The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Sappho of Green Springs, by Bret Harte

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Title: A Sappho of Green Springs

Author: Bret Harte

Release Date: May 30, 2006 [EBook #2867]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Donald Lainson





A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS

THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE

THROUGH THE SANTA CLARA WHEAT

A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE





A SAPPHO OF GREEN SPRINGS


CHAPTER I


"Come in," said the editor.

The door of the editorial room of the "Excelsior Magazine" began to
creak painfully under the hesitating pressure of an uncertain and
unfamiliar hand. This continued until with a start of irritation the
editor faced directly about, throwing his leg over the arm of his chair
with a certain youthful dexterity. With one hand gripping its back,
the other still grasping a proof-slip, and his pencil in his mouth, he
stared at the intruder.

The stranger, despite his hesitating entrance, did not seem in the least
disconcerted. He was a tall man, looking even taller by reason of the
long formless overcoat he wore, known as a "duster," and by a long
straight beard that depended from his chin, which he combed with two
reflective fingers as he contemplated the editor. The red dust which
still lay in the creases of his garment and in the curves of his soft
felt hat, and left a dusty circle like a precipitated halo around his
feet, proclaimed him, if not a countryman, a recent inland importation
by coach. "Busy?" he said, in a grave but pleasant voice. "I kin wait.
Don't mind ME. Go on."

The editor indicated a chair with his disengaged hand and plunged again
into his proof-slips. The stranger surveyed the scant furniture and
appointments of the office with a look of grave curiosity, and then,
taking a chair, fixed an earnest, penetrating gaze on the editor's
profile. The editor felt it, and, without looking up, said--

"Well, go on."

"But you're busy. I kin wait."

"I shall not be less busy this morning. I can listen."

"I want you to give me the name of a certain person who writes in your
magazine."

The editor's eye glanced at the second right-hand drawer of his desk.
It did not contain the names of his contributors, but what in the
traditions of his office was accepted as an equivalent,--a revolver.
He had never yet presented either to an inquirer. But he laid aside his
proofs, and, with a slight darkening of his youthful, discontented face,
said, "What do you want to know for?"

The question was so evidently unexpected that the stranger's face
colored slightly, and he hesitated. The editor meanwhile, without
taking his eyes from the man, mentally ran over the contents of the last
magazine. They had been of a singularly peaceful character. There seemed
to be nothing to justify homicide on his part or the stranger's. Yet
there was no knowing, and his questioner's bucolic appearance by no
means precluded an assault. Indeed, it had been a legend of the office
that a predecessor had suffered vicariously from a geological hammer
covertly introduced into a scientific controversy by an irate professor.

"As we make ourselves responsible for the conduct of the magazine,"
continued the young editor, with mature severity, "we do not give up the
names of our contributors. If you do not agree with their opinions"--

"But I DO," said the stranger, with his former composure, "and I reckon
that's why I want to know who wrote those verses called 'Underbrush,'
signed 'White Violet,' in your last number. They're pow'ful pretty."

The editor flushed slightly, and glanced instinctively around for any
unexpected witness of his ludicrous mistake. The fear of ridicule was
uppermost in his mind, and he was more relieved at his mistake not being
overheard than at its groundlessness.

"The verses ARE pretty," he said, recovering himself, with a critical
air, "and I am glad you like them. But even then, you know, I could not
give you the lady's name without her permission. I will write to her and
ask it, if you like."

The actual fact was that the verses had been sent to him anonymously
from a remote village in the Coast Range,--the address being the
post-office and the signature initials.

The stranger looked disturbed. "Then she ain't about here anywhere?" he
said, with a vague gesture. "She don't belong to the office?"

The young editor beamed with tolerant superiority: "No, I am sorry to
say."

"I should like to have got to see her and kinder asked her a
few questions," continued the stranger, with the same reflective
seriousness. "You see, it wasn't just the rhymin' o' them verses,--and
they kinder sing themselves to ye, don't they?--it wasn't the chyce o'
words,--and I reckon they allus hit the idee in the centre shot every
time,--it wasn't the idees and moral she sort o' drew out o' what she
was tellin',--but it was the straight thing itself,--the truth!"

"The truth?" repeated the editor.

"Yes, sir. I've bin there. I've seen all that she's seen in the
brush--the little flicks and checkers o' light and shadder down in
the brown dust that you wonder how it ever got through the dark of the
woods, and that allus seems to slip away like a snake or a lizard if you
grope. I've heard all that she's heard there--the creepin', the sighin',
and the whisperin' through the bracken and the ground-vines of all that
lives there."

"You seem to be a poet yourself," said the editor, with a patronizing
smile.

"I'm a lumberman, up in Mendocino," returned the stranger, with sublime
naivete. "Got a mill there. You see, sightin' standin' timber and
selectin' from the gen'ral show of the trees in the ground and the lay
of roots hez sorter made me take notice." He paused. "Then," he added,
somewhat despondingly, "you don't know who she is?"

"No," said the editor, reflectively; "not even if it is really a WOMAN
who writes."

"Eh?"

"Well, you see, 'White Violet' may as well be the nom de plume of a man
as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification.
The handwriting, I remember, WAS more boyish than feminine."

"No," returned the stranger doggedly, "it wasn't no MAN. There's ideas
and words there that only come from a woman: baby-talk to the birds, you
know, and a kind of fearsome keer of bugs and creepin' things that don't
come to a man who wears boots and trousers. Well," he added, with a
return to his previous air of resigned disappointment, "I suppose you
don't even know what she's like?"

"No," responded the editor, cheerfully. Then, following an idea
suggested by the odd mingling of sentiment and shrewd perception in
the man before him, he added: "Probably not at all like anything you
imagine. She may be a mother with three or four children; or an old maid
who keeps a boarding-house; or a wrinkled school-mistress; or a chit
of a school-girl. I've had some fair verses from a red-haired girl of
fourteen at the Seminary," he concluded with professional coolness.

The stranger regarded him with the naive wonder of an inexperienced
man. Having paid this tribute to his superior knowledge, he regained his
previous air of grave perception. "I reckon she ain't none of them. But
I'm keepin' you from your work. Good-by. My name's Bowers--Jim Bowers,
of Mendocino. If you're up my way, give me a call. And if you do write
to this yer 'White Violet,' and she's willin', send me her address."

He shook the editor's hand warmly--even in its literal significance
of imparting a good deal of his own earnest caloric to the editor's
fingers--and left the room. His footfall echoed along the passage and
died out, and with it, I fear, all impression of his visit from the
editor's mind, as he plunged again into the silent task before him.

Presently he was conscious of a melodious humming and a light leisurely
step at the entrance of the hall. They continued on in an easy harmony
and unaffected as the passage of a bird. Both were pleasant and both
familiar to the editor. They belonged to Jack Hamlin, by vocation a
gambler, by taste a musician, on his way from his apartments on
the upper floor, where he had just risen, to drop into his friend's
editorial room and glance over the exchanges, as was his habit before
breakfast.

The door opened lightly. The editor was conscious of a faint odor of
scented soap, a sensation of freshness and cleanliness, the impression
of a soft hand like a woman's on his shoulder and, like a woman's,
momentarily and playfully caressing, the passage of a graceful shadow
across his desk, and the next moment Jack Hamlin was ostentatiously
dusting a chair with an open newspaper preparatory to sitting down.

"You ought to ship that office-boy of yours, if he can't keep things
cleaner," he said, suspending his melody to eye grimly the dust which
Mr. Bowers had shaken from his departing feet.

The editor did not look up until he had finished revising a difficult
paragraph. By that time Mr. Hamlin had comfortably settled himself on
a cane sofa, and, possibly out of deference to his surroundings, had
subdued his song to a peculiarly low, soft, and heartbreaking whistle as
he unfolded a newspaper. Clean and faultless in his appearance, he had
the rare gift of being able to get up at two in the afternoon with
much of the dewy freshness and all of the moral superiority of an early
riser.

"You ought to have been here just now, Jack," said the editor.

"Not a row, old man, eh?" inquired Jack, with a faint accession of
interest.

"No," said the editor, smiling. Then he related the incidents of the
previous interview, with a certain humorous exaggeration which was part
of his nature. But Jack did not smile.

"You ought to have booted him out of the ranch on sight," he said. "What
right had he to come here prying into a lady's affairs?--at least a lady
as far as HE knows. Of course she's some old blowzy with frumpled hair
trying to rope in a greenhorn with a string of words and phrases,"
concluded Jack, carelessly, who had an equally cynical distrust of the
sex and of literature.

"That's about what I told him," said the editor.

"That's just what you SHOULDN'T have told him," returned Jack. "You
ought to have stuck up for that woman as if she'd been your own mother.
Lord! you fellows don't know how to run a magazine. You ought to let ME
sit on that chair and tackle your customers."

"What would you have done, Jack?" asked the editor, much amused to
find that his hitherto invincible hero was not above the ordinary human
weakness of offering advice as to editorial conduct.

"Done?" reflected Jack. "Well, first, sonny, I shouldn't keep a revolver
in a drawer that I had to OPEN to get at."

"But what would you have said?"

"I should simply have asked him what was the price of lumber at
Mendocino," said Jack, sweetly, "and when he told me, I should have said
that the samples he was offering out of his own head wouldn't suit. You
see, you don't want any trifling in such matters. You write well enough,
my boy," continued he, turning over his paper, "but what you're lacking
in is editorial dignity. But go on with your work. Don't mind me."

Thus admonished, the editor again bent over his desk, and his friend
softly took up his suspended song. The editor had not proceeded far in
his corrections when Jack's voice again broke the silence.

"Where are those d----d verses, anyway?"

Without looking up, the editor waved his pencil towards an uncut copy of
the "Excelsior Magazine" lying on the table.

"You don't suppose I'm going to READ them, do you?" said Jack,
aggrievedly. "Why don't you say what they're about? That's your business
as editor."

But that functionary, now wholly lost and wandering in the non-sequitur
of an involved passage in the proof before him, only waved an impatient
remonstrance with his pencil and knit his brows. Jack, with a sigh, took
up the magazine.

A long silence followed, broken only by the hurried rustling of sheets
of copy and an occasional exasperated start from the editor. The sun
was already beginning to slant a dusty beam across his desk; Jack's
whistling had long since ceased. Presently, with an exclamation of
relief, the editor laid aside the last proof-sheet and looked up.

Jack Hamlin had closed the magazine, but with one hand thrown over the
back of the sofa he was still holding it, his slim forefinger between
its leaves to keep the place, and his handsome profile and dark
lashes lifted towards the window. The editor, smiling at this unwonted
abstraction, said quietly,--

"Well, what do you think of them?"

Jack rose, laid the magazine down, settled his white waistcoat with both
hands, and lounged towards his friend with audacious but slightly
veiled and shining eyes. "They sort of sing themselves to you," he said,
quietly, leaning beside the editor's desk, and looking down upon him.
After a pause he said, "Then you don't know what she's like?"

"That's what Mr. Bowers asked me," remarked the editor.

"D--n Bowers!"

"I suppose you also wish me to write and ask for permission to give you
her address?" said the editor, with great gravity.

"No," said Jack, coolly. "I propose to give it to YOU within a week, and
you will pay me with a breakfast. I should like to have it said that I
was once a paid contributor to literature. If I don't give it to you,
I'll stand you a dinner, that's all."

"Done!" said the editor. "And you know nothing of her now?"

"No," said Jack, promptly. "Nor you?"

"No more than I have told you."

"That'll do. So long!" And Jack, carefully adjusting his glossy hat over
his curls at an ominously wicked angle, sauntered lightly from the room.
The editor, glancing after his handsome figure and hearing him take
up his pretermitted whistle as he passed out, began to think that the
contingent dinner was by no means an inevitable prospect.

Howbeit, he plunged once more into his monotonous duties. But the
freshness of the day seemed to have departed with Jack, and the
later interruptions of foreman and publisher were of a more practical
character. It was not until the post arrived that the superscription on
one of the letters caught his eye, and revived his former interest.
It was the same hand as that of his unknown contributor's
manuscript--ill-formed and boyish. He opened the envelope. It contained
another poem with the same signature, but also a note--much longer than
the brief lines that accompanied the first contribution--was scrawled
upon a separate piece of paper. This the editor opened first, and read
the following, with an amazement that for the moment dominated all other
sense:--


MR. EDITOR,--I see you have got my poetry in. But I don't see the
spondulix that oughter follow. Perhaps you don't know where to send it.
Then I'll tell you. Send the money to Lock Box 47, Green Springs P.
O., per Wells Fargo's Express, and I'll get it there, on account of my
parents not knowing. We're very high-toned, and they would think it's
low making poetry for papers. Send amount usually paid for poetry in
your papers. Or may be you think I make poetry for nothing? That's where
you slip up!

Yours truly,

WHITE VIOLET.

P. S.--If you don't pay for poetry, send this back. It's as good as what
you did put in, and is just as hard to make. You hear me? that's me--all
the time.

WHITE VIOLET.


The editor turned quickly to the new contribution for some corroboration
of what he felt must be an extraordinary blunder. But no! The few lines
that he hurriedly read breathed the same atmosphere of intellectual
repose, gentleness, and imagination as the first contribution. And yet
they were in the same handwriting as the singular missive, and both were
identical with the previous manuscript.

Had he been the victim of a hoax, and were the verses not original? No;
they were distinctly original, local in color, and even local in the use
of certain old English words that were common in the Southwest. He had
before noticed the apparent incongruity of the handwriting and the text,
and it was possible that for the purposes of disguise the poet might
have employed an amanuensis. But how could he reconcile the incongruity
of the mercenary and slangy purport of the missive itself with the
mental habit of its author? Was it possible that these inconsistent
qualities existed in the one individual? He smiled grimly as he thought
of his visitor Bowers and his friend Jack. He was startled as he
remembered the purely imaginative picture he had himself given to the
seriously interested Bowers of the possible incongruous personality of
the poetess.

Was he quite fair in keeping this from Jack? Was it really honorable, in
view of their wager? It is to be feared that a very human enjoyment of
Jack's possible discomfiture quite as much as any chivalrous friendship
impelled the editor to ring eventually for the office-boy.

"See if Mr. Hamlin is in his rooms."

The editor then sat down, and wrote rapidly as follows:--


DEAR MADAM,--You are as right as you are generous in supposing that
only ignorance of your address prevented the manager from previously
remitting the honorarium for your beautiful verses. He now begs to send
it to you in the manner you have indicated. As the verses have attracted
deserved attention, I have been applied to for your address. Should
you care to submit it to me to be used at my discretion, I shall feel
honored by your confidence. But this is a matter left entirely to your
own kindness and better judgment. Meantime, I take pleasure in accepting
"White Violet's" present contribution, and remain, dear madam, your
obedient servant,

THE EDITOR.


The boy returned as he was folding the letter. Mr. Hamlin was not only
NOT in his rooms, but, according to his negro servant Pete, had left
town an hour ago for a few days in the country.

"Did he say where?" asked the editor, quickly.

"No, sir: he didn't know."

"Very well. Take this to the manager." He addressed the letter, and,
scrawling a few hieroglyphics on a memorandum-tag, tore it off, and
handed it with the letter to the boy.

An hour later he stood in the manager's office. "The next number is
pretty well made up," he said, carelessly, "and I think of taking a day
or two off."

"Certainly," said the manager. "It will do you good. Where do you think
you'll go?"

"I haven't quite made up my mind."


CHAPTER II


"Hullo!" said Jack Hamlin.

He had halted his mare at the edge of an abrupt chasm. It did not appear
to be fifty feet across, yet its depth must have been nearly two
hundred to where the hidden mountain-stream, of which it was the banks,
alternately slipped, tumbled, and fell with murmuring and monotonous
regularity. One or two pine-trees growing on the opposite edge, loosened
at the roots, had tilted their straight shafts like spears over the
abyss, and the top of one, resting on the upper branches of a sycamore a
few yards from him, served as an aerial bridge for the passage of a boy
of fourteen to whom Mr. Hamlin's challenge was addressed.

The boy stopped midway in his perilous transit, and, looking down upon
the horseman, responded, coolly, "Hullo, yourself!"

"Is that the only way across this infernal hole, or the one you prefer
for exercise?" continued Hamlin, gravely.

The boy sat down on a bough, allowing his bare feet to dangle over the
dizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this
occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful
combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed
trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing
and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply.
Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses,
and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He smiled, however, and
said, quietly,--

"Come here, George Washington. I want to talk to you."

Without rejecting this august yet impossible title, the boy presently
lifted his feet, and carelessly resumed his passage across the
chasm until, reaching the sycamore, he began to let himself down
squirrel-wise, leap by leap, with an occasional trapeze swinging from
bough to bough, dropping at last easily to the ground. Here he appeared
to be rather good-looking, albeit the sun and air had worked a miracle
of brown tan and freckles on his exposed surfaces, until the mottling of
his oval cheeks looked like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr.
Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion as
the hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay like
trappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and the
stinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns,
but at that moment would have bet something on the chances of their
survival.

"I did not hear what you said just now, general," he remarked, with
great elegance of manner, "but I know from your reputation that it could
not be a lie. I therefore gather that there IS another way across."

The boy smiled; rather, his very short upper lip apparently vanished
completely over his white teeth, and his very black eyes, which showed a
great deal of the white around them, danced in their orbits.

"But YOU couldn't find it," he said, slyly.

"No more could you find the half-dollar I dropped just now, unless I
helped you."

Mr. Hamlin, by way of illustration, leaned deeply over his left stirrup,
and pointed to the ground. At the same moment a bright half-dollar
absolutely appeared to glitter in the herbage at the point of his
finger. It was a trick that had always brought great pleasure and profit
to his young friends, and some loss and discomfiture of wager to his
older ones.

The boy picked up the coin: "There's a dip and a level crossing about a
mile over yer,"--he pointed,--"but it's through the woods, and they're
that high with thick bresh."

"With what?"

"Bresh," repeated the boy; "THAT,"--pointing to a few fronds of bracken
growing in the shadow of the sycamore.

"Oh! underbrush?"

"Yes; I said 'bresh,'" returned the boy, doggedly. "YOU might get
through, ef you war spry, but not your hoss. Where do you want to go,
anyway?"

"Do you know, George," said Mr. Hamlin, lazily throwing his right
leg over the horn of his saddle for greater ease and deliberation in
replying, "it's very odd, but that's just what I'D like to know. Now,
what would YOU, in your broad statesmanlike views of things generally,
advise?"

Quite convinced of the stranger's mental unsoundness, the boy glanced
again at his half-dollar, as if to make sure of its integrity, pocketed
it doubtfully, and turned away.

"Where are you going?" said Hamlin, resuming his seat with the agility
of a circus-rider, and spurring forward.

"To Green Springs, where I live, two miles over the ridge on the far
slope,"--indicating the direction.

"Ah!" said Jack, with thoughtful gravity. "Well, kindly give my love to
your sister, will you?"

"George Washington didn't have no sister," said the boy, cunningly.

"Can I have been mistaken?" said Hamlin, lifting his hand to his
forehead with grieved accents. "Then it seems YOU have. Kindly give her
my love."

"Which one?" asked the boy, with a swift glance of mischief. "I've got
four."

"The one that's like you," returned Hamlin, with prompt exactitude.
"Now, where's the 'bresh' you spoke of?"

"Keep along the edge until you come to the log-slide. Foller that, and
it'll lead you into the woods. But ye won't go far, I tell ye. When you
have to turn back, instead o' comin' back here, you kin take the trail
that goes round the woods, and that'll bring ye out into the stage road
ag'in near the post-office at the Green Springs crossin' and the new
hotel. That'll be war ye'll turn up, I reckon," he added, reflectively.
"Fellers that come yer gunnin' and fishin' gin'rally do," he concluded,
with a half-inquisitive air.

"Ah?" said Mr. Hamlin, quietly shedding the inquiry. "Green Springs
Hotel is where the stage stops, eh?"

"Yes, and at the post-office," said the boy. "She'll be along here
soon," he added.

"If you mean the Santa Cruz stage," said Hamlin, "she's here already. I
passed her on the ridge half an hour ago."

The boy gave a sudden start, and a quick uneasy expression passed over
his face. "Go 'long with ye!" he said, with a forced smile: "it ain't
her time yet."

"But I SAW her," repeated Hamlin, much amused. "Are you expecting
company? Hullo! Where are you off to? Come back."

But his companion had already vanished in the thicket with the
undeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentary
rustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. The
hidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distant
woodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. Hamlin was again alone.

"Wonder whether he's got parents in the stage, and has been playing
truant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to some
devilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been a
little older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents to
watch the coach. Just my luck to have him light out as I was beginning
to get some talk out of him." He paused, looked at his watch, and
straightened himself in his stirrups. "Four o'clock. I reckon I might as
well try the woods and what that imp calls the 'bresh;' I may strike a
shanty or a native by the way."

With this determination, Mr. Hamlin urged his horse along the faint
trail by the brink of the watercourse which the boy had just indicated.
He had no definite end in view beyond the one that had brought him the
day before to that locality--his quest of the unknown poetess. His clue
would have seemed to ordinary humanity the faintest. He had merely
noted the provincial name of a certain plant mentioned in the poem, and
learned that its habitat was limited to the southern local range; while
its peculiar nomenclature was clearly of French Creole or Gulf State
origin. This gave him a large though sparsely-populated area
for locality, while it suggested a settlement of Louisianians or
Mississippians near the Summit, of whom, through their native gambling
proclivities, he was professionally cognizant. But he mainly trusted
Fortune. Secure in his faith in the feminine character of that goddess,
he relied a great deal on her well-known weakness for scamps of his
quality.

It was not long before he came to the "slide"--a lightly-cut or shallow
ditch. It descended slightly in a course that was far from straight, at
times diverging to avoid the obstacles of trees or boulders, at times
shaving them so closely as to leave smooth abrasions along their sides
made by the grinding passage of long logs down the incline. The track
itself was slippery from this, and preoccupied all Hamlin's skill as a
horseman, even to the point of stopping his usual careless whistle.
At the end of half an hour the track became level again, and he was
confronted with a singular phenomenon.

He had entered the wood, and the trail seemed to cleave through a
far-stretching, motionless sea of ferns that flowed on either side to
the height of his horse's flanks. The straight shafts of the trees rose
like columns from their hidden bases and were lost again in a roof
of impenetrable leafage, leaving a clear space of fifty feet between,
through which the surrounding horizon of sky was perfectly visible.
All the light that entered this vast sylvan hall came from the sides;
nothing permeated from above; nothing radiated from below; the height
of the crest on which the wood was placed gave it this lateral
illumination, but gave it also the profound isolation of some temple
raised by long-forgotten hands. In spite of the height of these clear
shafts, they seemed dwarfed by the expanse of the wood, and in the
farthest perspective the base of ferns and the capital of foliage
appeared almost to meet. As the boy had warned him, the slide had turned
aside, skirting the wood to follow the incline, and presently the little
trail he now followed vanished utterly, leaving him and his horse adrift
breast-high in this green and yellow sea of fronds. But Mr. Hamlin,
imperious of obstacles, and touched by some curiosity, continued to
advance lazily, taking the bearings of a larger red-wood in the centre
of the grove for his objective point. The elastic mass gave way before
him, brushing his knees or combing his horse's flanks with wide-spread
elfin fingers, and closing up behind him as he passed, as if to
obliterate any track by which he might return. Yet his usual luck did
not desert him here. Being on horseback, he found that he could detect
what had been invisible to the boy and probably to all pedestrians,
namely, that the growth was not equally dense, that there were certain
thinner and more open spaces that he could take advantage of by more
circuitous progression, always, however, keeping the bearings of the
central tree. This he at last reached, and halted his panting horse.
Here a new idea which had been haunting him since he entered the wood
took fuller possession of him. He had seen or known all this before!
There was a strange familiarity either in these objects or in the
impression or spell they left upon him. He remembered the verses! Yes,
this was the "underbrush" which the poetess had described: the gloom
above and below, the light that seemed blown through it like the wind,
the suggestion of hidden life beneath this tangled luxuriance, which she
alone had penetrated,--all this was here. But, more than that, here was
the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her
verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of
her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had
provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy
susceptibility he was simply thrown into a corresponding mood of
emotion and relieved himself with song. One of the verses he had already
associated in his mind with the rhythm of an old plantation melody, and
it struck his fancy to take advantage of the solitude to try its effect.
Humming to himself, at first softly, he at last grew bolder, and let his
voice drift away through the stark pillars of the sylvan colonnade till
it seemed to suffuse and fill it with no more effort than the light
which strayed in on either side. Sitting thus, his hat thrown a little
back from his clustering curls, the white neck and shoulders of his
horse uplifting him above the crested mass of fern, his red sash the one
fleck of color in their olive depths, I am afraid he looked much
more like the real minstrel of the grove than the unknown poetess who
transfigured it. But this, as has been already indicated, was Jack
Hamlin's peculiar gift. Even as he had previously outshone the vaquero
in his borrowed dress, he now silenced and supplanted a few fluttering
blue-jays--rightful tenants of the wood--with a more graceful and airy
presence and a far sweeter voice.

The open horizon towards the west had taken a warmer color from the
already slanting sun when Mr. Hamlin, having rested his horse, turned
to that direction. He had noticed that the wood was thinner there,
and, pushing forward, he was presently rewarded by the sound of far-off
wheels, and knew he must be near the high-road that the boy had spoken
of. Having given up his previous intention of crossing the stream, there
seemed nothing better for him to do than to follow the truant's advice
and take the road back to Green Springs. Yet he was loath to leave the
wood, halting on its verge, and turning to look back into its charmed
recesses. Once or twice--perhaps because he recalled the words of the
poem--that yellowish sea of ferns had seemed instinct with hidden life,
and he had even fancied, here and there, a swaying of its plumed crests.
Howbeit, he still lingered long enough for the open sunlight into which
he had obtruded to point out the bravery of his handsome figure. Then
he wheeled his horse, the light glanced from polished double bit and
bridle-fripperies, caught his red sash and bullion buttons, struck a
parting flash from his silver spurs, and he was gone!

For a moment the light streamed unbrokenly through the wood. And then
it could be seen that the yellow mass of undergrowth HAD moved with the
passage of another figure than his own. For ever since he had entered
the shade, a woman, shawled in a vague, shapeless fashion, had watched
him wonderingly, eagerly, excitedly, gliding from tree to tree as he
advanced, or else dropping breathlessly below the fronds of fern whence
she gazed at him as between parted fingers. When he wheeled she had run
openly to the west, albeit with hidden face and still clinging shawl,
and taken a last look at his retreating figure. And then, with a faint
but lingering sigh, she drew back into the shadow of the wood again and
vanished also.


CHAPTER III


At the end of twenty minutes Mr. Hamlin reined in his mare. He had just
observed in the distant shadows of a by-lane that intersected his road
the vanishing flutter of two light print dresses. Without a moment's
hesitation he lightly swerved out of the high-road and followed the
retreating figures.

As he neared them, they seemed to be two slim young girls, evidently
so preoccupied with the rustic amusement of edging each other off the
grassy border into the dust of the track that they did not perceive
his approach. Little shrieks, slight scufflings, and interjections of
"Cynthy! you limb!" "Quit that, Eunice, now!" and "I just call that
real mean!" apparently drowned the sound of his canter in the soft dust.
Checking his speed to a gentle trot, and pressing his horse close beside
the opposite fence, he passed them with gravely uplifted hat and a
serious, preoccupied air. But in that single, seemingly conventional
glance, Mr. Hamlin had seen that they were both pretty, and that one had
the short upper lip of his errant little guide. A hundred yards farther
on he halted, as if irresolutely, gazed doubtfully ahead of him, and
then turned back. An expression of innocent--almost childlike--concern
was clouding the rascal's face. It was well, as the two girls had drawn
closely together, having been apparently surprised in the midst of a
glowing eulogium of this glorious passing vision by its sudden return.
At his nearer approach, the one with the short upper lip hid that
piquant feature and the rest of her rosy face behind the other's
shoulder, which was suddenly and significantly opposed to the advance
of this handsome intruder, with a certain dignity, half real, half
affected, but wholly charming. The protectress appeared--possibly from
her defensive attitude--the superior of her companion.

Audacious as Jack was to his own sex, he had early learned that
such rare but discomposing graces as he possessed required a certain
apologetic attitude when presented to women, and that it was only a
plain man who could be always complacently self-confident in their
presence. There was, consequently, a hesitating lowering of this
hypocrite's brown eyelashes as he said, in almost pained accents,--

"Excuse me, but I fear I've taken the wrong road. I'm going to Green
Springs."

"I reckon you've taken the wrong road, wherever you're going," returned
the young lady, having apparently made up her mind to resent each of
Jack's perfections as a separate impertinence: "this is a PRIVATE road."
She drew herself fairly up here, although gurgled at in the ear and
pinched in the arm by her companion.

"I beg your pardon," said Jack, meekly. "I see I'm trespassing on your
grounds. I'm very sorry. Thank you for telling me. I should have gone on
a mile or two farther, I suppose, until I came to your house," he added,
innocently.

"A mile or two! You'd have run chock ag'in' our gate in another minit,"
said the short-lipped one, eagerly. But a sharp nudge from her companion
sent her back again into cover, where she waited expectantly for another
crushing retort from her protector.

But, alas! it did not come. One cannot be always witty, and Jack looked
distressed. Nevertheless, he took advantage of the pause.

"It was so stupid in me, as I think your brother"--looking at
Short-lip--"very carefully told me the road."

The two girls darted quick glances at each other. "Oh, Bawb!" said the
first speaker, in wearied accents,--"THAT limb! He don't keer."

"But he DID care," said Hamlin, quietly, "and gave me a good deal of
information. Thanks to him, I was able to see that ferny wood that's so
famous--about two miles up the road. You know--the one that there's a
poem written about!"

The shot told! Short-lip burst into a display of dazzling little teeth
and caught the other girl convulsively by the shoulders. The superior
girl bent her pretty brows, and said, "Eunice, what's gone of ye? Quit
that!" but, as Hamlin thought, paled slightly.

"Of course," said Hamlin, quickly, "you know--the poem everybody's
talking about. Dear me! let me see! how does it go?" The rascal knit his
brows, said, "Ah, yes," and then murmured the verse he had lately sung
quite as musically.

Short-lip was shamelessly exalted and excited. Really she could scarcely
believe it! She already heard herself relating the whole occurrence.
Here was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen--an entire
stranger--talking to them in the most beautiful and natural way,
right in the lane, and reciting poetry to her sister! It was like a
novel--only more so. She thought that Cynthia, on the other hand, looked
distressed, and--she must say it--"silly."

All of which Jack noted, and was wise. He had got all he wanted--at
present. He gathered up his reins.

"Thank you so much, and your brother, too, Miss Cynthia," he said,
without looking up. Then, adding, with a parting glance and smile, "But
don't tell Bob how stupid I was," he swiftly departed.

In half an hour he was at the Green Springs Hotel. As he rode into the
stable yard, he noticed that the coach had only just arrived, having
been detained by a land-slip on the Summit road. With the recollection
of Bob fresh in his mind, he glanced at the loungers at the stage
office. The boy was not there, but a moment later Jack detected him
among the waiting crowd at the post-office opposite. With a view of
following up his inquiries, he crossed the road as the boy entered the
vestibule of the post-office. He arrived in time to see him unlock one
of a row of numbered letter-boxes rented by subscribers, which occupied
a partition by the window, and take out a small package and a letter.
But in that brief glance Mr. Hamlin detected the printed address of the
"Excelsior Magazine" on the wrapper. It was enough. Luck was certainly
with him.

He had time to get rid of the wicked sparkle that had lit his dark eyes,
and to lounge carelessly towards the boy as the latter broke open the
package, and then hurriedly concealed it in his jacket-pocket, and
started for the door. Mr. Hamlin quickly followed him, unperceived, and,
as he stepped into the street, gently tapped him on the shoulder. The
boy turned and faced him quickly. But Mr. Hamlin's eyes showed nothing
but lazy good-humor.

"Hullo, Bob. Where are you going?"

The boy again looked up suspiciously at this revelation of his name.

"Home," he said, briefly.

"Oh, over yonder," said Hamlin, calmly. "I don't mind walking with you
as far as the lane."

He saw the boy's eyes glance furtively towards an alley that ran beside
the blacksmith's shop a few rods ahead, and was convinced that he
intended to evade him there. Slipping his arm carelessly in the youth's,
he concluded to open fire at once.

"Bob," he said, with irresistible gravity, "I did not know when I met
you this morning that I had the honor of addressing a poet--none other
than the famous author of 'Underbrush.'"

The boy started back, and endeavored to withdraw his arm, but Mr. Hamlin
tightened his hold, without, however, changing his careless expression.

"You see," he continued, "the editor is a friend of mine, and, being
afraid this package might not get into the right hands--as you didn't
give your name--he deputized me to come here and see that it was all
square. As you're rather young, for all you're so gifted, I reckon I'd
better go home with you, and take a receipt from your parents. That's
about square, I think?"

The consternation of the boy was so evident and so far beyond Mr.
Hamlin's expectation that he instantly halted him, gazed into his
shifting eyes, and gave a long whistle.

"Who said it was for ME? Wot you talkin' about? Lemme go!" gasped the
boy, with the short intermittent breath of mingled fear and passion.

"Bob," said Mr. Hamlin, in a singularly colorless voice which was very
rare with him, and an expression quite unlike his own, "what is your
little game?"

The boy looked down in dogged silence.

"Out with it! Who are you playing this on?"

"It's all among my own folks; it's nothin' to YOU," said the boy,
suddenly beginning to struggle violently, as if inspired by this
extenuating fact.

"Among your own folks, eh? White Violet and the rest, eh? But SHE'S not
in it?"

No reply.

"Hand me over that package. I'll give it back to you again."

The boy handed it to Mr. Hamlin. He read the letter, and found the
inclosure contained a twenty-dollar gold-piece. A half-supercilious
smile passed over his face at this revelation of the inadequate
emoluments of literature and the trifling inducements to crime. Indeed,
I fear the affair began to take a less serious moral complexion in his
eyes.

"Then White Violet--your sister Cynthia, you know," continued Mr.
Hamlin, in easy parenthesis--"wrote for this?" holding the coin
contemplatively in his fingers, "and you calculated to nab it yourself?"

The quick searching glance with which Bob received the name of his
sister, Mr. Hamlin attributed only to his natural surprise that
this stranger should be on such familiar terms with her; but the boy
responded immediately and bluntly:--

"No! SHE didn't write for it. She didn't want nobody to know who she
was. Nobody wrote for it but me. Nobody KNEW FOLKS WAS PAID FOR PO'TRY
BUT ME. I found it out from a feller. I wrote for it. I wasn't goin' to
let that skunk of an editor have it himself!"

"And you thought YOU would take it," said Hamlin, his voice resuming
its old tone. "Well, George--I mean Bob, your conduct was praiseworthy,
although your intentions were bad. Still, twenty dollars is rather
too much for your trouble. Suppose we say five and call it square?" He
handed the astonished boy five dollars. "Now, George Washington," he
continued, taking four other twenty-dollar pieces from his pocket, and
adding them to the inclosure, which he carefully refolded, "I'm going to
give you another chance to live up to your reputation. You'll take that
package, and hand it to White Violet, and say you found it, just as
it is, in the lock-box. I'll keep the letter, for it would knock you
endways if it was seen, and I'll make it all right with the editor. But,
as I've got to tell him that I've seen White Violet myself, and know
she's got it, I expect YOU to manage in some way to have me see her.
I'll manage the rest of it; and I won't blow on you, either. You'll
come back to the hotel, and tell me what you've done. And now, George,"
concluded Mr. Hamlin, succeeding at last in fixing the boy's evasive eye
with a peculiar look, "it may be just as well for you to understand
that I know every nook and corner of this place, that I've already been
through that underbrush you spoke of once this morning, and that I've
got a mare that can go wherever YOU can, and a d----d sight quicker!"

"I'll give the package to White Violet," said the boy, doggedly.

"And you'll come back to the hotel?"

The boy hesitated, and then said, "I'll come back."

"All right, then. Adios, general."

Bob disappeared around the corner of a cross-road at a rapid trot, and
Mr. Hamlin turned into the hotel.

"Smart little chap that!" he said to the barkeeper.

"You bet!" returned the man, who, having recognized Mr. Hamlin, was
delighted at the prospect of conversing with a gentleman of such
decidedly dangerous reputation. "But he's been allowed to run a little
wild since old man Delatour died, and the widder's got enough to do, I
reckon, lookin' arter her four gals, and takin' keer of old Delatour's
ranch over yonder. I guess it's pretty hard sleddin' for her sometimes
to get clo'es and grub for the famerly, without follerin' Bob around."

"Sharp girls, too, I reckon; one of them writes things for the
magazines, doesn't she?--Cynthia, eh?" said Mr. Hamlin, carelessly.

Evidently this fact was not a notorious one to the barkeeper. He,
however, said, "Dunno; mabbee; her father was eddicated, and the widder
Delatour, too, though she's sorter queer, I've heard tell. Lord!
Mr. Hamlin, YOU oughter remember old man Delatour! From Opelousas,
Louisiany, you know! High old sport French style, frilled
bosom--open-handed, and us'ter buck ag'in' faro awful! Why, he dropped
a heap o' money to YOU over in San Jose two years ago at poker! You must
remember him!"

The slightest possible flush passed over Mr. Hamlin's brow under the
shadow of his hat, but did not get lower than his eyes. He suddenly HAD
recalled the spendthrift Delatour perfectly, and as quickly regretted
now that he had not doubled the honorarium he had just sent to his
portionless daughter. But he only said, coolly, "No," and then, raising
his pale face and audacious eyes, continued in his laziest and most
insulting manner, "no: the fact is, my mind is just now preoccupied in
wondering if the gas is leaking anywhere, and if anything is ever served
over this bar except elegant conversation. When the gentleman who mixes
drinks comes back, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell him to send a
whisky sour to Mr. Jack Hamlin in the parlor. Meantime, you can turn off
your soda fountain: I don't want any fizz in mine."

Having thus quite recovered himself, Mr. Hamlin lounged gracefully
across the hall into the parlor. As he did so, a darkish young man, with
a slim boyish figure, a thin face, and a discontented expression,
rose from an armchair, held out his hand, and, with a saturnine smile,
said:--

"Jack!"

"Fred!"

The two men remained gazing at each other with a half-amused,
half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. "I didn't think
YOU'D be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred," he said,
half seriously.

"Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I hunted
you up," said the editor, mischievously. "Read that. I got it an hour
after you left." And he placed a little triumphantly in Jack's hand the
letter he had received from White Violet.

Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two hands
on the editor's shoulders. "Yes, my young friend, and you sat down and
wrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollars--which, permit me
to say, was d----d poor pay! But that isn't your fault, I reckon: it's
the meanness of your proprietors."

"But it isn't the question, either, just now, Jack, however you have
been able to answer it. Do you mean to say seriously that you want to
know anything more of a woman who could write such a letter?"

"I don't know," said Jack, cheerfully. "She might be a devilish sight
funnier than if she hadn't written it--which is the fact."

"You mean to say SHE didn't write it?"

"Yes."

"Who did, then?"

"Her brother Bob."

After a moment's scrutiny of his friend's bewildered face, Mr. Hamlin
briefly related his adventures, from the moment of his meeting Bob at
the mountain-stream to the barkeeper's gossiping comment and sequel.
"Therefore," he concluded, "the author of 'Underbrush' is Miss Cynthia
Delatour, one of four daughters of a widow who lives two miles from
here at the crossing. I shall see her this evening and make sure;
but to-morrow morning you will pay me the breakfast you owe me. She's
good-looking, but I can't say I fancy the poetic style: it's a little
too high-toned for me. However, I love my love with a C, because she is
your Contributor; I hate her with a C, because of her Connections; I met
her by Chance and treated her with Civility; her name is Cynthia, and
she lives on a Cross-road."

"But you surely don't expect you will ever see Bob, again!" said the
editor, impatiently. "You have trusted him with enough to start him for
the Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you have
established in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised that
a man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp the
second time."

"My knowledge of the world," returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, "tells
me that's the only way you can trust anybody. ONCE doesn't make a habit,
nor show a character. I could see by his bungling that he had never
tried this on before. Just now the temptation to wipe out his punishment
by doing the square thing, and coming back a sort of hero, is stronger
than any other. 'Tisn't everybody that gets that chance," he added, with
an odd laugh.

Nevertheless, three hours passed without bringing Bob. The two men had
gone to the billiard-room, when a waiter brought a note, which he
handed to Mr. Hamlin with some apologetic hesitation. It bore no
superscription, but had been brought by a boy who described Mr. Hamlin
perfectly, and requested that the note should be handed to him with the
remark that "Bob had come back."

"And is he there now?" asked Mr. Hamlin, holding the letter unopened in
his hand.

"No, sir; he run right off."

The editor laughed, but Mr. Hamlin, having perused the note, put away
his cue. "Come into my room," he said.

The editor followed, and Mr. Hamlin laid the note before him on the
table. "Bob's all right," he said, "for I'll bet a thousand dollars that
note is genuine."

It was delicately written, in a cultivated feminine hand, utterly unlike
the scrawl that had first excited the editor's curiosity, and ran as
follows:--


He who brought me the bounty of your friend--for I cannot call a
recompense so far above my deserts by any other name--gives me also to
understand that you wished for an interview. I cannot believe that this
is mere idle curiosity, or that you have any motive that is not kindly
and honorable, but I feel that I must beg and pray you not to seek to
remove the veil behind which I have chosen to hide myself and my
poor efforts from identification. I THINK I know you--I KNOW I
know myself--well enough to believe it would give neither of us any
happiness. You will say to your generous friend that he has already
given the Unknown more comfort and hope than could come from any
personal compliment or publicity, and you will yourself believe that you
have all unconsciously brightened a sad woman's fancy with a Dream and a
Vision that before today had been unknown to

WHITE VIOLET.


"Have you read it?" asked Mr. Hamlin.

"Yes."

"Then you don't want to see it any more, or even remember you ever saw
it," said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces and
letting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.

"But, I say, Jack! look here; I don't understand! You say you have
already seen this woman, and yet"--

"I HAVEN'T seen her," said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right here
and leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, and--that I
owe you that dinner."


CHAPTER IV


When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr.
Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupant
of a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tall
figure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. James
Bowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had just
abandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, but
Mr. Bowers's resources were a life-long experience and technical skill;
he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and his
knowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr.
Hamlin's luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormal
growths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were
not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by
the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers's
visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even
figuratively accept the omen.

He baited and rested his horse at the hotel, where his bucolic exterior,
however, did not elicit that attention which had been accorded to Mr.
Hamlin's charming insolence or the editor's cultivated manner. But he
glanced over a township map on the walls of the reading-room, and took
note of the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches,
passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in the
direction of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a young
sapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling but
familiar woodman's step.

It is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to follow Mr. Bowers in
his professional diagnosis of the locality. He recognized Nature in one
of her moods of wasteful extravagance,--a waste that his experienced
eye could tell was also sapping the vitality of those outwardly robust
shafts that rose around him. He knew, without testing them, that half of
these fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he could
detect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirred
by the wind that streamed through their long aisles,--like incense
mingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then to
part the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeing
again, as he had told the editor, the weird SECOND twilight through
their miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But,
even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess,
he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphere
and melody of her verse. Its spell was upon him, too. Unlike Mr. Hamlin,
he did not sing. He only halted once or twice, silently combing his
straight narrow beard with his three fingers, until the action seemed
to draw down the lines of his face into limitless dejection, and an
inscrutable melancholy filled his small gray eyes. The few birds which
had hailed Mr. Hamlin as their successful rival fled away before the
grotesque and angular half-length of Mr. Bowers, as if the wind had
blown in a scarecrow from the distant farms.

Suddenly he observed the figure of a woman, with her back towards him,
leaning motionless against a tree, and apparently gazing intently in the
direction of Green Springs. He had approached so near to her that it
was singular she had not heard him. Mr. Bowers was a bashful man in the
presence of the other sex. He felt exceedingly embarrassed; if he could
have gone away without attracting her attention he would have done so.
Neither could he remain silent, a tacit spy of her meditation. He had
recourse to a polite but singularly artificial cough.

To his surprise, she gave a faint cry, turned quickly towards him, and
then shrank back and lapsed quite helpless against the tree. Her evident
distress overcame his bashfulness. He ran towards her.

"I'm sorry I frighted ye, ma'am, but I was afraid I might skeer ye more
if I lay low, and said nothin'."

Even then, if she had been some fair young country girl, he would have
relapsed after this speech into his former bashfulness. But the face and
figure she turned towards him were neither young nor fair: a woman past
forty, with gray threads and splashes in her brushed-back hair, which
was turned over her ears in two curls like frayed strands of rope. Her
forehead was rather high than broad, her nose large but well-shaped,
and her eyes full but so singularly light in color as to seem almost
sightless. The short upper lip of her large mouth displayed her teeth
in an habitual smile, which was in turn so flatly contradicted by every
other line of her careworn face that it seemed gratuitously artificial.
Her figure was hidden by a shapeless garment that partook equally of the
shawl, cloak, and wrapper.

"I am very foolish," she began, in a voice and accent that at once
asserted a cultivated woman, "but I so seldom meet anybody here that a
voice quite startled me. That, and the heat," she went on, wiping her
face, into which the color was returning violently--"for I seldom go out
as early as this--I suppose affected me."

Mr. Bowers had that innate Far-Western reverence for womanhood which
I fancy challenges the most polished politeness. He remained patient,
undemonstrative, self-effacing, and respectful before her, his angular
arm slightly but not obtrusively advanced, the offer of protection being
in the act rather than in any spoken word, and requiring no response.

"Like as not, ma'am," he said, cheerfully looking everywhere but in her
burning face. "The sun IS pow'ful hot at this time o' day; I felt it
myself comin' yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it
back, it's likely to come out ag'in. Ye can't check it no more than the
sap in that choked limb thar"--he pointed ostentatiously where a fallen
pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which
still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. "Do you
live far from here, ma'am?" he added.

"Only as far as the first turning below the hill."

"I've got my buggy here, and I'm goin' that way, and I can jist set ye
down thar cool and comfortable. Ef," he continued, in the same assuring
tone, without waiting for a reply, "ye'll jist take a good grip of
my arm thar," curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherd's
crook, "I'll go first, and break away the brush for ye."

She obeyed mechanically, and they fared on through the thick ferns in
this fashion for some moments, he looking ahead, occasionally dropping
a word of caution or encouragement, but never glancing at her face.
When they reached the buggy he lifted her into it carefully,--and
perpendicularly, it struck her afterwards, very much as if she had been
a transplanted sapling with bared and sensitive roots,--and then gravely
took his place beside her.

"Bein' in the timber trade myself, ma'am," he said, gathering up the
reins, "I chanced to sight these woods, and took a look around. My name
is Bowers, of Mendocino; I reckon there ain't much that grows in the
way o' standin' timber on the Pacific Slope that I don't know and can't
locate, though I DO say it. I've got ez big a mill, and ez big a run in
my district, ez there is anywhere. Ef you're ever up my way, you ask for
Bowers--Jim Bowers--and that's ME."

There is probably nothing more conducive to conversation between
strangers than a wholesome and early recognition of each other's
foibles. Mr. Bowers, believing his chance acquaintance a superior woman,
naively spoke of himself in a way that he hoped would reassure her
that she was not compromising herself in accepting his civility, and so
satisfy what must be her inevitable pride. On the other hand, the woman
regained her self-possession by this exhibition of Mr. Bowers's vanity,
and, revived by the refreshing breeze caused by the rapid motion of the
buggy along the road, thanked him graciously.

"I suppose there are many strangers at the Green Springs Hotel," she
said, after a pause.

"I didn't get to see 'em, as I only put up my hoss there," he replied.
"But I know the stage took some away this mornin': it seemed pretty well
loaded up when I passed it."

The woman drew a deep sigh. The act struck Mr. Bowers as a possible
return of her former nervous weakness. Her attention must at once be
distracted at any cost--even conversation.

"Perhaps," he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, "I'm a-talkin'
to Mrs. McFadden?"

"No," said the woman, abstractedly.

"Then it must be Mrs. Delatour? There are only two township lots on that
crossroad."

"My name IS Delatour," she said, somewhat wearily.

Mr. Bowers was conversationally stranded. He was not at all anxious to
know her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there was
nothing more to say. He would, of course, have preferred to ask her
if she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew the
poetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appeared
to be an "eddicated" woman made him sensitive of displaying technical
ignorance in his manner of talking about it. She might ask him if it was
"subjective" or "objective"--two words he had heard used at the Debating
Society at Mendocino on the question, "Is poetry morally beneficial?"
For a few moments he was silent. But presently she took the initiative
in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if
appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief
in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but
unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at
times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some
conversation she had held with another.

She had lived there ever since she had been in California. Her husband
had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.
The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been
obliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls and
a boy. She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at
Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared,
too shiftless--to do anything. The farm did not pay; the land was poor;
she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans,
where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand country
life. Of course she had been married too young--as all girls were.
Lately she had thought of selling off and moving to San Francisco, where
she would open a boarding-house or a school for young ladies. He could
advise her, perhaps, of some good opportunity. Her own girls were far
enough advanced to assist her in teaching; one particularly, Cynthia,
was quite clever, and spoke French and Spanish fluently.

As Mr. Bowers was familiar with many of these counts in the feminine
American indictment of life generally, he was not perhaps greatly moved.
But in the last sentence he thought he saw an opening to return to his
main object, and, looking up cautiously, said:--

"And mebbe write po'try now and then?" To his great discomfiture, the
only effect of this suggestion was to check his companion's speech for
some moments and apparently throw her back into her former abstraction.
Yet, after a long pause, as they were turning into the lane, she said,
as if continuing the subject:--

"I only hope that, whatever my daughters may do, they won't marry
young."

The yawning breaches in the Delatour gates and fences presently came
in view. They were supposed to be reinforced by half a dozen dogs,
who, however, did their duty with what would seem to be the prevailing
inefficiency, retiring after a single perfunctory yelp to shameless
stretching, scratching, and slumber. Their places were taken on the
veranda by two negro servants, two girls respectively of eight and
eleven, and a boy of fourteen, who remained silently staring. As Mr.
Bowers had accepted the widow's polite invitation to enter, she was
compelled, albeit in an equally dazed and helpless way, to issue some
preliminary orders:--

"Now, Chloe--I mean aunt Dinah--do take Eunice--I mean Victorine and
Una--away, and--you know--tidy them; and you, Sarah--it's Sarah, isn't
it?--lay some refreshment in the parlor for this gentleman. And,
Bob, tell your sister Cynthia to come here with Eunice." As Bob still
remained staring at Mr. Bowers, she added, in weary explanation, "Mr.
Bowers brought me over from the Summit woods in his buggy--it was so
hot. There--shake hands and thank him, and run away--do!"

They crossed a broad but scantily-furnished hall. Everywhere the same
look of hopeless incompleteness, temporary utility, and premature decay;
most of the furniture was mismatched and misplaced; many of the rooms
had changed their original functions or doubled them; a smell of cooking
came from the library, on whose shelves, mingled with books, were
dresses and household linen, and through the door of a room into which
Mrs. Delatour retired to remove her duster Mr. Bowers caught a glimpse
of a bed, and of a table covered with books and papers, at which a
tall, fair girl was writing. In a few moments Mrs. Delatour returned,
accompanied by this girl, and Eunice, her short-lipped sister. Bob, who
joined the party seated around Mr. Bowers and a table set with cake, a
decanter, and glasses, completed the group. Emboldened by the presence
of the tall Cynthia and his glimpse of her previous literary attitude,
Mr. Bowers resolved to make one more attempt.

"I suppose these yer young ladies sometimes go to the wood, too?" As his
eye rested on Cynthia, she replied:--

"Oh, yes."

"I reckon on account of the purty shadows down in the brush, and the
soft light, eh? and all that?" he continued, with a playful manner but a
serious accession of color.

"Why, the woods belong to us. It's mar's property!" broke in Eunice with
a flash of teeth.

"Well, Lordy, I wanter know!" said Mr. Bowers, in some astonishment.
"Why, that's right in my line, too! I've been sightin' timber all along
here, and that's how I dropped in on yer mar." Then, seeing a look of
eagerness light up the faces of Bob and Eunice, he was encouraged to
make the most of his opportunity. "Why, ma'am," he went on, cheerfully,
"I reckon you're holdin' that wood at a pretty stiff figger, now."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Delatour, simply.

Mr. Bowers delivered a wink at Bob and Eunice, who were still watching
him with anxiety. "Well, not on account of the actool timber, for the
best of it ain't sound," he said, "but on account of its bein' famous!
Everybody that reads that pow'ful pretty poem about it in the 'Excelsior
Magazine' wants to see it. Why, it would pay the Green Springs
hotel-keeper to buy it up for his customers. But I s'pose you reckon to
keep it--along with the poetess--in your famerly?"

Although Mr. Bowers long considered this speech as the happiest and most
brilliant effort of his life, its immediate effect was not, perhaps,
all that could be desired. The widow turned upon him a restrained and
darkening face. Cynthia half rose with an appealing "Oh, mar!" and Bob
and Eunice, having apparently pinched each other to the last stage of
endurance, retired precipitately from the room in a prolonged giggle.

"I have not yet thought of disposing of the Summit woods, Mr. Bowers,"
said Mrs. Delatour, coldly, "but if I should do so, I will consult you.
You must excuse the children, who see so little company, they are quite
unmanageable when strangers are present. Cynthia, WILL you see if the
servants have looked after Mr. Bowers's horse? You know Bob is not to be
trusted."

There was clearly nothing else for Mr. Bowers to do but to take his
leave, which he did respectfully, if not altogether hopefully. But when
he had reached the lane, his horse shied from the unwonted spectacle of
Bob, swinging his hat, and apparently awaiting him, from the fork of a
wayside sapling.

"Hol' up, mister. Look here!"

Mr. Bowers pulled up. Bob dropped into the road, and, after a backward
glance over his shoulder, said:--

"Drive 'longside the fence in the shadder." As Mr. Bowers obeyed,
Bob approached the wheels of the buggy in a manner half shy, half
mysterious. "You wanter buy them Summit woods, mister?"

"Well, per'aps, sonny. Why?" smiled Mr. Bowers.

"Coz I'll tell ye suthin'. Don't you be fooled into allowin' that
Cynthia wrote that po'try. She didn't--no more'n Eunice nor me. Mar
kinder let ye think it, 'cos she don't want folks to think SHE did it.
But mar wrote that po'try herself; wrote it out o' them thar woods--all
by herself. Thar's a heap more po'try thar, you bet, and jist as good.
And she's the one that kin write it--you hear me? That's my mar, every
time! You buy that thar wood, and get mar to run it for po'try, and
you'll make your pile, sure! I ain't lyin'. You'd better look spry:
thar's another feller snoopin' 'round yere--only he barked up the wrong
tree, and thought it was Cynthia, jist as you did."

"Another feller?" repeated the astonished Bowers.

"Yes; a rig'lar sport. He was orful keen on that po'try, too, you bet.
So you'd better hump yourself afore somebody else cuts in. Mar got a
hundred dollars for that pome, from that editor feller and his pardner.
I reckon that's the rig'lar price, eh?" he added, with a sudden
suspicious caution.

"I reckon so," replied Mr. Bowers, blankly. "But--look here, Bob! Do you
mean to say it was your mother--your MOTHER, Bob, who wrote that poem?
Are you sure?"

"D'ye think I'm lyin'?" said Bob, scornfully. "Don't I know? Don't I
copy 'em out plain for her, so as folks won't know her handwrite? Go
'way! you're loony!" Then, possibly doubting if this latter expression
were strictly diplomatic with the business in hand, he added, in
half-reproach, half-apology, "Don't ye see I don't want ye to be fooled
into losin' yer chance o' buying up that Summit wood? It's the cold
truth I'm tellin' ye."

Mr. Bowers no longer doubted it. Disappointed as he undoubtedly was at
first,--and even self-deceived,--he recognized in a flash the grim fact
that the boy had stated. He recalled the apparition of the sad-faced
woman in the wood--her distressed manner, that to his inexperienced
mind now took upon itself the agitated trembling of disturbed mystic
inspiration. A sense of sadness and remorse succeeded his first shock of
disappointment.

"Well, are ye going to buy the woods?" said Bob, eying him grimly. "Ye'd
better say."

Mr. Bowers started. "I shouldn't wonder, Bob," he said, with a smile,
gathering up his reins. "Anyhow, I'm comin' back to see your mother this
afternoon. And meantime, Bob, you keep the first chance for me."

He drove away, leaving the youthful diplomatist standing with his bare
feet in the dust. For a minute or two the young gentleman amused himself
by a few light saltatory steps in the road. Then a smile of scornful
superiority, mingled perhaps with a sense of previous slights and
unappreciation, drew back his little upper lip, and brightened his
mottled cheek.

"I'd like ter know," he said, darkly, "what this yer God-forsaken
famerly would do without ME!"


CHAPTER V


It is to be presumed that the editor and Mr. Hamlin mutually kept to
their tacit agreement to respect the impersonality of the poetess,
for during the next three months the subject was seldom alluded to
by either. Yet in that period White Violet had sent two other
contributions, and on each occasion Mr. Hamlin had insisted upon
increasing the honorarium to the amount of his former gift. In vain the
editor pointed out the danger of this form of munificence; Mr. Hamlin
retorted by saying that if he refused he would appeal to the proprietor,
who certainly would not object to taking the credit of this liberality.
"As to the risks," concluded Jack, sententiously, "I'll take them; and
as far as you're concerned, you certainly get the worth of your money."

Indeed, if popularity was an indiction, this had become suddenly true.
For the poetess's third contribution, without changing its strong
local color and individuality, had been an unexpected outburst of human
passion--a love-song, that touched those to whom the subtler meditative
graces of the poetess had been unknown. Many people had listened to this
impassioned but despairing cry from some remote and charmed solitude,
who had never read poetry before, who translated it into their own
limited vocabulary and more limited experience, and were inexpressibly
affected to find that they, too, understood it; it was caught up and
echoed by the feverish, adventurous, and unsatisfied life that filled
that day and time. Even the editor was surprised and frightened. Like
most cultivated men, he distrusted popularity: like all men who believe
in their own individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet
now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that
judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst
was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion
the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and
even approached the tabooed subject.

"Did you see anything that suggested this sort of business in--in--that
woman--I mean in--your pilgrimage, Jack?"

"No," responded Jack, gravely. "But it's easy to see she's got hold
of some hay-footed fellow up there in the mountains with straws in his
hair, and is playing him for all he's worth. You won't get much more
poetry out of her, I reckon."

Is was not long after this conversation that one afternoon, when the
editor was alone, Mr. James Bowers entered the editorial room with much
of the hesitation and irresolution of his previous visit. As the editor
had not only forgotten him, but even, dissociated him with the poetess,
Mr. Bowers was fain to meet his unresponsive eye and manner with some
explanation.

"Ye disremember my comin' here, Mr. Editor, to ask you the name o' the
lady who called herself 'White Violet,' and how you allowed you couldn't
give it, but would write and ask for it?"

Mr. Editor, leaning back in his chair, now remembered the occurrence,
but was distressed to add that the situation remained unchanged, and
that he had received no such permission.

"Never mind THAT, my lad," said Mr. Bowers, gravely, waving his hand. "I
understand all that; but, ez I've known the lady ever since, and am now
visiting her at her house on the Summit, I reckon it don't make much
matter."

It was quite characteristic of Mr. Bowers's smileless earnestness that
he made no ostentation of this dramatic retort, nor of the undisguised
stupefaction of the editor.

"Do you mean to say that you have met White Violet, the author of these
poems?" repeated the editor.

"Which her name is Delatour,--the widder Delatour,--ez she has herself
give me permission to tell you," continued Mr. Bowers, with a certain
abstracted and automatic precision that dissipated any suggestion of
malice in the reversed situation.

"Delatour!--a widow!" repeated the editor.

"With five children," continued Mr. Bowers. Then, with unalterable
gravity, he briefly gave an outline of her condition and the
circumstances of his acquaintance with her.

"But I reckoned YOU might have known suthin' o' this; though she never
let on you did," he concluded, eying the editor with troubled curiosity.

The editor did not think it necessary to implicate Mr. Hamlin. He said,
briefly, "I? Oh, no!"

"Of course, YOU might not have seen her?" said Mr. Bowers, keeping the
same grave, troubled gaze on the editor.

"Of course not," said the editor, somewhat impatient under the singular
scrutiny of Mr. Bowers; "and I'm very anxious to know how she looks.
Tell me, what is she like?"

"She is a fine, pow'ful, eddicated woman," said Mr. Bowers, with slow
deliberation. "Yes, sir,--a pow'ful woman, havin' grand ideas of her
own, and holdin' to 'em." He had withdrawn his eyes from the editor, and
apparently addressed the ceiling in confidence.

"But what does she look like, Mr. Bowers?" said the editor, smiling.

"Well, sir, she looks--LIKE--IT! Yes,"--with deliberate caution,--"I
should say, just like it."

After a pause, apparently to allow the editor to materialize this
ravishing description, he said, gently, "Are you busy just now?"

"Not very. What can I do for you?"

"Well, not much for ME, I reckon," he returned, with a deeper
respiration, that was his nearest approach to a sigh, "but suthin'
perhaps for yourself and--another. Are you married?"

"No," said the editor, promptly.

"Nor engaged to any--young lady?"--with great politeness.

"No."

"Well, mebbe you think it a queer thing for me to say,--mebbe you reckon
you KNOW it ez well ez anybody,--but it's my opinion that White Violet
is in love with you."

"With me?" ejaculated the editor, in a hopeless astonishment that at
last gave way to an incredulous and irresistible laugh.

A slight touch of pain passed over Mr. Bowers's dejected face, but left
the deep outlines set with a rude dignity. "It's SO," he said, slowly,
"though, as a young man and a gay feller, ye may think it's funny."

"No, not funny, but a terrible blunder, Mr. Bowers, for I give you my
word I know nothing of the lady and have never set eyes upon her."

"No, but she has on YOU. I can't say," continued Mr. Bowers, with
sublime naivete, "that I'd ever recognize you from her description, but
a woman o' that kind don't see with her eyes like you and me, but with
all her senses to onct, and a heap more that ain't senses as we know
'em. The same eyes that seed down through the brush and ferns in the
Summit woods, the same ears that heerd the music of the wind trailin'
through the pines, don't see you with my eyes or hear you with my ears.
And when she paints you, it's nat'ril for a woman with that pow'ful mind
and grand idees to dip her brush into her heart's blood for warmth and
color. Yer smilin', young man. Well, go on and smile at me, my lad, but
not at her. For you don't know her. When you know her story as I do,
when you know she was made a wife afore she ever knew what it was to be
a young woman, when you know that the man she married never understood
the kind o' critter he was tied to no more than ef he'd been a steer
yoked to a Morgan colt, when ye know she had children growin' up around
her afore she had given over bein' a sort of child herself, when ye
know she worked and slaved for that man and those children about the
house--her heart, her soul, and all her pow'ful mind bein' all the time
in the woods along with the flickering leaves and the shadders,--when
ye mind she couldn't get the small ways o' the ranch because she had the
big ways o' Natur' that made it,--then you'll understand her."

Impressed by the sincerity of his visitor's manner, touched by the
unexpected poetry of his appeal, and yet keenly alive to the absurdity
of an incomprehensible blunder somewhere committed, the editor gasped
almost hysterically,--

"But why should all this make her in love with ME?"

"Because ye are both gifted," returned Mr. Bowers, with sad but
unconquerable conviction; "because ye're both, so to speak, in a line
o' idees and business that draws ye together,--to lean on each other and
trust each other ez pardners. Not that YE are ezakly her ekal," he went
on, with a return to his previous exasperating naivete, "though I've
heerd promisin' things of ye, and ye're still young, but in matters
o' this kind there is allers one ez hez to be looked up to by
the other,--and gin'rally the wrong one. She looks up to you, Mr.
Editor,--it's part of her po'try,--ez she looks down inter the brush
and sees more than is plain to you and me. Not," he continued, with a
courteously deprecating wave of the hand, "ez you hain't bin kind to
her--mebbe TOO kind. For thar's the purty letter you writ her, thar's
the perlite, easy, captivatin' way you had with her gals and
that boy--hold on!"--as the editor made a gesture of despairing
renunciation,--"I ain't sayin' you ain't right in keepin' it to
yourself,--and thar's the extry money you sent her every time. Stop! she
knows it was EXTRY, for she made a p'int o' gettin' me to find out the
market price o' po'try in papers and magazines, and she reckons you've
bin payin' her four hundred per cent. above them figgers--hold on! I
ain't sayin' it ain't free and liberal in you, and I'd have done the
same thing; yet SHE thinks"--

But the editor had risen hastily to his feet with flushing cheeks.

"One moment, Mr. Bowers," he said, hurriedly. "This is the most dreadful
blunder of all. The gift is not mine. It was the spontaneous offering
of another who really admired our friend's work,--a gentleman who"--He
stopped suddenly.

The sound of a familiar voice, lightly humming, was borne along the
passage; the light tread of a familiar foot was approaching. The editor
turned quickly towards the open door,--so quickly that Mr. Bowers was
fain to turn also.

For a charming instant the figure of Jack Hamlin, handsome, careless,
and confident, was framed in the doorway. His dark eyes, with their
habitual scorn of his average fellow-man, swept superciliously over
Mr. Bowers, and rested for an instant with caressing familiarity on the
editor.

"Well, sonny, any news from the old girl at the Summit?"

"No-o," hastily stammered the editor, with a half-hysterical laugh. "No,
Jack. Excuse me a moment."

"All right; busy, I see. Hasta manana."

The picture vanished, the frame was empty.

"You see," continued the editor, turning to Mr. Bowers, "there has been
a mistake. I"--but he stopped suddenly at the ashen face of Mr. Bowers,
still fixed in the direction of the vanished figure.

"Are you ill?"

Mr. Bowers did not reply, but slowly withdrew his eyes, and turned them
heavily on the editor. Then, drawing a longer, deeper breath, he picked
up his soft felt hat, and, moulding it into shape in his hands as if
preparing to put it on, he moistened his dry, grayish lips, and said,
gently:--

"Friend o' yours?"

"Yes," said the editor--"Jack Hamlin. Of course, you know him?"

"Yes."

Mr. Bowers here put his hat on his head, and, after a pause, turned
round slowly once or twice, as if he had forgotten it, and was still
seeking it. Finally he succeeded in finding the editor's hand, and shook
it, albeit his own trembled slightly. Then he said:--

"I reckon you're right. There's bin a mistake. I see it now. Good-by.
If you're ever up my way, drop in and see me." He then walked to the
doorway, passed out, and seemed to melt into the afternoon shadows of
the hall.

He never again entered the office of the "Excelsior Magazine," neither
was any further contribution ever received from White Violet. To a
polite entreaty from the editor, addressed first to "White Violet"
and then to Mrs. Delatour, there was no response. The thought of Mr.
Hamlin's cynical prophecy disturbed him, but that gentleman, preoccupied
in filling some professional engagements in Sacramento, gave him no
chance to acquire further explanations as to the past or the future. The
youthful editor was at first in despair and filled with a vague remorse
of some unfulfilled duty. But, to his surprise, the readers of the
magazine seemed to survive their talented contributor, and the feverish
life that had been thrilled by her song, in two months had apparently
forgotten her. Nor was her voice lifted from any alien quarter; the
domestic and foreign press that had echoed her lays seemed to respond no
longer to her utterance.

It is possible that some readers of these pages may remember a previous
chronicle by the same historian wherein it was recorded that the
volatile spirit of Mr. Hamlin, slightly assisted by circumstances,
passed beyond these voices at the Ranch of the Blessed Fisherman, some
two years later. As the editor stood beside the body of his friend on
the morning of the funeral, he noticed among the flowers laid upon his
bier by loving hands a wreath of white violets. Touched and disturbed
by a memory long since forgotten, he was further embarrassed, as the
cortege dispersed in the Mission graveyard, by the apparition of the
tall figure of Mr. James Bowers from behind a monumental column. The
editor turned to him quickly.

"I am glad to see you here," he said, awkwardly, and he knew not
why; then, after a pause, "I trust you can give me some news of Mrs.
Delatour. I wrote to her nearly two years ago, but had no response."

"Thar's bin no Mrs. Delatour for two years," said Mr. Bowers,
contemplatively stroking his beard; "and mebbe that's why. She's bin for
two years Mrs. Bowers."

"I congratulate you," said the editor; "but I hope there still remains
a White Violet, and that, for the sake of literature, she has not given
up"--

"Mrs. Bowers," interrupted Mr. Bowers, with singular deliberation,
"found that makin' po'try and tendin' to the cares of a growin'-up
famerly was irritatin' to the narves. They didn't jibe, so to speak.
What Mrs. Bowers wanted--and what, po'try or no po'try, I've bin tryin'
to give her--was Rest! She's bin havin' it comfor'bly up at my ranch
at Mendocino, with her children and me. Yes, sir"--his eye wandered
accidentally to the new-made grave--"you'll excuse my sayin' it to a man
in your profession, but it's what most folks will find is a heap better
than readin' or writin' or actin' po'try--and that's Rest!"




THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE


CHAPTER I


It had grown dark on Burnt Ridge. Seen from below, the whole serrated
crest that had glittered in the sunset as if its interstices were eaten
by consuming fires, now, closed up its ranks of blackened shafts and
became again harsh and sombre chevaux de frise against the sky. A faint
glow still lingered over the red valley road, as if it were its own
reflection, rather than any light from beyond the darkened ridge. Night
was already creeping up out of remote canyons and along the furrowed
flanks of the mountain, or settling on the nearer woods with the sound
of home-coming and innumerable wings. At a point where the road began to
encroach upon the mountain-side in its slow winding ascent the darkness
had become so real that a young girl cantering along the rising terrace
found difficulty in guiding her horse, with eyes still dazzled by the
sunset fires.

In spite of her precautions, the animal suddenly shied at some object
in the obscured roadway, and nearly unseated her. The accident disclosed
not only the fact that she was riding in a man's saddle, but also a foot
and ankle that her ordinary walking-dress was too short to hide. It was
evident that her equestrian exercise was extempore, and that at that
hour and on that road she had not expected to meet company. But she was
apparently a good horsewoman, for the mischance which might have thrown
a less practical or more timid rider seemed of little moment to her.
With a strong hand and determined gesture she wheeled her frightened
horse back into the track, and rode him directly at the object. But here
she herself slightly recoiled, for it was the body of a man lying in the
road.

As she leaned forward over her horse's shoulder, she could see by the
dim light that he was a miner, and that, though motionless, he was
breathing stertorously. Drunk, no doubt!--an accident of the locality
alarming only to her horse. But although she cantered impatiently
forward, she had not proceeded a hundred yards before she stopped
reflectively, and trotted back again. He had not moved. She could now
see that his head and shoulders were covered with broken clods of earth
and gravel, and smaller fragments lay at his side. A dozen feet above
him on the hillside there was a foot trail which ran parallel with the
bridle-road, and occasionally overhung it. It seemed possible that he
might have fallen from the trail and been stunned.

Dismounting, she succeeded in dragging him to a safer position by the
bank. The act discovered his face, which was young, and unknown to her.
Wiping it with the silk handkerchief which was loosely slung around his
neck after the fashion of his class, she gave a quick feminine glance
around her and then approached her own and rather handsome face near his
lips. There was no odor of alcohol in the thick and heavy respiration.
Mounting again, she rode forward at an accelerated pace, and in twenty
minutes had reached a higher tableland of the mountain, a cleared
opening in the forest that showed signs of careful cultivation, and
a large, rambling, yet picturesque-looking dwelling, whose unpainted
red-wood walls were hidden in roses and creepers. Pushing open a
swinging gate, she entered the inclosure as a brown-faced man, dressed
as a vaquero, came towards her as if to assist her to alight. But she
had already leaped to the ground and thrown him the reins.

"Miguel," she said, with a mistress's quiet authority in her boyish
contralto voice, "put Glory in the covered wagon, and drive down the
road as far as the valley turning. There's a man lying near the right
bank, drunk, or sick, may be, or perhaps crippled by a fall. Bring him
up here, unless somebody has found him already, or you happen to know
who he is and where to take him."

The vaquero raised his shoulders, half in disappointed expectation
of some other command. "And your brother, senora, he has not himself
arrived."

A light shadow of impatience crossed her face. "No," she said, bluntly.
"Come, be quick."

She turned towards the house as the man moved away. Already a
gaunt-looking old man had appeared in the porch, and was awaiting her
with his hand shadowing his angry, suspicious eyes, and his lips moving
querulously.

"Of course, you've got to stand out there and give orders and 'tend
to your own business afore you think o' speaking to your own flesh and
blood," he said aggrievedly. "That's all YOU care!"

"There was a sick man lying in the road, and I've sent Miguel to look
after him," returned the girl, with a certain contemptuous resignation.

"Oh, yes!" struck in another voice, which seemed to belong to the female
of the first speaker's species, and to be its equal in age and temper,
"and I reckon you saw a jay bird on a tree, or a squirrel on the fence,
and either of 'em was more important to you than your own brother."

"Steve didn't come by the stage, and didn't send any message," continued
the young girl, with the same coldly resigned manner. "No one had any
news of him, and, as I told you before, I didn't expect any."

"Why don't you say right out you didn't WANT any?" said the old man,
sneeringly. "Much you inquired! No; I orter hev gone myself, and I would
if I was master here, instead of me and your mother bein' the dust of
the yearth beneath your feet."

The young girl entered the house, followed by the old man, passing an
old woman seated by the window, who seemed to be nursing her resentment
and a large Bible which she held clasped against her shawled bosom
at the same moment. Going to the wall, she hung up her large hat
and slightly shook the red dust from her skirts as she continued her
explanation, in the same deep voice, with a certain monotony of logic
and possibly of purpose and practice also.

"You and mother know as well as I do, father, that Stephen is no more to
be depended upon than the wind that blows. It's three years since he has
been promising to come, and even getting money to come, and yet he has
never showed his face, though he has been a dozen times within five
miles of this house. He doesn't come because he doesn't want to come. As
to YOUR going over to the stage-office, I went there myself at the last
moment to save you the mortification of asking questions of strangers
that they know have been a dozen times answered already."

There was such a ring of absolute truthfulness, albeit worn by
repetition, in the young girl's deep honest voice that for one instant
her two more emotional relatives quailed before it; but only for a
moment.

"That's right!" shrilled the old woman. "Go on and abuse your own
brother. It's only the fear you have that he'll make his fortune yet and
shame you before the father and mother you despise."

The young girl remained standing by the window, motionless and
apparently passive, as if receiving an accepted and usual punishment.
But here the elder woman gave way to sobs and some incoherent snuffling,
at which the younger went away. Whether she recognized in her mother's
tears the ordinary deliquescence of emotion, or whether, as a woman
herself, she knew that this mere feminine conventionality could not
possibly be directed at her, and that the actual conflict between them
had ceased, she passed slowly on to an inner hall, leaving the male
victim, her unfortunate father, to succumb, as he always did sooner or
later, to their influence. Crossing the hall, which was decorated with a
few elk horns, Indian trophies, and mountain pelts, she entered another
room, and closed the door behind her with a gesture of relief.

The room, which looked upon a porch, presented a singular combination of
masculine business occupations and feminine taste and adornment. A desk
covered with papers, a shelf displaying a ledger and account-books,
another containing works of reference, a table with a vase of flowers
and a lady's riding-whip upon it, a map of California flanked on either
side by an embroidered silken workbag and an oval mirror decked with
grasses, a calendar and interest-table hanging below two school-girl
crayons of classic heads with the legend, "Josephine Forsyth
fecit,"--were part of its incongruous accessories. The young girl
went to her desk, but presently moved and turned towards the window
thoughtfully. The last gleam had died from the steel-blue sky; a
few lights like star points began to prick out the lower valley. The
expression of monotonous restraint and endurance had not yet faded from
her face.

Yet she had been accustomed to scenes like the one she had just passed
though since her girlhood. Five years ago, Alexander Forsyth, her uncle,
had brought her to this spot--then a mere log cabin on the hillside--as
a refuge from the impoverished and shiftless home of his elder brother
Thomas and his ill-tempered wife. Here Alexander Forsyth, by reason of
his more dominant character and business capacity, had prospered until
he became a rich and influential ranch owner. Notwithstanding her
father's jealousy of Alexander's fortune, and the open rupture that
followed between the brothers, Josephine retained her position in the
heart and home of her uncle without espousing the cause of either; and
her father was too prudent not to recognize the near and prospective
advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant
denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of
them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the
virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to
its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle
fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for
the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother
Stephen, and accepted it calmly. True to an odd standard of justice,
which she had erected from the crumbling ruins of her own domestic
life, she was tolerant of everything but human perfection. This quality,
however fatal to her higher growth, had given her a peculiar capacity
for business which endeared her to her uncle. Familiar with the
strong passions and prejudices of men, she had none of those feminine
meannesses, a wholesome distrust of which had kept her uncle a bachelor.
It was not strange, therefore, that when he died two years ago it was
found that he had left her his entire property, real and personal,
limited only by a single condition. She was to undertake the vocation
of a "sole trader," and carry on the business under the name of "J.
Forsyth." If she married, the estate and property was to be held
distinct from her husband's, inalienable under the "Married Woman's
Property Act," and subject during her life only to her own control and
personal responsibilities as a trader.

The intense disgust and discomfiture of her parents, who had expected to
more actively participate in their brother's fortune, may be imagined.
But it was not equal to their fury when Josephine, instead of providing
for them a separate maintenance out of her abundance, simply offered to
transfer them and her brother to her own house on a domestic but not
a business equality. There being no alternative but their former
precarious shiftless life in their "played-out" claim in the valley,
they wisely consented, reserving the sacred right of daily protest and
objurgation. In the economy of Burnt Ridge Ranch they alone took it upon
themselves to represent the shattered domestic altar and its outraged
Lares and Penates. And so conscientiously did they perform their task
as even occasionally to impede the business visitor to the ranch, and to
cause some of the more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young
girl's commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she thought her
parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, or whether she regarded
their presence in the light of a penitential atonement for some previous
disregard of them, no one knew. Public opinion inclined to the latter.

The black line of ridge faded out with her abstraction, and she
turned from the window and lit the lamp on her desk. The yellow light
illuminated her face and figure. In their womanly graces there was no
trace of what some people believed to be a masculine character, except
a singularly frank look of critical inquiry and patient attention in her
dark eyes. Her long brown hair was somewhat rigidly twisted into a knot
on the top of her head, as if more for security than ornament. Brown
was also the prevailing tint of her eyebrows, thickly-set eyelashes, and
eyes, and was even suggested in the slight sallowness of her complexion.
But her lips were well-cut and fresh-colored and her hands and feet
small and finely formed. She would have passed for a pretty girl, had
she not suggested something more.

She sat down, and began to examine a pile of papers before her with that
concentration and attention to detail which was characteristic of her
eyes, pausing at times with prettily knit brows, and her penholder
between her lips, in the semblance of a pout that was pleasant enough to
see. Suddenly the rattle of hoofs and wheels struck her with the sense
of something forgotten, and she put down her work quickly and stood up
listening. The sound of rough voices and her father's querulous accents
was broken upon by a cultivated and more familiar utterance: "All right;
I'll speak to her at once. Wait there," and the door opened to the
well-known physician of Burnt Ridge, Dr. Duchesne.

"Look here," he said, with an abruptness that was only saved from being
brusque by a softer intonation and a reassuring smile, "I met Miguel
helping an accident into your buggy. Your orders, eh?"

"Oh, yes," said Josephine, quietly. "A man I saw on the road."

"Well, it's a bad case, and wants prompt attention. And as your house is
the nearest I came with him here."

"Certainly," she said gravely. "Take him to the second room
beyond--Steve's room--it's ready," she explained to two dusky shadows in
the hall behind the doctor.

"And look here," said the doctor, partly closing the door behind him
and regarding her with critical eyes, "you always said you'd like to see
some of my queer cases. Well, this is one--a serious one, too; in fact,
it's just touch and go with him. There's a piece of the bone pressing
on the brain no bigger than that, but as much as if all Burnt Ridge was
atop of him! I'm going to lift it. I want somebody here to stand by,
some one who can lend a hand with a sponge, eh?--some one who isn't
going to faint or scream, or even shake a hair's-breadth, eh?"

The color rose quickly to the girl's cheek, and her eyes kindled. "I'll
come," she said thoughtfully. "Who is he?"

The doctor stared slightly at the unessential query. "Don't know,--one
of the river miners, I reckon. It's an urgent case. I'll go and get
everything ready. You'd better," he added, with an ominous glance at
her gray frock, "put something over your dress." The suggestion made her
grave, but did not alter her color.

A moment later she entered the room. It was the one that had always been
set apart for her brother: the very bed on which the unconscious man
lay had been arranged that morning with her own hands. Something of
this passed through her mind as she saw that the doctor had wheeled it
beneath the strong light in the centre of the room, stripped its
outer coverings with professional thoughtfulness, and rearranged the
mattresses. But it did not seem like the same room. There was a pungent
odor in the air from some freshly-opened phial; an almost feminine
neatness and luxury in an open morocco case like a jewel box on the
table, shining with spotless steel. At the head of the bed one of her
own servants, the powerful mill foreman, was assisting with the
mingled curiosity and blase experience of one accustomed to smashed and
lacerated digits. At first she did not look at the central unconscious
figure on the bed, whose sufferings seemed to her to have been
vicariously transferred to the concerned, eager, and drawn faces that
looked down upon its immunity. Then she femininely recoiled before the
bared white neck and shoulders displayed above the quilt, until, forcing
herself to look upon the face half-concealed by bandages and the head
from which the dark tangles of hair had been ruthlessly sheared, she
began to share the doctor's unconcern in his personality. What mattered
who or what HE was? It was--a case!

The operation began. With the same earnest intelligence that she had
previously shown, she quickly and noiselessly obeyed the doctor's
whispered orders, and even half anticipated them. She was conscious of a
singular curiosity that, far from being mean or ignoble, seemed to lift
her not only above the ordinary weaknesses of her own sex, but made her
superior to the men around her. Almost before she knew it, the operation
was over, and she regarded with equal curiosity the ostentatious
solicitude with which the doctor seemed to be wiping his fateful
instrument that bore an odd resemblance to a silver-handled centre-bit.
The stertorous breathing below the bandages had given way to a fainter
but more natural respiration. There was a moment of suspense. The
doctor's hand left the pulse and lifted the closed eyelid of the
sufferer. A slight movement passed over the figure. The sluggish face
had cleared; life seemed to struggle back into it before even the dull
eyes participated in the glow. Dr. Duchesne with a sudden gesture waved
aside his companions, but not before Josephine had bent her head eagerly
forward.

"He is coming to," she said.

At the sound of that deep clear voice--the first to break the hush of
the room--the dull eyes leaped up, and the head turned in its direction.
The lips moved and uttered a single rapid sentence. The girl recoiled.

"You're all right now," said the doctor, cheerfully, intent only upon
the form before him.

The lips moved again, but this time feebly and vacantly; the eyes were
staring vaguely around.

"What's matter? What's all about?" said the man, thickly.

"You've had a fall. Think a moment. Where do you live?"

Again the lips moved, but this time only to emit a confused, incoherent
murmur. Dr. Duchesne looked grave, but recovered himself quickly.

"That will do. Leave him alone now," he said brusquely to the others.

But Josephine lingered.

"He spoke well enough just now," she said eagerly. "Did you hear what he
said?"

"Not exactly," said the doctor, abstractedly, gazing at the man.

"He said, 'You'll have to kill me first,'" said Josephine, slowly.

"Humph;" said the doctor, passing his hand backwards and forwards before
the man's eyes to note any change in the staring pupils.

"Yes," continued Josephine, gravely. "I suppose," she added, cautiously,
"he was thinking of the operation--of what you had just done to him?"

"What I had done to him? Oh, yes!"


CHAPTER II


Before noon the next day it was known throughout Burnt Ridge Valley that
Dr. Duchesne had performed a difficult operation upon an unknown man,
who had been picked up unconscious from a fall, and carried to Burnt
Ridge Ranch. But although the unfortunate man's life was saved by the
operation, he had only momentarily recovered consciousness--relapsing
into a semi-idiotic state, which effectively stopped the discovery
of any clue to his friends or his identity. As it was evidently an
ACCIDENT, which, in that rude community--and even in some more civilized
ones--conveyed a vague impression of some contributary incapacity on the
part of the victim, or some Providential interference of a retributive
character, Burnt Ridge gave itself little trouble about it. It is
unnecessary to say that Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth gave themselves and
Josephine much more. They had a theory and a grievance. Satisfied from
the first that the alleged victim was a drunken tramp, who submitted to
have a hole bored in his head in order to foist himself upon the ranch,
they were loud in their protests, even hinting at a conspiracy between
Josephine and the stranger to supplant her brother in the property, as
he had already in the spare bedroom. "Didn't all that yer happen THE
VERY NIGHT she pretended to go for Stephen--eh?" said Mrs. Forsyth.
"Tell me that! And didn't she have it all arranged with the buggy
to bring him here, as that sneaking doctor let out--eh? Looks mighty
curious, don't it?" she muttered darkly to the old man. But although
that gentleman, even from his own selfish view, would scarcely have
submitted to a surgical operation and later idiocy as the price of
insuring comfortable dependency, he had no doubt others were base enough
to do it; and lent a willing ear to his wife's suspicions.

Josephine's personal knowledge of the stranger went little further.
Doctor Duchesne had confessed to her his professional disappointment at
the incomplete results of the operation. He had saved the man's life,
but as yet not his reason. There was still hope, however, for the
diagnosis revealed nothing that might prejudice a favorable progress. It
was a most interesting case. He would watch it carefully, and as soon
as the patient could be removed would take him to the county hospital,
where, under his own eyes, the poor fellow would have the benefit of
the latest science and the highest specialists. Physically, he was doing
remarkably well; indeed, he must have been a fine young chap, free from
blood taint or vicious complication, whose flesh had healed like an
infant's. It should be recorded that it was at this juncture that Mrs.
Forsyth first learnt that a SILVER PLATE let into the artful stranger's
skull was an adjunct of the healing process! Convinced that this
infamous extravagance was part and parcel of the conspiracy, and was
only the beginning of other assimilations of the Forsyths' metallic
substance; that the plate was probably polished and burnished with
a fulsome inscription to the doctor's skill, and would pass into the
possession and adornment of a perfect stranger, her rage knew no bounds.
He or his friends ought to be made to pay for it or work it out! In vain
it was declared that a few dollars were all that was found in the man's
pocket, and that no memoranda gave any indication of his name, friends,
or history beyond the suggestion that he came from a distance. This was
clearly a part of the conspiracy! Even Josephine's practical good
sense was obliged to take note of this singular absence of all record
regarding him, and the apparent obliteration of everything that might be
responsible for his ultimate fate.

Homeless, friendless, helpless, and even nameless, the unfortunate man
of twenty-five was thus left to the tender mercies of the mistress of
Burnt Ridge Ranch, as if he had been a new-born foundling laid at her
door. But this mere claim of weakness was not all; it was supplemented
by a singular personal appeal to Josephine's nature. From the time that
he turned his head towards her voice on that fateful night, his eyes had
always followed her around the room with a wondering, yearning, canine
half-intelligence. Without being able to convince herself that he
understood her better than his regular attendant furnished by the
doctor, she could not fail to see that he obeyed her implicitly, and
that whenever any difficulty arose between him and his nurse she was
always appealed to. Her pride in this proof of her practical sovereignty
WAS flattered; and when Doctor Duchesne finally admitted that although
the patient was now physically able to be removed to the hospital, yet
he would lose in the change that very strong factor which Josephine had
become in his mental recovery, the young girl as frankly suggested that
he should stay as long as there was any hope of restoring his reason.
Doctor Duchesne was delighted. With all his enthusiasm for science, he
had a professional distrust of some of its disciples, and perhaps was
not sorry to keep this most interesting case in his own hands. To
him her suggestion was only a womanly kindness, tempered with womanly
curiosity. But the astonishment and stupefaction of her parents at this
evident corroboration of suspicions they had as yet only half believed
was tinged with superstitious dread. Had she fallen in love with this
helpless stranger? or, more awful to contemplate, was he really no
stranger, but a surreptitious lover thus strategically brought under her
roof? For once they refrained from open criticism. The very magnitude of
their suspicions left them dumb.

It was thus that the virgin Chatelaine of Burnt Ridge Ranch was left to
gaze untrammeled upon her pale and handsome guest, whose silken,
bearded lips and sad, childlike eyes might have suggested a more Exalted
Sufferer in their absence of any suggestion of a grosser material
manhood. But even this imaginative appeal did not enter into her
feelings. She felt for her good-looking, helpless patient a profound
and honest pity. I do not know whether she had ever heard that "pity was
akin to love." She would probably have resented that utterly untenable
and atrocious commonplace. There was no suggestion, real or illusive,
of any previous masterful quality in the man which might have made his
present dependent condition picturesque by contrast. He had come to her
handicapped by an unromantic accident and a practical want of energy and
intellect. He would have to touch her interest anew if, indeed, he
would ever succeed in dispelling the old impression. His beauty, in a
community of picturesquely handsome men, had little weight with her,
except to accent the contrast with their fuller manhood.

Her life had given her no illusions in regard to the other sex. She had
found them, however, more congenial and safer companions than women, and
more accessible to her own sense of justice and honor. In return, they
had respected and admired rather than loved her, in spite of her womanly
graces. If she had at times contemplated eventual marriage, it was only
as a possible practical partnership in her business; but as she lived in
a country where men thought it dishonorable and a proof of incompetency
to rise by their wives' superior fortune, she had been free from that
kind of mercenary persecution, even from men who might have worshiped
her in hopeless and silent honor.

For this reason, there was nothing in the situation that suggested
a single compromising speculation in the minds of the neighbors, or
disturbed her own tranquillity. There seemed to be nothing in the future
except a possible relief to her curiosity. Some day the unfortunate
man's reason would be restored, and he would tell his simple history.
Perhaps he might explain what was in his mind when he turned to her
the first evening with that singular sentence which had often recurred
strangely to her, she knew not why. It did not strike her until later
that it was because it had been the solitary indication of an energy and
capacity that seemed unlike him. Nevertheless, after that explanation,
she would have been quite willing to have shaken hands with him and
parted.

And yet--for there was an unexpressed remainder in her thought--she
was never entirely free or uninfluenced in his presence. The flickering
vacancy of his sad eyes sometimes became fixed with a resolute
immobility under the gentle questioning with which she had sought to
draw out his faculties, that both piqued and exasperated her. He could
say "Yes" and "No," as she thought intelligently, but he could not utter
a coherent sentence nor write a word, except like a child in imitation
of his copy. She taught him to repeat after her the names of the
inanimate objects in the room, then the names of the doctor, his
attendant, the servant, and, finally, her own under her Christian
prenomen, with frontier familiarity; but when she pointed to himself he
waited for HER to name him! In vain she tried him with all the masculine
names she knew; his was not one of them, or he would not or could not
speak it. For at times she rejected the professional dictum of the
doctor that the faculty of memory was wholly paralyzed or held in
abeyance, even to the half-automatic recollection of his letters, yet
she inconsistently began to teach him the alphabet with the same method,
and--in her sublime unconsciousness of his manhood--with the
same discipline as if he were a very child. When he had recovered
sufficiently to leave his room, she would lead him to the porch before
her window, and make him contented and happy by allowing him to watch
her at work at her desk, occasionally answering his wondering eyes with
a word, or stirring his faculties with a question. I grieve to say
that her parents had taken advantage of this publicity and his supposed
helpless condition to show their disgust of his assumption, to the
extreme of making faces at him--an act which he resented with such a
furious glare that they retreated hurriedly to their own veranda. A
fresh though somewhat inconsistent grievance was added to their previous
indictment of him: "If we ain't found dead in our bed with our throats
cut by that woman's crazy husband" (they had settled by this time that
there had been a clandestine marriage), "we'll be lucky," groaned Mrs.
Forsyth.

Meantime, the mountain summer waxed to its fullness of fire and
fruition. There were days when the crowded forest seemed choked and
impeded with its own foliage, and pungent and stifling with its own
rank maturity; when the long hillside ranks of wild oats, thickset and
impassable, filled the air with the heated dust of germination. In this
quickening irritation of life it would be strange if the unfortunate
man's torpid intellect was not helped in its awakening, and he was
allowed to ramble at will over the ranch; but with the instinct of a
domestic animal he always returned to the house, and sat in the porch,
where Josephine usually found him awaiting her when she herself returned
from a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied him on the
mountain-side leaning against a projecting ledge in an attitude so rapt
and immovable that she felt compelled to approach him. He appeared to
be dumbly absorbed in the prospect, which might have intoxicated a saner
mind.

Half veiled by the heat that rose quiveringly from the fiery canyon
below, the domain of Burnt Ridge stretched away before him, until,
lifted in successive terraces hearsed and plumed with pines, it was at
last lost in the ghostly snow-peaks. But the practical Josephine seized
the opportunity to try once more to awaken the slumbering memory of her
pupil. Following his gaze with signs and questions, she sought to draw
from him some indication of familiar recollection of certain points of
the map thus unrolled behind him. But in vain. She even pointed out the
fateful shadow of the overhanging ledge on the road where she had picked
him up--there was no response in his abstracted eyes. She bit her lips;
she was becoming irritated again. Then it occurred to her that, instead
of appealing to his hopeless memory, she had better trust to some
unreflective automatic instinct independent of it, and she put the
question a little forward: "When you leave us, where will you go from
here?" He stirred slightly, and turned towards her. She repeated her
query slowly and patiently, with signs and gestures recognized between
them. A faint glow of intelligence struggled into his eyes: he lifted
his arm slowly, and pointed.

"Ah! those white peaks--the Sierras?" she asked, eagerly. No reply.
"Beyond them?"

"Yes."

"The States?" No reply. "Further still?"

He remained so patiently quiet and still pointing that she leaned
forward, and, following with her eyes the direction of his hand, saw
that he was pointing to the sky!

Then a great quiet fell upon them. The whole mountain-side seemed to her
to be hushed, as if to allow her to grasp and realize for the first time
the pathos of the ruined life at her side, which IT had known so long,
but which she had never felt till now. The tears came to her eyes; in
her swift revulsion of feeling she caught the thin uplifted hand between
her own. It seemed to her that he was about to raise them to his lips,
but she withdrew them hastily, and moved away. She had a strange fear
that if he had kissed them, it might seem as if some dumb animal had
touched them--or--IT MIGHT NOT. The next day she felt a consciousness
of this in his presence, and a wish that he was well-cured and away. She
determined to consult Dr. Duchesne on the subject when he next called.

But the doctor, secure in the welfare of his patient, had not visited
him lately, and she found herself presently absorbed in the business of
the ranch, which at this season was particularly trying. There had also
been a quarrel between Dick Shipley, her mill foreman, and Miguel, her
ablest and most trusted vaquero, and in her strict sense of impartial
justice she was obliged to side on the merits of the case with Shipley
against her oldest retainer. This troubled her, as she knew that with
the Mexican nature, fidelity and loyalty were not unmixed with quick and
unreasoning jealousy. For this reason she was somewhat watchful of the
two men when work was over, and there was a chance of their being
thrown together. Once or twice she had remained up late to meet Miguel
returning from the posada at San Ramon, filled with aguardiente and a
recollection of his wrongs, and to see him safely bestowed before she
herself retired. It was on one of those occasions, however, that she
learned that Dick Shipley, hearing that Miguel had disparaged him freely
at the posada, had broken the discipline of the ranch, and absented
himself the same night that Miguel "had leave," with a view of facing
his antagonist on his own ground. To prevent this, the fearless girl at
once secretly set out alone to overtake and bring back the delinquent.

For two or three hours the house was thus left to the sole occupancy of
Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth and the invalid--a fact only dimly suspected by the
latter, who had become vaguely conscious of Josephine's anxiety, and had
noticed the absence of light and movement in her room. For this reason,
therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in the
porch to await her return, he was startled by hearing HER voice in the
shadow of the lower porch, accompanied by a hurried tapping against the
door of the old couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would have
moved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with white and parted
lips and vacantly distended eyeballs.

Meantime the voice and muffled tapping had brought the tremulous fingers
of old Forsyth to the door-latch. He opened the door partly; a slight
figure that had been lurking in the shadow of the porch pushed rapidly
through the opening. There was a faint outcry quickly hushed, and the
door closed again. The rays of a single candle showed the two old people
hysterically clasping in their arms the figure that had entered--a
slight but vicious-looking young fellow of five-and-twenty.

"There, d--n it!" he said impatiently, in a voice whose rich depth was
like Josephine's, but whose querulous action was that of the two old
people before him, "let me go, and quit that, I didn't come here to be
strangled! I want some money--money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, for
I've got to be off again before daylight. So look sharp, will you?"

"But, Stevy dear, when you didn't come that time three months ago, but
wrote from Los Angeles, you said you'd made a strike at last, and"--

"What are you talking about?" he interrupted violently. "That was just
my lyin' to keep you from worryin' me. Three months ago--three months
ago! Why, you must have been crazy to have swallowed it; I hadn't a
cent."

"Nor have we," said the old woman, shrilly. "That hellish sister of
yours still keeps us like beggars. Our only hope was you, our own boy.
And now you only come to--to go again."

"But SHE has money; SHE'S doing well, and SHE shall give it to me,"
he went on, angrily. "She can't bully me with her business airs and
morality. Who else has got a right to share, if it is not her own
brother?"

Alas for the fatuousness of human malevolence! Had the unhappy couple
related only the simple facts they knew about the new guest of Burnt
Ridge Ranch, and the manner of his introduction, they might have spared
what followed.

But the old woman broke into a vindictive cry: "Who else, Steve--who
else? Why, the slut has brought a MAN here--a sneaking, deceitful,
underhanded, crazy lover!"

"Oh, has she?" said the young man, fiercely, yet secretly pleased at
this promising evidence of his sister's human weakness. "Where is she?
I'll go to her. She's in her room, I suppose," and before they could
restrain him, he had thrown off their impeding embraces and darted
across the hall.

The two old people stared doubtfully at each other. For even this
powerful ally, whose strength, however, they were by no means sure
of, might succumb before the determined Josephine! Prudence demanded a
middle course. "Ain't they brother and sister?" said the old man, with
an air of virtuous toleration. "Let 'em fight it out."

The young man impatiently entered the room he remembered to have been
his sister's. By the light of the moon that streamed upon the window
he could see she was not there. He passed hurriedly to the door of her
bedroom; it was open; the room was empty, the bed unturned. She was not
in the house--she had gone to the mill. Ah! What was that they had said?
An infamous thought passed through the scoundrel's mind. Then, in what
he half believed was an access of virtuous fury, he began by the dim
light to rummage in the drawers of the desk for such loose coin or
valuables as, in the perfect security of the ranch, were often left
unguarded. Suddenly he heard a heavy footstep on the threshold, and
turned.

An awful vision--a recollection, so unexpected, so ghostlike in that
weird light that he thought he was losing his senses--stood before him.
It moved forwards with staring eyeballs and white and open lips from
which a horrible inarticulate sound issued that was the speech of no
living man! With a single desperate, almost superhuman effort Stephen
Forsyth bounded aside, leaped from the window, and ran like a madman
from the house. Then the apparition trembled, collapsed, and sank in an
undistinguishable heap to the ground.

When Josephine Forsyth returned an hour later with her mill foreman, she
was startled to find her helpless patient in a fit on the floor of her
room. With the assistance of her now converted and penitent employee,
she had the unfortunate man conveyed to his room--but not until she had
thoughtfully rearranged the disorder of her desk and closed the open
drawers without attracting Dick Shipley's attention. In the morning,
hearing that the patient was still in the semiconscious exhaustion of
his late attack, but without seeing him, she sent for Dr. Duchesne. The
doctor arrived while she was absent at the mill, where, after a careful
examination of his patient, he sought her with some little excitement.

"Well?" she said, with eager gravity.

"Well, it looks as if your wish would be gratified. Your friend has
had an epileptic fit, but the physical shock has started his mental
machinery again. He has recovered his faculties; his memory is
returning: he thinks and speaks coherently; he is as sane as you and I."

"And"--said Josephine, questioning the doctor's knitted eyebrows.

"I am not yet sure whether it was the result of some shock he doesn't
remember; or an irritation of the brain, which would indicate that the
operation had not been successful and that there was still some physical
pressure or obstruction there--in which case he would be subject to
these attacks all his life."

"Do you think his reason came before the fit or after?" asked the girl,
anxiously.

"I couldn't say. Had anything happened?"

"I was away, and found him on the floor on my return," she answered,
half uneasily. After a pause she said, "Then he has told you his name
and all about himself?"

"Yes, it's nothing at all! He was a stranger just arrived from the
States, going to the mines--the old story; had no near relations, of
course; wasn't missed or asked after; remembers walking along the ridge
and falling over; name, John Baxter, of Maine." He paused, and relaxing
into a slight smile, added, "I haven't spoiled your romance, have I?"

"No," she said, with an answering smile. Then as the doctor walked
briskly away she slightly knitted her pretty brows, hung her head,
patted the ground with her little foot beyond the hem of her gown, and
said to herself, "The man was lying to him."


CHAPTER III


On her return to the house, Josephine apparently contented herself with
receiving the bulletin of the stranger's condition from the servant, for
she did not enter his room. She had obtained no theory of last night's
incident from her parents, who, beyond a querulous agitation that was
quickened by the news of his return to reason, refrained from even that
insidious comment which she half feared would follow. When another
day passed without her seeing him, she nevertheless was conscious of a
little embarrassment when his attendant brought her the request that
she would give him a moment's speech in the porch, whither he had been
removed.

She found him physically weaker; indeed, so much so that she was fain,
even in her embarrassment, to assist him back to the bench from which
he had ceremoniously risen. But she was so struck with the change in
his face and manner, a change so virile and masterful, in spite of its
gentle sadness of manner, that she recoiled with a slight timidity as if
he had been a stranger, although she was also conscious that he seemed
to be more at his ease than she was. He began in a low exhausted voice,
but before he had finished his first sentence, she felt herself in the
presence of a superior.

"My thanks come very late, Miss Forsyth," he said, with a faint smile,
"but no one knows better than yourself the reason why, or can better
understand that they mean that the burden you have so generously taken
on yourself is about to be lifted. I know all, Miss Forsyth. Since
yesterday I have learned how much I owe you, even my life I believe,
though I am afraid I must tell you in the same breath that THAT is of
little worth to any one. You have kindly helped and interested yourself
in a poor stranger who turns out to be a nobody, without friends,
without romance, and without even mystery. You found me lying in the
road down yonder, after a stupid accident that might have happened to
any other careless tramp, and which scarcely gave me a claim to a bed
in the county hospital, much less under this kindly roof. It was not my
fault, as you know, that all this did not come out sooner; but while it
doesn't lessen your generosity, it doesn't lessen my debt, and although
I cannot hope to ever repay you, I can at least keep the score from
running on. Pardon my speaking so bluntly, but my excuse for speaking at
all was to say 'Good-by' and 'God bless you.' Dr. Duchesne has promised
to give me a lift on my way in his buggy when he goes."

There was a slight touch of consciousness in his voice in spite of its
sadness, which st