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+Project Gutenberg's Etext A Phyllis of the Sierras, by Bret Harte
+#39 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Title:  A Phyllis of the Sierras
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+Author:  Bret Harte
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+July, 2001  [Etext #2711]
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext A Phyllis of the Sierras, by Bret Harte
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+
+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!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 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.
+
+
+CHAPTER 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," be 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.
+
+
+CHAPTER 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."
+
+
+CHAPTER 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 Project Gutenberg's Etext A Phyllis of the Sierras, by Bret Harte
+
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