the passage.
+
+The news of Minty's success was further corroborated by Sir Robert,
+who later that evening called Bradley into the study. "Frank has been
+writing from Nice that he has renewed his acquaintance with some old
+Californian friends of yours--a Mr. and Miss Sharpe. Lady Canterbridge
+says that they are well known in London to some of our friends, but I
+would like to ask you something about them. Lady Mainwaring was on the
+point of inviting them here when I received a letter from Mr. Sharpe
+asking for a BUSINESS interview. Pray who is this Sharpe?"
+
+"You say he writes for a BUSINESS interview?" asked Bradley.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bradley hesitated for a moment and then said quietly, "Perhaps, then, I
+am justified in a breach of confidence to him, in order to answer your
+question. He is the man who has assumed all the liabilities of the
+Sierran Land and Timber Company to enable the Bank to resume payment.
+But he did it on the condition that you were never to know it. For the
+rest, he was a blacksmith who made a fortune, as Lady Canterbridge will
+tell you."
+
+"How very odd--how kind, I mean. I should like to have been civil to him
+on Frank's account alone."
+
+"I should see him on business and be civil to him afterwards." Sir
+Robert received the American's levity with his usual seriousness.
+
+"No, they must come here for Christmas. His daughter is--?"
+
+"Araminta Eulalie Sharpe," said Bradley, in defiant memory of Lady
+Canterbridge.
+
+Sir Robert winced audibly. "I shall rely on you, my dear boy, to help me
+make it pleasant for them," he said.
+
+Christmas came, but not Minty. It drew a large contingent from
+Oldenhurst to the quaint old church, who came to view the green-wreathed
+monuments, and walls spotted with crimson berries, as if with the blood
+of former Oldenhurst warriors, and to impress the wondering villagers
+with the ineffable goodness and bounty of the Creator towards the Lords
+of Oldenhurst and their friends. Sir Robert, a little gouty, kept the
+house, and Bradley, somewhat uneasy at the Sharpes' absence, but more
+distrait with other thoughts, wandered listlessly in the long library.
+At the lower angle it was embayed into the octagon space of a former
+tower, which was furnished as a quaint recess for writing or study,
+pierced through its enormous walls with a lance-shaped window, hidden by
+heavy curtains. He was gazing abstractedly at the melancholy eyes of Sir
+Percival, looking down from the dark panel opposite, when he heard the
+crisp rustle of a skirt. Lady Canterbridge tightly and stiffly buttoned
+in black from her long narrow boots to her slim, white-collared neck,
+stood beside him with a prayer-book in her ungloved hand. Bradley
+colored quickly; the penetrating incense of the Christmas boughs
+and branches that decked the walls and ceilings, mingled with some
+indefinable intoxicating aura from the woman at his side, confused his
+senses. He seemed to be losing himself in some forgotten past coeval
+with the long, quaintly-lighted room, the rich hangings, and the painted
+ancestor of this handsome woman. He recovered himself with an effort,
+and said,
+
+"You are going to church?"
+
+"I may meet them coming home; it's all the same. You like HIM?" she said
+abruptly, pointing to the portrait. "I thought you did not care for that
+sort of man over there."
+
+"A man like that must have felt the impotence of his sacrifice before he
+died, and that condoned everything," said Bradley, thoughtfully.
+
+"Then you don't think him a fool? Bob says it was a fair bargain for
+a title and an office, and that by dying he escaped trial and the
+confiscation of what he had."
+
+Bradley did not reply.
+
+"I am disturbing your illusions again. Yet I rather like them. I think
+you are quite capable of a sacrifice--perhaps you know what it is
+already."
+
+He felt that she was looking at him; he felt equally that he could not
+respond with a commonplace. He was silent.
+
+"I have offended you again, Mr. Bradley," she said. "Please be
+Christian, and pardon me. You know this is a season of peace and
+goodwill." She raised her blue eyes at the same moment to the Christmas
+decorations on the ceiling. They were standing before the parted drapery
+of the lance window. Midway between the arched curtains hung a spray
+of mistletoe--the conceit of a mischievous housemaid. Their eyes met it
+simultaneously.
+
+Bradley had Lady Canterbridge's slim, white hand in his own. The next
+moment voices were heard in the passage, and the door nearly opposite to
+them opened deliberately. The idea of their apparent seclusion and half
+compromising attitude flashed through the minds of both at the same
+time. Lady Canterbridge stepped quickly backward, drawing Bradley with
+her, into the embrasure of the window; the folds of the curtain swung
+together and concealed them from view.
+
+The door had been opened by the footman, ushering in a broad-shouldered
+man, who was carrying a travelling-bag and an umbrella in his hand.
+Dropping into an arm-chair before the curtain, he waved away the
+footman, who, even now, mechanically repeated a previously vain attempt
+to relieve the stranger of his luggage.
+
+"You leave that 'ere grip sack where it is, young man, and tell Sir
+Robert Mainwaring that Mr. Demander Sharpe, of Californy, wishes to
+see him--on business--on BUSINESS, do ye' hear? You hang onter that
+sentence--on BUSINESS! it's about ez much ez you kin carry, I reckon,
+and leave that grip sack alone."
+
+From behind the curtain Bradley made a sudden movement to go forward;
+but Lady Canterbridge--now quite pale but collected--restrained him with
+a warning movement of her hand. Sir Robert's stick and halting step were
+next heard along the passage, and he entered the room. His simple and
+courteous greeting of the stranger was instantly followed by a renewed
+attack upon the "grip sack," and a renewed defence of it by the
+stranger.
+
+"No, Sir Robert," said the voice argumentatively, "this yer's a BUSINESS
+interview, and until it's over--if YOU please--we'll remain ez we air.
+I'm Demander Sharpe, of Californy, and I and my darter, Minty, oncet had
+the pleasure of knowing your boy over thar, and of meeting him agin the
+other day at Nice."
+
+"I think," said Sir Robert's voice gently, "that these are not the only
+claims you have upon me. I have only a day or two ago heard from
+Mr. Bradley that I owe to your generous hands and your disinterested
+liberality the saving of my California fortune."
+
+There was the momentary sound of a pushed-back chair, a stamping of
+feet, and then Mr. Sharpe's voice rose high with the blacksmith's old
+querulous aggrieved utterance.
+
+"So it's that finikin', conceited Bradley agin--that's giv' me away!
+Ef that man's all-fired belief in his being the Angel Gabriel and Dan'l
+Webster rolled inter one don't beat anythin'! I suppose that high-flyin'
+jay-bird kalkilated to put you and me and my gal and yer boy inter
+harness for his four hoss chariot and he sittin' kam on the box drivin'
+us! Why don't he tend to his own business, and look arter his own
+concerns--instead o' leaving Jinny Bradley and Loo Macy dependent
+on Kings and Queens and titled folks gen'rally, and he, Jim Bradley,
+philanderin' with another man's wife--while that thar man is hard at
+work tryin' to make a honest livin' fer his wife, buckin' agin faro an'
+the tiger gen'rally at Monaco! Eh? And that man a-inter-meddlin' with
+me! Ef," continued the voice, dropped to a tone of hopeless moral
+conviction, "ef there's a man I mor'aly despise--it's that finikin' Jim
+Bradley."
+
+"You quite misunderstand me, my dear sir," said Sir Robert's hurried
+voice; "he told me you had pledged him to secrecy, and he only revealed
+it to explain why you wished to see me."
+
+There was a grunt of half-placated wrath from Sharpe, and then the voice
+resumed, but more deliberately, "Well, to come back to business: you've
+got a boy, Francis, and I've got a darter, Araminty. They've sorter
+taken a shine to each other and they want to get married. Mind yer--wait
+a moment!--it wasn't allus so. No, sir; when my gal Araminty first seed
+your boy in Californy she was poor, and she didn't kalkilate to get
+inter anybody's family unbeknownst or on sufferance. Then she got rich
+and you got poor; and then--hold on a minit!--she allows, does my girl,
+that there ain't any nearer chance o' their making a match than they
+were afore, for she isn't goin' to hev it said that she married your son
+fur the chance of some day becomin' Lady Mainwaring."
+
+"One moment, Mr. Sharpe," said the voice of the Baronet, gravely: "I am
+both flattered and pained by what I believe to be the kindly object of
+your visit. Indeed, I may say I have gathered a suspicion of what might
+be the sequel of this most unhappy acquaintance of my son and your
+daughter; but I cannot believe that he has kept you in ignorance of his
+unfortunate prospects and his still more unfortunate state of health."
+
+"When I told ye to hold on a minit," continued the blacksmith's voice,
+with a touch of querulousness in its accent, "that was jist wot I was
+comin' to. I knowed part of it from my own pocket, she knowed the rest
+of it from his lip and the doctors she interviewed. And then she says to
+me--sez my girl Minty--Pop,' she sez, 'he's got nothing to live for now
+but his title, and that he never may live to get, so that I think ye kin
+jist go, Pop, and fairly and squarely, as a honest man, ask his father
+to let me hev him.' Them's my darter's own words, Sir Robert, and when
+I tell yer that she's got a million o' dollars to back them, ye'll know
+she means business, every time."
+
+"Did Francis know that you were coming here?"
+
+"Bless ye, no! he don't know that she would have him. Ef it kem to that,
+he ain't even asked her! She wouldn't let him until she was sure of
+YOU."
+
+"Then you mean to say there is no engagement?"
+
+"In course not. I reckoned to do the square thing first with ye."
+
+The halting step of the Baronet crossing the room was heard distinctly.
+He had stopped beside Sharpe. "My dear Mr. Sharpe," he said, in a
+troubled voice, "I cannot permit this sacrifice. It is too--too great!"
+
+"Then," said Sharpe' s voice querulously, "I'm afraid we must do without
+your permission. I didn't reckon to find a sort o' British Jim Bradley
+in you. If YOU can't permit my darter to sacrifice herself by marryin'
+your son, I can't permit her to sacrifice her love and him by NOT
+marryin' him. So I reckon this yer interview is over."
+
+"I am afraid we are both old fools, Mr. Sharpe; but--we will talk this
+over with Lady Mainwaring. Come--" There was evidently a slight struggle
+near the chair over some inanimate object. But the next moment the
+Baronet's voice rose, persuasively, "Really, I must insist upon
+relieving you of your bag and umbrella."
+
+"Well, if you'll let me telegraph 'yes' to Minty, I don't care if yer
+do."
+
+When the room was quiet again, Lady Canterbridge and James Bradley
+silently slipped from the curtain, and, without a word, separated at the
+door.
+
+
+There was a merry Christmas at Oldenhurst and at Nice. But whether
+Minty's loving sacrifice was accepted or not, or whether she ever
+reigned as Lady Mainwaring, or lived an untitled widow, I cannot
+say. But as Oldenhurst still exists in all its pride and power, it is
+presumed that the peril that threatened its fortunes was averted,
+and that if another heroine was not found worthy of a frame in its
+picture-gallery, at least it had been sustained as of old by devotion
+and renunciation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phyllis of the Sierras, by Bret Harte
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 2711.txt or 2711.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/1/2711/
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.