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+Title:  The Twins of Table Mountain
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+Author:  Bret Harte
+
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+
+The Twins of Table Mountain
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I.    THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN
+
+II.   AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG
+
+III.  THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY
+
+IV.   A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT
+
+V.    VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION
+
+
+
+
+THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+A CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+They lived on the verge of a vast stony level, upheaved so far
+above the surrounding country that its vague outlines, viewed from
+the nearest valley, seemed a mere cloud-streak resting upon the
+lesser hills.  The rush and roar of the turbulent river that washed
+its eastern base were lost at that height; the winds that strove
+with the giant pines that half way climbed its flanks spent their
+fury below the summit; for, at variance with most meteorological
+speculation, an eternal calm seemed to invest this serene altitude.
+The few Alpine flowers seldom thrilled their petals to a passing
+breeze; rain and snow fell alike perpendicularly, heavily, and
+monotonously over the granite bowlders scattered along its brown
+expanse.  Although by actual measurement an inconsiderable
+elevation of the Sierran range, and a mere shoulder of the nearest
+white-faced peak that glimmered in the west, it seemed to lie so
+near the quiet, passionless stars, that at night it caught something
+of their calm remoteness.
+
+The articulate utterance of such a locality should have been a
+whisper; a laugh or exclamation was discordant; and the ordinary
+tones of the human voice on the night of the 15th of May, 1868, had
+a grotesque incongruity.
+
+In the thick darkness that clothed the mountain that night, the
+human figure would have been lost, or confounded with the outlines
+of outlying bowlders, which at such times took upon themselves the
+vague semblance of men and animals.  Hence the voices in the
+following colloquy seemed the more grotesque and incongruous from
+being the apparent expression of an upright monolith, ten feet
+high, on the right, and another mass of granite, that, reclining,
+peeped over the verge.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Hello yourself!"
+
+"You're late."
+
+"I lost the trail, and climbed up the slide."
+
+Here followed a stumble, the clatter of stones down the mountain-
+side, and an oath so very human and undignified that it at once
+relieved the bowlders of any complicity of expression.  The voices,
+too, were close together now, and unexpectedly in quite another
+locality.
+
+"Anything up?"
+
+"Looey Napoleon's declared war agin Germany."
+
+"Sho-o-o!"
+
+Notwithstanding this exclamation, the interest of the latter
+speaker was evidently only polite and perfunctory.  What, indeed,
+were the political convulsions of the Old World to the dwellers on
+this serene, isolated eminence of the New?
+
+"I reckon it's so," continued the first voice.  "French Pete and
+that thar feller that keeps the Dutch grocery hev hed a row over
+it; emptied their six-shooters into each other.  The Dutchman's got
+two balls in his leg, and the Frenchman's got an onnessary
+buttonhole in his shirt-buzzum, and hez caved in."
+
+This concise, local corroboration of the conflict of remote
+nations, however confirmatory, did not appear to excite any further
+interest.  Even the last speaker, now that he was in this calm,
+dispassionate atmosphere, seemed to lose his own concern in his
+tidings, and to have abandoned every thing of a sensational and
+lower-worldly character in the pines below.  There were a few
+moments of absolute silence, and then another stumble.  But now the
+voices of both speakers were quite patient and philosophical.
+
+"Hold on, and I'll strike a light," said the second speaker.  "I
+brought a lantern along, but I didn't light up.  I kem out afore
+sundown, and you know how it allers is up yer.  I didn't want it,
+and didn't keer to light up.  I forgot you're always a little dazed
+and strange-like when you first come up."
+
+There was a crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which
+the surrounding darkness seemed to resent.  The faces of the two
+men thus revealed were singularly alike.  The same thin, narrow
+outline of jaw and temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same
+brown growth of curly beard and mustache, which concealed the
+mouth, and hid what might have been any individual idiosyncrasy of
+thought or expression,--showed them to be brothers, or better known
+as the "Twins of Table Mountain."  A certain animation in the face
+of the second speaker,--the first-comer,--a certain light in his
+eye, might have at first distinguished him; but even this faded out
+in the steady glow of the lantern, and had no value as a permanent
+distinction, for, by the time they had reached the western verge of
+the mountain, the two faces had settled into a homogeneous calmness
+and melancholy.
+
+The vague horizon of darkness, that a few feet from the lantern
+still encompassed them, gave no indication of their progress, until
+their feet actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the
+roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the
+mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the
+deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit.
+Had it not been for the windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a
+few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of
+human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its
+monotonous dead level.  And, when they descended a dozen well-worn
+steps to the door of their cabin, they left the summit, as before,
+lonely, silent, motionless, its long level uninterrupted, basking
+in the cold light of the stars.
+
+The simile of a "nest" as applied to the cabin of the brothers was
+no mere figure of speech as the light of the lantern first flashed
+upon it.  The narrow ledge before the door was strewn with
+feathers.  A suggestion that it might be the home and haunt of
+predatory birds was promptly checked by the spectacle of the
+nailed-up carcasses of a dozen hawks against the walls, and the
+outspread wings of an extended eagle emblazoning the gable above
+the door, like an armorial bearing.  Within the cabin the walls and
+chimney-piece were dazzlingly bedecked with the party-colored wings
+of jays, yellow-birds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and the poly-
+tinted wood-duck.  Yet in that dry, highly-rarefied atmosphere,
+there was not the slightest suggestion of odor or decay.
+
+The first speaker hung the lantern upon a hook that dangled from
+the rafters, and, going to the broad chimney, kicked the half-dead
+embers into a sudden resentful blaze.  He then opened a rude
+cupboard, and, without looking around, called, "Ruth!"
+
+The second speaker turned his head from the open doorway where he
+was leaning, as if listening to something in the darkness, and
+answered abstractedly,--
+
+"Rand!"
+
+"I don't believe you have touched grub to-day!"
+
+Ruth grunted out some indifferent reply.
+
+"Thar hezen't been a slice cut off that bacon since I left,"
+continued Rand, bringing a side of bacon and some biscuits from the
+cupboard, and applying himself to the discussion of them at the
+table.  "You're gettin' off yer feet, Ruth.  What's up?"
+
+Ruth replied by taking an uninvited seat beside him, and resting
+his chin on the palms of his hands.  He did not eat, but simply
+transferred his inattention from the door to the table.
+
+"You're workin' too many hours in the shaft," continued Rand.
+"You're always up to some such d--n fool business when I'm not
+yer."
+
+"I dipped a little west to-day," Ruth went on, without heeding the
+brotherly remonstrance, "and struck quartz and pyrites."
+
+"Thet's you!--allers dippin' west or east for quartz and the color,
+instead of keeping on plumb down to the 'cement'!"*
+
+
+* The local name for gold-bearing alluvial drift,--the bed of a
+prehistoric river.
+
+
+"We've been three years digging for cement," said Ruth, more in
+abstraction than in reproach,--"three years!"
+
+"And we may be three years more,--may be only three days.  Why, you
+couldn't be more impatient if--if--if you lived in a valley."
+
+Delivering this tremendous comparison as an unanswerable climax,
+Rand applied himself once more to his repast.  Ruth, after a
+moment's pause, without speaking or looking up, disengaged his hand
+from under his chin, and slid it along, palm uppermost, on the
+table beside his brother.  Thereupon Rand slowly reached forward
+his left hand, the right being engaged in conveying victual to his
+mouth, and laid it on his brother's palm.  The act was evidently an
+habitual, half mechanical one; for in a few moments the hands were
+as gently disengaged, without comment or expression.  At last Rand
+leaned back in his chair, laid down his knife and fork, and,
+complacently loosening the belt that held his revolver, threw it
+and the weapon on his bed.  Taking out his pipe, and chipping some
+tobacco on the table, he said carelessly, "I came a piece through
+the woods with Mornie just now."
+
+The face that Ruth turned upon his brother was very distinct in its
+expression at that moment, and quite belied the popular theory that
+the twins could not be told apart.  "Thet gal," continued Rand,
+without looking up, "is either flighty, or--or suthin'," he added
+in vague disgust, pushing the table from him as if it were the lady
+in question.  "Don't tell me!"
+
+Ruth's eyes quickly sought his brother's, and were as quickly
+averted, as he asked hurriedly, "How?"
+
+"What gets me," continued Rand in a petulant non sequitur, "is that
+YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer,
+permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and
+promanadin', and swoppin' sentiments and mottoes."
+
+Ruth tried to contradict his blushing face with a laugh of worldly
+indifference.
+
+"She came up yer on a sort of pasear."
+
+"Oh, yes!--a short cut to the creek," interpolated Rand satirically.
+
+"Last Tuesday or Wednesday," continued Ruth, with affected
+forgetfulness.
+
+"Oh, in course, Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday!  You've so many
+folks climbing up this yer mountain to call on ye," continued the
+ironical Rand, "that you disremember; only you remembered enough
+not to tell me.  SHE did.  She took me for you, or pretended to."
+
+The color dropped from Ruth's cheek.
+
+"Took you for me?" he asked, with an awkward laugh.
+
+"Yes," sneered Rand; "chirped and chattered away about OUR picnic,
+OUR nose-gays, and lord knows what!  Said she'd keep them blue-
+jay's wings, and wear 'em in her hat.  Spouted poetry, too,--the
+same sort o' rot you get off now and then."
+
+Ruth laughed again, but rather ostentatiously and nervously.
+
+"Ruth, look yer!"
+
+Ruth faced his brother.
+
+"What's your little game?  Do you mean to say you don't know what
+thet gal is?  Do you mean to say you don't know thet she's the
+laughing-stock of the Ferry; thet her father's a d----d old fool,
+and her mother's a drunkard and worse; thet she's got any right to
+be hanging round yer?  You can't mean to marry her, even if you
+kalkilate to turn me out to do it, for she wouldn't live alone with
+ye up here.  'Tain't her kind.  And if I thought you was thinking
+of--"
+
+"What?" said Ruth, turning upon his brother quickly.
+
+"Oh, thet's right! holler; swear and yell, and break things, do!
+Tear round!" continued Rand, kicking his boots off in a corner,
+"just because I ask you a civil question.  That's brotherly," he
+added, jerking his chair away against the side of the cabin, "ain't
+it?"
+
+"She's not to blame because her mother drinks, and her father's a
+shyster," said Ruth earnestly and strongly.  "The men who make her
+the laughing-stock of the Ferry tried to make her something worse,
+and failed, and take this sneak's revenge on her.  'Laughing-
+stock!'  Yes, they knew she could turn the tables on them."
+
+"Of course; go on!  She's better than me.  I know I'm a fratricide,
+that's what I am," said Rand, throwing himself on the upper of the
+two berths that formed the bedstead of the cabin.
+
+"I've seen her three times," continued Ruth.
+
+"And you've known me twenty years," interrupted his brother.
+
+Ruth turned on his heel, and walked towards the door.
+
+"That's right; go on!  Why don't you get the chalk?"
+
+Ruth made no reply.  Rand descended from the bed, and, taking a
+piece of chalk from the shelf, drew a line on the floor, dividing
+the cabin in two equal parts.
+
+"You can have the east half," he said, as he climbed slowly back
+into bed.
+
+This mysterious rite was the usual termination of a quarrel between
+the twins.  Each man kept his half of the cabin until the feud was
+forgotten.  It was the mark of silence and separation, over which
+no words of recrimination, argument, or even explanation, were
+delivered, until it was effaced by one or the other.  This was
+considered equivalent to apology or reconciliation, which each were
+equally bound in honor to accept.
+
+It may be remarked that the floor was much whiter at this line of
+demarcation, and under the fresh chalk-line appeared the faint
+evidences of one recently effaced.
+
+Without apparently heeding this potential ceremony, Ruth remained
+leaning against the doorway, looking upon the night, the bulk of
+whose profundity and blackness seemed to be gathered below him.
+The vault above was serene and tranquil, with a few large far-
+spaced stars; the abyss beneath, untroubled by sight or sound.
+Stepping out upon the ledge, he leaned far over the shelf that
+sustained their cabin, and listened.  A faint rhythmical roll,
+rising and falling in long undulations against the invisible
+horizon, to his accustomed ears told him the wind was blowing among
+the pines in the valley.  Yet, mingling with this familiar sound,
+his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect a stranger inarticulate
+murmur, as of confused and excited voices, swelling up from the
+mysterious depths to the stars above, and again swallowed up in the
+gulfs of silence below.  He was roused from a consideration of this
+phenomenon by a faint glow towards the east, which at last
+brightened, until the dark outline of the distant walls of the
+valley stood out against the sky.  Were his other senses
+participating in the delusion of his ears? for with the brightening
+light came the faint odor of burning timber.
+
+His face grew anxious as he gazed.  At last he rose, and re-entered
+the cabin.  His eyes fell upon the faint chalk-mark, and, taking
+his soft felt hat from his head, with a few practical sweeps of the
+brim he brushed away the ominous record of their late estrangement.
+Going to the bed whereon Rand lay stretched, open-eyed, he would
+have laid his hand upon his arm lightly; but the brother's fingers
+sought and clasped his own.  "Get up," he said quietly; "there's a
+strange fire in the Canyon head that I can't make out."
+
+Rand slowly clambered from his shelf, and hand in hand the brothers
+stood upon the ledge.  "It's a right smart chance beyond the Ferry,
+and a piece beyond the Mill, too," said Rand, shading his eyes with
+his hand, from force of habit.  "It's in the woods where--"  He
+would have added where he met Mornie; but it was a point of honor
+with the twins, after reconciliation, not to allude to any topic of
+their recent disagreement.
+
+Ruth dropped his brother's hand.  "It doesn't smell like the
+woods," he said slowly.
+
+"Smell!" repeated Rand incredulously.  "Why, it's twenty miles in a
+bee-line yonder.  Smell, indeed!"
+
+Ruth was silent, but presently fell to listening again with his
+former abstraction.  "You don't hear anything, do you?" he asked
+after a pause.
+
+"It's blowin' in the pines on the river," said Rand shortly.
+
+"You don't hear anything else?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing like--like--like--"
+
+Rand, who had been listening with an intensity that distorted the
+left side of his face, interrupted him impatiently.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"Like a woman sobbin'?"
+
+"Ruth," said Rand, suddenly looking up in his brother's face,
+"what's gone of you?"
+
+Ruth laughed.  "The fire's out," he said, abruptly re-entering the
+cabin.  "I'm goin' to turn in."
+
+Rand, following his brother half reproachfully, saw him divest
+himself of his clothing, and roll himself in the blankets of his
+bed.
+
+"Good-night, Randy!"
+
+Rand hesitated.  He would have liked to ask his brother another
+question; but there was clearly nothing to be done but follow his
+example.
+
+"Good-night, Ruthy!" he said, and put out the light.  As he did so,
+the glow in the eastern horizon faded, too, and darkness seemed to
+well up from the depths below, and, flowing in the open door,
+wrapped them in deeper slumber.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+THE CLOUDS GATHER.
+
+
+Twelve months had elapsed since the quarrel and reconciliation,
+during which interval no reference was made by either of the
+brothers to the cause which had provoked it.  Rand was at work in
+the shaft, Ruth having that morning undertaken the replenishment of
+the larder with game from the wooded skirt of the mountain.  Rand
+had taken advantage of his brother's absence to "prospect" in the
+"drift,"--a proceeding utterly at variance with his previous
+condemnation of all such speculative essay; but Rand, despite his
+assumption of a superior practical nature, was not above certain
+local superstitions.  Having that morning put on his gray flannel
+shirt wrong side out,--an abstraction recognized among the miners
+as the sure forerunner of divination and treasure-discovery,--he
+could not forego that opportunity of trying his luck, without
+hazarding a dangerous example.  He was also conscious of feeling
+"chipper,"--another local expression for buoyancy of spirit, not
+common to men who work fifty feet below the surface, without the
+stimulus of air and sunshine, and not to be overlooked as an
+important factor in fortunate adventure.  Nevertheless, noon came
+without the discovery of any treasure.  He had attacked the walls
+on either side of the lateral "drift" skilfully, so as to expose
+their quality without destroying their cohesive integrity, but had
+found nothing.  Once or twice, returning to the shaft for rest and
+air, its grim silence had seemed to him pervaded with some vague
+echo of cheerful holiday voices above.  This set him to thinking of
+his brother's equally extravagant fancy of the wailing voices in
+the air on the night of the fire, and of his attributing it to a
+lover's abstraction.
+
+"I laid it to his being struck after that gal; and yet," Rand
+continued to himself, "here's me, who haven't been foolin' round no
+gal, and dog my skin if I didn't think I heard one singin' up
+thar!"  He put his foot on the lower round of the ladder, paused,
+and slowly ascended a dozen steps.  Here he paused again.  All at
+once the whole shaft was filled with the musical vibrations of a
+woman's song.  Seizing the rope that hung idly from the windlass,
+he half climbed, half swung himself, to the surface.
+
+The voice was there; but the sudden transition to the dazzling
+level before him at first blinded his eyes, so that he took in only
+by degrees the unwonted spectacle of the singer,--a pretty girl,
+standing on tiptoe on a bowlder not a dozen yards from him, utterly
+absorbed in tying a gayly-striped neckerchief, evidently taken from
+her own plump throat, to the halliards of a freshly-cut hickory-
+pole newly reared as a flag-staff beside her.  The hickory-pole,
+the halliards, the fluttering scarf, the young lady herself, were
+all glaring innovations on the familiar landscape; but Rand, with
+his hand still on the rope, silently and demurely enjoyed it.
+
+For the better understanding of the general reader, who does not
+live on an isolated mountain, it may be observed that the young
+lady's position on the rock exhibited some study of POSE, and a
+certain exaggeration of attitude, that betrayed the habit of an
+audience; also that her voice had an artificial accent that was not
+wholly unconscious, even in this lofty solitude.  Yet the very next
+moment, when she turned, and caught Rand's eye fixed upon her, she
+started naturally, colored slightly, uttered that feminine
+adjuration, "Good Lord! gracious! goodness me!" which is seldom
+used in reference to its effect upon the hearer, and skipped
+instantly from the bowlder to the ground.  Here, however, she
+alighted in a POSE, brought the right heel of her neatly-fitting
+left boot closely into the hollowed side of her right instep, at
+the same moment deftly caught her flying skirt, whipped it around
+her ankles, and, slightly raising it behind, permitted the chaste
+display of an inch or two of frilled white petticoat.  The most
+irreverent critic of the sex will, I think, admit that it has some
+movements that are automatic.
+
+"Hope I didn't disturb ye," said Rand, pointing to the flag-staff.
+
+The young lady slightly turned her head.  "No," she said; "but I
+didn't know anybody was here, of course.  Our PARTY"--she
+emphasized the word, and accompanied it with a look toward the
+further extremity of the plateau, to show she was not alone--"our
+party climbed this ridge, and put up this pole as a sign to show
+they did it."  The ridiculous self-complacency of this record in
+the face of a man who was evidently a dweller on the mountain
+apparently struck her for the first time.  "We didn't know," she
+stammered, looking at the shaft from which Rand had emerged, "that--
+that--"  She stopped, and, glancing again towards the distant
+range where her friends had disappeared, began to edge away.
+
+"They can't be far off," interposed Rand quietly, as if it were the
+most natural thing in the world for the lady to be there.  "Table
+Mountain ain't as big as all that.  Don't you be scared!  So you
+thought nobody lived up here?"
+
+She turned upon him a pair of honest hazel eyes, which not only
+contradicted the somewhat meretricious smartness of her dress, but
+was utterly inconsistent with the palpable artificial color of her
+hair,--an obvious imitation of a certain popular fashion then known
+in artistic circles as the "British Blonde,"--and began to
+ostentatiously resume a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves.  Having,
+as it were, thus indicated her standing and respectability, and put
+an immeasurable distance between herself and her bold interlocutor,
+she said impressively, "We evidently made a mistake: I will rejoin
+our party, who will, of course, apologize."
+
+"What's your hurry?" said the imperturbable Rand, disengaging
+himself from the rope, and walking towards her.  "As long as you're
+up here, you might stop a spell."
+
+"I have no wish to intrude; that is, our party certainly has not,"
+continued the young lady, pulling the tight gloves, and smoothing
+the plump, almost bursting fingers, with an affectation of
+fashionable ease.
+
+"Oh! I haven't any thing to do just now," said Rand, "and it's
+about grub time, I reckon.  Yes, I live here, Ruth and me,--right
+here."
+
+The young woman glanced at the shaft.
+
+"No, not down there," said Rand, following her eye, with a laugh.
+"Come here, and I'll show you."
+
+A strong desire to keep up an appearance of genteel reserve, and an
+equally strong inclination to enjoy the adventurous company of this
+good-looking, hearty young fellow, made her hesitate.  Perhaps she
+regretted having undertaken a role of such dignity at the
+beginning: she could have been so perfectly natural with this
+perfectly natural man, whereas any relaxation now might increase
+his familiarity.  And yet she was not without a vague suspicion
+that her dignity and her gloves were alike thrown away on him,--a
+fact made the more evident when Rand stepped to her side, and,
+without any apparent consciousness of disrespect or gallantry, laid
+his large hand, half persuasively, half fraternally, upon her
+shoulder, and said, "Oh, come along, do!"
+
+The simple act either exceeded the limits of her forbearance, or
+decided the course of her subsequent behavior.  She instantly
+stepped back a single pace, and drew her left foot slowly and
+deliberately after her; then she fixed her eyes and uplifted
+eyebrows upon the daring hand, and, taking it by the ends of her
+thumb and forefinger, lifted it, and dropped it in mid-air.  She
+then folded her arms.  It was the indignant gesture with which
+"Alice," the Pride of Dumballin Village, received the loathsome
+advances of the bloated aristocrat, Sir Parkyns Parkyn, and had at
+Marysville, a few nights before, brought down the house.
+
+This effect was, I think, however, lost upon Rand.  The slight
+color that rose to his cheek as he looked down upon his clay-soiled
+hands was due to the belief that he had really contaminated her
+outward superfine person.  But his color quickly passed: his frank,
+boyish smile returned, as he said, "It'll rub off.  Lord, don't
+mind that!  Thar, now--come on!"
+
+The young woman bit her lip.  Then nature triumphed; and she
+laughed, although a little scornfully.  And then Providence
+assisted her with the sudden presentation of two figures, a man and
+woman, slowly climbing up over the mountain verge, not far from
+them.  With a cry of "There's Sol, now!" she forgot her dignity and
+her confusion, and ran towards them.
+
+Rand stood looking after her neat figure, less concerned in the
+advent of the strangers than in her sudden caprice.  He was not so
+young and inexperienced but that he noted certain ambiguities in
+her dress and manner: he was by no means impressed by her dignity.
+But he could not help watching her as she appeared to be volubly
+recounting her late interview to her companions; and, still
+unconscious of any impropriety or obtrusiveness, he lounged down
+lazily towards her.  Her humor had evidently changed; for she
+turned an honest, pleased face upon him, as she girlishly attempted
+to drag the strangers forward.
+
+The man was plump and short; unlike the natives of the locality, he
+was closely cropped and shaven, as if to keep down the strong blue-
+blackness of his beard and hair, which nevertheless asserted itself
+over his round cheeks and upper lip like a tattooing of Indian ink.
+The woman at his side was reserved and indistinctive, with that
+appearance of being an unenthusiastic family servant peculiar to
+some men's wives.  When Rand was within a few feet of him, he
+started, struck a theatrical attitude, and, shading his eyes with
+his hand, cried, "What, do me eyes deceive me!" burst into a hearty
+laugh, darted forward, seized Rand's hand, and shook it briskly.
+
+"Pinkney, Pinkney, my boy! how are you?  And this is your little
+'prop'? your quarter-section, your country-seat, that we've been
+trespassing on, eh?  A nice little spot, cool, sequestered,
+remote,--a trifle unimproved; carriage-road as yet unfinished.  Ha,
+ha!  But to think of our making a discovery of this inaccessible
+mountain, climbing it, sir, for two mortal hours, christening it
+'Sol's Peak,' getting up a flag-pole, unfurling our standard to the
+breeze, sir, and then, by Gad, winding up by finding Pinkney, the
+festive Pinkney, living on it at home!"
+
+Completely surprised, but still perfectly good-humored, Rand shook
+the stranger's right hand warmly, and received on his broad
+shoulders a welcoming thwack from the left, without question.  "She
+don't mind her friends making free with ME evidently," said Rand to
+himself, as he tried to suggest that fact to the young lady in a
+meaning glance.
+
+The stranger noted his glance, and suddenly passed his hand
+thoughtfully over his shaven cheeks.  "No," he said--"yes, surely,
+I forget--yes, I see; of course you don't!  Rosy," turning to his
+wife, "of course Pinkney doesn't know Phemie, eh?"
+
+"No, nor ME either, Sol," said that lady warningly.
+
+"Certainly!" continued Sol.  "It's his misfortune.  You weren't
+with me at Gold Hill.--Allow me," he said, turning to Rand, "to
+present Mrs. Sol Saunders, wife of the undersigned, and Miss
+Euphemia Neville, otherwise known as the 'Marysville Pet,' the best
+variety actress known on the provincial boards.  Played Ophelia at
+Marysville, Friday; domestic drama at Gold Hill, Saturday; Sunday
+night, four songs in character, different dress each time, and a
+clog-dance.  The best clog-dance on the Pacific Slope," he added in
+a stage aside.  "The minstrels are crazy to get her in 'Frisco.
+But money can't buy her--prefers the legitimate drama to this sort
+of thing."  Here he took a few steps of a jig, to which the
+"Marysville Pet" beat time with her feet, and concluded with a
+laugh and a wink--the combined expression of an artist's admiration
+for her ability, and a man of the world's scepticism of feminine
+ambition.
+
+Miss Euphemia responded to the formal introduction by extending her
+hand frankly with a re-assuring smile to Rand, and an utter
+obliviousness of her former hauteur.  Rand shook it warmly, and
+then dropped carelessly on a rock beside them.
+
+"And you never told me you lived up here in the attic, you rascal!"
+continued Sol with a laugh.
+
+"No," replied Rand simply.  "How could I?  I never saw you before,
+that I remember."
+
+Miss Euphemia stared at Sol.  Mrs. Sol looked up in her lord's
+face, and folded her arms in a resigned expression.  Sol rose to
+his feet again, and shaded his eyes with his hand, but this time
+quite seriously, and gazed at Rand's smiling face.
+
+"Good Lord!  Do you mean to say your name isn't Pinkney?" he asked,
+with a half embarrassed laugh.
+
+"It IS Pinkney," said Rand; "but I never met you before."
+
+"Didn't you come to see a young lady that joined my troupe at Gold
+Hill last month, and say you'd meet me at Keeler's Ferry in a day
+or two?"
+
+"No-o-o," said Rand, with a good-humored laugh.  "I haven't left
+this mountain for two months."
+
+He might have added more; but his attention was directed to Miss
+Euphemia, who during this short dialogue, having stuffed
+alternately her handkerchief, the corner of her mantle, and her
+gloves, into her mouth, restrained herself no longer, but gave way
+to an uncontrollable fit of laughter.  "O Sol!" she gasped
+explanatorily, as she threw herself alternately against him, Mrs.
+Sol, and a bowlder, "you'll kill me yet!  O Lord! first we take
+possession of this man's property, then we claim HIM."  The
+contemplation of this humorous climax affected her so that she was
+fain at last to walk away, and confide the rest of her speech to
+space.
+
+Sol joined in the laugh until his wife plucked his sleeve, and
+whispered something in his ear.  In an instant his face became at
+once mysterious and demure.  "I owe you an apology," he said,
+turning to Rand, but in a voice ostentatiously pitched high enough
+for Miss Euphemia to overhear: "I see I have made a mistake.  A
+resemblance--only a mere resemblance, as I look at you now--led me
+astray.  Of course you don't know any young lady in the profession?"
+
+"Of course he doesn't, Sol," said Miss Euphemia.  "I could have
+told you that.  He didn't even know ME!"
+
+The voice and mock-heroic attitude of the speaker was enough to
+relieve the general embarrassment with a laugh.  Rand, now
+pleasantly conscious of only Miss Euphemia's presence, again
+offered the hospitality of his cabin, with the polite recognition
+of her friends in the sentence, "and you might as well come along
+too."
+
+"But won't we incommode the lady of the house?" said Mrs. Sol
+politely.
+
+"What lady of the house"? said Rand almost angrily.
+
+"Why, Ruth, you know!"
+
+It was Rand's turn to become hilarious.  "Ruth," he said, "is short
+for Rutherford, my brother."  His laugh, however, was echoed only
+by Euphemia.
+
+"Then you have a brother?" said Mrs. Sol benignly.
+
+"Yes," said Rand: "he will be here soon."  A sudden thought dropped
+the color from his cheek.  "Look here," he said, turning impulsively
+upon Sol.  "I have a brother, a twin-brother.  It couldn't be HIM--"
+
+Sol was conscious of a significant feminine pressure on his right
+arm.  He was equal to the emergency.  "I think not," he said
+dubiously, "unless your brother's hair is much darker than yours.
+Yes! now I look at you, yours is brown.  He has a mole on his right
+cheek hasn't he?"
+
+The red came quickly back to Rand's boyish face.  He laughed.  "No,
+sir: my brother's hair is, if any thing, a shade lighter than mine,
+and nary mole.  Come along!"
+
+And leading the way, Rand disclosed the narrow steps winding down
+to the shelf on which the cabin hung.  "Be careful," said Rand,
+taking the now unresisting hand of the "Marysville Pet" as they
+descended: "a step that way, and down you go two thousand feet on
+the top of a pine-tree."
+
+But the girl's slight cry of alarm was presently changed to one of
+unaffected pleasure as they stood on the rocky platform.  "It isn't
+a house: it's a NEST, and the loveliest!" said Euphemia breathlessly.
+
+"It's a scene, a perfect scene, sir!" said Sol, enraptured.  "I
+shall take the liberty of bringing my scene-painter to sketch it
+some day.  It would do for 'The Mountaineer's Bride' superbly, or,"
+continued the little man, warming through the blue-black border of
+his face with professional enthusiasm, "it's enough to make a play
+itself.  'The Cot on the Crags.'  Last scene--moonlight--the
+struggle on the ledge!  The Lady of the Crags throws herself from
+the beetling heights!--A shriek from the depths--a woman's wail!"
+
+"Dry up!" sharply interrupted Rand, to whom this speech recalled
+his brother's half-forgotten strangeness.  "Look at the prospect."
+
+In the full noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea
+of pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost
+itself in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon.  The thronging woods
+choked every defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with
+its dark-green tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit
+and bare.  Here and there were profound olive depths, over which
+the gray hawk hung lazily, and into which blue jays dipped.  A
+faint, dull yellowish streak marked an occasional watercourse; a
+deeper reddish ribbon, the mountain road and its overhanging murky
+cloud of dust.
+
+"Is it quite safe here?" asked Mrs. Sol, eying the little cabin.
+"I mean from storms?"
+
+"It never blows up here," replied Rand, "and nothing happens."
+
+"It must be lovely," said Euphemia, clasping her hands.
+
+"It IS that," said Rand proudly.  "It's four years since Ruth and I
+took up this yer claim, and raised this shanty.  In that four years
+we haven't left it alone a night, or cared to.  It's only big
+enough for two, and them two must be brothers.  It wouldn't do for
+mere pardners to live here alone,--they couldn't do it.  It
+wouldn't be exactly the thing for man and wife to shut themselves
+up here alone.  But Ruth and me know each other's ways, and here
+we'll stay until we've made a pile.  We sometimes--one of us--takes
+a pasear to the Ferry to buy provisions; but we're glad to crawl up
+to the back of old 'Table' at night."
+
+"You're quite out of the world here, then?" suggested Mrs. Sol.
+
+"That's it, just it!  We're out of the world,--out of rows, out of
+liquor, out of cards, out of bad company, out of temptation.
+Cussedness and foolishness hez got to follow us up here to find us,
+and there's too many ready to climb down to them things to tempt
+'em to come up to us."
+
+There was a little boyish conceit in his tone, as he stood there,
+not altogether unbecoming his fresh color and simplicity.  Yet,
+when his eyes met those of Miss Euphemia, he colored, he hardly
+knew why, and the young lady herself blushed rosily.
+
+When the neat cabin, with its decorated walls, and squirrel and
+wild-cat skins, was duly admired, the luncheon-basket of the
+Saunders party was re-enforced by provisions from Rand's larder,
+and spread upon the ledge; the dimensions of the cabin not
+admitting four.  Under the potent influence of a bottle, Sol became
+hilarious and professional.  The "Pet" was induced to favor the
+company with a recitation, and, under the plea of teaching Rand, to
+perform the clog-dance with both gentlemen.  Then there was an
+interval, in which Rand and Euphemia wandered a little way down the
+mountain-side to gather laurel, leaving Mr. Sol to his siesta on a
+rock, and Mrs. Sol to take some knitting from the basket, and sit
+beside him.
+
+When Rand and his companion had disappeared, Mrs. Sol nudged her
+sleeping partner.  "Do you think that WAS the brother?"
+
+Sol yawned.  "Sure of it.  They're as like as two peas, in looks."
+
+"Why didn't you tell him so, then?"
+
+"Will you tell me, my dear, why you stopped me when I began?"
+
+"Because something was said about Ruth being here; and I supposed
+Ruth was a woman, and perhaps Pinkney's wife, and knew you'd be
+putting your foot in it by talking of that other woman.  I supposed
+it was for fear of that he denied knowing you."
+
+"Well, when HE--this Rand--told me he had a twin-brother, he looked
+so frightened that I knew he knew nothing of his brother's doings
+with that woman, and I threw him off the scent.  He's a good
+fellow, but awfully green, and I didn't want to worry him with
+tales.  I like him, and I think Phemie does too."
+
+"Nonsense!  He's a conceited prig!  Did you hear his sermon on the
+world and its temptations?  I wonder if he thought temptation had
+come up to him in the person of us professionals out on a picnic.
+I think it was positively rude."
+
+"My dear woman, you're always seeing slights and insults.  I tell
+you he's taken a shine to Phemie; and he's as good as four seats
+and a bouquet to that child next Wednesday evening, to say nothing
+of the eclat of getting this St. Simeon--what do you call him?--
+Stalactites?"
+
+"Stylites," suggested Mrs. Sol.
+
+"Stylites, off from his pillar here.  I'll have a paragraph in the
+paper, that the hermit crabs of Table Mountain--"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Sol!"
+
+"The hermit twins of Table Mountain bespoke the chaste performance."
+
+"One of them being the protector of the well-known Mornie Nixon,"
+responded Mrs. Sol, viciously accenting the name with her knitting-
+needles.
+
+"Rosy, you're unjust.  You're prejudiced by the reports of the
+town.  Mr. Pinkney's interest in her may be a purely artistic one,
+although mistaken.  She'll never make a good variety-actress: she's
+too heavy.  And the boys don't give her a fair show.  No woman can
+make a debut in my version of 'Somnambula,' and have the front row
+in the pit say to her in the sleepwalking scene, 'You're out rather
+late, Mornie.  Kinder forgot to put on your things, didn't you?
+Mother sick, I suppose, and you're goin' for more gin?  Hurry
+along, or you'll ketch it when ye get home.'  Why, you couldn't do
+it yourself, Rosy!"
+
+To which Mrs. Sol's illogical climax was, that, "bad as Rutherford
+might be, this Sunday-school superintendent, Rand, was worse."
+
+Rand and his companion returned late, but in high spirits.  There
+was an unnecessary effusiveness in the way in which Euphemia kissed
+Mrs. Sol,--the one woman present, who UNDERSTOOD, and was to be
+propitiated,--which did not tend to increase Mrs. Sol's good humor.
+She had her basket packed all ready for departure; and even the
+earnest solicitation of Rand, that they would defer their going
+until sunset, produced no effect.
+
+"Mr. Rand--Mr. Pinkney, I mean--says the sunsets here are so
+lovely," pleaded Euphemia.
+
+"There is a rehearsal at seven o'clock, and we have no time to
+lose," said Mrs. Sol significantly.
+
+"I forgot to say," said the "Marysville Pet" timidly, glancing at
+Mrs. Sol, "that Mr. Rand says he will bring his brother on
+Wednesday night, and wants four seats in front, so as not to be
+crowded."
+
+Sol shook the young man's hand warmly.  "You'll not regret it, sir:
+it's a surprising, a remarkable performance."
+
+"I'd like to go a piece down the mountain with you," said Rand,
+with evident sincerity, looking at Miss Euphemia; "but Ruth isn't
+here yet, and we make a rule never to leave the place alone.  I'll
+show you the slide: it's the quickest way to go down.  If you meet
+any one who looks like me, and talks like me, call him 'Ruth,' and
+tell him I'm waitin' for him yer."
+
+Miss Phemia, the last to go, standing on the verge of the
+declivity, here remarked, with a dangerous smile, that, if she met
+any one who bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him
+with her,--a playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand's
+cheek.  When she added to this the greater audacity of kissing her
+hand to him, the young hermit actually turned away in sheer
+embarrassment.  When he looked around again, she was gone, and for
+the first time in his experience the mountain seemed barren and
+lonely.
+
+The too sympathetic reader who would rashly deduce from this any
+newly awakened sentiment in the virgin heart of Rand would quite
+misapprehend that peculiar young man.  That singular mixture of
+boyish inexperience and mature doubt and disbelief, which was
+partly the result of his temperament, and partly of his cloistered
+life on the mountain, made him regard his late companions, now that
+they were gone, and his intimacy with them, with remorseful
+distrust.  The mountain was barren and lonely, because it was no
+longer HIS.  It had become a part of the great world, which four
+years ago he and his brother had put aside, and in which, as two
+self-devoted men, they walked alone.  More than that, he believed
+he had acquired some understanding of the temptations that assailed
+his brother, and the poor little vanities of the "Marysville Pet"
+were transformed into the blandishments of a Circe.  Rand, who
+would have succumbed to a wicked, superior woman, believed he was a
+saint in withstanding the foolish weakness of a simple one.
+
+
+He did not resume his work that day.  He paced the mountain,
+anxiously awaiting his brother's return, and eager to relate his
+experiences.  He would go with him to the dramatic entertainment;
+from his example and wisdom, Ruth should learn how easily
+temptation might be overcome.  But, first of all, there should be
+the fullest exchange of confidences and explanations.  The old rule
+should be rescinded for once, the old discussion in regard to
+Mornie re-opened, and Rand, having convinced his brother of error,
+would generously extend his forgiveness.
+
+The sun sank redly.  Lingering long upon the ledge before their
+cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand
+still wrapped in revery.  Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in
+the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly
+up; but Ruth came not.  The moon rose, a silver gleam on the
+farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother's prolonged
+absence, resolved to break another custom, and leave the summit, to
+seek him on the trail.  He buckled on his revolvers, seized his
+gun, when a cry from the depths arrested him.  He leaned over the
+ledge, and listened.  Again the cry arose, and this time more
+distinctly.  He held his breath: the blood settled around his heart
+in superstitious terror.  It was the wailing voice of a woman.
+
+"Ruth, Ruth! for God's sake come and help me!"
+
+The blood flew back hotly to Rand's cheek.  It was Mornie's voice.
+By leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving
+along the almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned
+trail, long since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion
+of the ledge, stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him.  Rand knew
+the trail, a dangerous one always: in its present condition a
+single mis-step would be fatal.  Would she make that mis-step?  He
+shook off a horrible temptation that seemed to be sealing his lips,
+and paralyzing his limbs, and almost screamed to her, "Drop on your
+face, hang on to the chaparral, and don't move!"
+
+In another instant, with a coil of rope around his arm, he was
+dashing down the almost perpendicular "slide."  When he had nearly
+reached the level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of
+the rope to a jutting splinter of granite, and began to "lay out,"
+and work his way laterally along the face of the mountain.
+Presently he struck the regular trail at the point from which the
+woman must have diverged.
+
+"It is Rand," she said, without lifting her head.
+
+"It is," replied Rand coldly.  "Pass the rope under your arms, and
+I'll get you back to the trail."
+
+"Where is Ruth?" she demanded again, without moving.  She was
+trembling, but with excitement rather than fear.
+
+"I don't know," returned Rand impatiently.  "Come! the ledge is
+already crumbling beneath our feet."
+
+"Let it crumble!" said the woman passionately.
+
+Rand surveyed her with profound disgust, then passed the rope
+around her waist, and half lifted, half swung her from her feet.
+In a few moments she began to mechanically help herself, and
+permitted him to guide her to a place of safety.  That reached, she
+sank down again.
+
+The rising moon shone full upon her face and figure.  Through his
+growing indignation Rand was still impressed and even startled with
+the change the few last months had wrought upon her.  In place of
+the silly, fanciful, half-hysterical hoyden whom he had known, a
+matured woman, strong in passionate self-will, fascinating in a
+kind of wild, savage beauty, looked up at him as if to read his
+very soul.
+
+"What are you staring at?" she said finally.  "Why don't you help
+me on?"
+
+"Where do you want to go?" said Rand quietly.
+
+"Where!  Up there!"--she pointed savagely to the top of the
+mountain,--"to HIM!  Where else should I go?" she said, with a
+bitter laugh.
+
+"I've told you he wasn't there," said Rand roughly.  "He hasn't
+returned."
+
+"I'll wait for him--do you hear?--wait for him; stay there till he
+comes.  If you won't help me, I'll go alone."
+
+She made a step forward but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to
+lean against the mountain for support.  Stains of travel were on
+her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning
+passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from
+beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand
+placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half
+supporting her, began the ascent.  Her head dropped wearily on his
+shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly,
+lay across his breast and hands; her grateful eyes were close to
+his; her breath was upon his cheek: and yet his only consciousness
+was of the possibly ludicrous figure he might present to his
+brother, should he meet him with Mornie Nixon in his arms.  Not a
+word was spoken by either till they reached the summit.  Relieved
+at finding his brother still absent, he turned not unkindly toward
+the helpless figure on his arm.  "I don't see what makes Ruth so
+late," he said.  "He's always here by sundown.  Perhaps--"
+
+"Perhaps he knows I'm here," said Mornie, with a bitter laugh.
+
+"I didn't say that," said Rand, "and I don't think it.  What I
+meant was, he might have met a party that was picnicking here to-
+day,--Sol. Saunders and wife, and Miss Euphemia--"
+
+Mornie flung his arm away from her with a passionate gesture.
+"THEY here!--picnicking HERE!--those people HERE!"
+
+"Yes," said Rand, unconsciously a little ashamed.  "They came here
+accidentally."
+
+Mornie's quick passion had subsided: she had sunk again wearily and
+helplessly on a rock beside him.  "I suppose," she said, with a
+weak laugh--"I suppose, they talked of ME.  I suppose they told you
+how, with their lies and fair promises, they tricked me out, and
+set me before an audience of brutes and laughing hyenas to make
+merry over.  Did they tell you of the insults that I received?--how
+the sins of my parents were flung at me instead of bouquets?  Did
+they tell you they could have spared me this, but they wanted the
+few extra dollars taken in at the door?  No!"
+
+"They said nothing of the kind," replied Rand surlily.
+
+"Then you must have stopped them.  You were horrified enough to
+know that I had dared to take the only honest way left me to make a
+living.  I know you, Randolph Pinkney!  You'd rather see Joaquin
+Muriatta, the Mexican bandit, standing before you to-night with a
+revolver, than the helpless, shamed, miserable Mornie Nixon.  And
+you can't help yourself, unless you throw me over the cliff.
+Perhaps you'd better," she said, with a bitter laugh that faded
+from her lips as she leaned, pale and breathless, against the
+bowlder.
+
+"Ruth will tell you--" began Rand.
+
+"D--n Ruth!"
+
+Rand turned away.
+
+"Stop!" she said suddenly, staggering to her feet.  "I'm sick--for
+all I know, dying.  God grant that it may be so!  But, if you are a
+man, you will help me to your cabin--to some place where I can lie
+down NOW, and be at rest.  I'm very, very tired."
+
+She paused.  She would have fallen again; but Rand, seeing more in
+her face than her voice interpreted to his sullen ears, took her
+sullenly in his arms, and carried her to the cabin.  Her eyes
+glanced around the bright party-colored walls, and a faint smile
+came to her lips as she put aside her bonnet, adorned with a
+companion pinion of the bright wings that covered it.
+
+"Which is Ruth's bed?" she asked.
+
+Rand pointed to it.
+
+"Lay me there!"
+
+Rand would have hesitated, but, with another look at her face,
+complied.
+
+She lay quite still a moment.  Presently she said, "Give me some
+brandy or whiskey!"
+
+Rand was silent and confused.
+
+"I forgot," she added half bitterly.  "I know you have not that
+commonest and cheapest of vices."
+
+She lay quite still again.  Suddenly she raised herself partly on
+her elbow, and in a strong, firm voice, said, "Rand!"
+
+"Yes, Mornie."
+
+"If you are wise and practical, as you assume to be, you will do
+what I ask you without a question.  If you do it AT ONCE, you may
+save yourself and Ruth some trouble, some mortification, and
+perhaps some remorse and sorrow.  Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Go to the nearest doctor, and bring him here with you."
+
+"But YOU!"
+
+Her voice was strong, confident, steady, and patient.  "You can
+safely leave me until then."
+
+In another moment Rand was plunging down the "slide."  But it was
+past midnight when he struggled over the last bowlder up the
+ascent, dragging the half-exhausted medical wisdom of Brown's Ferry
+on his arm.
+
+"I've been gone long, doctor," said Rand feverishly, "and she
+looked SO death-like when I left.  If we should be too late!"
+
+The doctor stopped suddenly, lifted his head, and pricked his ears
+like a hound on a peculiar scent.  "We ARE too late," he said, with
+a slight professional laugh.
+
+Indignant and horrified, Rand turned upon him.
+
+"Listen," said the doctor, lifting his hand.
+
+Rand listened, so intently that he heard the familiar moan of the
+river below; but the great stony field lay silent before him.  And
+then, borne across its bare barren bosom, like its own
+articulation, came faintly the feeble wail of a new-born babe.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+STORM.
+
+
+The doctor hurried ahead in the darkness.  Rand, who had stopped
+paralyzed at the ominous sound, started forward again mechanically;
+but as the cry arose again more distinctly, and the full
+significance of the doctor's words came to him, he faltered,
+stopped, and, with cheeks burning with shame and helpless
+indignation, sank upon a stone beside the shaft, and, burying his
+face in his hands, fairly gave way to a burst of boyish tears.  Yet
+even then the recollection that he had not cried since, years ago,
+his mother's dying hands had joined his and Ruth's childish fingers
+together, stung him fiercely, and dried his tears in angry heat
+upon his cheeks.
+
+How long he sat there, he remembered not; what he thought, he
+recalled not.  But the wildest and most extravagant plans and
+resolves availed him nothing in the face of this forever desecrated
+home, and this shameful culmination of his ambitious life on the
+mountain.  Once he thought of flight; but the reflection that he
+would still abandon his brother to shame, perhaps a self-contented
+shame, checked him hopelessly.  Could he avert the future?  He
+MUST; but how?  Yet he could only sit and stare into the darkness
+in dumb abstraction.
+
+Sitting there, his eyes fell upon a peculiar object in a crevice of
+the ledge beside the shaft.  It was the tin pail containing his
+dinner, which, according to their custom, it was the duty of the
+brother who staid above ground to prepare and place for the brother
+who worked below.  Ruth must, consequently, have put it there
+before he left that morning, and Rand had overlooked it while
+sharing the repast of the strangers at noon.  At the sight of this
+dumb witness of their mutual cares and labors, Rand sighed, half in
+brotherly sorrow, half in a selfish sense of injury done him.
+
+He took up the pail mechanically, removed its cover, and--started;
+for on top of the carefully bestowed provisions lay a little note,
+addressed to him in Ruth's peculiar scrawl.
+
+He opened it with feverish hands, held it in the light of the
+peaceful moon, and read as follows:
+
+
+DEAR, DEAR BROTHER,--When you read this, I shall be far away.  I go
+because I shall not stay to disgrace you, and because the girl that
+I brought trouble upon has gone away too, to hide her disgrace and
+mine; and where she goes, Rand, I ought to follow her, and, please
+God, I will!  I am not as wise or as good as you are, but it seems
+the best I can do; and God bless you, dear old Randy, boy!  Times
+and times again I've wanted to tell you all, and reckoned to do so;
+but whether you was sitting before me in the cabin, or working
+beside me in the drift, I couldn't get to look upon your honest
+face, dear brother, and say what things I'd been keeping from you
+so long.  I'll stay away until I've done what I ought to do, and if
+you can say, "Come, Ruth," I will come; but, until you can say it,
+the mountain is yours, Randy, boy, the mine is yours, the cabin is
+yours, ALL is yours.  Rub out the old chalk-marks, Rand, as I rub
+them out here in my--[A few words here were blurred and indistinct,
+as if the moon had suddenly become dim-eyed too].  God bless you,
+brother!
+
+P.S.--You know I mean Mornie all the time.  It's she I'm going to
+seek; but don't you think so bad of her as you do, I am so much
+worse than she.  I wanted to tell you that all along, but I didn't
+dare.  She's run away from the Ferry half crazy; said she was going
+to Sacramento, and I am going there to find her alive or dead.
+Forgive me, brother!  Don't throw this down right away; hold it in
+your hand a moment, Randy, boy, and try hard to think it's my hand
+in yours.  And so good-by, and God bless you, old Randy!
+
+From your loving brother,
+
+RUTH.
+
+
+A deep sense of relief overpowered every other feeling in Rand's
+breast.  It was clear that Ruth had not yet discovered the truth of
+Mornie's flight: he was on his way to Sacramento, and before he
+could return, Mornie could be removed.  Once despatched in some
+other direction, with Ruth once more returned and under his
+brother's guidance, the separation could be made easy and final.
+There was evidently no marriage as yet; and now, the fear of an
+immediate meeting over, there should be none.  For Rand had already
+feared this; had recalled the few infelicitous relations, legal and
+illegal, which were common to the adjoining camp,--the flagrantly
+miserable life of the husband of a San Francisco anonyma who lived
+in style at the Ferry, the shameful carousals and more shameful
+quarrels of the Frenchman and Mexican woman who "kept house" at
+"the Crossing," the awful spectacle of the three half-bred Indian
+children who played before the cabin of a fellow miner and
+townsman.  Thank Heaven, the Eagle's Nest on Table Mountain should
+never be pointed at from the valley as another--
+
+A heavy hand upon his arm brought him trembling to his feet.  He
+turned, and met the half-anxious, half-contemptuous glance of the
+doctor.
+
+"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said dryly; "but it's about time you
+or somebody else put in an appearance at that cabin.  Luckily for
+HER, she's one woman in a thousand; has had her wits about her
+better than some folks I know, and has left me little to do but
+make her comfortable.  But she's gone through too much,--fought her
+little fight too gallantly,--is altogether too much of a trump to
+be played off upon now.  So rise up out of that, young man, pick up
+your scattered faculties, and fetch a woman--some sensible creature
+of her own sex--to look after her; for, without wishing to be
+personal, I'm d----d if I trust her to the likes of you."
+
+There was no mistaking Dr. Duchesne' s voice and manner; and Rand
+was affected by it, as most people were throughout the valley of
+the Stanislaus.  But he turned upon him his frank and boyish face,
+and said simply, "But I don't know any woman, or where to get one."
+
+The doctor looked at him again.  "Well, I'll find you some one," he
+said, softening.
+
+"Thank you!" said Rand.
+
+The doctor was disappearing.  With an effort Rand recalled him.
+"One moment, doctor."  He hesitated, and his cheeks were glowing.
+"You'll please say nothing about this down there"--he pointed to
+the valley--"for a time.  And you'll say to the woman you send--"
+
+Dr. Duchesne, whose resolute lips were sealed upon the secrets of
+half Tuolumne County, interrupted him scornfully.  "I cannot answer
+for the woman--you must talk to her yourself.  As for me, generally
+I keep my professional visits to myself; but--" he laid his hand on
+Rand's arm--"if I find out you're putting on any airs to that poor
+creature, if, on my next visit, her lips or her pulse tell me you
+haven't been acting on the square to her, I'll drop a hint to
+drunken old Nixon where his daughter is hidden.  I reckon she could
+stand his brutality better than yours.  Good-night!"
+
+In another moment he was gone.  Rand, who had held back his quick
+tongue, feeling himself in the power of this man, once more alone,
+sank on a rock, and buried his face in his hands.  Recalling
+himself in a moment, he rose, wiped his hot eyelids, and staggered
+toward the cabin.  It was quite still now.  He paused on the
+topmost step, and listened: there was no sound from the ledge, or
+the Eagle's Nest that clung to it.  Half timidly he descended the
+winding steps, and paused before the door of the cabin.  "Mornie,"
+he said, in a dry, metallic voice, whose only indication of the
+presence of sickness was in the lowness of its pitch,--"Mornie!"
+There was no reply.  "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,--
+Rand.  If you want anything, you're to call me.  I am just
+outside."  Still no answer came from the silent cabin.  He pushed
+open the door gently, hesitated, and stepped over the threshold.
+
+A change in the interior of the cabin within the last few hours
+showed a new presence.  The guns, shovels, picks, and blankets had
+disappeared; the two chairs were drawn against the wall, the table
+placed by the bedside.  The swinging-lantern was shaded towards the
+bed,--the object of Rand's attention.  On that bed, his brother's
+bed, lay a helpless woman, pale from the long black hair that
+matted her damp forehead, and clung to her hollow cheeks.  Her face
+was turned to the wall, so that the softened light fell upon her
+profile, which to Rand at that moment seemed even noble and strong.
+But the next moment his eye fell upon the shoulder and arm that lay
+nearest to him, and the little bundle, swathed in flannel, that it
+clasped to her breast.  His brow grew dark as he gazed.  The
+sleeping woman moved.  Perhaps it was an instinctive consciousness
+of his presence; perhaps it was only the current of cold air
+from the opened door: but she shuddered slightly, and, still
+unconscious, drew the child as if away from HIM, and nearer to her
+breast.  The shamed blood rushed to Rand's face; and saying half
+aloud, "I'm not going to take your precious babe away from you," he
+turned in half-boyish pettishness away.  Nevertheless he came back
+again shortly to the bedside, and gazed upon them both.  She
+certainly did look altogether more ladylike, and less aggressive,
+lying there so still: sickness, that cheap refining process of some
+natures, was not unbecoming to her.  But this bundle!  A boyish
+curiosity, stronger than even his strong objection to the whole
+episode, was steadily impelling him to lift the blanket from it.
+"I suppose she'd waken if I did," said Rand; "but I'd like to know
+what right the doctor had to wrap it up in my best flannel shirt."
+This fresh grievance, the fruit of his curiosity, sent him away
+again to meditate on the ledge.  After a few moments he returned
+again, opened the cupboard at the foot of the bed softly, took
+thence a piece of chalk, and scrawled in large letters upon the
+door of the cupboard, "If you want anything, sing out: I'm just
+outside.--RAND."  This done, he took a blanket and bear-skin from
+the corner, and walked to the door.  But here he paused, looked
+back at the inscription (evidently not satisfied with it),
+returned, took up the chalk, added a line, but rubbed it out again,
+repeated this operation a few times until he produced the polite
+postscript,--"Hope you'll be better soon."  Then he retreated to
+the ledge, spread the bear-skin beside the door, and, rolling
+himself in a blanket, lit his pipe for his night-long vigil.  But
+Rand, although a martyr, a philosopher, and a moralist, was young.
+In less than ten minutes the pipe dropped from his lips, and he was
+asleep.
+
+
+He awoke with a strange sense of heat and suffocation, and with
+difficulty shook off his covering.  Rubbing his eyes, he discovered
+that an extra blanket had in some mysterious way been added in the
+night; and beneath his head was a pillow he had no recollection of
+placing there when he went to sleep.  By degrees the events of the
+past night forced themselves upon his benumbed faculties, and he
+sat up.  The sun was riding high; the door of the cabin was open.
+Stretching himself, he staggered to his feet, and looked in through
+the yawning crack at the hinges.  He rubbed his eyes again.  Was he
+still asleep, and followed by a dream of yesterday?  For there,
+even in the very attitude he remembered to have seen her sitting at
+her luncheon on the previous day, with her knitting on her lap, sat
+Mrs. Sol Saunders!  What did it mean? or had she really been
+sitting there ever since, and all the events that followed only a
+dream?
+
+A hand was laid upon his arm; and, turning, he saw the murky black
+eyes and Indian-inked beard of Sol beside him.  That gentleman put
+his finger on his lips with a theatrical gesture, and then, slowly
+retreating in the well-known manner of the buried Majesty of
+Denmark, waved him, like another Hamlet, to a remoter part of the
+ledge.  This reached, he grasped Rand warmly by the hand, shook it
+heartily, and said, "It's all right, my boy; all right!"
+
+"But--" began Rand.  The hot blood flowed to his cheeks: he
+stammered, and stopped short.
+
+"It's all right, I say!  Don't you mind!  We'll pull you through."
+
+"But, Mrs. Sol! what does she--"
+
+"Rosey has taken the matter in hand, sir; and when that woman takes
+a matter in hand, whether it's a baby or a rehearsal, sir, she
+makes it buzz."
+
+"But how did she know?" stammered Rand.
+
+"How?  Well, sir, the scene opened something like this," said Sol
+professionally.  "Curtain rises on me and Mrs. Sol.  Domestic
+interior: practicable chairs, table, books, newspapers.  Enter Dr.
+Duchesne,--eccentric character part, very popular with the boys,--
+tells off-hand affecting story of strange woman--one 'more
+unfortunate'--having baby in Eagle's Nest, lonely place on 'peaks
+of Snowdon,' midnight; eagles screaming, you know, and far down
+unfathomable depths; only attendant, cold-blooded ruffian,
+evidently father of child, with sinister designs on child and
+mother."
+
+"He didn't say THAT!" said Rand, with an agonized smile.
+
+"Order!  Sit down in front!" continued Sol easily.  "Mrs. Sol--
+highly interested, a mother herself--demands name of place.  'Table
+Mountain.'  No; it cannot be--it is!  Excitement.  Mystery!  Rosey
+rises to occasion--comes to front: 'Some one must go; I--I--will go
+myself!'  Myself, coming to center: 'Not alone, dearest; I--I will
+accompany you!'  A shriek at right upper center.  Enter the
+'Marysville Pet.'  'I have heard all.  'Tis a base calumny.  It
+cannot be HE--Randolph!  Never!'--'Dare you accompany us will!'
+Tableau.
+
+"Is Miss Euphemia--here?" gasped Rand, practical even in his
+embarrassment.
+
+"Or-r-rder!  Scene second.  Summit of mountain--moonlight Peaks of
+Snowdon in distance.  Right--lonely cabin.  Enter slowly up defile,
+Sol, Mrs. Sol, the 'Pet.'  Advance slowly to cabin.  Suppressed
+shriek from the 'Pet,' who rushes to recumbent figure--Left--
+discovered lying beside cabin-door.  ''Tis he!  Hist! he sleeps!'
+Throws blanket over him, and retires up stage--so."  Here Sol
+achieved a vile imitation of the "Pet's" most enchanting stage-
+manner.  "Mrs. Sol advances--Center--throws open door.  Shriek!
+''Tis Mornie, the lost found!'  The 'Pet' advances: 'And the father
+is?'--'Not Rand!'  The 'Pet' kneeling: 'Just Heaven, I thank thee!'
+No, it is--'"
+
+"Hush!" said Rand appealingly, looking toward the cabin.
+
+"Hush it is!" said the actor good-naturedly.  "But it's all right,
+Mr. Rand: we'll pull you through."
+
+Later in the morning, Rand learned that Mornie's ill-fated
+connection with the Star Variety Troupe had been a source of
+anxiety to Mrs. Sol, and she had reproached herself for the girl's
+infelicitous debut.
+
+"But, Lord bless you, Mr. Rand!" said Sol, "it was all in the way
+of business.  She came to us--was fresh and new.  Her chance,
+looking at it professionally, was as good as any amateur's; but
+what with her relations here, and her bein' known, she didn't take.
+We lost money on her!  It's natural she should feel a little ugly.
+We all do when we get sorter kicked back onto ourselves, and find
+we can't stand alone.  Why, you wouldn't believe it," he continued,
+with a moist twinkle of his black eyes; "but the night I lost my
+little Rosey, of diphtheria in Gold Hill, the child was down on the
+bills for a comic song; and I had to drag Mrs. Sol on, cut up as
+she was, and filled up with that much of Old Bourbon to keep her
+nerves stiff, so she could do an old gag with me to gain time, and
+make up the 'variety.'  Why, sir, when I came to the front, I was
+ugly!  And when one of the boys in the front row sang out, 'Don't
+expose that poor child to the night air, Sol,'--meaning Mrs. Sol,--
+I acted ugly.  No, sir, it's human nature; and it was quite natural
+that Mornie, when she caught sight o' Mrs. Sol's face last night,
+should rise up and cuss us both.  Lord, if she'd only acted like
+that!  But the old lady got her quiet at last; and, as I said
+before, it's all right, and we'll pull her through.  But don't YOU
+thank us: it's a little matter betwixt us and Mornie.  We've got
+everything fixed, so that Mrs. Sol can stay right along.  We'll
+pull Mornie through, and get her away from this, and her baby too,
+as soon as we can.  You won't get mad if I tell you something?"
+said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh.  "Mrs. Sol was rather down
+on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your
+brother to you; but when she found he'd run off and left YOU, you,--
+don't mind my sayin',--a 'mere boy,' to take what oughter be HIS
+place, why, she just wheeled round agin' him.  I suppose he got
+flustered, and couldn't face the music.  Never left a word of
+explanation?  Well, it wasn't exactly square, though I tell the old
+woman it's human nature.  He might have dropped a hint where he was
+goin'.  Well, there, I won't say a word more agin' him.  I know how
+you feel.  Hush it is."
+
+It was the firm conviction of the simple-minded Sol that no one
+knew the various natural indications of human passion better than
+himself.  Perhaps it was one of the fallacies of his profession
+that the expression of all human passion was limited to certain
+conventional signs and sounds.  Consequently, when Rand colored
+violently, became confused, stammered, and at last turned hastily
+away, the good-hearted fellow instantly recognized the unfailing
+evidence of modesty and innocence embarrassed by recognition.  As
+for Rand, I fear his shame was only momentary.  Confirmed in the
+belief of his ulterior wisdom and virtue, his first embarrassment
+over, he was not displeased with this halfway tribute, and really
+believed that the time would come when Mr. Sol should eventually
+praise his sagacity and reservation, and acknowledge that he was
+something more than a mere boy.  He, nevertheless, shrank from
+meeting Mornie that morning, and was glad that the presence of Mrs.
+Sol relieved him from that duty.
+
+The day passed uneventfully.  Rand busied himself in his usual
+avocations, and constructed a temporary shelter for himself and Sol
+beside the shaft, besides rudely shaping a few necessary articles
+of furniture for Mrs. Sol.
+
+"It will be a little spell yet afore Mornie's able to be moved,"
+suggested Sol, "and you might as well be comfortable."
+
+Rand sighed at this prospect, yet presently forgot himself in the
+good humor of his companion, whose admiration for himself he began
+to patronizingly admit.  There was no sense of degradation in
+accepting the friendship of this man who had traveled so far, seen
+so much, and yet, as a practical man of the world, Rand felt was so
+inferior to himself.  The absence of Miss Euphemia, who had early
+left the mountain, was a source of odd, half-definite relief.
+Indeed, when he closed his eyes to rest that night, it was with a
+sense that the reality of his situation was not as bad as he had
+feared.  Once only, the figure of his brother--haggard, weary, and
+footsore, on his hopeless quest, wandering in lonely trails and
+lonelier settlements--came across his fancy; but with it came the
+greater fear of his return, and the pathetic figure was banished.
+"And, besides, he's in Sacramento by this time, and like as not
+forgotten us all," he muttered; and, twining this poppy and
+mandragora around his pillow, he fell asleep.
+
+His spirits had quite returned the next morning, and once or twice
+he found himself singing while at work in the shaft.  The fear that
+Ruth might return to the mountain before he could get rid of
+Mornie, and the slight anxiety that had grown upon him to know
+something of his brother's movements, and to be able to govern them
+as he wished, caused him to hit upon the plan of constructing an
+ingenious advertisement to be published in the San Francisco
+journals, wherein the missing Ruth should be advised that news of
+his quest should be communicated to him by "a friend," through the
+same medium, after an interval of two weeks.  Full of this amiable
+intention, he returned to the surface to dinner.  Here, to his
+momentary confusion, he met Miss Euphemia, who, in absence of Sol,
+was assisting Mrs. Sol in the details of the household.
+
+If the honest frankness with which that young lady greeted him was
+not enough to relieve his embarrassment, he would have forgotten
+it in the utterly new and changed aspect she presented.  Her
+extravagant walking-costume of the previous day was replaced by
+some bright calico, a little white apron, and a broad-brimmed
+straw-hat, which seemed to Rand, in some odd fashion, to restore
+her original girlish simplicity.  The change was certainly not
+unbecoming to her.  If her waist was not as tightly pinched, a la
+mode, there still was an honest, youthful plumpness about it; her
+step was freer for the absence of her high-heel boots; and even the
+hand she extended to Rand, if not quite so small as in her tight
+gloves, and a little brown from exposure, was magnetic in its
+strong, kindly grasp.  There was perhaps a slight suggestion of the
+practical Mr. Sol in her wholesome presence; and Rand could not
+help wondering if Mrs. Sol had ever been a Gold Hill "Pet" before
+her marriage with Mr. Sol.  The young girl noticed his curious
+glance.
+
+"You never saw me in my rehearsal dress before," she said, with a
+laugh.  "But I'm not 'company' to-day, and didn't put on my best
+harness to knock round in.  I suppose I look dreadful."
+
+"I don't think you look bad," said Rand simply.
+
+"Thank you," said Euphemia, with a laugh and a courtesy.  "But this
+isn't getting the dinner."
+
+As part of that operation evidently was the taking-off of her hat,
+the putting-up of some thick blond locks that had escaped, and the
+rolling-up of her sleeves over a pair of strong, rounded arms, Rand
+lingered near her.  All trace of the "Pet's" previous professional
+coquetry was gone,--perhaps it was only replaced by a more natural
+one; but as she looked up, and caught sight of Rand's interested
+face, she laughed again, and colored a little.  Slight as was the
+blush, it was sufficient to kindle a sympathetic fire in Rand's own
+cheeks, which was so utterly unexpected to him that he turned on
+his heel in confusion.  "I reckon she thinks I'm soft and silly,
+like Ruth," he soliloquized, and, determining not to look at her
+again, betook himself to a distant and contemplative pipe.  In vain
+did Miss Euphemia address herself to the ostentatious getting of
+the dinner in full view of him; in vain did she bring the coffee-
+pot away from the fire, and nearer Rand, with the apparent
+intention of examining its contents in a better light; in vain,
+while wiping a plate, did she, absorbed in the distant prospect,
+walk to the verge of the mountain, and become statuesque and
+forgetful.  The sulky young gentleman took no outward notice of
+her.
+
+Mrs. Sol's attendance upon Mornie prevented her leaving the cabin,
+and Rand and Miss Euphemia dined in the open air alone.  The
+ridiculousness of keeping up a formal attitude to his solitary
+companion caused Rand to relax; but, to his astonishment, the "Pet"
+seemed to have become correspondingly distant and formal.  After a
+few moments of discomfort, Rand, who had eaten little, arose, and
+"believed he would go back to work."
+
+"Ah, yes!" said the "Pet," with an indifferent air, "I suppose you
+must.  Well, good-by, Mr. Pinkney."
+
+Rand turned.  "YOU are not going?" he asked, in some uneasiness.
+
+"I'VE got some work to do too," returned Miss Euphemia a little
+curtly.
+
+"But," said the practical Rand, "I thought you allowed that you
+were fixed to stay until to-morrow?"
+
+But here Miss Euphemia, with rising color and slight acerbity of
+voice, was not aware that she was "fixed to stay" anywhere, least
+of all when she was in the way.  More than that, she MUST say--
+although perhaps it made no difference, and she ought not to say
+it--that she was not in the habit of intruding upon gentlemen who
+plainly gave her to understand that her company was not desirable.
+She did not know why she said this--of course it could make no
+difference to anybody who didn't, of course, care--but she only
+wanted to say that she only came here because her dear friend, her
+adopted mother,--and a better woman never breathed,--had come, and
+had asked her to stay.  Of course, Mrs. Sol was an intruder
+herself--Mr. Sol was an intruder--they were all intruders: she only
+wondered that Mr. Pinkney had borne with them so long.  She knew it
+was an awful thing to be here, taking care of a poor--poor,
+helpless woman; but perhaps Mr. Rand's BROTHER might forgive them,
+if he couldn't.  But no matter, she would go--Mr. Sol would go--ALL
+would go; and then, perhaps, Mr, Rand--
+
+She stopped breathless; she stopped with the corner of her apron
+against her tearful hazel eyes; she stopped with--what was more
+remarkable than all--Rand's arm actually around her waist, and his
+astonished, alarmed face within a few inches of her own.
+
+"Why, Miss Euphemia, Phemie, my dear girl!  I never meant anything
+like THAT," said Rand earnestly.  "I really didn't now!  Come now!"
+
+"You never once spoke to me when I sat down," said Miss Euphemia,
+feebly endeavoring to withdraw from Rand's grasp.
+
+"I really didn't!  Oh, come now, look here!  I didn't!  Don't!
+There's a dear--THERE!"
+
+This last conclusive exposition was a kiss.  Miss Euphemia was not
+quick enough to release herself from his arms.  He anticipated that
+act a full half-second, and had dropped his own, pale and breathless.
+
+The girl recovered herself first.  "There, I declare, I'm forgetting
+Mrs. Sol's coffee!" she exclaimed hastily, and, snatching up the
+coffee-pot, disappeared.  When she returned, Rand was gone.  Miss
+Euphemia busied herself demurely in clearing up the dishes, with the
+tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her.
+But no Rand appeared.  Presently she began to laugh quietly to
+herself.  This occurred several times during her occupation, which
+was somewhat prolonged.  The result of this meditative hilarity was
+summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked
+slowly back to the cabin: "I do believe I'm the first woman that
+that boy ever kissed."
+
+Miss Euphemia staid that day and the next, and Rand forgot his
+embarrassment.  By what means I know not, Miss Euphemia managed to
+restore Rand's confidence in himself and in her, and in a little
+ramble on the mountain-side got him to relate, albeit somewhat
+reluctantly, the particulars of his rescue of Mornie from her
+dangerous position on the broken trail.
+
+"And, if you hadn't got there as soon as you did, she'd have
+fallen?" asked the "Pet."
+
+"I reckon," returned Rand gloomily: "she was sorter dazed and
+crazed like."
+
+"And you saved her life?"
+
+"I suppose so, if you put it that way," said Rand sulkily.
+
+"But how did you get her up the mountain again?"
+
+"Oh! I got her up," returned Rand moodily.
+
+"But how?  Really, Mr. Rand, you don't know how interesting this
+is.  It's as good as a play," said the "Pet," with a little excited
+laugh.
+
+"Oh, I carried her up!"
+
+"In your arms?"
+
+"Y-e-e-s."
+
+Miss Euphemia paused, and bit off the stalk of a flower, made a wry
+face, and threw it away from her in disgust.
+
+Then she dug a few tiny holes in the earth with her parasol, and
+buried bits of the flower-stalk in them, as if they had been tender
+memories.  "I suppose you knew Mornie very well?" she asked.
+
+"I used to run across her in the woods," responded Rand shortly, "a
+year ago.  I didn't know her so well then as--"  He stopped.
+
+"As what?  As NOW?" asked the "Pet" abruptly.  Rand, who was
+coloring over his narrow escape from a topic which a delicate
+kindness of Sol had excluded from their intercourse on the
+mountain, stammered, "as YOU do, I meant."
+
+The "Pet" tossed her head a little.  "Oh! I don't know her at all--
+except through Sol."
+
+Rand stared hard at this.  The "Pet," who was looking at him
+intently, said, "Show me the place where you saw Mornie clinging
+that night."
+
+"It's dangerous," suggested Rand.
+
+"You mean I'd be afraid!  Try me!  I don't believe she was SO
+dreadfully frightened!"
+
+"Why?" asked Rand, in astonishment.
+
+"Oh--because--"
+
+Rand sat down in vague wonderment.
+
+"Show it to me," continued the "Pet," "or--I'll find it ALONE!"
+
+Thus challenged, he rose, and, after a few moments' climbing, stood
+with her upon the trail.  "You see that thorn-bush where the rock
+has fallen away.  It was just there.  It is not safe to go farther.
+No, really!  Miss Euphemia!  Please don't!  It's almost certain
+death!"
+
+But the giddy girl had darted past him, and, face to the wall of
+the cliff, was creeping along the dangerous path.  Rand followed
+mechanically.  Once or twice the trail crumbled beneath her feet;
+but she clung to a projecting root of chaparral, and laughed.  She
+had almost reached her elected goal, when, slipping, the
+treacherous chaparral she clung to yielded in her grasp, and Rand,
+with a cry, sprung forward.
+
+But the next instant she quickly transferred her hold to a cleft in
+the cliff, and was safe.  Not so her companion.  The soil beneath
+him, loosened by the impulse of his spring, slipped away: he was
+falling with it, when she caught him sharply with her disengaged
+hand, and together they scrambled to a more secure footing.
+
+"I could have reached it alone," said the "Pet," "if you'd left me
+alone."
+
+"Thank Heaven, we're saved!" said Rand gravely.
+
+"AND WITHOUT A ROPE," said Miss Euphemia significantly.
+
+Rand did not understand her.  But, as they slowly returned to the
+summit, he stammered out the always difficult thanks of a man who
+has been physically helped by one of the weaker sex.  Miss Euphemia
+was quick to see her error.
+
+"I might have made you lose your footing by catching at you," she
+said meekly.  "But I was so frightened for you, and could not help
+it."
+
+The superior animal, thoroughly bamboozled, thereupon complimented
+her on her dexterity.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing!" she said, with a sigh.  "I used to do the
+flying-trapeze business with papa when I was a child, and I've not
+forgotten it."  With this and other confidences of her early life,
+in which Rand betrayed considerable interest, they beguiled the
+tedious ascent.  "I ought to have made you carry me up," said the
+lady, with a little laugh, when they reached the summit; "but you
+haven't known me as long as you have Mornie, have you?"  With this
+mysterious speech she bade Rand "good-night," and hurried off to
+the cabin.
+
+And so a week passed by,--the week so dreaded by Rand, yet passed
+so pleasantly, that at times it seemed as if that dread were only a
+trick of his fancy, or as if the circumstances that surrounded him
+were different from what he believed them to be.  On the seventh
+day the doctor had staid longer than usual; and Rand, who had been
+sitting with Euphemia on the ledge by the shaft, watching the
+sunset, had barely time to withdraw his hand from hers, as Mrs.
+Sol, a trifle pale and wearied-looking, approached him.
+
+"I don't like to trouble you," she said,--indeed, they had seldom
+troubled him with the details of Mornie's convalescence, or even
+her needs and requirements,--"but the doctor is alarmed about
+Mornie, and she has asked to see you.  I think you'd better go in
+and speak to her.  You know," continued Mrs. Sol delicately, "you
+haven't been in there since the night she was taken sick, and maybe
+a new face might do her good."
+
+The guilty blood flew to Rand's face as he stammered, "I thought
+I'd be in the way.  I didn't believe she cared much to see me.  Is
+she worse?"
+
+"The doctor is looking very anxious," said Mrs. Sol simply.
+
+The blood returned from Rand's face, and settled around his heart.
+He turned very pale.  He had consoled himself always for his
+complicity in Ruth's absence, that he was taking good care of
+Mornie, or--what is considered by most selfish natures an
+equivalent--permitting or encouraging some one else to "take good
+care of her;" but here was a contingency utterly unforeseen.  It
+did not occur to him that this "taking good care" of her could
+result in anything but a perfect solution of her troubles, or that
+there could be any future to her condition but one of recovery.
+But what if she should die?  A sudden and helpless sense of his
+responsibility to Ruth, to HER, brought him trembling to his feet.
+
+He hurried to the cabin, where Mrs. Sol left him with a word of
+caution: "You'll find her changed and quiet,--very quiet.  If I was
+you, I wouldn't say anything to bring back her old self."
+
+The change which Rand saw was so great, the face that was turned to
+him so quiet, that, with a new fear upon him, he would have
+preferred the savage eyes and reckless mien of the old Mornie whom
+he hated.  With his habitual impulsiveness he tried to say
+something that should express that fact not unkindly, but faltered,
+and awkwardly sank into the chair by her bedside.
+
+"I don't wonder you stare at me now," she said in a far-off voice.
+"It seems to you strange to see me lying here so quiet.  You are
+thinking how wild I was when I came here that night.  I must have
+been crazy, I think.  I dreamed that I said dreadful things to you;
+but you must forgive me, and not mind it.  I was crazy then."  She
+stopped, and folded the blanket between her thin fingers.  "I
+didn't ask you to come here to tell you that, or to remind you of
+it; but--but when I was crazy, I said so many worse, dreadful
+things of HIM; and you--YOU will be left behind to tell him of it."
+
+Rand was vaguely murmuring something to the effect that "he knew
+she didn't mean anything," that "she musn't think of it again,"
+that "he'd forgotten all about it," when she stopped him with a
+tired gesture.
+
+"Perhaps I was wrong to think, that, after I am gone, you would
+care to tell him anything.  Perhaps I'm wrong to think of it at
+all, or to care what he will think of me, except for the sake of
+the child--his child, Rand--that I must leave behind me.  He will
+know that IT never abused him.  No, God bless its sweet heart! IT
+never was wild and wicked and hateful, like its cruel, crazy
+mother.  And he will love it; and you, perhaps, will love it too--
+just a little, Rand!  Look at it!"  She tried to raise the helpless
+bundle beside her in her arms, but failed.  "You must lean over,"
+she said faintly to Rand.  "It looks like him, doesn't it?"
+
+Rand, with wondering, embarrassed eyes, tried to see some
+resemblance, in the little blue-red oval, to the sad, wistful face
+of his brother, which even then was haunting him from some
+mysterious distance.  He kissed the child's forehead, but even then
+so vaguely and perfunctorily, that the mother sighed, and drew it
+closer to her breast.
+
+"The doctor says," she continued in a calmer voice, "that I'm not
+doing as well as I ought to.  I don't think," she faltered, with
+something of her old bitter laugh, "that I'm ever doing as well as
+I ought to, and perhaps it's not strange now that I don't.  And he
+says that, in case anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead.
+I have looked ahead.  It's a dark look ahead, Rand--a horror of
+blackness, without kind faces, without the baby, without--without
+HIM!"
+
+She turned her face away, and laid it on the bundle by her side.
+It was so quiet in the cabin, that, through the open door beyond,
+the faint, rhythmical moan of the pines below was distinctly heard.
+
+"I know it's foolish; but that is what 'looking ahead' always meant
+to me," she said, with a sigh.  "But, since the doctor has been
+gone, I've talked to Mrs. Sol, and find it's for the best.  And I
+look ahead, and see more clearly.  I look ahead, and see my
+disgrace removed far away from HIM and you.  I look ahead, and see
+you and HE living together happily, as you did before I came
+between you.  I look ahead, and see my past life forgotten, my
+faults forgiven; and I think I see you both loving my baby, and
+perhaps loving me a little for its sake.  Thank you, Rand, thank
+you!"
+
+For Rand's hand had caught hers beside the pillow, and he was
+standing over her, whiter than she.  Something in the pressure of
+his hand emboldened her to go on, and even lent a certain strength
+to her voice.
+
+"When it comes to THAT, Rand, you'll not let these people take the
+baby away.  You'll keep it HERE with you until HE comes.  And
+something tells me that he will come when I am gone.  You'll keep
+it here in the pure air and sunlight of the mountain, and out of
+those wicked depths below; and when I am gone, and they are gone,
+and only you and Ruth and baby are here, maybe you'll think that it
+came to you in a cloud on the mountain,--a cloud that lingered only
+long enough to drop its burden, and faded, leaving the sunlight and
+dew behind.  What is it, Rand?  What are you looking at?"
+
+"I was thinking," said Rand in a strange altered voice, "that I
+must trouble you to let me take down those duds and furbelows that
+hang on the wall, so that I can get at some traps of mine behind
+them."  He took some articles from the wall, replaced the dresses
+of Mrs. Sol, and answered Mornie's look of inquiry.
+
+"I was only getting at my purse and my revolver," he said, showing
+them.  "I've got to get some stores at the Ferry by daylight."
+
+Mornie sighed.  "I'm giving you great trouble, Rand, I know; but it
+won't be for long."
+
+He muttered something, took her hand again, and bade her "good-
+night."  When he reached the door, he looked back.  The light was
+shining full upon her face as she lay there, with her babe on her
+breast, bravely "looking ahead."
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+THE CLOUDS PASS.
+
+
+It was early morning at the Ferry.  The "up coach" had passed, with
+lights unextinguished, and the "outsides" still asleep.  The
+ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his
+lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking "all night" bar-keeper on
+the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar.
+An Indian half-breed, porter of the Mansion House, was washing out
+the stains of recent nocturnal dissipation from the bar-room and
+veranda; a few birds were twittering on the cotton-woods beside the
+river; a bolder few had alighted upon the veranda, and were trying
+to reconcile the existence of so much lemon-peel and cigar-stumps
+with their ideas of a beneficent Creator.  A faint earthly
+freshness and perfume rose along the river banks.  Deep shadow
+still lay upon the opposite shore; but in the distance, four miles
+away, Morning along the level crest of Table Mountain walked with
+rosy tread.
+
+The sleepy bar-keeper was that morning doomed to disappointment;
+for scarcely had the coach passed, when steps were heard upon the
+veranda, and a weary, dusty traveller threw his blanket and
+knapsack to the porter, and then dropped into a vacant arm-chair,
+with his eyes fixed on the distant crest of Table Mountain.  He
+remained motionless for some time, until the bar-keeper, who had
+already concocted the conventional welcome of the Mansion House,
+appeared with it in a glass, put it upon the table, glanced at the
+stranger, and then, thoroughly awake, cried out,--
+
+"Ruth Pinkney--or I'm a Chinaman!"
+
+The stranger lifted his eyes wearily.  Hollow circles were around
+their orbits; haggard lines were in his checks.  But it was Ruth.
+
+He took the glass, and drained it at a single draught.  "Yes," he
+said absently, "Ruth Pinkney," and fixed his eyes again on the
+distant rosy crest.
+
+"On your way up home?" suggested the bar-keeper, following the
+direction of Ruth's eyes.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Been upon a pasear, hain't yer?  Been havin' a little tear round
+Sacramento,--seein' the sights?"
+
+Ruth smiled bitterly.  "Yes."
+
+The bar-keeper lingered, ostentatiously wiping a glass.  But Ruth
+again became abstracted in the mountain, and the barkeeper turned
+away.
+
+How pure and clear that summit looked to him! how restful and
+steadfast with serenity and calm! how unlike his own feverish,
+dusty, travel-worn self!  A week had elapsed since he had last
+looked upon it,--a week of disappointment, of anxious fears, of
+doubts, of wild imaginings, of utter helplessness.  In his hopeless
+quest of the missing Mornie, he had, in fancy, seen this serene
+eminence haunting his remorseful, passion-stricken soul.  And now,
+without a clew to guide him to her unknown hiding-place, he was
+back again, to face the brother whom he had deceived, with only the
+confession of his own weakness.  Hard as it was to lose forever the
+fierce, reproachful glances of the woman he loved, it was still
+harder, to a man of Ruth's temperament, to look again upon the face
+of the brother he feared.  A hand laid upon his shoulder startled
+him.  It was the bar-keeper.
+
+"If it's a fair question, Ruth Pinkney, I'd like to ask ye how long
+ye kalkilate to hang around the Ferry to-day."
+
+"Why?" demanded Ruth haughtily.
+
+"Because, whatever you've been and done, I want ye to have a square
+show.  Ole Nixon has been cavoortin' round yer the last two days,
+swearin' to kill you on sight for runnin' off with his darter.
+Sabe?  Now, let me ax ye two questions.  FIRST, Are you heeled?"
+
+Ruth responded to this dialectical inquiry affirmatively by putting
+his hand on his revolver.
+
+"Good!  Now, SECOND, Have you got the gal along here with you?"
+
+"No," responded Ruth in a hollow voice.
+
+"That's better yet," said the man, without heeding the tone of the
+reply.  "A woman--and especially THE woman in a row of this kind--
+handicaps a man awful."  He paused, and took up the empty glass.
+"Look yer, Ruth Pinkney, I'm a square man, and I'll be square with
+you.  So I'll just tell you you've got the demdest odds agin' ye.
+Pr'aps ye know it, and don't keer.  Well, the boys around yer are
+all sidin' with the old man Nixon.  It's the first time the old rip
+ever had a hand in his favor: so the boys will see fair play for
+Nixon, and agin' YOU.  But I reckon you don't mind him!"
+
+"So little, I shall never pull trigger on him," said Ruth gravely.
+
+The bar-keeper stared, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  "Well,
+thar's that Kanaka Joe, who used to be sorter sweet on Mornie,--
+he's an ugly devil,--he's helpin' the old man."
+
+The sad look faded from Ruth's eyes suddenly.  A certain wild
+Berserker rage--a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows
+what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers'
+Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement--glowed in
+its place.  The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for
+the day's festivities.  But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose,
+turned hesitatingly towards him.
+
+"Have you seen my brother Rand lately?"
+
+"Nary."
+
+"He hasn't been here, or about the Ferry?"
+
+"Nary time."
+
+"You haven't heard," said Ruth, with a faint attempt at a smile,
+"if he's been around here asking after me,--sorter looking me up,
+you know?"
+
+"Not much," returned the bar-keeper deliberately.  "Ez far ez I
+know Rand,--that ar brother o' yours,--he's one of yer high-toned
+chaps ez doesn't drink, thinks bar-rooms is pizen, and ain't the
+sort to come round yer, and sling yarns with me."
+
+Ruth rose; but the hand that he placed upon the table, albeit a
+powerful one, trembled so that it was with difficulty he resumed
+his knapsack.  When he did so, his bent figure, stooping shoulders,
+and haggard face, made him appear another man from the one who had
+sat down.  There was a slight touch of apologetic deference and
+humility in his manner as he paid his reckoning, and slowly and
+hesitatingly began to descend the steps.
+
+The bar-keeper looked after him thoughtfully.  "Well, dog my skin!"
+he ejaculated to himself, "ef I hadn't seen that man--that same
+Ruth Pinkney--straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and
+dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in
+him.  Thar's something up!"
+
+But here Ruth reached the last step, and turned again.
+
+"If you see old man Nixon, say I'm in town; if you see that ----
+---- ----" (I regret to say that I cannot repeat his exact, and
+brief characterization of the present condition and natal antecedents
+of Kanaka Joe), "say I'm looking out for him," and was gone.
+
+He wandered down the road, towards the one long, straggling street
+of the settlement.  The few people who met him at that early hour
+greeted him with a kind of constrained civility; certain cautious
+souls hurried by without seeing him; all turned and looked after
+him; and a few followed him at a respectful distance.  A somewhat
+notorious practical joker and recognized wag at the Ferry
+apparently awaited his coming with something of invitation and
+expectation, but, catching sight of Ruth's haggard face and blazing
+eyes, became instantly practical, and by no means jocular in his
+greeting.  At the top of the hill, Ruth turned to look once more
+upon the distant mountain, now again a mere cloud-line on the
+horizon.  In the firm belief that he would never again see the sun
+rise upon it, he turned aside into a hazel-thicket, and, tearing
+out a few leaves from his pocket-book, wrote two letters,--one to
+Rand, and one to Mornie, but which, as they were never delivered,
+shall not burden this brief chronicle of that eventful day.  For,
+while transcribing them, he was startled by the sounds of a dozen
+pistol-shots in the direction of the hotel he had recently quitted.
+Something in the mere sound provoked the old hereditary fighting
+instinct, and sent him to his feet with a bound, and a slight
+distension of the nostrils, and sniffing of the air, not unknown to
+certain men who become half intoxicated by the smell of powder.  He
+quickly folded his letters, and addressed them carefully, and,
+taking off his knapsack and blanket, methodically arranged them
+under a tree, with the letters on top.  Then he examined the lock
+of his revolver, and then, with the step of a man ten years
+younger, leaped into the road.  He had scarcely done so when he was
+seized, and by sheer force dragged into a blacksmith's shop at the
+roadside.  He turned his savage face and drawn weapon upon his
+assailant, but was surprised to meet the anxious eyes of the bar-
+keeper of the Mansion House.
+
+"Don't be a d----d fool," said the man quickly.  "Thar's fifty
+agin' you down thar.  But why in h-ll didn't you wipe out old Nixon
+when you had such a good chance?"
+
+"Wipe out old Nixon?" repeated Ruth.
+
+"Yes; just now, when you had him covered."
+
+"What!"
+
+The bar-keeper turned quickly upon Ruth, stared at him, and then
+suddenly burst into a fit of laughter.  "Well, I've knowed you two
+were twins, but damn me if I ever thought I'd be sold like this!"
+And he again burst into a roar of laughter.
+
+"What do you mean?" demanded Ruth savagely.
+
+"What do I mean?" returned the barkeeper.  "Why, I mean this.  I
+mean that your brother Rand, as you call him, he'z bin--for a young
+feller, and a pious feller--doin' about the tallest kind o'
+fightin' to-day that's been done at the Ferry.  He laid out that ar
+Kanaka Joe and two of his chums.  He was pitched into on your
+quarrel, and he took it up for you like a little man.  I managed to
+drag him off, up yer in the hazel-bush for safety, and out you
+pops, and I thought you was him.  He can't be far away.  Halloo!
+There they're comin'; and thar's the doctor, trying to keep them
+back!"
+
+A crowd of angry, excited faces, filled the road suddenly; but
+before them Dr. Duchesne, mounted, and with a pistol in his hand,
+opposed their further progress.
+
+"Back in the bush!" whispered the barkeeper.  "Now's your time!"
+
+But Ruth stirred not.  "Go you back," he said in a low voice, "find
+Rand, and take him away.  I will fill his place here."  He drew his
+revolver, and stepped into the road.
+
+A shout, a report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near
+his feet, told him he was recognized.  He stirred not; but another
+shout, and a cry, "There they are--BOTH of 'em!" made him turn.
+
+His brother Rand, with a smile on his lip and fire in his eye,
+stood by his side.  Neither spoke.  Then Rand, quietly, as of old,
+slipped his hand into his brother's strong palm.  Two or three
+bullets sang by them; a splinter flew from the blacksmith's shed:
+but the brothers, hard gripping each other's hands, and looking
+into each other's faces with a quiet joy, stood there calm and
+imperturbable.
+
+There was a momentary pause.  The voice of Dr. Duchesne rose above
+the crowd.
+
+"Keep back, I say! keep back!  Or hear me!--for five years I've
+worked among you, and mended and patched the holes you've drilled
+through each other's carcasses--Keep back, I say!--or the next man
+that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that
+no surgeon can stop.  I'm sick of your bungling ball practice!
+Keep back!--or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a man's
+vitals are!"
+
+There was a burst of laughter from the crowd, and for a moment
+the twins were forgotten in this audacious speech and coolly
+impertinent presence.
+
+"That's right!  Now let that infernal old hypocritical drunkard,
+Mat Nixon, step to the front."
+
+The crowd parted right and left, and half pushed, half dragged
+Nixon before him.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the doctor, "this is the man who has just shot at
+Rand Pinkney for hiding his daughter.  Now, I tell you, gentlemen,
+and I tell him, that for the last week his daughter, Mornie Nixon,
+has been under my care as a patient, and my protection as a friend.
+If there's anybody to be shot, the job must begin with me!"
+
+There was another laugh, and a cry of "Bully for old Sawbones!"
+Ruth started convulsively, and Rand answered his look with a
+confirming pressure of his hand.
+
+"That isn't all, gentlemen: this drunken brute has just shot at a
+gentleman whose only offence, to my knowledge, is, that he has, for
+the last week, treated her with a brother's kindness, has taken her
+into his own home, and cared for her wants as if she were his own
+sister."
+
+Ruth's hand again grasped his brother's.  Rand colored and hung his
+head.
+
+"There's more yet, gentlemen.  I tell you that that girl, Mornie
+Nixon, has, to my knowledge, been treated like a lady, has been
+cared for as she never was cared for in her father's house, and,
+while that father has been proclaiming her shame in every bar-room
+at the Ferry, has had the sympathy and care, night and day, of two
+of the most accomplished ladies of the Ferry,--Mrs. Sol Saunders,
+gentlemen, and Miss Euphemia."
+
+There was a shout of approbation from the crowd.  Nixon would have
+slipped away, but the doctor stopped him.
+
+"Not yet!  I've one thing more to say.  I've to tell you, gentlemen,
+on my professional word of honor, that, besides being an old
+hypocrite, this same old Mat Nixon is the ungrateful, unnatural
+GRANDFATHER of the first boy born in the district."
+
+A wild huzza greeted the doctor's climax.  By a common consent the
+crowd turned toward the Twins, who, grasping each other's hands,
+stood apart.  The doctor nodded his head.  The next moment the
+Twins were surrounded, and lifted in the arms of the laughing
+throng, and borne in triumph to the bar-room of the Mansion House.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the bar-keeper, "call for what you like: the
+Mansion House treats to-day in honor of its being the first time
+that Rand Pinkney has been admitted to the bar."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+It was agreed, that, as her condition was still precarious, the
+news should be broken to her gradually and indirectly.  The
+indefatigable Sol had a professional idea, which was not
+displeasing to the Twins.  It being a lovely summer afternoon, the
+couch of Mornie was lifted out on the ledge, and she lay there
+basking in the sunlight, drinking in the pure air, and looking
+bravely ahead in the daylight as she had in the darkness, for her
+couch commanded a view of the mountain flank.  And, lying there,
+she dreamed a pleasant dream, and in her dream saw Rand returning
+up the mountain-trail.  She was half conscious that he had good
+news for her; and, when he at last reached her bedside, he began
+gently and kindly to tell his news.  But she heard him not, or
+rather in her dream was most occupied with his ways and manners,
+which seemed unlike him, yet inexpressibly sweet and tender.  The
+tears were fast coming in her eyes, when he suddenly dropped on his
+knees beside her, threw away Rand's disguising hat and coat, and
+clasped her in his arms.  And by that she KNEW it was Ruth.
+
+But what they said; what hurried words of mutual explanation and
+forgiveness passed between them; what bitter yet tender recollections
+of hidden fears and doubts, now forever chased away in the rain of
+tears and joyous sunshine of that mountain-top, were then whispered;
+whatever of this little chronicle that to the reader seems strange
+and inconsistent (as all human record must ever be strange and
+imperfect, except to the actors) was then made clear,--was never
+divulged by them, and must remain with them forever.  The rest of
+the party had withdrawn, and they were alone.  But when Mornie
+turned, and placed the baby in its father's arms, they were so
+isolated in their happiness, that the lower world beneath them might
+have swung and drifted away, and left that mountain-top the
+beginning and creation of a better planet.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+"You know all about it now," said Sol the next day, explaining the
+previous episodes of this history to Ruth: "you've got the whole
+plot before you.  It dragged a little in the second act, for the
+actors weren't up in their parts.  But for an amateur performance,
+on the whole, it wasn't bad."
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," said Rand impulsively, "how we'd have got
+on without Euphemia.  It's too bad she couldn't be here to-day."
+
+"She wanted to come," said Sol; "but the gentleman she's engaged to
+came up from Marysville last night."
+
+"Gentleman--engaged!" repeated Rand, white and red by turns.
+
+"Well, yes.  I say, 'gentleman,' although he's in the variety
+profession.  She always said," said Sol, quietly looking at Rand,
+"that she'd never marry OUT of it."
+
+
+
+
+AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG.
+
+
+The first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was,
+I think, in the spring of 1854.  He was at that time in possession
+of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a
+wife of some attraction, on whose affections another friend held an
+encumbering lien.  One day it was found that he had secretly dug,
+or caused to be dug, a deep trap before the front-door of his
+dwelling, into which a few friends, in the course of the evening,
+casually and familiarly dropped.  This circumstance, slight in
+itself, seemed to point to the existence of a certain humor in the
+man, which might eventually get into literature, although his
+wife's lover--a man of quick discernment, whose leg was broken by
+the fall--took other views.  It was some weeks later, that, while
+dining with certain other friends of his wife, he excused himself
+from the table to quietly re-appear at the front-window with a
+three-quarter inch hydraulic pipe, and a stream of water projected
+at the assembled company.  An attempt was made to take public
+cognizance of this; but a majority of the citizens of Red Dog, who
+were not at dinner, decided that a man had a right to choose his
+own methods of diverting his company.  Nevertheless, there were
+some hints of his insanity; his wife recalled other acts clearly
+attributable to dementia; the crippled lover argued from his own
+experience that the integrity of her limbs could only be secured by
+leaving her husband's house; and the mortgagee, fearing a further
+damage to his property, foreclosed.  But here the cause of all this
+anxiety took matters into his own hands, and disappeared.
+
+When we next heard from him, he had, in some mysterious way, been
+relieved alike of his wife and property, and was living alone at
+Rockville fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper.  But that
+originality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his
+own private life, when applied to politics in the columns of "The
+Rockville Vanguard" was singularly unsuccessful.  An amusing
+exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of the manner in
+which the opposing candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman,
+was, I regret to say, answered only by assault and battery.  A
+gratuitous and purely imaginative description of a great religious
+revival in Calaveras, in which the sheriff of the county--a
+notoriously profane sceptic--was alleged to have been the chief
+exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal of the county advertising
+from the paper.  In the midst of this practical confusion he
+suddenly died.  It was then discovered, as a crowning proof of his
+absurdity, that he had left a will, bequeathing his entire effects
+to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the Rockville Hotel.  But that
+absurdity became serious when it was also discovered that among
+these effects were a thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining
+Company, which a day or two after his demise, and while people were
+still laughing at his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang into
+opulence and celebrity.  Three millions of dollars was roughly
+estimated as the value of the estate thus wantonly sacrificed.  For
+it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to the enterprise and
+energy of that young and thriving settlement, that there was not
+probably a single citizen who did not feel himself better able to
+control the deceased humorist's property.  Some had expressed a
+doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps
+too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen
+from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few
+had declined office and a low salary: but no one shrank from the
+possibility of having been called upon to assume the functions of
+Peggy Moffat, the heiress.
+
+The will was contested,--first by the widow, who it now appeared
+had never been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of
+his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his
+moral and pecuniary worth.  But the humble legatee--a singularly
+plain, unpretending, uneducated Western girl--exhibited a dogged
+pertinacity in claiming her rights.  She rejected all compromises.
+A rough sense of justice in the community, while doubting her
+ability to take care of the whole fortune, suggested that she ought
+to be content with three hundred thousand dollars.  "She's bound to
+throw even THAT away on some derned skunk of a man, natoorally; but
+three millions is too much to give a chap for makin' her onhappy.
+It's offerin' a temptation to cussedness."  The only opposing voice
+to this counsel came from the sardonic lips of Mr. Jack Hamlin.
+"Suppose," suggested that gentleman, turning abruptly on the
+speaker,--"suppose, when you won twenty thousand dollars of me last
+Friday night--suppose that, instead of handing you over the money
+as I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind-legs, and said, 'Look yer,
+Bill Wethersbee, you're a d----d fool.  If I give ye that twenty
+thousand, you'll throw it away in the first skin-game in 'Frisco,
+and hand it over to the first short-card sharp you'll meet.
+There's a thousand,--enough for you to fling away,--take it and
+get!'  Suppose what I'd said to you was the frozen truth, and you
+know'd it, would that have been the square thing to play on you?"
+But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the inefficiency of the
+comparison by stating that HE had won the money fairly with a
+STAKE.  "And how do you know," demanded Hamlin savagely, bending
+his black eyes on the astounded casuist,--"how do you know that the
+gal hezn't put down a stake?"  The man stammered an unintelligible
+reply.  The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder.
+"Look yer, old man," he said, "every gal stakes her WHOLE pile,--
+you can bet your life on that,--whatever's her little game.  If she
+took to keerds instead of her feelings, if she'd put up 'chips'
+instead o' body and soul, she'd bust every bank 'twixt this and
+'Frisco!  You hear me?"
+
+Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as
+sentimentally, to Peggy Moffat herself.  The best legal wisdom of
+San Francisco, retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion,
+in a private interview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in
+the quasi-criminal attitude of having unlawfully practised upon the
+affections of an insane elderly gentleman, with a view of getting
+possession of his property, and suggested to her that no vestige of
+her moral character would remain after the trial, if she persisted
+in forcing her claims to that issue.  It is said that Peggy, on
+hearing this, stopped washing the plate she had in her hands, and,
+twisting the towel around her fingers, fixed her small pale blue
+eyes at the lawyer.
+
+"And ez that the kind o' chirpin these critters keep up?"
+
+"I regret to say, my dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that
+the world is censorious.  I must add," he continued, with engaging
+frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the
+opinion of the world, and that such will be the theory of--our
+side."
+
+"Then," said Peggy stoutly, "ez I allow I've got to go into court
+to defend my character, I might as well pack in them three millions
+too."
+
+There is hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish and
+desire to "bust the crust" of her traducers, and, remarking that
+"that was the kind of hairpin" she was, closed the conversation
+with an unfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe
+contusion on the legal brow of her companion.  But this story,
+popular in the bar-rooms and gulches, lacked confirmation in higher
+circles.  Better authenticated was the legend related of an
+interview with her own lawyer.  That gentleman had pointed out to
+her the advantage of being able to show some reasonable cause for
+the singular generosity of the testator.
+
+"Although," he continued, "the law does not go back of the will for
+reason or cause for its provisions, it would be a strong point with
+the judge and jury--particularly if the theory of insanity were set
+up--for us to show that the act was logical and natural.  Of course
+you have--I speak confidently, Miss Moffat--certain ideas of your
+own why the late Mr. Byways was so singularly generous to you."
+
+"No, I haven't," said Peg decidedly.
+
+"Think again.  Had he not expressed to you--you understand that
+this is confidential between us, although I protest, my dear young
+lady, that I see no reason why it should not be made public--had he
+not given utterance to sentiments of a nature consistent with some
+future matrimonial relations?"  But here Miss Peg's large mouth,
+which had been slowly relaxing over her irregular teeth, stopped
+him.
+
+"If you mean he wanted to marry me--  No!"
+
+"I see.  But were there any conditions--of course you know the law
+takes no cognizance of any not expressed in the will; but still,
+for the sake of mere corroboration of the bequest--do you know of
+any conditions on which he gave you the property?"
+
+"You mean did he want anything in return?"
+
+"Exactly, my dear young lady."
+
+Peg's face on one side turned a deep magenta color, on the other a
+lighter cherry, while her nose was purple, and her forehead an
+Indian red.  To add to the effect of this awkward and discomposing
+dramatic exhibition of embarrassment, she began to wipe her hands
+on her dress, and sat silent.
+
+"I understand," said the lawyer hastily.  "No matter--the
+conditions WERE fulfilled."
+
+"No!" said Peg amazedly.  "How could they be until he was dead?"
+
+It was the lawyer's turn to color and grow embarrassed.
+
+"He DID say something, and make some conditions," continued Peg,
+with a certain firmness through her awkwardness; "but that's
+nobody's business but mine and his'n.  And it's no call o' yours or
+theirs."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Moffat, if these very conditions were proofs of
+his right mind, you surely would not object to make them known, if
+only to enable you to put yourself in a condition to carry them
+out."
+
+"But," said Peg cunningly, "s'pose you and the Court didn't think
+'em satisfactory?  S'pose you thought 'em QUEER?  Eh?"
+
+With this helpless limitation on the part of the defence, the case
+came to trial.  Everybody remembers it,--how for six weeks it was
+the daily food of Calaveras County; how for six weeks the
+intellectual and moral and spiritual competency of Mr. James Byways
+to dispose of his property was discussed with learned and formal
+obscurity in the court, and with unlettered and independent
+prejudice by camp-fires and in bar-rooms.  At the end of that time,
+when it was logically established that at least nine-tenths of the
+population of Calaveras were harmless lunatics, and everybody
+else's reason seemed to totter on its throne, an exhausted jury
+succumbed one day to the presence of Peg in the court-room.  It was
+not a prepossessing presence at any time; but the excitement, and
+an injudicious attempt to ornament herself, brought her defects
+into a glaring relief that was almost unreal.  Every freckle on her
+face stood out and asserted itself singly; her pale blue eyes, that
+gave no indication of her force of character, were weak and
+wandering, or stared blankly at the judge; her over-sized head,
+broad at the base, terminating in the scantiest possible light-
+colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders, was as hard
+and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topped the railing
+against which she sat.
+
+The jury, who for six weeks had had her described to them by the
+plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress, who had sapped the failing
+reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man.  There was something so
+appallingly gratuitous in her plainness, that it was felt that
+three millions was scarcely a compensation for it.  "Ef that money
+was give to her, she earned it SURE, boys: it wasn't no softness of
+the old man," said the foreman.  When the jury retired, it was felt
+that she had cleared her character: when they re-entered the room
+with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded three
+millions damages for its defamation.
+
+She got the money.  But those who had confidently expected to see
+her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was
+presently whispered that she was exceedingly penurious.  That
+admirable woman, Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San
+Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her
+indignation.  "She cares more for two bits than I do for five
+dollars.  She wouldn't buy anything at the 'City of Paris,' because
+it was 'too expensive,' and at last rigged herself out, a perfect
+guy, at some cheap slop-shops in Market Street.  And after all the
+care Jane and me took of her, giving up our time and experience to
+her, she never so much as made Jane a single present."  Popular
+opinion, which regarded Mrs. Stiver's attention as purely
+speculative, was not shocked at this unprofitable denouement; but
+when Peg refused to give anything to clear the mortgage off the new
+Presbyterian Church, and even declined to take shares in the Union
+Ditch, considered by many as an equally sacred and safe investment,
+she began to lose favor.  Nevertheless, she seemed to be as
+regardless of public opinion as she had been before the trial; took
+a small house, in which she lived with an old woman who had once
+been a fellow-servant, on apparently terms of perfect equality, and
+looked after her money.  I wish I could say that she did this
+discreetly; but the fact is, she blundered.  The same dogged
+persistency she had displayed in claiming her rights was visible in
+her unsuccessful ventures.  She sunk two hundred thousand dollars
+in a worn-out shaft originally projected by the deceased testator;
+she prolonged the miserable existence of "The Rockville Vanguard"
+long after it had ceased to interest even its enemies; she kept the
+doors of the Rockville Hotel open when its custom had departed; she
+lost the co-operation and favor of a fellow-capitalist through a
+trifling misunderstanding in which she was derelict and impenitent;
+she had three lawsuits on her hands that could have been settled
+for a trifle.  I note these defects to show that she was by no
+means a heroine.  I quote her affair with Jack Folinsbee to show
+she was scarcely the average woman.
+
+That handsome, graceless vagabond had struck the outskirts of Red
+Dog in a cyclone of dissipation which left him a stranded but still
+rather interesting wreck in a ruinous cabin not far from Peg
+Moffat's virgin bower.  Pale, crippled from excesses, with a voice
+quite tremulous from sympathetic emotion more or less developed by
+stimulants, he lingered languidly, with much time on his hands, and
+only a few neighbors.  In this fascinating kind of general
+deshabille of morals, dress, and the emotions, he appeared before
+Peg Moffat.  More than that, he occasionally limped with her
+through the settlement.  The critical eye of Red Dog took in the
+singular pair,--Jack, voluble, suffering, apparently overcome by
+remorse, conscience, vituperation, and disease; and Peg, open-
+mouthed, high-colored, awkward, yet delighted; and the critical eye
+of Red Dog, seeing this, winked meaningly at Rockville.  No one
+knew what passed between them; but all observed that one summer day
+Jack drove down the main street of Red Dog in an open buggy, with
+the heiress of that town beside him.  Jack, albeit a trifle shaky,
+held the reins with something of his old dash; and Mistress Peggy,
+in an enormous bonnet with pearl-colored ribbons a shade darker
+than her hair, holding in her short, pink-gloved fingers a bouquet
+of yellow roses, absolutely glowed crimson in distressful
+gratification over the dash-board.  So these two fared on, out of
+the busy settlement, into the woods, against the rosy sunset.
+Possibly it was not a pretty picture: nevertheless, as the dim
+aisles of the solemn pines opened to receive them, miners leaned
+upon their spades, and mechanics stopped in their toil to look
+after them.  The critical eye of Red Dog, perhaps from the sun,
+perhaps from the fact that it had itself once been young and
+dissipated, took on a kindly moisture as it gazed.
+
+The moon was high when they returned.  Those who had waited to
+congratulate Jack on this near prospect of a favorable change in
+his fortunes were chagrined to find, that, having seen the lady
+safe home, he had himself departed from Red Dog.  Nothing was to be
+gained from Peg, who, on the next day and ensuing days, kept the
+even tenor of her way, sunk a thousand or two more in unsuccessful
+speculation, and made no change in her habits of personal economy.
+Weeks passed without any apparent sequel to this romantic idyl.
+Nothing was known definitely until Jack, a month later, turned up
+in Sacramento, with a billiard-cue in his hand, and a heart
+overcharged with indignant emotion.  "I don't mind saying to you,
+gentlemen, in confidence," said Jack to a circle of sympathizing
+players,--"I don't mind telling you regarding this thing, that I
+was as soft on that freckled-faced, red-eyed, tallow-haired gal, as
+if she'd been--a--a--an actress.  And I don't mind saying,
+gentlemen, that, as far as I understand women, she was just as soft
+on me.  You kin laugh; but it's so.  One day I took her out buggy-
+riding,--in style, too,--and out on the road I offered to do the
+square thing, just as if she'd been a lady,--offered to marry her
+then and there.  And what did she do?" said Jack with a hysterical
+laugh.  "Why, blank it all! OFFERED ME TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS A WEEK
+ALLOWANCE--PAY TO BE STOPPED WHEN I WASN'T AT HOME!"  The roar of
+laughter that greeted this frank confession was broken by a quiet
+voice asking, "And what did YOU say?"--"Say?" screamed Jack, "I
+just told her to go to ---- with her money."--"They say," continued
+the quiet voice, "that you asked her for the loan of two hundred
+and fifty dollars to get you to Sacramento--and that you got it."--
+"Who says so roared Jack.  "Show me the blank liar."  There was a
+dead silence.  Then the possessor of the quiet voice, Mr. Jack
+Hamlin, languidly reached under the table, took the chalk, and,
+rubbing the end of his billiard-cue, began with gentle gravity: "It
+was an old friend of mine in Sacramento, a man with a wooden leg, a
+game eye, three fingers on his right hand, and a consumptive cough.
+Being unable, naturally, to back himself, he leaves things to me.
+So, for the sake of argument," continued Hamlin, suddenly laying
+down his cue, and fixing his wicked black eyes on the speaker, "say
+it's ME!"
+
+I am afraid that this story, whether truthful or not, did not tend
+to increase Peg's popularity in a community where recklessness and
+generosity condoned for the absence of all the other virtues; and
+it is possible, also, that Red Dog was no more free from prejudice
+than other more civilized but equally disappointed matchmakers.
+Likewise, during the following year, she made several more foolish
+ventures, and lost heavily.  In fact, a feverish desire to increase
+her store at almost any risk seemed to possess her.  At last it was
+announced that she intended to reopen the infelix Rockville Hotel,
+and keep it herself.
+
+Wild as this scheme appeared in theory, when put into practical
+operation there seemed to be some chance of success.  Much,
+doubtless, was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping,
+but more to her rigid economy and untiring industry.  The mistress
+of millions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds,
+and labored like a common menial.  Visitors were attracted by this
+novel spectacle.  The income of the house increased as their
+respect for the hostess lessened.  No anecdote of her avarice was
+too extravagant for current belief.  It was even alleged that she
+had been known to carry the luggage of guests to their rooms, that
+she might anticipate the usual porter's gratuity.  She denied
+herself the ordinary necessaries of life.  She was poorly clad, she
+was ill-fed--but the hotel was making money.
+
+A few hinted of insanity; others shook their heads, and said a
+curse was entailed on the property.  It was believed, also, from
+her appearance, that she could not long survive this tax on her
+energies, and already there was discussion as to the probable final
+disposition of her property.
+
+It was the particular fortune of Mr. Jack Hamlin to be able to set
+the world right on this and other questions regarding her.
+
+A stormy December evening had set in when he chanced to be a guest
+of the Rockville Hotel.  He had, during the past week, been engaged
+in the prosecution of his noble profession at Red Dog, and had, in
+the graphic language of a coadjutor, "cleared out the town, except
+his fare in the pockets of the stage-driver."  "The Red Dog
+Standard" had bewailed his departure in playful obituary verse,
+beginning, "Dearest Johnny, thou hast left us," wherein the rhymes
+"bereft us" and "deplore" carried a vague allusion to "a thousand
+dollars more."  A quiet contentment naturally suffused his
+personality, and he was more than usually lazy and deliberate in
+his speech.  At midnight, when he was about to retire, he was a
+little surprised, however, by a tap on his door, followed by the
+presence of Mistress Peg Moffat, heiress, and landlady of Rockville
+hotel.
+
+Mr. Hamlin, despite his previous defence of Peg, had no liking for
+her.  His fastidious taste rejected her uncomeliness; his habits of
+thought and life were all antagonistic to what he had heard of her
+niggardliness and greed.  As she stood there, in a dirty calico
+wrapper, still redolent with the day's cuisine, crimson with
+embarrassment and the recent heat of the kitchen range, she
+certainly was not an alluring apparition.  Happily for the lateness
+of the hour, her loneliness, and the infelix reputation of the man
+before her, she was at least a safe one.  And I fear the very
+consciousness of this scarcely relieved her embarrassment.
+
+"I wanted to say a few words to ye alone, Mr. Hamlin," she began,
+taking an unoffered seat on the end of his portmanteau, "or I
+shouldn't hev intruded.  But it's the only time I can ketch you, or
+you me; for I'm down in the kitchen from sunup till now."
+
+She stopped awkwardly, as if to listen to the wind, which was
+rattling the windows, and spreading a film of rain against the
+opaque darkness without.  Then, smoothing her wrapper over her
+knees, she remarked, as if opening a desultory conversation,
+"Thar's a power of rain outside."
+
+Mr. Hamlin's only response to this meteorological observation was a
+yawn, and a preliminary tug at his coat as he began to remove it.
+
+"I thought ye couldn't mind doin' me a favor," continued Peg, with
+a hard, awkward laugh, "partik'ly seein' ez folks allowed you'd
+sorter bin a friend o' mine, and hed stood up for me at times when
+you hedn't any partikler call to do it.  I hevn't" she continued,
+looking down on her lap, and following with her finger and thumb a
+seam of her gown,--"I hevn't so many friends ez slings a kind word
+for me these times that I disremember them."  Her under lip
+quivered a little here; and, after vainly hunting for a forgotten
+handkerchief, she finally lifted the hem of her gown, wiped her
+snub nose upon it, but left the tears still in her eyes as she
+raised them to the man, Mr. Hamlin, who had by this time divested
+himself of his coat, stopped unbuttoning his waistcoat, and looked
+at her.
+
+"Like ez not thar'll be high water on the North Fork, ef this rain
+keeps on," said Peg, as if apologetically, looking toward the
+window.
+
+The other rain having ceased, Mr. Hamlin began to unbutton his
+waistcoat again.
+
+"I wanted to ask ye a favor about Mr.--about--Jack Folinsbee,"
+began Peg again hurriedly.  "He's ailin' agin, and is mighty low.
+And he's losin' a heap o' money here and thar, and mostly to YOU.
+You cleaned him out of two thousand dollars last night--all he
+had."
+
+"Well?" said the gambler coldly.
+
+"Well, I thought ez you woz a friend o' mine, I'd ask ye to let up
+a little on him," said Peg, with an affected laugh.  "You kin do
+it.  Don't let him play with ye."
+
+"Mistress Margaret Moffat," said Jack, with lazy deliberation,
+taking off his watch, and beginning to wind it up, "ef you're that
+much stuck after Jack Folinsbee, YOU kin keep him off of me much
+easier than I kin.  You're a rich woman.  Give him enough money to
+break my bank, or break himself for good and all; but don't keep
+him forlin' round me in hopes to make a raise.  It don't pay,
+Mistress Moffat--it don't pay!"
+
+A finer nature than Peg's would have misunderstood or resented the
+gambler's slang, and the miserable truths that underlaid it.  But
+she comprehended him instantly, and sat hopelessly silent.
+
+"Ef you'll take my advice," continued Jack, placing his watch and
+chain under his pillow, and quietly unloosing his cravat, "you'll
+quit this yer forlin', marry that chap, and hand over to him the
+money and the money-makin' that's killin' you.  He'll get rid of it
+soon enough.  I don't say this because I expect to git it; for,
+when he's got that much of a raise, he'll make a break for 'Frisco,
+and lose it to some first-class sport THERE.  I don't say, neither,
+that you mayn't be in luck enough to reform him.  I don't say,
+neither--and it's a derned sight more likely!--that you mayn't be
+luckier yet, and he'll up and die afore he gits rid of your money.
+But I do say you'll make him happy NOW; and, ez I reckon you're
+about ez badly stuck after that chap ez I ever saw any woman, you
+won't be hurtin' your own feelin's either."
+
+The blood left Peg's face as she looked up.  "But that's WHY I
+can't give him the money--and he won't marry me without it."
+
+Mr. Hamlin's hand dropped from the last button of his waistcoat.
+"Can't--give--him--the--money?" he repeated slowly.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--because I LOVE him."
+
+Mr. Hamlin rebuttoned his waistcoat, and sat down patiently on the
+bed.  Peg arose, and awkwardly drew the portmanteau a little nearer
+to him.
+
+"When Jim Byways left me this yer property," she began, looking
+cautiously around, "he left it to me on CONDITIONS; not conditions
+ez waz in his WRITTEN will, but conditions ez waz SPOKEN.  A
+promise I made him in this very room, Mr. Hamlin,--this very room,
+and on that very bed you're sittin' on, in which he died."
+
+Like most gamblers, Mr. Hamlin was superstitious.  He rose hastily
+from the bed, and took a chair beside the window.  The wind shook
+it as if the discontented spirit of Mr. Byways were without, re-
+enforcing his last injunction.
+
+"I don't know if you remember him," said Peg feverishly.  "he was a
+man ez hed suffered.  All that he loved--wife, fammerly, friends--
+had gone back on him.  He tried to make light of it afore folks;
+but with me, being a poor gal, he let himself out.  I never told
+anybody this.  I don't know why he told ME; I don't know,"
+continued Peg, with a sniffle, "why he wanted to make me unhappy
+too.  But he made me promise, that, if he left me his fortune, I'd
+NEVER, NEVER--so help me God!--never share it with any man or woman
+that I LOVED; I didn't think it would be hard to keep that promise
+then, Mr. Hamlin; for I was very poor, and hedn't a friend nor a
+living bein' that was kind to me, but HIM."
+
+"But you've as good as broken your promise already," said Hamlin.
+"You've given Jack money, as I know."
+
+"Only what I made myself.  Listen to me, Mr. Hamlin.  When Jack
+proposed to me, I offered him about what I kalkilated I could earn
+myself.  When he went away, and was sick and in trouble, I came
+here and took this hotel.  I knew that by hard work I could make it
+pay.  Don't laugh at me, please.  I DID work hard, and DID make it
+pay--without takin' one cent of the fortin'.  And all I made,
+workin' by night and day, I gave to him.  I did, Mr. Hamlin.  I
+ain't so hard to him as you think, though I might be kinder, I
+know."
+
+Mr. Hamlin rose, deliberately resumed his coat, watch, hat, and
+overcoat.  When he was completely dressed again, he turned to Peg.
+"Do you mean to say that you've been givin' all the money you made
+here to this A 1 first-class cherubim?"
+
+"Yes; but he didn't know where I got it.  O Mr. Hamlin! he didn't
+know that."
+
+"Do I understand you, that he's bin buckin agin Faro with the money
+that you raised on hash?  And YOU makin' the hash?"
+
+"But he didn't know that, he wouldn't hev took it if I'd told him."
+
+"No, he'd hev died fust!" said Mr. Hamlin gravely.  "Why, he's that
+sensitive--is Jack Folinsbee--that it nearly kills him to take
+money even of ME.  But where does this angel reside when he isn't
+fightin' the tiger, and is, so to speak, visible to the naked eye?"
+
+"He--he--stops here," said Peg, with an awkward blush.
+
+"I see.  Might I ask the number of his room--or should I be a--
+disturbing him in his meditations?" continued Jack Hamlin, with
+grave politeness.
+
+"Oh! then you'll promise?  And you'll talk to him, and make HIM
+promise?"
+
+"Of course," said Hamlin quietly.
+
+"And you'll remember he's sick--very sick?  His room's No. 44, at
+the end of the hall.  Perhaps I'd better go with you?"
+
+"I'll find it."
+
+"And you won't be too hard on him?"
+
+"I'll be a father to him," said Hamlin demurely, as he opened the
+door and stepped into the hall.  But he hesitated a moment, and
+then turned, and gravely held out his hand.  Peg took it timidly.
+He did not seem quite in earnest; and his black eyes, vainly
+questioned, indicated nothing.  But he shook her hand warmly, and
+the next moment was gone.
+
+He found the room with no difficulty.  A faint cough from within,
+and a querulous protest, answered his knock.  Mr. Hamlin entered
+without further ceremony.  A sickening smell of drugs, a palpable
+flavor of stale dissipation, and the wasted figure of Jack
+Folinsbee, half-dressed, extended upon the bed, greeted him.  Mr.
+Hamlin was for an instant startled.  There were hollow circles
+round the sick man's eyes; there was palsy in his trembling limbs;
+there was dissolution in his feverish breath.
+
+"What's up?" he asked huskily and nervously.
+
+"I am, and I want YOU to get up too."
+
+"I can't, Jack.  I'm regularly done up."  He reached his shaking
+hand towards a glass half-filled with suspicious, pungent-smelling
+liquid; but Mr. Hamlin stayed it.
+
+"Do you want to get back that two thousand dollars you lost?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, get up, and marry that woman down stairs."
+
+Folinsbee laughed half hysterically, half sardonically.
+
+"She won't give it to me."
+
+"No; but I will."
+
+"YOU?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Folinsbee, with an attempt at a reckless laugh, rose, trembling and
+with difficulty, to his swollen feet.  Hamlin eyed him narrowly,
+and then bade him lie down again.  "To-morrow will do," he said,
+"and then--"
+
+"If I don't "
+
+"If you don't," responded Hamlin, "why, I'll just wade in and CUT
+YOU OUT!"
+
+But on the morrow Mr. Hamlin was spared that possible act of
+disloyalty; for, in the night, the already hesitating spirit of Mr.
+Jack Folinsbee took flight on the wings of the south-east storm.
+When or how it happened, nobody knew.  Whether this last excitement
+and the near prospect of matrimony, or whether an overdose of
+anodyne, had hastened his end, was never known.  I only know, that,
+when they came to awaken him the next morning, the best that was
+left of him--a face still beautiful and boy-like--looked up coldly
+at the tearful eyes of Peg Moffat.  "It serves me right, it's a
+judgment," she said in a low whisper to Jack Hamlin; "for God knew
+that I'd broken my word, and willed all my property to him."
+
+She did not long survive him.  Whether Mr. Hamlin ever clothed with
+action the suggestion indicated in his speech to the lamented Jack
+that night, is not of record.  He was always her friend, and on her
+demise became her executor.  But the bulk of her property was left
+to a distant relation of handsome Jack Folinsbee, and so passed out
+of the control of Red Dog forever.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY
+
+
+It was growing quite dark in the telegraph-office at Cottonwood,
+Tuolumne County, California.  The office, a box-like enclosure, was
+separated from the public room of the Miners' Hotel by a thin
+partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at
+Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-
+stand preparatory to going home.  Without, the first monotonous
+rain of the season was dripping from the porches of the hotel in
+the waning light of a December day.  The operator, accustomed as he
+was to long intervals of idleness, was fast becoming bored.
+
+The tread of mud-muffled boots on the veranda, and the entrance of
+two men, offered a momentary excitement.  He recognized in the
+strangers two prominent citizens of Cottonwood; and their manner
+bespoke business.  One of them proceeded to the desk, wrote a
+despatch, and handed it to the other interrogatively.
+
+"That's about the way the thing p'ints," responded his companion
+assentingly.
+
+"I reckoned it only squar to use his dientical words?"
+
+"That's so."
+
+The first speaker turned to the operator with the despatch.
+
+"How soon can you shove her through?"
+
+The operator glanced professionally over the address and the length
+of the despatch.
+
+"Now," he answered promptly.
+
+"And she gets there?"
+
+"To-night.  But there's no delivery until to-morrow."
+
+"Shove her through to-night, and say there's an extra twenty left
+here for delivery."
+
+The operator, accustomed to all kinds of extravagant outlay for
+expedition, replied that he would lay this proposition with the
+despatch, before the San Francisco office.  He then took it and
+read it--and re-read it.  He preserved the usual professional
+apathy,--had doubtless sent many more enigmatical and mysterious
+messages,--but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes
+inquiringly to his customer.  That gentleman, who enjoyed a
+reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his
+gaze a little impatiently.  The operator had recourse to a trick.
+Under the pretence of misunderstanding the message, he obliged
+the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of accuracy, and
+even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly to insure
+correctness, but really to extract further information.
+Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript of
+his message.  The operator went to his instrument hesitatingly.
+
+"I suppose," he added half-questioningly, "there ain't no chance of
+a mistake.  This address is Rightbody, that rich old Bostonian that
+everybody knows.  There ain't but one?"
+
+"That's the address," responded the first speaker coolly.
+
+"Didn't know the old chap had investments out here," suggested the
+operator, lingering at his instrument.
+
+"No more did I," was the insufficient reply.
+
+For some few moments nothing was heard but the click of the
+instrument, as the operator worked the key, with the usual
+appearance of imparting confidence to a somewhat reluctant hearer
+who preferred to talk himself.  The two men stood by, watching his
+motions with the usual awe of the unprofessional.  When he had
+finished, they laid before him two gold-pieces.  As the operator
+took them up, he could not help saying,--
+
+"The old man went off kinder sudden, didn't he?  Had no time to
+write?"
+
+"Not sudden for that kind o' man," was the exasperating reply.
+
+But the speaker was not to be disconcerted.  "If there is an
+answer--" he began.
+
+"There ain't any," replied the first speaker quietly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because the man ez sent the message is dead."
+
+"But it's signed by you two."
+
+"On'y ez witnesses--eh?" appealed the first speaker to his comrade.
+
+"On'y ez witnesses," responded the other.
+
+The operator shrugged his shoulders.  The business concluded, the
+first speaker slightly relaxed.  He nodded to the operator, and
+turned to the bar-room with a pleasing social impulse.  When their
+glasses were set down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful
+condemnation of the hard times and the weather, apparently
+dismissed all previous proceedings from his mind, and lounged out
+with his companion.  At the corner of the street they stopped.
+
+"Well, that job's done," said the first speaker, by way of
+relieving the slight social embarrassment of parting.
+
+"Thet's so," responded his companion, and shook his hand.
+
+They parted.  A gust of wind swept through the pines, and struck a
+faint Aeolian cry from the wires above their heads; and the rain
+and the darkness again slowly settled upon Cottonwood.
+
+The message lagged a little at San Francisco, laid over half an
+hour at Chicago, and fought longitude the whole way; so that it was
+past midnight when the "all night" operator took it from the wires
+at Boston.  But it was freighted with a mandate from the San
+Francisco office; and a messenger was procured, who sped with it
+through dark snow-bound streets, between the high walls of close-
+shuttered rayless houses, to a certain formal square ghostly with
+snow-covered statues.  Here he ascended the broad steps of a
+reserved and solid-looking mansion, and pulled a bronze bell-knob,
+that somewhere within those chaste recesses, after an apparent
+reflective pause, coldly communicated the fact that a stranger was
+waiting without--as he ought.  Despite the lateness of the hour,
+there was a slight glow from the windows, clearly not enough to
+warm the messenger with indications of a festivity within, but yet
+bespeaking, as it were, some prolonged though subdued excitement.
+The sober servant who took the despatch, and receipted for it as
+gravely as if witnessing a last will and testament, respectfully
+paused before the entrance of the drawing-room.  The sound of
+measured and rhetorical speech, through which the occasional
+catarrhal cough of the New-England coast struggled, as the only
+effort of nature not wholly repressed, came from its heavily-
+curtained recesses; for the occasion of the evening had been the
+reception and entertainment of various distinguished persons, and,
+as had been epigrammatically expressed by one of the guests, "the
+history of the country" was taking its leave in phrases more or
+less memorable and characteristic.  Some of these valedictory
+axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as
+a genteel contribution to the entertainer.  Some had been already
+prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified the guest at
+other mansions.
+
+The last guest departed, the last carriage rolled away, when the
+servant ventured to indicate the existence of the despatch to his
+master, who was standing on the hearth-rug in an attitude of
+wearied self-righteousness.  He took it, opened it, read it, re-
+read it, and said,--
+
+"There must be some mistake!  It is not for me.  Call the boy,
+Waters."
+
+Waters, who was perfectly aware that the boy had left, nevertheless
+obediently walked towards the hall-door, but was recalled by his
+master.
+
+"No matter--at present!"
+
+"It's nothing serious, William?" asked Mrs. Rightbody, with languid
+wifely concern.
+
+"No, nothing.  Is there a light in my study?"
+
+"Yes.  But, before you go, can you give me a moment or two?"
+
+Mr. Rightbody turned a little impatiently towards his wife.  She
+had thrown herself languidly on the sofa; her hair was slightly
+disarranged, and part of a slippered foot was visible.  She might
+have been a finely-formed woman; but even her careless deshabille
+left the general impression that she was severely flannelled
+throughout, and that any ostentation of womanly charm was under
+vigorous sanitary SURVEILLANCE.
+
+"Mrs. Marvin told me to-night that her son made no secret of his
+serious attachment for our Alice, and that, if I was satisfied, Mr.
+Marvin would be glad to confer with you at once."
+
+The information did not seem to absorb Mr. Rightbody's wandering
+attention, but rather increased his impatience.  He said hastily,
+that he would speak of that to-morrow; and partly by way of
+reprisal, and partly to dismiss the subject, added--
+
+"Positively James must pay some attention to the register and the
+thermometer.  It was over 70 degrees to-night, and the ventilating
+draught was closed in the drawing-room."
+
+"That was because Professor Ammon sat near it, and the old
+gentleman's tonsils are so sensitive."
+
+"He ought to know from Dr. Dyer Doit that systematic and regular
+exposure to draughts stimulates the mucous membrane; while fixed
+air over 60 degrees invariably--"
+
+"I am afraid, William," interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, with feminine
+adroitness, adopting her husband's topic with a view of thereby
+directing him from it,--"I'm afraid that people do not yet
+appreciate the substitution of bouillon for punch and ices.  I
+observed that Mr. Spondee declined it, and, I fancied, looked
+disappointed.  The fibrine and wheat in liqueur-glasses passed
+quite unnoticed too."
+
+"And yet each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of
+a pound of beef.  I'm surprised at Spondee!" continued Mr.
+Rightbody aggrievedly.  "Exhausting his brain and nerve force by
+the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and
+diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas.  Even Mrs.
+Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the
+temperature of the stomach by the introduction of ice--"
+
+"Yes; but she took a lemon ice at the last Dorothea Reception, and
+asked me if I had observed that the lower animals refused their
+food at a temperature over 60 degrees."
+
+Mr. Rightbody again moved impatiently towards the door.  Mrs.
+Rightbody eyed him curiously.
+
+"You will not write, I hope?  Dr. Keppler told me to-night that
+your cerebral symptoms interdicted any prolonged mental strain."
+
+"I must consult a few papers," responded Mr. Rightbody curtly, as
+he entered his library.
+
+It was a richly-furnished apartment, morbidly severe in its
+decorations, which were symptomatic of a gloomy dyspepsia of art,
+then quite prevalent.  A few curios, very ugly, but providentially
+equally rare, were scattered about.  There were various bronzes,
+marbles, and casts, all requiring explanation, and so fulfilling
+their purpose of promoting conversation, and exhibiting the
+erudition of their owner.  There were souvenirs of travel with a
+history, old bric-a-brac with a pedigree, but little or nothing
+that challenged attention for itself alone.  In all cases the
+superiority of the owner to his possessions was admitted.  As a
+natural result, nobody ever lingered there, the servants avoided
+the room, and no child was ever known to play in it.
+
+Mr. Rightbody turned up the gas, and from a cabinet of drawers,
+precisely labelled, drew a package of letters.  These he carefully
+examined.  All were discolored, and made dignified by age; but
+some, in their original freshness, must have appeared trifling, and
+inconsistent with any correspondent of Mr. Rightbody.  Nevertheless,
+that gentleman spent some moments in carefully perusing them,
+occasionally referring to the telegram in his hand. Suddenly
+there was a knock at the door.  Mr. Rightbody started, made a
+half-unconscious movement to return the letters to the drawer,
+turned the telegram face downwards, and then, somewhat harshly,
+stammered,--
+
+"Eh?  Who's there?  Come in."
+
+"I beg your pardon, papa," said a very pretty girl, entering,
+without, however, the slightest trace of apology or awe in her
+manner, and taking a chair with the self-possession and familiarity
+of an habitue of the room; "but I knew it was not your habit to
+write late, so I supposed you were not busy.  I am on my way to
+bed."
+
+She was so very pretty, and withal so utterly unconscious of it, or
+perhaps so consciously superior to it, that one was provoked into a
+more critical examination of her face.  But this only resulted in a
+reiteration of her beauty, and perhaps the added facts that her
+dark eyes were very womanly, her rich complexion eloquent, and her
+chiselled lips fell enough to be passionate or capricious,
+notwithstanding that their general effect suggested neither
+caprice, womanly weakness, nor passion.
+
+With the instinct of an embarrassed man, Mr. Rightbody touched the
+topic he would have preferred to avoid.
+
+"I suppose we must talk over to-morrow," he hesitated, "this matter
+of yours and Mr. Marvin's?  Mrs. Marvin has formally spoken to your
+mother."
+
+Miss Alice lifted her bright eyes intelligently, but not joyfully;
+and the color of action, rather than embarrasament, rose to her
+round cheeks.
+
+"Yes, HE said she would," she answered simply.
+
+"At present," continued Mr. Rightbody still awkwardly, "I see no
+objection to the proposed arrangement."
+
+Miss Alice opened her round eyes at this.
+
+"Why, papa, I thought it had been all settled long ago!  Mamma knew
+it, you knew it.  Last July, mamma and you talked it over."
+
+"Yes, yes," returned her father, fumbling his papers; "that is--
+well, we will talk of it to-morrow."  In fact, Mr. Rightbody HAD
+intended to give the affair a proper attitude of seriousness and
+solemnity by due precision of speech, and some apposite reflections,
+when he should impart the news to his daughter, but felt himself
+unable to do it now.  "I am glad, Alice," he said at last, "that you
+have quite forgotten your previous whims and fancies.  You see WE
+are right."
+
+"Oh! I dare say, papa, if I'm to be married at all, that Mr. Marvin
+is in every way suitable."
+
+Mr. Rightbody looked at his daughter narrowly.  There was not the
+slightest impatience nor bitterness in her manner: it was as well
+regulated as the sentiment she expressed.
+
+"Mr. Marvin is--" he began.
+
+"I know what Mr. Marvin IS," interrupted Miss Alice; "and he has
+promised me that I shall be allowed to go on with my studies the
+same as before.  I shall graduate with my class; and, if I prefer
+to practise my profession, I can do so in two years after our
+marriage."
+
+"In two years?" queried Mr. Rightbody curiously.
+
+"Yes.  You see, in case we should have a child, that would give me
+time enough to wean it."
+
+Mr. Rightbody looked at this flesh of his flesh, pretty and
+palpable flesh as it was; but, being confronted as equally with the
+brain of his brain, all he could do was to say meekly,--
+
+"Yes, certainly.  We will see about all that to-morrow."
+
+Miss Alice rose.  Something in the free, unfettered swing of her
+arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe
+hips, suggested his next speech, although still distrait and
+impatient.
+
+"You continue your exercise with the health-lift yet, I see."
+
+"Yes, papa; but I had to give up the flannels.  I don't see how
+mamma could wear them.  But my dresses are high-necked, and by
+bathing I toughen my skin.  See!" she added, as, with a child-like
+unconsciousness, she unfastened two or three buttons of her gown,
+and exposed the white surface of her throat and neck to her father,
+"I can defy a chill."
+
+Mr. Rightbody, with something akin to a genuine playful, paternal
+laugh, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
+
+"It's getting late, Ally," he said parentally, but not dictatorially.
+"Go to bed."
+
+"I took a nap of three hours this afternoon," said Miss Alice, with
+a dazzling smile, "to anticipate this dissipation.  Good-night,
+papa.  To-morrow, then."
+
+"To-morrow," repeated Mr. Rightbody, with his eyes still fixed upon
+the girl vaguely.  "Good-night."
+
+Miss Alice tripped from the room, possibly a trifle the more light-
+heartedly that she had parted from her father in one of his rare
+moments of illogical human weakness.  And perhaps it was well for
+the poor girl that she kept this single remembrance of him, when, I
+fear, in after-years, his methods, his reasoning, and indeed all he
+had tried to impress upon her childhood, had faded from her memory.
+
+For, when she had left, Mr. Rightbody fell again to the examination
+of his old letters.  This was quite absorbing; so much so, that he
+did not notice the footsteps of Mrs. Rightbody, on the staircase as
+she passed to her chamber, nor that she had paused on the landing
+to look through the glass half-door on her husband, as he sat there
+with the letters beside him, and the telegram opened before him.
+Had she waited a moment later, she would have seen him rise, and
+walk to the sofa with a disturbed air and a slight confusion; so
+that, on reaching it, he seemed to hesitate to lie down, although
+pale and evidently faint.  Had she still waited, she would have
+seen him rise again with an agonized effort, stagger to the table,
+fumblingly refold and replace the papers in the cabinet, and lock
+it, and, although now but half-conscious, hold the telegram over
+the gas-flame till it was consumed.
+
+For, had she waited until this moment, she would have flown
+unhesitatingly to his aid, as, this act completed, he staggered
+again, reached his hand toward the bell, but vainly, and then fell
+prone upon the sofa.
+
+But alas! no providential nor accidental hand was raised to save
+him, or anticipate the progress of this story.  And when, half an
+hour later, Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed, and more indignant at
+his violation of the doctor's rules, appeared upon the threshold,
+Mr. Rightbody lay upon the sofa, dead!
+
+With bustle, with thronging feet, with the irruption of strangers,
+and a hurrying to and fro, but, more than all, with an impulse and
+emotion unknown to the mansion when its owner was in life, Mrs.
+Rightbody strove to call back the vanished life, but in vain.  The
+highest medical intelligence, called from its bed at this strange
+hour, saw only the demonstration of its theories made a year
+before.  Mr. Rightbody was dead--without doubt, without mystery,
+even as a correct man should die--logically, and indorsed by the
+highest medical authority.
+
+But even in the confusion, Mrs. Rightbody managed to speed a
+messenger to the telegraph-office for a copy of the despatch
+received by Mr. Rightbody, but now missing.
+
+In the solitude of her own room, and without a confidant, she read
+these words:--
+
+
+                           "[Copy.]
+
+"To MR. ADAMS RIGHTBODY, BOSTON, MASS.
+
+"Joshua Silsbie died suddenly this morning.  His last request was
+that you should remember your sacred compact with him of thirty
+years ago.
+         (Signed)                       "SEVENTY-FOUR.
+                                        "SEVENTY-FIVE."
+
+
+In the darkened home, and amid the formal condolements of their
+friends who had called to gaze upon the scarcely cold features of
+their late associate, Mrs. Rightbody managed to send another
+despatch.  It was addressed to "Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five,"
+Cottonwood.  In a few hours she received the following enigmatical
+response:--
+
+"A horse-thief named Josh Silsbie was lynched yesterday morning by
+the Vigilantes at Deadwood."
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+The spring of 1874 was retarded in the California sierras; so much
+so, that certain Eastern tourists who had early ventured into the
+Yo Semite Valley found themselves, one May morning, snow-bound
+against the tempestuous shoulders of El Capitan.  So furious was
+the onset of the wind at the Upper Merced Canyon, that even so
+respectable a lady as Mrs. Rightbody was fain to cling to the neck
+of her guide to keep her seat in the saddle; while Miss Alice,
+scorning all masculine assistance, was hurled, a lovely chaos,
+against the snowy wall of the chasm.  Mrs. Rightbody screamed; Miss
+Alice raged under her breath, but scrambled to her feet again in
+silence.
+
+"I told you so!" said Mrs. Rightbody, in an indignant whisper, as
+her daughter again ranged beside her.  "I warned you especially,
+Alice--that--that--"
+
+"What?" interrupted Miss Alice curtly.
+
+"That you would need your chemiloons and high boots," said Mrs.
+Rightbody, in a regretful undertone, slightly increasing her
+distance from the guides.
+
+Miss Alice shrugged her pretty shoulders scornfully, but ignored
+her mother's implication.
+
+"You were particularly warned against going into the valley at this
+season," she only replied grimly.
+
+Mrs. Rightbody raised her eyes impatiently.
+
+"You know how anxious I was to discover your poor father's strange
+correspondent, Alice.  You have no consideration."
+
+"But when YOU HAVE discovered him--what then?" queried Miss Alice.
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Yes.  My belief is, that you will find the telegram only a mere
+business cipher, and all this quest mere nonsense."
+
+"Alice!  Why, YOU yourself thought your father's conduct that night
+very strange.  Have you forgotten?"
+
+The young lady had NOT, but, for some far-reaching feminine reason,
+chose to ignore it at that moment, when her late tumble in the snow
+was still fresh in her mind.
+
+"And this woman, whoever she may be--" continued Mrs. Rightbody.
+
+"How do you know there's a woman in the case?" interrupted Miss
+Alice, wickedly I fear.
+
+"How do--I--know--there's a woman?" slowly ejaculated Mrs.
+Rightbody, floundering in the snow and the unexpected possibility
+of such a ridiculous question.  But here her guide flew to her
+assistance, and estopped further speech.  And, indeed, a grave
+problem was before them.
+
+The road that led to their single place of refuge--a cabin, half
+hotel, half trading-post, scarce a mile away--skirted the base of
+the rocky dome, and passed perilously near the precipitous wall of
+the valley.  There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more
+to this terrace-like passage; and the guides paused for a moment of
+consultation, cooly oblivious, alike to the terrified questioning
+of Mrs. Rightbody, or the half-insolent independence of the
+daughter.  The elder guide was russet-bearded, stout, and humorous:
+the younger was dark-bearded, slight, and serious.
+
+"Ef you kin git young Bunker Hill to let you tote her on your
+shoulders, I'll git the Madam to hang on to me," came to Mrs.
+Rightbody's horrified ears as the expression of her particular
+companion.
+
+"Freeze to the old gal, and don't reckon on me if the daughter
+starts in to play it alone," was the enigmatical response of the
+younger guide.
+
+Miss Alice overheard both propositions; and, before the two men
+returned to their side, that high-spirited young lady had urged her
+horse down the declivity.
+
+Alas! at this moment a gust of whirling snow swept down upon her.
+There was a flounder, a mis-step, a fatal strain on the wrong rein,
+a fall, a few plucky but unavailing struggles, and both horse and
+rider slid ignominiously down toward the rocky shelf.  Mrs.
+Rightbody screamed.  Miss Alice, from a confused debris of snow and
+ice, uplifted a vexed and coloring face to the younger guide, a
+little the more angrily, perhaps, that she saw a shade of impatience
+on his face.
+
+"Don't move, but tie one end of the 'lass' under your arms, and
+throw me the other," he said quietly.
+
+"What do you mean by 'lass'--the lasso?" asked Miss Alice
+disgustedly.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Then why don't you say so?"
+
+"O Alice!" reproachfully interpolated Mrs. Rightbody, encircled by
+the elder guide's stalwart arm.
+
+Miss Alice deigned no reply, but drew the loop of the lasso over
+her shoulders, and let it drop to her round waist.  Then she
+essayed to throw the other end to her guide.  Dismal failure!  The
+first fling nearly knocked her off the ledge; the second went all
+wild against the rocky wall; the third caught in a thorn-bush,
+twenty feet below her companion's feet.  Miss Alice's arm sunk
+helplessly to her side, at which signal of unqualified surrender,
+the younger guide threw himself half way down the slope, worked his
+way to the thorn-bush, hung for a moment perilously over the
+parapet, secured the lasso, and then began to pull away at his
+lovely burden.  Miss Alice was no dead weight, however, but
+steadily half-scrambled on her hands and knees to within a foot or
+two of her rescuer.  At this too familiar proximity, she stood up,
+and leaned a little stiffly against the line, causing the guide to
+give an extra pull, which had the lamentable effect of landing her
+almost in his arms.
+
+As it was, her intelligent forehead struck his nose sharply, and I
+regret to add, treating of a romantic situation, caused that
+somewhat prominent sign and token of a hero to bleed freely.  Miss
+Alice instantly clapped a handful of snow over his nostrils.
+
+"Now elevate your right arm," she said commandingly.
+
+He did as he was bidden, but sulkily.
+
+"That compresses the artery."
+
+No man, with a pretty woman's hand and a handful of snow over his
+mouth and nose, could effectively utter a heroic sentence, nor,
+with his arm elevated stiffly over his head, assume a heroic
+attitude.  But, when his mouth was free again, he said half-
+sulkily, half-apologetically,--
+
+"I might have known a girl couldn't throw worth a cent."
+
+"Why?" demanded Miss Alice sharply.
+
+"Because--why--because--you see--they haven't got the experience,"
+he stammered feebly.
+
+"Nonsense! they haven't the CLAVICLE--that's all!  It's because I'm
+a woman, and smaller in the collar-bone, that I haven't the play of
+the fore-arm which you have.  See!"  She squared her shoulders
+slightly, and turned the blaze of her dark eyes full on his.
+"Experience, indeed!  A girl can learn anything a boy can."
+
+Apprehension took the place of ill-humor in her hearer.  He turned
+his eyes hastily away, and glanced above him.  The elder guide had
+gone forward to catch Miss Alice's horse, which, relieved of his
+rider, was floundering toward the trail.  Mrs. Rightbody was
+nowhere to be seen.  And these two were still twenty feet below the
+trail!
+
+There was an awkward pause.
+
+"Shall I put you up the same way?" he queried.  Miss Alice looked
+at his nose, and hesitated.  "Or will you take my hand?" he added
+in surly impatience.  To his surprise, Miss Alice took his hand,
+and they began the ascent together.
+
+But the way was difficult and dangerous.  Once or twice her feet
+slipped on the smoothly-worn rock beneath; and she confessed to an
+inward thankfulness when her uncertain feminine hand-grip was
+exchanged for his strong arm around her waist.  Not that he was
+ungentle; but Miss Alice angrily felt that he had once or twice
+exercised his superior masculine functions in a rough way; and yet
+the next moment she would have probably rejected the idea that she
+had even noticed it.  There was no doubt, however, that he WAS a
+little surly.
+
+A fierce scramble finally brought them back in safety to the trail;
+but in the action Miss Alice's shoulder, striking a projecting
+bowlder, wrung from her a feminine cry of pain, her first sign of
+womanly weakness.  The guide stopped instantly.
+
+"I am afraid I hurt you?"
+
+She raised her brown lashes, a trifle moist from suffering, looked
+in his eyes, and dropped her own.  Why, she could not tell.  And
+yet he had certainly a kind face, despite its seriousness; and a
+fine face, albeit unshorn and weather-beaten.  Her own eyes had
+never been so near to any man's before, save her lover's; and yet
+she had never seen so much in even his.  She slipped her hand away,
+not with any reference to him, but rather to ponder over this
+singular experience, and somehow felt uncomfortable thereat.
+
+Nor was he less so.  It was but a few days ago that he had accepted
+the charge of this young woman from the elder guide, who was the
+recognized escort of the Rightbody party, having been a former
+correspondent of her father's.  He had been hired like any other
+guide, but had undertaken the task with that chivalrous enthusiasm
+which the average Californian always extends to the sex so rare to
+him.  But the illusion had passed; and he had dropped into a sulky,
+practical sense of his situation, perhaps fraught with less danger
+to himself.  Only when appealed to by his manhood or her weakness,
+he had forgotten his wounded vanity.
+
+He strode moodily ahead, dutifully breaking the path for her in the
+direction of the distant canyon, where Mrs. Rightbody and her
+friend awaited them.  Miss Alice was first to speak.  In this
+trackless, uncharted terra incognita of the passions, it is always
+the woman who steps out to lead the way.
+
+"You know this place very well.  I suppose you have lived here
+long?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You were not born here--no?"
+
+A long pause.
+
+"I observe they call you 'Stanislaus Joe.'  Of course that is not
+your real name?"  (Mem.--Miss Alice had never called him ANYTHING,
+usually prefacing any request with a languid, "O-er-er, please,
+mister-er-a!" explicit enough for his station.)
+
+"No."
+
+Miss Alice (trotting after him, and bawling in his ear).--"WHAT
+name did you say?"
+
+The Man (doggedly).--"I don't know."  Nevertheless, when they
+reached the cabin, after an half-hour's buffeting with the storm,
+Miss Alice applied herself to her mother's escort, Mr. Ryder.
+
+"What's the name of the man who takes care of my horse?"
+
+"Stanislaus Joe," responded Mr. Ryder.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"No.  Sometimes he's called Joe Stanislaus."
+
+Miss Alice (satirically).--"I suppose it's the custom here to send
+young ladies out with gentlemen who hide their names under an
+alias?"
+
+Mr. Ryder (greatly perplexed).--"Why, dear me, Miss Alice, you
+allers 'peared to me as a gal as was able to take keer--"
+
+Miss Alice (interrupting with a wounded, dove-like timidity).--"Oh,
+never mind, please!"
+
+The cabin offered but scanty accommodation to the tourists; which
+fact, when indignantly presented by Mrs. Rightbody, was explained
+by the good-humored Ryder from the circumstance that the usual
+hotel was only a slight affair of boards, cloth, and paper, put up
+during the season, and partly dismantled in the fall.  "You
+couldn't be kept warm enough there," he added.  Nevertheless Miss
+Alice noticed that both Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe retired there
+with their pipes, after having prepared the ladies' supper, with
+the assistance of an Indian woman, who apparently emerged from the
+earth at the coming of the party, and disappeared as mysteriously.
+
+The stars came out brightly before they slept; and the next morning
+a clear, unwinking sun beamed with almost summer power through the
+shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the
+details of its rude interior.  Two or three mangy, half-eaten
+buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles
+and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory.
+A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but
+so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity
+respected its secret.  Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and
+informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her
+husband's unknown correspondent.  "Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five
+represent two members of the Vigilance Committee, my dear, and Mr.
+Ryder will assist me to find them."
+
+"Mr. Ryder!" ejaculated Miss Alice, in scornful astonishment.
+
+"Alice," said Mrs. Rightbody, with a suspicious assumption of
+sudden defence, "you injure yourself, you injure me, by this
+exclusive attitude.  Mr. Ryder is a friend of your father's, an
+exceedingly well-informed gentleman.  I have not, of course,
+imparted to him the extent of my suspicions.  But he can help me to
+what I must and will know.  You might treat him a little more
+civilly--or, at least, a little better than you do his servant,
+your guide.  Mr. Ryder is a gentleman, and not a paid courier."
+
+Miss Alice was suddenly attentive.  When she spoke again, she
+asked, "Why do you not find out something about this Silsbie--who
+died--or was hung--or something of that kind?"
+
+"Child!" said Mrs. Rightbody, "don't you see there was no Silsbie,
+or, if there was, he was simply the confidant of that--woman?"
+
+A knock at the door, announcing the presence of Mr. Ryder and
+Stanislaus Joe with the horses, checked Mrs. Rightbody's speech.
+As the animals were being packed, Mrs. Rightbody for a moment
+withdrew in confidential conversation with Mr. Ryder, and, to the
+young lady's still greater annoyance, left her alone with
+Stanislaus Joe.  Miss Alice was not in good temper, but she felt it
+necessary to say something.
+
+"I hope the hotel offers better quarters for travellers than this
+in summer," she began.
+
+"It does."
+
+"Then this does not belong to it?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Who lives here, then?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"I beg your pardon," stammered Miss Alice, "I thought you lived
+where we hired--where we met you--in--in--  You must excuse me."
+
+"I'm not a regular guide; but as times were hard, and I was out of
+grub, I took the job."
+
+"Out of grub!" "job!"  And SHE was the "job."  What would Henry
+Marvin say?  It would nearly kill him.  She began herself to feel a
+little frightened, and walked towards the door.
+
+"One moment, miss!"
+
+The young girl hesitated.  The man's tone was surly, and yet
+indicated a certain kind of half-pathetic grievance.  HER curiosity
+got the better of her prudence, and she turned back.
+
+"This morning," he began hastily, "when we were coming down the
+valley, you picked me up twice."
+
+"I picked YOU up?" repeated the astonished Alice.
+
+"Yes, CONTRADICTED me: that's what I mean,--once when you said
+those rocks were volcanic, once when you said the flower you picked
+was a poppy.  I didn't let on at the time, for it wasn't my say;
+but all the while you were talking I might have laid for you--"
+
+"I don't understand you," said Alice haughtily.
+
+"I might have entrapped you before folks.  But I only want you to
+know that I'M right, and here are the books to show it."
+
+He drew aside the dingy calico curtain, revealed a small shelf of
+bulky books, took down two large volumes,--one of botany, one of
+geology,--nervously sought his text, and put them in Alice's
+outstretched hands.
+
+"I had no intention--" she began, half-proudly, half-embarrassedly.
+
+"Am I right, miss?" he interrupted.
+
+"I presume you are, if you say so."
+
+"That's all, ma'am.  Thank you!"
+
+Before the girl had time to reply, he was gone.  When he again
+returned, it was with her horse, and Mrs. Rightbody and Ryder were
+awaiting her.  But Miss Alice noticed that his own horse was
+missing.
+
+"Are you not going with us?" she asked.
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, indeed!"
+
+Miss Alice felt her speech was a feeble conventionalism; but it was
+all she could say.  She, however, DID something.  Hitherto it had
+been her habit to systematically reject his assistance in mounting
+to her seat.  Now she awaited him.  As he approached, she smiled,
+and put out her little foot.  He instantly stooped; she placed it
+in his hand, rose with a spring, and for one supreme moment
+Stanislaus Joe held her unresistingly in his arms.  The next moment
+she was in the saddle; but in that brief interval of sixty seconds
+she had uttered a volume in a single sentence,--
+
+"I hope you will forgive me!"
+
+He muttered a reply, and turned his face aside quickly as if to
+hide it.
+
+Miss Alice cantered forward with a smile, but pulled her hat down
+over her eyes as she joined her mother.  She was blushing.
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+Mr. Ryder was as good as his word.  A day or two later he entered
+Mrs. Rightbody's parlor at the Chrysopolis Hotel in Stockton, with
+the information that he had seen the mysterious senders of the
+despatch, and that they were now in the office of the hotel waiting
+her pleasure.  Mr. Ryder further informed her that these gentlemen
+had only stipulated that they should not reveal their real names,
+and that they be introduced to her simply as the respective
+"Seventy-Four" and "Seventy-Five" who had signed the despatch sent
+to the late Mr. Rightbody.
+
+Mrs. Rightbody at first demurred to this; but, on the assurance
+from Mr. Ryder that this was the only condition on which an
+interview would be granted, finally consented.
+
+"You will find them square men, even if they are a little rough,
+ma'am.  But, if you'd like me to be present, I'll stop; though I
+reckon, if ye'd calkilated on that, you'd have had me take care o'
+your business by proxy, and not come yourself three thousand miles
+to do it."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody believed it better to see them alone.
+
+"All right, ma'am.  I'll hang round out here; and ef ye should
+happen to have a ticklin' in your throat, and a bad spell o'
+coughin', I'll drop in, careless like, to see if you don't want
+them drops.  Sabe?"
+
+And with an exceedingly arch wink, and a slight familiar tap on
+Mrs. Rightbody's shoulder, which might have caused the late Mr.
+Rightbody to burst his sepulchre, he withdrew.
+
+A very timid, hesitating tap on the door was followed by the
+entrance of two men, both of whom, in general size, strength, and
+uncouthness, were ludicrously inconsistent with their diffident
+announcement.  They proceeded in Indian file to the centre of the
+room, faced Mrs. Rightbody, acknowledged her deep courtesy by a
+strong shake of the hand, and, drawing two chairs opposite to her,
+sat down side by side.
+
+"I presume I have the pleasure of addressing--" began Mrs. Rightbody.
+
+The man directly opposite Mrs. Rightbody turned to the other
+inquiringly.
+
+The other man nodded his head, and replied,--
+
+"Seventy-Four."
+
+"Seventy-Five," promptly followed the other.
+
+Mrs. Rightbody paused, a little confused.
+
+"I have sent for you," she began again, "to learn something more of
+the circumstances under which you gentlemen sent a despatch to my
+late husband."
+
+"The circumstances," replied Seventy-Four quietly, with a side-
+glance at his companion, "panned out about in this yer style.  We
+hung a man named Josh Silsbie, down at Deadwood, for hoss-stealin'.
+When I say WE, I speak for Seventy-Five yer as is present, as well
+as representin', so to speak, seventy-two other gents as is
+scattered.  We hung Josh Silsbie on squar, pretty squar, evidence.
+Afore he was strung up, Seventy-Five yer axed him, accordin' to
+custom, ef ther was enny thing he had to say, or enny request that
+he allowed to make of us.  He turns to Seventy-Five yer, and--"
+
+Here he paused suddenly, looking at his companion.
+
+"He sez, sez he," began Seventy-Five, taking up the narrative,--"he
+sez, 'Kin I write a letter?' sez he.  Sez I, 'Not much, ole man:
+ye've got no time.'  Sez he, 'Kin I send a despatch by telegraph?'
+I sez, 'Heave ahead.'  He sez,--these is his dientikal words,--
+'Send to Adam Rightbody, Boston.  Tell him to remember his sacred
+compack with me thirty years ago.'"
+
+"'His sacred compack with me thirty years ago,'" echoed Seventy-
+Four,--"his dientikal words."
+
+"What was the compact?" asked Mrs. Rightbody anxiously.
+
+Seventy-Four looked at Seventy-Five, and then both arose, and
+retired to the corner of the parlor, where they engaged in a slow
+but whispered deliberation.  Presently they returned, and sat down
+again.
+
+"We allow," said Seventy-Four, quietly but decidedly, "that YOU
+know what that sacred compact was."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody lost her temper and her truthfulness together.  "Of
+course," she said hurriedly, "I know.  But do you mean to say that
+you gave this poor man no further chance to explain before you
+murdered him?"
+
+Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five both rose again slowly, and retired.
+When they returned again, and sat down, Seventy-Five, who by this
+time, through some subtile magnetism, Mrs. Rightbody began to
+recognize as the superior power, said gravely,--
+
+"We wish to say, regarding this yer murder, that Seventy-Four and
+me is equally responsible; that we reckon also to represent, so to
+speak, seventy-two other gentlemen as is scattered; that we are
+ready, Seventy-Four and me, to take and holt that responsibility,
+now and at any time, afore every man or men as kin be fetched agin
+us.  We wish to say that this yer say of ours holds good yer in
+Californy, or in any part of these United States."
+
+"Or in Canady," suggested Seventy-Four.
+
+"Or in Canady.  We wouldn't agree to cross the water, or go to
+furrin parts, unless absolutely necessary.  We leaves the chise of
+weppings to your principal, ma'am, or being a lady, ma'am, and
+interested, to any one you may fetch to act for him.  An
+advertisement in any of the Sacramento papers, or a playcard or
+handbill stuck unto a tree near Deadwood, saying that Seventy-Four
+or Seventy-Five will communicate with this yer principal or agent
+of yours, will fetch us--allers."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed and desperate, saw her blunder.
+"I mean nothing of the kind," she said hastily.  "I only expected
+that you might have some further details of this interview with
+Silsbie; that perhaps you could tell me--" a bold, bright thought
+crossed Mrs. Rightbody's mind--"something more about HER."
+
+The two men looked at each other.
+
+"I suppose your society have no objection to giving me information
+about HER," said Mrs. Rightbody eagerly.
+
+Another quiet conversation in the corner, and the return of both
+men.
+
+"We want to say that we've no objection."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody's heart beat high.  Her boldness had made her
+penetration good.  Yet she felt she must not alarm the men
+heedlessly.
+
+"Will you inform me to what extent Mr. Rightbody, my late husband,
+was interested in her?"
+
+This time it seemed an age to Mrs. Rightbody before the men
+returned from their solemn consultation in the corner.  She could
+both hear and feel that their discussion was more animated than
+their previous conferences.  She was a little mortified, however,
+when they sat down, to hear Seventy-Four say slowly,--
+
+"We wish to say that we don't allow to say HOW much."
+
+"Do you not think that the 'sacred compact' between Mr. Rightbody
+and Mr. Silsbie referred to her?"
+
+"We reckon it do."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody, flushed and animated, would have given worlds had
+her daughter been present to hear this undoubted confirmation of
+her theory.  Yet she felt a little nervous and uncomfortable even
+on this threshold of discovery.
+
+"Is she here now?"
+
+"She's in Tuolumne," said Seventy-Four.
+
+"A little better looked arter than formerly," added Seventy-Five.
+
+"I see.  Then Mr. Silsbie ENTICED her away?"
+
+"Well, ma'am, it WAS allowed as she runned away.  But it wasn't
+proved, and it generally wasn't her style."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody trifled with her next question.
+
+"She was pretty, of course?"
+
+The eyes of both men brightened.
+
+"She was THAT!" said Seventy-Four emphatically.
+
+"It would have done you good to see her!" added Seventy-Five.
+
+Mrs. Rightbody inwardly doubted it; but, before she could ask
+another question, the two men again retired to the corner for
+consultation.  When they came back, there was a shade more of
+kindliness and confidence in their manner; and Seventy-Four opened
+his mind more freely.
+
+"We wish to say, ma'am, looking at the thing, by and large, in a
+far-minded way, that, ez YOU seem interested, and ez Mr. Rightbody
+was interested, and was, according to all accounts, deceived and
+led away by Silsbie, that we don't mind listening to any
+proposition YOU might make, as a lady--allowin' you was ekally
+interested."
+
+"I understand," said Mrs. Rightbody quickly.  "And you will furnish
+me with any papers?"
+
+The two men again consulted.
+
+"We wish to say, ma'am, that we think she's got papers, but--"
+
+"I MUST have them, you understand," interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, "at
+any price.
+
+"We was about to say, ma'am," said Seventy-Four slowly, "that,
+considerin' all things,--and you being a lady--you kin have HER,
+papers, pedigree, and guaranty, for twelve hundred dollars."
+
+It has been alleged that Mrs. Rightbody asked only one question
+more, and then fainted.  It is known, however, that by the next day
+it was understood in Deadwood that Mrs. Rightbody had confessed to
+the Vigilance Committee that her husband, a celebrated Boston
+millionaire, anxious to gain possession of Abner Springer's well-
+known sorrel mare, had incited the unfortunate Josh Silsbie to
+steal it; and that finally, failing in this, the widow of the
+deceased Boston millionaire was now in personal negotiation with
+the owners.
+
+Howbeit, Miss Alice, returning home that afternoon, found her
+mother with a violent headache.
+
+"We will leave here by the next steamer," said Mrs. Rightbody
+languidly.  "Mr. Ryder has promised to accompany us."
+
+"But, mother--"
+
+"The climate, Alice, is over-rated.  My nerves are already
+suffering from it.  The associations are unfit for you, and Mr.
+Marvin is naturally impatient."
+
+Miss Alice colored slightly.
+
+"But your quest, mother?"
+
+"I've abandoned it."
+
+"But I have not," said Alice quietly.  "Do you remember my guide at
+the Yo Semite,--Stanislaus Joe?  Well, Stanislaus Joe is--who do
+you think?"
+
+Mrs. Rightbody was languidly indifferent.
+
+"Well, Stanislaus Joe is the son of Joshua Silsbie."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody sat upright in astonishment
+
+"Yes.  But mother, he knows nothing of what we know.  His father
+treated him shamefully, and set him cruelly adrift years ago; and,
+when he was hung, the poor fellow, in sheer disgrace, changed his
+name."
+
+"But, if he knows nothing of his father's compact, of what interest
+is this?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!  Only I thought it might lead to something."
+
+Mrs. Rightbody suspected that "something," and asked sharply, "And
+pray how did YOU find it out?  You did not speak of it in the
+valley."
+
+"Oh! I didn't find it out till to-day," said Miss Alice, walking to
+the window.  "He happened to be here, and--told me."
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+
+If Mrs. Rightbody's friends had been astounded by her singular and
+unexpected pilgrimage to California so soon after her husband's
+decease, they were still more astounded by the information, a year
+later, that she was engaged to be married to a Mr. Ryder, of whom
+only the scant history was known, that he was a Californian, and
+former correspondent of her husband.  It was undeniable that the
+man was wealthy, and evidently no mere adventurer; it was rumored
+that he was courageous and manly: but even those who delighted in
+his odd humor were shocked at his grammar and slang.
+
+It was said that Mr. Marvin had but one interview with his father-
+in-law elect, and returned so supremely disgusted, that the match
+was broken off.  The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled,
+found its way through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly
+repeated it.  Only one member of the Rightbody family--and a new
+one--saved them from utter ostracism.  It was young Mr. Ryder, the
+adopted son of the prospective head of the household, whose
+culture, manners, and general elegance, fascinated and thrilled
+Boston with a new sensation.  It seemed to many that Miss Alice
+should, in the vicinity of this rare exotic, forget her former
+enthusiasm for a professional life; but the young man was pitied by
+society, and various plans for diverting him from any mesalliance
+with the Rightbody family were concocted.
+
+It was a wintry night, and the second anniversary of Mr. Rightbody's
+death, that a light was burning in his library.  But the dead man's
+chair was occupied by young Mr. Ryder, adopted son of the new
+proprietor of the mansion; and before him stood Alice, with her dark
+eyes fixed on the table.
+
+"There must have been something in it, Joe, believe me.  Did you
+never hear your father speak of mine?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"But you say he was college-bred, and born a gentleman, and in his
+youth he must have had many friends."
+
+"Alice," said the young man gravely, "when I have done something to
+redeem my name, and wear it again before these people, before YOU,
+it would be well to revive the past.  But till then--"
+
+But Alice was not to be put down.  "I remember," she went on,
+scarcely heeding him, "that, when I came in that night, papa was
+reading a letter, and seemed to be disconcerted."
+
+"A letter?"
+
+"Yes; but," added Alice, with a sigh, "when we found him here
+insensible, there was no letter on his person.  He must have
+destroyed it."
+
+"Did you ever look among his papers?  If found, it might be a
+clew."
+
+The young man glanced toward the cabinet.  Alice read his eyes, and
+answered,--
+
+"Oh, dear, no!  The cabinet contained only his papers, all
+perfectly arranged,--you know how methodical were his habits,--and
+some old business and private letters, all carefully put away."
+
+"Let us see them," said the young man, rising.
+
+They opened drawer after drawer; files upon files of letters and
+business papers, accurately folded and filed.  Suddenly Alice
+uttered a little cry, and picked up a quaint ivory paper-knife
+lying at the bottom of a drawer.
+
+"It was missing the next day, and never could be found: he must
+have mislaid it here.  This is the drawer," said Alice eagerly.
+
+Here was a clew.  But the lower part of the drawer was filled with
+old letters, not labelled, yet neatly arranged in files.  Suddenly
+he stopped, and said, "Put them back, Alice, at once."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Some of these letters are in my father's handwriting."
+
+"The more reason why I should see them," said the girl imperatively.
+"Here, you take part, and I'll take part, and we'll get through
+quicker."
+
+There was a certain decision and independence in her manner which
+he had learned to respect.  He took the letters, and in silence
+read them with her.  They were old college letters, so filled with
+boyish dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and utopian theories, that I
+fear neither of these young people even recognized their parents in
+the dead ashes of the past.  They were both grave, until Alice
+uttered a little hysterical cry, and dropped her face in her hands.
+Joe was instantly beside her.
+
+"It's nothing, Joe, nothing.  Don't read it, please; please, don't.
+It's so funny! it's so very queer!"
+
+But Joe had, after a slight, half-playful struggle, taken the
+letter from the girl.  Then he read aloud the words written by his
+father thirty years ago.
+
+"I thank you, dear friend, for all you say about my wife and boy.
+I thank you for reminding me of our boyish compact.  He will be
+ready to fulfil it, I know, if he loves those his father loves,
+even if you should marry years later.  I am glad for your sake, for
+both our sakes, that it is a boy.  Heaven send you a good wife,
+dear Adams, and a daughter, to make my son equally happy."
+
+Joe Silsbie looked down, took the half-laughing, half-tearful face
+in his hands, kissed her forehead, and, with tears in his grave
+eyes, said, "Amen!"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+I am inclined to think that this sentiment was echoed heartily by
+Mrs. Rightbody's former acquaintances, when, a year later, Miss
+Alice was united to a professional gentleman of honor and renown,
+yet who was known to be the son of a convicted horse-thief.  A few
+remembered the previous Californian story, and found corroboration
+therefor; but a majority believed it a just reward to Miss Alice
+for her conduct to Mr. Marvin, and, as Miss Alice cheerfully
+accepted it in that light, I do not see why I may not end my story
+with happiness to all concerned.
+
+
+
+A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT.
+
+
+It was the sacred hour of noon at Sammtstadt.  Everybody was at
+dinner; and the serious Kellner of "Der Wildemann" glanced in mild
+reproach at Mr. James Clinch, who, disregarding that fact and the
+invitatory table d'hote, stepped into the street.  For Mr. Clinch
+had eaten a late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American,
+and, moveover, preoccupied with business.  He was consequently
+indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like
+counting-house of "Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins," to
+find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at
+the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth "Mittagsessen"
+as a reasonable explanation of the solitude.  "A country," said Mr.
+Clinch to himself, "that stops business at mid-day to go to dinner,
+and employs women-servants to talk to business-men, is played out."
+
+He stepped from the silent building into the equally silent
+Kronprinzen Strasse.  Not a soul to be seen anywhere.  Rows on rows
+of two-storied, gray-stuccoed buildings that might be dwellings, or
+might be offices, all showing some traces of feminine taste and
+supervision in a flower or a curtain that belied the legended
+"Comptoir," or "Direction," over their portals.  Mr. Clinch thought
+of Boston and State Street, of New York and Wall Street, and became
+coldly contemptuous.
+
+Yet there was clearly nothing to do but to walk down the formal
+rows of chestnuts that lined the broad Strasse, and then walk back
+again.  At the corner of the first cross-street he was struck with
+the fact that two men who were standing in front of a dwelling-
+house appeared to be as inconsistent, and out of proportion to the
+silent houses, as were the actors on a stage to the painted canvas
+thoroughfares before which they strutted.  Mr. Clinch usually had
+no fancies, had no eye for quaintness; besides, this was not a
+quaint nor romantic district, only an entrepot for silks and
+velvets, and Mr. Clinch was here, not as a tourist, but as a
+purchaser.  The guidebooks had ignored Sammtstadt, and he was too
+good an American to waste time in looking up uncatalogued
+curiosities.  Besides, he had been here once before,--an entire
+day!
+
+One o'clock.  Still a full hour and a half before his friend would
+return to business.  What should he do?  The Verein where he had
+once been entertained was deserted even by its waiters; the garden,
+with its ostentatious out-of-door tables, looked bleak and bare.
+Mr. Clinch was not artistic in his tastes; but even he was quick to
+detect the affront put upon Nature by this continental, theatrical
+gardening, and turned disgustedly away.  Born near a "lake" larger
+than the German Ocean, he resented a pool of water twenty-five feet
+in diameter under that alluring title; and, a frequenter of the
+Adirondacks, he could scarce contain himself over a bit of rock-
+work twelve feet high.  "A country," said Mr. Clinch, "that--" but
+here he remembered that he had once seen in a park in his native
+city an imitation of the Drachenfels in plaster, on a scale of two
+inches to the foot, and checked his speech.
+
+He turned into the principal allee of the town.  There was a long
+white building at one end,--the Bahnhof: at the other end he
+remembered a dye-house.  He had, a year ago, met its hospitable
+proprietor: he would call upon him now.
+
+But the same solitude confronted him as he passed the porter's
+lodge beside the gateway.  The counting-house, half villa, half
+factory, must have convoked its humanity in some out-of-the-way
+refectory, for the halls and passages were tenantless.  For the
+first time he began to be impressed with a certain foreign
+quaintness in the surroundings; he found himself also recalling
+something he had read when a boy, about an enchanted palace whose
+inhabitants awoke on the arrival of a long-predestined Prince.  To
+assure himself of the absolute ridiculousness of this fancy, he
+took from his pocket the business-card of its proprietor, a sample
+of dye, and recalled his own personality in a letter of credit.
+Having dismissed this idea from his mind, he lounged on again
+through a rustic lane that might have led to a farmhouse, yet was
+still, absurdly enough, a part of the factory gardens.  Crossing a
+ditch by a causeway, he presently came to another ditch and another
+causeway, and then found himself idly contemplating a massive, ivy-
+clad, venerable brick wall.  As a mere wall it might not have
+attracted his attention; but it seemed to enter and bury itself at
+right angles in the side-wall of a quite modern-looking dwelling.
+After satisfying himself of this fact, he passed on before the
+dwelling, but was amazed to see the wall reappear on the other side
+exactly the same--old, ivy-grown, sturdy, uncompromising, and
+ridiculous.
+
+Could it actually be a part of the house?  He turned back, and
+repassed the front of the building.  The entrance door was
+hospitably open.  There was a hall and a staircase, but--by all
+that was preposterous!--they were built OVER and AROUND the central
+brick intrusion.  The wall actually ran through the house!  "A
+country," said Mr. Clinch to himself, "where they build their
+houses over ruins to accommodate them, or save the trouble of
+removal, is,--" but a very pleasant voice addressing him here
+stopped his usual hasty conclusion.
+
+"Guten Morgen!"
+
+Mr. Clinch looked hastily up.  Leaning on the parapet of what
+appeared to be a garden on the roof of the house was a young girl,
+red-cheeked, bright-eyed, blond-haired.  The voice was soft,
+subdued, and mellow; it was part of the new impression he was
+receiving, that it seemed to be in some sort connected with the
+ivy-clad wall before him.  His hat was in his hand as he answered,--
+
+"Guten Morgen!"
+
+"Was the Herr seeking anything?"
+
+"The Herr was only waiting a longtime-coming friend, and had
+strayed here to speak with the before-known proprietor."
+
+"So?  But, the before-known proprietor sleeping well at present
+after dinner, would the Herr on the terrace still a while linger?"
+
+The Herr would, but looked around in vain for the means to do it.
+He was thinking of a scaling-ladder, when the young woman
+reappeared at the open door, and bade him enter.
+
+Following the youthful hostess, Mr. Clinch mounted the staircase,
+but, passing the mysterious wall, could not forbear an allusion to
+it.  "It is old, very old," said the girl: "it was here when I
+came."
+
+"That was not very long ago," said Mr. Clinch gallantly.
+
+"No; but my grandfather found it here too."
+
+"And built over it?"
+
+"Why not?  It is very, very hard, and SO thick."
+
+Mr. Clinch here explained, with masculine superiority, the
+existence of such modern agents as nitro-glycerine and dynamite,
+persuasive in their effects upon time-honored obstructions and
+encumbrances.
+
+"But there was not then what you call--this--ni--nitro-glycerine."
+
+"But since then?"
+
+The young girl gazed at him in troubled surprise.  "My great-
+grandfather did not take it away when he built the house: why
+should we?"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+They had passed through a hall and dining-room, and suddenly
+stepped out of a window upon a gravelled terrace.  From this a few
+stone steps descended to another terrace, on which trees and shrubs
+were growing; and yet, looking over the parapet, Mr. Clinch could
+see the road some twenty feet below.  It was nearly on a level
+with, and part of, the second story of the house.  Had an
+earthquake lifted the adjacent ground? or had the house burrowed
+into a hill?  Mr. Clinch turned to his companion, who was standing
+close beside him, breathing quite audibly, and leaving an
+impression on his senses as of a gentle and fragrant heifer.
+
+"How was all this done?"
+
+The maiden did not know.  "It was always here."
+
+Mr. Clinch reascended the steps.  He had quite forgotten his
+impatience.  Possibly it was the gentle, equable calm of the girl,
+who, but for her ready color, did not seem to be moved by anything;
+perhaps it was the peaceful repose of this mausoleum of the dead
+and forgotten wall that subdued him, but he was quite willing to
+take the old-fashioned chair on the terrace which she offered him,
+and follow her motions with not altogether mechanical eyes as she
+drew out certain bottles and glasses from a mysterious closet in
+the wall.  Mr. Clinch had the weakness of a majority of his sex in
+believing that he was a good judge of wine and women.  The latter,
+as shown in the specimen before him, he would have invoiced as a
+fair sample of the middle-class German woman,--healthy, comfort-
+loving, home-abiding, the very genius of domesticity.  Even in her
+virgin outlines the future wholesome matron was already forecast,
+from the curves of her broad hips, to the flat lines of her back
+and shoulders.  Of the wine he was to judge later.  THAT required
+an even more subtle and unimpassioned intellect.
+
+She placed two bottles before him on the table,--one, the
+traditional long-necked, amber-colored Rheinflasche; the other, an
+old, quaint, discolored, amphorax-patterned glass jug.  The first
+she opened.
+
+"This," she said, pointing to the other, "cannot be opened."
+
+Mr. Clinch paid his respects first to the opened bottle, a good
+quality of Niersteiner.  With his intellect thus clarified, he
+glanced at the other.
+
+"It is from my great-grandfather.  It is old as the wall."
+
+Mr. Clinch examined the bottle attentively.  It seemed to have no
+cork.  Formed of some obsolete, opaque glass, its twisted neck was
+apparently hermetically sealed by the same material.  The maiden
+smiled, as she said,--
+
+"It cannot be opened now without breaking the bottle.  It is not
+good luck to do so.  My grandfather and my father would not."
+
+But Mr. Clinch was still examining the bottle.  Its neck was
+flattened towards the mouth; but a close inspection showed it was
+closed by some equally hard cement, but not glass.
+
+"If I can open it without breaking the bottle, have I your
+permission?"
+
+A mischievous glance rested on Mr. Clinch, as the maiden answered,--
+
+"I shall not object; but for what will you do it?"
+
+"To taste it, to try it."
+
+"You are not afraid?"
+
+There was just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity
+in the maiden's manner to impel him to any risk.  His only answer
+was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument.  Holding the
+neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the
+steel twice or thrice around it.  A faint rasping, scratching sound
+was all the wondering girl heard.  Then, with a sudden, dexterous
+twist of his thumb and finger, to her utter astonishment he laid
+the top of the neck, neatly cut off, in her hand.
+
+"There's a better and more modern bottle than you had before," he
+said, pointing to the cleanly-divided neck, "and any cork will fit
+it now."
+
+But the girl regarded him with anxiety.  "And you still wish to
+taste the wine?"
+
+"With your permission, yes!"
+
+He looked up in her eyes.  There was permission: there was
+something more, that was flattering to his vanity.  He took the
+wine-glass, and, slowly and in silence, filled it from the
+mysterious flask.
+
+The wine fell into the glass clearly, transparently, heavily, but
+still and cold as death.  There was no sparkle, no cheap
+ebullition, no evanescent bubble.  Yet it was so clear, that, but
+for a faint amber-tinting, the glass seemed empty.  There was no
+aroma, no ethereal diffusion from its equable surface.  Perhaps it
+was fancy, perhaps it was from nervous excitement; but a slight
+chill seemed to radiate from the still goblet, and bring down the
+temperature of the terrace.  Mr. Clinch and his companion both
+insensibly shivered.
+
+But only for a moment.  Mr. Clinch raised the glass to his lips.
+As he did so, he remembered seeing distinctly, as in a picture
+before him, the sunlit terrace, the pretty girl in the foreground,--
+an amused spectator of his sacrilegious act,--the outlying ivy-
+crowned wall, the grass-grown ditch, the tall factory chimneys
+rising above the chestnuts, and the distant poplars that marked the
+Rhine.
+
+The wine was delicious; perhaps a TRIFLE, only a trifle, heady.  He
+was conscious of a slight exaltation.  There was also a smile upon
+the girl's lip and a roguish twinkle in her eye as she looked at
+him.
+
+"Do you find the wine to your taste?" she asked.
+
+"Fair enough, I warrant," said Mr. Clinch with ponderous gallantry;
+"but methinks 'tis nothing compared with the nectar that grows on
+those ruby lips.  Nay, by St. Ursula, I swear it!"
+
+No sooner had this solemnly ridiculous speech passed the lips of
+the unfortunate man than he would have given worlds to have
+recalled it.  He knew that he must be intoxicated; that the
+sentiment and language were utterly unlike him, he was miserably
+aware; that he did not even know exactly what it meant, he was also
+hopelessly conscious.  Yet feeling all this,--feeling, too, the
+shame of appearing before her as a man who had lost his senses
+through a single glass of wine,--nevertheless he rose awkwardly,
+seized her hand, and by sheer force drew her towards him, and
+kissed her.  With an exclamation that was half a cry and half a
+laugh, she fled from him, leaving him alone and bewildered on the
+terrace.
+
+For a moment Mr. Clinch supported himself against the open window,
+leaning his throbbing head on the cold glass.  Shame, mortification,
+an hysterical half-consciousness of his utter ridiculousness, and
+yet an odd, undefined terror of something, by turns possessed him.
+Was he ever before guilty of such perfect folly?  Had he ever before
+made such a spectacle of himself?  Was it possible that he, Mr.
+James Clinch, the coolest head at a late supper,--he, the American,
+who had repeatedly drunk Frenchmen and Englishmen under the
+table--could be transformed into a sentimental, stagey idiot by a
+single glass of wine?  He was conscious, too, of asking himself
+these very questions in a stilted sort of rhetoric, and with a
+rising brutality of anger that was new to him.  And then everything
+swam before him, and he seemed to lose all consciousness.
+
+But only for an instant.  With a strong effort of his will he again
+recalled himself, his situation, his surroundings, and, above all,
+his appointment.  He rose to his feet, hurriedly descended the
+terrace-steps, and, before he well knew how, found himself again on
+the road.  Once there, his faculties returned in full vigor; he was
+again himself.  He strode briskly forward toward the ditch he had
+crossed only a few moments before, but was suddenly stopped.  It
+was filled with water.  He looked up and down.  It was clearly the
+same ditch; but a flowing stream thirty feet wide now separated him
+from the other bank.
+
+The appearance of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt
+the full restoration of his faculties.  He stepped to the brink of
+the flood to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last
+vestiges of his potations.  But as he approached the placid depths,
+and knelt down he again started back, and this time with a full
+conviction of his own madness; for reflected from its mirror-like
+surface was a figure he could scarcely call his own, although here
+and there some trace of his former self remained.
+
+His close-cropped hair, trimmed a la mode, had given way to long,
+curling locks that dropped upon his shoulders.  His neat mustache
+was frightfully prolonged, and curled up at the ends stiffly.  His
+Piccadilly collar had changed shape and texture, and reached--a
+mass of lace--to a point midway of his breast!  His boots,--why had
+he not noticed his boots before?--these triumphs of his Parisian
+bootmaker, were lost in hideous leathern cases that reached half
+way up his thighs.  In place of his former high silk hat, there lay
+upon the ground beside him the awful thing he had just taken off,--
+a mass of thickened felt, flap, feather, and buckle that weighed at
+least a stone.
+
+A single terrible idea now took possession of him.  He had been
+"sold," "taken in," "done for."  He saw it all.  In a state of
+intoxication he had lost his way, had been dragged into some vile
+den, stripped of his clothes and valuables, and turned adrift upon
+the quiet town in this shameless masquerade.  How should he keep
+his appointment? how inform the police of this outrage upon a
+stranger and an American citizen? how establish his identity?  Had
+they spared his papers?  He felt feverishly in his breast.  Ah!--
+his watch?  Yes, a watch--heavy, jewelled, enamelled--and, by all
+that was ridiculous, FIVE OTHERS!  He ran his hands into his
+capacious trunk hose.  What was this?  Brooches, chains, finger-
+rings,--one large episcopal one,--ear-rings, and a handful of
+battered gold and silver coins.  His papers, his memorandums, his
+passport--all proofs of his identity--were gone!  In their place
+was the unmistakable omnium gatherum of an accomplished knight of
+the road.  Not only was his personality, but his character, gone
+forever.
+
+It was a part of Mr. Clinch's singular experience that this last
+stroke of ill fortune seemed to revive in him something of the
+brutal instinct he had felt a moment before.  He turned eagerly
+about with the intention of calling some one--the first person he
+met--to account.  But the house that he had just quitted was gone.
+The wall!  Ah, there it was, no longer purposeless, intrusive, and
+ivy-clad, but part of the buttress of another massive wall that
+rose into battlements above him.  Mr. Clinch turned again
+hopelessly toward Sammtstadt.  There was the fringe of poplars on
+the Rhine, there were the outlying fields lit by the same meridian
+sun; but the characteristic chimneys of Sammtstadt were gone.  Mr.
+Clinch was hopelessly lost.
+
+The sound of a horn breaking the stillness recalled his senses.  He
+now for the first time perceived that a little distance below him,
+partly hidden in the trees, was a queer, tower-shaped structure
+with chains and pulleys, that in some strange way recalled his
+boyish reading.  A drawbridge and portcullis!  And on the
+battlement a figure in a masquerading dress as absurd as his own,
+flourishing a banner and trumpet, and trying to attract his
+attention.
+
+"Was wollen Sie?"
+
+"I want to see the proprietor," said Mr. Clinch, choking back his
+rage.
+
+There was a pause, and the figure turned apparently to consult with
+some one behind the battlements.  After a moment he reappeared, and
+in a perfunctory monotone, with an occasional breathing spell on
+the trumpet, began,--
+
+"You do give warranty as a good knight and true, as well as by the
+bones of the blessed St. Ursula, that you bear no ill will, secret
+enmity, wicked misprise or conspiracy, against the body of our
+noble lord and master Von Kolnsche?  And you bring with you no
+ambush, siege, or surprise of retainers, neither secret warrant nor
+lettres de cachet, nor carry on your knightly person poisoned
+dagger, magic ring, witch-powder, nor enchanted bullet, and that
+you have entered into no unhallowed alliance with the Prince of
+Darkness, gnomes, hexies, dragons, Undines, Loreleis, nor the
+like?"
+
+"Come down out of that, you d----d old fool!" roared Mr. Clinch,
+now perfectly beside himself with rage,--"come down, and let me
+in!"
+
+As Mr. Clinch shouted out the last words, confused cries of
+recognition and welcome, not unmixed with some consternation, rose
+from the battlements: "Ach Gott!" "Mutter Gott--it is he!  It is
+Jann, Der Wanderer.  It is himself."  The chains rattled, the
+ponderous drawbridge creaked and dropped; and across it a medley of
+motley figures rushed pellmell.  But, foremost among them, the very
+maiden whom he had left not ten minutes before flew into his arms,
+and with a cry of joyful greeting sank upon his breast.  Mr. Clinch
+looked down upon the fair head and long braids.  It certainly was
+the same maiden, his cruel enchantress; but where did she get those
+absurd garments?
+
+"Willkommen," said a stout figure, advancing with some authority,
+and seizing his disengaged hand, "where hast thou been so long?"
+
+Mr. Clinch, by no means placated, coldly dropped the extended hand.
+It was NOT the proprietor he had known.  But there was a singular
+resemblance in his face to some one of Mr. Clinch's own kin; but
+who, he could not remember.  "May I take the liberty of asking your
+name?" he asked coldly.
+
+The figure grinned.  "Surely; but, if thou standest upon punctilio,
+it is for ME to ask thine, most noble Freiherr," said he, winking
+upon his retainers.  "Whom have I the honor of entertaining?"
+
+"My name is Clinch,--James Clinch of Chicago, Ill."
+
+A shout of laughter followed.  In the midst of his rage and
+mortification Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and
+annoyance flit across the face of the maiden.  He was puzzled, but
+pressed her hand, in spite of his late experiences, reassuringly.
+She made a gesture of silence to him, and then slipped away in the
+crowd.
+
+"Schames K'l'n'sche von Schekargo," mimicked the figure, to the
+unspeakable delight of his retainers.  "So!  THAT is the latest
+French style.  Holy St. Ursula!  Hark ye, nephew!  I am not a
+travelled man.  Since the Crusades we simple Rhine gentlemen have
+staid at home.  But I call myself Kolnsche of Koln, at your
+service."
+
+"Very likely you are right," said Mr. Clinch hotly, disregarding
+the caution of his fair companion; "but, whoever YOU are, I am a
+stranger entitled to protection.  I have been robbed."
+
+If Mr. Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry
+statement, it could not have been more hilariously received.  He
+paused, grew confused, and then went on hesitatingly,--
+
+"In place of my papers and credentials I find only these."  And he
+produced the jewelry from his pockets.
+
+Another shout of laughter and clapping of hands followed this
+second speech; and the baron, with a wink at his retainers,
+prolonged the general mirth by saying, "By the way, nephew, there
+is little doubt but there has been robbery--somewhere."
+
+"It was done," continued Mr. Clinch, hurrying to make an end of his
+explanation, "while I was inadvertently overcome with liquor,--
+drugged liquor."
+
+The laughter here was so uproarious that the baron, albeit with
+tears of laughter in his own eyes, made a peremptory gesture of
+silence.  The gesture was peculiar to the baron, efficacious and
+simple.  It consisted merely in knocking down the nearest laugher.
+Having thus restored tranquillity, he strode forward, and took Mr.
+Clinch by the hand.  "By St. Adolph, I did doubt thee a moment ago,
+nephew; but this last frank confession of thine shows me I did thee
+wrong.  Willkommen zu Hause, Jann, drunk or sober, willcommen zu
+Cracowen."
+
+More and more mystified, but convinced of the folly of any further
+explanation, Mr. Clinch took the extended hand of his alleged
+uncle, and permitted himself to be led into the castle.  They
+passed into a large banqueting-hall adorned with armor and
+implements of the chase.  Mr. Clinch could not help noticing, that,
+although the appointments were liberal and picturesque, the
+ventilation was bad, and the smoke from the huge chimney made the
+air murky.  The oaken tables, massive in carving and rich in color,
+were unmistakably greasy; and Mr. Clinch slipped on a piece of meat
+that one of the dozen half-wild dogs who were occupying the room
+was tearing on the floor.  The dog, yelping, ran between the legs
+of a retainer, precipitating him upon the baron, who instantly,
+with the "equal foot" of fate, kicked him and the dog into a
+corner.
+
+"And whence came you last?" asked the baron, disregarding the
+little contretemps, and throwing himself heavily on an oaken
+settle, while he pushed a queer, uncomfortable-looking stool, with
+legs like a Siamese-twin-connected double X, towards his companion.
+
+Mr. Clinch, who had quite given himself up to fate, answered
+mechanically,--
+
+"Paris."
+
+The baron winked his eye with unutterable, elderly wickedness.
+"Ach Gott! it is nothing to what it was when I was your age.  Ah!
+there was Manon,--Sieur Manon we used to call her.  I suppose she's
+getting old now.  How goes on the feud between the students and the
+citizens?  Eh?  Did you go to the bal in la Cite?"
+
+Mr. Clinch stopped the flow of those Justice-Shallow-like
+reminiscences by an uneasy exclamation.  He was thinking of the
+maiden who had disappeared so suddenly.  The baron misinterpreted
+his nervousness.  "What ho, within there!--Max, Wolfgang,--lazy
+rascals!  Bring some wine."
+
+At the baleful word Mr. Clinch started to his feet.  "Not for me!
+Bring me none of your body-and-soul-destroying poison!  I've enough
+of it!"
+
+The baron stared.  The servitors stared also.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Clinch, recalling himself slowly;
+"but I fear that Rhine wine does not agree with me."
+
+The baron grinned.  Perceiving, however, that the three servitors
+grinned also, he kicked two of them into obscurity, and felled the
+third to the floor with his fist.  "Hark ye, nephew," he said,
+turning to the astonished Clinch, "give over this nonsense!  By the
+mitre of Bishop Hatto, thou art as big a fool as he!"
+
+"Hatto," repeated Clinch mechanically.  "What! he of the Mouse
+Tower?"
+
+"Ay, of the Mouse Tower!" sneered the baron.  "I see you know the
+story."
+
+"Why am I like him?" asked Mr. Clinch in amazement.
+
+The baron grinned.  "HE punished the Rhenish wine as thou dost,
+without judgment.  He had--"
+
+"The jim-jams," said Mr. Clinch mechanically again.
+
+The baron frowned.  "I know not what gibberish thou sayest by 'jim-
+jams'; but he had, like thee, the wildest fantasies and imaginings;
+saw snakes, toads, rats, in his boots, but principally rats; said
+they pursued him, came to his room, his bed--ach Gott!"
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Clinch, with a sudden return to his firmer self and
+his native inquiring habits; "then THAT is the fact about Bishop
+Hatto of the story?"
+
+"His enemies made it the subject of a vile slander of an old friend
+of mine," said the baron; "and those cursed poets, who believe
+everything, and then persuade others to do so,--may the Devil fly
+away with them!--kept it up."
+
+Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch's sceptical mind.  He forgot
+himself and his surroundings.
+
+"And that story of the Drachenfels?" he asked insinuatingly,--"the
+dragon, you know.  Was he too--"
+
+The baron grinned.  "A boar transformed by the drunken brains of
+the Bauers of the Siebengebirge.  Ach Gott!  Ottefried had many a
+hearty laugh over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service
+with the nervous mother of the silly maiden."
+
+"And the seven sisters of Schonberg?" asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.
+
+"'Schonberg!  Seven sisters!'  What of them?" demanded the baron
+sharply.
+
+"Why, you know,--the maidens who were so coy to their suitors, and--
+don't you remember?--jumped into the Rhine to avoid them."
+
+"'Coy?  Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?" roared the baron,
+purple with rage.  "Hark ye, nephew!  I like not this jesting.
+Thou knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy
+father.  How 'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap
+WE might tell another story.  Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou
+art where a petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do
+other than he did.  And THIS is his reward?  Ach Gott!  'Coy!'  And
+THIS, I warrant, is the way the story is delivered in Paris."
+
+Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in
+a guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the
+explanation.  Besides, he was on the eve of historic information;
+he was, as it were, interviewing the past; and, whether he would
+ever be able to profit by the opportunity or not, he could not bear
+to lose it.  "And how about the Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?"
+he asked glibly.
+
+"It was said," observed the baron sardonically, "that when thou
+disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven
+knows where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some
+creature.  Ach Gott!  I believe it!  But a truce to this
+balderdash.  And so thou wantest to know of the 'coy' sisters of
+Schoenberg?  Hark ye, Jann, that cousin of thine is a Schonberg.
+Call you her 'coy'?  Did I not see thy greeting?  Eh?  By St.
+Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call you
+her greeting 'coy'?"
+
+Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt
+that his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit,
+or himself from weakness.  But out of his very perplexity and
+turmoil a bright idea was born.  He turned to the baron,--
+
+"Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?"
+
+The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"But what if I told you a new one?"
+
+"You?"
+
+"Yes; a part of my experience?"
+
+The baron was curious.  It was early in the afternoon, just after
+dinner.  He might be worse bored.
+
+"I've only one condition," added Mr. Clinch: "the young lady--I
+mean, of course, my cousin--must hear it too."
+
+"Oh, ay!  I see.  Of course--the old trick!  Well, call the jade.
+But mark ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights.  Keep to
+thyself.  Be as thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the
+road.--What ho there, scoundrels!  Call the Lady Wilhemina."
+
+It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend's name;
+but it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the
+very decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified.
+Nevertheless, with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast
+eyes, she stood before them.
+
+Mr. Clinch began.  Without heeding the baron's scornful grin, he
+graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a
+Lorelei, her usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge
+into the Rhine.
+
+"I am free to confess," added Mr. Clinch, with an affecting glance
+to Wilhelmina, "that I was not enamoured of the graces of the lady,
+but was actuated by my desire to travel, and explore hitherto
+unknown regions.  I wished to travel, to visit--"
+
+"Paris," interrupted the baron sarcastically.
+
+"America," continued Mr. Clinch.
+
+"What?"--"America."
+
+"'Tis a gnome-like sounding name, this Meriker.  Go on, nephew:
+tell us of Meriker."
+
+With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described
+his landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and
+Hell Gate, East River, New York.  He described the railways, tram-
+ways, telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone.  An occasional
+oath broke from the baron, but he listened attentively; and in a
+few moments Mr. Clinch had the raconteur's satisfaction of seeing
+the vast hall slowly filling with open-eyed and open-mouthed
+retainers hanging upon his words.  Mr. Clinch went on to describe
+his astonishment at meeting on these very shores some of his own
+blood and kin.  "In fact," said Mr. Clinch, "here were a race
+calling themselves 'Clinch,' but all claiming to have descended
+from Kolnische."
+
+"And how?" sneered the baron.
+
+"Through James Kolnische and Wilhelmina his wife," returned Mr.
+Clinch boldly.  "They emigrated from Koln and Crefeld to
+Philadelphia, where there is a quarter named Crefeld."  Mr. Clinch
+felt himself shaky as to his chronology, but wisely remembered that
+it was a chronology of the future to his hearers, and they could
+not detect an anachronism.  With his eyes fixed upon those of the
+gentle Wilhelmina, Mr. Clinch now proceeded to describe his return
+to his fatherland, but his astonishment at finding the very face of
+the country changed, and a city standing on those fields he had
+played in as a boy; and how he had wandered hopelessly on, until he
+at last sat wearily down in a humble cottage built upon the ruins
+of a lordly castle.  "So utterly travel-worn and weak had I
+become," said Mr. Clinch, with adroitly simulated pathos, "that a
+single glass of wine offered me by the simple cottage maiden
+affected me like a prolonged debauch."
+
+A long-drawn snore was all that followed this affecting climax.
+The baron was asleep; the retainers were also asleep.  Only one
+pair of eyes remained open,--arch, luminous, blue,--Wilhelmina's.
+
+"There is a subterranean passage below us to Linn.  Let us fly!"
+she whispered.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"They always do it in the legends," she murmured modestly.
+
+"But your father?"
+
+"He sleeps.  Do you not hear him?"
+
+Certainly somebody was snoring.  But, oddly enough, it seemed to be
+Wilhelmina.  Mr. Clinch suggested this to her.
+
+"Fool, it is yourself!"
+
+Mr. Clinch, struck with the idea, stopped to consider.  She was
+right.  It certainly WAS himself.
+
+With a struggle he awoke.  The sun was shining.  The maiden was
+looking at him.  But the castle--the castle was gone!
+
+"You have slept well," said the maiden archly.  "Everybody does
+after dinner at Sammtstadt.  Father has just awakened, and is
+coming."
+
+Mr. Clinch stared at the maiden, at the terrace, at the sky, at the
+distant chimneys of Sammtstadt, at the more distant Rhine, at the
+table before him, and finally at the empty glass.  The maiden
+smiled.  "Tell me," said Mr. Clinch, looking in her eyes, "is there
+a secret passage underground between this place and the Castle of
+Linn?"
+
+"An underground passage?"
+
+"Ay--whence the daughter of the house fled with a stranger knight."
+
+"They say there is," said the maiden, with a gentle blush.
+
+"Can you show it to me?"
+
+She hesitated.  "Papa is coming: I'll ask him."
+
+I presume she did.  At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs
+me of a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and
+Kolnische of Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the
+Verein at Sammtstadt, of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines,
+who mistook a flask of Cognac and rock-candy, used for "craftily
+qualifying" lower grades of wine to the American standard, for the
+rarest Rudesheimerberg.
+
+
+
+
+VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION
+
+
+Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel
+with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain
+unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people
+who pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own.  The men
+and women hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but,
+what is worse, do not even see their own reflection in this
+hypocritical plane, and are consequently unable, through its aid,
+to correct any carelessness of garb, gait, or demeanor.  At first
+this seems to be taking an unfair advantage of the human animal,
+who invariably assumes an attitude when he is conscious of being
+under human focus.  But I observe that my neighbors' windows, right
+and left, have a similar apparatus, that this custom is evidently a
+local one, and the locality is German.  Being an American stranger,
+I am quite willing to leave the morality of the transaction with
+the locality, and adapt myself to the custom: indeed, I had thought
+of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any unfairness of
+observation I might make in these pages.  But my German mirrors
+reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment; and the American
+eye, I fear, is but mortal, and like all mortal eyes, figuratively
+as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent scientific
+authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German
+opticians.
+
+And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority
+of those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already
+invoked the aid of the optician.  Why are these people, physically
+in all else so much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in
+eyesight?  Or, to omit the passing testimony of my Spion, and take
+my own personal experience, why does my young friend Max, brightest
+of all schoolboys, who already wears the cap that denotes the
+highest class,--why does he shock me by suddenly drawing forth a
+pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy face would be an
+obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa--if German children
+could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent?  Or why does the
+Fraulein Marie, his sister, pink as Aurora, round as Hebe, suddenly
+veil her blue eyes with a golden lorgnette in the midst of our
+polyglot conversation?  Is it to evade the direct, admiring glance
+of the impulsive American?  Dare I say NO?  Dare I say that that
+frank, clear, honest, earnest return of the eye, which has on the
+Continent most unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under
+criticism, is quite as common to her more carefully-guarded,
+tradition-hedged German sisters?  No, it is not that.  Is it any
+thing in these emerald and opal tinted skies, which seem so unreal
+to the American eye, and for the first time explain what seemed the
+unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet restful Rhine
+fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain of romance
+even over mid-day?  Surely not.  Is it not rather, O Herr Professor
+profound in analogy and philosophy!--is it not rather this
+abominable black-letter, this elsewhere-discarded, uncouth, slowly-
+decaying text known as the German Alphabet, that plucks out the
+bright eyes of youth, and bristles the gateways of your language
+with a chevaux de frise of splintered rubbish?  Why must I hesitate
+whether it is an accident of the printer's press, or the poor
+quality of the paper, that makes this letter a "k" or a "t"?  Why
+must I halt in an emotion or a thought because "s" and "f" are so
+nearly alike?  Is it not enough that I, an impulsive American,
+accustomed to do a thing first, and reflect upon it afterwards,
+must grope my way through a blind alley of substantives and
+adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an obscure corner,
+without ruining my eyesight in the groping?
+
+But I dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active
+resentment.  This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my
+Spion, harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully
+at a burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it
+would seem a burlesque, but for the poor dog's sad sincerity.
+Perhaps it is because I have the barbarian's fondness for dogs, and
+for their lawless, gentle, loving uselessness, that I rebel against
+this unnatural servitude.  It seems as monstrous as if a child were
+put between the shafts, and made to carry burdens; and I have come
+to regard those men and women, who in the weakest perfunctory way
+affect to aid the poor brute by laying idle hands on the barrow
+behind, as I would unnatural parents.  Pegasus harnessed to the
+Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a desecration.  I fancy
+the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the performance, and,
+in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to assume it is
+PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along, barking, and
+endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load that
+any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty.
+Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to
+it.  When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the
+dog, either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the
+shafts, or by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters
+any such delusion of even the habit of servitude.  The few of his
+race who do not work in this ducal city seem to have lost their
+democratic canine sympathies, and look upon him with something of
+that indifferent calm with which yonder officer eyes the road-
+mender in the ditch below him.  He loses even the characteristics
+of species.  The common cur and mastiff look alike in harness.  The
+burden levels all distinctions.  I have said that he was generally
+sincere in his efforts.  I recall but one instance to the contrary.
+I remember a young colley who first attracted my attention by his
+persistent barking.  Whether he did this, as the plough-boy
+whistled, "for want of thought," or whether it was a running
+protest against his occupation, I could not determine, until one
+day I noticed, that, in barking, he slightly threw up his neck and
+shoulders, and that the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him,
+having its weight evenly poised on the wheels by the trucks in the
+hands of its driver, enabled him by this movement to cunningly
+throw the center of gravity and the greater weight on the man,--a
+fact which that less sagacious brute never discerned.  Perhaps I am
+using a strong expression regarding his driver.  It may be that the
+purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food, care, and
+shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in
+freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared
+for and protected as such (an odd recollection that this argument
+had been used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country
+strikes me here); but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and
+I cannot help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle,
+sympathetic, characteristic figure from their domestic life and
+surroundings have not acquired an equal gain through his harsh
+labors.
+
+To the American eye there is, throughout the length and breadth of
+this foreign city, no more notable and striking object than the
+average German house-servant.  It is not that she has passed my
+Spion a dozen times within the last hour,--for here she is
+messenger, porter, and commissionnaire, as well as housemaid and
+cook,--but that she is always a phenomenon to the American
+stranger, accustomed to be abused in his own country by his foreign
+Irish handmaiden.  Her presence is as refreshing and grateful as
+the morning light, and as inevitable and regular.  When I add that
+with the novelty of being well served is combined the satisfaction
+of knowing that you have in your household an intelligent being who
+reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not abstract your
+books, nor criticise your literary composition; who is cleanly
+clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having
+borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking without
+the least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who
+is obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and
+replete with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of
+immediate pecuniary return, what wonder that the American
+householder translated into German life feels himself in a new Eden
+of domestic possibilities unrealized in any other country, and
+begins to believe in a present and future of domestic happiness!
+What wonder that the American bachelor living in German lodgings
+feels half the terrors of the conjugal future removed, and rushes
+madly into love--and housekeeping!  What wonder that I, a long-
+suffering and patient master, who have been served by the reticent
+but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the childlike
+but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the brotherly
+but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and have
+been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, only in due
+time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the
+Celt,--what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the
+praises of my German handmaid!  Honor to thee, Lenchen, wherever
+thou goest!  Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad! whether with
+that tightly-booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in
+blue polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on
+mine errands,--errands which Bridget o'Flaherty would scorn to
+undertake, or, undertaking, would hopelessly blunder in.  Heaven
+bless thee, child, in thy early risings and in thy later sittings,
+at thy festive board overflowing with Essig and Fett, in the
+mysteries of thy Kuchen, in the fulness of thy Bier, and in thy
+nightly suffocations beneath mountainous and multitudinous
+feathers!  Good, honest, simple-minded, cheerful, duty-loving
+Lenchen!  Have not thy brothers, strong and dutiful as thou, lent
+their gravity and earnestness to sweeten and strengthen the fierce
+youth of the Republic beyond the seas? and shall not thy children
+inherit the broad prairies that still wait for them, and discover
+the fatness thereof, and send a portion transmuted in glittering
+shekels back to thee?
+
+Almost as notable are the children whose round faces have as
+frequently been reflected in my Spion.  Whether it is only a fancy
+of mine that the average German retains longer than any other race
+his childish simplicity and unconsciousness, or whether it is
+because I am more accustomed to the extreme self-assertion and
+early maturity of American children, I know not; but I am inclined
+to believe that among no other people is childhood as perennial,
+and to be studied in such characteristic and quaint and simple
+phases as here.  The picturesqueness of Spanish and Italian
+childhood has a faint suspicion of the pantomime and the conscious
+attitudinizing of the Latin races.  German children are not
+exuberant or volatile: they are serious,--a seriousness, however,
+not to be confounded with the grave reflectiveness of age, but only
+the abstract wonderment of childhood; for all those who have made a
+loving study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that
+its dominant expression is GRAVITY, and not playfulness, and will
+be satisfied that he erred pitifully who first ascribed "light-
+heartedness" and "thoughtlessness" as part of its phenomena.  These
+little creatures I meet upon the street,--whether in quaint wooden
+shoes and short woollen petticoats, or neatly booted and furred,
+with school knapsacks jauntily borne upon little square shoulders,--
+all carry likewise in their round chubby faces their profound
+wonderment and astonishment at the big busy world into which they
+have so lately strayed.  If I stop to speak with this little maid
+who scarcely reaches to the top-boots of yonder cavalry officer,
+there is less of bashful self-consciousness in her sweet little
+face than of grave wonder at the foreign accent and strange ways of
+this new figure obtruded upon her limited horizon.  She answers
+honestly, frankly, prettily, but gravely.  There is a remote
+possibility that I might bite; and, with this suspicion plainly
+indicated in her round blue eyes, she quietly slips her little red
+hand from mine, and moves solemnly away.  I remember once to have
+stopped in the street with a fair countrywoman of mine to
+interrogate a little figure in sabots,--the one quaint object in
+the long, formal perspective of narrow, gray bastard-Italian
+facaded houses of a Rhenish German Strasse.  The sweet little
+figure wore a dark-blue woollen petticoat that came to its knees;
+gray woollen stockings covered the shapely little limbs below; and
+its very blonde hair, the color of a bright dandelion, was tied in
+a pathetic little knot at the back of its round head, and garnished
+with an absurd green ribbon.  Now, although this gentlewoman's
+sympathies were catholic and universal, unfortunately their
+expression was limited to her own mother-tongue.  She could not
+help pouring out upon the child the maternal love that was in her
+own womanly breast, nor could she withhold the "baby-talk" through
+which it was expressed.  But, alas! it was in English.  Hence
+ensued a colloquy, tender and extravagant on the part of the elder,
+grave and wondering on the part of the child.  But the lady had a
+natural feminine desire for reciprocity, particularly in the
+presence of our emotion-scorning sex, and as a last resource she
+emptied the small silver of her purse into the lap of the coy
+maiden.  It was a declaration of love, susceptible of translation
+at the nearest cake-shop.  But the little maid, whose dress and
+manner certainly did not betray an habitual disregard of gifts of
+this kind, looked at the coin thoughtfully, but not regretfully.
+Some innate sense of duty, equally strong with that of being polite
+to strangers, filled her consciousness.  With the utterly
+unexpected remark that her father 'did not allow her to take money',
+the queer little figure moved away, leaving the two Americans
+covered with mortification.  The rare American child who could have
+done this would have done it with an attitude.  This little German
+bourgeoise did it naturally.  I do not intend to rush to the
+deduction that German children of the lower classes habitually
+refuse pecuniary gratuities: indeed, I remember to have wickedly
+suggested to my companion, that, to avoid impoverishment in a
+foreign land, she should not repeat the story nor the experiment.
+But I simply offer it as a fact, and to an American, at home or
+abroad, a novel one.
+
+I owe to these little figures another experience quite as strange.
+It was at the close of a dull winter's day,--a day from which all
+out-of-door festivity seemed to be naturally excluded: there was a
+baleful promise of snow in the air and a dismal reminiscence of it
+under foot, when suddenly, in striking contrast with the dreadful
+bleakness of the street, a half dozen children, masked and
+bedizened with cheap ribbons, spangles, and embroidery, flashed
+across my Spion.  I was quick to understand the phenomenon.  It was
+the Carnival season.  Only the night before I had been to the great
+opening masquerade,--a famous affair, for which this art-loving
+city is noted, and to which strangers are drawn from all parts of
+the Continent.  I remember to have wondered if the pleasure-loving
+German in America had not broken some of his conventional shackles
+in emigration; for certainly I had found the Carnival balls of the
+"Lieder Kranz Society" in New York, although decorous and
+fashionable to the American taste, to be wild dissipations compared
+with the practical seriousness of this native performance, and I
+hailed the presence of these children in the open street as a
+promise of some extravagance, real, untrammelled, and characteristic.
+I seized my hat and--OVERCOAT,--a dreadful incongruity to the
+spangles that had whisked by, and followed the vanishing figures
+round the corner.  Here they were re-enforced by a dozen men and
+women, fantastically, but not expensively arrayed, looking not
+unlike the supernumeraries of some provincial opera troupe.
+Following the crowd, which already began to pour in from the
+side-streets, in a few moments I was in the broad, grove-like allee,
+and in the midst of the masqueraders.
+
+I remember to have been told that this was a characteristic annual
+celebration of the lower classes, anticipated with eagerness, and
+achieved with difficulty, indeed, often only through the
+alternative of pawning clothing and furniture to provide the means
+for this ephemeral transformation.  I remember being warned, also,
+that the buffoonery was coarse, and some of the slang hardly fit
+for "ears polite."  But I am afraid that I was not shocked at the
+prodigality of these poor people, who purchased a holiday on such
+hard conditions; and, as to the coarseness of the performance, I
+felt that I certainly might go where these children could.
+
+At first the masquerading figures appeared to be mainly composed of
+young girls of ages varying from nine to eighteen.  Their costumes--
+if what was often only the addition of a broad, bright-colored
+stripe to the hem of a short dress could be called a COSTUME--were
+plain, and seemed to indicate no particular historical epoch or
+character.  A general suggestion of the peasant's holiday attire
+was dominant in all the costumes.  Everybody was closely masked.
+All carried a short, gayly-striped baton of split wood, called a
+Pritsche, which, when struck sharply on the back or shoulders of
+some spectator or sister-masker, emitted a clattering, rasping
+sound.  To wander hand in hand down this broad allee, to strike
+almost mechanically, and often monotonously, at each other with
+their batons, seemed to be the extent of that wild dissipation.
+The crowd thickened.  Young men with false noses, hideous masks,
+cheap black or red cotton dominoes, soldiers in uniform, crowded
+past each other, up and down the promenade, all carrying a
+Pritsche, and exchanging blows with each other, but always with the
+same slow seriousness of demeanor, which, with their silence, gave
+the performance the effect of a religious rite.  Occasionally some
+one shouted: perhaps a dozen young fellows broke out in song; but
+the shout was provocative of nothing, the song faltered as if the
+singers were frightened at their own voices.  One blithe fellow,
+with a bear's head on his fur-capped shoulders, began to dance;
+but, on the crowd stopping to observe him seriously, he apparently
+thought better of it, and slipped away.  Nevertheless, the solemn
+beating of Pritschen over each other's backs went on.  I remember
+that I was followed the whole length of the allee by a little girl
+scarcely twelve years old, in a bright striped skirt and black
+mask, who from time to time struck me over the shoulders with a
+regularity and sad persistency that was peculiarly irresistible to
+me; the more so, as I could not help thinking that it was not half
+as amusing to herself.  Once only did the ordinary brusque
+gallantry of the Carnival spirit show itself.  A man with an
+enormous pair of horns, like a half-civilized satyr, suddenly
+seized a young girl and endeavored to kiss her.  A slight struggle
+ensued, in which I fancied I detected in the girl's face and manner
+the confusion and embarrassment of one who was obliged to overlook,
+or seem to accept, a familiarity that was distasteful, rather than
+be laughed at for prudishness or ignorance.  But the incident was
+exceptional.  Indeed, it was particularly notable to my American
+eyes to find such decorum where there might easily have been the
+greatest license.  I am afraid that an American mob of this class
+would have scarcely been as orderly and civil under the
+circumstances.  They might have shown more humor; but there would
+have probably been more effrontery: they might have been more
+exuberant; they would certainly have been drunker.  I did not
+notice a single masquerader unduly excited by liquor: there was not
+a word or motion from the lighter sex that could have been
+construed into an impropriety.  There was something almost pathetic
+to me in this attempt to wrest gayety and excitement out of these
+dull materials; to fight against the blackness of that wintry sky,
+and the stubborn hardness of the frozen soil, with these painted
+sticks of wood; to mock the dreariness of their poverty with these
+flaunting raiments.  It did not seem like them, or rather,
+consistent with my idea of them.  There was incongruity deeper than
+their bizarre externals; a half-melancholy, half-crazy absurdity in
+their action, the substitution of a grim spasmodic frenzy for
+levity, that rightly or wrongly impressed me.  When the increasing
+gloom of the evening made their figures undistinguishable, I turned
+into the first cross-street.  As I lifted my hat to my persistent
+young friend with the Pritsche, I fancied she looked as relieved as
+myself.  If, however, I was mistaken; if that child's pathway
+through life be strewn with rosy recollections of the unresisting
+back of the stranger American; if any burden, O Gretchen! laid upon
+thy young shoulders, be lighter for the trifling one thou didst lay
+upon mine,--know, then, that I, too, am content.
+
+And so, day by day, has my Spion reflected the various changing
+forms of life before it.  It has seen the first flush of spring in
+the broad allee, when the shadows of tiny leaflets overhead were
+beginning to checker the cool, square flagstones.  It has seen the
+glare and fulness of summer sunshine and shadow, the flying of
+November gold through the air, the gaunt limbs, and stark, rigid,
+death-like whiteness of winter.  It has seen children in their
+queer, wicker baby-carriages, old men and women, and occasionally
+that grim usher of death, in sable cloak and cocked hat,--a baleful
+figure for the wandering invalid tourist to meet,--who acts as
+undertaker for this ducal city, and marshals the last melancholy
+procession.  I well remember my first meeting with this ominous
+functionary.  It was an early autumnal morning; so early, that the
+long formal perspective of the allee, and the decorous, smooth
+vanishing-lines of cream-and-gray fronted houses, were unrelieved
+by a single human figure.  Suddenly a tall black spectre, as
+theatrical and as unreal as the painted scenic distance, turned the
+corner from a cross-street, and moved slowly towards me.  A long
+black cloak, falling from its shoulders to its feet, floated out on
+either side like sable wings; a cocked hat trimmed with crape, and
+surmounted by a hearse-like feather, covered a passionless face;
+and its eyes, looking neither left nor right, were fixed fatefully
+upon some distant goal.  Stranger as I was to this Continental
+ceremonial figure, there was no mistaking his functions as the grim
+messenger, knocking "with equal foot" on every door; and, indeed,
+so perfectly did he act and look his role, that there was nothing
+ludicrous in the extraordinary spectacle.  Facial expression and
+dignity of bearing were perfect; the whole man seemed saturated
+with the accepted sentiment of his office.  Recalling the half-
+confused and half-conscious ostentatious hypocrisy of the American
+sexton, the shameless absurdities of the English mutes and
+mourners, I could not help feeling, that, if it were demanded that
+Grief and Fate should be personified, it were better that it should
+be well done.  And it is one observation of my Spion, that this
+sincerity and belief is the characteristic of all Continental
+functionaries.
+
+It is possible that my Spion has shown me little that is really
+characteristic of the people, and the few observations I have made
+I offer only as an illustration of the impressions made upon two-
+thirds of American strangers in the larger towns of Germany.
+Assimilation goes on more rapidly than we are led to imagine.  As I
+have seen my friend Karl, fresh and awkward in his first uniform,
+lounging later down the allee with the blase listlessness of a
+full-blown militaire, so I have seen American and English residents
+gradually lose their peculiarities, and melt and merge into the
+general mass.  Returning to my Spion after a flying trip through
+Belgium and France, as I look down the long perspective of the
+Strasse, I am conscious of recalling the same style of architecture
+and humanity at Aachen, Brussels, Lille, and Paris, and am inclined
+to believe that, even as I would have met, in a journey of the same
+distance through a parallel of the same latitude in America, a
+greater diversity of type and character, and a more distinct flavor
+of locality, even so would I have met a more heterogeneous and
+picturesque display from a club window on Fifth Avenue, New York,
+or Montgomery Street, San Francisco.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Twins of Table Mountain, by Bret Harte
+
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