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Title:  Tales of Trail and Town

Author:  Bret Harte

March, 2000  [Etext #2550]


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TALES OF TRAIL AND TOWN

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


THE ANCESTORS OF PETER ATHERLY

TWO AMERICANS

THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN

THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK

A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE

THE YOUNGEST PROSPECTOR IN CALAVERAS

A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS




TALES OF TRAIL AND TOWN


THE ANCESTORS OF PETER ATHERLY

CHAPTER I


It must be admitted that the civilizing processes of Rough and
Ready were not marked by any of the ameliorating conditions of
other improved camps.  After the discovery of the famous "Eureka"
lead, there was the usual influx of gamblers and saloon-keepers;
but that was accepted as a matter of course.  But it was thought
hard that, after a church was built and a new school erected, it
should suddenly be found necessary to have doors that locked,
instead of standing shamelessly open to the criticism and
temptation of wayfarers, or that portable property could no longer
be left out at night in the old fond reliance on universal
brotherhood.  The habit of borrowing was stopped with the
introduction of more money into the camp, and the establishment of
rates of interest; the poorer people either took what they wanted,
or as indiscreetly bought on credit.  There were better clothes to
be seen in its one long straggling street, but those who wore them
generally lacked the grim virtue of the old pioneers, and the
fairer faces that were to be seen were generally rouged.  There was
a year or two of this kind of mutation, in which the youthful
barbarism of Rough and Ready might have been said to struggle with
adult civilized wickedness, and then the name itself disappeared.
By an Act of the Legislature the growing town was called "Atherly,"
after the owner of the Eureka mine,--Peter Atherly,--who had given
largess to the town in its "Waterworks" and a "Gin Mill," as the
new Atherly Hotel and its gilded bar-rooms were now called.  Even
at the last moment, however, the new title of "Atherly" hung in the
balance.  The romantic daughter of the pastor had said that Mr.
Atherly should be called "Atherly of Atherly," an aristocratic
title so strongly suggestive of an innovation upon democratic
principles that it was not until it was discreetly suggested that
everybody was still free to call him "Atherly, late of Rough and
Ready," that opposition ceased.

Possibly this incident may have first awakened him to the value of
his name, and some anxiety as to its origin.  Roughly speaking,
Atherly's father was only a bucolic emigrant from "Mizzouri," and
his mother had done the washing for the camp on her first arrival.
The Atherlys had suffered on their overland journey from drought
and famine, with the addition of being captured by Indians, who had
held them captive for ten months.  Indeed, Mr. Atherly, senior,
never recovered from the effects of his captivity, and died shortly
after Mrs. Atherly had given birth to twins, Peter and Jenny
Atherly.  This was scant knowledge for Peter in the glorification
of his name through his immediate progenitors; but "Atherly of
Atherly" still sounded pleasantly, and, as the young lady had said,
smacked of old feudal days and honors.  It was believed beyond
doubt, even in their simple family records,--the flyleaf of a
Bible,--that Peter Atherly's great-grandfather was an Englishman
who brought over to his Majesty's Virginian possessions his only
son, then a boy.  It was not established, however, to what class of
deportation he belonged: whether he was suffering exile from
religious or judicial conviction, or if he were only one of the
articled "apprentices" who largely made up the American immigration
of those days.  Howbeit, "Atherly" was undoubtedly an English name,
even suggesting respectable and landed ancestry, and Peter Atherly
was proud of it.  He looked somewhat askance upon his Irish and
German fellow citizens, and talked a good deal about "race."  Two
things, however, concerned him: he was not in looks certainly like
any type of modern Englishman as seen either on the stage in San
Francisco, or as an actual tourist in the mining regions, and his
accent was undoubtedly Southwestern.  He was tall and dark, with
deep-set eyes in a singularly immobile countenance; he had an erect
but lithe and sinewy figure even for his thirty odd years, and
might easily have been taken for any other American except for the
single exception that his nose was distinctly Roman, and gave him a
distinguished air.  There was a suggestion of Abraham Lincoln (and
even of Don Quixote) in his tall, melancholy figure and length of
limb, but nothing whatever that suggested an Englishman.

It was shortly after the christening of Atherly town that an
incident occurred which at first shook, and then the more firmly
established, his mild monomania.  His widowed mother had been for
the last two years an inmate of a private asylum for inebriates,
through certain habits contracted while washing for the camp in the
first year of her widowhood.  This had always been a matter of open
sympathy to Rough and Ready; but it was a secret reproach hinted at
in Atherly, although it was known that the rich Peter Atherly kept
his mother liberally supplied, and that both he and his sister
"Jinny" or Jenny Atherly visited her frequently.  One day he was
telegraphed for, and on going to the asylum found Mrs. Atherly
delirious and raving.  Through her son's liberality she had bribed
an attendant, and was fast succumbing to a private debauch.  In the
intervals of her delirium she called Peter by name, talked
frenziedly and mysteriously of his "high connections"--alluded to
himself and his sister as being of the "true breed"--and with a
certain vigor of epithet, picked up in the familiarity of the camp
during the days when she was known as "Old Ma'am Atherly" or "Aunt
Sally," declared that they were "no corn-cracking Hoosiers,"
"hayseed pikes," nor "northern Yankee scum," and that she should
yet live to see them "holding their own lands again and the lands
of their forefathers."  Quieted at last by opiates, she fell into a
more lucid but scarcely less distressing attitude.  Recognizing
her son again, as well as her own fast failing condition, she
sarcastically thanked him for coming to "see her off," congratulated
him that he would soon be spared the lie and expense of keeping her
here on account of his pride, under the thin pretext of trying to
"cure" her.  She knew that Sally Atherly of Rough and Ready wasn't
considered fit company for "Atherly of Atherly" by his fine new
friends.  This and much more in a voice mingling maudlin sentiment
with bitter resentment, and with an ominous glitter in her bloodshot
and glairy eyes.  Peter winced with a consciousness of the
half-truth of her reproaches, but the curiosity and excitement
awakened by the revelations of her frenzy were greater than his
remorse.  He said quickly:--

"You were speaking of father!--of his family--his lands and
possessions.  Tell me again!"

"Wot are ye givin' us?" she ejaculated in husky suspicion, opening
upon him her beady eyes, in which the film of death was already
gathering.

"Tell me of father,--my father and his family! his great-
grandfather!--the Atherlys, my relations--what you were saying.
What do you know about them?"

"THAT'S all ye wanter know--is it?  THAT'S what ye'r' comin' to the
old washer-woman for--is it?" she burst out with the desperation of
disgust.  "Well--give it up!  Ask me another!"

"But, mother--the old records, you know!  The family Bible--what
you once told us--me and Jinny!"

Something gurgled in her throat like a chuckle.  With the energy of
malevolence, she stammered: "There wasn't no records--there wasn't
no family Bible! it's all a lie--you hear me!  Your Atherly that
you're so proud of was just a British bummer who was kicked outer
his family in England and sent to buzz round in Americky.  He
honey-fogled me--Sally Magregor--out of a better family than his'n,
in Kansas, and skyugled me away, but it was a straight out
marriage, and I kin prove it.  It was in the St. Louis papers, and
I've got it stored away safe enough in my trunk!  You hear me!  I'm
shoutin'!  But he wasn't no old settler in Mizzouri--he wasn't
descended from any settler, either!  He was a new man outer
England--fresh caught--and talked down his throat.  And he fooled
ME--the darter of an old family that was settled on the right bank
of the Mizzouri afore Dan'l Boone came to Kentucky--with his new
philanderings.  Then he broke up, and went all to pieces when we
struck Californy, and left ME--Sally Magregor, whose father had
niggers of his own--to wash for Rough and Ready!  THAT'S your
Atherly!  Take him!  I don't want him--I've done with him!  I was
done with him long afore--afore"--a cough checked her utterance,--
"afore"--  She gasped again, but the words seemed to strangle in
her throat.  Intent only on her words and scarcely heeding her
sufferings, Peter was bending over her eagerly, when the doctor
rudely pulled him away and lifted her to a sitting posture.  But
she never spoke again.  The strongest restoratives quickly
administered only left her in a state of scarcely breathing
unconsciousness.

"Is she dying?  Can't you bring her to," said the anxious Peter,
"if only for a moment, doctor?"

"I'm thinkin'," said the visiting doctor, an old Scotch army
surgeon, looking at the rich Mr. Atherly with cool, professional
contempt, "that your mother willna do any more washing for me as in
the old time, nor give up her life again to support her bairns.
And it isna my eentention to bring her back to pain for the
purposes of geeneral conversation!"

Nor, indeed, did she ever come back to any purpose, but passed away
with her unfinished sentence.  And her limbs were scarcely decently
composed by the attendants before Peter was rummaging the trunk in
her room for the paper she had spoken of.  It was in an old work-
box--a now faded yellow clipping from a newspaper, lying amidst
spoils of cotton thread, buttons, and beeswax, which he even then
remembered to have seen upon his mother's lap when she superadded
the sewing on of buttons to her washing of the miners' shirts.  And
his dark and hollow cheek glowed with gratified sentiment as he
read the clipping.

"We hear with regret of the death of Philip Atherly, Esq., of Rough
and Ready, California.  Mr. Atherly will be remembered by some of
our readers as the hero of the romantic elopement of Miss Sallie
Magregor, daughter of Colonel 'Bob' Magregor, which created such a
stir in well-to-do circles some thirty years ago.  It was known
vaguely that the young couple had 'gone West,'--a then unknown
region,--but it seems that after severe trials and tribulations on
the frontier with savages, they emigrated early to Oregon, and
then, on the outbreak of the gold fever, to California.  But it
will be a surprise to many to know that it has just transpired that
Mr. Atherly was the second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, an English
baronet, and by the death of his brother might have succeeded to
the property and title."

He remained for some moments looking fixedly at the paper, until
the commonplace paragraph imprinted itself upon his brain as no
line of sage or poet had ever done, and then he folded it up and
put it in his pocket.  In his exaltation he felt that even the
mother he had never loved was promoted to a certain respect as his
father's wife, although he was equally conscious of a new
resentment against her for her contemptuous allusions to HIS
father, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his
position.  His mother, he feared, was indeed low!--but HE was his
father's son!  Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long
remembered for its barbaric opulence and display.  Thirty
carriages, procured from Sacramento at great expense, were freely
offered to his friends to join in the astounding pageant.  A
wonderful casket of iron and silver, brought from San Francisco,
held the remains of the ex-washerwoman of Rough and Ready.  But a
more remarkable innovation was the addition of a royal crown to the
other ornamentation of the casket.  Peter Atherly's ideas of
heraldry were very vague,--Sacramento at that time offered him no
opportunity of knowing what were the arms of the Atherlys,--and the
introduction of the royal crown seemed to satisfy Peter's mind as
to what a crest MIGHT be, while to the ordinary democratic mind it
simply suggested that the corpse was English!  Political criticism
being thus happily averted, Mrs. Atherly's body was laid in the
little cemetery, not far away from certain rude wooden crosses
which marked the burial-place of wanderers whose very names were
unknown, and in due time a marble shaft was erected over it.  But
when, the next day, the county paper contained, in addition to the
column-and-a-half description of the funeral, the more formal
announcement of the death of "Mrs. Sallie Atherly, wife of the late
Philip Atherly, second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, of England,"
criticism and comment broke out.  The old pioneers of Rough and
Ready felt that they had been imposed upon, and that in some vague
way the unfortunate woman had made them the victims of a huge
practical joke during all these years.  That she had grimly enjoyed
their ignorance of her position they did not doubt.  "Why, I
remember onct when I was sorter bullyraggin' her about mixin' up my
duds with Doc Simmons's, and sendin' me Whiskey Dick's old rags,
she turned round sudden with a kind of screech, and ran out into
the brush.  I reckoned, at the time, that it was either 'drink' or
feelin's, and could hev kicked myself for being sassy to the old
woman, but I know now that all this time that air critter--that
barrownet's daughter-in-law--was just laughin' herself into fits in
the brush!  No, sir, she played this yer camp for all it was worth,
year in and out, and we just gave ourselves away like speckled
idiots! and now she's lyin' out thar in the bone yard, and keeps on
p'intin' the joke, and a-roarin' at us in marble."

Even the later citizens in Atherly felt an equal resentment against
her, but from different motives.  That her drinking habits and her
powerful vocabulary were all the effect of her aristocratic
alliance they never doubted.  And, although it brought the virtues
of their own superior republican sobriety into greater contrast,
they felt a scandal at having been tricked into attending this
gilded funeral of dissipated rank.  Peter Atherly found himself
unpopular in his own town.  The sober who drank from his free
"Waterworks," and the giddy ones who imbibed at his "Gin Mill,"
equally criticised him.  He could not understand it; his peculiar
predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere
presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted
facts?  He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral!
Yet the criticism went on.  Presently it took the milder but more
contagious form of ridicule.  In his own hotel, built with his own
money, and in his own presence, he had heard a reckless frequenter
of the bar-room decline some proffered refreshment on the ground
that "he only drank with his titled relatives."  A local humorist,
amidst the applause of an admiring crowd at the post-office window,
had openly accused the postmaster of withholding letters to him
from his only surviving brother, "the Dook of Doncherknow."  "The
ole dooky never onct missed the mail to let me know wot's goin' on
in me childhood's home," remarked the humorist plaintively; "and
yer's this dod-blasted gov'ment mule of a postmaster keepin' me
letters back!"  Letters with pretentious and gilded coats of arms,
taken from the decorated inner lining of cigar-boxes, were posted
to prominent citizens.  The neighboring and unregenerated
settlement of Red Dog was more outrageous in its contribution.  The
Red Dog "Sentinel," in commenting on the death of "Haulbowline
Tom," a drunken English man-o'-war's man, said: "It may not be
generally known that our regretted fellow citizen, while serving on
H. M. S. Boxer, was secretly married to Queen Kikalu of the
Friendly Group; but, unlike some of our prosperous neighbors, he
never boasted of his royal alliance, and resisted with steady
British pluck any invitation to share the throne.  Indeed, any
allusion to the subject affected him deeply.  There are those among
us who will remember the beautiful portrait of his royal bride
tattooed upon his left arm with the royal crest and the crossed
flags of the two nations."  Only Peter Atherly and his sister
understood the sting inflicted either by accident or design in the
latter sentence.  Both he and his sister had some singular
hieroglyphic branded on their arms,--probably a reminiscence of
their life on the plains in their infant Indian captivity.  But
there was no mistaking the general sentiment.  The criticisms of a
small town may become inevasible.  Atherly determined to take the
first opportunity to leave Rough and Ready.  He was rich; his
property was secure; there was no reason why he should stay where
his family pretensions were a drawback.  And a further circumstance
determined his resolution.

He was awaiting his sister in his new house on a little crest above
the town.  She had been at the time of her mother's death, and
since, a private boarder in the Sacred Heart Convent at Santa Clara,
whence she had been summoned to the funeral, but had returned the
next day.  Few people had noticed in her brother's carriage the
veiled figure which might have belonged to one of the religious
orders; still less did they remember the dark, lank, heavy-browed
girl who had sometimes been seen about Rough and Ready.  For she had
her brother's melancholy, and greater reticence, and had continued
of her own free will, long after her girlish pupilage at the
convent, to live secluded under its maternal roof without taking
orders.  A general suspicion that she was either a religious
"crank," or considered herself too good to live in a mountain mining
town, had not contributed to her brother's popularity.  In her
abstraction from worldly ambitions she had, naturally, taken no part
in her brother's family pretensions.  He had given her an
independent allowance, and she was supposed to be equally a sharer
in his good fortune.  Yet she had suddenly declared her intention of
returning to Atherly, to consult him on affairs of importance.
Peter was both surprised and eager; there was but little affection
between them, but, preoccupied with his one idea, he was satisfied
that she wanted to talk about the family.

But he was amazed, disappointed, and disconcerted.  For Jenny
Atherly, the sober recluse of Santa Clara, hidden in her sombre
draperies at the funeral, was no longer to be recognized in the
fashionable, smartly but somewhat over-dressed woman he saw before
him.  In spite of her large features and the distinguishing Roman
nose, like his own, she looked even pretty in her excitement.  She
had left the convent, she was tired of the life there, she was
satisfied that a religious vocation would not suit her.  In brief,
she intended to enjoy herself like other women.  If he really felt
a pride in the family he ought to take her out, like other
brothers, and "give her a show."  He could do it there if he liked,
and she would keep house for him.  If he didn't want to, she must
have enough money to keep her fashionably in San Francisco.  But
she wanted excitement, and that she WOULD HAVE!  She wanted to go
to balls, theatres, and entertainments, and she intended to!  Her
voice grew quite high, and her dark cheek glowed with some new-
found emotion.

Astounded as he was, Peter succumbed.  It was better that she
should indulge her astounding caprice under his roof than
elsewhere.  It would not do for the sister of an Atherly to provoke
scandal.  He gave entertainments, picnics, and parties, and "Jinny"
Atherly plunged into these mild festivities with the enthusiasm of
a schoolgirl.  She not only could dance with feverish energy all
night, but next day could mount a horse--she was a fearless rider--
and lead the most accomplished horsemen.  She was a good shot, she
walked with the untiring foot of a coyote, she threaded the woods
with the instinct of a pioneer.  Peter regarded her with a singular
mingling of astonishment and fear.  Surely she had not learned this
at school!  These were not the teachings nor the sports of the good
sisters!  He once dared to interrogate her regarding this change in
her habits.  "I always FELT like it," she answered quickly, "but I
kept it down.  I used sometimes to feel that I couldn't stand it
any longer, but must rush out and do something," she said
passionately; "but," she went on with furtive eyes, and a sudden
wild timidity like that of a fawn, "I was afraid!  I was afraid IT
WAS LIKE MOTHER!  It seemed to me to be HER blood that was rising
in me, and I kept it down,--I didn't want to be like her,--and I
prayed and struggled against it.  Did you," she said, suddenly
grasping his hand, "ever feel like that?"

But Peter never had.  His melancholy faith in his father's race had
left no thought of his mother's blood mingling with it.  "But," he
said gravely, "believing this, why did you change?"

"Because I could hold out no longer.  I should have gone crazy.
Times I wanted to take some of those meek nuns, some of those
white-faced pupils with their blue eyes and wavy flaxen hair, and
strangle them.  I couldn't strive and pray and struggle any longer
THERE, and so I came here to let myself out!  I suppose when I get
married--and I ought to, with my money--it may change me!  You
don't suppose," she said, with a return of her wild-animal-like
timidity, "it is anything that was in FATHER, in those ATHERLYS,--
do you?"

But Peter had no idea of anything but virtue in the Atherly blood;
he had heard that the upper class of Europeans were fond of field
sports and of hunting; it was odd that his sister should inherit
this propensity and not he.  He regarded her more kindly for this
evidence of race.  "You think of getting married?" he said more
gently, yet with a certain brotherly doubt that any man could like
her enough, even with her money.  "Is there any one here would--
suit you?" he added diplomatically.

"No--I hate them all!" she burst out.  "There isn't one I don't
despise for his sickening, foppish, womanish airs."

Nevertheless, it was quite evident that some of the men were
attracted by her singular originality and a certain good
comradeship in her ways.  And it was on one of their riding
excursions that Peter noticed that she was singled out by a good-
looking, blond-haired young lawyer of the town for his especial
attentions.  As the cavalcade straggled in climbing the mountain,
the young fellow rode close to her saddle-bow, and as the distance
lengthened between the other stragglers, they at last were quite
alone.  When the trail became more densely wooded, Peter quite lost
sight of them.  But when, a few moments later, having lost the
trail himself, they again appeared in the distance before him, he
was so amazed that he unconsciously halted.  For the two horses
were walking side by side, and the stranger's arm was round his
sister's waist.

Had Peter any sense of humor he might have smiled at this weakness
in his Amazonian sister, but he saw only the serious, practical
side of the situation, with, of course, its inevitable relation to
his one controlling idea.  The young man was in good practice, and
would have made an eligible husband to any one else.  But was he
fit to mate with an Atherly?  What would those as yet unknown and
powerful relatives say to it?  At the same time he could not help
knowing that "Jinny," in the eccentricities of her virgin
spinsterhood, might be equally objectionable to them, as she
certainly was a severe trial to him here.  If she were off his
hands he might be able to prosecute his search for his relatives
with more freedom.  After all, there were mesalliances in all
families, and being a woman she was not in the direct line.
Instead, therefore, of spurring forward to join them, he lingered a
little until they passed out of sight, and until he was joined by a
companion from behind.  Him, too, he purposely delayed.  They were
walking slowly, breathing their mustangs, when his companion
suddenly uttered a cry of alarm, and sprang from his horse.  For on
the trail before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with
his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush.  He
was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a
livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small
elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow from a riding-whip; happily
the last idea was only in Peter's mind.  As they lifted him up he
came slowly to consciousness.  He was bewildered and dazed at
first, but as he began to speak the color came back freshly to his
face.  He could not conceive, he stammered, what had happened.  He
was riding with Miss Atherly, and he supposed his horse had slipped
upon some withered pine needles and thrown him!  A spasm of pain
crossed his face suddenly, and he lifted his hand to the top of his
head.  Was he hurt THERE?  No, but perhaps his hair, which was
flowing and curly, had caught in the branches--like Absalom's!  He
tried to smile, and even begged them to assist him to his horse
that he might follow his fair companion, who would be wondering
where he was; but Peter, satisfied that he had received no serious
injury, hurriedly enjoined him to stay, while he himself would
follow his sister.  Putting spurs to his horse, he succeeded, in
spite of the slippery trail, in overtaking her near the summit.  At
the sound of his horse's hoofs she wheeled quickly, came dashing
furiously towards him, and only pulled up at the sound of his
voice.  But she had not time to change her first attitude and
expression, which was something which perplexed and alarmed him.
Her long lithe figure was half crouching, half clinging to the
horse's back, her loosened hair flying over her shoulders, her dark
eyes gleaming with an odd nymph-like mischief.  Her white teeth
flashed as she recognized him, but her laugh was still mocking and
uncanny.  He took refuge in indignation.

"What has happened?" he said sharply.

"The fool tried to kiss me!" she said simply.  "And I--I--let out
at him--like mother!"

Nevertheless, she gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had
noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers,
with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent
with her previous masculine independence.

"You might have killed him," said Peter angrily.

"Perhaps I might!  OUGHT I have killed him, Peter?" she said
anxiously, yet with the same winning, timid smile.  If she had not
been his sister, he would have thought her quite handsome.

"As it is," he said impetuously, "you have made a frightful scandal
here."

"HE won't say anything about it--will he?" she inquired shyly,
still twisting the something around her finger.

Peter did not reply; perhaps the young lawyer really loved her and
would keep her secret!  But he was vexed, and there was something
maniacal in her twisting fingers.  "What have you got there?" he
said sharply.

She shook the object in the air before her with a laugh.  "Only a
lock of his hair," she said gayly; "but I didn't CUT it off!"

"Throw it away, and come here!" he said angrily.

But she only tucked the little blond curl into her waist belt and
shook her head.  He urged his horse forward, but she turned and
fled, laughing as he pursued her.  Being the better rider she could
easily evade him whenever he got too near, and in this way they
eventually reached the town and their house long before their
companions.  But she was far enough ahead of her brother to be able
to dismount and hide her trophy with childish glee before he
arrived.

She was right in believing that her unfortunate cavalier would make
no revelation of her conduct, and his catastrophe passed as an
accident.  But Peter could not disguise the fact that much of his
unpopularity was shared by his sister.  The matrons of Atherly
believed that she was "fast," and remembered more distinctly than
ever the evil habits of her mother.  That she would, in the due
course of time, "take to drink," they never doubted.  Her dancing
was considered outrageous in its unfettered freedom, and her
extraordinary powers of endurance were looked upon as "masculine"
by the weaker girls whose partners she took from them.  She
reciprocally looked down upon them, and made no secret of her
contempt for their small refinements and fancies.  She affected
only the society of men, and even treated them with a familiarity
that was both fearless and scornful.  Peter saw that it was useless
to face the opposition; Miss Atherly did not seem to encourage the
renewal of the young lawyer's attentions, although it was evident
that he was still attracted by her, nor did she seem to invite
advances from others.  He must go away--and he would have to take
her with him.  It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of
masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of
equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike
ignorance with this Amazonian quality.  He had made his
arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years,
and they departed together.  The young fair-haired lawyer came to
the stage-coach office to see them off.  Peter could detect no
sentiment in his sister's familiar farewell of her unfortunate
suitor.  At New York, however, it was arranged that "Jinny" should
stay with some friends whom they had made en route, and that, if
she wished, she could come to Europe later, and join him in London.

Thus relieved of one, Peter Atherly of Atherly started on his
cherished quest of his other and more remote relations.


CHAPTER II


Peter Atherly had been four months in England, but knew little of
the country until one summer afternoon when his carriage rolled
along the well-ordered road between Nonningsby Station and Ashley
Grange.

In that four months he had consulted authorities, examined records,
visited the Heralds' College, written letters, and made a few
friends.  A rich American, tracing his genealogical tree, was not a
new thing--even in that day--in London; but there was something
original and simple in his methods, and so much that was grave,
reserved, and un-American in his personality, that it awakened
interest.  A recognition that he was a foreigner, but a puzzled
doubt, however, of his exact nationality, which he found
everywhere, at first pained him, but he became reconciled to it at
about the same time that his English acquaintances abandoned their
own reserve and caution before the greater reticence of this
melancholy American, and actually became the questioners!  In this
way his quest became known only as a disclosure of his own
courtesy, and offers of assistance were pressed eagerly upon him.
That was why Sir Edward Atherly found himself gravely puzzled, as
he sat with his family solicitor one morning in the library of
Ashley Grange.

"Humph!" said Sir Edward.  "And you say he has absolutely no other
purpose in making these inquiries?"

"Positively none," returned the solicitor.  "He is even willing to
sign a renunciation of any claim which might arise out of this
information.  It is rather a singular case, but he seems to be a
rich man and quite able to indulge his harmless caprices."

"And you are quite sure he is Philip's son?"

"Quite, from the papers he brings me.  Of course I informed him
that even if he should be able to establish a legal marriage he
could expect nothing as next of kin, as you had children of your
own.  He seemed to know that already, and avowed that his only wish
was to satisfy his own mind."

"I suppose he wants to claim kinship and all that sort of thing for
society's sake?"

"I do not think so," said the solicitor dryly.  "I suggested an
interview with you, but he seemed to think it quite unnecessary, if
I could give him the information he required."

"Ha!" said Sir Edward promptly, "we'll invite him here.  Lady
Atherly can bring in some people to see him.  Is he--ahem--What is
he like?  The usual American, I suppose?"

"Not at all.  Quite foreign-looking--dark, and rather like an
Italian.  There is no resemblance to Mr. Philip," he said, glancing
at the painting of a flaxen-haired child fondling a greyhound under
the elms of Ashley Park.

"Ah!  Yes, yes!  Perhaps the mother was one of those Southern
creoles, or mulattoes," said Sir Edward with an Englishman's
tolerant regard for the vagaries of people who were clearly not
English; "they're rather attractive women, I hear."

"I think you do quite well to be civil to him," said the solicitor.
"He seems to take an interest in the family, and being rich, and
apparently only anxious to enhance the family prestige, you ought
to know him.  Now, in reference to those mortgages on Appleby Farm,
if you could get"--

"Yes, yes!" said Sir Edward quickly; "we'll have him down here;
and, I say! YOU'LL come too?"

The solicitor bowed.  "And, by the way," continued Sir Edward,
"there was a girl too,--wasn't there?  He has a sister, I believe?"

"Yes, but he has left her in America."

"Ah, yes!--very good--yes!--of course.  We'll have Lord Greyshott
and Sir Roger and old Lady Everton,--she knows all about Sir Ashley
and the family.  And--er--is he young or old?"

"About thirty, I should say, Sir Edward."

"Ah, well!  We'll have Lady Elfrida over from the Towers."

Had Peter known of these preparations he might have turned back to
Nonningsby without even visiting the old church in Ashley Park,
which he had been told held the ashes of his ancestors.  For during
these four months the conviction that he was a foreigner and that
he had little or nothing in common with things here had been
clearly forced upon him.  He could recognize some kinship in the
manners and customs of the people to those he had known in the West
and on the Atlantic coast, but not to his own individuality, and he
seemed even more a stranger here--where he had expected to feel the
thrill of consanguinity--than in the West.  He had accepted the
invitation of the living Atherly for the sake of the Atherlys long
dead and forgotten.  As the great quadrangle of stone and ivy
lifted itself out of the park, he looked longingly towards the
little square tower which peeped from between the yews nearer the
road.  As the carriage drove up to the carved archway whence so
many Atherlys had issued into the world, he could not believe that
any of his blood had gone forth from it, or, except himself, had
ever entered it before.  Once in the great house he felt like a
prisoner as he wandered through the long corridors to his room;
even the noble trees beyond his mullioned windows seemed of another
growth than those he had known.

There was no doubt that he created a sensation at Ashley Grange,
not only from his singular kinship, but from his striking
individuality.  The Atherlys and their guests were fascinated and
freely admiring.  His very originality, which prevented them from
comparing him with any English or American standard of excellence,
gave them a comfortable assurance of safety in their admiration.
His reserve, his seriousness, his simplicity, very unlike their
own, and yet near enough to suggest a delicate flattery, was in his
favor.  So was his naive frankness in regard to his status in the
family, shown in the few words of greeting with Sir Ashley, and in
his later simple yet free admissions regarding his obscure youth,
his former poverty, and his present wealth.  He boasted of neither;
he was disturbed by neither.  Standing alone, a stranger, for the
first time in an assemblage of distinguished and titled men and
women, he betrayed no consciousness; surrounded for the first time
by objects which he knew his wealth could not buy, he showed the
most unmistakable indifference,--the indifference of temperament.
The ladies vied with each other to attack this unimpressible
nature,--this profound isolation from external attraction.  They
followed him about, they looked into his dark, melancholy eyes; it
was impossible, they thought, that he could continue this superb
acting forever.  A glance, a smile, a burst of ingenuous
confidence, a covert appeal to his chivalry would yet catch him
tripping.  But the melancholy eyes that had gazed at the treasures
of Ashley Grange and the opulent ease of its guests without
kindling, opened to their first emotion,--wonder!  At which Lady
Elfrida, who had ingenuously admired him, hated him a little, as
the first step towards a kindlier feeling.

The next day, having declared his intention of visiting Ashley
Church, and, as frankly, his intention of going there alone, he
slipped out in the afternoon and made his way quietly through the
park to the square ivied tower he had first seen.  In this tranquil
level length of the wood there was the one spot, the churchyard,
where, oddly enough, the green earth heaved into little billows as
if to show the turbulence of that life which those who lay below
them had lately quitted.  It was a relief to the somewhat studied
and formal monotony of the well-ordered woodland,--every rood, of
which had been paced by visitors, keepers, or poachers,--to find
those decrepit and bending tombstones, lurching at every angle, or
deeply sinking into the green sea of forgetfulness around them.
All this, and the trodden paths of the villagers towards that
common place of meeting, struck him as being more human than
anything he had left behind him at the Grange.

He entered the ivy-grown porch and stared for a moment at the half-
legal official parochial notices posted on the oaken door,--his
first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,--
and hesitated.  He was not prepared to find that this last
resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and
tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security
attended his votive sigh.  God and the reigning sovereign of the
realm preserved a decorous alliance in the royal arms that appeared
above the official notices.  Presently he pushed open the door
gently and entered the nave.  For a moment it seemed to him as if
the arched gloom of the woods he had left behind was repeated in
the dim aisle and vaulted roof; there was an earthy odor, as if the
church itself, springing from the fertilizing dust below, had taken
root in the soil; the chequers of light from the faded stained-
glass windows fell like the flicker of leaves on the pavement.  He
paused before the cold altar, and started, for beside him lay the
recumbent figure of a warrior pillowed on his helmet with the
paraphernalia of his trade around him.  A sudden childish memory of
the great Western plains, and the biers of the Indian "braves"
raised on upright poles against the staring sky and above the
sunbaked prairie, rushed upon him.  There, too, had lain the
weapons of the departed chieftain; there, too, lay the Indian's
"faithful hound," here simulated by the cross-legged crusader's
canine effigy.  And now, strangest of all, he found that this
unlooked-for recollection and remembrance thrilled him more at that
moment than the dead before him.  Here they rested,--the Atherlys
of centuries; recumbent in armor or priestly robes, upright in
busts that were periwigged or hidden in long curls, above the
marble record of their deeds and virtues.  Some of these records
were in Latin,--an unknown tongue to Peter,--some in a quaint
English almost as unintelligible; but none as foreign to him as the
dead themselves.  Their banners waved above his head; their voices
filled the silent church, but fell upon his vacant eye and duller
ear.  He was none of them.

Presently he was conscious of a footstep, so faint, so subtle, that
it might have come from a peregrinating ghost.  He turned quickly
and saw Lady Elfrida, half bold, yet half frightened, halting
beside a pillar of the chancel.  But there was nothing of the dead
about her: she was radiating and pulsating with the uncompromising
and material freshness of English girlhood.  The wild rose in the
hedgerow was not more tangible than her cheek, nor the summer sky
more clearly cool and blue than her eyes.  The vigor of health and
unfettered freedom of limb was in her figure from her buckled
walking-shoe to her brown hair topped by a sailor hat.  The
assurance and contentment of a well-ordered life, of secured
position and freedom from vain anxieties or expectations, were
visible in every line of her refined, delicate, and evenly quiescent
features.  And yet Lady Elfrida, for the first time in her girlhood,
felt a little nervous.

Yet she was frank, too, with the frankness of those who have no
thought of being misunderstood.  She said she had come there out of
curiosity to see how he would "get on" with his ancestors.  She had
been watching him from the chancel ever since he came,--and she was
disappointed.  As far as emotion went she thought he had the
advantage of the stoniest and longest dead of them all.  Perhaps he
did not like them?  But he must be careful what he SAID, for some
of her own people were there,--manifestly this one.  (She put the
toe of her buckled shoe on the crusader Peter had just looked at.)
And then there was another in the corner.  So she had a right to
come there as well as he,--and she could act as cicerone!  This one
was a De Brecy, one of King John's knights, who married an Atherly.
(She swung herself into a half-sitting posture on the effigy of the
dead knight, composed her straight short skirt over her trim
ankles, and looked up in Peter's dark face.)  That would make them
some kind of relations,--wouldn't it?  He must come over to Bentley
Towers and see the rest of the De Brecys in the chapel there to-
morrow.  Perhaps there might be some he liked better, and who
looked more like him.  For there was no one here or at the Grange
who resembled him in the least.

He assented to the truth of this with such grave, disarming
courtesy, and yet with such undisguised wonder,--as she appeared to
talk with greater freedom to a stranger than an American girl
would,--that she at once popped off the crusader, and accompanied
him somewhat more demurely around the church.  Suddenly she stopped
with a slight exclamation.

They had halted before a tablet to the memory of a later Atherly,
an officer of his Majesty's 100th Foot, who was killed at
Braddock's defeat.  The tablet was supported on the one side by a
weeping Fame, and on the other by a manacled North American Indian.
She stammered and said: "You see there are other Atherlys who went
to America even before your father," and then stopped with a sense
of having made a slip.

A wild and inexplicable resentment against this complacent
historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter.  He knew that
his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not
help it!  His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he
almost trembled with excitement as he hurriedly pointed out to Lady
Elfrida that the Indians were VICTORIOUS in that ill-fated
expedition of the British forces, and that the captive savage was
an allegorical lie.  So swift and convincing was his emotion that
the young girl, knowing nothing of the subject and caring less,
shared his indignation, followed him with anxious eyes, and their
hands for an instant touched in innocent and generous sympathy.
And then--he knew not how or why--a still more wild and terrible
idea sprang up in his fancy.  He knew it was madness, yet for a
moment he could only stand and grapple with it silently and
breathlessly.  It was to seize this young and innocent girl, this
witness of his disappointment, this complacent and beautiful type
of all they valued here, and bear her away--a prisoner, a hostage--
he knew not why--on a galloping horse in the dust of the prairie--
far beyond the seas!  It was only when he saw her cheek flush and
pale, when he saw her staring at him with helpless, frightened, but
fascinated eyes,--the eyes of the fluttering bird under the spell
of the rattlesnake,--that he drew his breath and turned bewildered
away.  "And do you know, dear," she said with naive simplicity to
her sister that evening, "that although he was an American, and
everybody says that they don't care at all for those poor Indians,
he was so magnanimous in his indignation that I fancied he looked
like one of Cooper's heroes himself rather than an Atherly.  It was
such a stupid thing for me to show him that tomb of Major Atherly,
you know, who fought the Americans,--didn't he?--or was it later?--
but I quite forgot he was an American."  And with this belief in
her mind, and in the high expiation of a noble nature, she forbore
her characteristic raillery, and followed him meekly, manacled in
spirit like the allegorical figure, to the church porch, where they
separated, to meet on the morrow.  But that morrow never came.

For late in the afternoon a cable message reached him from
California asking him to return to accept a nomination to Congress
from his own district.  It determined his resolution, which for a
moment at the church porch had wavered under the bright eyes of
Lady Elfrida.  He telegraphed his acceptance, hurriedly took leave
of his honestly lamenting kinsman, followed his dispatch to London,
and in a few days was on the Atlantic.

How he was received in California, how he found his sister married
to the blond lawyer, how he recovered his popularity and won his
election, are details that do not belong to this chronicle of his
quest.  And that quest seems to have terminated forever with his
appearance at Washington to take his seat as Congressman.

It was the night of a levee at the White House.  The East Room was
crowded with smartly dressed men and women of the capital, quaintly
simple legislators from remote States in bygone fashions, officers
in uniform, and the diplomatic circle blazing with orders.  The
invoker of this brilliant assembly stood in simple evening dress
near the door,--unattended and hedged by no formality.  He shook
the hand of the new Congressman heartily, congratulated him by
name, and turned smilingly to the next comer.  Presently there was
a slight stir at one of the opposite doors, the crowd fell back,
and five figures stalked majestically into the centre of the room.
They were the leading chiefs of an Indian reservation coming to pay
their respects to their "Great Father," the President.  Their
costumes were a mingling of the picturesque with the grotesque; of
tawdriness with magnificence; of artificial tinsel and glitter with
the regal spoils of the chase; of childlike vanity with barbaric
pride.  Yet before these the glittering orders and ribbons of the
diplomats became dull and meaningless, the uniforms of the officers
mere servile livery.  Their painted, immobile faces and plumed
heads towered with grave dignity above the meaner crowd; their
inscrutable eyes returned no response to the timid glances directed
towards them.  They stood by themselves, alone and impassive,--yet
their presence filled the room with the sense of kings.  The
unostentatious, simple republican court suddenly seemed to have
become royal.  Even the interpreter who stood between their remote
dignity and the nearer civilized world acquired the status of a
court chamberlain.

When their "Great Father," apparently the less important personage,
had smilingly received them, a political colleague approached Peter
and took his arm.  "Gray Eagle would like to speak with you.  Come
on!  Here's your chance!  You may be put on the Committee on Indian
Relations, and pick up a few facts.  Remember we want a firm
policy; no more palaver about the 'Great Father' and no more
blankets and guns!  You know what we used to say out West, 'The
only "Good Indian" is a dead one.'  So wade in, and hear what the
old plug hat has to say."

Peter permitted himself to be led to the group.  Even at that
moment he remembered the figure of the Indian on the tomb at Ashley
Grange, and felt a slight flash of satisfaction over the superior
height and bearing of Gray Eagle.

"How!" said Gray Eagle.  "How!" said the other four chiefs.  "How!"
repeated Peter instinctively.  At a gesture from Gray Eagle the
interpreter said: "Let your friend stand back; Gray Eagle has
nothing to say to him.  He wishes to speak only with you."

Peter's friend reluctantly withdrew, but threw a cautioning glance
towards him.  "Ugh!" said Gray Eagle.  "Ugh!" said the other
chiefs.  A few guttural words followed to the interpreter, who
turned, and facing Peter with the monotonous impassiveness which he
had caught from the chiefs, said: "He says he knew your father.  He
was a great chief,--with many horses and many squaws.  He is dead."

"My father was an Englishman,--Philip Atherly!" said Peter, with an
odd nervousness creeping over him.

The interpreter repeated the words to Grey Eagle, who, after a
guttural "Ugh!" answered in his own tongue.

"He says," continued the interpreter with a slight shrug, yet
relapsing into his former impassiveness, "that your father was a
great chief, and your mother a pale face, or white woman.  She was
captured with an Englishman, but she became the wife of the chief
while in captivity.  She was only released before the birth of her
children, but a year or two afterwards she brought them as infants
to see their father,--the Great Chief,--and to get the mark of
their tribe.  He says you and your sister are each marked on the
left arm."

Then Gray Eagle opened his mouth and uttered his first English
sentence.  "His father, big Injin, take common white squaw!
Papoose no good,--too much white squaw mother, not enough big Injin
father!  Look!  He big man, but no can bear pain!  Ugh!"

The interpreter turned in time to catch Peter.  He had fainted.


CHAPTER III


A hot afternoon on the plains.  A dusty cavalcade of United States
cavalry and commissary wagons, which from a distance preserved a
certain military precision of movement, but on nearer view resolved
itself into straggling troopers in twos and fours interspersed
between the wagons, two noncommissioned officers and a guide riding
ahead, who had already fallen into the cavalry slouch, but off to
the right, smartly erect and cadet-like, the young lieutenant in
command.  A wide road that had the appearance of being at once well
traveled and yet deserted, and that, although well defined under
foot, still seemed to disappear and lose itself a hundred feet
ahead in the monotonous level.  A horizon that in that clear, dry,
hazeless atmosphere never mocked you, yet never changed, but kept
its eternal rim of mountains at the same height and distance from
hour to hour and day to day.  Dust--a parching alkaline powder that
cracked the skin--everywhere, clinging to the hubs and spokes of
the wheels, without being disturbed by movement, incrusting the
cavalryman from his high boots to the crossed sabres of his cap;
going off in small puffs like explosions under the plunging hoofs
of the horses, but too heavy to rise and follow them.  A reeking
smell of horse sweat and boot leather that lingered in the road
long after the train had passed.  An external silence broken only
by the cough of a jaded horse in the suffocating dust, or the
cracking of harness leather.  Within one of the wagons that seemed
a miracle of military neatness and methodical stowage, a lazy
conversation carried on by a grizzled driver and sunbrowned farrier.

"'Who be you?' sezee.  'I'm Philip Atherly, a member of Congress,'
sez the long, dark-complected man, sezee, 'and I'm on a commission
for looking into this yer Injin grievance,' sezee.  'You may be God
Almighty,' sez Nebraska Bill, sezee, 'but you look a d--d sight
more like a hoss-stealin' Apache, and we don't want any of your
psalm-singing, big-talkin' peacemakers interferin' with our ways of
treatin' pizen,--you hear me?  I'm shoutin',' sezee.  With that the
dark-complected man's eyes began to glisten, and he sorter squirmed
all over to get at Bill, and Bill outs with his battery.--Whoa,
will ye; what's up with YOU now?"  The latter remark was directed
to the young spirited near horse he was driving, who was beginning
to be strangely excited.

"What happened then?" said the farrier lazily.

"Well," continued the driver, having momentarily quieted his horse,
"I reckoned it was about time for me to wheel into line, for
fellers of the Bill stripe, out on the plains, would ez leave plug
a man in citizen's clothes, even if he was the President himself,
as they would drop on an Injin or a nigger.  'Look here, Bill,' sez
I, 'I'm escortin' this stranger under gov'ment orders, and I'm
responsible for him.  I ain't allowed to waste gov'ment powder and
shot on YOUR kind onless I've orders, but if you'll wait till I
strip off this shell* I'll lam the stuffin' outer ye, afore the
stranger.'  With that Bill just danced with rage, but dassent fire,
for HE knew, and I knew, that if he'd plugged me he'd been a dead
frontiersman afore the next mornin'."


* Cavalry jacket.


"But you'd have had to give him up to the authorities, and a jury
of his own kind would have set him free."

"Not much!  If you hadn't just joined, you'd know that ain't the
way o' 30th Cavalry," returned the driver.  "The kernel would have
issued his orders to bring in Bill dead or alive, and the 30th
would have managed to bring him in DEAD!  Then your jury might have
sat on him!  Tell you what, chaps of the Bill stripe don't care
overmuch to tackle the yaller braid."*


* Characteristic trimming of cavalry jacket.


"But what's this yer Congressman interferin' for, anyway?"

"He's a rich Californian.  Thinks he's got a 'call,' I reckon, to
look arter Injins, just as them Abolitionists looked arter slaves.
And get hated just as they was by the folks here,--and as WE are,
too, for the matter of that."

"Well, I dunno," rejoined the farrier, "it don't seem nateral for
white men to quarrel with each other about the way to treat an
Injin, and that Injin lyin' in ambush to shoot 'em both.  And ef
gov'ment would only make up its mind how to treat 'em, instead of
one day pretendin' to be their 'Great Father' and treatin' them
like babies, and the next makin' treaties with 'em like as they wos
forriners, and the next sendin' out a handful of us to lick ten
thousand of them--  Wot's the use of ONE regiment--even two--agin a
nation--on their own ground?"

"A nation,--and on their own ground,--that's just whar you've hit
it, Softy.  That's the argument of that Congressman Atherly, as
I've heard him talk with the kernel."

"And what did the kernel say?"

"The kernel reckoned it was his business to obey orders,--and so
should you.  So shut your head!  If ye wanted to talk about
gov'ment ye might say suthin' about its usin' us to convoy picnics
and excursion parties around, who come out here to have a day's
shootin', under some big-wig of a political boss or a railroad
president, with a letter to the general.  And WE'RE told off to
look arter their precious skins, and keep the Injins off 'em,--and
they shootin' or skeerin' off the Injins' nat'ral game, and our
provender!  Darn my skin ef there'll be much to scout for ef this
goes on.  And b'gosh!--of they aren't now ringin' in a lot of
titled forriners to hunt 'big game,' as they call it,--Lord This-
and-That and Count So-and-So,--all of 'em with letters to the
general from the Washington cabinet to show 'hospitality,' or from
millionaires who've bin hobnobbin' with 'em in the old country.
And darn my skin ef some of 'em ain't bringin' their wives and
sisters along too.  There was a lord and lady passed through here
under escort last week, and we're goin' to pick up some more of 'em
at Fort Biggs tomorrow,--and I reckon some of us will be told off
to act as ladies' maids or milliners.  Nothin' short of a good
Injin scare, I reckon, would send them and us about our reg'lar
business.  Whoa, then, will ye?  At it again, are ye?  What's gone
of the d--d critter?"

Here the fractious near horse was again beginning to show signs of
disturbance and active terror.  His quivering nostrils were turned
towards the wind, and he almost leaped the centre pole in his
frantic effort to avoid it.  The eyes of the two men were turned
instinctively in that direction.  Nothing was to be seen,--the
illimitable plain and the sinking sun were all that met the eye.
But the horse continued to struggle, and the wagon stopped.  Then
it was discovered that the horse of an adjacent trooper was also
laboring under the same mysterious excitement, and at the same
moment wagon No. 3 halted.  The infection of some inexplicable
terror was spreading among them.  Then two non-commissioned
officers came riding down the line at a sharp canter, and were
joined quickly by the young lieutenant, who gave an order.  The
trumpeter instinctively raised his instrument to his lips, but was
stopped by another order.

And then, as seen by a distant observer, a singular spectacle was
unfolded.  The straggling train suddenly seemed to resolve itself
into a large widening circle of horsemen, revolving round and
partly hiding the few heavy wagons that were being rapidly freed
from their struggling teams.  These, too, joined the circle, and
were driven before the whirling troopers.  Gradually the circle
seemed to grow smaller under the "winding-up" of those evolutions,
until the horseless wagons reappeared again, motionless, fronting
the four points of the compass, thus making the radii of a smaller
inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons as well as the
troopers' horses were closely "wound up" and densely packed
together in an immovable mass.  As the circle became smaller the
troopers leaped from their horses,--which, however, continued to
blindly follow each other in the narrower circle,--and ran to the
wagons, carbines in hand.  In five minutes from the time of giving
the order the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses
corralled in the centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted
with their repeating carbines in the angles of the rude bastions
formed by the deserted wagons, and ready for an attack.  The
stampede, if such it was, was stopped.

And yet no cause for it was to be seen!  Nothing in earth or sky
suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous
evolution that suppressed it.  The guide, with three men in open
order, rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as
empty of result.  In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed
and fed, the camp slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and
were led out of the circle, and as the rays of the setting sun
began to expand fanlike across the plain the cavalcade moved on.
But between them and the sinking sun, and visible through its last
rays, was a faint line of haze parallel with their track.  Yet even
this, too, quickly faded away.

Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west
he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle
more marvelous than that he had just witnessed.  For the
illimitable plain with its monotonous prospect was far from being
level; a hundred yards further on he would have slowly and
imperceptibly descended into a depression nearly a mile in width.
Here he not only would have completely lost sight of his own
cavalcade, but have come upon another thrice its length.  For here
was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky shapes, some crouching on
dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing lances, lodge-poles,
rifles, women and children after them, all moving with a monotonous
rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision of the other
cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it.  They had done so
all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that crept
and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious
white men.  It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those
watchers that had touched the keen scent of the troopers' horses.

The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved
on in unison together.  Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to
arise, stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist
towards the west.  The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of
the commandant's house at Fort Biggs.  It had been his intention to
visit the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received
a letter announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished
to join him.  He had never told her the secret of their Indian
paternity, as it had been revealed to him from the scornful lips of
Gray Eagle a year ago; he knew her strangely excitable nature;
besides, she was a wife now, and the secret would have to be shared
with her husband.  When he himself had recovered from the shock of
the revelation, two things had impressed themselves upon his
reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous claim upon the
Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own
race.  He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one
object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his
position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy,
should have given him this singular opportunity.

Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position.  He was
obliged to divorce himself from his political party as well as keep
clear of the wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical
"contractors," and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian
civilizers, who would have regenerated the Indian with a text which
he did not understand and they were unable to illustrate by
example.  He had expected the opposition of lawless frontiersmen
and ignorant settlers--as roughly indicated in the conversation
already recorded; indeed he had felt it difficult to argue his
humane theories under the smoking roof of a raided settler's cabin,
whose owner, however, had forgotten his own repeated provocations,
or the trespass of which he was proud.  But Atherly's unaffected
and unobtrusive zeal, his fixity of purpose, his undoubted courage,
his self-abnegation, and above all the gentle melancholy and half-
philosophical wisdom of this new missionary, won him the respect
and assistance of even the most callous or the most skeptical of
officials.  The Secretary of the Interior had given him carte
blanche; the President trusted him, and it was said had granted him
extraordinary powers.  Oddly enough it was only his own Californian
constituency, who had once laughed at what they deemed his early
aristocratic pretensions, who now found fault with his democratic
philanthropy.  That a man who had been so well received in England--
the news of his visit to Ashley Grange had been duly recorded--
should sink so low as "to take up with the Injins" of his own
country galled their republican pride.  A few of his personal
friends regretted that he had not brought back from England more
conservative and fashionable graces, and had not improved his
opportunities.  Unfortunately there was no essentially English
policy of trusting aborigines that they knew of.

In his gloomy self-scrutiny he had often wondered if he ought not
to openly proclaim his kinship with the despised race, but he was
always deterred by the thought of his sister and her husband, as
well as by the persistent doubt whether his advocacy of Indian
rights with his fellow countrymen would be as well served by such a
course.  And here again he was perplexed by a singular incident of
his early missionary efforts which he had at first treated with
cold surprise, but to which later reflection had given a new
significance.  After Gray Eagle's revelation he had made a
pilgrimage to the Indian country to verify the statements regarding
his dead father,--the Indian chief Silver Cloud.  Despite the
confusion of tribal dialects he was amazed to find that the Indian
tongue came back to him almost as a forgotten boyish memory, so
that he was soon able to do without an interpreter; but not until
that functionary, who knew his secret, appeared one day as a more
significant ambassador.  "Gray Eagle says if you want truly to be a
brother to his people you must take a wife among them.  He loves
you--take one of his!"  Peter, through whose veins--albeit of mixed
blood--ran that Puritan ice so often found throughout the Great
West, was frigidly amazed.  In vain did the interpreter assure him
that the wife in question, Little Daybreak, was a wife only in
name, a prudent reserve kept by Gray Eagle in the orphan daughter
of a brother brave.  But Peter was adamant.  Whatever answer the
interpreter returned to Gray Eagle he never knew.  But to his alarm
he presently found that the Indian maiden Little Daybreak had been
aware of Gray Eagle's offer, and had with pathetic simplicity
already considered herself Peter's spouse.  During his stay at the
encampment he found her sitting before his lodge every morning.  A
girl of sixteen in years, a child of six in intellect, she flashed
her little white teeth upon him when he lifted his tent flap,
content to receive his grave, melancholy bow, or patiently trotted
at his side carrying things he did not want, which she had taken
from the lodge.  When he sat down to work, she remained seated at a
distance, looking at him with glistening beady eyes like
blackberries set in milk, and softly scratching the little bare
brown ankle of one foot with the turned-in toes of the other, after
an infantine fashion.  Yet after he had left--a still single man,
solely though his interpreter's diplomacy, as he always believed--
he was very worried as to the wisdom of his course.  Why should he
not in this way ally himself to his unfortunate race irrevocably?
Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he
dared not voice to himself.  Since his visit to the English
Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to
that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture.
But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him
with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the
contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled
to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive
savage supporter.  He could not pass the upright supported bier of
an Indian brave--slowly desiccating in the desert air--without
seeing in the dead warrior's paraphernalia of arms and trophies
some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose marble
effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of
her ancestors.  Yet only the peaceful gloom and repose of the old
church touched him now; even she, too, with all her glory of
English girlhood, seemed to belong to that remote past.  She was
part of the restful quiet of the church; the yews in the quaint old
churchyard might have waved over her as well.

Still, he was eager to see his sister, and if he should conclude to
impart to her his secret, she might advise him.  At all events, he
decided to delay his departure until her arrival, a decision with
which the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had
that morning discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the
fort, and the lately arrived commissary train had reported the
unaccountable but promptly prevented stampede.

Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her
husband, who seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and
confide to him his anxiety about her health, and the strange fits
of excitement under which she occasionally labored.  Remembering
the episode of the Californian woods three years ago, Peter stared
at this good-natured, good-looking man, whose life he had always
believed she once imperiled, and wondered more than ever at their
strange union.

"Do you ever quarrel?" asked Peter bluntly.

"No," said the good-hearted fellow warmly, "never!  We have never
had a harsh word; she's the dearest girl,--the best wife in the
world to me, but"--he hesitated, "you know there are times when I
think she confounds me with somebody else, and is strange!
Sometimes when we are in company she stands alone and stares at
everybody, without saying a word, as if she didn't understand them.
Or else she gets painfully excited and dances all night until she
is exhausted.  I thought, perhaps," he added timidly, "that you
might know, and would tell me if she had any singular experience as
a child,--any illness, or," he went on still more gently, "if
perhaps her mother or father"--

"No," interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction
that this was no time for revelation of his secret, "no, nothing."

"The doctor says," continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost
mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon
which their wives talk openly, "that it may be owing to Jenny's
peculiar state of health just now, you know, and that if--all went
well, you know, and there should be--don't you see--a little
child"--

Peter interrupted him with a start.  A child!  Jenny's child!
Silver Cloud's grandchild!  This was a complication he had not
thought of.  No!  It was too late to tell his secret now.  He only
nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, "I dare say he is
right."

Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well.  Perhaps it was
the excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe
figure, nearly half a head taller than her husband's, was a
striking one among the officers' wives in the commandant's sitting-
room.  Her olive cheek glowed with a faint illuminating color;
there was something even patrician in her slightly curved nose and
high cheek bones, and her smile, rare even in her most excited
moments, was, like her brother's, singularly fascinating.  The
officers evidently thought so too, and when the young lieutenant of
the commissary escort, fresh from West Point and Flirtation Walk,
gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were slightly
scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs.
Lascelles received his attentions.  Even Peter was a little
disturbed.  Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife's animation,
and pleased at her success, gazed at her with unqualified
admiration.  Indeed, he was so satisfied with her improvement, and
so sanguine of her ultimate recovery, that he felt justified in
leaving her with her brother and returning to Omaha by the regular
mail wagon next day.  There was no danger to be apprehended in her
accompanying Peter; they would have a full escort; the reservation
lay in a direction unfrequented by marauding tribes; the road was
the principal one used by the government to connect the fort with
the settlements, and well traveled; the officers' wives had often
journeyed thither.

The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the
journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and
drew up before the house of the Indian agent.  Peter was relieved;
he had been anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which
might be produced on her excitable nature by a first view of her
own kinsfolk, although she was still ignorant of her relationship.
Her interest and curiosity, however, had nothing abnormal in it.
But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon THEM at her
first appearance.  A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her,
and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she
betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction
that she drew close to him.  Knowing that his old interpreter and
Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles
away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced
her as his sister.  But he presently found that the braves had
added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen
demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of
the agent's wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination
and inspection.  Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by
the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

"Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here," he said.  "Do you
know that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist
upon it that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in
captivity against your plighted faith to them!  You'll excuse me,"
he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, "troubling you
with their d--d fool talk, and you won't say anything to HER about
it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position
among 'em.  You don't want to lose their confidence, and you know
how easily their skeery faculties are stampeded with an idea!"

"Where is she now?" demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

"Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon.  I thought she might be a
little skeered of the braves, and I've kept them away.  SHE'S all
right, you know; only if you intend to stay here long I'd"--

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket
of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's
voices.  When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on
a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young
girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap.
Some of them had already half mischievously, half curiously
possessed themselves of her dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves,
and were parading before her in their grotesque finery, apparently
as much to her childish excited amusement as their own.  She was
even answering their gesticulations with equivalent gestures in her
attempt to understand them, and trying amidst shouts of laughter to
respond to the monotonous chant of the old women who were
zigzagging a dance before her.  With the gayly striped blankets
lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly
colored feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights
and shadows, it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the
more experienced Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain
temper and want of consecutive idea of playing animals, and the
stolid unwinking papoose in his sister's lap gave his sentiment a
momentary shock.

Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children
slinking away from his grave face.  "I have had such a funny time,
Peter!  Only to think of it, I believe they've never seen men or
women with decent clothes before,--of course the settlers' wives
don't dress much,--and I believe they'd have had everything I
possess if you hadn't come.  But they're TOO funny for anything.
It was killing to see them put on my hat wrong side before, and try
to make one out of my parasol.  But I like them a great deal better
than those gloomy chiefs, and I think I understand them almost.
And do you know, Peter, somehow I seem to have known them all
before.  And those dear little papooses, aren't they ridiculously
lovely.  I only wish"--she stopped, for Peter had somewhat
hurriedly taken the Indian boy from her arms and restored it to the
frightened mother.  A singular change came over her face, and she
glanced at him quickly.  But she resumed, with a heightened color,
"I like it ever so much better here than down at the fort.  And
ever so much better than New York.  I don't wonder that you like
them so much, Peter, and are so devoted to them.  Don't be angry,
dear, because I let them have my things; I'm sure I never cared
particularly for them, and I think it would be such fun to dress as
they do."  Peter remembered keenly his sudden shock at her
precipitate change to bright colors after leaving her novitiate at
the Sacred Heart.  "I do hope," she went on eagerly, "that we are
going to stay a long time here."

"We are leaving to-morrow," he said curtly.  "I find I have urgent
business at the fort."

And they did leave.  None too soon, thought Peter and the Indian
agent, as they glanced at the faces of the dusky chiefs who had
gathered around the cabin.  Luckily the presence of their cavalry
escort rendered any outbreak impossible, and the stoical
taciturnity of the race kept Peter from any verbal insult.  But
Mrs. Lascelles noticed their lowering dissatisfaction, and her eyes
flashed.  "I wonder you don't punish them," she said simply.

For a few days after their return she did not allude to her visit,
and Peter was beginning to think that her late impressions were as
volatile as they were childlike.  He devoted himself to his
government report, and while he kept up his communications with the
reservation and the agent, for the present domiciled himself at the
fort.

Colonel Bryce, the commandant though doubtful of civilians, was not
slow to appreciate the difference of playing host to a man of
Atherly's wealth and position and even found in Peter's reserve and
melancholy an agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and
material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the
younger officers.  For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there
was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that
relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an "example."  Mrs.
Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more
tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness.
Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the
gesticulations of a few "friendlies" who had penetrated the parade
ground of the fort to barter beads and wampum.  The colonel was
obliged at last to caution her against this, as it was found that in
her inexperience she had given them certain articles that were
contraband of the rules, and finally to stop them from an intrusion
which was becoming more frequent and annoying.  Left thus to
herself, she relieved her isolation by walks beyond the precincts of
the garrison, where she frequently met those "friendly" wanderers,
chiefly squaws and children.  Here she was again cautioned by the
commander,--

"Don't put too much faith in those creatures, Mrs. Lascelles."

Jenny elevated her black brows and threw up her arched nose like a
charger.  "I'm not afraid of old women and children," she said
loftily.

"But I am," said the colonel gravely.  "It's a horrible thing to
think of, but these feeble old women and innocent children are
always selected to torture the prisoners taken by the braves, and,
by Jove, they seem to like it."

Thus restricted, Mrs. Lascelles fell back upon the attentions of
Lieutenant Forsyth, whose gallantry was always as fresh as his
smart cadet-like tunics, and they took some rides together.
Whether it was military caution or the feminine discretion of the
colonel's wife,--to the quiet amusement of the other officers,--a
trooper was added to the riding party by the order of the colonel,
and thereafter it consisted of three.  One night, however, the
riders did not appear at dinner, and there was considerable
uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout the garrison.  It
was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses
blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing
every sign of fatigue and disturbance.  The colonel said a few
sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent,
plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon
himself.  HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper
and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them,
but it was no fault of HIS, and they had to ride at the top of
their speed to cover the ground between them and the fort.  It was
noticed that Mrs. Lascelles scarcely spoke to Forsyth, and turned
abruptly away from the colonel's interrogations and went to her
room.

Peter, absorbed in his report, scarcely noticed the incident, nor
the singular restraint that seemed to fall upon the little military
household for a day or two afterwards.  He had accepted the
lieutenant's story without comment or question; he knew his own
sister too well to believe that she had lent herself to a
flirtation with Forsyth; indeed, he had rather pitied the young
officer when he remembered Lascelles' experience in his early
courtship.  But he was somewhat astonished one afternoon to find
the trooper Cassidy alone in his office.

"Oi thought Oi'd make bould to have a word wid ye, sorr," he said,
recovering from a stiff salute with his fingers nipping the cord of
his trousers.  "It's not for meeself, sorr, although the ould man
was harrd on me, nor for the leddy, your sister, but for the sake
of the leftenant, sorr, who the ould man was harrdest on of all.
Oi was of the parrty that rode with your sister."

"Yes, yes, I remember, I heard the story," said Peter.  "She and
Mr. Forsyth got lost."

"Axin' your pardin, sorr, she didn't.  Mr. Forsyth loid.  Loid like
an officer and a jintleman--as he is, God bless him--to save a
leddy, more betoken your sister, sorr.  They never got lost, sorr.
We was all three together from the toime we shtarted till we got
back, and it's the love av God that we ever got back at all.  And
it's breaking me hearrt, sorr, to see HIM goin' round with the
black looks of everybody upon him, and he a-twirlin' his moustache
and purtending not to mind."

"What do you mean?" said Peter, uneasily.

"Oi mane to be tellin' you what happened, sorr," said Cassidy
stoutly.  "When we shtarted out Oi fell three files to the rear, as
became me, so as not to be in the way o' their colloguing, but
sorra a bit o' stragglin' was there, and Oi kept them afore me all
the toime.  When we got to Post Oak Bottom the leddy p'ints her
whip off to the roight, and sez she: 'It's a fine bit of turf
there, Misther Forsyth,' invitin' like, and with that she gallops
away to the right.  The leftenant follys her, and Oi closed up the
rear.  So we rides away innoshent like amongst the trees, me
thinkin' only it wor a mighty queer place for manoovrin', until we
seed, just beyond us in the hollow, the smoke of an Injin camp and
a lot of women and childer.  And Mrs. Lascelles gets off and goes
to discoursin' and blarneying wid 'em: and Oi sees Mr. Forsyth
glancin' round and lookin' oneasy.  Then he goes up and sez
something to your sister, and she won't give him a hearin'.  And
then he tells her she must mount and be off.  And she turns upon
him, bedad, like a tayger, and bids him be off himself.  Then he
comes to me and sez he, 'Oi don't like the look o' this, Cassidy,'
sez he; 'the woods behind is full of braves,' sez he.  'Thrue for
you, leftenant,' sez Oi, 'it's into a trap that the leddy hez led
us, God save her!'  'Whisht,' he sez, 'take my horse, it's the
strongest.  Go beside her, and when Oi say the word lift her up
into the saddle before ye, and gallop like blazes.  Oi'll bring up
the rear and the other horse.'  Wid that we changed horses and
cantered up to where she was standing, and he gives the word when
she isn't lookin', and Oi grabs her up--she sthrugglin' like mad
but not utterin' a cry--and Oi lights out for the trail agin.  And
sure enough the braves made as if they would folly, but the
leftenant throws the reins of her horse over the horn of his
saddle, and whips out his revolver and houlds 'em back till I've
got well away to the trail again.  And then they let fly their
arrows, and begorra the next thing a BULLET whizzes by him.  And
then he knows they have arrms wid 'em and are 'hostiles,' and he
rowls the nearest one over, wheelin' and fightin' and coverin' our
retreat till we gets to the road agin.  And they daren't folly us
out of cover.  Then the lady gets more sinsible, and the leftenant
pershuades her to mount her horse agin.  But before we comes to the
fort, he sez to me: 'Cassidy,' sez he, 'not a word o' this on
account of the leddy.'  And I was mum, sorr, while he was shootin'
off his mouth about him bein' lost and all that, and him bein'
bully-ragged by the kernel, and me knowin' that but for him your
sister wouldn't be between these walls here, and Oi wouldn't be
talkin' to ye.  And shure, sorr, ye might be tellin's the kernel as
how the leddy was took by the hysterics, and was that loony that
she didn't know whatever she was sayin', and so get the leftenant
in favor again."

"I will speak with the colonel to-night," said Peter gloomily.

"Lord save yer honor," returned the trooper gratefully, "and if ye
could be sayin' that the LEDDY tould you,--it would only be the
merest taste of a loi ye'd be tellin',--and you'd save me from
breakin' me word to the leftenant."

"I shall of course speak to my sister first," returned Peter, with
a guilty consciousness that he had accepted the trooper's story
mainly from his previous knowledge of his sister's character.
Nevertheless, in spite of this foregone conclusion, he DID speak to
her.  To his surprise she did not deny it.  Lieutenant Forsyth,--a
vain and conceited fool,--whose silly attentions she had accepted
solely that she might get recreation beyond the fort,--had presumed
to tell her what SHE must do!  As if SHE was one of those stupid
officers' wives or sisters!  And it never would have happened if
he--Peter--had let her remain at the reservation with the Indian
agent's wife, or if "Charley" (the gentle Lascelles) were here!  HE
would have let her go, or taken her there.  Besides all the while
she was among friends; HIS, Peter's own friends,--the people whose
cause he was championing!  In vain did Peter try to point out to
her that these "people" were still children in mind and impulse,
and capable of vacillation or even treachery.  He remembered he was
talking to a child in mind and impulse, who had shown the same
qualities, and in trying to convince her of her danger he felt he
was only voicing the common arguments of his opponents.

He spoke also to the colonel, excusing her through her ignorance,
her trust in his influence with the savages, and the general
derangement of her health.  The colonel, relieved of his suspicions
of a promising young officer, was gentle and sympathetic, but firm
as to Peter's future course.  In a moment of caprice and
willfulness she might imperil the garrison as she had her escort,
and, more than that, she was imperiling Peter's influence with the
Indians.  Absurd stories had come to his ears regarding the
attitude of the reservation towards him.  He thought she ought to
return home as quickly as possible.  Fortunately an opportunity
offered.  The general commanding had advised him of the visit to
the fort of a party of English tourists who had been shooting in
the vicinity, and who were making the fort the farthest point of
their western excursion.  There were three or four ladies in the
party, and as they would be returning to the line of railroad under
escort, she could easily accompany them.  This, added Colonel
Carter, was also Mrs. Carter's opinion,--she was a woman of
experience, and had a married daughter of her own.  In the mean
time Peter had better not broach the subject to his sister, but
trust to the arrival of the strangers, who would remain for a week,
and who would undoubtedly divert Mrs. Lascelles' impressible mind,
and eventually make the proposition more natural and attractive.

In the interval Peter revisited the reservation, and endeavored to
pacify the irritation that had sprung from his previous inspection.
The outrage at Post Oak Bottom he was assured had no relation to
the incident at the reservation, but was committed by some
stragglers from other tribes who had not yet accepted the
government bounty, yet had not been thus far classified as
"hostile."  There had been no "Ghost Dancing" nor other indication
of disturbance.  The colonel had not deemed it necessary to send
out an exemplary force, or make a counter demonstration.  The
incident was allowed to drop.  At the reservation Peter had ignored
the previous conduct of the chiefs towards him; had with quiet
courage exposed himself fully--unarmed and unattended--amongst
them, and had as fully let it be known that this previous incident
was the reason that his sister had not accompanied him on his
second visit.  He left them at the close of the second day more
satisfied in his mind, and perhaps in a more enthusiastic attitude
towards his report.

As he came within sound of the sunset bugles, he struck a narrower
trail which led to the fort, through an oasis of oaks and
cottonwoods and a small stream or "branch," which afterwards lost
itself in the dusty plain.  He had already passed a few settler's
cabins, a sutler's shop, and other buildings that had sprung up
around this armed nucleus of civilization--which, in due season,
was to become a frontier town.  But as yet the brief wood was wild
and secluded; frequented only by the women and children of the
fort, within whose protecting bounds it stood, and to whose formal
"parade," and trim white and green cottage "quarters," it afforded
an agreeable relief.  As he rode abstractedly forward under the low
cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence stealing over him, an
influence that was not only a present experience but at the same
time a far-off memory.  The concave vault above deepened; the
sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the
leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through
the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley
Church!  He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly
slipped across his pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke
with the disturbance and sense of unreality of a dream.  For he saw
Lady Elfrida standing before him!

It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although
the figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain
changes of costume which the eye of recollection noticed.  In place
of the smart narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was
wearing a slouched cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown,
that, with all its becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to
become characteristic and respectable, as a crest to her refined
head, and as historic as a Lely canvas.  She wore a flannel shirt,
belted in at her slight waist with a band of yellow leather,
defining her small hips, and short straight pleatless skirts that
fell to her trim ankles and buckled leather shoes.  She was fresh
and cool, wholesome and clean, free and unfettered; indeed, her
beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident.  So much so that
when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy, gauzy, and
challenging graces of the officer's wives, who were dressed in
their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned
naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who
seemed to defy it.  She was clearly not an idealized memory, a
spirit or a ghost, but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle
rosier, as she laughingly addressed him:--

"I suppose it isn't quite fair to surprise you like that," she
said, with an honest girlish hand-shake, "for you see I know all
about you now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were
expected; and I dare say you thought we were still in England, if
you remembered us at all.  And we haven't met since that day at
Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,--or rather on your pet
protege's, the Indian's: you remember Major Atherly's tomb?  And to
think that all the while we didn't know that you were a public man
and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this.  Why, we'd
have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,--
he's always fond of doing these things,--and we'd have passed
resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel
shirts, and revolvers--but I believe you draw the line at that.  My
brother was saying only the other day that you weren't half praised
enough for going in for this sort of thing when you were so rich,
and needn't care.  And so that's why you rushed away from Ashley
Grange,--just to come here and work out your mission?"

His whole life, his first wild Californian dream, his English
visit, the revelation of Gray Eagle, the final collapse of his old
beliefs, were whirling through his brain to the music of this clear
young voice.  And by some cruel irony of circumstance it seemed now
to even mock his later dreams of expiation as it also called back
his unhappy experience of the last week.

"Have you--have you"--he stammered with a faint smile, "seen my
sister?"

"Not yet," said Lady Elfrida.  "I believe she is not well and is
confined to her room; you will introduce me, won't you?" she added
eagerly.  "Of course, when we heard that there was an Atherly here
we inquired about you; and I told them you were a relation of
ours," she went on with a half-mischievous shyness,--"you remember
the de Bracys,--and they seemed surprised and rather curious.  I
suppose one does not talk so much about these things over here, and
I dare say you have so much to occupy your mind you don't talk of
us in England."  With the quickness of a refined perception she saw
a slight shade in his face, and changed the subject.  "And we have
had such a jolly time; we have met so many pleasant people; and
they've all been so awfully good to us, from the officials and
officers down to the plainest working-man.  And all so naturally
too--so different from us.  I sometimes think we have to work
ourselves up to be civil to strangers."  "No," she went on gayly,
in answer to his protesting gesture, and his stammered reminder of
his own reception.  "No.  You came as a sort of kinsman, and Sir
Edward knew all about you before he asked you down to the Grange--
or even sent over for me from the Towers.  No! you Americans take
people on their 'face value,' as my brother Reggy says, and we
always want to know what are the 'securities.'  And then American
men are more gallant, though," she declared mischievously, "I think
you are an exception in that way.  Indeed," she went on, "the more
I see of your countrymen the less you seem like them.  You are more
like us,--more like an Englishman--indeed, more like an Englishman
than most Englishmen,--I mean in the matter of reserve and all that
sort of thing, you know.  It's odd,--isn't it?  Is your sister like
you?"

"You shall judge for yourself," said Peter with a gayety that was
forced in proportion as his forebodings became more gloomy.  Would
his sister's peculiarities--even her secret--be safe from the clear
eyes of the young girl?

"I know I shall like her," said Lady Elfrida, simply.  "I mean to
make friends with her before we leave, and I hope to see a great
deal of her; and," she said with a naive non sequitur, that,
however, had its painful significance to Peter, "I do want you to
show me some Indians--your Indians, you know YOUR friends.  I've
seen some of them, of course; I am afraid I am a little prejudiced,
for I did not like them.  You see my taste has to be educated, I
suppose; but I thought them so foolishly vain and presuming."

"That is their perfect childishness," said Peter quickly.  "It is
not, I believe, considered a moral defect," he added bitterly.

Lady Elfrida laughed, and yet at the same moment a look of appeal
that was in itself quite as childlike shone in her blue eyes.
"There, I have blundered again, I know; but I told you I have such
ridiculous prejudices!  And I really want to like them as you do.
Only," she laughed again, "it seems strange that YOU, of all men,
should have interested yourself in people so totally different to
you.  But what will be the result if your efforts are successful?
Will they remain a distinct race?  Will you make citizens,
soldiers, congressmen, governors of them?  Will they intermarry
with the whites?  Is that a part of your plan?  I hope not!"

It was a part of Peter's sensitive excitement that even through the
unconscious irony of this speech he was noticing the difference
between the young English girl's evident interest in a political
problem and the utter indifference of his own countrywomen.  Here
was a girl scarcely out of her teens, with no pretension to being a
blue stocking, with half the aplomb of an American girl of her own
age, gravely considering a question of political economy.  Oddly
enough, it added to his other irritation, and he said almost
abruptly, "Why not?"

She took the question literally and with a little youthful
timidity.  "But these mixed races never attain to anything, do
they?  I thought that was understood.  But," she added with
feminine quickness, "and I suppose it's again only a PERSONAL
argument, YOU wouldn't like your sister to have married an Indian,
would you?"

The irony of the situation had reached its climax to Peter.  It
didn't seem to be his voice that said, "I can answer by an argument
still more personal.  I have even thought myself of marrying an
Indian woman."

It seemed to him that what he said was irrevocable, but he was
desperate.  It seemed to him that in a moment more he would have
told her his whole secret.  But the young girl drew back from him
with a slight start of surprise.  There may have been something in
the tone of his voice and in his manner that verged upon a
seriousness she was never contemplating in her random talk; it may
have been an uneasiness of some youthful imprudence in pressing the
subject upon a man of his superiority, and that his abrupt climax
was a rebuke.  But it was only for a moment; her youthful buoyancy,
and, above all, a certain common sense that was not incompatible to
her high nature, came to her rescue.  "But that," she said with
quick mischievousness, "would be a SACRIFICE taken in the interest
of these people, don't you see; and being a sacrifice, it's no
argument."

Peter saw his mistake, but there was something so innocent and
delightful in the youthful triumph of this red-lipped logician,
that he was forced to smile.  I have said that his smile was rare
and fascinating, a concession wrung from his dark face and calm
beardless lips that most people found irresistible, but it was odd,
nevertheless, that Lady Elfrida now for the first time felt a
sudden and not altogether unpleasant embarrassment over the very
subject she had approached with such innocent fearlessness.  There
was a new light in her eyes, a fresher color in her cheeks as she
turned her face--she knew not why--away from him.  But it enabled
her to see a figure approaching them from the fort.  And I grieve
to say that, perhaps for the first time in her life, Lady Elfrida
was guilty of an affected start.

"Oh, here's Reggy coming to look for me.  I'd quite forgotten, but
I'm so glad.  I want you to know my brother Reggy.  He was always
so sorry he missed you at the Grange."

The tall, young, good-looking brown Englishman who had sauntered up
bestowed a far more critical glance upon Peter's horse than upon
Peter, but nevertheless grasped his hand heartily as his sister
introduced him.  Perhaps both men were equally undemonstrative,
although the reserve of one was from temperament and the other from
education.  Nevertheless Lord Reginald remarked, with a laugh, that
it was awfully jolly to be there, and that it had been a beastly
shame that he was in Scotland when Atherly was at the Grange.  That
none of them had ever suspected till they came to the fort that he,
Atherly, was one of those government chappies, and so awfully keen
on Indian politics.  "Friddy" had been the first to find it out,
but they thought she was chaffing.  At which "Friddy," who had
suddenly resolved herself into the youthfulest of schoolgirls in
the presence of her brother, put her parasol like an Indian club
behind her back, and still rosy, beamed admiringly upon Reggy.
Then the three, Peter leading his horse, moved on towards the fort,
presently meeting "Georgy," the six-foot Guardsman cousin in
extraordinary tweeds and flannel shirt; Lord Runnybroke, uncle of
Friddy, middle-aged and flannel-shirted, a mighty hunter; Lady
Runnybroke, in a brown duster, but with a stately head that
suggested ostrich feathers; Moyler-Spence, M. P., with an eyeglass,
and the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, closely attended by the always gallant
Lieutenant Forsyth.  Peter began to feel a nervous longing to be
alone on the burning plain and the empty horizon beyond them, until
he could readjust himself to these new conditions, and glanced
half-wearily around him.  But his eye met Friddy's, who seemed to
have evoked this gathering with a wave of her parasol, like the
fairy of a pantomime, and he walked on in silence.

A day or two of unexpected pleasure passed for Peter.  In these new
surroundings he found he could separate Lady Elfrida from his
miserable past, and the conventional restraint of Ashley Grange.
Again, the revelation of her familiar name Friddy seemed to make
her more accessible and human to him than her formal title, and
suited the girlish simplicity that lay at the foundation of her
character, of which he had seen so little before.  At least so he
fancied, and so excused himself; it was delightful to find her
referring to him as an older friend; pleasant, indeed, to see that
her family tacitly recognized it, and frequently appealed to him
with the introduction, "Friddy says you can tell us," or "You and
Friddy had better arrange it between you."  Even the dreaded
introduction of his sister was an agreeable surprise, owing to Lady
Elfrida's frank and sympathetic prepossession, which Jenny could
not resist.  In a few moments they were walking together in serious
and apparently confidential conversation.  For to Peter's wonder it
was the "Lady Elfrida" side of the English girl's nature that
seemed to have attracted Jenny, and not the playfulness of
"Friddy," and he was delighted to see that the young girl had
assumed a grave chaperonship of the tall Mrs. Lascelles that would
have done credit to Mrs. Carter or Lady Runnybroke.  Had he been
less serious he might have been amused, too, at the importance of
his own position in the military outpost, through the arrival of
the strangers.  That this grave political enthusiast and civilian
should be on familiar terms with a young Englishwoman of rank was
at first inconceivable to the officers.  And that he had never
alluded to it before seemed to them still more remarkable.

Nevertheless, there was much liveliness and good fellowship at the
fort.  Captains and lieutenants down to the youngest "cub,"
Forsyth, vied with each other to please the Englishmen, supplied
them with that characteristic American humor and anecdote which it
is an Englishman's privilege to bring away with him, and were
picturesquely and chivalrously devoted in their attentions to the
ladies, who were pleased and amused by it, though it is to be
doubted if it increased their respect for the giver, although they
were more grateful for it than the average American woman.  Lady
Elfrida found the officers very entertaining and gallant.
Accustomed to the English officer, and his somewhat bored way of
treating his profession and his duties, she may have been amused at
the zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm of these youthful warriors,
who aspired to appear as nothing but soldiers, when she contrasted
them with her Guardsmen relatives who aspired to be everything else
but that; but she kept it to herself.  It was a recognized,
respectable, and even superior occupation for gentlemen in England;
what it might be in America,--who knows?  She certainly found
Peter, the civilian, more attractive, for there really was nothing
English to compare him with, and she had something of the same
feeling in her friendship for Jenny, except the patronage which
Jenny seemed to solicit, and perhaps require, as a foreigner.

One afternoon the English guests, accompanied by a few of their
hosts and a small escort, were making a shooting expedition to the
vicinity of Green Spring, when Peter, plunged in his report, looked
up to find his sister entering his office.  Her face was pale, and
there was something in her expression which reawakened his old
anxiety.  Nevertheless he smiled, and said gently:--

"Why are you not enjoying yourself with the others?"

"I have a headache," she said, languidly, "but," lifting her eyes
suddenly to his, "why are YOU not?  You are their good friend, you
know,--even their relation."

"No more than you are," he returned, with affected gayety.  "But
look at the report--it is only half finished!  I have already been
shirking it for them."

"You mustn't let your devotion to the Indians keep you from your
older friends," said Mrs. Lascelles, with an odd laugh.  "But you
never told me about these people before, Peter; tell me now.  They
were very kind to you, weren't they, on account of your
relationship?"

"Entirely on account of that," said Peter, with a sudden bitterness
he could not repress.  "But they are very pleasant," he added
quickly, "and very simple and unaffected, in spite of their rank;
perhaps I ought to say, BECAUSE of it."

"You mean they are kind to us because they feel themselves
superior,--just as you are kind to the Indians, Peter."

"I am afraid they have no such sense of political equality towards
us, Jenny, as impels me to be just to the Indian," he said with
affected lightness.  "But Lady Elfrida sympathizes with the
Indians--very much."

"She!"  The emphasis which his sister put upon the personal pronoun
was unmistakable, but Peter ignored it, and so apparently did she,
as she said the next moment in a different voice, "She's very
pretty, don't you think?"

"Very," said Peter coldly.

There was a long pause.  Peter slightly fingered one of the sheets
of his delayed report on his desk.  His sister looked up.  "I'm
afraid I'm as bad as Lady Elfrida in keeping you from your Indians;
but I had something to say to you.  No matter, another time will do
when you're not so busy."

"Please go on now," said Peter, with affected unconcern, yet with a
feeling of uneasiness creeping over him.

"It was only this," said Jenny, seating herself with her elbow on
the desk and her chin in a cup-like hollow of her hand, "did you
ever think that in the interests of these poor Indians, you know,
purely for the sake of your belief in them, and just to show that
you were above vulgar prejudices,--did you ever think you could
marry one of them?"

Two thoughts flashed quickly on Peter's mind,--first, that Lady
Elfrida had repeated something of their conversation to his sister;
secondly, that some one had told her of Little Daybreak.  Each was
equally disturbing.  But he recovered himself quickly and said, "I
might if I thought it was required.  But even a sacrifice is not
always an example."

"Then you think it would be a sacrifice?" she said, slowly raising
her dark eyes to his.

"If I did something against received opinion, against precedent,
and for aught I know against even the prejudices of those I wish to
serve, however lofty my intention was and however great the benefit
to them in the end, it would still be a sacrifice in the present."
He saw his own miserable logic and affected didactics, but he went
on lightly, "But why do you ask such a question?  You haven't any
one in your mind for me, have you?"

She had risen thoughtfully and was moving towards the door.
Suddenly she turned with a quick, odd vivacity: "Perhaps I had.
Oh, Peter, there was such a lovely little squaw I saw the last time
I was at Oak Bottom!  She was no darker than I am, but so
beautiful.  Even in her little cotton gown and blanket, with only a
string of beads around her throat, she was as pretty as any one
here.  And I dare say she could be educated and appear as well as
any white woman.  I should so like to have you see her.  I would
have tried to bring her to the fort, but the braves are very
jealous of their wives or daughters seeing white men, you know, and
I was afraid of the colonel."

She had spoken volubly and with a strange excitement, but even at
the moment her face changed again, and as she left the office, with
a quick laugh and parting gesture, there were tears in her eyes.

Accustomed to her moods and caprices, Peter thought little of the
intrusion, relieved as he was of his first fears.  She had come to
him from loneliness and curiosity, and, perhaps, he thought with a
sad smile, from a little sisterly jealousy of the young girl who
had evinced such an interest in him, and had known him before.  He
took up his pen and continued the interrupted paragraph of his
report.

"I am satisfied that much of the mischievous and extravagant
prejudice against the half breed and all alliances of the white and
red races springs from the ignorance of the frontiersman and his
hasty generalization of facts.  There is no doubt that an
intermixture of blood brings out purely superficial contrasts the
more strongly, and that against the civilizing habits and even
costumes of the half breed, certain Indian defects appear the more
strongly as in the case of the color line of the quadroon and
octoroon, but it must not be forgotten that these are only the
contrasts of specific improvement, and the inference that the
borrowed defects of a half breed exceed the original defects of the
full-blooded aborigine is utterly illogical."  He stopped suddenly
and laid down his pen with a heightened color; the bugle had blown,
the guard was turning out to receive the commandant and his
returning party, among whom was Friddy.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

Through the illusions of depression and distance the "sink" of
Butternut Creek seemed only an incrustation of blackish moss on the
dull gray plain.  It was not until one approached within half a
mile of it that it resolved itself into a copse of butternut-trees
sunken below the distant levels.  Here once, in geological story,
the waters of Butternut Creek, despairing of ever crossing the
leagues of arid waste before them, had suddenly disappeared in the
providential interposition of an area of looser soil, and so given
up the effort and the ghost forever, their grave being marked by
the butternut copse, chance-sown by bird or beast in the saturated
ground.  In Indian legend the "sink" commemorated the equally
providential escape of a great tribe who, surrounded by enemies,
appealed to the Great Spirit for protection, and was promptly
conveyed by subterraneous passages to the banks of the Great River
a hundred miles away.  Its outer edges were already invaded by the
dust of the plain, but within them ran cool recesses, a few
openings, and the ashes of some long-forgotten camp-fires.  To-day
its sombre shadows were relieved by bright colored dresses, the
jackets of the drivers of a large sutler's wagon, whose white
canvas head marked the entrance of the copse, and all the
paraphernalia of a picnic.  It was a party gotten up by the foreign
guests to the ladies of the fort, prepared and arranged by the
active Lady Elfrida, assisted by the only gentleman of the party,
Peter Atherly, who, from his acquaintance with the locality, was
allowed to accompany them.  The other gentlemen, who with a large
party of officers and soldiers were shooting in the vicinity, were
sufficiently near for protection.  They would rejoin the ladies
later.

"It does not seem in the least as if we were miles away from any
town or habitation," said Lady Runnybroke, complacently seating
herself on a stump, "and I shouldn't be surprised to see a church
tower through those trees.  It's very like the hazel copse at
Longworth, you know.  Not at all what I expected."

"For the matter of that neither are the Indians," said the Hon.
Evelyn Rayne.  "Did you ever see such grotesque creatures in their
cast-off boots and trousers?  They're no better than gypsies.  I
wonder what Mr. Atherly can find in them."

"And he a rich man, too,--they say he's got a mine in California
worth a million,--to take up a craze like this," added the lively
Mrs. Captain Joyce, "that's what gets me!  You know," she went on
confidentially, "that cranks and reformers are always poor--it's
quite natural; but I don't see what he, a rich man, expects to make
by his reforms, I'm sure."

"He'll get over it in time," said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, "they all
do.  At least he expects to get the reforms he wants in a year, and
then he's coming over to England again."

"Indeed, how very nice," responded Lady Runnybroke quickly.  "Did
he say so?"

"No.  But Friddy says he is."

The two officers' wives glanced at each other.  Lady Runnybroke put
up her eyeglass in default of ostrich feathers, and said
didactically, "I'm sure Mr. Atherly is very much in earnest, and
sincerely devoted to his work.  And in a man of his wealth and
position here it's most estimable.  My dear," she said, getting up
and moving towards Mrs. Lascelles, "we were just saying how good
and unselfish your brother was in his work for these poor people."

But Jenny Lascelles must have been in one of those abstracted moods
which so troubled her husband, for she seemed to be staring
straight before her into the recesses of the wood.  In her there
was a certain resemblance to the attitude of a listening animal.

"I wish Mr. Atherly was a little more unselfish to US poor people,"
said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, "for he and Friddy have been nearly an
hour looking for a place to spread our luncheon baskets.  I wish
they'd leave the future of the brown races to look after itself and
look a little more after us.  I'm famished."

"I fancy they find it difficult to select a clear space for so
large a party as we will be when the gentlemen come in," returned
Lady Runnybroke, glancing in the direction of Jenny's abstracted
eyes.

"I suppose you must feel like chicken and salad, too, Lady
Runnybroke," suggested Mrs. Captain Joyce.

"I don't think I quite know HOW chicken and salad feel, dear," said
Lady Runnybroke with a puzzled air, "but if that's one of your
husband's delightful American stories, do tell us.  I never CAN get
Runnybroke to tell me any, although he roars over them all.  And I
dare say he gets them all wrong.  But look, here comes our luncheon."

Peter and Lady Elfrida were advancing towards them.  The scrutiny
of a dozen pairs of eyes--wondering, mischievous, critical,
impertinent, or resentful--would have been a trying ordeal to any
errant couple; but there was little if any change in Peter's grave
and gentle demeanor, albeit his dark eyes were shining with a
peculiar light, and Lady Elfrida had only the animation, color, and
slight excitability that became the responsible leader of the
little party.  They neither apologized or alluded to their delay.
They had selected a spot on the other side of the copse, and the
baskets could be sent around by the wagon; they had seen a slight
haze on the plain towards the east which betokened the vicinity of
the rest of the party, and they were about to propose that as the
gentlemen were so near they had better postpone the picnic until
they came up.  Lady Runnybroke smiled affably; the only thing she
had noticed was that Lady Elfrida in joining them had gone directly
to the side of the abstracted Jenny, and placed her arm around her
waist.  At which Lady Runnybroke airily joined them.

The surmises of Peter and Friddy appeared to be correct.  The
transfer of the provisions and the party to the other side was
barely concluded before they could see the gentlemen coming; they
were riding a little more rapidly than when they had set out, and
were arriving fully three hours before their time.  They burst upon
the ladies a little boisterously but gayly; they had had a glorious
time, but little sport; they had hurried back to join the ladies so
as to be able to return with them betimes.  They were ravenously
hungry; they wanted to fall to at once.  Only the officers' wives
noticed that the two files of troopers DID NOT DISMOUNT, but filed
slowly before the entrance to the woods.  Lady Elfrida as hostess
was prettily distressed by it, but was told by Captain Joyce that
it was "against rules," and that she could "feed" them at the fort.
The officers' wives put a few questions in whispers, and were
promptly frowned down.  Nevertheless, the luncheon was a successful
festivity: the gentlemen were loud in the praises of their gracious
hostess; the delicacies she had provided by express from distant
stations, and much that was distinctly English and despoiled from
her own stores, were gratefully appreciated by the officers of a
remote frontier garrison.  Lady Elfrida's health was toasted by the
gallant colonel in a speech that was the soul of chivalry.  Lord
Runnybroke responded, perhaps without the American abandon, but
with the steady conscientiousness of an hereditary legislator, but
the M. P. summed up a slightly exaggerated but well meaning episode
by pointing out that it was on occasions like this that the two
nations showed their common ancestry by standing side by side.
Only one thing troubled the rosy, excited, but still clear-headed
Friddy; the plates were whisked away like magic after each
delicacy, by the military servants, and vanished; the tables were
in the same mysterious way cleared as rapidly as they were set, and
any attempt to recall a dish was met by the declaration that it was
already packed away in the wagon.  As they at last rose from the
actually empty board, and saw even the tables disappear, Lady
Elfrida plaintively protested that she felt as if she had been
presiding over an Arabian Nights entertainment, served by genii,
and she knew that they would all awaken hungry when they were well
on their way back.  Nevertheless, in spite of this expedition, the
officers lounged about smoking until every trace of the festivity
had vanished.  Reggy found himself standing near Peter.  "You
know," he said, confidentially, "I don't think the colonel has a
very high opinion of your pets,--the Indians.  And, by Jove, if the
'friendlies' are as nasty towards you as they were to us this
morning, I wonder what you call the 'hostile' tribes."

"Did you have any difficulty with them?" said Peter quickly.

"No, not exactly, don't you know--we were too many, I fancy; but,
by Jove, the beggars whenever we met them,--and we met one or two
gypsy bands of them,--you know, they seemed to look upon us as
TRESPASSERS, don't you know."

"And you were, in point of fact," said Peter, smiling grimly.

"Oh, I say, come now!" said Reggy, opening his eyes.  After a
moment he laughed.  "Oh, yes, I see--of course, looking at it from
their point of view.  By Jove, I dare say the beggars were right,
you know; all the same,--don't you see,--YOUR people were poaching
too."

"So we were," said Peter gravely.

But here, at a word from the major, the whole party debouched from
the woods.  Everything appeared to be awaiting them,--the large
covered carryall for the guests, and the two saddle horses for Mrs.
Lascelles and Lady Elfrida, who had ridden there together.  Peter,
also mounted, accompanied the carryall with two of the officers;
the troopers and wagons brought up the rear.

It was very hot, with little or no wind.  On this part of the plain
the dust seemed lighter and finer, and rose with the wheels of the
carryall and the horses of the escort, trailing a white cloud over
the cavalcade like the smoke of an engine over a train.  It was
with difficulty the troopers could be kept from opening out on both
sides of the highway to escape it.  The whole atmosphere seemed
charged with it; it even appeared in a long bank to the right,
rising and obscuring the declining sun.  But they were already
within sight of the fort and the little copse beside it.  Then
trooper Cassidy trotted up to the colonel, who was riding in a
dusty cloud beside the carryall, "Captain Fleetwood's compliments,
sorr, and there are two sthragglers,--Mrs. Lascelles and the
English lady."  He pointed to the rapidly flying figures of Jenny
and Friddy making towards the wood.

The colonel made a movement of impatience.  "Tell Mr. Forsyth to
bring them back at once," he said.

But here a feminine chorus of excuses and expostulations rose from
the carryall.  "It's only Mrs. Lascelles going to show Friddy where
the squaws and children bathe," said Lady Runnybroke, "it's near
the fort, and they'll be there as quick as we shall."

"One moment, colonel," said Peter, with mortified concern.  "It's
another folly of my sister's! pray let me take it upon myself to
bring them back."

"Very well, but see you don't linger, and," turning to Cassidy, as
Peter galloped away, he added, "you follow him."

Peter kept the figures of the two women in view, but presently saw
them disappear in the wood.  He had no fear for their safety, but
he was indignant at this last untimely caprice of his sister.  He
knew the idea had originated with her, and that the officers knew
it, and yet she had made Lady Elfrida bear an equal share of the
blame.  He reached the edge of the copse, entered the first
opening, but he had scarcely plunged into its shadow and shut out
the plain behind him before he felt his arms and knees quickly
seized from behind.  So sudden and unexpected was the attack that
he first thought his horse had stumbled against a coil of wild
grapevine and was entangled, but the next moment he smelled the
rank characteristic odor and saw the brown limbs of the Indian who
had leaped on his crupper, while another rose at his horse's head.
Then a warning voice in his ear said in the native tongue:--

"If the great white medicine man calls to his fighting men, the
pale-faced girl and the squaw he calls his sister die!  They are
here, he understands."

But Peter had neither struggled nor uttered a cry.  At that touch,
and with the accents of that tongue in his ears, all his own Indian
blood seemed to leap and tingle through his veins.  His eyes
flashed; pinioned as he was he drew himself erect and answered
haughtily in his captor's own speech:--

"Good!  The great white medicine man obeys, for he and his sister
have no fear.  But if the pale-face girl is not sent back to her
people before the sun sets, then the yellow jackets will swarm the
woods, and they will follow her trail to the death.  My brother is
wise; let the girl go.  I have spoken."

"My brother is very cunning too.  He would call to his fighting men
through the lips of the pale-face girl."

"He will not.  The great white medicine man does not lie to his red
brother.  He will tell the pale-face girl to say to the chief of
the yellow jackets that he and his sister are with his brothers,
and all is peace.  But the pale-face girl must not see the great
white medicine man in these bonds, nor as a captive!  I have
spoken."

The two Indians fell back.  There was so much of force and dignity
in the man, so much of their own stoic calmness, that they at once
mechanically loosened the thongs of plaited deer hide with which
they had bound him, and side by side led him into the recesses of
the wood.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

There was some astonishment, although little alarm at the fort,
when Lady Elfrida returned accompanied by the orderly who had
followed Peter to the wood, but without Peter and his sister.  The
reason given was perfectly natural and conceivable.  Mrs. Lascelles
had preceded Lady Elfrida in entering the wood and taken another
opening, so that Lady Elfrida had found herself suddenly lost, and
surrounded by two or three warriors in dreadful paint.  They
motioned her to dismount, and said something she did not
understand, but she declined, knowing that she had heard Mr.
Atherly and the orderly following her, and feeling no fear.  And
sure enough Mr. Atherly presently came up with a couple of braves,
apologized to her for their mistake, but begged her to return to
the fort at once and assure the colonel that everything was right,
and that he and his sister were safe.  He was perfectly cool and
collected and like himself; she blushed slightly, as she said she
thought that he wished to impress upon her, for some reason she
could not understand, that he did not want the colonel to send any
assistance.  She was positive of that.  She told her story
unexcitedly; it was evident that she had not been frightened, but
Lady Runnybroke noticed that there was a shade of anxious
abstraction in her face.

When the officers were alone the colonel took hurried counsel of
them.  "I think," said Captain Fleetwood, "that Lady Elfrida's
story quite explains itself.  I believe this affair is purely a
local one, and has nothing whatever to do with the suspicious
appearances we noticed this afternoon, or the presence of so large
a body of Indians near Butternut.  Had this been a hostile movement
they would have scarcely allowed so valuable a capture as Lady
Elfrida to escape them."

"Unless they kept Atherly and his sister as a hostage," said
Captain Joyce.

"But Atherly is one of their friends; indeed he is their mediator
and apostle, a non-combatant, and has their confidence," returned
the colonel.  "It is much more reasonable to suppose that Atherly
has noticed some disaffection among these 'friendlies,' and he
fears that our sending a party to his assistance might precipitate
a collision.  Or he may have reason to believe that this stopping
of the two women under the very walls of the fort is only a feint
to draw our attention from something more serious.  Did he know
anything of our suspicions of the conduct of those Indians this
morning?"

"Not unless he gathered it from what Lord Reginald foolishly told
him.  We said nothing, of course," returned Captain Fleetwood, with
a soldier's habitual distrust of the wisdom of the civil arm.

"That will do, gentlemen," said the colonel, as the officers
dispersed; "send Cassidy here."

The colonel was alone on the veranda as Cassidy came up.

"You followed Mr. Atherly to-day?"

"Yes sorr."

"And you saw him when he gave the message to the young lady?"

"Yes sorr."

"Did you form any opinion from anything else you saw, of his object
in sending that message?"

"Only from what I saw of HIM."

"Well, what was that?"

"I saw him look afther the young leddy as she rode away, and then
wheel about and go straight back into the wood."

"And what did you think of that?" said the colonel, with a half
smile.

"I thought it was shacrifice, sorr."

"What do you mean?" said the colonel sharply.

"I mane, sorr," said Cassidy stoutly, "that he was givin' up hisself
and his sister for that young leddy."

The colonel looked at the sergeant.  "Ask Mr. Forsyth to come to me
privately, and return here with him."

As darkness fell, some half a dozen dismounted troopers, headed by
Forsyth and Cassidy, passed quietly out of the lower gate and
entered the wood.  An hour later the colonel was summoned from the
dinner table, and the guests heard the quick rattle of a wagon
turning out of the road gate--but the colonel did not return.  An
indefinable uneasiness crept over the little party, which reached
its climax in the summoning of the other officers, and the sudden
flashing out of news.  The reconnoitring party had found the dead
bodies of Peter Atherly and his sister on the plains at the edge of
the empty wood.

The women were gathered in the commandant's quarters, and for the
moment seemed to have been forgotten.  The officers' wives talked
with professional sympathy and disciplined quiet; the English
ladies were equally sympathetic, but collected.  Lady Elfrida,
rather white, but patient, asked a few questions in a voice whose
contralto was rather deepened.  One and all wished to "do
something"--anything "to help"--and one and all rebelled that the
colonel had begged them to remain within doors.  There was an
occasional quick step on the veranda, or the clatter of a hoof on
the parade, a continued but subdued murmur from the whitewashed
barracks, but everywhere a sense of keen restraint.

When they emerged on the veranda again, the whole aspect of the
garrison seemed to have changed in that brief time.  In the faint
moonlight they could see motionless files of troopers filling the
parade, the officers in belted tunics and slouched hats,--but
apparently not the same men; the half lounging ease and lazy
dandyism gone, a grim tension in all their faces, a set abstraction
in all their acts.  Then there was the rolling of heavy wheels in
the road, and the two horses of the ambulance appeared.  The
sentries presented arms; the colonel took off his hat; the officers
uncovered; the wagon wheeled into the parade; the surgeon stepped
out.  He exchanged a single word with the colonel, and lifted the
curtain of the ambulance.

As the colonel glanced within, a deep but embarrassed voice fell
upon his ear.  He turned quickly.  It was Lord Reginald, flushed
and sympathetic.

"He was a friend,--a relation of ours, you know," he stammered.
"My sister would like--to look at him again."

"Not now," said the colonel in a low voice.  The surgeon added
something in a voice still lower, which scarcely reached the
veranda.

Lord Reginald turned away with a white face.

"Fall back there!" Captain Fleetwood rode up.

"All ready, sir."

"One moment, captain," said the colonel quietly.  "File your first
half company before that ambulance, and bid the men look in."

The singular order was obeyed.  The men filed slowly forward, each
in turn halting before the motionless wagon and its immobile
freight.  They were men inured to frontier bloodshed and savage
warfare; some halted and hurried on; others lingered, others turned
to look again.  One man burst into a short laugh, but when the
others turned indignantly upon him, they saw that in his face that
held them in awe.  What they saw in the ambulance did not transpire;
what they felt was not known.  Strangely enough, however, what they
repressed themselves was mysteriously communicated to their horses,
who snorted and quivered with eagerness and impatience as they rode
back again.  The horse of the trooper who had laughed almost leaped
into the air.  Only Sergeant Cassidy was communicative; he took a
larger circuit in returning to his place, and managed to lean over
and whisper hoarsely in the ear of a camp follower spectator, "Tell
the young leddy that the torturin' divvils couldn't take the smile
off him!"

The little column filed out of the gateway into the road.  As
Captain Fleetwood passed Colonel Carter the two men's eyes met.
The colonel said quietly, "Good night, captain.  Let us have a good
report from you."

The captain replied only with his gauntleted hand against the brim
of his slouched hat, but the next moment his voice was heard strong
and clear enough in the road.  The little column trotted away as
evenly as on parade.  But those who climbed the roof of the
barracks a quarter of an hour later saw, in the moonlight, a white
cloud drifting rapidly across the plain towards the west.  It was a
small cloud in that bare, menacing, cruel, and illimitable waste;
but in its breast was crammed a thunderbolt.

It fell thirty miles away, blasting and scattering a thousand
warriors and their camp, giving and taking no quarter, vengeful,
exterminating, and complete.  Later there were different opinions
about it and the horrible crime that had provoked it: the opposers
of Peter's policy jubilant over the irony of the assassination of
the Apostle of Peace, Peter's disciples as actively deploring the
merciless and indiscriminating vengeance of the military; and so
the problem that Peter had vainly attempted to solve was left an
open question.  There were those, too, who believed that Peter had
never sacrificed himself and his sister for the sake of another,
but had provoked and incensed the savages by the blind arrogance of
a reformer.  There were wild stories by scouts and interpreters how
he had challenged his fate by an Indian bravado; how himself and
his sister had met torture with an Indian stoicism, and how the
Indian braves themselves at last in a turmoil of revulsion had
dipped their arrows and lances in the heroic heart's blood of their
victims, and worshiped their still palpitating flesh.

But there was one honest loyal little heart that carried back--
three thousand miles--to England the man as it had known and loved
him.  Lady Elfrida Runnybroke never married; neither did she go
into retirement, but lived her life and fulfilled her duties in her
usual clear-eyed fashion.  She was particularly kind to all
Americans,--barring, I fear, a few pretty-faced, finely-frocked
title-hunters,--told stories of the Far West, and had theories of a
people of which they knew little, cared less, and believed to be
vulgar.  But I think she found a new pleasure in the old church at
Ashley Grange, and loved to linger over the effigy of the old
Crusader,--her kinsman, the swashbuckler De Bracy,--with a vague
but pretty belief that devotion and love do not die with brave men,
but live and flourish even in lands beyond the seas.


TWO AMERICANS


Perhaps if there was anything important in the migration of the
Maynard family to Europe it rested solely upon the singular fact
that Mr. Maynard did not go there in the expectation of marrying
his daughter to a nobleman.  A Charleston merchant, whose house
represented two honorable generations, had, thirty years ago, a
certain self-respect which did not require extraneous aid and
foreign support, and it is exceedingly probable that his intention
of spending a few years abroad had no ulterior motive than pleasure
seeking and the observation of many things--principally of the
past--which his own country did not possess.  His future and that
of his family lay in his own land, yet with practical common sense
he adjusted himself temporarily to his new surroundings.  In doing
so, he had much to learn of others, and others had something to
learn of him; he found that the best people had a high simplicity
equal to his own; he corrected their impressions that a Southerner
had more or less negro blood in his veins, and that, although a
slave owner, he did not necessarily represent an aristocracy.  With
a distinguishing dialect of which he was not ashamed, a frank
familiarity of approach joined to an invincible courtesy of manner,
which made even his republican "Sir" equal to the ordinary address
to royalty, he was always respected and seldom misunderstood.  When
he was--it was unfortunate for those who misunderstood him.  His
type was as distinctive and original as his cousin's, the
Englishman, whom it was not the fashion then to imitate.  So that,
whether in the hotel of a capital, the Kursaal of a Spa, or the
humbler pension of a Swiss village, he was always characteristic.
Less so was his wife, who, with the chameleon quality of her
transplanted countrywomen, was already Parisian in dress; still
less so his daughter, who had by this time absorbed the
peculiarities of her French, German, and Italian governesses.  Yet
neither had yet learned to evade their nationality--or apologize
for it.

Mr. Maynard and his family remained for three years in Europe, his
stay having been prolonged by political excitement in his own State
of South Carolina.  Commerce is apt to knock the insularity out of
people; distance from one's own distinctive locality gives a wider
range to the vision, and the retired merchant foresaw ruin in his
State's politics, and from the viewpoint of all Europe beheld
instead of the usual collection of individual States--his whole
country.  But the excitement increasing, he was finally impelled to
return in a faint hope of doing something to allay it, taking his
wife with him, but leaving his daughter at school in Paris.  At
about this time, however, a single cannon shot fired at the
national flag on Fort Sumter shook the whole country, reverberated
even in Europe, sending some earnest hearts back to do battle for
State or country, sending others less earnest into inglorious
exile, but, saddest of all! knocking over the school bench of a
girl at the Paris pensionnat.  For that shot had also sunk
Maynard's ships at the Charleston wharves, scattered his piled
Cotton bales awaiting shipment at the quays, and drove him, a
ruined man, into the "Home Guard" against his better judgment.
Helen Maynard, like a good girl, had implored her father to let her
return and share his risks.  But the answer was "to wait" until
this nine days' madness of an uprising was over.  That madness
lasted six years, outlived Maynard, whose gray, misdoubting head
bit the dust at Ball's Bluff; outlived his colorless widow, and
left Kelly a penniless orphan.

Yet enough of her country was left in her to make her courageous
and independent of her past.  They say that when she got the news
she cried a little, and then laid the letter and what was left of
her last monthly allowance in Madame Ablas' lap.  Madame was
devastated.  "But you, impoverished and desolated angel, what of
you?"  "I shall get some of it back," said the desolated angel with
ingenuous candor, "for I speak better French and English than the
other girls, and I shall teach THEM until I can get into the
Conservatoire, for I have a voice.  You yourself have told papa
so."  From such angelic directness there was no appeal.  Madame
Ablas had a heart,--more, she had a French manageress's
discriminating instinct.  The American schoolgirl was installed in
a teacher's desk; her bosom friends and fellow students became her
pupils.  To some of the richest, and they were mainly of her own
country, she sold her smartest, latest dresses, jewels, and
trinkets at a very good figure, and put the money away against the
Conservatoire in the future.  She worked hard, she endured
patiently everything but commiseration.  "I'd have you know, Miss,"
she said to Miss de Laine, daughter of the famous house of Musslin,
de Laine & Co., of New York, "that whatever my position HERE may
be, it is not one to be patronized by a tapeseller's daughter.  My
case is not such a very 'sad one,' thank you, and I prefer not to
be spoken of as having seen 'better days' by people who haven't.
There!  Don't rap your desk with your pencil when you speak to me,
or I shall call out 'Cash!' before the whole class."  So
regrettable an exhibition of temper naturally alienated certain of
her compatriots who were unduly sensitive of their origin, and as
they formed a considerable colony who were then reveling in the
dregs of the Empire and the last orgies of a tottering court,
eventually cost her her place.  A republican so aristocratic was
not to be tolerated by the true-born Americans who paid court to De
Morny for the phosphorescent splendors of St. Cloud and the
Tuileries, and Miss Helen lost their favor.  But she had already
saved enough money for the Conservatoire and a little attic in a
very tall house in a narrow street that trickled into the ceaseless
flow of the Rue Lafayette.  Here for four years she trotted
backwards and forwards regularly to work with the freshness of
youth and the inflexible set purpose of maturity.  Here, rain or
shine, summer or winter, in the mellow season when the large cafes
expanded under the white sunshine into an overflow of little tables
on the pavement, or when the red glow of the Brasserie shone
through frosty panes on the turned-up collars of pinched Parisians
who hurried by, she was always to be seen.

Half Paris had looked into her clear, gray eyes and passed on; a
smaller and not very youthful portion of Paris had turned and
followed her with small advantage to itself and happily no fear to
her.  For even in her young womanhood she kept her child's loving
knowledge of that great city; she even had an innocent camaraderie
with street sweepers, kiosk keepers, and lemonade venders, and the
sternness of conciergedom melted before her.  In this wholesome,
practical child's experience she naturally avoided or overlooked
what would not have interested a child, and so kept her freshness
and a certain national shrewd simplicity invincible.  There is a
story told of her girlhood that, one day playing in the Tuileries
gardens, she was approached by a gentleman with a waxed mustache
and a still more waxen cheek beneath his heavy-lidded eyes.  There
was an exchange of polite amenities.

"And your name, ma petite?"

"Helen," responded the young girl naively.  "What's yours?"

"Ah," said the kind gentleman, gallantly pulling at his mustache,
"if you are Helen I am Paris."

The young girl raised her clear eyes to his and said gravely, "I
reckon your majesty is FRANCE!"

She retained this childish fearlessness as the poor student of the
Conservatoire; went alone all over Paris with her maiden skirts
untarnished by the gilded dust of the boulevards or the filth of
by-ways; knew all the best shops for her friends, and the cheapest
for her own scant purchases; discovered breakfasts for a few sous
with pale sempstresses, whose sadness she understood, and reckless
chorus girls, whose gayety she didn't; she knew where the earliest
chestnut buds were to be found in the Bois, when the slopes of the
Buttes Chaumont were green, and which was the old woman who sold
the cheapest flowers before the Madeleine.  Alone and independent,
she earned the affection of Madame Bibelot, the concierge, and,
what was more, her confidence.  Her outgoings and incomings were
never questioned.  The little American could take care of herself.
Ah, if her son Jacques were only as reasonable!  Miss Maynard might
have made more friends had she cared; she might have joined hands
with the innocent and light-hearted poverty of the coterie of her
own artistic compatriots, but something in her blood made her
distrust Bohemianism; her poverty was something to her too sacred
for jest or companionship; her own artistic aim was too long and
earnest for mere temporary enthusiasms.  She might have found
friends in her own profession.  Her professor opened the sacred
doors of his family circle to the young American girl.  She
appreciated the delicacy, refinement, and cheerful equal
responsibilities of that household, so widely different from the
accepted Anglo-Saxon belief, but there were certain restrictions
that rightly or wrongly galled her American habits of girlish
freedom, and she resolutely tripped past the first etage four or
five flights higher to her attic, the free sky, and independence!
Here she sometimes met another kind of independence in Monsieur
Alphonse, aged twenty two, and she who ought to have been Madame
Alphonse, aged seventeen, and they often exchanged greetings on the
landing with great respect towards each other, and, oddly enough,
no confusion or distrait.  Later they even borrowed each other's
matches without fear and without reproach, until one day Monsieur
Alphonse's parents took him away, and the desolated soi-disant
Madame Alphonse, in a cheerful burst of confidence, gave Helen her
private opinion of monsieur, and from her seventeen years'
experience warned the American infant of twenty against possible
similar complications.

One day--it was near the examination for prizes, and her funds were
running low--she was obliged to seek one of those humbler
restaurants she knew of for her frugal breakfast.  But she was not
hungry, and after a few mouthfuls left her meal unfinished as a
young man entered and half abstractedly took a seat at her table.
She had already moved towards the comptoir to pay her few sous,
when, chancing to look up in a mirror which hung above the counter,
reflecting the interior of the cafe, she saw the stranger, after
casting a hurried glance around him, remove from her plate the
broken roll and even the crumbs she had left, and as hurriedly
sweep them into his pocket-handkerchief.  There was nothing very
strange in this; she had seen something like it before in these
humbler cafes,--it was a crib for the birds in the Tuileries
Gardens, or the poor artist's substitute for rubber in correcting
his crayon drawing!  But there was a singular flushing of his
handsome face in the act that stirred her with a strange pity, made
her own cheek hot with sympathy, and compelled her to look at him
more attentively.  The back that was turned towards her was broad-
shouldered and symmetrical, and showed a frame that seemed to
require stronger nourishment than the simple coffee and roll he had
ordered and was devouring slowly.  His clothes, well made though
worn, fitted him in a smart, soldier-like way, and accentuated his
decided military bearing.  The singular use of his left hand in
lifting his cup made her uneasy, until a slight movement revealed
the fact that his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his coat.
He was one-armed.  She turned her compassionate eyes aside, yet
lingered to make a few purchases at the counter, as he paid his
bill and walked away.  But she was surprised to see that he
tendered the waiter the unexampled gratuity of a sou.  Perhaps he
was some eccentric Englishman; he certainly did not look like a
Frenchman.

She had quite forgotten the incident, and in the afternoon had
strolled with a few fellow pupils into the galleries of the Louvre.
It was "copying-day," and as her friends loitered around the easels
of the different students with the easy consciousness of being
themselves "artists," she strolled on somewhat abstractedly before
them.  Her own art was too serious to permit her much sympathy with
another, and in the chatter of her companions with the young
painters a certain levity disturbed her.  Suddenly she stopped.
She had reached a less frequented room; there was a single easel at
one side, but the stool before it was empty, and its late occupant
was standing in a recess by the window, with his back towards her.
He had drawn a silk handkerchief from his pocket.  She recognized
his square shoulders, she recognized the handkerchief, and as he
unrolled it she recognized the fragments of her morning's breakfast
as he began to eat them.  It was the one-armed man.

She remained so motionless and breathless that he finished his scant
meal without noticing her, and even resumed his place before the
easel without being aware of her presence.  The noise of approaching
feet gave a fresh impulse to her own, and she moved towards him.
But he was evidently accustomed to these interruptions, and worked
on steadily without turning his head.  As the other footsteps passed
her she was emboldened to take a position behind him and glance at
his work.  It was an architectural study of one of Canaletto's
palaces.  Even her inexperienced eyes were struck with its vigor and
fidelity.  But she was also conscious of a sense of disappointment.
Why was he not--like the others--copying one of the masterpieces?
Becoming at last aware of a motionless woman behind him, he rose,
and with a slight gesture of courtesy and a half-hesitating "Vous
verrez mieux la, mademoiselle," moved to one side.

"Thank you," said Miss Maynard in English, "but I did not want to
disturb you."

He glanced quickly at her face for the first time.  "Ah, you are
English!" he said.

"No.  I am American."

His face lightened.  "So am I."

"I thought so," she said.

"From my bad French?"

"No.  Because you did not look up to see if the woman you were
polite to was old or young."

He smiled.  "And you, mademoiselle,--you did not murmur a compliment
to the copy over the artist's back."

She smiled, too, yet with a little pang over the bread.  But she
was relieved to see that he evidently had not recognized her.  "You
are modest," she said; "you do not attempt masterpieces."

"Oh, no!  The giants like Titian and Corregio must be served with
both hands.  I have only one," he said half lightly, half sadly.

"But you have been a soldier," she said with quick intuition.

"Not much.  Only during our war,--until I was compelled to handle
nothing larger than a palette knife.  Then I came home to New York,
and, as I was no use there, I came here to study."

"I am from South Carolina," she said quietly, with a rising color.

He put his palette down, and glanced at her black dress.  "Yes,"
she went on doggedly, "my father lost all his property, and was
killed in battle with the Northerners.  I am an orphan,--a pupil of
the Conservatoire."  It was never her custom to allude to her
family or her lost fortunes; she knew not why she did it now, but
something impelled her to rid her mind of it to him at once.  Yet
she was pained at his grave and pitying face.

"I am very sorry," he said simply.  Then, after a pause, he added,
with a gentle smile, "At all events you and I will not quarrel here
under the wings of the French eagles that shelter us both."

"I only wanted to explain why I was alone in Paris," she said, a
little less aggressively.

He replied by unhooking his palette, which was ingeniously fastened
by a strap over his shoulder under the missing arm, and opened a
portfolio of sketches at his side.  "Perhaps they may interest you
more than the copy, which I have attempted only to get at this
man's method.  They are sketches I have done here."

There was a buttress of Notre Dame, a black arch of the Pont Neuf,
part of an old courtyard in the Faubourg St. Germain,--all very
fresh and striking.  Yet, with the recollection of his poverty in
her mind, she could not help saying, "But if you copied one of
those masterpieces, you know you could sell it.  There is always a
demand for that work."

"Yes," he replied, "but these help me in my line, which is
architectural study.  It is, perhaps, not very ambitious," he added
thoughtfully, "but," brightening up again, "I sell these sketches,
too.  They are quite marketable, I assure you."

Helen's heart sank again.  She remembered now to have seen such
sketches--she doubted not they were his--in the cheap shops in the
Rue Poissoniere, ticketed at a few francs each.  She was silent as
he patiently turned them over.  Suddenly she uttered a little cry.

He had just uncovered a little sketch of what seemed at first sight
only a confused cluster of roof tops, dormer windows, and chimneys,
level with the sky-line.  But it was bathed in the white sunshine
of Paris, against the blue sky she knew so well.  There, too, were
the gritty crystals and rust of the tiles, the red, brown, and
greenish mosses of the gutters, and lower down the more vivid
colors of geraniums and pansies in flower-pots under the white
dimity curtains which hid the small panes of garret windows; yet
every sordid detail touched and transfigured with the poetry and
romance of youth and genius.

"You have seen this?" she said.

"Yes; it is a study from my window.  One must go high for such
effects.  You would be surprised if you could see how different the
air and sunshine"--

"No," she interrupted gently, "I HAVE seen it."

"You?" he repeated, gazing at her curiously.

Helen ran the point of her slim finger along the sketch until it
reached a tiny dormer window in the left-hand corner, half-hidden
by an irregular chimney-stack.  The curtains were closely drawn.
Keeping her finger upon the spot, she said, interrogatively, "And
you saw THAT window?"

"Yes, quite plainly.  I remember it was always open, and the room
seemed empty from early morning to evening, when the curtains were
drawn."

"It is my room," she said simply.

Their eyes met with this sudden confession of their equal poverty.
"And mine," he said gayly, "from which this view was taken, is in
the rear and still higher up on the other street."

They both laughed as if some singular restraint had been removed;
Helen even forgot the incident of the bread in her relief.  Then
they compared notes of their experiences, of their different
concierges, of their housekeeping, of the cheap stores and the
cheaper restaurants of Paris,--except one.  She told him her name,
and learned that his was Philip, or, if she pleased, Major
Ostrander.  Suddenly glancing at her companions, who were
ostentatiously lingering at a little distance, she became conscious
for the first time that she was talking quite confidentially to a
very handsome man, and for a brief moment wished, she knew not why,
that he had been plainer.  This momentary restraint was accented by
the entrance of a lady and gentleman, rather distingue in dress and
bearing, who had stopped before them, and were eying equally the
artist, his work, and his companion with somewhat insolent
curiosity.  Helen felt herself stiffening; her companion drew
himself up with soldierly rigidity.  For a moment it seemed as if,
under that banal influence, they would part with ceremonious
continental politeness, but suddenly their hands met in a national
handshake, and with a frank smile they separated.

Helen rejoined her companions.

"So you have made a conquest of the recently acquired but unknown
Greek statue?" said Mademoiselle Renee lightly.  "You should take
up a subscription to restore his arm, ma petite, if there is a
modern sculptor who can do it.  You might suggest it to the two
Russian cognoscenti, who have been hovering around him as if they
wanted to buy him as well as his work.  Madame La Princesse is rich
enough to indulge her artistic taste."

"It is a countryman of mine," said Helen simply.

"He certainly does not speak French," said mademoiselle mischievously.

"Nor think it," responded Helen with equal vivacity.  Nevertheless,
she wished she had seen him alone.

She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises.
But the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing,
she drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole
in the curtain, looked over the opposite roofs. She had seen them
many times before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness,
which as her view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter's
sketch, must have been a transfigured memory of her own.  Then she
glanced curiously along the line of windows level with hers.  All
these, however, with their occasional revelations of the menage
behind them, were also familiar to her, but now she began to wonder
which was his.  A singular instinct at last impelled her to lift her
eyes.  Higher in the corner house, and so near the roof that it
scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand upright behind it,
was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other roofs, and framed
in that circular opening like a vignette was the handsome face of
Major Ostrander.  His eyes seemed to be turned towards her window.
Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a friendly
nod.  But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn away
quickly.

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near
her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental
on his part.  She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire.  In
the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-
cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and
was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to
accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:--

"I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard."

Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

"The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were
pleased, however, to also stare at my work.  They offered me a
fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches.  It didn't seem to me
quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had
forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply
referred them to him."

"No!" said Miss Helen indignantly; "you were not so foolish?"

Ostrander laughed.

"I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted
what they saw in my portfolio."

"Of course," said Helen.  "Why, that sketch of the housetop alone
was worth a hundred times more than what you"--  She stopped; she
did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added,
"more than what any of those usurers would give."

"I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,"
he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.

She did not see him again for several days.  The preparation for
her examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in
her work fully preoccupied her thoughts.  She was surprised, but
not disturbed, on the day of the awards to see him among the
audience of anxious parents and relations.  Miss Helen Maynard did
not get the first prize, nor yet the second; an accessit was her
only award.  She did not know until afterwards that this had long
been a foregone conclusion of her teachers on account of some
intrinsic defect in her voice.  She did not know until long
afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion
had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him.
For she herself had been calm and collected.  No one else knew how
crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three
years of labor and privation a useless struggle.  Yet though no
longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a
small patronage that saved her from destitution.  That night she
circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest
under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over
the condolences of the concierge--who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast
the director of the Conservatoire was and how he could be bribed;
but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she cried--just
a little.

But what was all this to that next morning--the glorious spring
morning which bathed all the roofs of Paris with warmth and hope,
rekindling enthusiasm and ambition in the breast of youth, and
gilding even much of the sordid dirt below.  It seemed quite
natural that she should meet Major Ostrander not many yards away as
she sallied out.  In that bright spring sunshine and the hopeful
spring of their youth they even laughed at the previous day's
disappointment.  Ah! what a claque it was, after all!  For himself,
he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced Parisian girl
who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the boards of
the Grand Opera than his countrywoman!  The Conservatoire settled
things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world!  America would come
to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy there
now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own.  Of course, Paris
schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but,
thank heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from
her!  This and much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly
found that they were both free for that day.  Why should they not
take advantage of that rare weather and rarer opportunity to make a
little suburban excursion?  But where?  There was the Bois, but
that was still Paris.  Fontainebleau?  Too far; there were always
artists sketching in the forest, and he would like for that day to
"sink the shop."  Versailles?  Ah, yes!  Versailles!

Thither they went.  It was not new to either of them.  Ostrander
knew it as an artist and as an American reader of that French
historic romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of
the Oeil de Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Petit Trianon, and the
sham heroics of a shifty court, to get to Lafayette.  Helen knew it
as a child who had dodged these lessons from her patriotic father,
but had enjoyed the woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly
the restaurant at the park gates.  That day they took it like a boy
and girl,--with the amused, omniscient tolerance of youth for a past
so inferior to the present.  Ostrander thought this gray-eyed,
independent American-French girl far superior to the obsequious
filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled through those
quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her fellow
pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the
Louvre.  Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the
one-armed soldier-painter!

All this was as yet free from either sentiment or passion, and was
only the frank pride of friendship.  But, oddly enough, their mere
presence and companionship seemed to excite in others that
tenderness they had not yet felt themselves.  Family groups watched
the handsome pair in their innocent confidences, and, with French
exuberant recognition of sentiment, thought them the incarnation of
Love.  Something in their manifest equality of condition kept even
the vainest and most susceptible of spectators from attempted
rivalry or cynical interruption.  And when at last they dropped
side by side on a sun-warmed stone bench on the terrace, and Helen,
inclining her brown head towards her companion, informed him of the
difficulty she had experienced in getting gumbo soup, rice and
chicken, corn cakes, or any of her favorite home dishes in Paris,
an exhausted but gallant boulevardier rose from a contiguous bench,
and, politely lifting his hat to the handsome couple, turned slowly
away from what he believed were tender confidences he would not
permit himself to hear.

But the shadow of the trees began to lengthen, casting broad bars
across the alle, and the sun sank lower to the level of their eyes.
They were quite surprised, on looking around a few moments later,
to discover that the gardens were quite deserted, and Ostrander, on
consulting his watch, found that they had just lost a train which
the other pleasure-seekers had evidently availed themselves of.  No
matter; there was another train an hour later; they could still
linger for a few moments in the brief sunset and then dine at the
local restaurant before they left.  They both laughed at their
forgetfulness, and then, without knowing why, suddenly lapsed into
silence.  A faint wind blew in their faces and trilled the thin
leaves above their heads.  Nothing else moved.  The long windows of
the palace in that sunset light seemed to glisten again with the
incendiary fires of the Revolution, and then went out blankly and
abruptly.  The two companions felt that they possessed the terrace
and all its memories as completely as the shadows who had lived and
died there.

"I am so glad we have had this day together," said the painter,
with a very conscious breaking of the silence, "for I am leaving
Paris to-morrow."

Helen raised her eyes quickly to his.

"For a few days only," he continued.  "My Russian customers--
perhaps I ought to say my patrons--have given me a commission to
make a study of an old chateau which the princess lately bought."

A swift recollection of her fellow pupil's raillery regarding the
princess's possible attitude towards the painter came over her and
gave a strange artificiality to her response.

"I suppose you will enjoy it very much," she said dryly.

"No," he returned with the frankness that she had lacked.  "I'd
much rather stay in Paris, but," he added with a faint smile, "it's
a question of money, and that is not to be despised.  Yet I--I--
somehow feel that I am deserting you,--leaving you here all alone
in Paris."

"I've been all alone for four years," she said, with a bitterness
she had never felt before, "and I suppose I'm accustomed to it."

Nevertheless she leaned a little forward, with her fawn-colored
lashes dropped over her eyes, which were bent upon the ground and
the point of the parasol she was holding with her little gloved
hands between her knees.  He wondered why she did not look up; he
did not know that it was partly because there were tears in her
eyes and partly for another reason.  As she had leaned forward his
arm had quite unconsciously moved along the back of the bench where
her shoulders had rested, and she could not have resumed her
position except in his half embrace.

He had not thought of it.  He was lost in a greater abstraction.
That infinite tenderness,--far above a woman's,--the tenderness of
strength and manliness towards weakness and delicacy, the
tenderness that looks down and not up, was already possessing him.
An instinct of protection drew him nearer this bowed but charming
figure, and if he then noticed that the shoulders were pretty, and
the curves of the slim waist symmetrical, it was rather with a
feeling of timidity and a half-consciousness of unchivalrous
thought.  Yet why should he not try to keep the brave and honest
girl near him always?  Why should he not claim the right to protect
her?  Why should they not--they who were alone in a strange land--
join their two lonely lives for mutual help and happiness?

A sudden perception of delicacy, the thought that he should have
spoken before her failure at the Conservatoire had made her feel
her helplessness, brought a slight color to his cheek.  Would it
not seem to her that he was taking an unfair advantage of her
misfortune?  Yet it would be so easy now to slip a loving arm
around her waist, while he could work for her and protect her with
the other.  THE OTHER!  His eye fell on his empty sleeve.  Ah, he
had forgotten that!  He had but ONE arm!

He rose up abruptly,--so abruptly that Helen, rising too, almost
touched the arm that was hurriedly withdrawn.  Yet in that
accidental contact, which sent a vague tremor through the young
girl's frame, there was still time for him to have spoken.  But he
only said:--

"Perhaps we had better dine."

She assented quickly,--she knew not why,--with a feeling of relief.
They walked very quietly and slowly towards the restaurant.  Not a
word of love had been spoken; not even a glance of understanding
had passed between them.  Yet they both knew by some mysterious
instinct that a crisis of their lives had come and gone, and that
they never again could be to each other as they were but a brief
moment ago.  They talked very sensibly and gravely during their
frugal meal; the previous spectator of their confidences would have
now thought them only simple friends and have been as mistaken as
before.  They talked freely of their hopes and prospects,--all save
one!  They even spoke pleasantly of repeating their little
expedition after his return from the country, while in their secret
hearts they had both resolved never to see each other again.  Yet
by that sign each knew that this was love, and were proud of each
other's pride, which kept it a secret.

The train was late, and it was past ten o'clock when they at last
appeared before the concierge of Helen's home.  During their
journey, and while passing though the crowds at the station and in
the streets, Ostrander had exhibited a new and grave guardianship
over the young girl, and, on the first landing, after a
scrutinizing and an almost fierce glance at one or two of Helen's
odd fellow lodgers, he had extended his protection so far as to
accompany her up the four flights to the landing of her apartment.
Here he took leave of her with a grave courtesy that half pained,
half pleased her.  She watched his broad shoulders and dangling
sleeve as he went down the stairs, and then quickly turned, entered
her room, and locked the door.  The smile had faded from her lips.
Going to the window, she pressed her hot forehead against the cool
glass and looked out upon the stars nearly level with the black
roofs around her.  She stood there some moments until another star
appeared higher up against the roof ridge, the star she was looking
for.  But here the glass pane before her eyes became presently dim
with moisture; she was obliged to rub it out with her handkerchief;
yet, somehow, it soon became clouded, at which she turned sharply
away and went to bed.

But Miss Helen did not know that when she had looked after the
retreating figure of her protector as he descended the stairs that
night that he was really carrying away on those broad shoulders the
character she had so laboriously gained during her four years'
solitude.  For when she came down the next morning the concierge
bowed to her with an air of easy, cynical abstraction, the result
of a long conversation with his wife the night before.  He had
taken Helen's part with a kindly cynicism.  "Ah! what would you--it
was bound to come.  The affair of the Conservatoire had settled
that.  The poor child could not starve; penniless, she could not
marry.  Only why consort with other swallows under the eaves when
she could have had a gilded cage on the first etage?"  But girls
were so foolish--in their first affair; then it was always LOVE!
The second time they were wiser.  And this maimed warrior and
painter was as poor as she.  A compatriot, too; well, perhaps that
saved some scandal; one could never know what the Americans were
accustomed to do.  The first floor, which had been inclined to be
civil to the young teacher, was more so, but less respectful; one
or two young men were tentatively familiar until they looked in her
gray eyes and remembered the broad shoulders of the painter.  Oddly
enough, only Mademoiselle Fifine, of her own landing, exhibited any
sympathy with her, and for the first time Helen was frightened.
She did not show it, however, only she changed her lodgings the
next day.  But before she left she had a few moments' conversation
with the concierge and an exchange of a word or two with some of
her fellow lodgers.  I have already hinted that the young lady had
great precision of statement; she had a pretty turn for handling
colloquial French and an incisive knowledge of French character.
She left No. 34, Rue de Frivole, working itself into a white rage,
but utterly undecided as to her real character.

But all this and much more was presently blown away in the hot
breath that swept the boulevards at the outburst of the Franco-
German War, and Miss Helen Maynard disappeared from Paris with many
of her fellow countrymen.  The excitement reached even a quaint old
chateau in Brittany where Major Ostrander was painting.  The woman
who was standing by his side as he sat before his easel on the
broad terrace observed that he looked disturbed.

"What matters?" she said gently.  "You have progressed so well in
your work that you can finish it elsewhere.  I have no great desire
to stay in France with a frontier garrisoned by troops while I have
a villa in Switzerland where you could still be my guest.  Paris
can teach you nothing more, my friend; you have only to create now--
and be famous."

"I must go to Paris," he said quietly.  "I have friends--
countrymen--there, who may want me now."

"If you mean the young singer of the Rue de Frivole, you have
compromised her already.  You can do her no good."

"Madame!"

The pretty face which he had been familiar with for the past six
weeks somehow seemed to change its character.  Under the mask of
dazzling skin he fancied he saw the high cheek-bones and square
Tartar angle; the brilliant eyes were even brighter than before,
but they showed more of the white than he had ever seen in them.

Nevertheless she smiled, with an equally stony revelation of her
white teeth, yet said, still gently, "Forgive me if I thought our
friendship justified me in being frank,--perhaps too frank for my
own good."

She stopped as if half expecting an interruption; but as he
remained looking wonderingly at her, she bit her lip, and went on:
"You have a great career before you.  Those who help you must do so
without entangling you; a chain of roses may be as impeding as
lead.  Until you are independent, you--who may in time compass
everything yourself--will need to be helped.  You know," she added
with a smile, "you have but one arm."

"In your kindness and appreciation you have made me forget it," he
stammered.  Yet he had a swift vision of the little bench at
Versailles where he had NOT forgotten it, and as he glanced around
the empty terrace where they stood he was struck with a fateful
resemblance to it.

"And I should not remind you now of it," she went on, "except to
say that money can always take its place.  As in the fairy story,
the prince must have a new arm made of gold."  She stopped, and
then suddenly coming closer to him said, hurriedly and almost
fiercely, "Can you not see that I am advising you against my
interests,--against myself?  Go, then, to Paris, and go quickly,
before I change my mind.  Only if you do not find your friends
there, remember you have always ONE here."  Before he could reply,
or even understand that white face, she was gone.

He left for Paris that afternoon.  He went directly to the Rue de
Frivole; his old resolution to avoid Helen was blown to the winds
in the prospect of losing her utterly.  But the concierge only knew
that mademoiselle had left a day or two after monsieur had
accompanied her home.  And, pointedly, there was another gentleman
who had inquired eagerly--and bountifully as far as money went--for
any trace of the young lady.  It was a Russe.  The concierge smiled
to himself at Ostrander's flushed cheek.  It served this one-armed,
conceited American poseur right.  Mademoiselle was wiser in this
SECOND affair.

Ostrander did not finish his picture.  The princess sent him a
cheque, which he coldly returned.  Nevertheless he had acquired
through his Russian patronage a local fame which stood him well
with the picture dealers,--in spite of the excitement of the war.
But his heart was no longer in his work; a fever of unrest seized
him, which at another time might have wasted itself in mere
dissipation.  Some of his fellow artists had already gone into the
army.  After the first great reverses he offered his one arm and
his military experience to that Paris which had given him a home.
The old fighting instinct returned to him with a certain
desperation he had never known before.  In the sorties from Paris
the one-armed American became famous, until a few days before the
capitulation, when he was struck down by a bullet through the lung,
and left in a temporary hospital.  Here in the whirl and terror of
Commune days he was forgotten, and when Paris revived under the
republic he had disappeared as completely as his compatriot Helen.

But Miss Helen Maynard had been only obscured and not extinguished.
At the first outbreak of hostilities a few Americans had still kept
giddy state among the ruins of the tottering empire.  A day or two
after she left the Rue de Frivole she was invited by one of her
wealthy former schoolmates to assist with her voice and talent at
one of their extravagant entertainments.  "You will understand,
dear," said Miss de Laine, with ingenious delicacy, as she eyed her
old comrade's well-worn dress, "that Poppa expects to pay you
professional prices, and it may be an opening for you among our
other friends."

"I should not come otherwise, dear," said Miss Helen with equal
frankness.  But she played and sang very charmingly to the
fashionable assembly in the Champs Elysees,--so charmingly, indeed,
that Miss de Laine patronizingly expatiated upon her worth and her
better days in confidence to some of the guests.

"A most deserving creature," said Miss de Laine to the dowager
duchess of Soho, who was passing through Paris on her way to
England; "you would hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when
he was one of the richest men in South Carolina."

"Your father seems to have been very fortunate," said the duchess
quietly, "and so are YOU.  Introduce me."

This not being exactly the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she
momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over
to the piano and introduce herself.  When she rose to go she
invited Helen to luncheon with her the next day.  "Come early, my
dear, and we'll have a long talk."  Helen pointed out hesitatingly
that she was practically a guest of the de Laines.  "Ah, well,
that's true, my dear; then you may bring one of them with you."

Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied.  She had a long
talk with the dowager.  "I am not rich, my dear, like your friends,
and cannot afford to pay ten napoleons for a song.  Like you I have
seen 'better days.'  But this is no place for you, child, and if
you can bear with an old woman's company for a while I think I can
find you something to do."  That evening Helen left for England
with the duchess, a piece of "ingratitude, indelicacy, and
shameless snobbery," which Miss de Laine was never weary of
dilating upon.  "And to think I introduced her, though she was a
professional!"

        .        .        .        .        .        .

It was three years after.  Paris, reviving under the republic, had
forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony,
emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.

It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the
window of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the
wonderful lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies,
heard the practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at
the same moment that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand
on her shoulder.

"We are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear."

"Why, we were there only last week!" said Helen.

"Undoubtedly," returned the duchess dryly, "and we may luncheon
there next week and the next following.  And," she added, looking
into her companion's gray eyes, "it rests with YOU to stay there if
you choose."

Helen stared at her protector.

"My dear," continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helen's
waist, "Sir James has honored ME--as became my relations to YOU--
with his confidences.  As you haven't given me YOURS I suppose you
have none, and that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James
wishes to marry you."

The unmistakable astonishment in the girl's eye satisfied the
duchess even before her voice.

"But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!" said the young girl
quickly.

"On the contrary, my dear, he knows EVERYTHING about you.  I have
been particular in telling him all I know--and some things even YOU
don't know and couldn't tell him.  For instance, that you are a
very nice person.  Come, my dear, don't look so stupefied, or I
shall really think there's something in it that I don't know.  It's
not a laughing nor a crying matter yet--at present it's only
luncheon again with a civil man who has three daughters and a place
in the county.  Don't make the mistake, however, of refusing him
before he offers--whatever you do afterwards."

"But"--stammered Helen.

"But--you are going to say that you don't love him and have never
thought of him as a husband," interrupted the duchess; "I read it
in your face,--and it's a very proper thing to say."

"It is so unexpected," urged Helen.

"Everything is unexpected from a man in these matters," said the
duchess.  "We women are the only ones that are prepared."

"But," persisted Helen, "if I don't want to marry at all?"

"I should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were
eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you."  She paused, and
then drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine
tenderness, "As long as I live, dear, you know that you have a home
here.  But I am an old woman living on the smallest of settlements.
Death is as inevitable to me as marriage should be to you."

Nevertheless, they did not renew the conversation, and later
received the greetings of their host at Moreland Hall with a
simplicity and frankness that were, however, perfectly natural and
unaffected in both women.  Sir James,--a tall, well-preserved man
of middle age, with the unmistakable bearing of long years of
recognized and unchallenged position,--however, exhibited on this
occasion that slight consciousness of weakness and susceptibility
to ridicule which is apt to indicate the invasion of the tender
passion in the heart of the average Briton.  His duty as host
towards the elder woman of superior rank, however, covered his
embarrassment, and for a moment left Helen quite undisturbed to
gaze again upon the treasures of the long drawing-room of Moreland
Hall with which she was already familiar.  There were the half-
dozen old masters, whose respectability had been as recognized
through centuries as their owner's ancestors; there were the
ancestors themselves,--wigged, ruffled, and white-handed, by
Vandyke, Lely, Romney, and Gainsborough; there were the uniform,
expressionless ancestresses in stiff brocade or short-waisted,
clinging draperies, but all possessing that brilliant coloring
which the gray skies outside lacked, and which seemed to have
departed from the dresses of their descendants.  The American girl
had sometimes speculated upon what might have been the appearance
of the lime-tree walk, dotted with these gayly plumaged folk, and
wondered if the tyranny of environment had at last subdued their
brilliant colors.  And a new feeling touched her.  Like most of her
countrywomen, she was strongly affected by the furniture of life;
the thought that all that she saw there MIGHT BE HERS; that she
might yet stand in succession to these strange courtiers and
stranger shepherdesses, and, like them, look down from the canvas
upon the intruding foreigner, thrilled her for a moment with a
half-proud, half-passive sense of yielding to what seemed to be her
fate.  A narrow-eyed, stiff-haired Dutch maid of honor before whom
she was standing gazed at her with staring vacancy.  Suddenly she
started.  Before the portrait upon a fanciful easel stood a small
elaborately framed sketch in oils.  It was evidently some recently
imported treasure.  She had not seen it before.  As she moved
quickly forward, she recognized at a glance that it was Ostrander's
sketch from the Paris grenier.

The wall, the room, the park beyond, even the gray sky, seemed to
fade away before her.  She was standing once more at her attic
window looking across the roofs and chimney stacks upward to the
blue sky of Paris.  Through a gap in the roofs she could see the
chestnut-trees trilling in the little square; she could hear the
swallows twittering in the leaden troughs of the gutter before her;
the call of the chocolate vender or the cry of a gamin floated up
to her from the street below, or the latest song of the cafe
chantant was whistled by the blue-bloused workman on the
scaffolding hard by.  The breath of Paris, of youth, of blended
work and play, of ambition, of joyous freedom, again filled her and
mingled with the scent of the mignonette that used to stand on the
old window-ledge.

"I am glad you like it.  I have only just put it up."

It was the voice of Sir James--a voice that had regained a little
of its naturalness--a calm, even lazy English voice--confident from
the experience of years of respectful listeners.  Yet it somehow
jarred upon her nerves with its complacency and its utter
incongruousness to her feelings.  Nevertheless, the impulse to know
more about the sketch was the stronger.

"Do you mean you have just bought it?" asked Helen.  "It's not
English?"

"No," said Sir James, gratified with his companion's interest.  "I
bought it in Paris just after the Commune."

"From the artist?" continued Helen, in a slightly constrained
voice.

"No," said Sir James, "although I knew the poor chap well enough.
You can easily see that he was once a painter of great promise.  I
rather think it was stolen from him while he was in hospital by
those incendiary wretches.  I recognized it, however, and bought
for a few francs from them what I would have paid HIM a thousand
for."

"In hospital?" repeated Helen dazedly.

"Yes," said Sir James.  "The fact is it was the ending of the usual
Bohemian artist's life.  Though in this case the man was a real
artist,--and I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours."

"In hospital?" again repeated Helen.  "Then he was poor?"

"Reckless, I should rather say; he threw himself into the fighting
before Paris and was badly wounded.  But it was all the result of
the usual love affair--the girl, they say, ran off with the usual
richer man.  At all events, it ruined him for painting; he never
did anything worth having afterwards."

"And now?" said Helen in the same unmoved voice.

Sir James shrugged his shoulders.  "He disappeared.  Probably he'll
turn up some day on the London pavement--with chalks.  That sketch,
by the way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio--
though he never would part with it.  I rather fancy, don't you
know, that the girl had something to do with it.  It's a
wonderfully realistic sketch, don't you see; and I shouldn't wonder
if it was the girl herself who lived behind one of those queer
little windows in the roof there."

"She did live there," said Helen in a low voice.

Sir James uttered a vague laugh.  Helen looked around her.  The
duchess had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library,
and in full view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her
glass to her eye, some books upon the shelves.

"I mean," said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, "that the young
girl did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the
right nor the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his
misfortunes to her."  She hesitated, not from any sense of her
indiscretion, but to recover from a momentary doubt if the girl
were really her own self--but only for a moment.

"Then you knew the painter, as I did?" he said in astonishment.

"Not as YOU did," responded Helen.  She drew nearer the picture,
and, pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:--

"Do you see that small window with the mignonette?"

"Perfectly."

"That was MY room.  His was opposite.  He told me so when I first
saw the sketch.  I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other,
and I believe him to have been a truthful, honorable man."

"But what were you doing there?  Surely you are joking?" said Sir
James, with a forced smile.

"I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could
afford to live."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"And the man was"--

"Major Ostrander was my friend.  I even think I have a better right
to call him that than you had."

Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat.  "Of
course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, don't you know, when I
spoke."  He looked around him as if to evade a scene.  "Ah! suppose
we ask the duchess to look at the sketch; I don't think she's seen
it."  He began to move in the direction of the library.

"She had better wait," said Helen quietly.

"For what?"

"Until"--hesitated Helen smilingly.

"Until?  I am afraid I don't understand," said Sir James stiffly,
coloring with a slight suspicion.

"Until you have APOLOGIZED."

"Of course," said Sir James, with a half-hysteric laugh.  "I do.
You understand I only repeated a story that was told me, and had no
idea of connecting YOU with it.  I beg your pardon, I'm sure.  I
er--er--in fact," he added suddenly, the embarrassed smile fading
from his face as he looked at her fixedly, "I remember now it must
have been the concierge of the house, or the opposite one, who told
me.  He said it was a Russian who carried off that young girl.  Of
course it was some made-up story."

"I left Paris with the duchess," said Helen quietly, "before the
war."

"Of course.  And she knows all about your friendship with this
man."

"I don't think she does.  I haven't told her.  Why should I?"
returned Helen, raising her clear eyes to his.

"Really, I don't know," stammered Sir James.  "But here she is.  Of
course if you prefer it, I won't say anything of this to her."

Helen gave him her first glance of genuine emotion; it happened,
however, to be scorn.

"How odd!" she said, as the duchess leisurely approached them, her
glass still in her eye.  "Sir James, quite unconsciously, has just
been showing me a sketch of my dear old mansarde in Paris.  Look!
That little window was my room.  And, only think of it, Sir James
bought it of an old friend of mine, who painted it from the
opposite attic, where he lived.  And quite unconsciously, too."

"How very singular!" said the duchess; "indeed, quite romantic!"

"Very!" said Sir James.

"Very!" said Helen.

The tone of their voices was so different that the duchess looked
from one to the other.

"But that isn't all," said Helen with a smile, "Sir James actually
fancied"--

"Will you excuse me for a moment?" said Sir James, interrupting,
and turning hastily to the duchess with a forced smile and a
somewhat heightened color.  "I had forgotten that I had promised
Lady Harriet to drive you over to Deep Hill after luncheon to meet
that South American who has taken such a fancy to your place, and I
must send to the stables."

As Sir James disappeared, the duchess turned to Helen.  "I see what
has happened, dear; don't mind me, for I frankly confess I shall
now eat my luncheon less guiltily than I feared.  But tell me, HOW
did you refuse him?"

"I didn't refuse him," said Helen.  "I only prevented his asking
me."

"How?"

Then Helen told her all,--everything except her first meeting with
Ostrander at the restaurant.  A true woman respects the pride of
those she loves more even than her own, and while Helen felt that
although that incident might somewhat condone her subsequent
romantic passion in the duchess's eyes, she could not tell it.

The duchess listened in silence.

"Then you two incompetents have never seen each other since?" she
asked.

"No."

"But you hope to?"

"I cannot speak for HIM," said Helen.

"And you have never written to him, and don't know whether he is
alive or dead?"

"No."

"Then I have been nursing in my bosom for three years at one and
the same time a brave, independent, matter-of-fact young person and
the most idiotic, sentimental heroine that ever figured in a
romantic opera or a country ballad."  Helen did not reply.  "Well,
my dear," said the duchess after a pause, "I see that you are
condemned to pass your days with me in some cheap hotel on the
continent."  Helen looked up wonderingly.  "Yes," she continued, "I
suppose I must now make up my mind to sell my place to this gilded
South American, who has taken a fancy to it.  But I am not going to
spoil my day by seeing him NOW.  No; we will excuse ourselves from
going to Deep Hill to-day, and we will go back home quietly after
luncheon.  It will be a mercy to Sir James."

"But," said Helen earnestly, "I can go back to my old life, and
earn my own living."

"Not if I can help it," said the duchess grimly.  "Your independence
has made you a charming companion to me, I admit; but I shall see
that it does not again spoil your chances of marrying. Here comes
Sir James.  Really, my dear, I don't know which one of you looks the
more relieved."

On their way back through the park Helen again urged the duchess to
give up the idea of selling Hamley Court, and to consent to her
taking up her old freedom and independence once more.  "I shall
never, never forget your loving kindness and protection," continued
the young girl, tenderly.  "You will let me come to you always when
you want me; but you will let me also shape my life anew, and work
for my living."  The duchess turned her grave, half humorous face
towards her.  "That means you have determined to seek HIM.  Well!
Perhaps if you give up your other absurd idea of independence, I
may assist you.  And now I really believe, dear, that there is that
dreadful South American," pointing to a figure that was crossing
the lawn at Hamley Court, "hovering round like a vulture.  Well, I
can't see him to-day if he calls, but YOU may.  By the way, they
say he is not bad-looking, was a famous general in the South
American War, and is rolling in money, and comes here on a secret
mission from his government.  But I forget--the rest of our life is
to be devoted to seeking ANOTHER.  And I begin to think I am not a
good matchmaker."

Helen was in no mood for an interview with the stranger, whom, like
the duchess, she was inclined to regard as a portent of fate and
sacrifice.  She knew her friend's straitened circumstances, which
might make such a sacrifice necessary to insure a competency for
her old age, and, as Helen feared also, a provision for herself.
She knew the strange tenderness of this masculine woman, which had
survived a husband's infidelities and a son's forgetfulness, to be
given to her, and her heart sank at the prospect of separation,
even while her pride demanded that she should return to her old
life again.  Then she wondered if the duchess was right; did she
still cherish the hope of meeting Ostrander again?  The tears she
had kept back all that day asserted themselves as she flung open
the library door and ran across the garden into the myrtle walk.
"In hospital!"  The words had been ringing in her ears though Sir
James's complacent speech, through the oddly constrained luncheon,
through the half-tender, half-masculine reasoning of her companion.
He HAD loved her--he had suffered and perhaps thought her false.
Suddenly she stopped.  At the further end of the walk the ominous
stranger whom she wished to avoid was standing looking towards the
house.

How provoking!  She glanced again; he was leaning against a tree
and was obviously as preoccupied as she was herself.  He was
actually sketching the ivy-covered gable of the library.  What
presumption!  And he was sketching with his left hand.  A sudden
thrill of superstition came over her.  She moved eagerly forward
for a better view of him.  No! he had two arms!

But his quick eye had already caught sight of her, and before she
could retreat she could see that he had thrown away his sketch-book
and was hastening eagerly toward her.  Amazed and confounded she
would have flown, but her limbs suddenly refused their office, and
as he at last came near her with the cry of "Helen!" upon his lips,
she felt herself staggering, and was caught in his arms.

"Thank God," he said.  "Then she HAS let you come to me!"

She disengaged herself slowly and dazedly from him and stood
looking at him with wondering eyes.  He was bronzed and worn; there
was the second arm: but still it was HE.  And with the love, which
she now knew he had felt, looking from his honest eyes!

"SHE has let me come!" she repeated vacantly.  "Whom do you mean?"

"The duchess."

"The duchess?"

"Yes."  He stopped suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his
own grew ashy white.  "Helen!  For God's sake tell me!  You have
not accepted him?"

"I have accepted no one," she stammered, with a faint color rising
to her cheeks.  "I do not understand you."

A look of relief came over him.  "But," he said amazedly, "has not
the duchess told you how I happen to be here?  How, when you
disappeared from Paris long ago--with my ambition crushed, and
nothing left to me but my old trade of the fighter--I joined a
secret expedition to help the Chilian revolutionists?  How I, who
might have starved as a painter, gained distinction as a partisan
general, and was rewarded with an envoyship in Europe?  How I came
to Paris to seek you?  How I found that even the picture--your
picture, Helen--had been sold.  How, in tracing it here, I met the
duchess at Deep Hill, and learning you were with her, in a moment
of impulse told her my whole story.  How she told me that though
she was your best friend, you had never spoken of me, and how she
begged me not to spoil your chance of a good match by revealing
myself, and so awakening a past--which she believed you had
forgotten.  How she implored me at least to let her make a fair
test of your affections and your memory, and until then to keep
away from you--and to spare you, Helen; and for your sake, I
consented.  Surely she has told this, NOW!"

"Not a word," said Helen blankly.

"Then you mean to say that if I had not haunted the park to-day, in
the hope of seeing you, believing that as you would not recognize
me with this artificial arm, I should not break my promise to her,--
you would not have known I was even living."

"No!--yes!--stay!"  A smile broke over her pale face and left it
rosy.  "I see it all now.  Oh, Philip, don't you understand?  She
wanted only to try us!"

There was a silence in the lonely wood, broken only by the trills
of a frightened bird whose retreat was invaded.

"Not now!  Please!  Wait!  Come with me!"

The next moment she had seized Philip's left hand, and, dragging
him with her, was flying down the walk towards the house.  But as
they neared the garden door it suddenly opened on the duchess, with
her glasses to her eyes, smiling.

The General Don Felipe Ostrander did not buy Hamley Court, but he
and his wife were always welcome guests there.  And Sir James, as
became an English gentleman,--amazed though he was at Philip's
singular return, and more singular incognito,--afterwards gallantly
presented Philip's wife with Philip's first picture.



THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN


The wind was getting up on the Bolinas Plain.  It had started the
fine alkaline dust along the level stage road, so that even that
faint track, the only break in the monotony of the landscape,
seemed fainter than ever.  But the dust cloud was otherwise a
relief; it took the semblance of distant woods where there was no
timber, of moving teams where there was no life.  And as Sue
Beasley, standing in the doorway of One Spring House that
afternoon, shading her sandy lashes with her small red hand,
glanced along the desolate track, even HER eyes, trained to the
dreary prospect, were once or twice deceived.

"Sue!"

It was a man's voice from within.  Sue took no notice of it, but
remained with her hand shading her eyes.

"Sue!  Wot yer yawpin' at thar?"

"Yawpin'" would seem to have been the local expression for her
abstraction, since, without turning her head, she answered slowly
and languidly: "Reckoned I see'd som' un on the stage road.  But
'tain't nothin' nor nobody."

Both voices had in their accents and delivery something of the
sadness and infinite protraction of the plain.  But the woman's had
a musical possibility in its long-drawn cadence, while the man's
was only monotonous and wearying.  And as she turned back into the
room again, and confronted her companion, there was the like
difference in their appearance.  Ira Beasley, her husband, had
suffered from the combined effects of indolence, carelessness,
misadventure, and disease.  Two of his fingers had been cut off by
a scythe, his thumb and part of his left ear had been blown away by
an overcharged gun; his knees were crippled by rheumatism, and one
foot was lame from ingrowing nails,--deviations that, however, did
not tend to correct the original angularities of his frame.  His
wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still retained--
they were childless--the rounded freshness of maidenhood.  Her
features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of
outline; her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect
blondes, and her complexion the sallowness of combined exposure and
alkaline assimilation.

She had lived there since, an angular girl of fifteen, she had been
awkwardly helped by Ira from the tail-board of the emigrant wagon
in which her mother had died two weeks before, and which was making
its first halt on the Californian plains, before Ira's door.  On
the second day of their halt Ira had tried to kiss her while she
was drawing water, and had received the contents of the bucket
instead,--the girl knowing her own value.  On the third day Ira had
some conversation with her father regarding locations and stock.
On the fourth day this conversation was continued in the presence
of the girl; on the fifth day the three walked to Parson Davies'
house, four miles away, where Ira and Sue were married.  The
romance of a week had taken place within the confines of her
present view from the doorway; the episode of her life might have
been shut in in that last sweep of her sandy lashes.

Nevertheless, at that moment some instinct, she knew not what,
impelled her when her husband left the room to put down the dish
she was washing, and, with the towel lapped over her bare pretty
arms, to lean once more against the doorpost, lazily looking down
the plain.  A cylindrical cloud of dust trailing its tattered skirt
along the stage road suddenly assaulted the house, and for an
instant enveloped it.  As it whirled away again something emerged,
or rather dropped from its skirts behind the little cluster of low
bushes which encircled the "One Spring."  It was a man.

"Thar!  I knew it was suthin'," she began aloud, but the words
somehow died upon her lips.  Then she turned and walked towards the
inner door, wherein her husband had disappeared,--but here stopped
again irresolutely.  Then she suddenly walked through the outer
door into the road and made directly for the spring.  The figure of
a man crouching, covered with dust, half rose from the bushes when
she reached them.  She was not frightened, for he seemed utterly
exhausted, and there was a singular mixture of shame, hesitation,
and entreaty in his broken voice as he gasped out:--

"Look here!--I say! hide me somewhere, won't you?  Just for a
little.  You see--the fact is--I'm chased!  They're hunting me
now,--they're just behind me.  Anywhere will do till they go by!
Tell you all about it another time.  Quick!  Please do!"

In all this there was nothing dramatic nor even startling to her.
Nor did there seem to be any present danger impending to the man.
He did not look like a horse-thief nor a criminal.  And he had
tried to laugh, half-apologetically, half-bitterly,--the
consciousness of a man who had to ask help of a woman at such a
moment.

She gave a quick glance towards the house.  He followed her eyes,
and said hurriedly: "Don't tell on me.  Don't let any one see me.
I'm trusting you.

"Come," she said suddenly.  "Get on THIS side."

He understood her, and slipped to her side, half-creeping, half-
crouching like a dog behind her skirts, but keeping her figure
between him and the house as she moved deliberately towards the
barn, scarce fifty yards away.  When she reached it she opened the
half-door quickly, said: "In there--at the top--among the hay"--
closed it, and was turning away, when there came a faint rapping
from within.  She opened the door again impatiently; the man said
hastily: "Wanted to tell you--it was a man who insulted a WOMAN!  I
went for him, you see--and"--

But she shut the door sharply.  The fugitive had made a blunder.
The importation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did
not help him.  She kept on towards the house, however, without the
least trace of excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the
front door again, walked quietly to the door of the inner room,
glanced in, saw that her husband was absorbed in splicing a riata,
and had evidently not missed her, and returned quietly to her dish-
washing.  With this singular difference: a few moments before she
had seemed inattentive and careless of what she was doing, as if
from some abstraction; now, when she was actually abstracted, her
movements were mechanically perfect and deliberate.  She carefully
held up a dish and examined it minutely for cracks, rubbing it
cautiously with the towel, but seeing all the while only the man
she had left in the barn.  A few moments elapsed.  Then there came
another rush of wind around the house, a drifting cloud of dust
before the door, the clatter of hoofs, and a quick shout.

Her husband reached the door, from the inner room, almost as
quickly as she did.  They both saw in the road two armed mounted
men--one of whom Ira recognized as the sheriff's deputy.

"Has anybody been here, just now?" he asked sharply.

"No."

"Seen anybody go by?" he continued.

"No.  What's up?"

"One of them circus jumpers stabbed Hal Dudley over the table in
Dolores monte shop last night, and got away this morning.  We
hunted him into the plain and lost him somewhere in this d----d
dust."

"Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin' just now," said Ira, with a
flash of recollection.  "Didn't ye, Sue?"

"Why the h-ll didn't she say it before?--I beg your pardon, ma'am;
didn't see you; you'll excuse haste."

Both the men's hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratified
smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward.  There was the faintest
of color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she
looked singularly pretty.  Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial
stirring through his monotonously wedded years.

The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands
and forearms--leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and
upper arm in charming contrast--and looked gravely past the
admiring figures that nearly touched her own.  "It was somewhar
over thar," she said lazily, pointing up the road in the opposite
direction to the barn, "but I ain't sure it WAS any one."

"Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?" said the
deputy.

"I reckon--if it WAS him," returned Sue.

"He must have got on," said the deputy; "but then he runs like a
deer; it's his trade."

"Wot trade?"

"Acrobat."

"Wot's that?"

The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity.  "A man who
runs, jumps, climbs--and all that sort, in the circus."

"But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?" she
continued with adorable naivete.

The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle.  "We're bound to
come up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and
this house it's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his
hole without your spottin' him a mile off!  Good-by!"  The words
were addressed to Ira, but the parting glance was directed to the
pretty wife as the two men galloped away.

An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife's
prettiness and its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira.
It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with,
"Well, ye won't ketch much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with
women-folks like this;" and he was unreasonably delighted at the
pretty assent of disdain and scorn which sparkled in his wife's
eyes as she added:--

"Not much, I reckon!"

"That's the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep
up," said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not
amenable to private sentiment there was no value in free
government.  Mrs. Beasley, however, complacently resumed her dish-
washing, and Ira returned to his riata in the adjoining room.  For
quite an interval there was no sound but the occasional click of a
dish laid upon its pile, with fingers that, however, were firm and
untremulous.  Presently Sue's low voice was heard.

"Wonder if that deputy caught anything yet.  I've a good mind to
meander up the road and see."

But the question brought Ira to the door with a slight return of
his former uneasiness.  He had no idea of subjecting his wife to
another admiring interview.  "I reckon I'll go myself," he said
dubiously; "YOU'D better stay and look after the house."

Her eyes brightened as she carried a pile of plates to the dresser;
it was possible she had foreseen this compromise.  "Yes," she said
cheerfully, "you could go farther than me."

Ira reflected.  He could also send them about their business if
they thought of returning.  He lifted his hat from the floor, took
his rifle down carefully from its pegs, and slouched out into the
road.  Sue watched him until he was well away, then flew to the
back door, stopping only an instant to look at her face in a small
mirror on the wall,--yet without noticing her new prettiness,--then
ran to the barn.  Casting a backward glance at the diminishing
figure of her husband in the distance, she threw open the door and
shut it quickly behind her.  At first the abrupt change from the
dazzling outer plain to the deep shadows of the barn bewildered
her.  She saw before her a bucket half filled with dirty water, and
a quantity of wet straw littering the floor; then lifting her eyes
to the hay-loft, she detected the figure of the fugitive, unclothed
from the waist upward, emerging from the loose hay in which he had
evidently been drying himself.  Whether it was the excitement of
his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetry of his
bared bust and arms--unlike anything she had ever seen before--
clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could not say,
but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed to the
public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious of
detected unreadiness than of shame.

"Gettin' the dust off me," he said, in hurried explanation; "be
down in a second."  Indeed, in another moment he had resumed his
shirt and flannel coat, and swung himself to the floor with a like
grace and dexterity, that was to her the revelation of a descending
god.  She found herself face to face with him,--his features
cleansed of dirt and grime, his hair plastered in wet curls on his
low forehead.  It was a face of cheap adornment, not uncommon in
his profession--unintelligent, unrefined, and even unheroic; but
she did not know that.  Overcoming a sudden timidity, she
nevertheless told him briefly and concisely of the arrival and
departure of his pursuers.

His low forehead wrinkled.  "Thar's no getting away until they come
back," he said without looking at her.  "Could ye keep me in here
to-night?"

"Yes," she returned simply, as if the idea had already occurred to
her; "but you must lie low in the loft."

"And could you"--he hesitated, and went on with a forced smile--
"you see, I've eaten nothing since last night.  Could you"--

"I'll bring you something," she said quickly, nodding her head.

"And if you had"--he went on more hesitatingly, glancing down at
his travel-torn and frayed garments--"anything like a coat, or any
other clothing?  It would disguise me also, you see, and put 'em
off the track."

She nodded her head again rapidly: she had thought of that too;
there was a pair of doeskin trousers and a velvet jacket left by a
Mexican vaquero who had bought stock from them two years ago.
Practical as she was, a sudden conviction that he would look well
in the velvet jacket helped her resolve.

"Did they say"--he said, with his forced smile and uneasy glance--
"did they--tell you anything about me?"

"Yes," she said abstractedly, gazing at him.

"You see," he began hurriedly, "I'll tell you how it was."

"No, don't!" she said quickly.  She meant it.  She wanted no facts
to stand between her and this single romance of her life.  "I must
go and get the things," she added, turning away, "before he gets
back."

"Who's HE?" asked the man.

She was about to reply, "My husband," but without knowing why
stopped and said, "Mr. Beasley," and then ran off quickly to the
house.

She found the vaquero's clothes, took some provisions, filled a
flask of whiskey in the cupboard, and ran back with them, her mouth
expanded to a vague smile, and pulsating like a schoolgirl.  She
even repressed with difficulty the ejaculation "There!" as she
handed them to him.  He thanked her, but with eyes fixed and
fascinated by the provisions.  She understood it with a new sense
of delicacy, and saying, "I'll come again when he gets back," ran
off and returned to the house, leaving him alone to his repast.

Meantime her husband, lounging lazily along the high road, had
precipitated the catastrophe he wished to avoid.  For his slouching
figure, silhouetted against the horizon on that monotonous level,
had been the only one detected by the deputy sheriff and the
constable, his companion, and they had charged down within fifty
yards of him before they discovered their mistake.  They were not
slow in making this an excuse for abandoning their quest as far as
Lowville: in fact, after quitting the distraction of Mrs. Beasley's
presence they had, without in the least suspecting the actual
truth, become doubtful if the fugitive had proceeded so far.  He
might at that moment be snugly ensconced behind some low wire-grass
ridge, watching their own clearly defined figures, and waiting only
for the night to evade them.  The Beasley house seemed a proper
place of operation in beating up the field.  Ira's cold reception
of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy.  "I have the
RIGHT, ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as
my posse to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't
the man to be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as
well if I 'requisition' your house."  The dreadful recollection
that the deputy had the power to detail him and the constable to
scour the plain while he remained behind in company with Sue
stopped Ira's further objections.  Yet, if he could only get rid of
her while the deputy was in the house,--but then his nearest
neighbor was five miles away!  There was nothing left for him to do
but to return with the men and watch his wife keenly.  Strange to
say, there was a certain stimulus in this which stirred his
monotonous pulses and was not without a vague pleasure.  There is a
revelation to some natures in newly awakened jealousy that is a
reincarnation of love.

As they came into the house a slight circumstance, which an hour
ago would have scarcely touched his sluggish sensibilities, now
appeared to corroborate his fear.  His wife had changed her cuffs
and collar, taken off her rough apron, and evidently redressed her
hair.  This, with the enhanced brightness of her eyes, which he had
before noticed, convinced him that it was due to the visit of the
deputy.  There was no doubt that the official was equally attracted
and fascinated by her prettiness, and although her acceptance of
his return was certainly not a cordial one, there was a kind of
demure restraint and over-consciousness in her manner that might be
coquetry.  Ira had vaguely observed this quality in other young
women, but had never experienced it in his brief courtship.  There
had been no rivalry, no sexual diplomacy nor insincerity in his
capture of the motherless girl who had leaped from the tail-board
of her father's wagon almost into his arms, and no man had since
come between them.  The idea that Sue should care for any other
than himself had been simply inconceivable to his placid, matter-
of-fact nature.  That their sacrament was final he had never
doubted.  If his two cows, bought with his own money or reared by
him, should suddenly have developed an inclination to give milk to
a neighbor, he would not have been more astonished.  But THEY could
have been brought back with a rope, and without a heart throb.

Passion of this kind, which in a less sincere society restricts its
expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira
only dumb and lethargic.  He moved slowly and abstractedly around
the room, accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped
helplessly into a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the
contiguity of his wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of--
he knew not what.  The atmosphere of the little house seemed to him
charged with some unwholesome electricity.  It kindled his wife's
eyes, stimulating the deputy and his follower to coarse
playfulness, enthralled his own limbs to the convulsive tightening
of his fingers around the rungs of his chair.  Yet he managed to
cling to his idea of keeping his wife occupied, and of preventing
any eyeshot between her and her guests, or the indulgence of
dangerously flippant conversation, by ordering her to bring some
refreshment.  "What's gone o' the whiskey bottle?" he said, after
fumbling in the cupboard.

Mrs. Beasley did not blench.  She only gave her head a slight toss.
"Ef you men can't get along with the coffee and flapjacks I'm going
to give ye, made with my own hands, ye kin just toddle right along
to the first bar, and order your tangle-foot there.  Ef it's a
barkeeper you're looking for, and not a lady, say so!"

The novel audacity of this speech, and the fact that it suggested
that preoccupation he hoped for, relieved Ira for a moment, while
it enchanted the guests as a stroke of coquettish fascination.
Mrs. Beasley triumphantly disappeared in the kitchen, slipped off
her cuffs and set to work, and in a few moments emerged with a tray
bearing the cakes and steaming coffee.  As neither she nor her
husband ate anything (possibly owing to an equal preoccupation) the
guests were obliged to confine their attentions to the repast
before them.  The sun, too, was already nearing the horizon, and
although its nearly level beams acted like a powerful search-light
over the stretching plain, twilight would soon put an end to the
quest.  Yet they lingered.  Ira now foresaw a new difficulty: the
cows were to be brought up and fodder taken from the barn; to do
this he would be obliged to leave his wife and the deputy together.
I do not know if Mrs. Beasley divined his perplexity, but she
carelessly offered to perform that evening function herself.  Ira's
heart leaped and sank again as the deputy gallantly proposed to
assist her.  But here rustic simplicity seemed to be equal to the
occasion.  "Ef I propose to do Ira's work," said Mrs. Beasley, with
provocative archness, "it's because I reckon he'll do more good
helpin' you catch your man than you'll do helpin' ME!  So clear
out, both of ye!"  A feminine audacity that recalled the deputy to
himself, and left him no choice but to accept Ira's aid.  I do not
know whether Mrs. Beasley felt a pang of conscience as her husband
arose gratefully and limped after the deputy; I only know that she
stood looking at them from the door, smiling and triumphant.

Then she slipped out of the back door again, and ran swiftly to the
barn, fastening on her clean cuffs and collar as she ran.  The
fugitive was anxiously awaiting her, with a slight touch of
brusqueness in his eagerness.

"Thought you were never coming!" he said.

She breathlessly explained, and showed him through the half-opened
door the figures of the three men slowly spreading and diverging
over the plain, like the nearly level sun-rays they were following.
The sunlight fell also on her panting bosom, her electrified sandy
hair, her red, half-opened mouth, and short and freckled upper lip.
The relieved fugitive turned from the three remoter figures to the
one beside him, and saw, for the first time, that it was fair.  At
which he smiled, and her face flushed and was irradiated.

Then they fell to talk,--he grateful, boastful,--as the distant
figures grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his
expression rather than his words, with her own girlish face and
brightening eyes.  But what he said, or how he explained his
position, with what speciousness he dwelt upon himself, his wrongs,
and his manifold manly virtues, is not necessary for us to know,
nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.  Enough for her that she
felt she had found the one man of all the world, and that she was
at that moment protecting him against all the world!  He was the
unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhood
had never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child
of her unsatisfied maternal yearnings.  If she could not comprehend
all his selfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she
could not follow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was SHE who
was deficient; if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was
because it was the language of a larger world from which she had
been excluded.  To this world belonged the beautiful limbs she
gazed on,--a very different world from that which had produced the
rheumatic deformities and useless mayhem of her husband, or the
provincially foppish garments of the deputy.  Sitting in the
hayloft together, where she had mounted for greater security, they
forgot themselves in his monologue of cheap vaporing, broken only
by her assenting smiles and her half-checked sighs.  The sharp
spices of the heated pine-shingles over their heads and the
fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air around
them.  The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not;
until the usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying "I
must go now," she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end.
For, as she rose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and
attempted to raise the face that was suddenly bending down as if
seeking to hide itself in the hay.  It was a brief struggle, ending
in a submission as sudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager
that it might have been impending for days instead of minutes.

"Oh, Sue! where are ye?"

It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only then
realized.  The man threw her aside with a roughness that
momentarily shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHE
would have confronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and
translated,--had he but kept her there.  Yet she answered, with a
quiet, level voice that astonished her lover, "Here!  I'm just
coming down!" and walked coolly to the ladder.  Looking over, and
seeing her husband with the deputy standing in the barnyard, she
quickly returned, put her finger to her lips, made a gesture for
her companion to conceal himself in the hay again, and was turning
away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior calmness, he grasped her
hand tightly and whispered, "Come again tonight, dear; do!"  She
hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips, and then quickly
disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.

"Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see," said Ira wearily.
"Whitey and Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just
waitin'."

"The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, and
mustn't be disturbed," said Mrs. Beasley, with decision; "and ye'll
have to take the hay from the stack to-night.  And," with an arch
glance at the deputy, "as I don't see that you two have done much
either, you're just in time to help fodder down."

Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the
task was soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no
opportunity for exclusive dalliance with Mrs. Beasley.  She shut
the barn door herself, and led the way to the house, learning
incidentally that the deputy had abandoned the chase, was to occupy
a "shake-down" on the kitchen-floor that night with the constable,
and depart at daybreak.  The gloom of her husband's face had
settled into a look of heavy resignation and alternate glances of
watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her with renewed
vivacity.  But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing
presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief.  When
the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in
copious draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle,
and even pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her
previous inhospitality.

"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you
that Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.

Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a
cocktail in such delightful imitation of the fashionable
barkeeper's dexterity that her guests were convulsed with
admiration.  Even Ira was struck with this revelation of a
youthfulness that five years of household care had checked, but
never yet subdued.  He had forgotten that he had married a child.
Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel, had
he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very
inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits.  It was another
face that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of
abstraction that struck a chill to his heart.  It was not HIS Sue
that was standing there, but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to
his morbid extravagance, by some one else's hand.

Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring
she was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the
liquor she had pretended to taste, went early to bed.  The deputy,
not finding the gloomy company of the husband to his taste,
presently ensconced himself on the floor, before the kitchen fire,
in the blankets that she had provided.  The constable followed his
example.  In a few moments the house was silent and sleeping, save
for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk on his chest and his
hands gripping the arms of his chair before the dying embers of his
hearth.

He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an
inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to
grasp the situation before him.  The common sense that had hitherto
governed his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and
that there was nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her
coquetry and aberration would not pass as easily.  But it recurred
to him that she had never shown this coquetry or aberration to HIM
during their own brief courtship,--that she had never looked or
acted like this before.  If this was love, she had never known it;
if it was only "women's ways," as he had heard men say, and so
dangerously attractive, why had she not shown it to him?  He
remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride without timidity,
without blushes, without expectation beyond the transference of her
home to his.  Would it have been different with another man?--with
the deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face?
What did it all mean?  Were all married people like this?  There
were the Westons, their neighbors,--was Mrs. Weston like Sue?  But
he remembered that Mrs. Weston had run away with Mr. Weston from
her father's house.  It was what they called "a love match."  Would
Sue have run away with him?  Would she now run away with--?

The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his first
impulse of anger--from the table.  He took another gulp of whiskey.
It tasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of
his blood.  He would go to bed.  Here a new and indefinable
timidity took possession of him; he remembered the strange look in
his wife's face.  It seemed suddenly as if the influence of the
sleeping stranger in the next room had not only isolated her from
him, but would make his presence in her bedroom an intrusion on
their hidden secrets.  He had to pass the open door of the kitchen.
The head of the unconscious deputy was close to Ira's heavy boot.
He had only to lift his heel to crush that ruddy, good-looking,
complacent face.  He hurried past him, up the creaking stairs.  His
wife lay still on one side of the bed, apparently asleep, her face
half-hidden in her loosened, fluffy hair.  It was well; for in the
vague shyness and restraint that was beginning to take possession
of him he felt he could not have spoken to her, or, if he had, it
would have been only to voice the horrible, unformulated things
that seemed to choke him.  He crept softly to the opposite side of
the bed, and began to undress.  As he pulled off his boots and
stockings, his eye fell upon his bare, malformed feet.  This caused
him to look at his maimed hand, to rise, drag himself across the
floor to the mirror, and gaze upon his lacerated ear.  She, this
prettily formed woman lying there, must have seen it often; she
must have known all these years that he was not like other men,--
not like the deputy, with his tight riding-boots, his soft hand,
and the diamond that sparkled vulgarly on his fat little finger.  A
cold sweat broke over him.  He drew on his stockings again, lifted
the outer counterpane, and, half undressed, crept under it,
wrapping its corner around his maimed hand, as if to hide it from
the light.  Yet he felt that he saw things dimly; there was a
moisture on his cheeks and eyelids he could not account for; it
must be the whiskey "coming out."

His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe.  What if
she should never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the
lanky girl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated?  It would
be better than this.  Yet at the same moment the picture was before
him of her pretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared
arms and laughing eyes, all so new, so fresh to him!  He tried to
listen to the slow ticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of
air through the house, and the movement, like a deep sigh, which
was the regular, inarticulate speech of the lonely plain beyond,
and quite distinct from the evening breeze.  He had heard it often,
but, like so many things he had learned that day, he never seemed
to have caught its meaning before.  Then, perhaps, it was his
supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of the whiskey he
had taken, but all this presently became confused and whirling.
Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear voices
that called him to "wake," and in the midst of it he fell into a
profound sleep.

The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay
motionless for many minutes.

Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appalling
snort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke.  A healthy animal,
he had shaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a
thirst for water and fresh air.  He raised his knees and rubbed his
eyes.  The water bucket was missing from the corner.  Well, he knew
where the spring was, and a turn out of the close and stifling
kitchen would do him good.  He yawned, put on his boots softly,
opened the back door, and stepped out.  Everything was dark, but
above and around him, to the very level of his feet, all apparently
pricked with bright stars.  The bulk of the barn rose dimly before
him on the right, to the left was the spring.  He reached it,
drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.  The
dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him,
rimmed with stars, did the rest.  He began to saunter slowly back,
the only reminiscence of his evening's potations being the figure
he recalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted
glasses, imitating the barkeeper.  A complacent smile straightened
his yellow mustache.  How she kept glancing at him and watching
him, the little witch!  Ha! no wonder!  What could she find in the
surly, slinking, stupid brute yonder?  (The gentleman here alluded
to was his host.)  But the deputy had not been without a certain
provincial success with the fair.  He was true to most men, and
fearless to all.  One may not be too hard upon him at this moment
of his life.

For as he was passing the house he stopped suddenly.  Above the
dry, dusty, herbal odors of the plain, above the scent of the new-
mown hay within the barn, there was distinctly another fragrance,--
the smell of a pipe.  But where?  Was it his host who had risen to
take the outer air?  Then it suddenly flashed upon him that Beasley
did NOT smoke, nor the constable either.  The smell seemed to come
from the barn.  Had he followed out the train of ideas thus
awakened, all might have been well; but at this moment his
attention was arrested by a far more exciting incident to him,--the
draped and hooded figure of Mrs. Beasley was just emerging from the
house.  He halted instantly in the shadow, and held his breath as
she glided quickly across the intervening space and disappeared in
the half-opened door of the barn.  Did she know he was there?  A
keen thrill passed over him; his mouth broadened into a breathless
smile.  It was his last! for, as he glided forward to the door, the
starry heavens broke into a thousand brilliant fragments around
him, the earth gave way beneath his feet, and he fell forward with
half his skull shot away.

Where he fell there he lay without an outcry, with only one
movement,--the curved and grasping fingers of the fighter's hand
towards his guarded hip.  Where he fell there he lay dead, his face
downwards, his good right arm still curved around across his back.
Nothing of him moved but his blood,--broadening slowly round him in
vivid color, and then sluggishly thickening and darkening until it
stopped too, and sank into the earth, a dull brown stain.  For an
instant the stillness of death followed the echoless report, then
there was a quick and feverish rustling within the barn, the
hurried opening of a window in the loft, scurrying footsteps,
another interval of silence, and then out of the farther darkness
the sounds of horse-hoofs in the muffled dust of the road.  But not
a sound or movement in the sleeping house beyond.


The stars at last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,--a
thin streak of opal fire.  A solitary bird twittered in the bush
beside the spring.  Then the back door of the house opened, and the
constable came forth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the
bewildered haste of a belated man.  His eyes were level, looking
for his missing leader as he went on, until at last he stumbled and
fell over the now cold and rigid body.  He scrambled to his feet
again, cast a hurried glance around him,--at the half-opened door
of the barn, at the floor littered with trampled hay.  In one
corner lay the ragged blouse and trousers of the fugitive, which
the constable instantly recognized.  He went back to the house, and
reappeared in a few moments with Ira, white, stupefied, and
hopelessly bewildered; clear only in his statement that his wife
had just fainted at the news of the catastrophe, and was equally
helpless in her own room.  The constable--a man of narrow ideas but
quick action--saw it all.  The mystery was plain without further
evidence.  The deputy had been awakened by the prowling of the
fugitive around the house in search of a horse.  Sallying out, they
had met, and Ira's gun, which stood in the kitchen, and which the
deputy had seized, had been wrested from him and used with fatal
effect at arm's length, and the now double assassin had escaped on
the sheriff's horse, which was missing.  Turning the body over to
the trembling Ira, he saddled his horse and galloped to Lowville
for assistance.

These facts were fully established at the hurried inquest which met
that day.  There was no need to go behind the evidence of the
constable, the only companion of the murdered man and first
discoverer of the body.  The fact that he, on the ground floor, had
slept through the struggle and the report, made the obliviousness
of the couple in the room above a rational sequence.  The dazed Ira
was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the
chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a
frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room.  By noon they
had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadows settled
over the lonely plain and silent house.  At nightfall Ira appeared
at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; he was
seen later by two packers, who had glanced furtively at the scene
of the late tragedy, sitting outside his doorway, a mere shadow in
the darkness; and a mounted patrol later in the night saw a light
in the bedroom window where the invalid Mrs. Beasley was confined.
But no one saw her afterwards.  Later, Ira explained that she had
gone to visit a relative until her health was restored.  Having few
friends and fewer neighbors, she was not missed; and even the
constable, the sole surviving guest who had enjoyed her brief
eminence of archness and beauty that fatal night, had quite
forgotten her in his vengeful quest of the murderer.  So that
people became accustomed to see this lonely man working in the
fields by day, or at nightfall gazing fixedly from his doorway.  At
the end of three months he was known as the recluse or "hermit" of
Bolinas Plain; in the rapid history-making of that epoch it was
forgotten that he had ever been anything else.

But Justice, which in those days was apt to nod over the affairs of
the average citizen, was keenly awake to offenses against its own
officers; and it chanced that the constable, one day walking
through the streets of Marysville, recognized the murderer and
apprehended him.  He was removed to Lowville.  Here, probably
through some modest doubt of the ability of the County Court, which
the constable represented, to deal with purely circumstantial
evidence, he was not above dropping a hint to the local Vigilance
Committee, who, singularly enough, in spite of his resistance, got
possession of the prisoner.  It was the rainy season, and business
was slack; the citizens of Lowville were thus enabled to give so
notorious a case their fullest consideration, and to assist
cheerfully at the ultimate hanging of the prisoner, which seemed to
be a foregone conclusion.

But herein they were mistaken.  For when the constable had given
his evidence, already known to the county, there was a disturbance
in the fringe of humanity that lined the walls of the assembly room
where the committee was sitting, and the hermit of Bolinas Plain
limped painfully into the room.  He had evidently walked there: he
was soaked with rain and plastered with mud; he was exhausted and
inarticulate.  But as he staggered to the witness-bench, and
elbowed the constable aside, he arrested the attention of every
one.  A few laughed, but were promptly silenced by the court.  It
was a reflection upon its only virtue,--sincerity.

"Do you know the prisoner?" asked the judge.

Ira Beasley glanced at the pale face of the acrobat, and shook his
head.

"Never saw him before," he said faintly.

"Then what are you doing here?" demanded the judge sternly.

Ira collected himself with evident effort, and rose to his halting
feet.  First he moistened his dry lips, then he said, slowly and
distinctly, "Because I killed the deputy of Bolinas."

With the thrill which ran through the crowded room, and the relief
that seemed to come upon him with that utterance, he gained
strength and even a certain dignity.

"I killed him," he went on, turning his head slowly around the
circle of eager auditors with the rigidity of a wax figure,
"because he made love to my wife.  I killed him because he wanted
to run away with her.  I killed him because I found him waiting for
her at the door of the barn at the dead o' night, when she'd got
outer bed to jine him.  He hadn't no gun.  He hadn't no fight.  I
killed him in his tracks.  That man," pointing to the prisoner,
"wasn't in it at all."  He stopped, loosened his collar, and,
baring his rugged throat below his disfigured ear, said: "Now take
me out and hang me!"

"What proof have we of this?  Where's your wife?  Does she
corroborate it?"

A slight tremor ran over him.

"She ran away that night, and never came back again.  Perhaps," he
added slowly, "because she loved him and couldn't bear me; perhaps,
as I've sometimes allowed to myself, gentlemen, it was because she
didn't want to bear evidence agin me."

In the silence that followed the prisoner was heard speaking to one
that was near him.  Then he rose.  All the audacity and confidence
that the husband had lacked were in HIS voice.  Nay, there was even
a certain chivalry in his manner which, for the moment, the rascal
really believed.

"It's true!" he said.  "After I stole the horse to get away, I
found that woman running wild down the road, cryin' and sobbin'.
At first I thought she'd done the shooting.  It was a risky thing
for me to do, gentlemen; but I took her up on the horse and got her
away to Lowville.  It was that much dead weight agin my chances,
but I took it.  She was a woman and--I ain't a dog!"

He was so exalted and sublimated by his fiction that for the first
time the jury was impressed in his favor.  And when Ira Beasley
limped across the room, and, extending his maimed hand to the
prisoner, said, "Shake!" there was another dead silence.

It was broken by the voice of the judge addressing the constable.

"What do you know of the deputy's attentions to Mrs. Beasley?  Were
they enough to justify the husband's jealousy?  Did he make love to
her?"

The constable hesitated.  He was a narrow man, with a crude sense
of the principles rather than the methods of justice.  He
remembered the deputy's admiration; he now remembered, even more
strongly, the object of that admiration, simulating with her pretty
arms the gestures of the barkeeper, and the delight it gave them.
He was loyal to his dead leader, but he looked up and down, and
then said, slowly and half-defiantly: "Well, judge, he was a MAN."

Everybody laughed.  That the strongest and most magic of all human
passions should always awake levity in any public presentment of or
allusion to it was one of the inconsistencies of human nature which
even a lynch judge had to admit.  He made no attempt to control the
tittering of the court, for he felt that the element of tragedy was
no longer there.  The foreman of the jury arose and whispered to
the judge amid another silence.  Then the judge spoke:--

"The prisoner and his witness are both discharged.  The prisoner to
leave the town within twenty-four hours; the witness to be
conducted to his own house at the expense of, and with the thanks
of, the Committee."

They say that one afternoon, when a low mist of rain had settled
over the sodden Bolinas Plain, a haggard, bedraggled, and worn-out
woman stepped down from a common "freighting wagon" before the
doorway where Beasley still sat; that, coming forward, he caught
her in his arms and called her "Sue;" and they say that they lived
happily together ever afterwards.  But they say--and this requires
some corroboration--that much of that happiness was due to Mrs.
Beasley's keeping forever in her husband's mind her own heroic
sacrifice in disappearing as a witness against him, her own
forgiveness of his fruitless crime, and the gratitude he owed to
the fugitive.



THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK


He was a "cowboy."  A reckless and dashing rider, yet mindful of
his horse's needs; good-humored by nature, but quick in quarrel;
independent of circumstance, yet shy and sensitive of opinion;
abstemious by education and general habit, yet intemperate in
amusement; self-centred, yet possessed of a childish vanity,--taken
altogether, a characteristic product of the Western plains, which
he never should have left.

But reckless adventure after adventure had brought him into
difficulties, from which there was only one equally adventurous
escape: he joined a company of Indians engaged by Buffalo Bill to
simulate before civilized communities the sports and customs of the
uncivilized.  In divers Christian arenas of the nineteenth century
he rode as a northern barbarian of the first might have disported
before the Roman populace, but harmlessly, of his own free will,
and of some little profit to himself.  He threw his lasso under the
curious eyes of languid men and women of the world, eager for some
new sensation, with admiring plaudits from them and a half
contemptuous egotism of his own.  But outside of the arena he was
lonely, lost, and impatient for excitement.

An ingenious attempt to "paint the town red" did not commend itself
as a spectacle to the householders who lived in the vicinity of
Earl's Court, London, and Alkali Dick was haled before a
respectable magistrate by a serious policeman, and fined as if he
had been only a drunken coster.  A later attempt at Paris to
"incarnadine" the neighborhood of the Champs de Mars, and "round
up" a number of boulevardiers, met with a more disastrous result,--
the gleam of steel from mounted gendarmes, and a mandate to his
employers.

So it came that one night, after the conclusion of the performance,
Alkali Dick rode out of the corral gate of the Hippodrome with his
last week's salary in his pocket and an imprecation on his lips.
He had shaken the sawdust of the sham arena from his high, tight-
fitting boots; he would shake off the white dust of France, and the
effeminate soil of all Europe also, and embark at once for his own
country and the Far West!

A more practical and experienced man would have sold his horse at
the nearest market and taken train to Havre, but Alkali Dick felt
himself incomplete on terra firma without his mustang,--it would be
hard enough to part from it on embarking,--and he had determined to
ride to the seaport.

The spectacle of a lithe horseman, clad in a Rembrandt sombrero,
velvet jacket, turnover collar, almost Van Dyke in its proportions,
white trousers and high boots, with long curling hair falling over
his shoulders, and a pointed beard and mustache, was a picturesque
one, but still not a novelty to the late-supping Parisians who
looked up under the midnight gas as he passed, and only recognized
one of those men whom Paris had agreed to designate as "Booflo-
bils," going home.

At three o'clock he pulled up at a wayside cabaret, preferring it
to the publicity of a larger hotel, and lay there till morning.
The slight consternation of the cabaret-keeper and his wife over
this long-haired phantom, with glittering, deep-set eyes, was
soothed by a royally-flung gold coin, and a few words of French
slang picked up in the arena, which, with the name of Havre,
comprised Dick's whole knowledge of the language.  But he was
touched with their ready and intelligent comprehension of his
needs, and their genial if not so comprehensive loquacity.  Luckily
for his quick temper, he did not know that they had taken him for a
traveling quack-doctor going to the Fair of Yvetot, and that madame
had been on the point of asking him for a magic balsam to prevent
migraine.

He was up betimes and away, giving a wide berth to the larger towns;
taking byways and cut-offs, yet always with the Western pathfinder's
instinct, even among these alien, poplar-haunted plains, low-banked
willow-fringed rivers, and cloverless meadows. The white sun shining
everywhere,--on dazzling arbors, summer-houses, and trellises; on
light green vines and delicate pea-rows; on the white trousers,
jackets, and shoes of smart shopkeepers or holiday makers; on the
white headdresses of nurses and the white-winged caps of the
Sisters of St. Vincent,--all this grew monotonous to this native of
still more monotonous wastes.  The long, black shadows of short,
blue-skirted, sabotted women and short, blue-bloused, sabotted men
slowly working in the fields, with slow oxen, or still slower heavy
Norman horses; the same horses gayly bedecked, dragging slowly not
only heavy wagons, but their own apparently more monstrous weight
over the white road, fretted his nervous Western energy, and made
him impatient to get on.

At the close of the second day he found some relief on entering a
trackless wood,--not the usual formal avenue of equidistant trees,
leading to nowhere, and stopping upon the open field,--but
apparently a genuine forest as wild as one of his own "oak
bottoms."  Gnarled roots and twisted branches flung themselves
across his path; his mustang's hoofs sank in deep pits of moss and
last year's withered leaves; trailing vines caught his heavy-
stirruped feet, or brushed his broad sombrero; the vista before him
seemed only to endlessly repeat the same sylvan glade; he was in
fancy once more in the primeval Western forest, and encompassed by
its vast, dim silences.  He did not know that he had in fact only
penetrated an ancient park which in former days resounded to the
winding fanfare of the chase, and was still, on stated occasions,
swept over by accurately green-coated Parisians and green-plumed
Dianes, who had come down by train!  To him it meant only unfettered
and unlimited freedom.

He rose in his stirrups, and sent a characteristic yell ringing
down the dim aisles before him.  But, alas! at the same moment, his
mustang, accustomed to the firmer grip of the prairie, in lashing
out, stepped upon a slimy root, and fell heavily, rolling over his
clinging and still unlodged rider.  For a few moments both lay
still.  Then Dick extricated himself with an oath, rose giddily,
dragged up his horse,--who, after the fashion of his race, was
meekly succumbing to his reclining position,--and then became aware
that the unfortunate beast was badly sprained in the shoulder, and
temporarily lame.  The sudden recollection that he was some miles
from the road, and that the sun was sinking, concentrated his
scattered faculties.  The prospect of sleeping out in that summer
woodland was nothing to the pioneer-bred Dick; he could make his
horse and himself comfortable anywhere--but he was delaying his
arrival at Havre.  He must regain the high road,--or some wayside
inn.  He glanced around him; the westering sun was a guide for his
general direction; the road must follow it north or south; he would
find a "clearing" somewhere.  But here Dick was mistaken; there
seemed no interruption of, no encroachment upon this sylvan tract,
as in his western woods.  There was no track or trail to be found;
he missed even the ordinary woodland signs that denoted the path of
animals to water.  For the park, from the time a Northern Duke had
first alienated it from the virgin forest, had been rigidly
preserved.

Suddenly, rising apparently from the ground before him, he saw the
high roof-ridges and tourelles of a long, irregular, gloomy
building.  A few steps further showed him that it lay in a cup-like
depression of the forest, and that it was still a long descent from
where he had wandered to where it stood in the gathering darkness.
His mustang was moving with great difficulty; he uncoiled his
lariat from the saddle-horn, and, selecting the most open space,
tied one end to the trunk of a large tree,--the forty feet of
horsehair rope giving the animal a sufficient degree of grazing
freedom.

Then he strode more quickly down the forest side towards the
building, which now revealed its austere proportions, though Dick
could see that they were mitigated by a strange, formal flower-
garden, with quaint statues and fountains.  There were grim black
allees of clipped trees, a curiously wrought iron gate, and twisted
iron espaliers.  On one side the edifice was supported by a great
stone terrace, which seemed to him as broad as a Parisian
boulevard.  Yet everywhere it appeared sleeping in the desertion
and silence of the summer twilight.  The evening breeze swayed the
lace curtains at the tall windows, but nothing else moved.  To the
unsophisticated Western man it looked like a scene on the stage.

His progress was, however, presently checked by the first sight of
preservation he had met in the forest,--a thick hedge, which
interfered between him and a sloping lawn beyond.  It was up to his
waist, yet he began to break his way through it, when suddenly he
was arrested by the sound of voices.  Before him, on the lawn, a
man and woman, evidently servants, were slowly advancing, peering
into the shadows of the wood which he had just left.  He could not
understand what they were saying, but he was about to speak and
indicate by signs his desire to find the road when the woman,
turning towards her companion, caught sight of his face and
shoulders above the hedge.  To his surprise and consternation, he
saw the color drop out of her fresh cheeks, her round eyes fix in
their sockets, and with a despairing shriek she turned and fled
towards the house.  The man turned at his companion's cry, gave the
same horrified glance at Dick's face, uttered a hoarse "Sacre!"
crossed himself violently, and fled also.

Amazed, indignant, and for the first time in his life humiliated,
Dick gazed speechlessly after them.  The man, of course, was a
sneaking coward; but the woman was rather pretty.  It had not been
Dick's experience to have women run from him!  Should he follow
them, knock the silly fellow's head against a tree, and demand an
explanation?  Alas, he knew not the language!  They had already
reached the house and disappeared in one of the offices.  Well! let
them go--for a mean "lowdown" pair of country bumpkins:--HE wanted
no favors from them!

He turned back angrily into the forest to seek his unlucky beast.
The gurgle of water fell on his ear; hard by was a spring, where at
least he could water the mustang.  He stooped to examine it; there
was yet light enough in the sunset sky to throw back from that
little mirror the reflection of his thin, oval face, his long,
curling hair, and his pointed beard and mustache.  Yes! this was
his face,--the face that many women in Paris had agreed was
romantic and picturesque.  Had those wretched greenhorns never seen
a real man before?  Were they idiots, or insane?  A sudden
recollection of the silence and seclusion of the building suggested
certainly an asylum,--but where were the keepers?

It was getting darker in the wood; he made haste to recover his
horse, to drag it to the spring, and there bathe its shoulder in
the water mixed with whiskey taken from his flask.  His saddle-bag
contained enough bread and meat for his own supper; he would camp
for the night where he was, and with the first light of dawn make
his way back through the wood whence he came.  As the light slowly
faded from the wood he rolled himself in his saddle-blanket and lay
down.

But not to sleep.  His strange position, the accident to his horse,
an unusual irritation over the incident of the frightened
servants,--trivial as it might have been to any other man,--and,
above all, an increasing childish curiosity, kept him awake and
restless.  Presently he could see also that it was growing lighter
beyond the edge of the wood, and that the rays of a young crescent
moon, while it plunged the forest into darkness and impassable
shadow, evidently was illuminating the hollow below.  He threw
aside his blanket, and made his way to the hedge again.  He was
right; he could see the quaint, formal lines of the old garden more
distinctly,--the broad terrace, the queer, dark bulk of the house,
with lights now gleaming from a few of its open windows.

Before one of these windows opening on the terrace was a small,
white, draped table with fruits, cups, and glasses, and two or
three chairs.  As he gazed curiously at these new signs of life and
occupation, he became aware of a regular and monotonous tap upon
the stone flags of the terrace.  Suddenly he saw three figures
slowly turn the corner of the terrace at the further end of the
building, and walk towards the table.  The central figure was that
of an elderly woman, yet tall and stately of carriage, walking with
a stick, whose regular tap he had heard, supported on the one side
by an elderly Cure in black soutaine, and on the other by a tall
and slender girl in white.

They walked leisurely to the other end of the terrace, as if
performing a regular exercise, and returned, stopping before the
open French window; where, after remaining in conversation a few
moments, the elderly lady and her ecclesiastical companion entered.
The young girl sauntered slowly to the steps of the terrace, and
leaning against a huge vase as she looked over the garden, seemed
lost in contemplation.  Her face was turned towards the wood, but
in quite another direction from where he stood.

There was something so gentle, refined, and graceful in her figure,
yet dominated by a girlish youthfulness of movement and gesture,
that Alkali Dick was singularly interested.  He had probably never
seen an ingenue before; he had certainly never come in contact with
a girl of that caste and seclusion in his brief Parisian experience.
He was sorely tempted to leave his hedge and try to obtain a nearer
view of her.  There was a fringe of lilac bushes running from the
garden up the slope; if he could gain their shadows, he could
descend into the garden.  What he should do after his arrival he had
not thought; but he had one idea--he knew not why--that if he
ventured to speak to her he would not be met with the abrupt rustic
terror he had experienced at the hands of the servants.  SHE was not
of that kind!  He crept through the hedge, reached the lilacs, and
began the descent softly and securely in the shadow.  But at the
same moment she arose, called in a youthful voice towards the open
window, and began to descend the steps.  A half-expostulating reply
came from the window, but the young girl answered it with the
laughing, capricious confidence of a spoiled child, and continued
her way into the garden.  Here she paused a moment and hung over a
rose-tree, from which she gathered a flower, afterwards thrust into
her belt.  Dick paused, too, half-crouching, half-leaning over a
lichen-stained, cracked stone pedestal from which the statue had
long been overthrown and forgotten.

To his surprise, however, the young girl, following the path to the
lilacs, began leisurely to ascend the hill, swaying from side to
side with a youthful movement, and swinging the long stalk of a
lily at her side.  In another moment he would be discovered!  Dick
was frightened; his confidence of the moment before had all gone;
he would fly,--and yet, an exquisite and fearful joy kept him
motionless.  She was approaching him, full and clear in the
moonlight.  He could see the grace of her delicate figure in the
simple white frock drawn at the waist with broad satin ribbon, and
its love-knots of pale blue ribbons on her shoulders; he could see
the coils of her brown hair, the pale, olive tint of her oval
cheek, the delicate, swelling nostril of her straight, clear-cut
nose; he could even smell the lily she carried in her little hand.
Then, suddenly, she lifted her long lashes, and her large gray eyes
met his.

Alas! the same look of vacant horror came into her eyes, and fixed
and dilated their clear pupils.  But she uttered no outcry,--there
was something in her blood that checked it; something that even
gave a dignity to her recoiling figure, and made Dick flush with
admiration.  She put her hand to her side, as if the shock of the
exertion of her ascent had set her heart to beating, but she did
not faint.  Then her fixed look gave way to one of infinite
sadness, pity, and pathetic appeal.  Her lips were parted; they
seemed to be moving, apparently in prayer.  At last her voice came,
wonderingly, timidly, tenderly: "Mon Dieu! c'est donc vous?  Ici?
C'est vous que Marie a crue voir!  Que venez-vous faire ici, Armand
de Fontonelles?  Repondez!"

Alas, not a word was comprehensible to Dick; nor could he think of
a word to say in reply.  He made an uncouth, half-irritated, half-
despairing gesture towards the wood he had quitted, as if to
indicate his helpless horse, but he knew it was meaningless to the
frightened yet exalted girl before him.  Her little hand crept to
her breast and clutched a rosary within the folds of her dress, as
her soft voice again arose, low but appealingly:

"Vous souffrez!  Ah, mon Dieu!  Peuton vous secourir?  Moi-meme--
mes prieres pourraient elles interceder pour vous?  Je supplierai
le ciel de prendre en pitie l'ame de mon ancetre.  Monsieur le Cure
est la,--je lui parlerai.  Lui et ma mere vous viendront en aide."

She clasped her hands appealingly before him.

Dick stood bewildered, hopeless, mystified; he had not understood a
word; he could not say a word.  For an instant he had a wild idea
of seizing her hand and leading her to his helpless horse, and then
came what he believed was his salvation,--a sudden flash of
recollection that he had seen the word he wanted, the one word that
would explain all, in a placarded notice at the Cirque of a
bracelet that had been LOST,--yes, the single word "PERDU."  He
made a step towards her, and in a voice almost as faint as her own,
stammered, "PERDU!"

With a little cry, that was more like a sigh than an outcry, the
girl's arms fell to her side; she took a step backwards, reeled,
and fainted away.

Dick caught her as she fell.  What had he said!--but, more than
all, what should he do now?  He could not leave her alone and
helpless,--yet how could he justify another disconcerting
intrusion?  He touched her hands; they were cold and lifeless; her
eyes were half closed; her face as pale and drooping as her lily.
Well, he must brave the worst now, and carry her to the house, even
at the risk of meeting the others and terrifying them as he had
her.  He caught her up,--he scarcely felt her weight against his
breast and shoulder,--and ran hurriedly down the slope to the
terrace, which was still deserted.  If he had time to place her on
some bench beside the window within their reach, he might still fly
undiscovered!  But as he panted up the steps of the terrace with
his burden, he saw that the French window was still open, but the
light seemed to have been extinguished.  It would be safer for her
if he could place her INSIDE the house,--if he but dared to enter.
He was desperate, and he dared!

He found himself alone, in a long salon of rich but faded white and
gold hangings, lit at the further end by two tall candles on either
side of the high marble mantel, whose rays, however, scarcely
reached the window where he had entered.  He laid his burden on a
high-backed sofa.  In so doing, the rose fell from her belt.  He
picked it up, put it in his breast, and turned to go.  But he was
arrested by a voice from the terrace:--

"Renee!"

It was the voice of the elderly lady, who, with the Cure at her
side, had just appeared from the rear of the house, and from the
further end of the terrace was looking towards the garden in search
of the young girl.  His escape in that way was cut off.  To add to
his dismay, the young girl, perhaps roused by her mother's voice,
was beginning to show signs of recovering consciousness.  Dick
looked quickly around him.  There was an open door, opposite the
window, leading to a hall which, no doubt, offered some exit on the
other side of the house.  It was his only remaining chance!  He
darted through it, closed it behind him, and found himself at the
end of a long hall or picture-gallery, strangely illuminated
through high windows, reaching nearly to the roof, by the moon,
which on that side of the building threw nearly level bars of light
and shadows across the floor and the quaint portraits on the wall.

But to his delight he could see at the other end a narrow, lance-
shaped open postern door showing the moonlit pavement without--
evidently the door through which the mother and the Cure had just
passed out.  He ran rapidly towards it.  As he did so he heard the
hurried ringing of bells and voices in the room he had quitted--the
young girl had evidently been discovered--and this would give him
time.  He had nearly reached the door, when he stopped suddenly--
his blood chilled with awe!  It was his turn to be terrified--he
was standing, apparently, before HIMSELF!

His first recovering thought was that it was a mirror--so accurately
was every line and detail of his face and figure reflected.  But a
second scrutiny showed some discrepancies of costume, and he saw it
was a panelled portrait on the wall.  It was of a man of his own
age, height, beard, complexion, and features, with long curls like
his own, falling over a lace Van Dyke collar, which, however, again
simulated the appearance of his own hunting-shirt.  The broad-
brimmed hat in the picture, whose drooping plume was lost in shadow,
was scarcely different from Dick's sombrero. But the likeness of the
face to Dick was marvelous--convincing!  As he gazed at it, the
wicked black eyes seemed to flash and kindle at his own,--its lip
curled with Dick's own sardonic humor!

He was recalled to himself by a step in the gallery.  It was the
Cure who had entered hastily, evidently in search of one of the
servants.  Partly because it was a man and not a woman, partly from
a feeling of bravado--and partly from a strange sense, excited by
the picture, that he had some claim to be there, he turned and
faced the pale priest with a slight dash of impatient devilry that
would have done credit to the portrait.  But he was sorry for it
the next moment!

The priest, looking up suddenly, discovered what seemed to him to
be the portrait standing before its own frame and glaring at him.
Throwing up his hands with an averted head and an "EXORCIS--!" he
wheeled and scuffled away.  Dick seized the opportunity, darted
through the narrow door on to the rear terrace, and ran, under
cover of the shadow of the house, to the steps into the garden.
Luckily for him, this new and unexpected diversion occupied the
inmates too much with what was going on in the house to give them
time to search outside.  Dick reached the lilac hedge, tore up the
hill, and in a few moments threw himself, panting, on his blanket.
In the single look he had cast behind, he had seen that the half-
dark salon was now brilliantly lighted--where no doubt the whole
terrified household was now assembled.  He had no fear of being
followed; since his confrontation with his own likeness in the
mysterious portrait, he understood everything.  The apparently
supernatural character of his visitation was made plain; his
ruffled vanity was soothed--his vindication was complete.  He
laughed to himself and rolled about, until in his suppressed
merriment the rose fell from his bosom, and--he stopped!  Its
freshness and fragrance recalled the innocent young girl he had
frightened.  He remembered her gentle, pleading voice, and his
cheek flushed.  Well, he had done the best he could in bringing her
back to the house--at the risk of being taken for a burglar--and
she was safe now!  If that stupid French parson didn't know the
difference between a living man and a dead and painted one, it
wasn't his fault.  But he fell asleep with the rose in his fingers.

He was awake at the first streak of dawn.  He again bathed his
horse's shoulder, saddled, but did not mount him, as the beast,
although better, was still stiff, and Dick wished to spare him for
the journey to still distant Havre, although he had determined to
lie over that night at the first wayside inn.  Luckily for him, the
disturbance at the chateau had not extended to the forest, for Dick
had to lead his horse slowly and could not have escaped; but no
suspicion of external intrusion seemed to have been awakened, and
the woodland was, evidently, seldom invaded.

By dint of laying his course by the sun and the exercise of a
little woodcraft, in the course of two hours he heard the creaking
of a hay-cart, and knew that he was near a traveled road.  But to
his discomfiture he presently came to a high wall, which had
evidently guarded this portion of the woods from the public.  Time,
however, had made frequent breaches in the stones; these had been
roughly filled in with a rude abatis of logs and treetops pointing
towards the road.  But as these were mainly designed to prevent
intrusion into the park rather than egress from it, Dick had no
difficulty in rolling them aside and emerging at last with his
limping steed upon the white high-road.  The creaking cart had
passed; it was yet early for traffic, and Dick presently came upon
a wine-shop, a bakery, a blacksmith's shop, laundry, and a somewhat
pretentious cafe and hotel in a broader space which marked the
junction of another road.

Directly before it, however, to his consternation, were the
massive, but timeworn, iron gates of a park, which Dick did not
doubt was the one in which he had spent the previous night.  But it
was impossible to go further in his present plight, and he boldly
approached the restaurant.  As he was preparing to make his usual
explanatory signs, to his great delight he was addressed in a
quaint, broken English, mixed with forgotten American slang, by the
white-trousered, black-alpaca coated proprietor.  More than that--
he was a Social Democrat and an enthusiastic lover of America--had
he not been to "Bos-town" and New York, and penetrated as far west
as "Booflo," and had much pleasure in that beautiful and free
country?  Yes! it was a "go-a-'ed" country--you "bet-your-lif'."
One had reason to say so: there was your electricity--your street
cars--your "steambots"--ah! such steambots--and your "r-rail-r-
roads."  Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the buffet of
the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example--and where is
one?  Nowhere!  Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!

Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great
satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself
to sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more
loquacious.  For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence,
this imbecility, of France?  He would tell.  It was the vile
corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the
fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious
Jesuitical power of the priests.  As for example, Monsieur "the
Booflo-bil" had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park
before the cafe?  It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of one of
the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the
Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been
tilled, and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's
pleasure in a year!  And, look you! the peasants starving around
its walls in their small garden patches and pinched farms!  And the
present Comte de Fontonelles cascading gold on his mistresses in
Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother, and her daughter living there
to feed and fatten and pension a brood of plotting, black-cowled
priests.  Ah, bah! where was your Republican France, then?  But a
time would come.  The "Booflo-bil" had, without doubt, noticed, as
he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of the park?

Dick, with a slight dry reserve, "reckoned that he had."

"They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in
the Revolution of '93, when the count was emigre, as one says with
reason 'skedadelle,' to England.  Let them look the next time that
they burn not the chateau,--'bet your lif'!'"

"The chateau," said Dick, with affected carelessness.  "Wot's the
blamed thing like?"

It was an old affair,--with armor and a picture-gallery,--and
bricabrac.  He had never seen it.  Not even as a boy,--it was kept
very secluded then.  As a man--you understand--he could not ask the
favor.  The Comtes de Fontonelles and himself were not friends.
The family did not like a cafe near their sacred gates,--where had
stood only the huts of their retainers.  The American would observe
that he had not called it "Cafe de Chateau," nor "Cafe de
Fontonelles,"--the gold of California would not induce him.  Why
did he remain there?  Naturally, to goad them!  It was a principle,
one understood.  To GOAD them and hold them in check!  One kept a
cafe,--why not?  One had one's principles,--one's conviction,--that
was another thing!  That was the kind of "'air-pin"--was it not?--
that HE, Gustav Ribaud, was like!

Yet for all his truculent socialism, he was quick, obliging, and
charmingly attentive to Dick and his needs.  As to Dick's horse, he
should have the best veterinary surgeon--there was an incomparable
one in the person of the blacksmith--see to him, and if it were an
affair of days, and Dick must go, he himself would be glad to
purchase the beast, his saddle, and accoutrements.  It was an
affair of business,--an advertisement for the cafe!  He would ride
the horse himself before the gates of the park.  It would please
his customers.  Ha! he had learned a trick or two in free America.

Dick's first act had been to shave off his characteristic beard and
mustache, and even to submit his long curls to the village barber's
shears, while a straw hat, which he bought to take the place of his
slouched sombrero, completed his transformation.  His host saw in
the change only the natural preparation of a voyager, but Dick had
really made the sacrifice, not from fear of detection, for he had
recovered his old swaggering audacity, but from a quick distaste he
had taken to his resemblance to the portrait.  He was too genuine a
Westerner, and too vain a man, to feel flattered at his resemblance
to an aristocratic bully, as he believed the ancestral De Fontonelles
to be.  Even his momentary sensation as he faced the Cure in the
picture-gallery was more from a vague sense that liberties had been
taken with his, Dick's, personality, than that he had borrowed
anything from the portrait.

But he was not so clear about the young girl.  Her tender,
appealing voice, although he knew it had been addressed only to a
vision, still thrilled his fancy.  The pluck that had made her
withstand her fear so long--until he had uttered that dreadful
word--still excited his admiration.  His curiosity to know what
mistake he had made--for he knew it must have been some frightful
blunder--was all the more keen, as he had no chance to rectify it.
What a brute she must have thought him--or DID she really think him
a brute even then?--for her look was one more of despair and pity!
Yet she would remember him only by that last word, and never know
that he had risked insult and ejection from her friends to carry
her to her place of safety.  He could not bear to go across the
seas carrying the pale, unsatisfied face of that gentle girl ever
before his eyes!  A sense of delicacy--new to Dick, but always the
accompaniment of deep feeling--kept him from even hinting his story
to his host, though he knew--perhaps BECAUSE he knew--that it would
gratify his enmity to the family.  A sudden thought struck Dick.
He knew her house, and her name.  He would write her a note.
Somebody would be sure to translate it for her.

He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his
fresh chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:--


DEAR MISS FONTONELLES,--Please excuse me for having skeert you.  I
hadn't any call to do it, I never reckoned to do it--it was all
jest my derned luck; I only reckoned to tell you I was lost--in
them blamed woods--don't you remember?--"lost"--PERDOO!--and then
you up and fainted!  I wouldn't have come into your garden, only,
you see, I'd just skeered by accident two of your helps, reg'lar
softies, and I wanted to explain.  I reckon they allowed I was that
man that that picture in the hall was painted after.  I reckon they
took ME for him--see?  But he ain't MY style, nohow, and I never
saw the picture at all until after I'd toted you, when you fainted,
up to your house, or I'd have made my kalkilations and acted
according.  I'd have laid low in the woods, and got away without
skeerin' you.  You see what I mean?  It was mighty mean of me, I
suppose, to have tetched you at all, without saying, "Excuse me,
miss," and toted you out of the garden and up the steps into your
own parlor without asking your leave.  But the whole thing tumbled
so suddent.  And it didn't seem the square thing for me to lite out
and leave you lying there on the grass.  That's why!  I'm sorry I
skeert that old preacher, but he came upon me in the picture hall
so suddent, that it was a mighty close call, I tell you, to get off
without a shindy.  Please forgive me, Miss Fontonelles.  When you
get this, I shall be going back home to America, but you might
write to me at Denver City, saying you're all right.  I liked your
style; I liked your grit in standing up to me in the garden until
you had your say, when you thought I was the Lord knows what--
though I never understood a word you got off--not knowing French.
But it's all the same now.  Say!  I've got your rose!

Yours very respectfully,

RICHARD FOUNTAINS.


Dick folded the epistle and put it in his pocket.  He would post it
himself on the morning before he left.  When he came downstairs he
found his indefatigable host awaiting him, with the report of the
veterinary blacksmith.  There was nothing seriously wrong with the
mustang, but it would be unfit to travel for several days.  The
landlord repeated his former offer.  Dick, whose money was pretty
well exhausted, was fain to accept, reflecting that SHE had never
seen the mustang and would not recognize it.  But he drew the line
at the sombrero, to which his host had taken a great fancy.  He had
worn it before HER!

Later in the evening Dick was sitting on the low veranda of the
cafe, overlooking the white road.  A round white table was beside
him, his feet were on the railing, but his eyes were resting beyond
on the high, mouldy iron gates of the mysterious park.  What he was
thinking of did not matter, but he was a little impatient at the
sudden appearance of his host--whom he had evaded during the
afternoon--at his side.  The man's manner was full of bursting
loquacity and mysterious levity.

Truly, it was a good hour when Dick had arrived at Fontonelles,--
"just in time."  He could see now what a world of imbeciles was
France.  What stupid ignorance ruled, what low cunning and low tact
could achieve,--in effect, what jugglers and mountebanks,
hypocritical priests and licentious and lying noblesse went to make
up existing society.  Ah, there had been a fine excitement, a
regular coup d'theatre at Fontonelles,--the chateau yonder; here at
the village, where the news was brought by frightened grooms and
silly women!  He had been in the thick of it all the afternoon!  He
had examined it,--interrogated them like a juge d'instruction,--
winnowed it, sifted it.  And what was it all?  An attempt by these
wretched priests and noblesse to revive in the nineteenth century--
the age of electricity and Pullman cars--a miserable mediaeval
legend of an apparition, a miracle!  Yes; one is asked to believe
that at the chateau yonder was seen last night three times the
apparition of Armand de Fontonelles!

Dick started.  "Armand de Fontonelles!"  He remembered that she had
repeated that name.

"Who's he?" he demanded abruptly.

"The first Comte de Fontonelles!  When monsieur knows that the
first comte has been dead three hundred years, he will see the
imbecility of the affair!"

"Wot did he come back for?" growled Dick.

"Ah! it was a legend.  Consider its artfulness!  The Comte Armand
had been a hard liver, a dissipated scoundrel, a reckless beast,
but a mighty hunter of the stag.  It was said that on one of these
occasions he had been warned by the apparition of St. Hubert; but
he had laughed,--for, observe, HE always jeered at the priests too;
hence this story!--and had declared that the flaming cross seen
between the horns of the sacred stag was only the torch of a
poacher, and he would shoot it!  Good! the body of the comte, dead,
but without a wound, was found in the wood the next day, with his
discharged arquebus in his hand.  The Archbishop of Rouen refused
his body the rites of the Church until a number of masses were said
every year and--paid for!  One understands! one sees their 'little
game;' the count now appears,--he is in purgatory!  More masses,--
more money!  There you are.  Bah!  One understands, too, that the
affair takes place, not in a cafe like this,--not in a public
place,--but at a chateau of the noblesse, and is seen by"--the
proprietor checked the characters on his fingers--TWO retainers;
one young demoiselle of the noblesse, daughter of the chatelaine
herself; and, my faith, it goes without saying, by a fat priest,
the Cure!  In effect, two interested ones!  And the priest,--his
lie is magnificent!  Superb!  For he saw the comte in the picture-
gallery,--in effect, stepping into his frame!"

"Oh, come off the roof," said Dick impatiently; "they must have
seen SOMETHING, you know.  The young lady wouldn't lie!"

Monsieur Ribaud leaned over, with a mysterious, cynical smile, and
lowering his voice said:--

"You have reason to say so.  You have hit it, my friend.  There WAS
a something!  And if we regard the young lady, you shall hear.  The
story of Mademoiselle de Fontonelles is that she has walked by
herself alone in the garden,--you observe, ALONE--in the moonlight,
near the edge of the wood.  You comprehend?  The mother and the
Cure are in the house,--for the time effaced!  Here at the edge of
the wood--though why she continues, a young demoiselle, to the edge
of the wood does not make itself clear--she beholds her ancestor,
as on a pedestal, young, pale, but very handsome and exalte,--
pardon!"

"Nothing," said Dick hurriedly; "go on!"

"She beseeches him why!  He says he is lost!  She faints away, on
the instant, there--regard me!--ON THE EDGE OF THE WOOD, she says.
But her mother and Monsieur le Cure find her pale, agitated,
distressed, ON THE SOFA IN THE SALON.  One is asked to believe that
she is transported through the air--like an angel--by the spirit of
Armand de Fontonelles.  Incredible!"

"Well, wot do YOU think?" said Dick sharply.

The cafe proprietor looked around him carefully, and then lowered
his voice significantly:--

"A lover!"

"A what?" said Dick, with a gasp.

"A lover!" repeated Ribaud.  "You comprehend!  Mademoiselle has no
dot,--the property is nothing,--the brother has everything.  A
Mademoiselle de Fontonelles cannot marry out of her class, and the
noblesse are all poor.  Mademoiselle is young,--pretty, they say,
of her kind.  It is an intolerable life at the old chateau;
mademoiselle consoles herself!"

Monsieur Ribaud never knew how near he was to the white road below
the railing at that particular moment.  Luckily, Dick controlled
himself, and wisely, as Monsieur Ribaud's next sentence showed him.

"A romance,--an innocent, foolish liaison, if you like,--but, all
the same, if known of a Mademoiselle de Fontonelles, a compromising,
a fatal entanglement.  There you are.  Look! for this, then, all
this story of cock and bulls and spirits!  Mademoiselle has been
discovered with her lover by some one.  This pretty story shall stop
their mouths!"

"But wot," said Dick brusquely, "wot if the girl was really skeert
at something she'd seen, and fainted dead away, as she said she
did,--and--and"--he hesitated--"some stranger came along and picked
her up?"

Monsieur Ribaud looked at him pityingly.

"A Mademoiselle de Fontonelle is picked up by her servants, by her
family, but not by the young man in the woods, alone.  It is even
more compromising!"

"Do you mean to say," said Dick furiously, "that the ragpickers and
sneaks that wade around in the slumgallion of this country would
dare to spatter that young gal?"

"I mean to say, yes,--assuredly, positively yes!" said Ribaud,
rubbing his hands with a certain satisfaction at Dick's fury.  "For
you comprehend not the position of la jeune fille in all France!
Ah! in America the young lady she go everywhere alone; I have seen
her--pretty, charming, fascinating--alone with the young man.  But
here, no, never!  Regard me, my friend.  The French mother, she say
to her daughter's fiance, 'Look! there is my daughter.  She has
never been alone with a young man for five minutes,--not even with
you.  Take her for your wife!'  It is monstrous! it is impossible!
it is so!"

There was a silence of a few minutes, and Dick looked blankly at
the iron gates of the park of Fontonelles.  Then he said: "Give me
a cigar."

Monsieur Ribaud instantly produced his cigar case.  Dick took a
cigar, but waved aside the proffered match, and entering the cafe,
took from his pocket the letter to Mademoiselle de Fontonelles,
twisted it in a spiral, lighted it at a candle, lit his cigar with
it, and returning to the veranda held it in his hand until the last
ashes dropped on the floor.  Then he said, gravely, to Ribaud:--

"You've treated me like a white man, Frenchy, and I ain't goin'
back on yer--though your ways ain't my ways--nohow; but I reckon in
this yer matter at the shotto you're a little too previous!  For
though I don't as a gin'ral thing take stock in ghosts, I BELIEVE
EVERY WORD THAT THEM FOLK SAID UP THAR.  And," he added, leaning
his hand somewhat heavily on Ribaud's shoulder, "if you're the man
I take you for, you'll believe it too!  And if that chap, Armand de
Fontonelles, hadn't hev picked up that gal at that moment, he would
hev deserved to roast in hell another three hundred years!  That's
why I believe her story.  So you'll let these yer Fontonelles keep
their ghosts for all they're worth; and when you next feel inclined
to talk about that girl's LOVER, you'll think of me, and shut your
head!  You hear me, Frenchy, I'm shoutin'!  And don't you forget it!"

Nevertheless, early the next morning, Monsieur Ribaud accompanied
his guest to the railway station, and parted from him with great
effusion.  On his way back an old-fashioned carriage with a
postilion passed him.  At a sign from its occupant, the postilion
pulled up, and Monsieur Ribaud, bowing to the dust, approached the
window, and the pale, stern face of a dignified, white-haired woman
of sixty that looked from it.

"Has he gone?" said the lady.

"Assuredly, madame; I was with him at the station."

"And you think no one saw him?"

"No one, madame, but myself."

"And--what kind of a man was he?"

Monsieur Ribaud lifted his shoulders, threw out his hands
despairingly, yet with a world of significance, and said:--

"An American."

"Ah!"

The carriage drove on and entered the gates of the chateau.  And
Monsieur Ribaud, cafe proprietor and Social Democrat, straightened
himself in the dust and shook his fist after it.



A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE


With the lulling of the wind towards evening it came on to snow--
heavily, in straight, quickly succeeding flakes, dropping like
white lances from the sky.  This was followed by the usual Sierran
phenomenon.  The deep gorge, which, as the sun went down, had
lapsed into darkness, presently began to reappear; at first the
vanished trail came back as a vividly whitening streak before them;
then the larches and pines that ascended from it like buttresses
against the hillsides glimmered in ghostly distinctness, until at
last the two slopes curved out of the darkness as if hewn in
marble.  For the sudden storm, which extended scarcely two miles,
had left no trace upon the steep granite face of the high cliffs
above; the snow, slipping silently from them, left them still
hidden in the obscurity of night.  In the vanished landscape the
gorge alone stood out, set in a chaos of cloud and storm through
which the moonbeams struggled ineffectually.

It was this unexpected sight which burst upon the occupants of a
large covered "station wagon" who had chanced upon the lower end of
the gorge.  Coming from a still lower altitude, they had known
nothing of the storm, which had momentarily ceased, but had left a
record of its intensity in nearly two feet of snow.  For some
moments the horses floundered and struggled on, in what the
travelers believed to be some old forgotten drift or avalanche,
until the extent and freshness of the fall became apparent.  To add
to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not comprehending
its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt to
return the way they came.  To go on, however, was impossible.  In
this quandary they looked about them in vain for some other exit
from the gorge.  The sides of that gigantic white furrow terminated
in darkness.  Hemmed in from the world in all directions, it might
have been their tomb.

But although THEY could see nothing beyond their prison walls, they
themselves were perfectly visible from the heights above them.  And
Jack Tenbrook, quartz miner, who was sinking a tunnel in the rocky
ledge of shelf above the gorge, stepping out from his cabin at ten
o'clock to take a look at the weather before turning in, could
observe quite distinctly the outline of the black wagon, the
floundering horses, and the crouching figures by their side,
scarcely larger than pygmies on the white surface of the snow, six
hundred feet below him.  Jack had courage and strength, and the
good humor that accompanies them, but he contented himself for a
few moments with lazily observing the travelers' discomfiture.  He
had taken in the situation with a glance; he would have helped a
brother miner or mountaineer, although he knew that it could only
have been drink or bravado that brought HIM into the gorge in a
snowstorm, but it was very evident that these were "greenhorns," or
eastern tourists, and it served their stupidity and arrogance
right!  He remembered also how he, having once helped an Eastern
visitor catch the mustang that had "bucked" him, had been called
"my man," and presented with five dollars; he recalled how he had
once spread the humble resources of his cabin before some straying
members of the San Francisco party who were "opening" the new
railroad, and heard the audible wonder of a lady that a civilized
being could live so "coarsely"?  With these recollections in his
mind, he managed to survey the distant struggling horses with a
fine sense of humor, not unmixed with self-righteousness.  There
was no real danger in the situation; it meant at the worst a delay
and a camping in the snow till morning, when he would go down to
their assistance.  They had a spacious traveling equipage, and
were, no doubt, well supplied with furs, robes, and provisions for
a several hours' journey; his own pork barrel was quite empty, and
his blankets worn.  He half smiled, extended his long arms in a
decided yawn, and turned back into his cabin to go to bed.  Then he
cast a final glance around the interior.  Everything was all right;
his loaded rifle stood against the wall; he had just raked ashes
over the embers of his fire to keep it intact till morning.  Only
one thing slightly troubled him; a grizzly bear, two-thirds grown,
but only half tamed, which had been given to him by a young lady
named "Miggles," when that charming and historic girl had decided
to accompany her paralytic lover to the San Francisco hospital, was
missing that evening.  It had been its regular habit to come to the
door every night for some sweet biscuit or sugar before going to
its lair in the underbrush behind the cabin.  Everybody knew it
along the length and breadth of Hemlock Ridge, as well as the fact
of its being a legacy from the fair exile.  No rifle had ever yet
been raised against its lazy bulk or the stupid, small-eyed head
and ruff of circling hairs made more erect by its well-worn leather
collar.  Consoling himself with the thought that the storm had
probably delayed its return, Jack took off his coat and threw it on
his bunk.  But from thinking of the storm his thoughts naturally
returned again to the impeded travelers below him, and he half
mechanically stepped out in his shirt-sleeves for a final look at
them.

But here something occurred that changed his resolution entirely.
He had previously noticed only the three foreshortened, crawling
figures around the now stationary wagon bulk.  They were now
apparently making arrangements to camp for the night.  But another
figure had been added to the group, and as it stood perched upon a
wagon seat laid on the snow Jack could see that its outline was not
bifurcated like the others.  But even that general suggestion was
not needed! the little head, the symmetrical curves visible even at
that distance, were quite enough to indicate that it was a woman!
The easy smile faded from Jack's face, and was succeeded by a look
of concern and then of resignation.  He had no choice now; he MUST
go!  There was a woman there, and that settled it.  Yet he had
arrived at this conclusion from no sense of gallantry, nor, indeed,
of chivalrous transport, but as a matter of simple duty to the sex.
He was giving up his sleep, was going down six hundred feet of
steep trail to offer his services during the rest of the night as
much as a matter of course as an Eastern man would have offered his
seat in an omnibus to a woman, and with as little expectation of
return for his courtesy.

Having resumed his coat, with a bottle of whiskey thrust into its
pocket, he put on a pair of india-rubber boots reaching to his
thighs, and, catching the blanket from his bunk, started with an
axe and shovel on his shoulder on his downward journey.  When the
distance was half completed he shouted to the travelers below; the
cry was joyously answered by the three men; he saw the fourth
figure, now unmistakably that of a slender youthful woman, in a
cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure
and immediate.  But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that
illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off
the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of
split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a
couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge.  The only
other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain
there while he went for assistance to the nearest station, but that
would take several hours and necessitate a double journey for the
sledge if he was lucky enough to find one.  The party quickly
acquiesced in Jack's first suggestion.

"Very well," said Jack, "then there's no time to be lost; unhitch
your horses and we'll dig a hole in that bank for them to stand in
out of the snow."  This was speedily done.  "Now," continued Jack,
"you'll just follow me up to my cabin; it's a pretty tough climb,
but I'll want your help to bring down the runners."

Here the man who seemed to be the head of the party--of middle age
and a superior, professional type--for the first time hesitated.
"I forgot to say that there is a lady with us,--my daughter," he
began, glancing towards the wagon.

"I reckoned as much," interrupted Jack simply, "and I allowed to
carry her up myself the roughest part of the way.  She kin make
herself warm and comf'ble in the cabin until we've got the runners
ready."

"You hear what our friend says, Amy?" suggested the gentleman,
appealingly, to the closed leather curtains of the wagon.

There was a pause.  The curtain was suddenly drawn aside, and a
charming little head and shoulders, furred to the throat and topped
with a bewitching velvet cap, were thrust out.  In the obscurity
little could be seen of the girl's features, but there was a
certain willfulness and impatience in her attitude.  Being in the
shadow, she had the advantage of the others, particularly of Jack,
as his figure was fully revealed in the moonlight against the
snowbank.  Her eyes rested for a moment on his high boots, his
heavy mustache, so long as to mingle with the unkempt locks which
fell over his broad shoulders, on his huge red hands streaked with
black grease from the wagon wheels, and some blood, stanched with
snow, drawn from bruises in cutting out brambles in the brush; on--
more awful than all--a monstrous, shiny "specimen" gold ring
encircling one of his fingers,--on the whiskey bottle that
shamelessly bulged from his side pocket, and then--slowly dropped
her dissatisfied eyelids.

"Why can't I stay HERE?" she said languidly.  "It's quite nice and
comfortable."

"Because we can't leave you alone, and we must go with this
gentleman to help him."

Miss Amy let the tail of her eye again creep shudderingly over this
impossible Jack.  "I thought the--the gentleman was going to help
US," she said dryly.

"Nonsense, Amy, you don't understand," said her father impatiently.
"This gentleman is kind enough to offer to make some sledge-runners
for us at his cabin, and we must help him."

"But I can stay here while you go.  I'm not afraid."

"Yes, but you're ALONE here, and something might happen."

"Nothing could happen," interrupted Jack, quickly and cheerfully.
He had flushed at first, but he was now considering that the
carrying of a lady as expensively attired and apparently as
delicate and particular as this one might be somewhat difficult.
"There's nothin' that would hurt ye here," he continued, addressing
the velvet cap and furred throat in the darkness, "and if there was
it couldn't get at ye, bein', so to speak, in the same sort o' fix
as you.  So you're all right," he added positively.

Inconsistently enough, the young lady did not accept this as
gratefully as might have been imagined, but Jack did not see the
slight flash of her eye as, ignoring him, she replied markedly to
her father, "I'd much rather stop here, papa."

"And," continued Jack, turning also to her father, "you can keep
the wagon and the whole gorge in sight from the trail all the way
up.  So you can see that everything's all right.  Why, I saw YOU
from the first."  He stopped awkwardly, and added, "Come along; the
sooner we're off the quicker the job's over."

"Pray don't delay the gentleman and--the job," said Miss Amy
sweetly.

Reassured by Jack's last suggestion, her father followed him with
the driver and the second man of the party, a youngish and somewhat
undistinctive individual, but to whose gallant anxieties Miss Amy
responded effusively.  Nevertheless, the young lady had especially
noted Jack's confession that he had seen them when they first
entered the gorge.  "And I suppose," she added to herself mentally,
"that he sat there with his boozing companions, laughing and
jeering at our struggles."

But when the sound of her companions' voices died away, and their
figures were swallowed up in the darkness behind the snow, she
forgot all this, and much else that was mundane and frivolous, in
the impressive and majestic solitude which seemed to descend upon
her from the obscurity above.

At first it was accompanied with a slight thrill of vague fear, but
this passed presently into that profound peace which the mountains
alone can give their lonely or perturbed children.  It seemed to
her that Nature was never the same, on the great plains where men
and cities always loomed into such ridiculous proportions, as when
the Great Mother raised herself to comfort them with smiling
hillsides, or encompassed them and drew them closer in the loving
arms of her mountains.  The long white canada stretched before her
in a purity that did not seem of the earth; the vague bulk of the
mountains rose on either side of her in a mystery that was not of
this life.  Yet it was not oppressive; neither was its restfulness
and quiet suggestive of obliviousness and slumber; on the contrary,
the highly rarefied air seemed to give additional keenness to her
senses; her hearing had become singularly acute; her eyesight
pierced the uttermost extremity of the gorge, lit by the full moon
that occasionally shone through slowly drifting clouds.  Her nerves
thrilled with a delicious sense of freedom and a strange desire to
run or climb.  It seemed to her, in her exalted fancy, that these
solitudes should be peopled only by a kingly race, and not by such
gross and material churls as this mountaineer who helped them.
And, I grieve to say,--writing of an idealist that WAS, and a
heroine that IS to be,--she was getting outrageously hungry.

There were a few biscuits in her traveling-bag, and she remembered
that she had been presented with a small jar of California honey at
San Jose.  This she took out and opened on the seat before her, and
spreading the honey on the biscuits, ate them with a keen schoolgirl
relish and a pleasant suggestion of a sylvan picnic in spite of the
cold.  It was all very strange; quite an experience for her to speak
of afterwards.  People would hardly believe that she had spent an
hour or two, all alone, in a deserted wagon in a mountain snow pass.
It was an adventure such as one reads of in the magazines.  Only
something was lacking which the magazines always supplied,--something
heroic, something done by somebody.  If that awful-looking
mountaineer--that man with the long hair and mustache, and that
horrible gold ring,--why such a ring?--was only different!  But he
was probably gorging beefsteak or venison with her father and Mr.
Waterhouse,--men were always such selfish creatures!--and had quite
forgotten all about her.  It would have been only decent for them to
have brought her down something hot; biscuits and honey were
certainly cloying, and somehow didn't agree with the temperature.
She was really half starved!  And much they cared!  It would just
serve them right if something DID happen to her,--or SEEM to happen
to her,--if only to frighten them.  And the pretty face that was
turned up in the moonlight wore a charming but decided pout.

Good gracious, what was that?  The horses were either struggling or
fighting in their snow shelters.  Then one with a frightened neigh
broke from its halter and dashed into the road, only to be plunged
snorting and helpless into the drifts.  Then the other followed.
How silly!  Something had frightened them.  Perhaps only a rabbit
or a mole; horses were such absurdly nervous creatures!  However,
it is just as well; somebody would see them or hear them,--that
neigh was quite human and awful,--and they would hurry down to see
what was the matter.  SHE couldn't be expected to get out and look
after the horses in the snow.  Anyhow, she WOULDN'T!  She was a
good deal safer where she was; it might have been rats or mice
about that frightened them!  Goodness!

She was still watching with curious wonder the continued fright of
the animals, when suddenly she felt the wagon half bumped, half
lifted from behind.  It was such a lazy, deliberate movement that
for a moment she thought it came from the party, who had returned
noiselessly with the runners.  She scrambled over to the back seat,
unbuttoned the leather curtain, lifted it, but nothing was to be
seen.  Consequently, with feminine quickness, she said, "I see you
perfectly, Mr. Waterhouse--don't be silly!"  But at this moment
there was another shock to the wagon, and from beneath it arose
what at first seemed to her to be an uplifting of the drift itself,
but, as the snow was shaken away from its heavy bulk, proved to be
the enormous head and shoulders of a bear!

Yet even then she was not WHOLLY frightened, for the snout that
confronted her had a feeble inoffensiveness; the small eyes were
bright with an eager, almost childish curiosity rather than a
savage ardor, and the whole attitude of the creature lifted upon
its hind legs was circus-like and ludicrous rather than aggressive.
She was enabled to say with some dignity, "Go away! Shoo!" and to
wave her luncheon basket at it with exemplary firmness.  But here
the creature laid one paw on the back seat as if to steady itself,
with the singular effect of collapsing the whole side of the wagon,
and then opened its mouth as if in some sort of inarticulate reply.
But the revelation of its red tongue, its glistening teeth, and,
above all, the hot, suggestive fume of its breath, brought the
first scream from the lips of Miss Amy.  It was real and
convincing; the horses joined in it; the three screamed together!
The bear hesitated for an instant, then, catching sight of the
honey-pot on the front seat, which the shrinking-back of the young
girl had disclosed, he slowly reached forward his other paw and
attempted to grasp it.  This exceedingly simple movement, however,
at once doubled up the front seat, sent the honey-pot a dozen feet
into the air, and dropped Miss Amy upon her knees in the bed of the
wagon.  The combined mental and physical shock was too much for
her; she instantly and sincerely fainted; the last thing in her
ears amidst this wreck of matter being the "wheep" of a bullet and
the sharp crack of a rifle.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

She recovered her consciousness in the flickering light of a fire
of bark, that played upon the rafters of a roof thatched with bark
and upon a floor of strewn and shredded bark.  She even suspected
she was lying upon a mattress of bark underneath the heavy bearskin
she could feel and touch.  She had a delicious sense of warmth,
and, mingled with this strange spicing of woodland freedom, even a
sense of home protection.  And surely enough, looking around, she
saw her father at her side.

He briefly explained the situation.  They had been at first
attracted by the cry of the frightened horses and their plunging,
which they could see distinctly, although they saw nothing else.
"But, Mr. Tenbrook"--

"Mr. Who?" said Amy, staring at the rafters.

"The owner of this cabin--the man who helped us--caught up his gun,
and, calling us to follow, ran like lightning down the trail.  At
first we followed blindly, and unknowingly, for we could only see
the struggling horses, who, however, seemed to be ALONE, and the
wagon from which you did not seem to have stirred.  Then, for the
first time, my dear child, we suddenly saw your danger.  Imagine
how we felt as that hideous brute rose up in the road and began
attacking the wagon.  We called on Tenbrook to fire, but for some
inconceivable reason he did not, although he still kept running at
the top of his speed.  Then we heard you shriek--"

"I didn't shriek, papa; it was the horses."

"My child, I knew your voice."

"Well, it was only a VERY LITTLE scream--because I had tumbled."
The color was coming back rapidly to her pink cheeks.

"And, then, at your scream, Tenbrook fired!--it was a wonderful
shot for the distance, so everybody says--and killed the bear,
though Tenbrook says it oughtn't to.  I believe he wanted to
capture the creature alive.  They've queer notions, those hunters.
And then, as you were unconscious, he brought you up here."

"WHO brought me?"

"Tenbrook; he's as strong as a horse.  Slung you up on his shoulders
like a feather pillow."

"Oh!"

"And then, as the wagon required some repairing from the brute's
attack, we concluded to take it leisurely, and let you rest here
for a while."

"And where is--where are THEY?"

"At work on the wagon.  I determined to stay with you, though you
are perfectly safe here."

"I suppose I ought--to thank--this man, papa?"

"Most certainly, though of course, I have already done so.  But he
was rather curt in reply.  These half-savage men have such singular
ideas.  He said the beast would never have attacked you except for
the honey-pot which it scented.  That's absurd."

"Then it's all my fault?"

"Nonsense!  How could YOU know?"

"And I've made all this trouble.  And frightened the horses.  And
spoilt the wagon.  And made the man run down and bring me up here
when he didn't want to!"

"My dear child!  Don't be idiotic!  Amy!  Well, really!"

For the idiotic one was really wiping two large tears from her
lovely blue eyes.  She subsided into an ominous silence, broken by
a single sniffle.  "Try to go to sleep, dear; you've had quite a
shock to your nerves, added her father soothingly.  She continued
silent, but not sleeping.

"I smell coffee."

"Yes, dear."

"You've been having coffee, papa?"

"We DID have some, I think," said the wretched man apologetically,
though why he could not determine.

"Before I came up? while the bear was trying to eat me?"

"No, after."

"I've a horrid taste in my mouth.  It's the honey.  I'll never eat
honey again.  Never!"

"Perhaps it's the whiskey."

"What?"

"The whiskey.  You were quite faint and chilled, you know.  We gave
you some."

"Out of--that--black--bottle?"

"Yes."

Another silence.

"I'd like some coffee.  I don't think he'd begrudge me that, if he
did save my life."

"I dare say there's some left."  Her father at once bestirred
himself and presently brought her some coffee in a tin cup.  It was
part of Miss Amy's rapid convalescence, or equally of her
debilitated condition, that she made no comment on the vessel.  She
lay for some moments looking curiously around the cabin; she had no
doubt it had a worse look in the daylight, but somehow the
firelight brought out a wondrous luxury of color in the bark floor
and thatching.  Besides, it was not "smelly," as she feared it
would be; on the contrary the spicy aroma of the woods was always
dominant.  She remembered that it was this that always made a
greasy, oily picnic tolerable.  She raised herself on her elbow,
seeing which her father continued confidently, "Perhaps, dear, if
you sat up for a few moments you might be strong enough presently
to walk down with me to the wagon.  It would save time."

Amy instantly lay down again.  "I don't know what you can be
thinking of, papa.  After this shock really I don't feel as if I
could STAND alone, much less WALK.  But, of course," with pathetic
resignation, "if you and Mr. Waterhouse supported me, perhaps I
might crawl a few steps at a time."

"Nonsense, Amy.  Of course, this man Tenbrook will carry you down
as he brought you up.  Only I thought,--but there are steps,
they're coming now.  No!--only HE."

The sound of crackling in the underbrush was followed by a
momentary darkening of the open door of the cabin.  It was the tall
figure of the mountaineer.  But he did not even make the pretense
of entering; standing at the door he delivered his news to the
interior generally.  It was to the effect that everything was
ready, and the two other men were even then harnessing the horses.
Then he drew back into the darkness.

"Papa," said Amy, in a sudden frightened voice, "I've lost my
bracelet."

"Haven't you dropped it somewhere there in the bunk?" asked her
father.

"No.  It's on the floor of the wagon.  I remember now it fell off
when I tumbled!  And it will be trodden upon and crushed!  Couldn't
you run down, ahead of me, and warn them, papa, dear?  Mr. Tenbrook
will have to go so slowly with me."  She tumbled out of the bunk
with singular alacrity, shook herself and her skirts into
instantaneous gracefulness, and fitted the velvet cap on her
straying hair.  Then she said hurriedly, "Run quick, papa dear, and
as you go, call him in and say I am quite ready."

Thus adjured, the obedient parent disappeared in the darkness.
With him also disappeared Miss Amy's singular alacrity.  Sitting
down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against
the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as
it was graceful.  I need not tell any feminine readers that there
was no dissimulation in all this,--no coquetry, no ostentation,--
and that the young girl was perfectly sincere!  But the masculine
reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she
had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse for
her capricious and ungenerous rejection of Tenbrook's proffered
service.  More than that, she felt she had periled her life in that
moment of folly, and that this man--this hero--had saved her.  For
hero he was, even if he did not fulfill her ideal,--it was only SHE
that was not a heroine.  Perhaps if he had been more like what she
wished she would have felt this less keenly; love leaves little
room for the exercise of moral ethics.  So Miss Amy Forester, being
a good girl at bottom, and not exactly loving this man, felt
towards him a frank and tender consideration which a more romantic
passion would have shrunk from showing.  Consequently, when
Tenbrook entered a moment later, he found Amy paler and more
thoughtful, but, as he fancied, much prettier than before, looking
up at him with eyes of the sincerest solicitude.

Nevertheless, he remained standing near the door, as if indicating
a possible intrusion, his face wearing a look of lowering
abstraction.  It struck her that this might be the effect of his
long hair and general uncouthness, and this only spurred her to a
fuller recognition of his other qualities.

"I am afraid," she began, with a charming embarrassment, "that
instead of resting satisfied with your kindness in carrying me up
here, I will have to burden you again with my dreadful weakness,
and ask you to carry me down also.  But all this seems so little
after what you have just done and for which I can never, NEVER hope
to thank you!"  She clasped her two little hands together, holding
her gloves between, and brought them down upon her lap in a gesture
as prettily helpless as it was unaffected.

"I have done scarcely anything," he said, glancing away towards the
fire, "and--your father has thanked me."

"You have saved my life!"

"No! no!" he said quickly.  "Not that!  You were in no danger,
except from my rifle, had I missed."

"I see," she said eagerly, with a little posthumous thrill at
having been after all a kind of heroine, "and it was a wonderful
shot, for you were so careful not to touch me."

"Please don't say any more," he said, with a slight movement of
half awkwardness, half impatience.  "It was a rough job, but it's
over now."

He stopped and chafed his red hands abstractedly together.  She
could see that he had evidently just washed them--and the glaring
ring was more in evidence than ever.  But the thought gave her an
inspiration.

"You'll at least let me shake hands with you!" she said, extending
both her own with childish frankness.

"Hold on, Miss Forester," he said, with sudden desperation.  "It
ain't the square thing!  Look here!  I can't play this thing on
you!--I can't let you play it on me any longer!  You weren't in any
danger,--you NEVER were!  That bear was only a half-wild thing I
helped to ra'r myself!  It's taken sugar from my hand night after
night at the door of this cabin as it might have taken it from
yours here if it was alive now.  It slept night after night in the
brush, not fifty yards away.  The morning's never come yet--till
now," he said hastily, to cover an odd break in his voice, "when it
didn't brush along the whole side of this cabin to kinder wake me
up and say 'So long,' afore it browsed away into the canyon.  Thar
ain't a man along the whole Divide who didn't know it; thar ain't a
man along the whole Divide that would have drawn a bead or pulled a
trigger on it till now.  It never had an enemy but the bees; it
never even knew why horses and cattle were frightened of it.  It
wasn't much of a pet, you'd say, Miss Forester; it wasn't much to
meet a lady's eye; but we of the woods must take our friends where
we find 'em and of our own kind.  It ain't no fault of yours, Miss,
that you didn't know it; it ain't no fault of yours what happened;
but when it comes to your THANKING me for it, why--it's--it's
rather rough, you see--and gets me."  He stopped short as
desperately and as abruptly as he had begun, and stared blankly at
the fire.

A wave of pity and shame swept over the young girl and left its
high tide on her cheek.  But even then it was closely followed by
the feminine instinct of defence and defiance.  The REAL hero--the
GENTLEMAN--she reasoned bitterly, would have spared her all this
knowledge.

"But why," she said, with knitted brows, "why, if you knew it was
so precious and so harmless--why did you fire upon it?"

"Because," he said almost fiercely, turning upon her, "because you
SCREAMED, and THEN I KNEW IT HAD FRIGHTENED YOU!"  He stopped
instantly as she momentarily recoiled from him, but the very
brusqueness of his action had dislodged a tear from his dark eyes
that fell warm on the back of her hand, and seemed to blot out the
indignity.  "Listen, Miss," he went on hurriedly, as if to cover up
his momentary unmanliness.  "I knew the bear was missing to-night,
and when I heard the horses scurrying about I reckoned what was up.
I knew no harm could come to you, for the horses were unharnessed
and away from the wagon.  I pelted down that trail ahead of them
all like grim death, calkilatin' to get there before the bear; they
wouldn't have understood me; I was too high up to call to the
creature when he did come out, and I kinder hoped you wouldn't see
him.  Even when he turned towards the wagon, I knew it wasn't YOU
he was after, but suthin' else, and I kinder hoped, Miss, that you,
being different and quicker-minded than the rest, would see it too.
All the while them folks were yellin' behind me to fire--as if I
didn't know my work.  I was half-way down--and then you screamed!
And then I forgot everything,--everything but standing clear of
hitting you,--and I fired.  I was that savage that I wanted to
believe that he'd gone mad, and would have touched you, till I got
down there and found the honey-pot lying alongside of him.  But
there,--it's all over now!  I wouldn't have let on a word to you
only I couldn't bear to take YOUR THANKS for it, and I couldn't
bear to have you thinking me a brute for dodgin' them."  He
stopped, walked to the fire, leaned against the chimney under the
shallow pretext of kicking the dull embers into a blaze, which,
however, had only the effect of revealing his two glistening eyes
as he turned back again and came towards her.  "Well," he said,
with an ineffectual laugh, "it's all over now, it's all in the
day's work, I reckon,--and now, Miss, if you're ready, and will
just fix yourself your own way so as to ride easy, I'll carry you
down."  And slightly bending his strong figure, he dropped on one
knee beside her with extended arms.

Now it is one thing to be carried up a hill in temperate,
unconscious blood and practical business fashion by a tall,
powerful man with steadfast, glowering eyes, but quite another
thing to be carried down again by the same man, who has been
crying, and when you are conscious that you are going to cry too,
and your tears may be apt to mingle.  So Miss Amy Forester said:
"Oh, wait, please!  Sit down a moment.  Oh, Mr. Tenbrook, I am so
very, very sorry," and, clapping her hand to her eyes, burst into
tears.

"Oh, please, please don't, Miss Forester," said Jack, sitting down
on the end of the bunk with frightened eyes, "please don't do that!
It ain't worth it.  I'm only a brute to have said anything."

"No, no!  You are SO noble, SO forgiving!" sobbed Miss Forester,
"and I have made you go and kill the only thing you cared for, that
was all your own."

"No, Miss,--not all my own, either,--and that makes it so rough.
For it was only left in trust with me by a friend.  It was her only
companion."

"HER only companion?" echoed Miss Forester, sharply lifting her
bowed head.

"Except," said Jack hurriedly, miscomprehending the emphasis with
masculine fatuity,--"except the dying man for whom she lived and
sacrificed her whole life.  She gave me this ring, to always remind
me of my trust.  I suppose," he added ruefully, looking down upon
it, "it's no use now.  I'd better take it off."

Then Amy eyed the monstrous object with angelic simplicity.  "I
certainly should," she said with infinite sweetness; "it would only
remind you of your loss.  But," she added, with a sudden, swift,
imploring look of her blue eyes, "if you could part with it to me,
it would be such a reminder and token of--of your forgiveness."

Jack instantly handed it to her.  "And now," he said, "let me carry
you down."

"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that--I had better try to walk,"
and she rose to her feet.

"Then I shall know that you have not forgiven me," said Jack sadly.

"But I have no right to trouble"--

Alas! she had no time to finish her polite objection, for the next
moment she felt herself lifted in the air, smelled the bark thatch
within an inch of her nose, saw the firelight vanish behind her,
and subsiding into his curved arms as in a hammock, the two passed
forth into the night together.

"I can't find, your bracelet anywhere, Amy," said her father, when
they reached the wagon.

"It was on the floor in the lint," said Amy reproachfully.  "But,
of course, you never thought of that!"

        .        .        .        .        .        .

My pen halts with some diffidence between two conclusions to this
veracious chronicle.  As they agree in result, though not in theory
or intention, I may venture to give them both.  To one coming from
the lips of the charming heroine herself I naturally yield the
precedence.  "Oh, the bear story!  I don't really remember whether
that was before I was engaged to John or after.  But I had known
him for some time; father introduced him at the Governor's ball at
Sacramento.  Let me see!--I think it was in the winter of '56.
Yes! it was very amusing; I always used to charge John with having
trained that bear to attack our carriage so that he might come in
as a hero!  Oh, of course, there are a hundred absurd stories about
him,--they used to say that he lived all alone in a cabin like a
savage, and all that sort of thing, and was a friend of a dubious
woman in the locality, whom the common people made a heroine of,--
Miggles, or Wiggles, or some such preposterous name.  But look at
John there; can you conceive it?"  The listener, glancing at a very
handsome, clean-shaven fellow, faultlessly attired, could not
conceive such an absurdity.  So I therefore simply give the opinion
of Joshua Bixley, Superintendent of the Long Divide Tunnel Company,
for what it is worth: "I never took much stock in that bear story,
and its captivating old Forester's daughter.  Old Forester knew a
thing or two, and when he was out here consolidating tunnels, he
found out that Jack Tenbrook was about headed for the big lead, and
brought him out and introduced him to Amy.  You see, Jack, clear
grit as he was, was mighty rough style, and about as simple as they
make 'em, and they had to get up something to account for that
girl's taking a shine to him.  But they seem to be happy enough--
and what are you going to do about it?"

And I transfer this philosophic query to the reader.



THE YOUNGEST PROSPECTOR IN CALAVERAS


He was scarcely eight when it was believed that he could have
reasonably laid claim to the above title.  But he never did.  He
was a small boy, intensely freckled to the roots of his tawny hair,
with even a suspicion of it in his almond-shaped but somewhat full
eyes, which were the greenish hue of a ripe gooseberry.  All this
was very unlike his parents, from whom he diverged in resemblance
in that fashion so often seen in the Southwest of America, as if
the youth of the boundless West had struck a new note of
independence and originality, overriding all conservative and
established rules of heredity.  Something of this was also shown in
a singular and remarkable reticence and firmness of purpose, quite
unlike his family or schoolfellows.  His mother was the wife of a
teamster, who had apparently once "dumped" his family, consisting
of a boy and two girls, on the roadside at Burnt Spring, with the
canvas roof of his wagon to cover them, while he proceeded to
deliver other freight, not so exclusively his own, at other
stations along the road, returning to them on distant and separate
occasions with slight additions to their stock, habitation, and
furniture.  In this way the canvas roof was finally shingled and
the hut enlarged, and, under the quickening of a smiling California
sky and the forcing of a teeming California soil, the chance-sown
seed took root and became known as Medliker's Ranch, or "Medliker's,"
with its bursting garden patch and its three sheds or "lean-to's."

The girls helped their mother in a childish, imitative way; the
boy, John Bunyan, after a more desultory and original fashion--when
he was not "going to" or ostensibly "coming from" school, for he
was seldom actually there.  Something of this fear was in the mind
of Mrs. Medliker one morning as she looked up from the kettle she
was scrubbing, with premonition of "more worriting," to behold the
Reverend Mr. Staples, the local minister, hale John Bunyan Medliker
into the shanty with one hand.  Letting Johnny go, he placed his
back against the door and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.
Johnny dropped into a chair, furtively glancing at the arm by which
Mr. Staples had dragged him, and feeling it with the other hand to
see if it was really longer.

"I've been requested by the schoolmaster," said the Rev. Mr.
Staples, putting his handkerchief back into his broad felt hat with
a gasping smile, "to bring our young friend before you for a matter
of counsel and discipline.  I have done so, Sister Medliker, with
some difficulty,"--he looked down at John Bunyan, who again felt
his arm and was satisfied that it WAS longer--"but we must do our
dooty, even with difficulty to ourselves, and, perhaps, to others.
Our young friend, John Bunyan, stands on a giddy height--on
slippery places, and," continued Mr. Staples, with a lofty
disregard to consecutive metaphor, "his feet are taking fast hold
of destruction."  Here the child drew a breath of relief, possibly
at the prospect of being on firm ground of any kind at last; but
Sister Medliker, to whom the Staples style of exordium had only a
Sabbath significance, turned to her offspring abruptly:--

"And what's these yer doin's now, John? and me a slavin' to send ye
to school?"

Thus appealed to, Johnny looked for a reply at his feet, at his
arm, and at the kettle.  Then he said: "I ain't done nothin', but
he"--indicating Staples--"hez been nigh onter pullin' off my arm."

"It's now almost a week ago," continued Mr. Staples, waving aside
the interruption with a smile of painful Christian tolerance, "or
perhaps ten days--I won't be too sure--that the schoolmaster
discovered that Johnny had in his possession two or three flakes of
fine river gold--each of the value of half a dollar, or perhaps
sixty-two and one half cents.  On being questioned where he got
them he refused to say; although subsequently he alleged that he
had 'found' them.  It being a single instance, he was given the
benefit of the doubt, and nothing more was said about it.  But a
few days after he was found trying to pass off, at Mr. Smith's
store, two other flakes of a different size, and a small nugget of
the value of four or five dollars.  At this point I was called in;
he repeated to me, I grieve to say, the same untruthfulness, and
when I suggested to him the obvious fact that he had taken it from
one of the miner's sluice boxes and committed the grievous sin of
theft, he wickedly denied it--so that we are prevented from
carrying out the Christian command of restoring it even ONE fold,
instead of four or five fold as the Mosaic Law might have required.
We were, alas! unable to ascertain anything from the miners
themselves, though I grieve to say they one and all agreed that
their 'take' that week was not at all what they had expected.  I
even went so far as to admit the possibility of his own statement,
and besought him at least to show me where he had found it.  He at
first refused with great stubbornness of temper, but later
consented to accompany me privately this afternoon to the spot."
Mr. Staples paused, and sinking his voice gloomily, and with his
eyes fixed upon Johnny, continued slowly: "When I state that, after
several times trying to evade me on the way, he finally led me to
the top of Bald Hill, where there is not a scrap of soil, and not
the slightest indication, and still persisted that he found it
THERE, you will understand, Sister Medliker, the incorrigibility of
his conduct, and how he has added the sin of 'false witness' to his
breaking the Eighth Commandment.  But I leave him to your Christian
discipline!  Let us hope that if, through his stiff-necked
obduracy, he has haply escaped the vengeance of man's law, he will
not escape the rod of the domestic tabernacle."

"Ye kin leave him to me," said Mrs. Medliker, in her anxiety to get
rid of the parson, assuming a confidence she was far from feeling.

"So be it, Sister Medliker," said Staples, drawing a long,
satisfactory breath; "and let us trust that when you have rastled
with his flesh and spirit, you will bring us joyful tidings to
Wednesday's Mother's Meeting."

He clapped his soft hat on his head, cast another glance at the
wicked Johnny, opened the door with his hand behind him, and backed
himself into the road.

"Now, Johnny," said Mrs. Medliker, setting her lips together as the
door closed, "look me right in the face, and say where you stole
that gold."

But Johnny evidently did not think that his mother's face at that
moment offered any moral support, for he did not look at her; but,
after gazing at the kettle, said slowly, "I didn't steal no gold."

"Then," said Mrs. Medliker triumphantly, "if ye didn't steal it,
you'd say right off HOW ye got it."

Children are often better logicians than their elders.  To John
Bunyan the stealing of gold and the mere refusal to say where he
got it were two distinct and separate things; that the negation of
the second proposition meant the affirmation of the first he could
not accept.  But then children are also imitative, and fearful of
the older intellect.  It struck Johnny that his mother might be
right, and that to her it really meant the same thing.  So, after a
moment's silence he replied more confidently, "I suppose I stoled
it."

But he was utterly unprepared for the darkening change in his
mother's face, and her furious accents.  "You stole it?--you STOLE
it, you limb!  And you sit there and brazenly tell me!  Who did you
steal it from?  Tell me quick, afore I wring it out of you!"

Completely astounded and bewildered at this new turn of affairs,
Johnny again fell back upon the dreadful truth, and gasped, "I
don't know."

"You don't know, you devil!  Did you take it from Frazer's?"

"No."

"From the Simmons Brothers?"

"No."

"From the Blazing Star Company?"

"No."

"From a store?"

"No."

"Then, in created goodness!--WHERE did you get it?"

Johnny raised his brown-gooseberry eyes for a single instant to his
mother's and said, "I found it."

Mrs. Medliker gasped again and stared hopelessly at the ceiling.
Yet she was conscious of a certain relief.  After all, it was
POSSIBLE that he had found it--liar as he undoubtedly was.

"Then why don't you say where, you awful child?"

"Don't want to!"

Johnny would have liked to add that he saw no reason why he should
tell.  Other people who found gold were not obliged to tell.  There
was Jim Brody, who had struck a lead and kept the locality secret.
Nobody forced him to tell.  Nobody called him a thief; nobody had
dragged him about by the arm until he showed it.  Why was it wrong
that a little boy should find gold?  It wasn't agin the
Commandments.  Mr. Staples had never got up and said, "Thou shalt
not find gold!"  His mother had never made him pray not to find it!
The schoolmaster had never read him awful stories of boys who found
gold and never said anything about it, and so came to a horrid end.
All this crowded his small boy's mind, and, crowding, choked his
small boy's utterance.

"You jest wait till your father comes home," said Mrs. Medliker,
"and he'll see whether you 'want to' or not.  And now get yourself
off to bed and stay there."

Johnny knew that his father--whose teams had increased to five
wagons, and whose route extended forty miles further--was not due
for a week, and that the catastrophe was yet remote.  His present
punishment he had expected.  He went into the adjoining bedroom,
which he occupied with his sister, and began to undress.  He
lingered for some time over one stocking, and finally cautiously
removed from it a small piece of flake gold which he had kept
concealed all day under his big toe, to the great discomfort of
that member.  But this was only a small, ordinary self-martyrdom of
boyhood.  He scratched a boyish hieroglyphic on the metal, and when
his mother's back was turned scraped a small hole in the adobe
wall, inserted the gold in it, and covered it up with a plaster
made of the moistened debris.  It was safe--so was his secret--for
it need not, perhaps, be stated here that Johnny HAD told the truth
and HAD honestly found the gold!  But where?--yes, that was his own
secret!  And now, Johnny, with the instinct of all young animals,
dismissed the whole subject from his mind, and, reclining
comfortably upon his arm, fell into an interesting study of the
habits of the red ant as exemplified in a crack of the adobe wall,
and with the aid of a burnt match succeeded in diverting for the
rest of the afternoon the attention of a whole laborious colony.

The next morning, however, brought trouble to him in the curiosity
of his sisters, heightened by their belief that he could at any
moment be taken off to prison--which was their understanding of
their mother's story.  I grieve to say that to them this invested
him with a certain romantic heroism, from the gratification of
which the hero himself was not exempt.  Nevertheless, he
successfully evaded their questioning, and on broader impersonal
grounds.  As girls, it was none of their business!  He wasn't a-
going to tell them HIS secrets!  And what did they know about gold,
anyway?  They couldn't tell it from brass!  The attitude of his
mother was, however, still perplexing.  She was no longer actively
indignant, but treated him with a mysterious reserve that was the
more appalling.  The fact was that she no longer believed in his
theft,--indeed, she had never seriously accepted it,--but his
strange reticence and secretiveness piqued her curiosity, and even
made her a little afraid of him.  The capacity for keeping a secret
she believed was manlike, and reminded her--for no reason in the
world--of Jim Medliker, her husband, whom she feared.  Well, she
would let them fight it out between them.  More than that, she was
finally obliged to sink her reserve in employing him in the
necessary "chores" for the house, and he was sent on an errand to
the country store at the cross-roads.  But he first extracted his
gold-flake from the wall, and put it in his pocket.

On arriving at the store, it was plain even to his boyish
perceptions that the minister had circulated his miserable story.
Two or three of the customers spoke to each other in a whisper, and
looked at him.  More than that, when he began his homeward journey
he saw that two of the loungers were evidently following him.  Half
in timidity and half in boyish mischief he once or twice strayed
from the direct road, and snatched a fearful joy in observing their
equal divergence.  As he passed Mr. Staples's house he saw that
reverend gentleman sneak out of his back gate, and, without seeing
the two others, join in the inquisitorial procession.  But the
events of the past day had had their quickening effect upon
Johnny's intellect.  A brilliantly wicked thought struck him.  As
he was passing a perfectly bare spot on the road he managed,
without being noticed, to cast his glittering flake of gold on the
sterile ground at the other side of the road, where the minister's
path would lie.  Then, at a point where the road turned, he
concealed himself in the brush.  The Reverend Mr. Staples hurried
forward as he lost sight of the boy in the sweep of the road, but
halted suddenly.  Johnny's heart leaped.  The minister looked
around him, stooped, picked up the piece of gold, thrust it
hurriedly in his waistcoat pocket, and continued his way.  When he
reached the turn of the road, before passing it, he availed himself
of his solitude to pause and again examine the treasure, and again
return it to his pocket.  But, to Johnny's surprise, he here turned
back, walked quickly to the spot where he had found it, carefully
examined the locality, kicking the loose soil and stones around
with his feet until he had apparently satisfied himself that there
was no more, and no gold-bearing indications in the soil.  At this
moment, however, the two other inquisitors came in sight, and Mr.
Staples turned quickly and hurried on.  Before he had passed the
brush where Johnny was concealed, the two men overtook him and
exchanged greetings.  They both spoke of "Johnny" and his crime; of
having followed him with a view of finding out where he went to
procure his gold, and of his having again evaded them.  Mr. Staples
agreed with their purpose, but, to Johnny's intense astonishment,
SAID NOTHING ABOUT HIS OWN FIND!  When they had passed on, the boy
slipped from his place of concealment and followed them at a
distance until his own house came in view.  Here the two men
diverged, but the minister continued on towards the other "store"
and post-office on the main road.

He would have told his mother what he had seen, and his surprise
that the minister had not spoken of finding the gold to the other
men, but he was checked, first by his mother's attitude towards
him, which was clearly the same as the minister's, and, second, by
the knowledge that she would have condemned his dropping the gold
in the minister's path,--though he knew not WHY,--or asked his
reason for it, which he was equally sure he could not formulate,
though he also knew not why.  But that evening, as he was returning
from the spring with water, he heard the minister's voice in the
kitchen.  It had been a day of surprises and revelations to Johnny,
but the climax seemed to be reached as he entered the room; and he
now stood transfixed and open-mouthed as he heard Mr. Staples say:--

"It's all very well, Sister Medliker, to comfort your heart with
vain hopes and delusions.  A mother's leanin's is the soul's
deceivin's,--and yer leanin' on a broken reed.  If the boy truly
found that gold he'd have come to ye and said: 'Behold, mother, I
have found gold in the highways and byways; rejoice and be
exceedin' glad!' and hev poured it inter yer lap.  Yes," continued
Mr. Staples aggressively to the boy, as he saw him stagger back
with his pail in hand, "yes, sir, THAT would have been the course
of a Christian child!"

For a moment Johnny felt the blood boiling in his ears, and a
thousand words seemed crowding in his throat.  "Then"--he gasped
and choked.  "Then"--he began again, and stopped with the
suffocation of indignation.

But Mr. Staples saw in his agitation only an awakened conscience,
and, nudging Mrs. Medliker, leaned eagerly forward for a reply.
"Then," he repeated, with suave encouragement, "go on, Johnny!
Speak it out!"

"Then," said Johnny, in a high, shrill falsetto that startled them,
"then wot for did YOU pick up that piece o' gold in the road this
arternoon, and say nothin' of it to the men who followed ye?  Ye
did; I seed yer!  And ye didn't say nothin' of it to anybody; and
ye ain't sayin' nothin' of it now ter maw! and ye've got it in yer
vest!  And it's mine, and I dropped it!  Gimme it."

Astonishment, confusion, and rage swelled and empurpled Staples'
face.  It was HIS turn to gasp for breath.  Yet in the same moment
he made an angry dash at the boy.  But Mrs. Medliker interfered.
This was an entirely new feature in the case.  Great is the power
of gold.  A single glance at the minister's confusion had convinced
her that Johnny's accusation was true, and it was Johnny's MONEY--
constructively HERS--that the minister was concealing.  His mere
possession of that gold had more effect in straightening out her
loose logic than any sense of hypocrisy.

"You leave the boy be, Brother Staples," said Mrs. Medliker
sharply.  "I reckon wot's his is hisn, spite of whar he got it."

Mr. Staples saw his mistake, and smiled painfully as he fumbled in
his waistcoat pocket.  "I believe I DID pick up something," he
said, "that may or may not have been gold, but I have dropped it
again or thrown it away; and really it is of little concern in our
moral lesson.  For we have only HIS word that it was really his!
How do we KNOW it?"

"Cos it has my marks on it," said Johnny quickly; "it had a criss-
cross I scratched on it.  I kin tell it good enuf."

Mr. Staples turned suddenly pale and rose.  "Of course," he said to
Mrs. Medliker with painful dignity, "if you set so much value upon
a mere worldly trifle, I will endeavor to find it.  It may be in my
other pocket."  He backed out of the door in his usual fashion, but
instantly went over to the post-office, where, as he afterwards
alleged, he had changed the ore for coin in a moment of inadvertence.
But Johnny's hieroglyphics were found on it, and in some mysterious
way the story got about.  It had two effects that Johnny did not
dream of.  It had forced his mother into an attitude of complicity
with him; it had raised up for him a single friend. Jake Stielitzer,
quartz miner, had declared that Burnt Spring was "playing it low
down" on Johnny!  That if they really believed that the boy took
gold from their sluice boxes, it was their duty to watch their
CLAIMS and not the boy.  That it was only their excuse for
"snooping" after him, and they only wanted to find his "strike,"
which was as much his as their claims were their own!  All this with
great proficiency of epithet, but also a still more recognized
proficiency with the revolver, which made the former respected.

"That's the real nigger in the fence, Johnny," said Jake, twirling
his huge mustache, "and they only want to know where your lead is,--
and don't yer tell 'em!  Let 'em bile over with waitin' first, and
that'll put the fire out.  Does yer pop know?"

"No," said Johnny.

"Nor yer mar?"

"No."

Jake whistled.  "Then it's only YOU, yourself?"

Johnny nodded violently, and his brown eyes glistened.

"It's a heap of information to be packed away in a chap of your
size, Johnny.  Makes you feel kinder crowded inside, eh?  MUST keep
it to yourself, eh?"

"Have to," said Johnny with a gasp that was a little like a sigh.

It caused Jake to look at him attentively.  "See here, Johnny," he
said, "now ef ye wanted to tell somebody about it,--somebody as was
a friend of yours,--ME, f'r instance?"

Johnny slowly withdrew the freckled, warty little hand that had
been resting confidingly in Jake's and gently sidled away from him.
Jake burst into a loud laugh.

"All right, Johnny boy," he said with a hearty slap upon the boy's
back, "keep yer head shut ef yer wanter!  Only ef anybody else
comes bummin' round ye, like this, jest turn him over TO ME, and
I'll lift him outer his boots!"

Jake kept his word, and his distance thereafter.  Indeed, it was
after this first and last conversation with him that the influence
of his powerful protection was so strong that all active criticisms
of Johnny ceased, and only a respectful surveillance of his
movements lingered in the settlement.  I do not know that this was
altogether distasteful to the child; it would have been strange,
indeed, if he had not felt at times exalted by this mysterious
influence that he seemed to have acquired over his fellow
creatures.  If he were merely hunting blackberries in the brush, he
was always sure, sooner or later, to find a ready hand offered to
help and accompany him; if he trapped a squirrel or tracked down a
wild bees' hoard, he generally found a smiling face watching him.
Prospectors sometimes stopped him with: "Well, Johnny, as a chipper
and far-minded boy, now WHAR would YOU advise us to dig?"  I grieve
to say that Johnny was not above giving his advice,--and that it
was invariably of not the smallest use to the recipient.

And so the days passed.  Mr. Medliker's absence was protracted, and
the hour of retribution and punishment still seemed far away.  The
blackberries ripened and dried upon the hillside, and the squirrels
had gathered their hoards; the bees no longer came and went through
the thicket, but Johnny was still in daily mysterious possession of
his grains of gold!  And then one day--after the fate of all heroic
humanity--his secret was imperilled by the blandishments and
machinations of the all-powerful sex.

Florry Fraser was a little playmate of Johnny's.  Why, with his
doubts of his elder sister's intelligence and integrity, he should
have selected a child two years younger, and of singular
simplicity, was, like his other secret, his own.  What SHE saw in
him to attract her was equally strange; possibly it may have been
his brown-gooseberry eyes or his warts; but she was quite content
to trot after him, like a young squaw, carrying his "bow-arrow," or
his "trap," supremely satisfied to share his woodland knowledge or
his scanter confidences.  For nobody who knew Johnny suspected that
she was privy to his great secret.  Howbeit, wherever his ragged
straw hat, thatched with his tawny hair, was detected in the brush,
the little nankeen sunbonnet of Florry was sure to be discerned not
far behind.  For two weeks they had not seen each other.  A fell
disease, nurtured in ignorance, dirt, and carelessness, was
striking right and left through the valleys of the foothills, and
Florry, whose sister had just recovered from an attack, had been
sequestered with her.  But one morning, as Johnny was bringing his
wood from the stack behind the house, he saw, to his intense
delight, a picket of the road fence slipped aside by a small red
hand, and a moment after Florry squeezed herself through the narrow
opening.  Her round cheeks were slightly flushed, and there was a
scrap of red flannel around her plump throat that heightened the
whiteness of her skin.

"My!" said Johnny, with half-real, half-affected admiration, "how
splendiferous!"

"Sore froat," said Florry, in a whisper, trying to insert her two
chubby fingers between the bandage and her chin.  "I mussent go
outer the garden patch!  I mussent play in the woods, for I'll be
seed!  I mussent stay long, for they'll ketch me outer bed!"

"Outer bed?" repeated Johnny, with intense admiration, as he
perceived for the first time that Florry was in a flannel nightgown,
with bare legs and feet.

"Ess."

Whereupon these two delightful imps chuckled and wagged their heads
with a sincere enjoyment that this mere world could not give!
Johnny slipped off his shoes and stockings and hurriedly put them
on the infant Florry, securing them from falling off with a thick
cord.  This added to their enjoyment.

"We can play cubby house in the stone heap," whispered Florry.

"Hol' on till I tote in this wood," said Johnny.  "You hide till I
come back."

Johnny swiftly delivered his load with an alacrity he had never
shown before.  Then they played "cubby house"--not fifty feet from
the cabin, with a hushed but guilty satisfaction.  But presently it
palled.  Their domain was too circumscribed for variety.  "Robinson
Crusoe up the tree" was impossible, as being visible from the house
windows.  Johnny was at his wits' end.  Florry was fretful and
fastidious.  Then a great thought struck him and left him cold.
"If I show you a show, you won't tell?" he said suddenly.

"No."

"Wish yer-ma-die?"

"Ess."

"Got any penny?"

"No."

"Got any slate pencil?"

"No."

"Ain't got any pins nor nuthin'?  You kin go in for a pin."

But Florry had none of childhood's fluctuating currency with her,
having, so to speak, no pockets.

"Well," said Johnny, brightening up, "ye kin go in for luv."

The child clipped him with her small arms and smiled, and, Johnny
leading the way, they crept on all fours through the thick ferns
until they paused before a deep fissure in the soil half overgrown
with bramble.  In its depths they could hear the monotonous trickle
of water.  It was really the source of the spring that afterwards
reappeared fifty yards nearer the road, and trickled into an
unfailing pool known as the Burnt Spring, from the brown color of
the surrounding bracken.  It was the water supply of the ranch, and
the reason for Mr. Medliker's original selection of that site.
Johnny lingered for an instant, looked carefully around, and then
lowered himself into the fissure.  A moment later he reached up his
arms to Florry, lowered her also, and both disappeared from view.
Yet from time to time their voices came faintly from below--with
the gurgle of water--as of festive gnomes at play.

At the end of ten minutes they reappeared, a little muddy, a little
bedraggled, but flushed and happy.  There were two pink spots on
Florry's cheeks, and she clasped something tightly in her little
red fist.

"There," said Johnny, when they were seated in the straw again,
"now mind you don't tell."

But here suddenly Florry's lips began to quiver, and she gave vent
to a small howl of anguish.

"You ain't bit by a trant'ler nor nuthin'?' said Johnny anxiously.
"Hush up!"

"N--o--o!  But"--

"But what?" said Johnny.

"Mar said I MUST tell!  Mar said I was to fin' out where you get
the truly gold!  Mar said I was to get you to take me," howled
Florry, in an agony of remorse.

Johnny gasped.  "You Injin!" he began.

"But I won't--Johnny!" said Florry, clutching his leg frantically.
"I won't and I sha'n't!  I ain't no Injin!"

Then, between her sobs, she told him how her mother and Mr. Staples
had said that she was to ask Johnny the next time they met to take
her where they found the "truly gold," and she was to remember
where it was and to tell them.  And they were going to give her a
new dolly and a hunk of gingerbread.  "But I won't--and I sha'n't!"
she said passionately.  She was quite pale again.

Johnny was convinced, but thoughtful.  "Tell 'em," he said
hoarsely, "tell 'em a big whopper!  They won't know no better.
They'll never guess where."  And he briefly recounted the wild-
goose chase he had given the minister.

"And get the dolly and the cake," said Florry, her eyes shining
through her tears.

"In course," said Johnny.  "They'll get the dolly back, but you kin
have eated the cake first."  They looked at each other, and their
eyes danced together over this heaven-sent inspiration.  Then
Johnny took off her shoes and stockings, rubbed her cold feet with
his dirty handkerchief, and said: "Now you trot over to your mar!"

He helped her through the loose picket of the fence and was turning
away when her faint voice again called him.

"Johnny!"

He turned back; she was standing on the other side of the fence
holding out her arms to him.  He went to her with shining eyes,
lifted her up, and from her hot but loving little lips took a fatal
kiss.

For only an hour later Mrs. Fraser found Florry in her bed, tossing
with a high fever and a light head.  She was talking of "Johnny"
and "gold," and had a flake of the metal in her tiny fist.  When
Mr. Staples was sent for, and with the mother and father, hung
anxiously above her bed, to their eager questioning they could only
find out that Florry had been to a high mountain, ever so far away,
and on the top of it there was gold lying around, and a shining
figure was giving it away to the people.

"And who were the people, Florry dear," said Mr. Staples
persuasively; "anybody ye know here?"

"They woz angels," said Florry, with a frightened glance over her
shoulder.

I grieve to say that Mr. Staples did not look as pleased at the
celestial vision as he might have, and poor Mrs. Fraser probably
saw that in her child's face which drove other things from her
mind.  Yet Mr. Staples persisted:--

"And who led you to this beautiful mountain?  Was it Johnny?"

"No."

"Who then?"

Florry opened her eyes on the speaker.  "I fink it was Dod," she
said, and closed them again.

But here Dr. Duchesne hurried in, and after a single glance at the
child hustled Mr. Staples from the room.  For there were grave
complications that puzzled him, Florry seemed easier and quieter
under his kindly voice and touch, but did not speak again,--and so,
slowly sinking, passed away that night in a dreamless sleep.  This
was followed by a mad panic at Burnt Spring the next day, and Mrs.
Medliker fled with her two girls to Sacramento, leaving Johnny,
ostensibly strong and active, to keep house until his father's
return.  But Mr. Medliker's return was again delayed, and in the
epidemic, which had now taken a fast hold of the settlement,
Johnny's secret--and indeed the boy himself--was quite forgotten.
It was only on Mr. Medliker's arrival it was known that he had been
lying dangerously ill, alone, in the abandoned house.  In his
strange reticence and firmness of purpose he had kept his
sufferings to himself,--as he had his other secret,--and they were
revealed only in the wasted, hollow figure that feebly opened the
door to his father.

On which intelligence Mr. Staples was, as usual, promptly on the
spot with his story of Johnny's secret to the father, and his usual
eager questioning to the fast-sinking boy.  "And now, Johnny," he
said, leaning over the bed, "tell us ALL.  There is One from whom
no secrets are hid.  Remember, too, that dear Florry, who is now
with the angels, has already confessed."

Perhaps it was because Johnny, even at that moment, hated the man;
perhaps it was because at that moment he loved and believed in
Florry, or perhaps it was only that because at that moment he was
nearer the greater Truth than his questioner, but he said, in a
husky voice, "You lie!"

Staples drew back with a flushed face, but lips that writhed in a
pained and still persistent eagerness.  "But, Johnny, at least tell
us where--wh--wow--wow."

I am obliged to admit that these undignified accents came from Mr.
Staples' own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr.
Medliker's arm around his throat.  The teamster was irascible and
prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same
reason, strong and sinewy.  Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and
dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside,
with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker in his ears:--

"You're a minister of the gospel, I know, but ef ye say another
word to my Johnny, I'll knock the gospel stuffin' out of ye.  Ye
hear me!  I'VE DRIVEN MULES AFORE!"

He then strode back into the room.  "Ye needn't answer, Johnny,
he's gone."

But so, too, had Johnny, for he never answered the question in this
world, nor, please God, was he required to in the next.  He lay
still and dead.  The community was scandalized the next day when
Mr. Medliker sent for a minister from Sacramento to officiate at
his child's funeral, in place of Mr. Staples, and then the subject
was dropped.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

But the influence of Johnny's hidden treasure still remained as a
superstition in the locality.  Prospecting parties were continually
made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and
data altogether apocryphal.  It was even alleged that a miner had
one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over
the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the
stars at the very moment he thought he had discovered their secret.
And then it was forgotten; the prosperous Mr. Medliker, now the
proprietor of a stage-coach route, moved away to Sacramento;
Medliker's Ranch became a station for changing horses, and, as the
new railway in time superseded even that, sank into a blacksmith's
shop on the outskirts of the new town of Burnt Spring.  And then
one day, six years after, news fell as a bolt from the blue!

It was thus recorded in the county paper: "A piece of rare good
fortune, involving, it is said, the development of a lead of
extraordinary value, has lately fallen to the lot of Mr. John
Silsbee, the popular blacksmith, on the site of the old Medliker
Ranch.  In clearing out the failing water-course known as Burnt
Spring, Mr. Silsbee came upon a rich ledge or pocket at the actual
source of the spring,--a fissure in the ground a few rods from the
road.  The present yield has been estimated to be from eight to ten
thousand dollars.  But the event is considered as one of the most
remarkable instances of the vagaries of 'prospecting' ever known,
as this valuable 'pot-hole' existed undisturbed for EIGHT YEARS not
FIFTY YARDS from the old cabin that was in former times the
residence of J. Medliker, Esq., and the station of the Pioneer
Stage Company, and was utterly unknown and unsuspected by the
previous inhabitants!  Verily truth is stranger than fiction!"



A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS


The schoolmaster at Hemlock Hill was troubled that morning.  Three
of his boys were missing.  This was not only a notable deficit in a
roll-call of twenty, but the absentees were his three most original
and distinctive scholars.  He had received no preliminary warning
or excuse.  Nor could he attribute their absence to any common
local detention or difficulty of travel.  They lived widely apart
and in different directions.  Neither were they generally known as
"chums," or comrades, who might have entered into an unhallowed
combination to "play hookey."

He looked at the vacant places before him with a concern which his
other scholars little shared, having, after their first lively
curiosity, not unmixed with some envy of the derelicts, apparently
forgotten them.  He missed the cropped head and inquisitive glances
of Jackson Tribbs on the third bench, the red hair and brown eyes
of Providence Smith in the corner, and there was a blank space in
the first bench where Julian Fleming, a lanky giant of seventeen,
had sat.  Still, it would not do to show his concern openly, and,
as became a man who was at least three years the senior of the
eldest, Julian Fleming, he reflected that they were "only boys,"
and that their friends were probably ignorant of the good he was
doing them, and so dismissed the subject.  Nevertheless, it struck
him as wonderful how the little world beneath him got on without
them.  Hanky Rogers, bully, who had been kept in wholesome check by
Julian Fleming, was lively and exuberant, and his conduct was
quietly accepted by the whole school; Johnny Stebbins, Tribbs's
bosom friend, consorted openly with Tribbs's particular enemy; some
of the girls were singularly gay and conceited.  It was evident
that some superior masculine oppression had been removed.

He was particularly struck by this last fact, when, the next
morning, no news coming of the absentees, he was impelled to
question his flock somewhat precisely concerning them.  There was
the usual shy silence which follows a general inquiry from the
teacher's desk; the children looked at one another, giggled
nervously, and said nothing.

"Can you give me any idea as to what might have kept them away?"
said the master.

Hanky Rogers looked quickly around, began, "Playin' hook--" in a
loud voice, but stopped suddenly without finishing the word, and
became inaudible.  The master saw fit to ignore him.

"Bee-huntin'," said Annie Roker vivaciously.

"Who is?" asked the master.

"Provy Smith, of course.  Allers bee-huntin'.  Gets lots o' honey.
Got two full combs in his desk last week.  He's awful on bees and
honey.  Ain't he, Jinny?"  This in a high voice to her sister.

The younger Miss Roker, thus appealed to, was heard to murmur that
of all the sneakin' bee-hunters she had ever seed, Provy Smith was
the worst.  "And squirrels--for nuts," she added.

The master became attentive,--a clue seemed probable here.  "Would
Tribbs and Fleming be likely to go with him?" he asked.

A significant silence followed.  The master felt that the children
recognized a doubt of this, knowing the boys were not "chums;"
possibly they also recognized something incriminating to them, and
with characteristic freemasonry looked at one another and were
dumb.

He asked no further questions, but, when school was dismissed,
mounted his horse and started for the dwelling of the nearest
culprit, Jackson Tribbs, four miles distant.  He had often admired
the endurance of the boy, who had accomplished the distance,
including the usual meanderings of a country youth, twice a day, on
foot, in all weathers, with no diminution of spirits or energy.  He
was still more surprised when he found it a mountain road, and that
the house lay well up on the ascent of the pass.  Autumn was
visible only in a few flaming sumacs set among the climbing pines,
and here, in a little clearing to the right, appeared the dwelling
he was seeking.

"Tribbses," or "Tribbs's Run," was devoted to the work of cutting
down the pines midway on a long regularly sloping mountain-side,
which allowed the trunks, after they were trimmed and cut into
suitable lengths, to be slid down through rude runs, or artificial
channels, into the valley below, where they were collected by teams
and conveyed to the nearest mills.  The business was simple in the
extreme, and was carried on by Tribbs senior, two men with saws and
axes, and the natural laws of gravitation.  The house was a long
log cabin; several sheds roofed with bark or canvas seemed
consistent with the still lingering summer and the heated odors of
the pines, but were strangely incongruous to those white patches on
the table-land and the white tongue stretching from the ridge to
the valley.  But the master was familiar with those Sierran
contrasts, and as he had never ascended the trail before, it might
be only the usual prospect of the dwellers there.  At this moment
Mr. Tribbs appeared from the cabin, with his axe on his shoulder.
Nodding carelessly to the master, he was moving away, when the
latter stopped him.

"Is Jackson here?" he asked.

"No," said the father, half impatiently, still moving on.  "Hain't
seen him since yesterday."

"Nor has he been at school," said the master, "either yesterday or
to-day."

Mr. Tribbs looked puzzled and grieved.  "Now I reckoned you had
kep' him in for some devilment of his'n, or lessons."

"Not ALL NIGHT!" said the master, somewhat indignant at this
presumption of his arbitrary functions.

"Humph!" said Mr. Tribbs.  "Mariar!"  Mrs. Tribbs made her
appearance in the doorway.  "The schoolmaster allows that Jackson
ain't bin to school at all."  Then, turning to the master, he
added, "Thar! you settle it between ye," and quietly walked away.

Mrs. Tribbs looked by no means satisfied with or interested in the
proposed tete-a-tete.  "Hev ye looked in the bresh" (i. e., brush
or underwood) "for him?" she said querulously.

"No," said the master, "I came here first.  There are two other
boys missing,--Providence Smith and Julian Fleming.  Did either of
them"--

But Mrs. Tribbs had interrupted him with a gesture of impatient
relief.  "Oh, that's all, is it?  Playin' hookey together, in
course.  'Scuse me, I must go back to my bakin'."  She turned away,
but stopped suddenly, touched, as the master fondly believed, by
some tardy maternal solicitude.  But she only said: "When he DOES
come back, you just give him a whalin', will ye?" and vanished into
her kitchen.

The master rode away, half ashamed of his foolish concern for the
derelicts.  But he determined to try Smith's father, who owned a
small rancho lower down on a spur of the same ridge.  But the spur
was really nearer Hemlock Hill, and could have been reached more
directly by a road from there.  He, however, kept along the ridge,
and after half an hour's ride was convinced that Jackson Tribbs
could have communicated with Provy Smith without coming nearer
Hemlock Hill, and this revived his former belief that they were
together.  He found the paternal Smith engaged in hoeing potatoes
in a stony field.  The look of languid curiosity with which he had
regarded the approach of the master changed to one of equally
languid aggression as he learned the object of his visit.

"Wot are ye comin' to ME for?  I ain't runnin' your school," he
said slowly and aggressively.  "I started Providence all right for
it mornin' afore last, since when I never set eyes on him.  That
lets ME out.  My business, young feller, is lookin' arter the
ranch.  Yours, I reckon, is lookin' arter your scholars."

"I thought it my business to tell you your son was absent from
school," said the master coldly, turning away.  "If you are
satisfied, I have nothing more to say."  Nevertheless, for the
moment he was so startled by this remarkable theory of his own
responsibility in the case that he quite accepted the father's
callousness,--or rather it seemed to him that his unfortunate
charges more than ever needed his protection.  There was still the
chance of his hearing some news from Julian Fleming's father; he
lived at some distance, in the valley on the opposite side of
Hemlock Hill; and thither the master made his way.  Luckily he had
not gone far before he met Mr. Fleming, who was a teamster, en
route.  Like the fathers of the other truants, he was also engaged
in his vocation.  But, unlike the others, Fleming senior was jovial
and talkative.  He pulled up his long team promptly, received the
master's news with amused interest, and an invitation to spirituous
refreshment from a demijohn in his wagon.

"Me and the ole woman kind o' spekilated that Jule might hev been
over with Aunt Marthy; but don't you worry, Mr. Schoolmaster.
They're limbs, every one o' them, but they'll fetch up somewhere,
all square!  Just you put two fingers o' that corn juice inside ye,
and let 'em slide.  Ye didn't hear what the 'lekshun news was when
ye was at Smith's, did ye?"

The master had not inquired.  He confessed he had been worried
about the boys.  He had even thought that Julian might have met
with an accident.

Mr. Fleming wiped his mouth, with a humorous affectation of
concern.  "Met with an ACCIDENT?  Yes, I reckon not ONE accident,
but TWO of 'em.  These yer accidents Jule's met with had two legs,
and were mighty lively accidents, you bet, and took him off with
'em; or mebbe they had four legs, and he's huntin' 'em yet.
Accidents!  Now I never thought o' that!  Well, when you come
across him and THEM ACCIDENTS, you just whale 'em, all three!  And
ye won't take another drink?  Well, so long, then!  Gee up!"  He
rolled away, with a laugh, in the heavy dust kicked up by his
plunging mules, and the master made his way back to the schoolhouse.
His quest for that day was ended.

But the next morning he was both astounded and relieved, at the
assembling of school, to find the three truants back in their
places.  His urgent questioning of them brought only the one and
same response from each: "Got lost on the ridge."  He further
gathered that they had slept out for two nights, and were together
all the time, but nothing further, and no details were given.  The
master was puzzled.  They evidently expected punishment; that was
no doubt also the wish of their parents; but if their story was
true, it was a serious question if he ought to inflict it.  There
was no means of testing their statement; there was equally none by
which he could controvert it.  It was evident that the whole school
accepted it without doubt; whether they were in possession of
details gained from the truants themselves which they had withheld
from him, or whether from some larger complicity with the culprits,
he could not say.  He told them gravely that he should withhold
equally their punishment and their pardon until he could satisfy
himself of their veracity, and that there had been no premeditation
in their act.  They seemed relieved, but here, again, he could not
tell whether it sprang from confidence in their own integrity or
merely from youthful hopefulness that delayed retribution never
arrived!

It was a month before their secret was fully disclosed.  It was
slowly evolved from corroborating circumstances, but always with a
shy reluctance from the boys themselves, and a surprise that any
one should think it of importance.  It was gathered partly from
details picked up at recess or on the playground, from the
voluntary testimony of teamsters and packers, from a record in the
county newspaper, but always shaping itself into a consecutive and
harmonious narrative.

It was a story so replete with marvelous escape and adventure that
the master hesitated to accept it in its entirety until after it
had long become a familiar history, and was even forgotten by the
actors themselves.  And even now he transcribes it more from the
circumstances that surrounded it than from a hope that the story
will be believed.


                        WHAT HAPPENED

Master Provy Smith had started out that eventful morning with the
intention of fighting Master Jackson Tribbs for the "Kingship" of
Table Ridge--a trifling territory of ten leagues square--Tribbs
having infringed on his boundaries and claimed absolute sovereignty
over the whole mountain range.  Julian Fleming was present as
referee and bottle-holder.  The battle ground selected was the
highest part of the ridge.  The hour was six o'clock, which would
allow them time to reach school before its opening, with all traces
of their conflict removed.  The air was crisp and cold,--a trifle
colder than usual,--and there was a singular thickening of the
sun's rays on the ridge, which made the distant peaks indistinct
and ghostlike.  However, the two combatants stripped "to the buff,"
and Fleming patronizingly took position at the "corner," leaning
upon a rifle, which, by reason of his superior years, and the
wilderness he was obliged to traverse in going to school, his
father had lent him to carry.  It was that day a providential
weapon.

Suddenly, Fleming uttered the word, "Sho!"  The two combatants
paused in their first "squaring off" to see, to their surprise,
that their referee had faced round, with his gun in his hand, and
was staring in another direction.

"B'ar!" shouted the three voices together.  A huge bear, followed
by its cubs, was seen stumbling awkwardly away to the right, making
for the timber below.  In an instant the boys had hurried into
their jackets again, and the glory of fight was forgotten in the
fever of the chase.  Why should they pound each other when there
was something to really KILL?  They started in instant pursuit,
Julian leading.

But the wind was now keen and bitter in their faces, and that
peculiar thickening of the air which they had noticed had become
first a dark blue and then a whitening pall, in which the bear was
lost.  They still kept on.  Suddenly Julian felt himself struck
between the eyes by what seemed a snowball, and his companions were
as quickly spattered by gouts of monstrous clinging snowflakes.
Others as quickly followed--it was not snowing, it was snowballing.
They at first laughed, affecting to retaliate with these whirling,
flying masses shaken like clinging feathers from a pillow; but in a
few seconds they were covered from head to foot by snow, their
limbs impeded or pinioned against them by its weight, their breath
gone.  They stopped blindly, breathlessly.  Then, with a common
instinct, they turned back.  But the next moment they heard Julian
cry, "Look out!"  Coming towards them out of the storm was the
bear, who had evidently turned back by the same instinct.  An
ungovernable instinct seized the younger boys, and they fled.  But
Julian stopped with leveled rifle.  The bear stopped too, with
sullen, staring eyes.  But the eyes that glanced along the rifle
were young, true, and steady.  Julian fired.  The hot smoke was
swept back by the gale into his face, but the bear turned and
disappeared in the storm again.  Julian ran on to where his
companions had halted at the report, a little ashamed of their
cowardice.  "Keep on that way!" he shouted hoarsely.  "No use
tryin' to go where the b'ar couldn't.  Keep on!"

"Keep on--whar?  There ain't no trail--no nuthin'!" said Jackson
querulously, to hold down a rising fear.  It was true.  The trail
had long since disappeared; even their footprints of a moment
before were filled up by the piling snow; they were isolated in
this stony upland, high in air, without a rock or tree to guide
them across its vast white level.  They were bitterly cold and
benumbed.  The stimulus of the storm and chase had passed, but
Julian kept driving them before him, himself driven along by the
furious blast, yet trying to keep some vague course along the
waste.  So an hour passed.  Then the wind seemed to have changed,
or else they had traveled in a circle--they knew not which, but the
snow was in their faces now.  But, worst of all, the snow had
changed too; it no longer fell in huge blue flakes, but in millions
of stinging gray granules.  Julian's face grew hard and his eyes
bright.  He knew it was no longer a snow-squall, but a lasting
storm.  He stopped; the boys tumbled against him.  He looked at
them with a strange smile.

"Hev you two made up?" he said.

"No--o!"

"Make up, then."

"What?"

"Shake hands."

They clasped each other's red, benumbed fingers and laughed, albeit
a little frightened at Julian.  "Go on!" he said, curtly.

They went on dazedly, stupidly, for another hour.

Suddenly Provy Smith's keen eyes sparkled.  He pointed to a
singular irregular mound of snow before them, plainly seen above
the dreary level.  Julian ran to it with a cry, and began wildly
digging.  "I knew I hit him," he cried, as he brushed the snow from
a huge and hairy leg.  It was the bear--dead, but not yet cold.  He
had succumbed with his huge back to the blast, the snow piling a
bulwark behind him, where it had slowly roofed him in.  The half-
frozen lads threw themselves fearlessly against his furry coat and
crept between his legs, nestling themselves beneath his still warm
body with screams of joy.  The snow they had thrown back increased
the bulwark, and drifting over it, in a few moments inclosed them
in a thin shell of snow.  Thoroughly exhausted, after a few grunts
of satisfaction, a deep sleep fell upon them, from which they were
awakened only by the pangs of hunger.  Alas! their dinners--the
school dinners--had been left on the inglorious battlefield.
Nevertheless, they talked of eating the bear if it came to the
worst.  They would have tried it even then, but they were far above
the belt of timber; they had matches--what boy has not?--but no
WOOD.  Still, they were reassured, and even delighted, with this
prospect, and so fell asleep again, stewing with the dead bear in
the half-impervious snow, and woke up in the morning ravenous, yet
to see the sun shining in their faces through the melted snow, and
for Jackson Tribbs to quickly discover, four miles away as the crow
flies, the cabin of his father among the flaming sumacs.

They started up in the glare of the sun, which at first almost
blinded them.  They then discovered that they were in a depression
of the table-land that sloped before them to a deep gully in the
mountainside, which again dropped into the canyon below.  The trail
they had lost, they now remembered, must be near this edge.  But it
was still hidden, and in seeking it there was danger of some fatal
misstep in the treacherous snow.  Nevertheless, they sallied out
bravely, although they would fain have stopped to skin the bear,
but Julian's mandate was peremptory.  They spread themselves along
the ridge, at times scraping the loose snow away in their search
for the lost trail.

Suddenly they all slipped and fell, but rose again quickly,
laughing.  Then they slipped and fell again, but this time with the
startling consciousness that it was not THEY who had slipped, but
THE SNOW!  As they regained their feet they could plainly see now
that a large crack on the white field, some twenty feet in width,
extended between them and the carcass of the bear, showing the
glistening rock below.  Again they were thrown down with a sharp
shock.  Jackson Tribbs, who had been showing a strange excitement,
suddenly gave a cry of warning.  "Lie flat, fellers! but keep a-
crawlin' and jumpin'.  We're goin' down a slide!"  And the next
moment they were sliding and tossing, apparently with the whole
snow-field, down towards the gullied precipice.

What happened after this, and how long it lasted, they never knew.
For, hurried along with increasing momentum, but always
mechanically clutching at the snow, and bounding from it as they
swept on, they sometimes lost breath, and even consciousness.  At
times they were half suffocated in rolling masses of drift, and
again free and skimming over its arrested surface, but always
falling, as it seemed to them, almost perpendicularly.  In one of
these shocks they seemed to be going through a thicket of
underbrush; but Provy Smith knew that they were the tops of pine-
trees.  At last there was one shock longer and lasting, followed by
a deepening thunder below them.  The avalanche had struck a ledge
in the mountain side, and precipitated its lower part into the
valley.

Then everything was still, until Provy heard Julian's voice
calling.  He answered, but there was no response from Tribbs.  Had
he gone over into the valley?  They set up a despairing shout!  A
voice--a smothered one--that might be his, came apparently from the
snow beneath them.  They shouted again; the voice, vague and
hollow, responded, but it was now surely his.

"Where are you?" screamed Provy.

"Down the chimbley."

There was a black square of adobe sticking out of the snow near
them.  They ran to it.  There was a hole.  They peered down, but
could see nothing at first but a faint glimmer.

"Come down, fellows!  It ain't far!" said Tribbs's voice.

"Wot yer got there?" asked Julian cautiously.

"Suthin' to eat."

That was enough.  In another instant Julian and Provy went down the
chimney.  What was a matter of fifteen feet after a thousand?
Tribbs had already lit a candle by which they could see that they
were in the cabin of some tunnel-man at work on the ridge.  He had
probably been in the tunnel when the avalanche fell, and escaped,
though his cabin was buried.  The three discoverers helped
themselves to his larder.  They laughed and ate as at a picnic,
played cards, pretended it was a robber's cave, and finally,
wrapping themselves in the miner's blankets, slept soundly, knowing
where they were, and confident also that they could find the trail
early the next morning.  They did so, and without going to their
homes came directly to school--having been absent about fifty
hours.  They were in high spirits, except for the thought of
approaching punishment, never dreaming to evade it by anything
miraculous in their adventures.


Such was briefly their story.  Its truth was corroborated by the
discovery of the bear's carcass, by the testimony of the tunnel-
man, who found his larder mysteriously ransacked in his buried
cabin, and, above all, by the long white tongue that for many
months hung from the ledge into the valley.  Nobody thought the
lanky Julian a hero,--least of all himself.  Nobody suspected that
Jackson Tribbs's treatment of a "slide" had been gathered from
experiments in his father's "runs"--and he was glad they did not.
The master's pardon obtained, the three truants cared little for
the opinion of Hemlock Hill.  They knew THEMSELVES, that was
enough.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Tales of Trail and Town, by Bret Harte

