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Stories in Light and Shadow

by Bret Harte

February, 2000  [Etext #2508]


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STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW

by

Bret Harte


From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 13

P. F. COLLIER & SON

NEW YORK


CONTENTS

"UNSER KARL"

UNCLE JIM AND UNCLE BILLY

SEE YUP

THE DESBOROUGH CONNECTIONS

SALOMY JANE'S KISS

THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN

THE PASSING OF ENRIQUEZ



STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW


"UNSER KARL"


The American consul for Schlachtstadt had just turned out of the
broad Konig's Allee into the little square that held his consulate.
Its residences always seemed to him to wear that singularly
uninhabited air peculiar to a street scene in a theatre.  The
facades, with their stiff, striped wooden awnings over the windows,
were of the regularity, color, and pattern only seen on the stage,
and conversation carried on in the street below always seemed to be
invested with that perfect confidence and security which surrounds
the actor in his painted desert of urban perspective.  Yet it was a
peaceful change to the other byways and highways of Schlachtstadt
which were always filled with an equally unreal and mechanical
soldiery, who appeared to be daily taken out of their boxes of
"caserne" or "depot" and loosely scattered all over the pretty
linden-haunted German town.  There were soldiers standing on street
corners; soldiers staring woodenly into shop windows; soldiers
halted suddenly into stone, like lizards, at the approach of
Offiziere; Offiziere lounging stiffly four abreast, sweeping the
pavement with their trailing sabres all at one angle.  There were
cavalcades of red hussars, cavalcades of blue hussars, cavalcades
of Uhlans, with glittering lances and pennons--with or without a
band--formally parading; there were straggling "fatigues" or
"details" coming round the corners; there were dusty, businesslike
columns of infantry, going nowhere and to no purpose.  And they one
and all seemed to be WOUND UP--for that service--and apparently
always in the same place.  In the band of their caps--invariably of
one pattern--was a button, in the centre of which was a square
opening or keyhole.  The consul was always convinced that through
this keyhole opening, by means of a key, the humblest caporal wound
up his file, the Hauptmann controlled his lieutenants and non-
commissioned officers, and even the general himself, wearing the
same cap, was subject through his cap to a higher moving power.  In
the suburbs, when the supply of soldiers gave out, there were
sentry-boxes; when these dropped off, there were "caissons," or
commissary wagons.  And, lest the military idea should ever fail
from out the Schlachtstadt's burgher's mind, there were police in
uniform, street-sweepers in uniform; the ticket-takers, guards, and
sweepers at the Bahnhof were in uniform,--but all wearing the same
kind of cap, with the probability of having been wound up freshly
each morning for their daily work.  Even the postman delivered
peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of
bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul
saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight of his
consular responsibility.

Yet, in spite of this military precedence, it did not seem in the
least inconsistent with the decidedly peaceful character of the
town, and this again suggested its utter unreality; wandering cows
sometimes got mixed up with squadrons of cavalry, and did not seem
to mind it; sheep passed singly between files of infantry, or
preceded them in a flock when on the march; indeed, nothing could
be more delightful and innocent than to see a regiment of infantry
in heavy marching order, laden with every conceivable thing they
could want for a week, returning after a cheerful search for an
invisible enemy in the suburbs, to bivouac peacefully among the
cabbages in the market-place.  Nobody was ever imposed upon for a
moment by their tremendous energy and severe display; drums might
beat, trumpets blow, dragoons charge furiously all over the
Exercier Platz, or suddenly flash their naked swords in the streets
to the guttural command of an officer--nobody seemed to mind it.
People glanced up to recognize Rudolf or Max "doing their service,"
nodded, and went about their business.  And although the officers
always wore their side-arms, and at the most peaceful of social
dinners only relinquished their swords in the hall, apparently that
they might be ready to buckle them on again and rush out to do
battle for the Fatherland between the courses, the other guests
only looked upon these weapons in the light of sticks and
umbrellas, and possessed their souls in peace.  And when, added to
this singular incongruity, many of these warriors were spectacled,
studious men, and, despite their lethal weapons, wore a slightly
professional air, and were--to a man--deeply sentimental and
singularly simple, their attitude in this eternal Kriegspiel seemed
to the consul more puzzling than ever.

As he entered his consulate he was confronted with another aspect
of Schlachtstadt quite as wonderful, yet already familiar to him.
For, in spite of these "alarums without," which, however, never
seem to penetrate beyond the town itself, Schlachtstadt and its
suburbs were known all over the world for the manufactures of
certain beautiful textile fabrics, and many of the rank and file of
those warriors had built up the fame and prosperity of the district
over their peaceful looms in wayside cottages.  There were great
depots and counting-houses, larger than even the cavalry barracks,
where no other uniform but that of the postman was known.  Hence it
was that the consul's chief duty was to uphold the flag of his own
country by the examination and certification of divers invoices
sent to his office by the manufacturers.  But, oddly enough, these
business messengers were chiefly women,--not clerks, but ordinary
household servants, and, on busy days, the consulate might have
been mistaken for a female registry office, so filled and possessed
it was by waiting Madchen.  Here it was that Gretchen, Lieschen,
and Clarchen, in the cleanest of blue gowns, and stoutly but
smartly shod, brought their invoices in a piece of clean paper, or
folded in a blue handkerchief, and laid them, with fingers more or
less worn and stubby from hard service, before the consul for his
signature.  Once, in the case of a very young Madchen, that
signature was blotted by the sweep of a flaxen braid upon it as the
child turned to go; but generally there was a grave, serious
business instinct and sense of responsibility in these girls of
ordinary peasant origin which, equally with their sisters of
France, were unknown to the English or American woman of any class.

That morning, however, there was a slight stir among those who,
with their knitting, were waiting their turn in the outer office as
the vice-consul ushered the police inspector into the consul's
private office.  He was in uniform, of course, and it took him a
moment to recover from his habitual stiff, military salute,--a
little stiffer than that of the actual soldier.

It was a matter of importance!  A stranger had that morning been
arrested in the town and identified as a military deserter.  He
claimed to be an American citizen; he was now in the outer office,
waiting the consul's interrogation.

The consul knew, however, that the ominous accusation had only a
mild significance here.  The term "military deserter" included any
one who had in youth emigrated to a foreign country without first
fulfilling his military duty to his fatherland.  His first
experiences of these cases had been tedious and difficult,--
involving a reference to his Minister at Berlin, a correspondence
with the American State Department, a condition of unpleasant
tension, and finally the prolonged detention of some innocent
German--naturalized--American citizen, who had forgotten to bring
his papers with him in revisiting his own native country.  It so
chanced, however, that the consul enjoyed the friendship and
confidence of the General Adlerkreutz, who commanded the 20th
Division, and it further chanced that the same Adlerkreutz was as
gallant a soldier as ever cried Vorwarts! at the head of his men,
as profound a military strategist and organizer as ever carried his
own and his enemy's plans in his iron head and spiked helmet, and
yet with as simple and unaffected a soul breathing under his gray
mustache as ever issued from the lips of a child.  So this grim but
gentle veteran had arranged with the consul that in cases where the
presumption of nationality was strong, although the evidence was
not present, he would take the consul's parole for the appearance
of the "deserter" or his papers, without the aid of prolonged
diplomacy.  In this way the consul had saved to Milwaukee a worthy
but imprudent brewer, and to New York an excellent sausage butcher
and possible alderman; but had returned to martial duty one or two
tramps or journeymen who had never seen America except from the
decks of the ships in which they were "stowaways," and on which
they were returned,--and thus the temper and peace of two great
nations were preserved.

"He says," said the inspector severely, "that he is an American
citizen, but has lost his naturalization papers.  Yet he has made
the damaging admission to others that he lived several years in
Rome!  And," continued the inspector, looking over his shoulder at
the closed door as he placed his finger beside his nose, "he says
he has relations living at Palmyra, whom he frequently visited.
Ach!  Observe this unheard-of-and-not-to-be-trusted statement!"

The consul, however, smiled with a slight flash of intelligence.
"Let me see him," he said.

They passed into the outer office; another policeman and a corporal
of infantry saluted and rose.  In the centre of an admiring and
sympathetic crowd of Dienstmadchen sat the culprit, the least
concerned of the party; a stripling--a boy--scarcely out of his
teens!  Indeed, it was impossible to conceive of a more innocent,
bucolic, and almost angelic looking derelict.  With a skin that had
the peculiar white and rosiness of fresh pork, he had blue eyes,
celestially wide open and staring, and the thick flocculent yellow
curls of the sun god!  He might have been an overgrown and badly
dressed Cupid who had innocently wandered from Paphian shores.  He
smiled as the consul entered, and wiped from his full red lips with
the back of his hand the traces of a sausage he was eating.  The
consul recognized the flavor at once,--he had smelled it before in
Lieschen's little hand-basket.

"You say you lived at Rome?" began the consul pleasantly.  "Did you
take out your first declaration of your intention of becoming an
American citizen there?"

The inspector cast an approving glance at the consul, fixed a stern
eye on the cherubic prisoner, and leaned back in his chair to hear
the reply to this terrible question.

"I don't remember," said the culprit, knitting his brows in infantine
thought.  "It was either there, or at Madrid or Syracuse."

The inspector was about to rise; this was really trifling with the
dignity of the municipality.  But the consul laid his hand on the
official's sleeve, and, opening an American atlas to a map of the
State of New York, said to the prisoner, as he placed the
inspector's hand on the sheet, "I see you know the names of the
TOWNS on the Erie and New York Central Railroad.  But"--

"I can tell you the number of people in each town and what are the
manufactures," interrupted the young fellow, with youthful vanity.
"Madrid has six thousand, and there are over sixty thousand in"--

"That will do," said the consul, as a murmur of Wunderschon! went
round the group of listening servant girls, while glances of
admiration were shot at the beaming accused.  "But you ought to
remember the name of the town where your naturalization papers were
afterwards sent."

"But I was a citizen from the moment I made my declaration," said
the stranger smiling, and looking triumphantly at his admirers,
"and I could vote!"

The inspector, since he had come to grief over American geographical
nomenclature, was grimly taciturn.  The consul, however, was by no
means certain of his victory.  His alleged fellow citizen was too
encyclopaedic in his knowledge: a clever youth might have crammed
for this with a textbook, but then he did not LOOK at all clever;
indeed, he had rather the stupidity of the mythological subject he
represented.  "Leave him with me," said the consul.  The inspector
handed him a precis of the case.  The cherub's name was Karl
Schwartz, an orphan, missing from Schlachtstadt since the age of
twelve.  Relations not living, or in emigration.  Identity
established by prisoner's admission and record.

"Now, Karl," said the consul cheerfully, as the door of his private
office closed upon them, "what is your little game?  Have you EVER
had any papers?  And if you were clever enough to study the map of
New York State, why weren't you clever enough to see that it
wouldn't stand you in place of your papers?"

"Dot's joost it," said Karl in English; "but you see dot if I haf
declairet mine intention of begomming a citizen, it's all the same,
don't it?"

"By no means, for you seem to have no evidence of the DECLARATION;
no papers at all."

"Zo!" said Karl.  Nevertheless, he pushed his small, rosy, pickled-
pig's-feet of fingers through his fleecy curls and beamed
pleasantly at the consul.  "Dot's vot's der matter," he said, as if
taking a kindly interest in some private trouble of the consul's.
"Dot's vere you vos, eh?"

The consul looked steadily at him for a moment.  Such stupidity was
by no means phenomenal, nor at all inconsistent with his
appearance.  "And," continued the consul gravely, "I must tell you
that, unless you have other proofs than you have shown, it will be
my duty to give you up to the authorities."

"Dot means I shall serve my time, eh?" said Karl, with an unchanged
smile.

"Exactly so," returned the consul.

"Zo!" said karl.  "Dese town--dose Schlachtstadt--is fine town, eh?
Fine vomens.  Goot men.  Und beer und sausage.  Blenty to eat and
drink, eh?  Und," looking around the room, "you and te poys haf a
gay times."

"Yes," said the consul shortly, turning away.  But he presently
faced round again on the unfettered Karl, who was evidently
indulging in a gormandizing reverie.

"What on earth brought you here, anyway?"

"Was it das?"

"What brought you here from America, or wherever you ran away from?"

"To see der, volks."

"But you are an ORPHAN, you know, and you have no folks living
here."

"But all Shermany is mine volks,--de whole gountry, don't it?  Pet
your poots!  How's dot, eh?"

The consul turned back to his desk and wrote a short note to
General Adlerkreutz in his own American German.  He did not think
it his duty in the present case to interfere with the authorities
or to offer his parole for Karl Schwartz.  But he would claim that,
as the offender was evidently an innocent emigrant and still young,
any punishment or military degradation be omitted, and he be
allowed to take his place like any other recruit in the ranks.  If
he might have the temerity to the undoubted, far-seeing military
authority of suggestion making here, he would suggest that Karl was
for the commissariat fitted!  Of course, he still retained the
right, on production of satisfactory proof, his discharge to claim.

The consul read this aloud to Karl.  The cherubic youth smiled and
said, "Zo!"  Then, extending his hand, he added the word "Zshake!"

The consul shook his hand a little remorsefully, and, preceding him
to the outer room, resigned him with the note into the inspector's
hands.  A universal sigh went up from the girls, and glances of
appeal sought the consul; but he wisely concluded that it would be
well, for a while, that Karl--a helpless orphan--should be under
some sort of discipline!  And the securer business of certifying
invoices recommenced.

Late that afternoon he received a folded bit of blue paper from the
waistbelt of an orderly, which contained in English characters and
as a single word "Alright," followed by certain jagged pen-marks,
which he recognized as Adlerkreutz's signature.  But it was not
until a week later that he learned anything definite.  He was
returning one night to his lodgings in the residential part of the
city, and, in opening the door with his pass-key, perceived in the
rear of the hall his handmaiden Trudschen, attended by the usual
blue or yellow or red shadow.  He was passing by them with the
local 'n' Abend! on his lips when the soldier turned his face and
saluted.  The consul stopped.  It was the cherub Karl in uniform!

But it had not subdued a single one of his characteristics.  His
hair had been cropped a little more closely under his cap, but
there was its color and woolliness still intact; his plump figure
was girt by belt and buttons, but he only looked the more unreal,
and more like a combination of pen-wiper and pincushion, until his
puffy breast and shoulders seemed to offer a positive invitation to
any one who had picked up a pin.  But, wonderful!--according to his
brief story--he had been so proficient in the goose step that he
had been put in uniform already, and allowed certain small
privileges,--among them, evidently the present one.  The consul
smiled and passed on.  But it seemed strange to him that Trudschen,
who was a tall strapping girl, exceedingly popular with the
military, and who had never looked lower than a corporal at least,
should accept the attentions of an Einjahriger like that.  Later he
interrogated her.

Ach! it was only Unser Karl!  And the consul knew he was Amerikanisch!

"Indeed!"

"Yes!  It was such a tearful story!"

"Tell me what it is," said the consul, with a faint hope that Karl
had volunteered some communication of his past.

"Ach Gott!  There in America he was a man, and could 'vote,' make
laws, and, God willing, become a town councilor,--or Ober
Intendant,--and here he was nothing but a soldier for years.  And
this America was a fine country.  Wunderschon?  There were such big
cities, and one 'Booflo'--could hold all Schlachtstadt, and had of
people five hundred thousand!"

The consul sighed.  Karl had evidently not yet got off the line of
the New York Central and Erie roads.  "But does he remember yet
what he did with his papers?" said the consul persuasively.

"Ach!  What does he want with PAPERS when he could make the laws?
They were dumb, stupid things--these papers--to him."

"But his appetite remains good, I hope?" suggested the consul.

This closed the conversation, although Karl came on many other
nights, and his toy figure quite supplanted the tall corporal of
hussars in the remote shadows of the hall.  One night, however, the
consul returned home from a visit to a neighboring town a day
earlier than he was expected.  As he neared his house he was a
little surprised to find the windows of his sitting-room lit up,
and that there were no signs of Trudschen in the lower hall or
passages.  He made his way upstairs in the dark and pushed open the
door of his apartment.  To his astonishment, Karl was sitting
comfortably in his own chair, his cap off before a student-lamp on
the table, deeply engaged in apparent study.  So profound was his
abstraction that it was a moment before he looked up, and the
consul had a good look at his usually beaming and responsive face,
which, however, now struck him as wearing a singular air of thought
and concentration.  When their eyes at last met, he rose instantly
and saluted, and his beaming smile returned.  But, either from his
natural phlegm or extraordinary self-control he betrayed neither
embarrassment nor alarm.

The explanation he gave was direct and simple.  Trudschen had gone
out with the Corporal Fritz for a short walk, and had asked him to
"keep house" during their absence.  He had no books, no papers,
nothing to read in the barracks, and no chance to improve his mind.
He thought the Herr Consul would not object to his looking at his
books.  The consul was touched; it was really a trivial indiscretion
and as much Trudschen's fault as Karl's!  And if the poor fellow had
any mind to improve,--his recent attitude certainly suggested
thought and reflection,--the consul were a brute to reprove him.  He
smiled pleasantly as Karl returned a stubby bit of pencil and some
greasy memoranda to his breast pocket, and glanced at the table.
But to his surprise it was a large map that Karl had been studying,
and, to his still greater surprise, a map of the consul's own
district.

"You seem to be fond of map-studying," said the consul pleasantly.
"You are not thinking of emigrating again?"

"Ach, no!" said Karl simply; "it is my cousine vot haf lif near
here.  I find her."

But he left on Trudschen's return, and the consul was surprised to
see that, while Karl's attitude towards her had not changed, the
girl exhibited less effusiveness than before.  Believing it to be
partly the effect of the return of the corporal, the consul taxed
her with faithlessness.  But Trudschen looked grave.

"Ah!  He has new friends, this Karl of ours.  He cares no more for
poor girls like us.  When fine ladies like the old Frau von Wimpfel
make much of him, what will you?"

It appeared, indeed, from Trudschen's account, that the widow of a
wealthy shopkeeper had made a kind of protege of the young soldier,
and given him presents.  Furthermore, that the wife of his colonel
had employed him to act as page or attendant at an afternoon
Gesellschaft, and that since then the wives of other officers had
sought him.  Did not the Herr Consul think it was dreadful that
this American, who could vote and make laws, should be subjected to
such things?

The consul did not know what to think.  It seemed to him, however,
that Karl was "getting on," and that he was not in need of his
assistance.  It was in the expectation of hearing more about him,
however, that he cheerfully accepted an invitation from Adlerkreutz
to dine at the Caserne one evening with the staff.  Here he found,
somewhat to his embarrassment, that the dinner was partly in his
own honor, and at the close of five courses, and the emptying of
many bottles, his health was proposed by the gallant veteran
Adlerkreutz in a neat address of many syllables containing all the
parts of speech and a single verb.  It was to the effect that in
his soul-friend the Herr Consul and himself was the never-to-be-
severed union of Germania and Columbia, and in their perfect
understanding was the war-defying alliance of two great nations,
and that in the consul's noble restoration of Unser Karl to the
German army there was the astute diplomacy of a great mind.  He was
satisfied that himself and the Herr Consul still united in the
great future, looking down upon a common brotherhood,--the great
Germanic-American Confederation,--would feel satisfied with
themselves and each other and their never-to-be-forgotten earth-
labors.  Cries of "Hoch! Hoch!" resounded through the apartment
with the grinding roll of heavy-bottomed beer-glasses, and the
consul, tremulous with emotion and a reserve verb in his pocket,
rose to reply.  Fully embarked upon this perilous voyage, and
steering wide and clear of any treacherous shore of intelligence or
fancied harbor of understanding and rest, he kept boldly out at
sea.  He said that, while his loving adversary in this battle of
compliment had disarmed him and left him no words to reply to his
generous panegyric, he could not but join with that gallant soldier
in his heartfelt aspirations for the peaceful alliance of both
countries.  But while he fully reciprocated all his host's broader
and higher sentiments, he must point out to this gallant assembly,
this glorious brotherhood, that even a greater tie of sympathy
knitted him to the general,--the tie of kinship!  For while it was
well known to the present company that their gallant commander had
married an Englishwoman, he, the consul, although always an
American, would now for the first time confess to them that he
HIMSELF was of Dutch descent on his mother's side!  He would say no
more, but confidently leave them in possession of the tremendous
significance of this until-then-unknown fact!  He sat down, with
the forgotten verb still in his pocket, but the applause that
followed this perfectly conclusive, satisfying, and logical climax
convinced him of his success.  His hand was grasped eagerly by
successive warriors; the general turned and embraced him before the
breathless assembly; there were tears in the consul's eyes.

As the festivities progressed, however, he found to his surprise
that Karl had not only become the fashion as a military page, but
that his naive stupidity and sublime simplicity was the wondering
theme and inexhaustible delight of the whole barracks.  Stories
were told of his genius for blundering which rivaled Handy Andy's;
old stories of fatuous ignorance were rearranged and fitted to "our
Karl."  It was "our Karl" who, on receiving a tip of two marks from
the hands of a young lady to whom he had brought the bouquet of a
gallant lieutenant, exhibited some hesitation, and finally said,
"Yes, but, gnadiges Fraulein, that COST us nine marks!"  It was
"our Karl" who, interrupting the regrets of another lady that she
was unable to accept his master's invitation, said politely, "Ah!
what matter, Gnadigste?  I have still a letter for Fraulein Kopp
[her rival], and I was told that I must not invite you both."  It
was "our Karl" who astonished the hostess to whom he was sent at
the last moment with apologies from an officer, unexpectedly
detained at barrack duty, by suggesting that he should bring that
unfortunate officer his dinner from the just served table.  Nor
were these charming infelicities confined to his social and
domestic service.  Although ready, mechanical, and invariably
docile in the manual and physical duties of a soldier,--which
endeared him to the German drill-master,--he was still invincibly
ignorant as to its purport, or even the meaning and structure of
the military instruments he handled or vacantly looked upon.  It
was "our Karl" who suggested to his instructors that in field-
firing it was quicker and easier to load his musket to the muzzle
at once, and get rid of its death-dealing contents at a single
discharge, than to load and fire consecutively.  It was "our Karl"
who nearly killed the instructor at sentry drill by adhering to the
letter of his instructions when that instructor had forgotten the
password.  It was the same Karl who, severely admonished for his
recklessness, the next time added to his challenge the precaution,
"Unless you instantly say 'Fatherland' I'll fire!"  Yet his perfect
good humor and childlike curiosity were unmistakable throughout,
and incited his comrades and his superiors to show him everything
in the hope of getting some characteristic comment from him.
Everything and everybody were open to Karl and his good-humored
simplicity.

That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the
gateway and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran
spontaneously before them and shouted "Heraus!" to the sentries.
But the general promptly checked "the turning out" of the guard
with a paternal shake of his finger to the over-zealous soldier, in
whom the consul recognized Karl.  "He is my Bursche now," said the
general explanatorily.  "My wife has taken a fancy to him.  Ach! he
is very popular with these women."  The consul was still more
surprised.  The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he knew to be a
pronounced Englishwoman,--carrying out her English ways,
proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt,
uncompromisingly, without fear and without reproach.  That she
should follow a merely foreign society craze, or alter her English
household so as to admit the impossible Karl, struck him oddly.

A month or two elapsed without further news of Karl, when one
afternoon he suddenly turned up at the consulate.  He had again
sought the consular quiet to write a few letters home; he had no
chance in the confinement of the barracks.

"But by this time you must be in the family of a field-marshal, at
least," suggested the consul pleasantly.

"Not to-day, but next week," said Karl, with sublime simplicity;
"THEN I am going to serve with the governor commandant of
Rheinfestung."

The consul smiled, motioned him to a seat at a table in the outer
office, and left him undisturbed to his correspondence.

Returning later, he found Karl, his letters finished, gazing with
childish curiosity and admiration at some thick official envelopes,
bearing the stamp of the consulate, which were lying on the table.
He was evidently struck with the contrast between them and the
thin, flimsy affairs he was holding in his hand.  He appeared still
more impressed when the consul told him what they were.

"Arc you writing to your friends?" continued the consul, touched by
his simplicity.

"Ach ja!" said Karl eagerly.

"Would you like to put your letter in one of these envelopes?"
continued the official.

The beaming face and eyes of Karl were a sufficient answer.  After
all, it was a small favor granted to this odd waif, who seemed to
still cling to the consular protection.  He handed him the envelope
and left him addressing it in boyish pride.

It was Karl's last visit to the consulate.  He appeared to have
spoken truly, and the consul presently learned that he had indeed
been transferred, through some high official manipulation, to the
personal service of the governor of Rheinfestung.  There was
weeping among the Dienstmadchen of Schlachtstadt, and a distinct
loss of originality and lightness in the gatherings of the gentler
Hausfrauen.  His memory still survived in the barracks through the
later editions of his former delightful stupidities,--many of them,
it is to be feared, were inventions,--and stories that were
supposed to have come from Rheinfestung were described in the slang
of the Offiziere as being "colossal."  But the consul remembered
Rheinfestung, and could not imagine it as a home for Karl, or in
any way fostering his peculiar qualities.  For it was eminently a
fortress of fortresses, a magazine of magazines, a depot of depots.
It was the key of the Rhine, the citadel of Westphalia, the
"Clapham Junction" of German railways, but defended, fortified,
encompassed, and controlled by the newest as well as the oldest
devices of military strategy and science.  Even in the pipingest
time of peace, whole railway trains went into it like a rat in a
trap, and might have never come out of it; it stretched out an
inviting hand and arm across the river that might in the twinkling
of an eye be changed into a closed fist of menace.  You "defiled"
into it, commanded at every step by enfilading walls; you
"debouched" out of it, as you thought, and found yourself only
before the walls; you "reentered" it at every possible angle; you
did everything apparently but pass through it.  You thought
yourself well out of it, and were stopped by a bastion.  Its
circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station.
It had pressed even the current of the river into its defensive
service.  There were secrets of its foundations and mines that only
the highest military despots knew and kept to themselves.  In a
word--it was impregnable.

That such a place could not be trifled with or misunderstood in its
right-and-acute-angled severities seemed plain to every one.  But
set on by his companions, who were showing him its defensive
foundations, or in his own idle curiosity, Karl managed to fall
into the Rhine and was fished out with difficulty.  The immersion
may have chilled his military ardor or soured his good humor, for
later the consul heard that he had visited the American consular
agent at an adjacent town with the old story of his American
citizenship.  "He seemed," said the consul's colleague, "to be well
posted about American railways and American towns, but he had no
papers.  He lounged around the office for a while and"--

"Wrote letters home?" suggested the consul, with a flash of
reminiscence.

"Yes, the poor chap had no privacy at the barracks, and I reckon
was overlooked or bedeviled."

This was the last the consul heard of Karl Schwartz directly; for a
week or two later he again fell into the Rhine, this time so
fatally and effectually that in spite of the efforts of his
companions he was swept away by the rapid current, and thus ended
his service to his country.  His body was never recovered.

A few months before the consul was transferred from Schlachtstadt
to another post his memory of the departed Karl was revived by a
visit from Adlerkreutz.  The general looked grave.

"You remember Unser Karl?" he said.

"Yes."

"Do you think he was an impostor?"

"As regards his American citizenship, yes!  But I could not say
more."

"So!" said the general.  "A very singular thing has happened," he
added, twirling his mustache.  "The Inspector of police has
notified us of the arrival of a Karl Schwartz in this town.  It
appears he is the REAL Karl Schwartz, identified by his sister as
the only one.  The other, who was drowned, was an impostor.  Hein?"

"Then you have secured another recruit?" said the consul smilingly.

"No.  For this one has already served his time in Elsass, where he
went when he left here as a boy.  But, Donnerwetter, why should
that dumb fool take his name?"

"By chance, I fancy.  Then he stupidly stuck to it, and had to take
the responsibilities with it.  Don't you see?" said the consul,
pleased with his own cleverness.

"Zo-o!" said the general slowly, in his deepest voice.  But the
German exclamation has a variety of significance, according to the
inflection, and Adlerkreutz's ejaculation seemed to contain them
all.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

It was in Paris, where the consul had lingered on his way to his
new post.  He was sitting in a well-known cafe, among whose
habitues were several military officers of high rank.  A group of
them were gathered round a table near him.  He was idly watching
them with an odd recollection of Schlachtstadt in his mind, and as
idly glancing from them to the more attractive Boulevard without.
The consul was getting a little tired of soldiers.

Suddenly there was a slight stir in the gesticulating group and a
cry of greeting.  The consul looked up mechanically, and then his
eyes remained fixed and staring at the newcomer.  For it was the
dead Karl; Karl, surely!  Karl!--his plump figure belted in a
French officer's tunic; his flaxen hair clipped a little closer,
but still its fleece showing under his kepi.  Karl, his cheeks more
cherubic than ever--unchanged but for a tiny yellow toy mustache
curling up over the corners of his full lips.  Karl, beaming at his
companions in his old way, but rattling off French vivacities
without the faintest trace of accent.  Could he be mistaken?  Was
it some phenomenal resemblance, or had the soul of the German
private been transmigrated to the French officer.

The consul hurriedly called the garcon.  "Who is that officer who
has just arrived?"

"It is the Captain Christian, of the Intelligence Bureau," said the
waiter, with proud alacrity.  "A famous officer, brave as a
rabbit,--un fier lapin,--and one of our best clients.  So drole,
too, such a farceur and mimic.  M'sieur would be ravished to hear
his imitations."

"But he looks like a German; and his name!"

"Ah, he is from Alsace.  But not a German!" said the waiter,
absolutely whitening with indignation.  "He was at Belfort.  So
was I.  Mon Dieu!  No, a thousand times no!"

"But has he been living here long?" said the consul.

"In Paris, a few months.  But his Department, M'sieur understands,
takes him EVERYWHERE!  Everywhere where he can gain information."

The consul's eyes were still on the Captain Christian.  Presently
the officer, perhaps instinctively conscious of the scrutiny,
looked towards him.  Their eyes met.  To the consul's surprise, the
ci-devant Karl beamed upon him, and advanced with outstretched
hand.

But the consul stiffened slightly, and remained so with his glass
in his hand.  At which Captain Christian brought his own easily to
a military salute, and said politely:--

"Monsieur le Consul has been promoted from his post.  Permit me to
congratulate him."

"You have heard, then?" said the consul dryly.

"Otherwise I should not presume.  For our Department makes it a
business--in Monsieur le Consul's case it becomes a pleasure--to
know everything."

"Did your Department know that the real Karl Schwartz has
returned?" said the consul dryly.

Captain Christian shrugged his shoulders.  "Then it appears that
the sham Karl died none too soon," he said lightly.  "And yet"--he
bent his eyes with mischievous reproach upon the consul.

"Yet what?" demanded the consul sternly.

"Monsieur le Consul might have saved the unfortunate man by
accepting him as an American citizen and not helping to force him
into the German service."

The consul saw in a flash the full military significance of this
logic, and could not repress a smile.  At which Captain Christian
dropped easily into a chair beside him, and as easily into broken
German English:--

"Und," he went on, "dees town--dees Schlachtstadt is fine town, eh?
Fine womens?  Goot men?  Und peer and sausage?  Blenty to eat and
trink, eh?  Und you und te poys haf a gay times?"

The consul tried to recover his dignity.  The waiter behind him,
recognizing only the delightful mimicry of this adorable officer,
was in fits of laughter.  Nevertheless, the consul managed to say
dryly:--

"And the barracks, the magazines, the commissariat, the details,
the reserves of Schlachtstadt were very interesting?"

"Assuredly."

"And Rheinfestung--its plans--its details, even its dangerous
foundations by the river--they were to a soldier singularly
instructive?"

"You have reason to say so," said Captain Christian, curling his
little mustache.

"And the fortress--you think?"

"Imprenable!  Mais"--

The consul remembered General Adlerkreutz's "Zo-o," and wondered.



UNCLE JIM AND UNCLE BILLY


They were partners.  The avuncular title was bestowed on them by
Cedar Camp, possibly in recognition of a certain matured good
humor, quite distinct from the spasmodic exuberant spirits of its
other members, and possibly from what, to its youthful sense,
seemed their advanced ages--which must have been at least forty!
They had also set habits even in their improvidence, lost
incalculable and unpayable sums to each other over euchre regularly
every evening, and inspected their sluice-boxes punctually every
Saturday for repairs--which they never made.  They even got to
resemble each other, after the fashion of old married couples, or,
rather, as in matrimonial partnerships, were subject to the
domination of the stronger character; although in their case it is
to be feared that it was the feminine Uncle Billy--enthusiastic,
imaginative, and loquacious--who swayed the masculine, steady-
going, and practical Uncle Jim.  They had lived in the camp since
its foundation in 1849; there seemed to be no reason why they
should not remain there until its inevitable evolution into a
mining-town.  The younger members might leave through restless
ambition or a desire for change or novelty; they were subject to no
such trifling mutation.  Yet Cedar Camp was surprised one day to
hear that Uncle Billy was going away.

The rain was softly falling on the bark thatch of the cabin with a
muffled murmur, like a sound heard through sleep.  The southwest
trades were warm even at that altitude, as the open door testified,
although a fire of pine bark was flickering on the adobe hearth and
striking out answering fires from the freshly scoured culinary
utensils on the rude sideboard, which Uncle Jim had cleaned that
morning with his usual serious persistency.  Their best clothes,
which were interchangeable and worn alternately by each other on
festal occasions, hung on the walls, which were covered with a
coarse sailcloth canvas instead of lath-and-plaster, and were
diversified by pictures from illustrated papers and stains from the
exterior weather.  Two "bunks," like ships' berths,--an upper and
lower one,--occupied the gable-end of this single apartment, and on
beds of coarse sacking, filled with dry moss, were carefully rolled
their respective blankets and pillows.  They were the only articles
not used in common, and whose individuality was respected.

Uncle Jim, who had been sitting before the fire, rose as the square
bulk of his partner appeared at the doorway with an armful of wood
for the evening stove.  By that sign he knew it was nine o'clock:
for the last six years Uncle Billy had regularly brought in the
wood at that hour, and Uncle Jim had as regularly closed the door
after him, and set out their single table, containing a greasy pack
of cards taken from its drawer, a bottle of whiskey, and two tin
drinking-cups.  To this was added a ragged memorandum-book and a
stick of pencil.  The two men drew their stools to the table.

"Hol' on a minit," said Uncle Billy.

His partner laid down the cards as Uncle Billy extracted from his
pocket a pill-box, and, opening it, gravely took a pill.  This was
clearly an innovation on their regular proceedings, for Uncle Billy
was always in perfect health.

"What's this for?" asked Uncle Jim half scornfully.

"Agin ager."

"You ain't got no ager," said Uncle Jim, with the assurance of
intimate cognizance of his partner's physical condition.

"But it's a pow'ful preventive!  Quinine!  Saw this box at Riley's
store, and laid out a quarter on it.  We kin keep it here,
comfortable, for evenings.  It's mighty soothin' arter a man's done
a hard day's work on the river-bar.  Take one."

Uncle Jim gravely took a pill and swallowed it, and handed the box
back to his partner.

"We'll leave it on the table, sociable like, in case any of the
boys come in," said Uncle Billy, taking up the cards.  "Well.  How
do we stand?"

Uncle Jim consulted the memorandum-book.  "You were owin' me sixty-
two thousand dollars on the last game, and the limit's seventy-five
thousand!"

"Je whillikins!" ejaculated Uncle Billy.  "Let me see."

He examined the book, feebly attempted to challenge the additions,
but with no effect on the total.  "We oughter hev made the limit a
hundred thousand," he said seriously; "seventy-five thousand is
only triflin' in a game like ours.  And you've set down my claim at
Angel's?" he continued.

"I allowed you ten thousand dollars for that," said Uncle Jim, with
equal gravity, "and it's a fancy price too."

The claim in question being an unprospected hillside ten miles
distant, which Uncle Jim had never seen, and Uncle Billy had not
visited for years, the statement was probably true; nevertheless,
Uncle Billy retorted:--

"Ye kin never tell how these things will pan out.  Why, only this
mornin' I was taking a turn round Shot Up Hill, that ye know is
just rotten with quartz and gold, and I couldn't help thinkin' how
much it was like my ole claim at Angel's.  I must take a day off to
go on there and strike a pick in it, if only for luck."

Suddenly he paused and said, "Strange, ain't it, you should speak
of it to-night?  Now I call that queer!"

He laid down his cards and gazed mysteriously at his companion.
Uncle Jim knew perfectly that Uncle Billy had regularly once a week
for many years declared his final determination to go over to
Angel's and prospect his claim, yet nevertheless he half responded
to his partner's suggestion of mystery, and a look of fatuous
wonder crept into his eyes.  But he contented himself by saying
cautiously, "You spoke of it first."

"That's the more sing'lar," said Uncle Billy confidently.  "And
I've been thinking about it, and kinder seeing myself thar all day.
It's mighty queer!"  He got up and began to rummage among some torn
and coverless books in the corner.

"Where's that 'Dream Book' gone to?"

"The Carson boys borrowed it," replied Uncle Jim.  "Anyhow, yours
wasn't no dream--only a kind o' vision, and the book don't take no
stock in visions."  Nevertheless, he watched his partner with some
sympathy, and added, "That reminds me that I had a dream the other
night of being in 'Frisco at a small hotel, with heaps o' money,
and all the time being sort o' scared and bewildered over it."

"No?" queried his partner eagerly yet reproachfully.  "You never
let on anything about it to ME!  It's mighty queer you havin' these
strange feelin's, for I've had 'em myself.  And only to-night,
comin' up from the spring, I saw two crows hopping in the trail,
and I says, 'If I see another, it's luck, sure!'  And you'll think
I'm lyin', but when I went to the wood-pile just now there was the
THIRD one sittin' up on a log as plain as I see you.  Tell 'e what
folks ken laugh--but that's just what Jim Filgee saw the night
before he made the big strike!"

They were both smiling, yet with an underlying credulity and
seriousness as singularly pathetic as it seemed incongruous to
their years and intelligence.  Small wonder, however, that in their
occupation and environment--living daily in an atmosphere of hope,
expectation, and chance, looking forward each morning to the blind
stroke of a pick that might bring fortune--they should see signs in
nature and hear mystic voices in the trackless woods that
surrounded them.  Still less strange that they were peculiarly
susceptible to the more recognized diversions of chance, and were
gamblers on the turning of a card who trusted to the revelation of
a shovelful of upturned earth.

It was quite natural, therefore, that they should return from their
abstract form of divination to the table and their cards.  But they
were scarcely seated before they heard a crackling step in the
brush outside, and the free latch of their door was lifted.  A
younger member of the camp entered.  He uttered a peevish "Halloo!"
which might have passed for a greeting, or might have been a slight
protest at finding the door closed, drew the stool from which Uncle
Jim had just risen before the fire, shook his wet clothes like a
Newfoundland dog, and sat down.  Yet he was by no means churlish
nor coarse-looking, and this act was rather one of easy-going,
selfish, youthful familiarity than of rudeness.  The cabin of
Uncles Billy and Jim was considered a public right or "common" of
the camp.  Conferences between individual miners were appointed
there.  "I'll meet you at Uncle Billy's" was a common tryst.  Added
to this was a tacit claim upon the partners' arbitrative powers, or
the equal right to request them to step outside if the interviews
were of a private nature.  Yet there was never any objection on the
part of the partners, and to-night there was not a shadow of
resentment of this intrusion in the patient, good-humored, tolerant
eyes of Uncles Jim and Billy as they gazed at their guest.  Perhaps
there was a slight gleam of relief in Uncle Jim's when he found
that the guest was unaccompanied by any one, and that it was not a
tryst.  It would have been unpleasant for the two partners to have
stayed out in the rain while their guests were exchanging private
confidences in their cabin.  While there might have been no limit
to their good will, there might have been some to their capacity
for exposure.

Uncle Jim drew a huge log from beside the hearth and sat on the
driest end of it, while their guest occupied the stool.  The young
man, without turning away from his discontented, peevish brooding
over the fire, vaguely reached backward for the whiskey-bottle and
Uncle Billy's tin cup, to which he was assisted by the latter's
hospitable hand.  But on setting down the cup his eye caught sight
of the pill-box.

"Wot's that?" he said, with gloomy scorn.  "Rat poison?"

"Quinine pills--agin ager," said Uncle Jim.  "The newest thing out.
Keeps out damp like Injin-rubber!  Take one to follow yer whiskey.
Me and Uncle Billy wouldn't think o' settin' down, quiet like, in
the evening arter work, without 'em.  Take one--ye 'r' welcome!  We
keep 'em out here for the boys."

Accustomed as the partners were to adopt and wear each other's
opinions before folks, as they did each other's clothing, Uncle
Billy was, nevertheless, astonished and delighted at Uncle Jim's
enthusiasm over HIS pills.  The guest took one and swallowed it.

"Mighty bitter!" he said, glancing at his hosts with the quick
Californian suspicion of some practical joke.  But the honest faces
of the partners reassured him.

"That bitterness ye taste," said Uncle Jim quickly, "is whar the
thing's gittin' in its work.  Sorter sickenin' the malaria--and
kinder water-proofin' the insides all to onct and at the same lick!
Don't yer see?  Put another in yer vest pocket; you'll be cryin'
for 'em like a child afore ye get home.  Thar!  Well, how's things
agoin' on your claim, Dick?  Boomin', eh?"

The guest raised his head and turned it sufficiently to fling his
answer back over his shoulder at his hosts.  "I don't know what
YOU'D call' boomin','" he said gloomily; "I suppose you two men
sitting here comfortably by the fire, without caring whether school
keeps or not, would call two feet of backwater over one's claim
'boomin';' I reckon YOU'D consider a hundred and fifty feet of
sluicing carried away, and drifting to thunder down the South Fork,
something in the way of advertising to your old camp!  I suppose
YOU'd think it was an inducement to investors!  I shouldn't
wonder," he added still more gloomily, as a sudden dash of rain
down the wide-throated chimney dropped in his tin cup--"and it
would be just like you two chaps, sittin' there gormandizing over
your quinine--if yer said this rain that's lasted three weeks was
something to be proud of!"

It was the cheerful and the satisfying custom of the rest of the
camp, for no reason whatever, to hold Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy
responsible for its present location, its vicissitudes, the
weather, or any convulsion of nature; and it was equally the
partners' habit, for no reason whatever, to accept these
animadversions and apologize.

"It's a rain that's soft and mellowin'," said Uncle Billy gently,
"and supplin' to the sinews and muscles.  Did ye ever notice, Jim"--
ostentatiously to his partner--"did ye ever notice that you get
inter a kind o' sweaty lather workin' in it?  Sorter openin' to the
pores!"

"Fetches 'em every time," said Uncle Billy.  "Better nor fancy
soap."

Their guest laughed bitterly.  "Well, I'm going to leave it to you.
I reckon to cut the whole concern to-morrow, and 'lite' out for
something new.  It can't be worse than this."

The two partners looked grieved, albeit they were accustomed to
these outbursts.  Everybody who thought of going away from Cedar
Camp used it first as a threat to these patient men, after the
fashion of runaway nephews, or made an exemplary scene of their
going.

"Better think twice afore ye go," said Uncle Billy.

"I've seen worse weather afore ye came," said Uncle Jim slowly.
"Water all over the Bar; the mud so deep ye couldn't get to Angel's
for a sack o' flour, and we had to grub on pine nuts and jackass-
rabbits.  And yet--we stuck by the camp, and here we are!"

The mild answer apparently goaded their guest to fury.  He rose
from his seat, threw back his long dripping hair from his handsome
but querulous face, and scattered a few drops on the partners.
"Yes, that's just it.  That's what gets me!  Here you stick, and
here you are!  And here you'll stick and rust until you starve or
drown!  Here you are,--two men who ought to be out in the world,
playing your part as grown men,--stuck here like children 'playing
house' in the woods; playing work in your wretched mud-pie ditches,
and content.  Two men not so old that you mightn't be taking your
part in the fun of the world, going to balls or theatres, or paying
attention to girls, and yet old enough to have married and have
your families around you, content to stay in this God-forsaken
place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse paupers.
That's what gets me!  Say you LIKE it?  Say you expect by hanging
on to make a strike--and what does that amount to?  What are YOUR
chances?  How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub
wages?  Say you're willing to share and share alike as you do--have
you got enough for two?  Aren't you actually living off each other?
Aren't you grinding each other down, choking each other's
struggles, as you sink together deeper and deeper in the mud of
this cussed camp?  And while you're doing this, aren't you, by your
age and position here, holding out hopes to others that you know
cannot be fulfilled?"

Accustomed as they were to the half-querulous, half-humorous, but
always extravagant, criticism of the others, there was something so
new in this arraignment of themselves that the partners for a
moment sat silent.  There was a slight flush on Uncle Billy's
cheek, there was a slight paleness on Uncle Jim's.  He was the
first to reply.  But he did so with a certain dignity which neither
his partner nor their guest had ever seen on his face before.

"As it's OUR fire that's warmed ye up like this, Dick Bullen," he
said, slowly rising, with his hand resting on Uncle Billy's
shoulder, "and as it's OUR whiskey that's loosened your tongue, I
reckon we must put up with what ye 'r' saying, just as we've
managed to put up with our own way o' living, and not quo'll with
ye under our own roof."

The young fellow saw the change in Uncle Jim's face and quickly
extended his hand, with an apologetic backward shake of his long
hair.  "Hang it all, old man," he said, with a laugh of mingled
contrition and amusement, "you mustn't mind what I said just now.
I've been so worried thinking of things about MYSELF, and, maybe, a
little about you, that I quite forgot I hadn't a call to preach to
anybody--least of all to you.  So we part friends, Uncle Jim, and
you too, Uncle Billy, and you'll forget what I said.  In fact, I
don't know why I spoke at all--only I was passing your claim just
now, and wondering how much longer your old sluice-boxes would hold
out, and where in thunder you'd get others when they caved in!  I
reckon that sent me off.  That's all, old chap!"

Uncle Billy's face broke into a beaming smile of relief, and it was
HIS hand that first grasped his guest's; Uncle Jim quickly followed
with as honest a pressure, but with eyes that did not seem to be
looking at Bullen, though all trace of resentment had died out of
them.  He walked to the door with him, again shook hands, but
remained looking out in the darkness some time after Dick Bullen's
tangled hair and broad shoulders had disappeared.

Meantime, Uncle Billy had resumed his seat and was chuckling and
reminiscent as he cleaned out his pipe.

"Kinder reminds me of Jo Sharp, when he was cleaned out at poker by
his own partners in his own cabin, comin' up here and bedevilin' US
about it!  What was it you lint him?"

But Uncle Jim did not reply; and Uncle Billy, taking up the cards,
began to shuffle them, smiling vaguely, yet at the same time
somewhat painfully.  "Arter all, Dick was mighty cut up about what
he said, and I felt kinder sorry for him.  And, you know, I rather
cotton to a man that speaks his mind.  Sorter clears him out, you
know, of all the slumgullion that's in him.  It's just like washin'
out a pan o' prospecting: you pour in the water, and keep slushing
it round and round, and out comes first the mud and dirt, and then
the gravel, and then the black sand, and then--it's all out, and
there's a speck o' gold glistenin' at the bottom!"

"Then you think there WAS suthin' in what he said?" said Uncle Jim,
facing about slowly.

An odd tone in his voice made Uncle Billy look up.  "No," he said
quickly, shying with the instinct of an easy pleasure-loving nature
from a possible grave situation.  "No, I don't think he ever got
the color!  But wot are ye moonin' about for?  Ain't ye goin' to
play?  It's mor' 'n half past nine now."

Thus adjured, Uncle Jim moved up to the table and sat down, while
Uncle Billy dealt the cards, turning up the Jack or right bower--
but WITHOUT that exclamation of delight which always accompanied
his good fortune, nor did Uncle Jim respond with the usual
corresponding simulation of deep disgust.  Such a circumstance had
not occurred before in the history of their partnership.  They both
played in silence--a silence only interrupted by a larger splash of
raindrops down the chimney.

"We orter put a couple of stones on the chimney-top, edgewise, like
Jack Curtis does.  It keeps out the rain without interferin' with
the draft," said Uncle Billy musingly.

"What's the use if"--

"If what?" said Uncle Billy quietly.

"If we don't make it broader," said Uncle Jim half wearily.

They both stared at the chimney, but Uncle Jim's eye followed the
wall around to the bunks.  There were many discolorations on the
canvas, and a picture of the Goddess of Liberty from an illustrated
paper had broken out in a kind of damp, measly eruption.  "I'll
stick that funny handbill of the 'Washin' Soda' I got at the
grocery store the other day right over the Liberty gal.  It's a
mighty perty woman washin' with short sleeves," said Uncle Billy.
"That's the comfort of them picters, you kin always get somethin'
new, and it adds thickness to the wall."

Uncle Jim went back to the cards in silence.  After a moment he
rose again, and hung his overcoat against the door.

"Wind's comin' in," he said briefly.

"Yes," said Uncle Billy cheerfully, "but it wouldn't seem nat'ral
if there wasn't that crack in the door to let the sunlight in o
mornin's.  Makes a kind o' sundial, you know.  When the streak o'
light's in that corner, I says 'six o'clock!' when it's across the
chimney I say 'seven!' and so 'tis!"

It certainly had grown chilly, and the wind was rising.  The candle
guttered and flickered; the embers on the hearth brightened
occasionally, as if trying to dispel the gathering shadows, but
always ineffectually.  The game was frequently interrupted by the
necessity of stirring the fire.  After an interval of gloom, in
which each partner successively drew the candle to his side to
examine his cards, Uncle Jim said:--

"Say?"

"Well!" responded Uncle Billy.

"Are you sure you saw that third crow on the wood-pile?"

"Sure as I see you now--and a darned sight plainer.  Why?"

"Nothin', I was just thinkin'.  Look here!  How do we stand now?"

Uncle Billy was still losing.  "Nevertheless," he said cheerfully,
"I'm owin' you a matter of sixty thousand dollars."

Uncle Jim examined the book abstractedly.  "Suppose," he said
slowly, but without looking at his partner, "suppose, as it's
gettin' late now, we play for my half share of the claim agin the
limit--seventy thousand--to square up."

"Your half share!" repeated Uncle Billy, with amused incredulity.

"My half share of the claim,--of this yer house, you know,--one
half of all that Dick Bullen calls our rotten starvation property,"
reiterated Uncle Jim, with a half smile.

Uncle Billy laughed.  It was a novel idea; it was, of course, "all
in the air," like the rest of their game, yet even then he had an
odd feeling that he would have liked Dick Bullen to have known it.
"Wade in, old pard," he said.  "I'm on it."

Uncle Jim lit another candle to reinforce the fading light, and the
deal fell to Uncle Billy.  He turned up Jack of clubs.  He also
turned a little redder as he took up his cards, looked at them, and
glanced hastily at his partner.  "It's no use playing," he said.
"Look here!"  He laid down his cards on the table.  They were the
ace, king and queen of clubs, and Jack of spades,--or left bower,--
which, with the turned-up Jack of clubs,--or right bower,--
comprised ALL the winning cards!

"By jingo!  If we'd been playin' four-handed, say you an' me agin
some other ducks, we'd have made 'four' in that deal, and h'isted
some money--eh?" and his eyes sparkled.  Uncle Jim, also, had a
slight tremulous light in his own.

"Oh no!  I didn't see no three crows this afternoon," added Uncle
Billy gleefully, as his partner, in turn, began to shuffle the
cards with laborious and conscientious exactitude.  Then dealing,
he turned up a heart for trumps.  Uncle Billy took up his cards one
by one, but when he had finished his face had become as pale as it
had been red before.  "What's the matter?" said Uncle Jim quickly,
his own face growing white.

Uncle Billy slowly and with breathless awe laid down his cards,
face up on the table.  It was exactly the same sequence IN HEARTS,
with the knave of diamonds added.  He could again take every trick.

They stared at each other with vacant faces and a half-drawn smile
of fear.  They could hear the wind moaning in the trees beyond;
there was a sudden rattling at the door.  Uncle Billy started to
his feet, but Uncle Jim caught his arm.  "DON'T LEAVE THE CARDS!
It's only the wind; sit down," he said in a low awe-hushed voice,
"it's your deal; you were two before, and two now, that makes your
four; you've only one point to make to win the game.  Go on."

They both poured out a cup of whiskey, smiling vaguely, yet with a
certain terror in their eyes.  Their hands were cold; the cards
slipped from Uncle Billy's benumbed fingers; when he had shuffled
them he passed them to his partner to shuffle them also, but did
not speak.  When Uncle Jim had shuffled them methodically he handed
them back fatefully to his partner.  Uncle Billy dealt them with a
trembling hand.  He turned up a club.  "If you are sure of these
tricks you know you've won," said Uncle Jim in a voice that was
scarcely audible.  Uncle Billy did not reply, but tremulously laid
down the ace and right and left bowers.

He had won!

A feeling of relief came over each, and they laughed hysterically
and discordantly.  Ridiculous and childish as their contest might
have seemed to a looker-on, to each the tension had been as great
as that of the greatest gambler, without the gambler's trained
restraint, coolness, and composure.  Uncle Billy nervously took up
the cards again.

"Don't," said Uncle Jim gravely; "it's no use--the luck's gone now."

"Just one more deal," pleaded his partner.

Uncle Jim looked at the fire, Uncle Billy hastily dealt, and threw
the two hands face up on the table.  They were the ordinary average
cards.  He dealt again, with the same result.  "I told you so,"
said Uncle Jim, without looking up.

It certainly seemed a tame performance after their wonderful hands,
and after another trial Uncle Billy threw the cards aside and drew
his stool before the fire.  "Mighty queer, warn't it?" he said,
with reminiscent awe.  "Three times running.  Do you know, I felt a
kind o' creepy feelin' down my back all the time.  Criky! what
luck!  None of the boys would believe it if we told 'em--least of
all that Dick Bullen, who don't believe in luck, anyway.  Wonder
what he'd have said! and, Lord! how he'd have looked!  Wall! what
are you starin' so for?"

Uncle Jim had faced around, and was gazing at Uncle Billy's good-
humored, simple face.  "Nothin'!" he said briefly, and his eyes
again sought the fire.

"Then don't look as if you was seein' suthin'--you give me the
creeps," returned Uncle Billy a little petulantly.  "Let's turn in,
afore the fire goes out!"

The fateful cards were put back into the drawer, the table shoved
against the wall.  The operation of undressing was quickly got
over, the clothes they wore being put on top of their blankets.
Uncle Billy yawned, "I wonder what kind of a dream I'll have
tonight--it oughter be suthin' to explain that luck."  This was his
"good-night" to his partner.  In a few moments he was sound asleep.

Not so Uncle Jim.  He heard the wind gradually go down, and in the
oppressive silence that followed could detect the deep breathing of
his companion and the far-off yelp of a coyote.  His eyesight
becoming accustomed to the semi-darkness, broken only by the
scintillation of the dying embers of their fire, he could take in
every detail of their sordid cabin and the rude environment in
which they had lived so long.  The dismal patches on the bark roof,
the wretched makeshifts of each day, the dreary prolongation of
discomfort, were all plain to him now, without the sanguine hope
that had made them bearable.  And when he shut his eyes upon them,
it was only to travel in fancy down the steep mountain side that he
had trodden so often to the dreary claim on the overflowed river,
to the heaps of "tailings" that encumbered it, like empty shells of
the hollow, profitless days spent there, which they were always
waiting for the stroke of good fortune to clear away.  He saw again
the rotten "sluicing," through whose hopeless rifts and holes even
their scant daily earnings had become scantier.  At last he arose,
and with infinite gentleness let himself down from his berth
without disturbing his sleeping partner, and wrapping himself in
his blanket, went to the door, which he noiselessly opened.  From
the position of a few stars that were glittering in the northern
sky he knew that it was yet scarcely midnight; there were still
long, restless hours before the day!  In the feverish state into
which he had gradually worked himself it seemed to him impossible
to wait the coming of the dawn.

But he was mistaken.  For even as he stood there all nature seemed
to invade his humble cabin with its free and fragrant breath, and
invest him with its great companionship.  He felt again, in that
breath, that strange sense of freedom, that mystic touch of
partnership with the birds and beasts, the shrubs and trees, in
this greater home before him.  It was this vague communion that had
kept him there, that still held these world-sick, weary workers in
their rude cabins on the slopes around him; and he felt upon his
brow that balm that had nightly lulled him and them to sleep and
forgetfulness.  He closed the door, turned away, crept as
noiselessly as before into his bunk again, and presently fell into
a profound slumber.

But when Uncle Billy awoke the next morning he saw it was late; for
the sun, piercing the crack of the closed door, was sending a
pencil of light across the cold hearth, like a match to rekindle
its dead embers.  His first thought was of his strange luck the
night before, and of disappointment that he had not had the dream
of divination that he had looked for.  He sprang to the floor, but
as he stood upright his glance fell on Uncle Jim's bunk.  It was
empty.  Not only that, but his BLANKETS--Uncle Jim's own particular
blankets--WERE GONE!

A sudden revelation of his partner's manner the night before struck
him now with the cruelty of a blow; a sudden intelligence, perhaps
the very divination he had sought, flashed upon him like lightning!
He glanced wildly around the cabin.  The table was drawn out from
the wall a little ostentatiously, as if to catch his eye.  On it
was lying the stained chamois-skin purse in which they had kept the
few grains of gold remaining from their last week's "clean up."
The grains had been carefully divided, and half had been taken!
But near it lay the little memorandum-book, open, with the stick of
pencil lying across it.  A deep line was drawn across the page on
which was recorded their imaginary extravagant gains and losses,
even to the entry of Uncle Jim's half share of the claim which he
had risked and lost!  Underneath were hurriedly scrawled the
words:--

"Settled by YOUR luck, last night, old pard.--JAMES FOSTER."


It was nearly a month before Cedar Camp was convinced that Uncle
Billy and Uncle Jim had dissolved partnership.  Pride had prevented
Uncle Billy from revealing his suspicions of the truth, or of
relating the events that preceded Uncle Jim's clandestine flight,
and Dick Bullen had gone to Sacramento by stage-coach the same
morning.  He briefly gave out that his partner had been called to
San Francisco on important business of their own, that indeed might
necessitate his own removal there later.  In this he was singularly
assisted by a letter from the absent Jim, dated at San Francisco,
begging him not to be anxious about his success, as he had hopes of
presently entering into a profitable business, but with no further
allusions to his precipitate departure, nor any suggestion of a
reason for it.  For two or three days Uncle Billy was staggered and
bewildered; in his profound simplicity he wondered if his
extraordinary good fortune that night had made him deaf to some
explanation of his partner's, or, more terrible, if he had shown
some "low" and incredible intimation of taking his partner's
extravagant bet as REAL and binding.  In this distress he wrote to
Uncle Jim an appealing and apologetic letter, albeit somewhat
incoherent and inaccurate, and bristling with misspelling, camp
slang, and old partnership jibes.  But to this elaborate epistle he
received only Uncle Jim's repeated assurances of his own bright
prospects, and his hopes that his old partner would be more
fortunate, single-handed, on the old claim.  For a whole week or
two Uncle Billy sulked, but his invincible optimism and good humor
got the better of him, and he thought only of his old partner's
good fortune.  He wrote him regularly, but always to one address--a
box at the San Francisco post-office, which to the simple-minded
Uncle Billy suggested a certain official importance.  To these
letters Uncle Jim responded regularly but briefly.

From a certain intuitive pride in his partner and his affection,
Uncle Billy did not show these letters openly to the camp, although
he spoke freely of his former partner's promising future, and even
read them short extracts.  It is needless to say that the camp did
not accept Uncle Billy's story with unsuspecting confidence.  On
the contrary, a hundred surmises, humorous or serious, but always
extravagant, were afloat in Cedar Camp.  The partners had quarreled
over their clothes--Uncle Jim, who was taller than Uncle Billy, had
refused to wear his partner's trousers.  They had quarreled over
cards--Uncle Jim had discovered that Uncle Billy was in possession
of a "cold deck," or marked pack.  They had quarreled over Uncle
Billy's carelessness in grinding up half a box of "bilious pills"
in the morning's coffee.  A gloomily imaginative mule-driver had
darkly suggested that, as no one had really seen Uncle Jim leave
the camp, he was still there, and his bones would yet be found in
one of the ditches; while a still more credulous miner averred that
what he had thought was the cry of a screech-owl the night previous
to Uncle Jim's disappearance, might have been the agonized
utterance of that murdered man.  It was highly characteristic of
that camp--and, indeed, of others in California--that nobody, not
even the ingenious theorists themselves, believed their story, and
that no one took the slightest pains to verify or disprove it.
Happily, Uncle Billy never knew it, and moved all unconsciously in
this atmosphere of burlesque suspicion.  And then a singular change
took place in the attitude of the camp towards him and the
disrupted partnership.  Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had
agreed to put the blame upon Billy--possibly because he was present
to receive it.  As days passed that slight reticence and dejection
in his manner, which they had at first attributed to remorse and a
guilty conscience, now began to tell as absurdly in his favor.
Here was poor Uncle Billy toiling though the ditches, while his
selfish partner was lolling in the lap of luxury in San Francisco!
Uncle Billy's glowing accounts of Uncle Jim's success only
contributed to the sympathy now fully given in his behalf and their
execration of the absconding partner.  It was proposed at Biggs's
store that a letter expressing the indignation of the camp over his
heartless conduct to his late partner, William Fall, should be
forwarded to him.  Condolences were offered to Uncle Billy, and
uncouth attempts were made to cheer his loneliness.  A procession
of half a dozen men twice a week to his cabin, carrying their own
whiskey and winding up with a "stag dance" before the premises, was
sufficient to lighten his eclipsed gayety and remind him of a
happier past.  "Surprise" working parties visited his claim with
spasmodic essays towards helping him, and great good humor and
hilarity prevailed.  It was not an unusual thing for an honest
miner to arise from an idle gathering in some cabin and excuse
himself with the remark that he "reckoned he'd put in an hour's
work in Uncle Billy's tailings!"  And yet, as before, it was very
improbable if any of these reckless benefactors REALLY believed in
their own earnestness or in the gravity of the situation.  Indeed,
a kind of hopeful cynicism ran through their performances.  "Like
as not, Uncle Billy is still in 'cahoots' [i. e., shares] with his
old pard, and is just laughin' at us as he's sendin' him accounts
of our tomfoolin'."

And so the winter passed and the rains, and the days of cloudless
skies and chill starlit nights began.  There were still freshets
from the snow reservoirs piled high in the Sierran passes, and the
Bar was flooded, but that passed too, and only the sunshine
remained.  Monotonous as the seasons were, there was a faint
movement in the camp with the stirring of the sap in the pines and
cedars.  And then, one day, there was a strange excitement on the
Bar.  Men were seen running hither and thither, but mainly
gathering in a crowd on Uncle Billy's claim, that still retained
the old partners' names in "The Fall and Foster."  To add to the
excitement, there was the quickly repeated report of a revolver, to
all appearance aimlessly exploded in the air by some one on the
outskirts of the assemblage.  As the crowd opened, Uncle Billy
appeared, pale, hysterical, breathless, and staggering a little
under the back-slapping and hand-shaking of the whole camp.  For
Uncle Billy had "struck it rich"--had just discovered a "pocket,"
roughly estimated to be worth fifteen thousand dollars!

Although in that supreme moment he missed the face of his old
partner, he could not help seeing the unaffected delight and
happiness shining in the eyes of all who surrounded him.  It was
characteristic of that sanguine but uncertain life that success and
good fortune brought no jealousy nor envy to the unfortunate, but
was rather a promise and prophecy of the fulfillment of their own
hopes.  The gold was there--Nature but yielded up her secret.
There was no prescribed limit to her bounty.  So strong was this
conviction that a long-suffering but still hopeful miner, in the
enthusiasm of the moment, stooped down and patted a large boulder
with the apostrophic "Good old gal!"

Then followed a night of jubilee, a next morning of hurried
consultation with a mining expert and speculator lured to the camp
by the good tidings; and then the very next night--to the utter
astonishment of Cedar Camp--Uncle Billy, with a draft for twenty
thousand dollars in his pocket, started for San Francisco, and took
leave of his claim and the camp forever!

        .        .        .        .        .         .

When Uncle Billy landed at the wharves of San Francisco he was a
little bewildered.  The Golden Gate beyond was obliterated by the
incoming sea-fog, which had also roofed in the whole city, and
lights already glittered along the gray streets that climbed the
grayer sand-hills.  As a Western man, brought up by inland rivers,
he was fascinated and thrilled by the tall-masted seagoing ships,
and he felt a strange sense of the remoter mysterious ocean, which
he had never seen.  But he was impressed and startled by smartly
dressed men and women, the passing of carriages, and a sudden
conviction that he was strange and foreign to what he saw.  It had
been his cherished intention to call upon his old partner in his
working clothes, and then clap down on the table before him a draft
for ten thousand dollars as HIS share of their old claim.  But in
the face of these brilliant strangers a sudden and unexpected
timidity came upon him.  He had heard of a cheap popular hotel,
much frequented by the returning gold-miner, who entered its
hospitable doors--which held an easy access to shops--and emerged
in a few hours a gorgeous butterfly of fashion, leaving his old
chrysalis behind him.  Thence he inquired his way; hence he
afterwards issued in garments glaringly new and ill fitting.  But
he had not sacrificed his beard, and there was still something fine
and original in his handsome weak face that overcame the cheap
convention of his clothes.  Making his way to the post-office, he
was again discomfited by the great size of the building, and
bewildered by the array of little square letter-boxes behind glass
which occupied one whole wall, and an equal number of opaque and
locked wooden ones legibly numbered.  His heart leaped; he
remembered the number, and before him was a window with a clerk
behind it.  Uncle Billy leaned forward.

"Kin you tell me if the man that box 690 b'longs to is in?"

The clerk stared, made him repeat the question, and then turned
away.  But he returned almost instantly, with two or three grinning
heads besides his own, apparently set behind his shoulders.  Uncle
Billy was again asked to repeat his question.  He did so.

"Why don't you go and see if 690 is in his box?" said the first
clerk, turning with affected asperity to one of the others.

The clerk went away, returned, and said with singular gravity, "He
was there a moment ago, but he's gone out to stretch his legs.
It's rather crampin' at first; and he can't stand it more than ten
hours at a time, you know."

But simplicity has its limits.  Uncle Billy had already guessed his
real error in believing his partner was officially connected with
the building; his cheek had flushed and then paled again.  The
pupils of his blue eyes had contracted into suggestive black
points.  "Ef you'll let me in at that winder, young fellers," he
said, with equal gravity, "I'll show yer how I kin make YOU small
enough to go in a box without crampin'!  But I only wanted to know
where Jim Foster LIVED."

At which the first clerk became perfunctory again, but civil.  "A
letter left in his box would get you that information," he said,
"and here's paper and pencil to write it now."

Uncle Billy took the paper and began to write, "Just got here.
Come and see me at"--  He paused.  A brilliant idea had struck him;
He could impress both his old partner and the upstarts at the
window; he would put in the name of the latest "swell" hotel in San
Francisco, said to be a fairy dream of opulence.  He added "The
Oriental," and without folding the paper shoved it in the window.

"Don't you want an envelope?" asked the clerk.

"Put a stamp on the corner of it," responded Uncle Billy, laying
down a coin, "and she'll go through."  The clerk smiled, but
affixed the stamp, and Uncle Billy turned away.

But it was a short-lived triumph.  The disappointment at finding
Uncle Jim's address conveyed no idea of his habitation seemed to
remove him farther away, and lose his identity in the great city.
Besides, he must now make good his own address, and seek rooms at
the Oriental.  He went thither.  The furniture and decorations,
even in these early days of hotel-building in San Francisco, were
extravagant and over-strained, and Uncle Billy felt lost and lonely
in his strange surroundings.  But he took a handsome suite of
rooms, paid for them in advance on the spot, and then, half
frightened, walked out of them to ramble vaguely through the city
in the feverish hope of meeting his old partner.  At night his
inquietude increased; he could not face the long row of tables in
the pillared dining-room, filled with smartly dressed men and
women; he evaded his bedroom, with its brocaded satin chairs and
its gilt bedstead, and fled to his modest lodgings at the Good
Cheer House, and appeased his hunger at its cheap restaurant, in
the company of retired miners and freshly arrived Eastern
emigrants.  Two or three days passed thus in this quaint double
existence.  Three or four times a day he would enter the gorgeous
Oriental with affected ease and carelessness, demand his key from
the hotel-clerk, ask for the letter that did not come, go to his
room, gaze vaguely from his window on the passing crowd below for
the partner he could not find, and then return to the Good Cheer
House for rest and sustenance.  On the fourth day he received a
short note from Uncle Jim; it was couched in his usual sanguine but
brief and businesslike style.  He was very sorry, but important and
profitable business took him out of town, but he trusted to return
soon and welcome his old partner.  He was also, for the first time,
jocose, and hoped that Uncle Billy would not "see all the sights"
before he, Uncle Jim, returned.  Disappointing as this
procrastination was to Uncle Billy, a gleam of hope irradiated it:
the letter had bridged over that gulf which seemed to yawn between
them at the post-office.  His old partner had accepted his visit to
San Francisco without question, and had alluded to a renewal of
their old intimacy.  For Uncle Billy, with all his trustful
simplicity, had been tortured by two harrowing doubts: one, whether
Uncle Jim in his new-fledged smartness as a "city" man--such as he
saw in the streets--would care for his rough companionship; the
other, whether he, Uncle Billy, ought not to tell him at once of
his changed fortune.  But, like all weak, unreasoning men, he clung
desperately to a detail--he could not forego his old idea of
astounding Uncle Jim by giving him his share of the "strike" as his
first intimation of it, and he doubted, with more reason perhaps,
if Jim would see him after he had heard of his good fortune.  For
Uncle Billy had still a frightened recollection of Uncle Jim's
sudden stroke for independence, and that rigid punctiliousness
which had made him doggedly accept the responsibility of his
extravagant stake at euchre.

With a view of educating himself for Uncle Jim's company, he "saw
the sights" of San Francisco--as an overgrown and somewhat stupid
child might have seen them--with great curiosity, but little
contamination or corruption.  But I think he was chiefly pleased
with watching the arrival of the Sacramento and Stockton steamers
at the wharves, in the hope of discovering his old partner among
the passengers on the gang-plank.  Here, with his old superstitious
tendency and gambler's instinct, he would augur great success in
his search that day if any one of the passengers bore the least
resemblance to Uncle Jim, if a man or woman stepped off first, or
if he met a single person's questioning eye.  Indeed, this got to
be the real occupation of the day, which he would on no account
have omitted, and to a certain extent revived each day in his mind
the morning's work of their old partnership.  He would say to
himself, "It's time to go and look up Jim," and put off what he was
pleased to think were his pleasures until this act of duty was
accomplished.

In this singleness of purpose he made very few and no entangling
acquaintances, nor did he impart to any one the secret of his
fortune, loyally reserving it for his partner's first knowledge.
To a man of his natural frankness and simplicity this was a great
trial, and was, perhaps, a crucial test of his devotion.  When he
gave up his rooms at the Oriental--as not necessary after his
partner's absence--he sent a letter, with his humble address, to
the mysterious lock-box of his partner without fear or false shame.
He would explain it all when they met.  But he sometimes treated
unlucky and returning miners to a dinner and a visit to the gallery
of some theatre.  Yet while he had an active sympathy with and
understanding of the humblest, Uncle Billy, who for many years had
done his own and his partner's washing, scrubbing, mending, and
cooking, and saw no degradation in it, was somewhat inconsistently
irritated by menial functions in men, and although he gave
extravagantly to waiters, and threw a dollar to the crossing-
sweeper, there was always a certain shy avoidance of them in his
manner.  Coming from the theatre one night Uncle Billy was,
however, seriously concerned by one of these crossing-sweepers
turning hastily before them and being knocked down by a passing
carriage.  The man rose and limped hurriedly away; but Uncle Billy
was amazed and still more irritated to hear from his companion that
this kind of menial occupation was often profitable, and that at
some of the principal crossings the sweepers were already rich men.

But a few days later brought a more notable event to Uncle Billy.
One afternoon in Montgomery Street he recognized in one of its
smartly dressed frequenters a man who had a few years before been a
member of Cedar Camp.  Uncle Billy's childish delight at this
meeting, which seemed to bridge over his old partner's absence,
was, however, only half responded to by the ex-miner, and then
somewhat satirically.  In the fullness of his emotion, Uncle Billy
confided to him that he was seeking his old partner, Jim Foster,
and, reticent of his own good fortune, spoke glowingly of his
partner's brilliant expectations, but deplored his inability to
find him.  And just now he was away on important business.  "I
reckon he's got back," said the man dryly.  "I didn't know he had a
lock-box at the post-office, but I can give you his other address.
He lives at the Presidio, at Washerwoman's Bay."  He stopped and
looked with a satirical smile at Uncle Billy.  But the latter,
familiar with Californian mining-camp nomenclature, saw nothing
strange in it, and merely repeated his companion's words.

"You'll find him there!  Good-by!  So long!  Sorry I'm in a hurry,"
said the ex-miner, and hurried away.

Uncle Billy was too delighted with the prospect of a speedy meeting
with Uncle Jim to resent his former associate's supercilious haste,
or even to wonder why Uncle Jim had not informed him that he had
returned.  It was not the first time that he had felt how wide was
the gulf between himself and these others, and the thought drew him
closer to his old partner, as well as his old idea, as it was now
possible to surprise him with the draft.  But as he was going to
surprise him in his own boarding-house--probably a handsome one--
Uncle Billy reflected that he would do so in a certain style.

He accordingly went to a livery stable and ordered a landau and
pair, with a negro coachman.  Seated in it, in his best and most
ill-fitting clothes, he asked the coachman to take him to the
Presidio, and leaned back in the cushions as they drove through the
streets with such an expression of beaming gratification on his
good-humored face that the passers-by smiled at the equipage and
its extravagant occupant.  To them it seemed the not unusual sight
of the successful miner "on a spree."  To the unsophisticated Uncle
Billy their smiling seemed only a natural and kindly recognition of
his happiness, and he nodded and smiled back to them with
unsuspecting candor and innocent playfulness.  "These yer 'Frisco
fellers ain't ALL slouches, you bet," he added to himself half
aloud, at the back of the grinning coachman.

Their way led through well-built streets to the outskirts, or
rather to that portion of the city which seemed to have been
overwhelmed by shifting sand-dunes, from which half-submerged
fences and even low houses barely marked the line of highway.  The
resistless trade-winds which had marked this change blew keenly in
his face and slightly chilled his ardor.  At a turn in the road the
sea came in sight, and sloping towards it the great Cemetery of
Lone Mountain, with white shafts and marbles that glittered in the
sunlight like the sails of ships waiting to be launched down that
slope into the Eternal Ocean.  Uncle Billy shuddered.  What if it
had been his fate to seek Uncle Jim there!

"Dar's yar Presidio!" said the negro coachman a few moments later,
pointing with his whip, "and dar's yar Wash'woman's Bay!"

Uncle Billy stared.  A huge quadrangular fort of stone with a flag
flying above its battlements stood at a little distance, pressed
against the rocks, as if beating back the encroaching surges;
between him and the fort but farther inland was a lagoon with a
number of dilapidated, rudely patched cabins or cottages, like
stranded driftwood around its shore.  But there was no mansion, no
block of houses, no street, not another habitation or dwelling to
be seen!

Uncle Billy's first shock of astonishment was succeeded by a
feeling of relief.  He had secretly dreaded a meeting with his old
partner in the "haunts of fashion;" whatever was the cause that
made Uncle Jim seek this obscure retirement affected him but
slightly; he even was thrilled with a vague memory of the old
shiftless camp they had both abandoned.  A certain instinct--he
knew not why, or less still that it might be one of delicacy--made
him alight before they reached the first house.  Bidding the
carriage wait, Uncle Billy entered, and was informed by a blowzy
Irish laundress at a tub that Jim Foster, or "Arkansaw Jim," lived
at the fourth shanty "beyant."  He was at home, for "he'd shprained
his fut."  Uncle Billy hurried on, stopped before the door of a
shanty scarcely less rude than their old cabin, and half timidly
pushed it open.  A growling voice from within, a figure that rose
hurriedly, leaning on a stick, with an attempt to fly, but in the
same moment sank back in a chair with an hysterical laugh--and
Uncle Billy stood in the presence of his old partner!  But as Uncle
Billy darted forward, Uncle Jim rose again, and this time with
outstretched hands.  Uncle Billy caught them, and in one supreme
pressure seemed to pour out and transfuse his whole simple soul
into his partner's.  There they swayed each other backwards and
forwards and sideways by their still clasped hands, until Uncle
Billy, with a glance at Uncle Jim's bandaged ankle, shoved him by
sheer force down into his chair.

Uncle Jim was first to speak.  "Caught, b' gosh!  I mighter known
you'd be as big a fool as me!  Look you, Billy Fall, do you know
what you've done?  You've druv me out er the streets whar I was
makin' an honest livin', by day, on three crossin's!  Yes," he
laughed forgivingly, "you druv me out er it, by day, jest because I
reckoned that some time I might run into your darned fool face,"--
another laugh and a grasp of the hand,--"and then, b'gosh! not
content with ruinin' my business BY DAY, when I took to it at
night, YOU took to goin' out at nights too, and so put a stopper on
me there!  Shall I tell you what else you did?  Well, by the holy
poker! I owe this sprained foot to your darned foolishness and my
own, for it was getting away from YOU one night after the theatre
that I got run into and run over!

"Ye see," he went on, unconscious of Uncle Billy's paling face, and
with a naivete, though perhaps not a delicacy, equal to Uncle
Billy's own, "I had to play roots on you with that lock-box
business and these letters, because I did not want you to know what
I was up to, for you mightn't like it, and might think it was
lowerin' to the old firm, don't yer see?  I wouldn't hev gone into
it, but I was played out, and I don't mind tellin' you NOW, old
man, that when I wrote you that first chipper letter from the lock-
box I hedn't eat anythin' for two days.  But it's all right NOW,"
with a laugh.  "Then I got into this business--thinkin' it nothin'--
jest the very last thing--and do you know, old pard, I couldn't
tell anybody but YOU--and, in fact, I kept it jest to tell you--
I've made nine hundred and fifty-six dollars!  Yes, sir, NINE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX DOLLARS! solid money, in Adams and Co.'s
Bank, just out er my trade."

"Wot trade?" asked Uncle Billy.

Uncle Jim pointed to the corner, where stood a large, heavy
crossing-sweeper's broom.  "That trade."

"Certingly," said Uncle Billy, with a quick laugh.

"It's an outdoor trade," said Uncle Jim gravely, but with no
suggestion of awkwardness or apology in his manner; "and thar ain't
much difference between sweepin' a crossin' with a broom and raking
over tailing with a rake, ONLY--WOT YE GET with a broom YOU HAVE
HANDED TO YE, and ye don't have to PICK IT UP AND FISH IT OUT ER
the wet rocks and sluice-gushin'; and it's a heap less tiring to
the back."

"Certingly, you bet!" said Uncle Billy enthusiastically, yet with a
certain nervous abstraction.

"I'm glad ye say so; for yer see I didn't know at first how you'd
tumble to my doing it, until I'd made my pile.  And ef I hadn't
made it, I wouldn't hev set eyes on ye agin, old pard--never!"

"Do you mind my runnin' out a minit," said Uncle Billy, rising.
"You see, I've got a friend waitin' for me outside--and I reckon"--
he stammered--"I'll jest run out and send him off, so I kin talk
comf'ble to ye."

"Ye ain't got anybody you're owin' money to," said Uncle Jim
earnestly, "anybody follerin' you to get paid, eh?  For I kin jest
set down right here and write ye off a check on the bank!"

"No," said Uncle Billy.  He slipped out of the door, and ran like a
deer to the waiting carriage.  Thrusting a twenty-dollar gold-piece
into the coachman's hand, he said hoarsely, "I ain't wantin' that
kerridge just now; ye ken drive around and hev a private jamboree
all by yourself the rest of the afternoon, and then come and wait
for me at the top o' the hill yonder."

Thus quit of his gorgeous equipage, he hurried back to Uncle Jim,
grasping his ten-thousand dollar draft in his pocket.  He was
nervous, he was frightened, but he must get rid of the draft and
his story, and have it over.  But before he could speak he was
unexpectedly stopped by Uncle Jim.

"Now, look yer, Billy boy!" said Uncle Jim; "I got suthin' to say
to ye--and I might as well clear it off my mind at once, and then
we can start fair agin.  Now," he went on, with a half laugh,
"wasn't it enough for ME to go on pretendin' I was rich and doing a
big business, and gettin' up that lock-box dodge so as ye couldn't
find out whar I hung out and what I was doin'--wasn't it enough for
ME to go on with all this play-actin', but YOU, you long-legged or
nary cuss! must get up and go to lyin' and play-actin', too!"

"ME play-actin'?  ME lyin'?" gasped Uncle Billy.

Uncle Jim leaned back in his chair and laughed.  "Do you think you
could fool ME?  Do you think I didn't see through your little game
o' going to that swell Oriental, jest as if ye'd made a big strike--
and all the while ye wasn't sleepin' or eatin' there, but jest
wrastlin' yer hash and having a roll down at the Good Cheer!  Do
you think I didn't spy on ye and find that out?  Oh, you long-eared
jackass-rabbit!"

He laughed until the tears came into his eyes, and Uncle Billy
laughed too, albeit until the laugh on his face became quite fixed,
and he was fain to bury his head in his handkerchief.

"And yet," said Uncle Jim, with a deep breath, "gosh! I was
frighted--jest for a minit!  I thought, mebbe, you HAD made a big
strike--when I got your first letter--and I made up my mind what
I'd do!  And then I remembered you was jest that kind of an open
sluice that couldn't keep anythin' to yourself, and you'd have been
sure to have yelled it out to ME the first thing.  So I waited.
And I found you out, you old sinner!"  He reached forward and dug
Uncle Billy in the ribs.

"What WOULD you hev done?" said Uncle Billy, after an hysterical
collapse.

Uncle Jim's face grew grave again.  "I'd hev--I'd--hev cl'ared out!
Out er 'Frisco! out er Californy! out er Ameriky!  I couldn't have
stud it!  Don't think I would hev begrudged ye yer luck!  No man
would have been gladder than me."  He leaned forward again, and
laid his hand caressingly upon his partner's arm--"Don't think I'd
hev wanted to take a penny of it--but I--thar! I COULDN'T hev stood
up under it!  To hev had YOU, you that I left behind, comin' down
here rollin' in wealth and new partners and friends, and arrive
upon me--and this shanty--and"--he threw towards the corner of the
room a terrible gesture, none the less terrible that it was
illogical and inconsequent to all that had gone before--"and--and--
THAT BROOM!"

There was a dead silence in the room.  With it Uncle Billy seemed
to feel himself again transported to the homely cabin at Cedar Camp
and that fateful night, with his partner's strange, determined face
before him as then.  He even fancied that he heard the roaring of
the pines without, and did not know that it was the distant sea.

But after a minute Uncle Jim resumed:--

"Of course you've made a little raise somehow, or you wouldn't be
here?"

"Yes," said Uncle Billy eagerly.  "Yes!  I've got"--  He stopped
and stammered.  "I've got--a--few hundreds."

"Oh, oh!" said Uncle Jim cheerfully.  He paused, and then added
earnestly, "I say!  You ain't got left, over and above your d--d
foolishness at the Oriental, as much as five hundred dollars?"

"I've got," said Uncle Billy, blushing a little over his first
deliberate and affected lie, "I've got at least five hundred and
seventy-two dollars.  Yes," he added tentatively, gazing anxiously
at his partner, "I've got at least that."

"Je whillikins!" said Uncle Jim, with a laugh.  Then eagerly, "Look
here, pard!  Then we're on velvet!  I've got NINE hundred; put your
FIVE with that, and I know a little ranch that we can get for
twelve hundred.  That's what I've been savin' up for--that's my
little game!  No more minin' for ME.  It's got a shanty twice as
big as our old cabin, nigh on a hundred acres, and two mustangs.
We can run it with two Chinamen and jest make it howl!  Wot yer
say--eh?"  He extended his hand.

"I'm in," said Uncle Billy, radiantly grasping Uncle Jim's.  But
his smile faded, and his clear simple brow wrinkled in two lines.

Happily Uncle Jim did not notice it.  "Now, then, old pard," he
said brightly, "we'll have a gay old time to-night--one of our
jamborees!  I've got some whiskey here and a deck o' cards, and
we'll have a little game, you understand, but not for 'keeps' now!
No, siree; we'll play for beans."

A sudden light illuminated Uncle Billy's face again, but he said,
with a grim desperation, "Not to-night!  I've got to go into town.
That fren' o' mine expects me to go to the theayter, don't ye see?
But I'll be out to-morrow at sun-up, and we'll fix up this thing o'
the ranch."

"Seems to me you're kinder stuck on this fren'," grunted Uncle Jim.

Uncle Billy's heart bounded at his partner's jealousy.  "No--but I
MUST, you know," he returned, with a faint laugh.

"I say--it ain't a HER, is it?" said Uncle Jim.

Uncle Billy achieved a diabolical wink and a creditable blush at
his lie.

"Billy?"

"Jim!"

And under cover of this festive gallantry Uncle Billy escaped.  He
ran through the gathering darkness, and toiled up the shifting
sands to the top of the hill, where he found the carriage waiting.

"Wot," said Uncle Billy in a low confidential tone to the coachman,
"wot do you 'Frisco fellers allow to be the best, biggest, and
riskiest gamblin'-saloon here?  Suthin' high-toned, you know?"

The negro grinned.  It was the usual case of the extravagant
spendthrift miner, though perhaps he had expected a different
question and order.

"Dey is de 'Polka,' de 'El Dorado,' and de 'Arcade' saloon, boss,"
he said, flicking his whip meditatively.  "Most gents from de mines
prefer de 'Polka,' for dey is dancing wid de gals frown in.  But de
real prima facie place for gents who go for buckin' agin de tiger
and straight-out gamblin' is de 'Arcade.'"

"Drive there like thunder!" said Uncle Billy, leaping into the
carriage.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

True to his word, Uncle Billy was at his partner's shanty early the
next morning.  He looked a little tired, but happy, and had brought
a draft with him for five hundred and seventy-five dollars, which
he explained was the total of his capital.  Uncle Jim was
overjoyed.  They would start for Napa that very day, and conclude
the purchase of the ranch; Uncle Jim's sprained foot was a
sufficient reason for his giving up his present vocation, which he
could also sell at a small profit.  His domestic arrangements were
very simple; there was nothing to take with him--there was
everything to leave behind.  And that afternoon, at sunset, the two
reunited partners were seated on the deck of the Napa boat as she
swung into the stream.

Uncle Billy was gazing over the railing with a look of abstracted
relief towards the Golden Gate, where the sinking sun seemed to be
drawing towards him in the ocean a golden stream that was forever
pouring from the Bay and the three-hilled city beside it.  What
Uncle Billy was thinking of, or what the picture suggested to him,
did not transpire; for Uncle Jim, who, emboldened by his holiday,
was luxuriating in an evening paper, suddenly uttered a long-drawn
whistle, and moved closer to his abstracted partner.  "Look yer,"
he said, pointing to a paragraph he had evidently just read, "just
you listen to this, and see if we ain't lucky, you and me, to be
jest wot we air--trustin' to our own hard work--and not thinkin' o'
'strikes' and 'fortins.'  Jest unbutton yer ears, Billy, while I
reel off this yer thing I've jest struck in the paper, and see what
d--d fools some men kin make o' themselves.  And that theer
reporter wot wrote it--must hev seed it reely!"

Uncle Jim cleared his throat, and holding the paper close to his
eyes read aloud slowly:--

"'A scene of excitement that recalled the palmy days of '49 was
witnessed last night at the Arcade Saloon.  A stranger, who might
have belonged to that reckless epoch, and who bore every evidence
of being a successful Pike County miner out on a "spree," appeared
at one of the tables with a negro coachman bearing two heavy bags
of gold.  Selecting a faro-bank as his base of operations, he began
to bet heavily and with apparent recklessness, until his play
excited the breathless attention of every one.  In a few moments he
had won a sum variously estimated at from eighty to a hundred
thousand dollars.  A rumor went round the room that it was a
concerted attempt to "break the bank" rather than the drunken freak
of a Western miner, dazzled by some successful strike.  To this
theory the man's careless and indifferent bearing towards his
extraordinary gains lent great credence.  The attempt, if such it
was, however, was unsuccessful.  After winning ten times in
succession the luck turned, and the unfortunate "bucker" was
cleared out not only of his gains, but of his original investment,
which may be placed roughly at twenty thousand dollars.  This
extraordinary play was witnessed by a crowd of excited players, who
were less impressed by even the magnitude of the stakes than the
perfect sang-froid and recklessness of the player, who, it is said,
at the close of the game tossed a twenty-dollar gold-piece to the
banker and smilingly withdrew.  The man was not recognized by any
of the habitues of the place.'

"There!" said Uncle Jim, as he hurriedly slurred over the French
substantive at the close, "did ye ever see such God-forsaken
foolishness?"

Uncle Billy lifted his abstracted eyes from the current, still
pouring its unreturning gold into the sinking sun, and said, with a
deprecatory smile, "Never!"

Nor even in the days of prosperity that visited the Great Wheat
Ranch of "Fall and Foster" did he ever tell his secret to his
partner.



SEE YUP


I don't suppose that his progenitors ever gave him that name, or,
indeed, that it was a NAME at all; but it was currently believed
that--as pronounced "See UP"--it meant that lifting of the outer
angle of the eye common to the Mongolian.  On the other hand, I had
been told that there was an old Chinese custom of affixing some
motto or legend, or even a sentence from Confucius, as a sign above
their shops, and that two or more words, which might be merely
equivalent to "Virtue is its own reward," or "Riches are
deceitful," were believed by the simple Californian miner to be the
name of the occupant himself.  Howbeit, "See Yup" accepted it with
the smiling patience of his race, and never went by any other.  If
one of the tunnelmen always addressed him as "Brigadier-General,"
"Judge," or "Commodore," it was understood to be only the American
fondness for ironic title, and was never used except in personal
conversation.  In appearance he looked like any other Chinaman,
wore the ordinary blue cotton blouse and white drawers of the
Sampan coolie, and, in spite of the apparent cleanliness and
freshness of these garments, always exhaled that singular medicated
odor--half opium, half ginger--which we recognized as the common
"Chinese smell."

Our first interview was characteristic of his patient quality.  He
had done my washing for several months, but I had never yet seen
him.  A meeting at last had become necessary to correct his
impressions regarding "buttons"--which he had seemed to consider as
mere excrescences, to be removed like superfluous dirt from soiled
linen.  I had expected him to call at my lodgings, but he had not
yet made his appearance.  One day, during the noontide recess of
the little frontier school over which I presided, I returned rather
early.  Two or three of the smaller boys, who were loitering about
the school-yard, disappeared with a certain guilty precipitation
that I suspected for the moment, but which I presently dismissed
from my mind.  I passed through the empty school-room to my desk,
sat down, and began to prepare the coming lessons.  Presently I
heard a faint sigh.  Looking up, to my intense concern, I
discovered a solitary Chinaman whom I had overlooked, sitting in a
rigid attitude on a bench with his back to the window.  He caught
my eye and smiled sadly, but without moving.

"What are you doing here?" I asked sternly.

"Me washee shilts; me talkee 'buttons.'"

"Oh! you're See Yup, are you?"

"Allee same, John."

"Well, come here."

I continued my work, but he did not move.

"Come here, hang it!  Don't you understand?"

"Me shabbee, 'comme yea.'  But me no shabbee Mellican boy, who
catchee me, allee same.  YOU 'comme yea'--YOU shabbee?"

Indignant, but believing that the unfortunate man was still in fear
of persecution from the mischievous urchins whom I had evidently
just interrupted, I put down my pen and went over to him.  Here I
discovered, to my surprise and mortification, that his long pigtail
was held hard and fast by the closed window behind him which the
young rascals had shut down upon it, after having first noiselessly
fished it outside with a hook and line.  I apologized, opened the
window, and released him.  He did not complain, although he must
have been fixed in that uncomfortable position for some minutes,
but plunged at once into the business that brought him there.

"But WHY didn't you come to my lodgings?" I asked.

He smiled sadly but intelligently.

"Mishtel Bally [Mr. Barry, my landlord] he owce me five dollee fo
washee, washee.  He no payee me.  He say he knock hellee outee me
allee time I come for payee.  So me no come HOUSEE, me come
SCHOOLEE, Shabbee?  Mellican boy no good, but not so big as
Mellican man.  No can hurtee Chinaman so much.  Shabbee?"

Alas!  I knew that this was mainly true.  Mr. James Barry was an
Irishman, whose finer religious feelings revolted against paying
money to a heathen.  I could not find it in my heart to say
anything to See Yup about the buttons; indeed, I spoke in
complimentary terms about the gloss of my shirts, and I think I
meekly begged him to come again for my washing.  When I went home I
expostulated with Mr. Barry, but succeeded only in extracting from
him the conviction that I was one of "thim black Republican fellys
that worshiped naygurs."  I had simply made an enemy of him.  But I
did not know that, at the same time, I had made a friend of See
Yup!

I became aware of this a few days later, by the appearance on my
desk of a small pot containing a specimen of camellia japonica in
flower.  I knew the school-children were in the habit of making
presents to me in this furtive fashion,--leaving their own nosegays
of wild flowers, or perhaps a cluster of roses from their parents'
gardens,--but I also knew that this exotic was too rare to come
from them.  I remembered that See Yup had a Chinese taste for
gardening, and a friend, another Chinaman, who kept a large nursery
in the adjoining town.  But my doubts were set at rest by the
discovery of a small roll of red rice-paper containing my washing-
bill, fastened to the camellia stalk.  It was plain that this
mingling of business and delicate gratitude was clearly See Yup's
own idea.  As the finest flower was the topmost one, I plucked it
for wearing, when I found, to my astonishment, that it was simply
wired to the stalk.  This led me to look at the others, which I
found also wired!  More than that, they seemed to be an inferior
flower, and exhaled that cold, earthy odor peculiar to the
camellia, even, as I thought, to an excess.  A closer examination
resulted in the discovery that, with the exception of the first
flower I had plucked, they were one and all ingeniously constructed
of thin slices of potato, marvelously cut to imitate the vegetable
waxiness and formality of the real flower.  The work showed an
infinite and almost pathetic patience in detail, yet strangely
incommensurate with the result, admirable as it was.  Nevertheless,
this was also like See Yup.  But whether he had tried to deceive
me, or whether he only wished me to admire his skill, I could not
say.  And as his persecution by my scholars had left a balance of
consideration in his favor, I sent him a warm note of thanks, and
said nothing of my discovery.

As our acquaintance progressed, I became frequently the recipient
of other small presents from him: a pot of preserves of a quality I
could not purchase in shops, and whose contents in their crafty,
gingery dissimulation so defied definition that I never knew
whether they were animal, vegetable, or mineral; two or three
hideous Chinese idols, "for luckee," and a diabolical fire-work
with an irregular spasmodic activity that would sometimes be
prolonged until the next morning.  In return, I gave him some
apparently hopeless oral lessons in English, and certain sentences
to be copied, which he did with marvelous precision.  I remember
one instance when this peculiar faculty of imitation was disastrous
in result.  In setting him a copy, I had blurred a word which I
promptly erased, and then traced the letters more distinctly over
the scratched surface.  To my surprise, See Yup triumphantly
produced HIS copy with the erasion itself carefully imitated, and,
in fact, much more neatly done than mine.

In our confidential intercourse, I never seemed to really get
nearer to him.  His sympathy and simplicity appeared like his
flowers--to be a good-humored imitation of my own.  I am satisfied
that his particularly soulless laugh was not derived from any
amusement he actually felt, yet I could not say it was forced.  In
his accurate imitations, I fancied he was only trying to evade any
responsibility of his own.  THAT devolved upon his taskmaster!  In
the attention he displayed when new ideas were presented to him,
there was a slight condescension, as if he were looking down upon
them from his three thousand years of history.

"Don't you think the electric telegraph wonderful?" I asked one
day.

"Very good for Mellican man," he said, with his aimless laugh;
"plenty makee him jump!"

I never could tell whether he had confounded it with electro-
galvanism, or was only satirizing our American haste and
feverishness.  He was capable of either.  For that matter, we knew
that the Chinese themselves possessed some means of secretly and
quickly communicating with one another.  Any news of good or ill
import to their race was quickly disseminated through the
settlement before WE knew anything about it.  An innocent basket of
clothes from the wash, sent up from the river-bank, became in some
way a library of information; a single slip of rice-paper,
aimlessly fluttering in the dust of the road, had the mysterious
effect of diverging a whole gang of coolie tramps away from our
settlement.

When See Yup was not subject to the persecutions of the more
ignorant and brutal he was always a source of amusement to all, and
I cannot recall an instance when he was ever taken seriously.  The
miners found diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries,
whether innocent or retaliatory, and were fond of relating with
great gusto his evasion of the Foreign Miners' Tax.  This was an
oppressive measure aimed principally at the Chinese, who humbly
worked the worn-out "tailings" of their Christian fellow miners.
It was stated that See Yup, knowing the difficulty--already alluded
to--of identifying any particular Chinaman by NAME, conceived the
additional idea of confusing recognition by intensifying the
monotonous facial expression.  Having paid his tax himself to the
collector, he at once passed the receipt to his fellows, so that
the collector found himself confronted in different parts of the
settlement with the receipt and the aimless laugh of, apparently,
See Yup himself.  Although we all knew that there were a dozen
Chinamen or more at work at the mines, the collector never was able
to collect the tax from more than TWO, --See Yup and one See Yin,--
and so great was THEIR facial resemblance that the unfortunate
official for a long time hugged himself with the conviction that he
had made See Yup PAY TWICE, and withheld the money from the
government!  It is very probable that the Californian's recognition
of the sanctity of a joke, and his belief that "cheating the
government was only cheating himself," largely accounted for the
sympathies of the rest of the miners.

But these sympathies were not always unanimous.

One evening I strolled into the bar-room of the principal saloon,
which, so far as mere upholstery and comfort went, was also the
principal house in the settlement.  The first rains had commenced;
the windows were open, for the influence of the southwest trades
penetrated even this far-off mountain mining settlement, but, oddly
enough, there was a fire in the large central stove, around which
the miners had collected, with their steaming boots elevated on a
projecting iron railing that encircled it.  They were not attracted
by the warmth, but the stove formed a social pivot for gossip, and
suggested that mystic circle dear to the gregarious instinct.  Yet
they were decidedly a despondent group.  For some moments the
silence was only broken by a gasp, a sigh, a muttered oath, or an
impatient change of position.  There was nothing in the fortunes of
the settlement, nor in their own individual affairs to suggest this
gloom.  The singular truth was that they were, one and all,
suffering from the pangs of dyspepsia.

Incongruous as such a complaint might seem to their healthy
environment,--their outdoor life, their daily exercise, the healing
balsam of the mountain air, their enforced temperance in diet, and
the absence of all enervating pleasures,--it was nevertheless the
incontestable fact.  Whether it was the result of the nervous,
excitable temperament which had brought them together in this
feverish hunt for gold; whether it was the quality of the tinned
meats or half-cooked provisions they hastily bolted, begrudging the
time it took to prepare and to consume them; whether they too often
supplanted their meals by tobacco or whiskey, the singular
physiological truth remained that these young, finely selected
adventurers, living the lives of the natural, aboriginal man, and
looking the picture of health and strength, actually suffered more
from indigestion than the pampered dwellers of the cities.  The
quantity of "patent medicines," "bitters," "pills," "panaceas," and
"lozenges" sold in the settlement almost exceeded the amount of the
regular provisions whose effects they were supposed to correct.
The sufferers eagerly scanned advertisements and placards.  There
were occasional "runs" on new "specifics," and general conversation
eventually turned into a discussion of their respective merits.  A
certain childlike faith and trust in each new remedy was not the
least distressing and pathetic of the symptoms of these grown-up,
bearded men.

"Well, gentlemen," said Cyrus Parker, glancing around at his fellow
sufferers, "ye kin talk of your patent medicines, and I've tackled
'em all, but only the other day I struck suthin' that I'm goin' to
hang on to, you bet."

Every eye was turned moodily to the speaker, but no one said
anything.

"And I didn't get it outer advertisements, nor off of circulars.  I
got it outer my head, just by solid thinking," continued Parker.

"What was it, Cy?" said one unsophisticated and inexperienced
sufferer.

Instead of replying, Parker, like a true artist, knowing he had the
ear of his audience, dramatically flashed a question upon them.

"Did you ever hear of a Chinaman having dyspepsy?"

"Never heard he had sabe enough to hev ANYTHING," said a scorner.

"No, but DID ye?" insisted Parker.

"Well, no!" chorused the group.  They were evidently struck with
the fact.

"Of course you didn't," said Parker triumphantly.  "'Cos they
AIN'T.  Well, gentlemen, it didn't seem to me the square thing that
a pesky lot o' yellow-skinned heathens should be built different to
a white man, and never know the tortur' that a Christian feels; and
one day, arter dinner, when I was just a-lyin' flat down on the
bank, squirmin', and clutching the short grass to keep from
yellin', who should go by but that pizened See Yup, with a grin on
his face.

"'Mellican man plenty playee to him Joss after eatin',' sez he; 'but
Chinaman smellee punk, allee same, and no hab got.'

"I knew the slimy cuss was just purtendin' he thought I was prayin'
to my Joss, but I was that weak I hadn't stren'th, boys, to heave a
rock at him.  Yet it gave me an idea."

"What was it?" they asked eagerly.

"I went down to his shop the next day, when he was alone, and I was
feeling mighty bad, and I got hold of his pigtail and I allowed I'd
stuff it down his throat if he didn't tell me what he meant.  Then
he took a piece of punk and lit it, and put it under my nose, and,
darn my skin, gentlemen, you migh'n't believe me, but in a minute I
felt better, and after a whiff or two I was all right."

"Was it pow'ful strong, Cy?" asked the inexperienced one.

"No," said Parker, "and that's just what's got me.  It was a sort
o' dreamy, spicy smell, like a hot night.  But as I couldn't go
'round 'mong you boys with a lighted piece o' punk in my hand, ez
if I was settin' off Fourth of July firecrackers, I asked him if he
couldn't fix me up suthin' in another shape that would be handier
to use when I was took bad, and I'd reckon to pay him for it like
ez I'd pay for any other patent medicine.  So he fixed me up this."

He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a small red paper
which, when opened, disclosed a pink powder.  It was gravely passed
around the group.

"Why, it smells and tastes like ginger," said one.

"It is only ginger!" said another scornfully.

"Mebbe it is, and mebbe it isn't," returned Cy Parker stoutly.
"Mebbe ut's only my fancy.  But if it's the sort o' stuff to bring
on that fancy, and that fancy CURES me, it's all the same.  I've
got about two dollars' worth o' that fancy or that ginger, and I'm
going to stick to it.  You hear me!"  And he carefully put it back
in his pocket.

At which criticisms and gibes broke forth.  If he (Cy Parker), a
white man, was going to "demean himself" by consulting a Chinese
quack, he'd better buy up a lot o' idols and stand 'em up around
his cabin.  If he had that sort o' confidences with See Yup, he
ought to go to work with him on his cheap tailings, and be
fumigated all at the same time.  If he'd been smoking an opium
pipe, instead of smelling punk, he ought to be man enough to
confess it.  Yet it was noticeable that they were all very anxious
to examine the packet again, but Cy Parker was alike indifferent to
demand or entreaty.

A few days later I saw Abe Wynford, one of the party, coming out of
See Yup's wash-house.  He muttered something in passing about the
infamous delay in sending home his washing, but did not linger long
in conversation.  The next day I met another miner AT the wash-
house, but HE lingered so long on some trifling details that I
finally left him there alone with See Yup.  When I called upon
Poker Jack of Shasta, there was a singular smell of incense in HIS
cabin, which he attributed to the very resinous quality of the fir
logs he was burning.  I did not attempt to probe these mysteries by
any direct appeal to See Yup himself: I respected his reticence;
indeed, if I had not, I was quite satisfied that he would have lied
to me.  Enough that his wash-house was well patronized, and he was
decidedly "getting on."

It might have been a month afterwards that Dr. Duchesne was setting
a broken bone in the settlement, and after the operation was over,
had strolled into the Palmetto Saloon.  He was an old army surgeon,
much respected and loved in the district, although perhaps a little
feared for the honest roughness and military precision of his
speech.  After he had exchanged salutations with the miners in his
usual hearty fashion, and accepted their invitation to drink, Cy
Parker, with a certain affected carelessness which did not,
however, conceal a singular hesitation in his speech, began:--

"I've been wantin' to ask ye a question, Doc,--a sort o' darned
fool question, ye know,--nothing in the way of consultation, don't
you see, though it's kin er in the way o' your purfeshun.  Sabe?"

"Go on, Cy," said the doctor good-humoredly, "this is my dispensary
hour."

"Oh! it ain't anything about symptoms, Doc, and there ain't
anything the matter with me.  It's only just to ask ye if ye
happened to know anything about the medical practice of these yer
Chinamen?"

"I don't know," said the doctor bluntly, "and I don't know ANYBODY
who does."

There was a sudden silence in the bar, and the doctor, putting down
his glass, continued with slight professional precision:--

"You see, the Chinese know nothing of anatomy from personal
observation.  Autopsies and dissection are against their
superstitions, which declare the human body sacred, and are
consequently never practiced."

There was a slight movement of inquiring interest among the party,
and Cy Parker, after a meaning glance at the others, went on half
aggressively, half apologetically:--

"In course, they ain't surgeons like you, Doc, but that don't keep
them from having their own little medicines, just as dogs eat
grass, you know.  Now I want to put it to you, as a fa'r-minded
man, if you mean ter say that, jest because those old women who
sarve out yarbs and spring medicines in families don't know
anything of anatomy, they ain't fit to give us their simple and
nat'ral medicines?"

"But the Chinese medicines are not simple or natural," said the
doctor coolly.

"Not simple?" echoed the party, closing round him.

"I don't mean to say," continued the doctor, glancing around at
their eager, excited faces with an appearance of wonder, "that they
are positively noxious, unless taken in large quantities, for they
are not drugs at all, but I certainly should not call them
'simple.'  Do YOU know what they principally are?"

"Well, no," said Parker cautiously, "perhaps not EXACTLY."

"Come a little closer, and I'll tell you."

Not only Parker's head but the others were bent over the counter.
Dr. Duchesne uttered a few words in a tone inaudible to the rest of
the company.  There was a profound silence, broken at last by Abe
Wynford's voice:--

"Ye kin pour me out about three fingers o' whiskey, Barkeep.  I'll
take it straight."

"Same to me," said the others.

The men gulped down their liquor; two of them quietly passed out.
The doctor wiped his lips, buttoned his coat, and began to draw on
his riding-gloves.

"I've heerd," said Poker Jack of Shasta, with a faint smile on his
white face, as he toyed with the last drops of liquor in his glass,
"that the darned fools sometimes smell punk as a medicine, eh?"

"Yes, THAT'S comparatively decent," said the doctor reflectively.
"It's only sawdust mixed with a little gum and formic acid."

"Formic acid?  Wot's that?"

"A very peculiar acid secreted by ants.  It is supposed to be used
by them offensively in warfare--just as the skunk, eh?"

But Poker Jack of Shasta had hurriedly declared that he wanted to
speak to a man who was passing, and had disappeared.  The doctor
walked to the door, mounted his horse, and rode away.  I noticed,
however, that there was a slight smile on his bronzed, impassive
face.  This led me to wonder if he was entirely ignorant of the
purpose for which he had been questioned, and the effect of his
information.  I was confirmed in the belief by the remarkable
circumstances that nothing more was said of it; the incident seemed
to have terminated there, and the victims made no attempt to
revenge themselves on See Yup.  That they had one and all, secretly
and unknown to one another, patronized him, there was no doubt;
but, at the same time, as they evidently were not sure that Dr.
Duchesne had not hoaxed them in regard to the quality of See Yup's
medicines, they knew that an attack on the unfortunate Chinaman
would in either case reveal their secret and expose them to the
ridicule of their brother miners.  So the matter dropped, and See
Yup remained master of the situation.

Meantime he was prospering.  The coolie gang he worked on the
river, when not engaged in washing clothes, were "picking over" the
"tailings," or refuse of gravel, left on abandoned claims by
successful miners.  As there was no more expense attending this
than in stone-breaking or rag-picking, and the feeding of the
coolies, which was ridiculously cheap, there was no doubt that See
Yup was reaping a fair weekly return from it; but, as he sent his
receipts to San Francisco through coolie managers, after the
Chinese custom, and did not use the regular Express Company, there
was no way of ascertaining the amount.  Again, neither See Yup nor
his fellow countrymen ever appeared to have any money about them.
In ruder times and more reckless camps, raids were often made by
ruffians on their cabins or their traveling gangs, but never with
any pecuniary result.  This condition, however, it seemed was
destined to change.

One Saturday See Yup walked into Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express
office with a package of gold-dust, which, when duly weighed, was
valued at five hundred dollars.  It was consigned to a Chinese
company in San Francisco.  When the clerk handed See Yup a receipt,
he remarked casually:--

"Washing seems to pay, See Yup."

"Washee velly good pay.  You wantee washee, John?" said See Yup
eagerly.

"No, no," said the clerk, with a laugh.  "I was only thinking five
hundred dollars would represent the washing of a good many shirts."

"No leplesent washee shirts at all!  Catchee gold-dust when washee
tailings.  Shabbee?"

The clerk DID "shabbee," and lifted his eyebrows.  The next
Saturday See Yup appeared with another package, worth about four
hundred dollars, directed to the same consignee.

"Didn't pan out quite so rich this week, eh?" said the clerk
engagingly.

"No," returned See Yup impassively; "next time he payee more."

When the third Saturday came, with the appearance of See Yup and
four hundred and fifty dollars' worth of gold-dust, the clerk felt
he was no longer bound to keep the secret.  He communicated it to
others, and in twenty-four hours the whole settlement knew that See
Yup's coolie company were taking out an average of four hundred
dollars per week from the refuse and tailings of the old abandoned
Palmetto claim!

The astonishment of the settlement was profound.  In earlier days
jealousy and indignation at the success of these degraded heathens
might have taken a more active and aggressive shape, and it would
have fared ill with See Yup and his companions.  But the settlement
had become more prosperous and law-abiding; there were one or two
Eastern families and some foreign capital already there, and its
jealousy and indignation were restricted to severe investigation
and legal criticism.  Fortunately for See Yup, it was an old-
established mining law that an abandoned claim and its tailings
became the property of whoever chose to work it.  But it was
alleged that See Yup's company had in reality "struck a lead,"--
discovered a hitherto unknown vein or original deposit of gold, not
worked by the previous company, and having failed legally to
declare it by preemption and public registry, in their foolish
desire for secrecy, had thus forfeited their right to the property.
A surveillance of their working, however, did not establish this
theory; the gold that See Yup had sent away was of the kind that
might have been found in the tailings overlooked by the late
Palmetto owners.  Yet it was a very large yield for mere refuse.

"Them Palmetto boys were mighty keerless after they'd made their
big 'strike' and got to work on the vein, and I reckon they threw a
lot of gold away," said Cy Parker, who remembered their large-
handed recklessness in the "flush days."  "On'y that WE didn't
think it was white man's work to rake over another man's leavin's,
we might hev had what them derned Chinamen hev dropped into.  Tell
ye what, boys, we've been a little too 'high and mighty,' and we'll
hev to climb down."

At last the excitement reached its climax, and diplomacy was
employed to effect what neither intimidation nor espionage could
secure.  Under the pretense of desiring to buy out See Yup's
company, a select committee of the miners was permitted to examine
the property and its workings.  They found the great bank of stones
and gravel, representing the cast-out debris of the old claim,
occupied by See Yup and four or five plodding automatic coolies.
At the end of two hours the committee returned to the saloon
bursting with excitement.  They spoke under their breath, but
enough was gathered to satisfy the curious crowd that See Yup's
pile of tailings was rich beyond their expectations.  The committee
had seen with their own eyes gold taken out of the sand and gravel
to the amount of twenty dollars in the two short hours of their
examination.  And the work had been performed in the stupidest,
clumsiest, yet PATIENT Chinese way.  What might not white men do
with better appointed machinery!  A syndicate was at once formed.
See Yup was offered twenty thousand dollars if he would sell out
and put the syndicate in possession of the claim in twenty-four
hours.  The Chinaman received the offer stolidly.  As he seemed
inclined to hesitate, I am grieved to say that it was intimated to
him that if he declined he might be subject to embarrassing and
expensive legal proceedings to prove his property, and that
companies would be formed to "prospect" the ground on either side
of his heap of tailings.  See Yup at last consented, with the
proviso that the money should be paid in gold into the hands of a
Chinese agent in San Francisco on the day of the delivery of the
claim.  The syndicate made no opposition to this characteristic
precaution of the Chinaman.  It was like them not to travel with
money, and the implied uncomplimentary suspicion of danger from the
community was overlooked.  See Yup departed the day that the
syndicate took possession.  He came to see me before he went.  I
congratulated him upon his good fortune; at the same time, I was
embarrassed by the conviction that he was unfairly forced into a
sale of his property at a figure far below its real value.

I think differently now.

At the end of the week it was said that the new company cleared up
about three hundred dollars.  This was not so much as the community
had expected, but the syndicate was apparently satisfied, and the
new machinery was put up.  At the end of the next week the
syndicate were silent as to their returns.  One of them made a
hurried visit to San Francisco.  It was said that he was unable to
see either See Yup or the agent to whom the money was paid.  It was
also noticed that there was no Chinaman remaining in the settlement.
Then the fatal secret was out.

The heap of tailings had probably never yielded the See Yup company
more than twenty dollars a week, the ordinary wage of such a
company.  See Yup had conceived the brilliant idea of "booming" it
on a borrowed capital of five hundred dollars in gold-dust, which
he OPENLY transmitted by express to his confederate and creditor in
San Francisco, who in turn SECRETLY sent it back to See Yup by
coolie messengers, to be again openly transmitted to San Francisco.
The package of gold-dust was thus passed backwards and forwards
between debtor and creditor, to the grave edification of the
Express Company and the fatal curiosity of the settlement.  When
the syndicate had gorged the bait thus thrown out, See Yup, on the
day the self-invited committee inspected the claim, promptly
"salted" the tailings by CONSCIENTIOUSLY DISTRIBUTING THE GOLD-DUST
OVER IT so deftly that it appeared to be its natural composition
and yield.

I have only to bid farewell to See Yup, and close this reminiscence
of a misunderstood man, by adding the opinion of an eminent jurist
in San Francisco, to whom the facts were submitted: "So clever was
this alleged fraud, that it is extremely doubtful if an action
would lie against See Yup in the premises, there being no legal
evidence of the 'salting,' and none whatever of his actual
allegation that the gold-dust was the ORDINARY yield of the
tailings, that implication resting entirely with the committee who
examined it under false pretense, and who subsequently forced the
sale by intimidation."



THE DESBOROUGH CONNECTIONS


"Then it isn't a question of property or next of kin?" said the
consul.

"Lord! no," said the lady vivaciously.  "Why, goodness me!  I
reckon old Desborough could, at any time before he died, have
'bought up' or 'bought out' the whole lot of his relatives on this
side of the big pond, no matter what they were worth.  No, it's
only a matter of curiosity and just sociableness."

The American consul at St. Kentigorn felt much relieved.  He had
feared it was only the old story of delusive quests for imaginary
estates and impossible inheritances which he had confronted so often
in nervous wan-eyed enthusiasts and obstreperous claimants from his
own land.  Certainly there was no suggestion of this in the richly
dressed and be-diamonded matron before him, nor in her pretty
daughter, charming in a Paris frock, alive with the consciousness of
beauty and admiration, and yet a little ennuye from gratified
indulgence.  He knew the mother to be the wealthy widow of a New
York millionaire, that she was traveling for pleasure in Europe, and
a chance meeting with her at dinner a few nights before had led to
this half-capricious, half-confidential appointment at the consulate.

"No," continued Mrs. Desborough; "Mr. Desborough came to America,
when a small boy, with an uncle who died some years ago.  Mr.
Desborough never seemed to hanker much after his English relatives
as long as I knew him, but now that I and Sadie are over here, why
we guessed we might look 'em up and sort of sample 'em!  'Desborough'
's rather a good name," added the lady, with a complacency that,
however, had a suggestion of query in it.

"Yes," said the consul; "from the French, I fancy."

"Mr. Desborough was English--very English," corrected the lady.

"I mean it may be an old Norman name," said the consul.

'Norman's good enough for ME," said the daughter, reflecting.
"We'll just settle it as Norman.  I never thought about that DES."

"Only you may find it called 'Debborough' here, and spelt so," said
the consul, smiling.

Miss Desborough lifted her pretty shoulders and made a charming
grimace.  "Then we won't acknowledge 'em.  No Debborough for me!"

"You might put an advertisement in the papers, like the 'next of
kin' notice, intimating, in the regular way, that they would 'hear
of something to their advantage'--as they certainly would,"
continued the consul, with a bow.  "It would be such a refreshing
change to the kind of thing I'm accustomed to, don't you know--this
idea of one of my countrywomen coming over just to benefit English
relatives!  By Jove!  I wouldn't mind undertaking the whole thing
for you--it's such a novelty."  He was quite carried away with the
idea.

But the two ladies were far from participating in this joyous
outlook.  "No," said Mrs. Desborough promptly, "that wouldn't do.
You see," she went on with superb frankness, "that would be just
giving ourselves away, and saying who WE were before we found out
what THEY were like.  Mr. Desborough was all right in HIS way, but
we don't know anything about his FOLKS!  We ain't here on a mission
to improve the Desboroughs, nor to gather in any 'lost tribes.'"

It was evident that, in spite of the humor of the situation and the
levity of the ladies, there was a characteristic national
practicalness about them, and the consul, with a sigh, at last gave
the address of one or two responsible experts in genealogical
inquiry, as he had often done before.  He felt it was impossible to
offer any advice to ladies as thoroughly capable of managing their
own affairs as his fair countrywomen, yet he was not without some
curiosity to know the result of their practical sentimental quest.
That he should ever hear of them again he doubted.  He knew that
after their first loneliness had worn off in their gregarious
gathering at a London hotel they were not likely to consort with
their own country people, who indeed were apt to fight shy of one
another, and even to indulge in invidious criticism of one another
when admitted in that society to which they were all equally
strangers.  So he took leave of them on their way back to London
with the belief that their acquaintance terminated with that brief
incident.  But he was mistaken.

In the year following he was spending his autumn vacation at a
country house.  It was an historic house, and had always struck him
as being--even in that country of historic seats--a singular
example of the vicissitudes of English manorial estates and the
mutations of its lords.  His host in his prime had been recalled
from foreign service to unexpectedly succeed to an uncle's title
and estate.  That estate, however, had come into the possession of
the uncle only through his marriage with the daughter of an old
family whose portraits still looked down from the walls upon the
youngest and alien branch.  There were likenesses, effigies,
memorials, and reminiscences of still older families who had
occupied it through forfeiture by war or the favoritism of kings,
and in its stately cloisters and ruined chapel was still felt the
dead hand of its evicted religious founders, which could not be
shaken off.

It was this strange individuality that affected all who saw it.
For, however changed were those within its walls, whoever were its
inheritors or inhabiters, Scrooby Priory never changed nor altered
its own character.  However incongruous or ill-assorted the
portraits that looked from its walls,--so ill met that they might
have flown at one another's throats in the long nights when the
family were away,--the great house itself was independent of them
all.  The be-wigged, be-laced, and be-furbelowed of one day's
gathering, the round-headed, steel-fronted, and prim-kerchiefed
congregation of another day, and even the black-coated, bare-armed,
and bare-shouldered assemblage of to-day had no effect on the
austerities of the Priory.  Modern houses might show the tastes and
prepossessions of their dwellers, might have caught some passing
trick of the hour, or have recorded the augmented fortunes or
luxuriousness of the owner, but Scrooby Priory never!  No one had
dared even to disturb its outer rigid integrity; the breaches of
time and siege were left untouched.  It held its calm indifferent
sway over all who passed its low-arched portals, and the consul was
fain to believe that he--a foreign visitor--was no more alien to
the house than its present owner.

"I'm expecting a very charming compatriot of yours to-morrow," said
Lord Beverdale as they drove from the station together.  "You must
tell me what to show her."

"I should think any countrywoman of mine would be quite satisfied
with the Priory," said the consul, glancing thoughtfully towards
the pile dimly seen through the park.

"I shouldn't like her to be bored here," continued Beverdale.
"Algy met her at Rome, where she was occupying a palace with her
mother--they're very rich, you know.  He found she was staying with
Lady Minever at Hedham Towers, and I went over and invited her with
a little party.  She's a Miss Desborough."

The consul gave a slight start, and was aware that Beverdale was
looking at him.

"Perhaps you know her?" said Beverdale.

"Just enough to agree with you that she is charming," said the
consul.  "I dined with them, and saw them at the consulate."

"Oh yes; I always forget you are a consul.  Then, of course, you
know all about them.  I suppose they're very rich, and in society
over there?" said Beverdale in a voice that was quite animated.

It was on the consul's lips to say that the late Mr. Desborough was
an Englishman, and even to speak playfully of their proposed quest,
but a sudden instinct withheld him.  After all, perhaps it was only
a caprice, or idea, they had forgotten,--perhaps, who knows?--that
they were already ashamed of.  They had evidently "got on" in
English society, if that was their real intent, and doubtless Miss
Desborough, by this time, was quite as content with the chance of
becoming related to the Earl of Beverdale, through his son and
heir, Algernon, as if they had found a real Lord Desborough among
their own relatives.  The consul knew that Lord Beverdale was not a
rich man, that like most men of old family he was not a slave to
class prejudice; indeed, the consul had seen very few noblemen off
the stage or out of the pages of a novel who were.  So he said,
with a slight affectation of authority, that there was as little
doubt of the young lady's wealth as there was of her personal
attractions.

They were nearing the house through a long avenue of chestnuts
whose variegated leaves were already beginning to strew the ground
beneath, and they could see the vista open upon the mullioned
windows of the Priory, lighted up by the yellow October sunshine.
In that sunshine stood a tall, clean-limbed young fellow, dressed
in a shooting-suit, whom the consul recognized at once as Lord
Algernon, the son of his companion.  As if to accent the graces of
this vision of youth and vigor, near him, in the shadow, an old man
had halted, hat in hand, still holding the rake with which he had
been gathering the dead leaves in the avenue; his back bent, partly
with years, partly with the obeisance of a servitor.  There was
something so marked in this contrast, in this old man standing in
the shadow of the fading year, himself as dried and withered as the
leaves he was raking, yet pausing to make his reverence to this
passing sunshine of youth and prosperity in the presence of his
coming master, that the consul, as they swept by, looked after him
with a stirring of pain.

"Rather an old man to be still at work," said the consul.

Beverdale laughed.  "You must not let him hear you say so; he
considers himself quite as fit as any younger man in the place,
and, by Jove! though he's nearly eighty, I'm inclined to believe
it.  He's not one of our people, however; he comes from the
village, and is taken on at odd times, partly to please himself.
His great aim is to be independent of his children,--he has a
granddaughter who is one of the maids at the Priory,--and to keep
himself out of the workhouse.  He does not come from these parts--
somewhere farther north, I fancy.  But he's a tough lot, and has a
deal of work in him yet."

"Seems to be going a bit stale lately," said Lord Algernon, "and I
think is getting a little queer in his head.  He has a trick of
stopping and staring straight ahead, at times, when he seems to go
off for a minute or two.  There!" continued the young man, with a
light laugh.  "I say! he's doing it now!"  They both turned quickly
and gazed at the bent figure--not fifty yards away--standing in
exactly the same attitude as before.  But, even as they gazed, he
slowly lifted his rake and began his monotonous work again.

At Scrooby Priory, the consul found that the fame of his fair
countrywoman had indeed preceded her, and that the other guests
were quite as anxious to see Miss Desborough as he was.  One of
them had already met her in London; another knew her as one of the
house party at the Duke of Northforeland's, where she had been a
central figure.  Some of her naive sallies and frank criticisms
were repeated with great unction by the gentlemen, and with some
slight trepidation and a "fearful joy" by the ladies.  He was more
than ever convinced that mother and daughter had forgotten their
lineal Desboroughs, and he resolved to leave any allusion to it to
the young lady herself.

She, however, availed herself of that privilege the evening after
her arrival.  "Who'd have thought of meeting YOU here?" she said,
sweeping her skirts away to make room for him on a sofa.  "It's a
coon's age since I saw you--not since you gave us that letter to
those genealogical gentlemen in London."

The consul hoped that it had proved successful.

"Yes, but maw guessed we didn't care to go back to Hengist and
Horsa, and when they let loose a lot of 'Debboroughs' and
'Daybrooks' upon us, maw kicked!  We've got a drawing ten yards
long, that looks like a sour apple tree, with lots of Desboroughs
hanging up on the branches like last year's pippins, and I guess
about as worm-eaten.  We took that well enough, but when it came to
giving us a map of straight lines and dashes with names written
under them like an old Morse telegraph slip, struck by lightning,
then maw and I guessed that it made us tired.

"You know," she went on, opening her clear gray eyes on the consul,
with a characteristic flash of shrewd good sense through her quaint
humor, "we never reckoned where this thing would land us, and we
found we were paying a hundred pounds, not only for the Desboroughs,
but all the people they'd MARRIED, and their CHILDREN, and
children's children, and there were a lot of outsiders we'd never
heard of, nor wanted to hear of.  Maw once thought she'd got on the
trail of a Plantagenet, and followed it keen, until she found she
had been reading the dreadful thing upside down.  Then we concluded
we wouldn't take any more stock in the family until it had risen."

During this speech the consul could not help noticing that,
although her attitude was playfully confidential to him, her voice
really was pitched high enough to reach the ears of smaller groups
around her, who were not only following her with the intensest
admiration, but had shamelessly abandoned their own conversation,
and had even faced towards her.  Was she really posing in her
naivete?  There was a certain mischievous, even aggressive,
consciousness in her pretty eyelids.  Then she suddenly dropped
both eyes and voice, and said to the consul in a genuine aside, "I
like this sort of thing much better."

The consul looked puzzled.  "What sort of thing?"

"Why, all these swell people, don't you see? those pictures on the
walls! this elegant room! everything that has come down from the
past, all ready and settled for you, you know--ages ago!  Something
you haven't to pick up for yourself and worry over."

But here the consul pointed out that the place itself was not
"ancestral" as regarded the present earl, and that even the
original title of his predecessors had passed away from it.  "In
fact, it came into the family by one of those 'outsiders' you
deprecate.  But I dare say you'd find the place quite as
comfortable with Lord Beverdale for a host as you would if you had
found out he were a cousin," he added.

"Better," said the young lady frankly.

"I suppose your mother participates in these preferences?" said the
consul, with a smile.

"No," said Miss Desborough, with the same frankness, "I think maw's
rather cut up at not finding a Desborough.  She was invited down
here, but SHE'S rather independent, you know, so she allowed I
could take care of myself, while she went off to stay with the old
Dowager Lady Mistowe, who thinks maw a very proper womanly person.
I made maw mad by telling her that's just what old Lady Mistowe
would say of her cook--for I can't stand these people's patronage.
However, I shouldn't wonder if I was invited here as a 'most
original person.'"

But here Lord Algernon came up to implore her to sing them one of
"those plantation songs;" and Miss Desborough, with scarcely a
change of voice or manner, allowed herself to be led to the piano.
The consul had little chance to speak with her again, but he saw
enough that evening to convince him not only that Lord Algernon was
very much in love with her, but that the fact had been equally and
complacently accepted by the family and guests.  That her present
visit was only an opportunity for a formal engagement was clear to
every woman in the house--not excepting, I fear, even the fair
subject of gossip herself.  Yet she seemed so unconcerned and self-
contained that the consul wondered if she really cared for Lord
Algernon.  And having thus wondered, he came to the conclusion that
it didn't much matter, for the happiness of so practically
organized a young lady, if she loved him or not.

It is highly probable that Miss Sadie Desborough had not even gone
so far as to ask herself that question.  She awoke the next morning
with a sense of easy victory and calm satisfaction that had,
however, none of the transports of affection.  Her taste was
satisfied by the love of a handsome young fellow,--a typical
Englishman,--who, if not exactly original or ideal, was, she felt,
of an universally accepted, "hall-marked" standard, the legitimate
outcome of a highly ordered, carefully guarded civilization, whose
repose was the absence of struggle or ambition; a man whose regular
features were not yet differentiated from the rest of his class by
any of those disturbing lines which people call character.
Everything was made ready for her, without care or preparation; she
had not even an ideal to realize or to modify.  She could slip
without any jar or dislocation into this life which was just saved
from self-indulgence and sybaritic luxury by certain conventional
rules of activity and the occupation of amusement which, as
obligations of her position, even appeared to suggest the novel
aspect of a DUTY!  She could accept all this without the sense of
being an intruder in an unbroken lineage--thanks to the consul's
account of the Beverdales' inheritance.  She already pictured
herself as the mistress of this fair domain, the custodian of its
treasures and traditions, and the dispenser of its hospitalities,
but--as she conscientiously believed--without pride or vanity, in
her position; only an intense and thoughtful appreciation of it.
Nor did she dream of ever displaying it ostentatiously before her
less fortunate fellow countrywomen; on the contrary, she looked
forward to their possible criticism of her casting off all
transatlantic ties with an uneasy consciousness that was perhaps
her nearest approach to patriotism.  Yet, again, she reasoned that,
as her father was an Englishman, she was only returning to her old
home.  As to her mother, she had already comforted herself by
noticing certain discrepancies in that lady's temperament, which
led her to believe that she herself alone inherited her father's
nature--for her mother was, of course, distinctly American!  So
little conscious was she of any possible snobbishness in this
belief, that in her superb naivete she would have argued the point
with the consul, and employed a wit and dialect that were purely
American.

She had slipped out of the Priory early that morning that she might
enjoy alone, unattended and unciceroned, the aspect of that vast
estate which might be hers for the mere accepting.  Perhaps there
was some instinct of delicacy in her avoiding Lord Algernon that
morning; not wishing, as she herself might have frankly put it, "to
take stock" of his inheritance in his presence.  As she passed into
the garden through the low postern door, she turned to look along
the stretching facade of the main building, with the high stained
windows of its banqueting-hall and the state chamber where a king
had slept.  Even in that crisp October air, and with the green of
its ivied battlements against the gold of the distant wood, it
seemed to lie in the languid repose of an eternal summer.  She
hurried on down the other terrace into the Italian garden, a quaint
survival of past grandeur, passed the great orangery and numerous
conservatories, making a crystal hamlet in themselves--seeing
everywhere the same luxury.  But it was a luxury that she fancied
was redeemed from the vulgarity of ostentation by the long custom
of years and generations, so unlike the millionaire palaces of her
own land; and, in her enthusiasm, she even fancied it was further
sanctified by the grim monastic founders who had once been content
with bread and pulse in the crumbling and dismantled refectory.  In
the plenitude of her feelings she felt a slight recognition of some
beneficent being who had rolled this golden apple at her feet, and
felt as if she really should like to "do good" in her sphere.

It so chanced that, passing through a small gate in the park, she
saw walking, a little ahead of her, a young girl whom she at once
recognized as a Miss Amelyn, one of the guests of the evening
before.  Miss Desborough remembered that she played the accompaniment
of one or two songs upon the piano, and had even executed a long
solo during the general conversation, without attention from the
others, and apparently with little irritation to herself, subsiding
afterwards into an armchair, quite on the fringe of other people's
conversation.  She had been called "my dear" by one or two dowagers,
and by her Christian name by the earl, and had a way of impalpably
melting out of sight at times.  These trifles led Miss Desborough to
conclude that she was some kind of dependent or poor relation.  Here
was an opportunity to begin her work of "doing good."  She quickened
her pace and overtook Miss Amelyn.

"Let me walk with you," she said graciously.

The young English girl smiled assent, but looked her surprise at
seeing the cynosure of last night's eyes unattended.

"Oh," said Sadie, answering the mute query, "I didn't want to be
'shown round' by anybody, and I'm not going to bore YOU with asking
to see sights either.  We'll just walk together; wherever YOU'RE
going is good enough for me."

"I'm going as far as the village," said Miss Amelyn, looking down
doubtfully at Sadie's smart French shoes--"if you care to walk so
far."

Sadie noticed that her companion was more solidly booted, and that
her straight, short skirts, although less stylish than her own, had
a certain character, better fitted to the freer outdoor life of the
country.  But she only said, however, "The village will do," and
gayly took her companion's arm.

"But I'm afraid you'll find it very uninteresting, for I am going
to visit some poor cottages," persisted Miss Amelyn, with a certain
timid ingenuousness of manner which, however, was as distinct as
Miss Desborough's bolder frankness.  "I promised the rector's
daughter to take her place to-day."

"And I feel as if I was ready to pour oil and wine to any extent,"
said Miss Desborough, "so come along!"

Miss Amelyn laughed, and yet glanced around her timidly, as if she
thought that Miss Desborough ought to have a larger and more
important audience.  Then she continued more confidentially and
boldly, "But it isn't at all like 'slumming,' you know.  These poor
people here are not very bad, and are not at all extraordinary."

"Never mind," said Sadie, hurrying her along.  After a pause she
went on, "You know the Priory very well, I guess?"

"I lived there when I was a little girl, with my aunt, the Dowager
Lady Beverdale," said Miss Amelyn.  "When my cousin Fred, who was
the young heir, died, and the present Lord Beverdale succeeded,--HE
never expected it, you know, for there were two lives, his two
elder brothers, besides poor Fred's, between, but they both died,--
we went to live in the Dower House."

"The Dower House?" repeated Sadie.

"Yes, Lady Beverdale's separate property."

"But I thought all this property--the Priory--came into the family
through HER."

"It did--this was the Amelyns' place; but the oldest son or nearest
male heir always succeeds to the property and title."

"Do you mean to say that the present Lord Beverdale turned that old
lady out?"

Miss Amelyn looked shocked.  "I mean to say," she said gravely,
"Lady Beverdale would have had to go when her own son became of
age, had he lived."  She paused, and then said timidly, "Isn't it
that way in America?"

"Dear no!"  Miss Desborough had a faint recollection that there was
something in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence
against primogeniture.  "No! the men haven't it ALL their own way
THERE--not much!"

Miss Amelyn looked as if she did not care to discuss this problem.
After a few moments Sadie continued, "You and Lord Algernon are
pretty old friends, I guess?"

"No," replied Miss Amelyn.  "He came once or twice to the Priory
for the holidays, when he was quite a boy at Marlborough--for the
family weren't very well off, and his father was in India.  He was
a very shy boy, and of course no one ever thought of him succeeding."

Miss Desborough felt half inclined to be pleased with this, and yet
half inclined to resent this possible snubbing of her future
husband.  But they were nearing the village, and Miss Amelyn turned
the conversation to the object of her visit.  It was a new village--
an unhandsome village, for all that it stood near one of the gates
of the park.  It had been given over to some mines that were still
worked in its vicinity, and to the railway, which the uncle of the
present earl had resisted; but the railway had triumphed, and the
station for Scrooby Priory was there.  There was a grim church, of
a blackened or weather-beaten stone, on the hill, with a few grim
Amelyns reposing cross-legged in the chancel, but the character of
the village was as different from the Priory as if it were in
another county.  They stopped at the rectory, where Miss Amelyn
provided herself with certain doles and gifts, which the American
girl would have augmented with a five-pound note but for Miss
Amelyn's horrified concern.  "As many shillings would do, and they
would be as grateful," she said.  "More they wouldn't understand."

"Then keep it, and dole it out as you like," said Sadie quickly.

"But I don't think that--that Lord Beverdale would quite approve,"
hesitated Miss Amelyn.

The pretty brow of her companion knit, and her gray eyes flashed
vivaciously.  "What has HE to do with it?" she said pertly;
"besides, you say these are not HIS poor.  Take that five-pound
note--or--I'll DOUBLE it, get it changed into sovereigns at the
station, and hand 'em round to every man, woman, and child."

Miss Amelyn hesitated.  The American girl looked capable of doing
what she said; perhaps it was a national way of almsgiving!  She
took the note, with the mental reservation of making a full
confession to the rector and Lord Beverdale.

She was right in saying that the poor of Scrooby village were not
interesting.  There was very little squalor or degradation; their
poverty seemed not a descent, but a condition to which they had
been born; the faces which Sadie saw were dulled and apathetic
rather than sullen or rebellious; they stood up when Miss Amelyn
entered, paying HER the deference, but taking little note of the
pretty butterfly who was with her, or rather submitting to her
frank curiosity with that dull consent of the poor, as if they had
lost even the sense of privacy, or a right to respect.  It seemed
to the American girl that their poverty was more indicated by what
they were SATISFIED with than what she thought they MISSED.  It is
to be feared that this did not add to Sadie's sympathy; all the
beggars she had seen in America wanted all they could get, and she
felt as if she were confronted with an inferior animal.

"There's a wonderful old man lives here," said Miss Amelyn, as they
halted before a stone and thatch cottage quite on the outskirts of
the village.  "We can't call him one of our poor, for he still
works, although over eighty, and it's his pride to keep out of the
poorhouse, and, as he calls it, 'off' the hands of his
granddaughters.  But we manage to do something for THEM, and we
hope he profits by it.  One of them is at the Priory; they're
trying to make a maid of her, but her queer accent--they're from
the north--is against her with the servants.  I am afraid we won't
see old Debs, for he's at work again to-day, though the doctor has
warned him."

"Debs!  What a funny name!"

"Yes, but as many of these people cannot read or write, the name is
carried by the ear, and not always correctly.  Some of the railway
navvies, who come from the north as he does, call him 'Debbers.'"

They were obliged to descend into the cottage, which was so low
that it seemed to have sunk into the earth until its drooping eaves
of thatch mingled with the straw heap beside it.  Debs was not at
home.  But his granddaughter was there, who, after a preliminary
"bob," continued the stirring of the pot before the fire in
tentative silence.

"I am sorry to find that your grandfather has gone to work again in
spite of the doctor's orders," said Miss Amelyn.

The girl continued to stir the pot, and then said without looking
up, but as if also continuing a train of aggressive thoughts with
her occupation: "Eay, but 'e's so set oop in 'issen 'ee doan't take
orders from nobbut--leastways doctor.  Moinds 'em now moor nor a
floy.  Says 'ee knaws there nowt wrong wi' 'is 'eart.  Mout be
roight--how'siver, sarten sewer, 'is 'EAD'S a' in a muddle!  Toims
'ee goes off stamrin' and starin' at nowt, as if 'ee a'nt a
n'aporth o' sense.  How'siver I be doing my duty by 'em--and 'ere's
'is porritch when a' cooms--'gin a' be sick or maad."

What the American understood of the girl's speech and manner struck
her as having very little sympathy with either her aged relative or
her present visitor.  And there was a certain dogged selfish
independence about her that Miss Desborough half liked and half
resented.  However, Miss Amelyn did not seem to notice it, and,
after leaving a bottle of port for the grandfather, she took her
leave and led Sadie away.  As they passed into the village a
carriage, returning to the Priory, filled with their fellow guests,
dashed by, but was instantly pulled up at a word from Lord
Algernon, who leaped from the vehicle, hat in hand, and implored
the fair truant and her companion to join them.

"We're just making a tour around Windover Hill, and back to
luncheon," he said, with a rising color.  "We missed you awfully!
If we had known you were so keen on 'good works,' and so early at
it, by Jove! we'd have got up a 'slummin' party,' and all joined!"

"And you haven't seen half," said Lord Beverdale from the box.
"Miss Amelyn's too partial to the village.  There's an old drunken
retired poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it's
death to approach, except with a large party.  There's malignant
diphtheria over at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the
keeper's, and an old woman who has been bedridden for years."

But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling.  She thanked
him, but said she had just seen an old woman "who had been lying in
bed for twenty years, and hadn't spoken the truth once!"  She
proposed "going outside of Lord Beverdale's own preserves of grain-
fed poor," and starting up her own game.  She would return in time
for luncheon--if she could; if not, she "should annex the gruel of
the first kind incapable she met."

Yet, actually, she was far from displeased at being accidentally
discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim
of the morning.  One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her
frocks and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now
by this butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society,
and soil her pretty wings on the haunts of the impoverished, with
only a single companion,--of her own sex!--and smiled approvingly.
And in her present state of mind, remembering her companion's timid
attitude towards Lord Beverdale's opinions, she was not above
administering this slight snub to him in her presence.

When they had driven away, with many regrets, Miss Amelyn was deeply
concerned.  "I am afraid," she said, with timid conscientiousness,
"I have kept you from going with them.  And you must be bored with
what you have seen, I know.  I don't believe you really care one bit
for it--and you are only doing it to please me."

"Trot out the rest of your show," said Sadie promptly, "and we'll
wind up by lunching with the rector."

"He'd be too delighted," said Miss Amelyn, with disaster written
all over her girlish, truthful face, "but--but--you know--it really
wouldn't be quite right to Lord Beverdale.  You're his principal
guest--you know, and--they'd think I had taken you off."

"Well," said Miss Desborough impetuously, "what's the matter with
that inn--the Red Lion?  We can get a sandwich there, I guess.  I'm
not VERY hungry."

Miss Amelyn looked horrified for a moment, and then laughed; but
immediately became concerned again.  "No! listen to me, REALLY now!
Let me finish my round alone!  You'll have ample time if you go NOW
to reach the Priory for luncheon.  Do, please!  It would be ever so
much better for everybody.  I feel quite guilty as it is, and I
suppose I am already in Lord Beverdale's black books."

The trouble in the young girl's face was unmistakable, and as it
suited Miss Desborough's purpose just as well to show her
independence by returning, as she had set out, alone, she consented
to go.  Miss Amelyn showed her a short cut across the park, and they
separated--to meet at dinner.  In this brief fellowship, the
American girl had kept a certain supremacy and half-fascination over
the English girl, even while she was conscious of an invincible
character in Miss Amelyn entirely different from and superior to her
own.  Certainly there was a difference in the two peoples.  Why else
this inherited conscientious reverence for Lord Beverdale's
position, shown by Miss Amelyn, which she, an American alive to its
practical benefits, could not understand?  Would Miss Amelyn and
Lord Algernon have made a better match?  The thought irritated her,
even while she knew that she herself possessed the young man's
affections, the power to marry him, and, as she believed, kept her
own independence in the matter.

As she entered the iron gates at the lower end of the park, and
glanced at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still
above, she was conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and
that a few clouds had gathered.  As she walked on down the long
winding avenue, the sky became overcast, and, in one of those
strange contrasts of the English climate, the glory of the whole
day went out with the sunshine.  The woods suddenly became wrinkled
and gray, the distant hills sombre, the very English turf beneath
her feet grew brown; a mile and a half away, through the opening of
the trees, the west part of the Priory looked a crumbling, ivy-
eaten ruin.  A few drops of rain fell.  She hurried on.  Suddenly
she remembered that the avenue made a long circuit before
approaching the house, and that its lower end, where she was
walking, was but a fringe of the park.  Consequently there must be
a short cut across some fields and farm buildings to the back of
the park and the Priory.  She at once diverged to the right,
presently found a low fence, which she clambered over, and again
found a footpath which led to a stile.  Crossing that, she could
see the footpath now led directly to the Priory,--now a grim and
austere looking pile in the suddenly dejected landscape,--and that
it was probably used only by the servants and farmers.  A gust of
wind brought some swift needles of rain to her cheek; she could see
the sad hills beyond the Priory already veiling their faces; she
gathered her skirts and ran.  The next field was a long one, but
beside the further stile was a small clump of trees, the only ones
between her and the park.  Hurrying on to that shelter, she saw
that the stile was already occupied by a tall but bent figure,
holding a long stick in his hand, which gave him the appearance,
against the horizon, of the figure of Time leaning on his scythe.
As she came nearer she saw it was, indeed, an old man, half resting
on his rake.  He was very rugged and weather-beaten, and although
near the shelter of the trees, apparently unmindful of the rain
that was falling on his bald head, and the limp cap he was holding
uselessly in one hand.  He was staring at her, yet apparently
unconscious of her presence.  A sudden instinct came upon her--it
was "Debs"!

She went directly up to him, and with that frank common sense which
ordinarily distinguished her, took his cap from his hand and put it
on his head, grasped his arm firmly, and led him to the shelter of
the tree.  Then she wiped the raindrops from his face with her
handkerchief, shook out her own dress and her wet parasol, and,
propping her companion against the tree, said:--

"There, Mr. Debs!  I've heard of people who didn't know enough to
come in when it rained, but I never met one before."

The old man started, lifted his hairy, sinewy arm, bared to the
elbow, and wiped his bare throat with the dry side of it.  Then a
look of intelligence--albeit half aggressive--came into his face.
"Wheer beest tha going?" he asked.

Something in his voice struck Sadie like a vague echo.  Perhaps it
was only the queer dialect--or some resemblance to his
granddaughter's voice.  She looked at him a little more closely as
she said:--

"To the Priory."

"Whaat?"

She pointed with her parasol to the gray pile in the distance.  It
was possible that this demented peasant didn't even UNDERSTAND
English.

"The hall.  Oh, ay!"  Suddenly his brows knit ominously as he faced
her.  "An' wassist tha doin' drest oop in this foinery?  Wheer
gettist thee that goawn?  Thissen, or thy maester?  Nowt even a
napron, fit for thy wark as maaid at serviss; an' parson a gettin'
tha plaace at Hall!  So thou'lt be high and moity will tha! thou'lt
not walk wi' maaids, but traipse by thissen like a slut in the
toon--dang tha!"

Although it was plain to Sadie that the old man, in his wandering
perception, had mistaken her for his granddaughter in service at
the Priory, there was still enough rudeness in his speech for her
to have resented it.  But, strange to say, there was a kind of
authority in it that touched her with an uneasiness and repulsion
that was stronger than any other feeling.  "I think you have
mistaken me for some one else," she said hurriedly, yet wondering
why she had admitted it, and even irritated at the admission.  "I
am a stranger here, a visitor at the Priory.  I called with Miss
Amelyn at your cottage, and saw your other granddaughter; that's
how I knew your name."

The old man's face changed.  A sad, senile smile of hopeless
bewilderment crept into his hard mouth; he plucked his limp cap
from his head and let it hang submissively in his fingers, as if it
were his sole apology.  Then he tried to straighten himself, and
said, "Naw offins, miss, naw offins!  If tha knaws mea tha'll knaw
I'm grandfeyther to two galls as moight be tha owern age; tha'll
tell 'ee that old Debs at haaty years 'as warked and niver lost a
day as man or boy; has niver coome oopen 'em for n'aporth.  An'
'e'll keep out o' warkus till he doy.  An' 'ee's put by enow to by
wi' his own feythers in Lanksheer, an' not liggen aloane in
parson's choorchyard."

It was part of her uneasiness that, scarcely understanding or,
indeed, feeling any interest in these maundering details, she still
seemed to have an odd comprehension of his character and some
reminiscent knowledge of him, as if she were going through the
repetition of some unpleasant dream.  Even his wrinkled face was
becoming familiar to her.  Some weird attraction was holding her;
she wanted to get away from it as much as she wanted to analyze it.
She glanced ostentatiously at the sky, prepared to open her
parasol, and began to edge cautiously away.

"Then tha beant from these pearts?" he said suddenly.

"No, no," she said quickly and emphatically,--"no, I'm an American."

The old man started and moved towards her, eagerly, his keen eyes
breaking through the film that at times obscured them.  "'Merrikan!
tha baist 'Merrikan?  Then tha knaws ma son John, 'ee war nowt but
a bairn when brether Dick took un to 'Merriky!  Naw! Now! that wor
fifty years sen!--niver wroate to his old feyther--niver coomed
back, 'Ee wor tall-loike, an' thea said 'e feavored mea."  He
stopped, threw up his head, and with his skinny fingers drew back
his long, straggling locks from his sunken cheeks, and stared in
her face.  The quick transition of fascination, repulsion, shock,
and indefinable apprehension made her laugh hysterically.  To her
terror he joined in it, and eagerly clasped her wrists.  "Eh, lass!
tha knaws John--tha coomes from un to ole grandfeyther.  Who-rr-u!
Eay! but tha tho't to fool mea, did tha, lass?  Whoy, I knoawed tha
voice, for a' tha foine peacock feathers.  So tha be John's gell
coom from Ameriky.  Dear! a dear!  Coom neaur, lass! let's see what
tha's loike.  Eh, but thou'lt kiss tha grandfather, sewerly?"

A wild terror and undefined consternation had completely
overpowered her!  But she made a desperate effort to free her
wrists, and burst out madly:--

"Let me go!  How dare you!  I don't know you or yours!  I'm nothing
to you or your kin!  My name is Desborough--do you understand--do
you hear me, Mr. Debs?--DESBOROUGH!"

At the word the old man's fingers stiffened like steel around her
wrists, as he turned upon her a hard, invincible face.

"So thou'lt call thissen Des-borough, wilt tha?  Let me tell tha,
then, that 'Debs,' 'Debban,' 'Debbrook,' and 'Des-borough' are all
a seame!  Ay! thy feyther and thy feyther's feyther!  Thou'lt be a
Des-borough, will tha?  Dang tha! and look doon on tha kin, and
dress thissen in silks o' shame!  Tell 'ee thou'rt an ass, gell!
Don't tha hear?  An ass! for all tha bean John's bairn!  An ass!
that's what tha beast!"

With flashing eyes and burning cheeks she made one more supreme
effort, lifting her arms, freeing her wrists, and throwing the old
man staggering from her.  Then she leaped the stile, turned, and
fled through the rain.  But before she reached the end of the field
she stopped!  She had freed herself--she was stronger than he--what
had she to fear?  He was crazy!  Yes, he MUST be crazy, and he had
insulted her, but he was an old man--and God knows what!  Her heart
was beating rapidly, her breath was hurried, but she ran back to
the stile.

He was not there.  The field sloped away on either side of it.  But
she could distinguish nothing in the pouring rain above the wind-
swept meadow.  He must have gone home.  Relieved for a moment she
turned and hurried on towards the Priory.

But at every step she was followed, not by the old man's presence,
but by what he had said to her, which she could not shake off as
she had shaken off his detaining fingers.  Was it the ravings of
insanity, or had she stumbled unwittingly upon some secret--was it
after all a SECRET?  Perhaps it was something they all knew, or
would know later.  And she had come down here for this.  For back
of her indignation, back even of her disbelief in his insanity,
there was an awful sense of truth!  The names he had flung out, of
"Debs," "Debban," and "Debbrook" now flashed upon her as something
she had seen before, but had not understood.  Until she satisfied
herself of this, she felt she could not live or breathe!  She
loathed the Priory, with its austere exclusiveness, as it rose
before her; she wished she had never entered it; but it contained
that which she must know, and know at once!  She entered the
nearest door and ran up the grand staircase.  Her flushed face and
disordered appearance were easily accounted for by her exposure to
the sudden storm.  She went to her bedroom, sent her maid to
another room to prepare a change of dress, and sinking down before
her traveling-desk, groped for a document.  Ah! there it was--the
expensive toy that she had played with!  She hastily ran over its
leaves to the page she already remembered.  And there, among the
dashes and perpendicular lines she had jested over last night, on
which she had thought was a collateral branch of the line, stood
her father's name and that of Richard, his uncle, with the
bracketed note in red ink, "see Debbrook, Daybrook, Debbers, and
Debs."  Yes! this gaunt, half-crazy, overworked peasant, content to
rake the dead leaves before the rolling chariots of the Beverdales,
was her grandfather; that poorly clad girl in the cottage, and even
the menial in the scullery of this very house that might be HERS,
were her COUSINS!  She burst into a laugh, and then refolded the
document and put it away.

At luncheon she was radiant and sparkling.  Her drenched clothes
were an excuse for a new and ravishing toilette.  She had never
looked so beautiful before, and significant glances were exchanged
between some of the guests, who believed that the expected proposal
had already come.  But those who were of the carriage party knew
otherwise, and of Lord Algernon's disappointment.  Lord Beverdale
contented himself with rallying his fair guest on the becomingness
of "good works."  But he continued, "You're offering a dreadful
example to these ladies, Miss Desborough, and I know I shall never
hereafter be able to content them with any frivolous morning
amusement at the Priory.  For myself, when I am grown gouty and
hideous, I know I shall bloom again as a district visitor."

Yet under this surface sparkle and nervous exaltation Sadie never
lost consciousness of the gravity of the situation.  If her sense
of humor enabled her to see one side of its grim irony; if she
experienced a wicked satisfaction in accepting the admiration and
easy confidence of the high-born guests, knowing that her cousin
had assisted in preparing the meal they were eating, she had never
lost sight of the practical effect of the discovery she had made.
And she had come to a final resolution.  She should leave the
Priory at once, and abandon all idea of a matrimonial alliance with
its heir!  Inconsistent as this might seem to her selfish, worldly
nature, it was nevertheless in keeping with a certain pride and
independence that was in her blood.  She did not love Lord
Algernon, neither did she love her grandfather; she was equally
willing to sacrifice either or both; she knew that neither Lord
Algernon nor his father would make her connections an objection,
however they might wish to keep the fact a secret, or otherwise
dispose of them by pensions or emigration, but she could not bear
to KNOW IT HERSELF!  She never could be happy as the mistress of
Scrooby Priory with that knowledge; she did not idealize it as a
principle!  Carefully weighing it by her own practical common
sense, she said to herself that "it wouldn't pay."  The highest
independence is often akin to the lowest selfishness; she did not
dream that the same pride which kept her grandfather from the
workhouse and support by his daughters, and had even kept him from
communicating with his own son, now kept her from acknowledging
them, even for the gift of a title and domain.  There was only one
question before her: should she stay long enough to receive the
proposal of Lord Algernon, and then decline it?  Why should she not
snatch that single feminine joy out of the ashes of her burnt-up
illusion?  She knew that an opportunity would be offered that
afternoon.  The party were to take tea at Broxby Hall, and Lord
Algernon was to drive her there in his dogcart.  Miss Desborough
had gone up to her bedroom to put on a warmer cloak, and had rung
twice or thrice impatiently for her maid.

When the girl made her appearance, apologetic, voluble, and
excited, Miss Desborough scarcely listened to her excuses, until a
single word suddenly arrested her attention.  It was "old Debs."

"What ARE you talking about?" said Sadie, pausing in the adjustment
of her hat on her brown hair.

"Old Debs, miss,--that's what they call him; an old park-keeper,
just found dead in a pool of water in the fields; the grandfather
of one of the servants here; and there's such an excitement in the
servants' hall.  The gentlemen all knew it, too, for I heard Lord
Algernon say that he was looking very queer lately, and might have
had a fit; and Lord Beverdale has sent word to the coroner.  And
only think, the people here are such fools that they daren't touch
or move the poor man, and him lyin' there in the rain all the time,
until the coroner comes!"

Miss Desborough had been steadily regarding herself in the glass to
see if she had turned pale.  She had.  She set her teeth together
until the color partly returned.  But she kept her face away from
the maid.  "That'll do," she said quietly.  "You can tell me all
later.  I have some important news myself, and I may not go out
after all.  I want you to take a note for me."  She went to her
table, wrote a line in pencil, folded it, scribbled an address upon
it, handed it to the girl, and gently pushed her from the room.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

The consul was lingering on the terrace beside one of the
carriages; at a little distance a groom was holding the nervous
thoroughbred of Lord Algernon's dog-cart.  Suddenly he felt a touch
on his shoulder, and Miss Desborough's maid put a note in his hand.
It contained only a line:--


Please come and see me in the library, but without making any fuss
about it--at once.  S. D.


The consul glanced around him; no one had apparently noticed the
incident.  He slipped back into the house and made his way to the
library.  It was a long gallery; at the further end Miss Desborough
stood cloaked, veiled, and coquettishly hatted.  She was looking
very beautiful and animated.  "I want you to please do me a great
favor," she said, with an adorable smile, "as your own countrywoman,
you know--for the sake of Fourth of July and Pumpkin Pie and the Old
Flag!  I don't want to go to this circus to-day.  I am going to
leave here to-night!  I am!  Honest Injin!  I want YOU to manage it.
I want you to say that as consul you've received important news for
me: the death of some relative, if you like; or better, something
AFFECTING MY PROPERTY, you know," with a little satirical laugh.
"I guess that would fetch 'em!  So go at once."

"But really, Miss Desborough, do let us talk this over before you
decide!" implored the bewildered consul.  "Think what a
disappointment to your host and these ladies.  Lord Algernon
expects to drive you there; he is already waiting!  The party was
got up for you!"  Miss Desborough made a slight grimace.  "I mean
you ought to sacrifice something--but I trust there is really
nothing serious--to them!"

"If YOU do not speak to them, I will!" said Miss Desborough firmly.
"If you say what I tell you, it will come the more plausibly from
you.  Come!  My mind is made up.  One of us must break the news!
Shall it be you or I?"  She drew her cloak over her shoulders and
made a step forwards.

The consul saw she was determined.  "Then wait here till I return,
but keep yourself out of sight," he said, and hurried away.
Between the library and the terrace he conceived a plan.  His
perplexity lent him a seriousness which befitted the gravity of the
news he had to disclose.  "I am sorry to have to tell you," he
said, taking Lord Beverdale aside, "that I was the unlucky bearer
of some sad news to Miss Desborough this morning, through my
consular letters--some matter concerning the death of a relation of
hers, and some wearisome question of property.  I thought that it
was of little importance, and that she would not take it seriously,
but I find I was mistaken.  It may even oblige her to catch the
London train to-night.  I promised to make her excuses to you for
the present, and I'm afraid I must add my own to them, as she
wishes me to stay and advise her in this matter, which requires
some prompt action."

Miss Desborough was right: the magic word "property" changed the
slight annoyance on the earl's face to a sympathetic concern.
"Dear me! I trust it is nothing really serious," he said.  "Of
course, you will advise her, and, by the way, if my solicitor,
Withers, who'll be here to-morrow, can do anything, you know, call
him in.  I hope she'll be able to see me later.  It could not be a
NEAR relation who died, I fancy; she has no brothers or sisters, I
understand."

"A cousin, I think; an old friend," said the consul hastily.  He
heard Lord Beverdale say a few words to his companions, saw with a
tinge of remorse a cloud settle upon Lord Algernon's fresh face, as
he appealed in a whisper to old Lady Mesthyn, who leaned forward
from the carriage, and said, "If the dear child thought I could be
of any service, I should only be too glad to stay with her."

"I knew she would appreciate Lady Mesthyn's sympathy," said the
ingenious consul quickly, "but I really think the question is more
a business one--and"--

"Ah, yes," said the old lady, shaking her head, "it's dreadful, of
course, but we must all think of THAT!"

As the carriage drove away, the consul hurried back a little
viciously to his fair countrywoman.  "There!" he said, "I have done
it!  If I have managed to convey either the idea that you are a
penniless orphan, or that I have official information that you are
suspected of a dynamite conspiracy, don't blame me!  And now," he
said, "as I have excused myself on the ground that I must devote
myself to this dreadful business of yours, perhaps you'll tell me
WHAT it really is."

"Not a word more," said Miss Desborough; "except," she added,--
checking her smile with a weary gesture,--"except that I want to
leave this dreadful place at once!  There! don't ask me any more!"

There could be no doubt of the girl's sincerity.  Nor was it the
extravagant caprice of a petted idol.  What had happened?  He might
have believed in a lovers' quarrel, but he knew that she and Lord
Algernon could have had no private interview that evening.  He must
perforce accept her silence, yet he could not help saying:--

"You seemed to like the place so much last night.  I say, you
haven't seen the Priory ghost, have you?"

"The Priory ghost," she said quickly.  "What's that?"

"The old monk who passes through the cloisters with the sacred oil,
the bell, and the smell of incense whenever any one is to die here.
By Jove! it would have been a good story to tell instead of this
cock-and-bull one about your property.  And there WAS a death here
to-day.  You'd have added the sibyl's gifts to your other charms."

"Tell me about that old man," she said, looking past him out of the
window.  "I was at his cottage this morning.  But, no! first let us
go out.  You can take me for a walk, if you like.  You see I am all
ready, and I'm just stifling here."

They descended to the terrace together.  "Where would you like to
go?" he asked.

"To the village.  I may want to telegraph, you know."

They turned into the avenue, but Miss Desborough stopped.

"Is there not a shorter cut across the fields," she asked, "over
there?"

"There is," said the consul.

They both turned into the footpath which led to the farm and stile.
After a pause she said, "Did you ever talk with that poor old man?"

"No."

"Then you don't know if he really was crazy, as they think."

"No.  But they may have thought an old man's forgetfulness of
present things and his habit of communing with the past was
insanity.  For all that he was a plucky, independent old fellow,
with a grim purpose that was certainly rational."

"I suppose in his independence he would not have taken favors from
these people, or anybody?"

"I should think not."

"Don't you think it was just horrid--their leaving him alone in the
rain, when he might have been only in a fit?"

"The doctor says he died suddenly of heart disease," said the
consul.  "It might have happened at any moment and without
warning."

"Ah, that was the coroner's verdict, then," said Miss Desborough
quickly.

"The coroner did not think it necessary to have any inquest after
Lord Beverdale's statement.  It wouldn't have been very joyous for
the Priory party.  And I dare say he thought it might not be very
cheerful for YOU."

"How very kind!" said the young girl, with a quick laugh.  "But do
you know that it's about the only thing human, original, and
striking that has happened in this place since I've been here!  And
so unexpected, considering how comfortably everything is ordered
here beforehand."

"Yet you seemed to like that kind of thing very well, last evening,"
said the consul mischievously.

"That was last night," retorted Miss Desborough; "and you know the
line, 'Colors seen by candlelight do not look the same by day.'
But I'm going to be very consistent to-day, for I intend to go over
to that poor man's cottage again, and see if I can be of any
service.  Will you go with me?"

"Certainly," said the consul, mystified by his companion's
extraordinary conduct, yet apparent coolness of purpose, and hoping
for some further explanation.  Was she only an inexperienced flirt
who had found herself on the point of a serious entanglement she
had not contemplated?  Yet even then he knew she was clever enough
to extricate herself in some other way than this abrupt and brutal
tearing through the meshes.  Or was it possible that she really had
any intelligence affecting her property?  He reflected that he knew
very little of the Desboroughs, but on the other hand he knew that
Beverdale knew them much better, and was a prudent man.  He had no
right to demand her confidence as a reward for his secrecy; he must
wait her pleasure.  Perhaps she would still explain; women seldom
could resist the triumph of telling the secret that puzzled others.

When they reached the village she halted before the low roof of
Debs's cottage.  "I had better go in first," she said; "you can
come in later, and in the meantime you might go to the station for
me and find out the exact time that the express train leaves for
the north."

"But," said the astonished consul, "I thought you were going to
London?"

"No," said Miss Desborough quietly, "I am going to join some
friends at Harrogate."

"But that train goes much earlier than the train south, and--and
I'm afraid Lord Beverdale will not have returned so soon."

"How sad!" said Miss Desborough, with a faint smile, "but we must
bear up under it, and--I'll write him.  I will be here until you
return."

She turned away and entered the cottage.  The granddaughter she had
already seen and her sister, the servant at the Priory, were both
chatting comfortably, but ceased as she entered, and both rose with
awkward respect.  There was little to suggest that the body of
their grandfather, already in a rough oak shell, was lying upon
trestles beside them.

"You have carried out my orders, I see," said Miss Desborough,
laying down her parasol.

"Ay, miss; but it was main haard gettin' et dooan so soon, and et
cooast"--

"Never mind the cost.  I've given you money enough, I think, and if
I haven't, I guess I can give you more."

"Ay, miss!  Abbut the pa'son 'ead gi' un a funeral for nowt."

"But I understood you to say," said Miss Desborough, with an
impatient flash of eye, "that your grandfather wished to be buried
with his kindred in the north?"

"Ay, miss," said the girl apologetically, "an naw 'ees savit th'
munny.  Abbut e'd bean tickled 'ad 'ee knowed it!  Dear! dear! 'ee
niver thowt et 'ud be gi'en by stranger an' not 'es ownt fammaly."

"For all that, you needn't tell anybody it was given by ME," said
Miss Desborough.  "And you'll be sure to be ready to take the train
this afternoon--without delay."  There was a certain peremptoriness
in her voice very unlike Miss Amelyn's, yet apparently much more
effective with the granddaughter.

"Ay, miss.  Then, if tha'll excoose mea, I'll go streight to 'oory
oop sexten."

She bustled away.  "Now," said Miss Desborough, turning to the
other girl, "I shall take the same train, and will probably see you
on the platform at York to give my final directions.  That's all.
Go and see if the gentleman who came with me has returned from the
station."

The girl obeyed.  Left entirely alone, Miss Desborough glanced
around the room, and then went quietly up to the unlidded coffin.
The repose of death had softened the hard lines of the old man's
mouth and brow into a resemblance she now more than ever
understood.  She had stood thus only a few years before, looking at
the same face in a gorgeously inlaid mahogany casket, smothered
amidst costly flowers, and surrounded by friends attired in all the
luxurious trappings of woe; yet it was the same face that was now
rigidly upturned to the bare thatch and rafters of that crumbling
cottage, herself its only companion.  She lifted her delicate veil
with both hands, and, stooping down, kissed the hard, cold
forehead, without a tremor.  Then she dropped her veil again over
her dry eyes, readjusted it in the little, cheap, black-framed
mirror that hung against the wall, and opened the door as the
granddaughter returned.  The gentleman was just coming from the
station.

"Remember to look out for me at York," said Miss Desborough,
extending her gloved hand.  "Good-by till then."  The young girl
respectfully touched the ends of Miss Desborough's fingers, dropped
a curtsy, and Miss Desborough rejoined the consul.

"You have barely time to return to the Priory and see to your
luggage," said the consul, "if you must go.  But let me hope that
you have changed your mind."

"I have not changed my mind," said Miss Desborough quietly, "and my
baggage is already packed."  After a pause, she said thoughtfully,
"I've been wondering"--

"What?" said the consul eagerly.

"I've been wondering if people brought up to speak in a certain
dialect, where certain words have their own significance and color,
and are part of their own lives and experience--if, even when they
understand another dialect, they really feel any sympathy with it,
or the person who speaks it?"

"Apropos of"--asked the consul.

"These people I've just left!  I don't think I quite felt with them,
and I guess they didn't feel with me."

"But," said the consul laughingly, "you know that we Americans
speak with a decided dialect of our own, and attach the same occult
meaning to it.  Yet, upon my word, I think that Lord Beverdale--or
shall I say Lord Algernon?--would not only understand that American
word 'guess' as you mean it, but would perfectly sympathize with
you."

Miss Desborough's eyes sparkled even through her veil as she
glanced at her companion and said, "I GUESS NOT."

As the "tea" party had not yet returned, it fell to the consul to
accompany Miss Desborough and her maid to the station.  But here he
was startled to find a collection of villagers upon the platform,
gathered round two young women in mourning, and an ominous-looking
box.  He mingled for a moment with the crowd, and then returned to
Miss Desborough's side.

"Really," he said, with a concern that was scarcely assumed, "I
ought not to let you go.  The omens are most disastrous!  You came
here to a death; you are going away with a funeral!"

"Then it's high time I took myself off!" said the lady lightly.

"Unless, like the ghostly monk, you came here on a mission, and
have fulfilled it."

"Perhaps I have.  Good-by!"

        .        .        .        .        .        .

In spite of the bright and characteristic letter which Miss
Desborough left for her host,--a letter which mingled her peculiar
shrewd sense with her humorous extravagance of expression,--the
consul spent a somewhat uneasy evening under the fire of questions
that assailed him in reference to the fair deserter.  But he kept
loyal faith with her, adhering even to the letter of her
instructions, and only once was goaded into more active mendacity.
The conversation had turned upon "Debs," and the consul had
remarked on the singularity of the name.  A guest from the north
observed, however, that the name was undoubtedly a contraction.
"Possibly it might have been 'Debborough,' or even the same name as
our fair friend."

"But didn't Miss Desborough tell you last night that she had been
hunting up her people, with a family tree, or something like that?"
said Lord Algernon eagerly.  "I just caught a word here and there,
for you were both laughing."

The consul smiled blandly.  "You may well say so, for it was all
the most delightful piece of pure invention and utter extravagance.
It would have amused her still more if she had thought you were
listening and took it seriously!"

"Of course; I see!" said the young fellow, with a laugh and a
slight rise of color.  "I knew she was taking some kind of a rise
out of YOU, and that remark reminded me of it."

Nevertheless, within a year, Lord Algernon was happily married to
the daughter of a South African millionaire, whose bridal offerings
alone touched the sum of half a million.  It was also said that the
mother was "impossible" and the father "unspeakable," the relations
"inextinguishable;" but the wedding was an "occasion," and in the
succeeding year of festivity it is presumed that the names of
"Debs" and "Desborough" were alike forgotten.

But they existed still in a little hamlet near the edge of a bleak
northern moor, where they were singularly exalted on a soaring
shaft of pure marble above the submerged and moss-grown tombstones
of a simple country churchyard.  So great was the contrast between
the modern and pretentious monument and the graves of the humbler
forefathers of the village, that even the Americans who chanced to
visit it were shocked at what they believed was the ostentatious
and vulgar pride of one of their own countrywomen.  For on its
pedestal was inscribed:--


                  Sacred to the Memory
                          of
                  JOHN DEBS DESBOROUGH,
                Formerly of this parish,
        Who departed this life October 20th, 1892,
                   At Scrooby Priory,
              At the age of eighty-two years.
      This monument was erected as a loving testimony
                  by his granddaughter,
          Sadie Desborough, of New York, U. S. A.

              "And evening brings us home."



SALOMY JANE'S KISS


Only one shot had been fired.  It had gone wide of its mark,--the
ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had left Red Pete, who had fired
it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy.  For his hand had
been cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden
onset, and so the inevitable end had come.  He submitted sullenly
to his captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the
protracted struggle with a feeling not unlike relief.  Even the hot
and revengeful victors were content.  They had taken their men
alive.  At any time during the long chase they could have brought
them down by a rifle shot, but it would have been unsportsmanlike,
and have ended in a free fight, instead of an example.  And, for
the matter of that, their doom was already sealed.  Their end, by a
rope and a tree, although not sanctified by law, would have at
least the deliberation of justice.  It was the tribute paid by the
Vigilantes to that order which they had themselves disregarded in
the pursuit and capture.  Yet this strange logic of the frontier
sufficed them, and gave a certain dignity to the climax.

"Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it NOW, and say
it quick," said the ringleader.

Red Pete glanced around him.  He had been run to earth at his own
cabin in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly
women and children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly
at the twenty Vigilantes who surrounded them.  All were accustomed
to scenes of violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only
the suddenness of the onset and its quick result that had surprised
them.  They looked on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment;
there had been no fight to speak of--no spectacle!  A boy, nephew
of Red Pete, got upon the rain-barrel to view the proceedings more
comfortably; a tall, handsome, lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting
neighbor, leaned against the doorpost, chewing gum.  Only a yellow
hound was actively perplexed.  He could not make out if a hunt were
just over or beginning, and ran eagerly backwards and forwards,
leaping alternately upon the captives and the captors.

The ringleader repeated his challenge.  Red Pete gave a reckless
laugh and looked at his wife.

At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward.  It seemed that she had much
to say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader.
His soul would roast in hell for that day's work!  He called
himself a man, skunkin' in the open and afraid to show himself
except with a crowd of other "Kiyi's" around a house of women and
children.  Heaping insult upon insult, inveighing against his low
blood, his ancestors, his dubious origin, she at last flung out a
wild taunt of his invalid wife, the insult of a woman to a woman,
until his white face grew rigid, and only that Western-American
fetich of the sanctity of sex kept his twitching fingers from the
lock of his rifle.  Even her husband noticed it, and with a half-
authoritative "Let up on that, old gal," and a pat of his freed
left hand on her back, took his last parting.  The ringleader,
still white under the lash of the woman's tongue, turned abruptly
to the second captive.  "And if YOU'VE got anybody to say 'good-by'
to, now's your chance."

The man looked up.  Nobody stirred or spoke.  He was a stranger
there, being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known
to no one.  Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood,
of which father and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved
horses and stole them, fully accepting the frontier penalty of life
for the interference with that animal on which a man's life so
often depended.  But he understood the good points of a horse, as
was shown by the ones he bestrode--until a few days before the
property of Judge Boompointer.  This was his sole distinction.

The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the
attitude of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part
of his profession.  But it may have touched him that at that moment
he was less than his companion and his virago wife.  However, he
only shook his head.  As he did so his eye casually fell on the
handsome girl by the doorpost, who was looking at him.  The
ringleader, too, may have been touched by his complete loneliness,
for HE hesitated.  At the same moment he saw that the girl was
looking at his friendless captive.

A grotesque idea struck him.

"Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say 'good-by' to
a dying man, and him a stranger," he said.

There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that
equally struck the apathetic crowd.  It was well known that Salomy
Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off
the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn.  Nevertheless, she
slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody's
astonishment, lounged with languid grace and outstretched hand
towards the prisoner.  The color came into the gray reckless mask
which the doomed man wore as her right hand grasped his left, just
loosed by his captors.  Then she paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes
grew bold, and fixed themselves upon him.  She took the chewing-gum
from her mouth, wiped her red lips with the back of her hand, by a
sudden lithe spring placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding
to the saddle, threw her arms about his neck and pressed a kiss
upon his lips.

They remained thus for a hushed moment--the man on the threshold of
death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty--linked
together.  Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of
the girl's act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten.  She
slipped languidly to the ground; SHE was the focus of all eyes,--
she only!  The ringleader saw it and his opportunity.  He shouted:
"Time's up--Forward!" urged his horse beside his captives, and the
next moment the whole cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into
the darkening woods.

Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of the
committee, where the council was still sitting, and where both
culprits were to expiate the offense of which that council had
already found them guilty.  They rode in great and breathless
haste,--a haste in which, strangely enough, even the captives
seemed to join.  That haste possibly prevented them from noticing
the singular change which had taken place in the second captive
since the episode of the kiss.  His high color remained, as if it
had burned through his mask of indifference; his eyes were quick,
alert, and keen, his mouth half open as if the girl's kiss still
lingered there.  And that haste had made them careless, for the
horse of the man who led him slipped in a gopher-hole, rolled over,
unseated his rider, and even dragged the bound and helpless second
captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite mare.  In an instant they
were all on their feet again, but in that supreme moment the second
captive felt the cords which bound his arms had slipped to his
wrists.  By keeping his elbows to his sides, and obliging the
others to help him mount, it escaped their notice.  By riding close
to his captors, and keeping in the crush of the throng, he further
concealed the accident, slowly working his hands downwards out of
his bonds.

Their way lay through a sylvan wilderness, mid-leg deep in ferns,
whose tall fronds brushed their horses' sides in their furious
gallop and concealed the flapping of the captive's loosened cords.
The peaceful vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph and
shepherd than of human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast to this
whirlwind rush of stern, armed men.  The westering sun pierced the
subdued light and the tremor of leaves with yellow lances; birds
started into song on blue and dove-like wings, and on either side
of the trail of this vengeful storm could be heard the murmur of
hidden and tranquil waters.  In a few moments they would be on the
open ridge, whence sloped the common turnpike to "Sawyer's," a mile
away.  It was the custom of returning cavalcades to take this hill
at headlong speed, with shouts and cries that heralded their
coming.  They withheld the latter that day, as inconsistent with
their dignity; but, emerging from the wood, swept silently like an
avalanche down the slope.  They were well under way, looking only
to their horses, when the second captive slipped his right arm from
the bonds and succeeded in grasping the reins that lay trailing on
the horse's neck.  A sudden vaquero jerk, which the well-trained
animal understood, threw him on his haunches with his forelegs
firmly planted on the slope.  The rest of the cavalcade swept on;
the man who was leading the captive's horse by the riata, thinking
only of another accident, dropped the line to save himself from
being dragged backwards from his horse.  The captive wheeled, and
the next moment was galloping furiously up the slope.

It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an experienced
hand.  The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards before they
could pull up; the freed captive had covered half that distance
uphill.  The road was so narrow that only two shots could be fired,
and these broke dust two yards ahead of the fugitive.  They had not
dared to fire low; the horse was the more valuable animal.  The
fugitive knew this in his extremity also, and would have gladly
taken a shot in his own leg to spare that of his horse.  Five men
were detached to recapture or kill him.  The latter seemed
inevitable.  But he had calculated his chances; before they could
reload he had reached the woods again; winding in and out between
the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark.  They knew his horse
was superior to their own; at the end of two hours they returned,
for he had disappeared without track or trail.  The end was briefly
told in the "Sierra Record:"--

"Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded
justice, was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing Vigilantes
last week; his confederate, unfortunately, escaped on a valuable
horse belonging to Judge Boompointer.  The judge had refused one
thousand dollars for the horse only a week before.  As the thief,
who is still at large, would find it difficult to dispose of so
valuable an animal without detection, the chances are against
either of them turning up again."

        .        .        .        .        .        .

Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared.  Then
she became aware that her brief popularity had passed.  Mrs. Red
Pete, in stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping
denunciation of the whole universe, possibly for simulating an
emotion in which she herself was deficient.  The other women hated
her for her momentary exaltation above them; only the children
still admired her as one who had undoubtedly "canoodled" with a man
"a-going to be hung"--a daring flight beyond their wildest
ambition.  Salomy Jane accepted the change with charming unconcern.
She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a hideous affair that
would have ruined any other woman, but which only enhanced the
piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings, letting the
blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind, jumped
on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a
"So long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped
and fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.

Her father's house was four miles distant.  Contrasted with the
cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
and made it look like a low triangle.  It had a long barn and
cattle sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stock-raiser and the
owner of a "quarter section."  It had a sitting-room and a parlor
organ, whose transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing."
These things were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue importance,
but the girl's reserve and inaccessibility to local advances were
rather the result of a cool, lazy temperament and the preoccupation
of a large, protecting admiration for her father, for some years a
widower.  For Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in one or
two feuds,--it was said, not without cause,--and it is possible
that the pathetic spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a
shotgun may have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her
against the neighboring masculinity.  The thought that cattle,
horses, and "quarter section" would one day be hers did not disturb
her calm.  As for Mr. Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though
somewhat "interfering," and, being one of "his own womankind,"
therefore not without some degree of merit.

"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
Honeyfoglin' with a horse-thief, eh?" said Mr. Clay two days later
at breakfast.

"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said Salomy
Jane unconcernedly, without looking round.

"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it?  What are you goin' to
tell HIM?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.

"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
particularly by Mr. Clay.  Salomy Jane looked up.

"I'll tell him that when HE'S on his way to be hung, I'll kiss
him,--not till then," said the young lady brightly.

This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.

"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a
different color," he said grimly.

Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork.  This was certainly a new
and different phase of the situation.  She had never thought of it
before, and, strangely enough, for the first time she became
interested in the man.  "Got away?" she repeated.  "Did they let
him off?"

"Not much," said her father briefly.  "Slipped his cords, and going
down the grade pulled up short, just like a vaquero agin a lassoed
bull, almost draggin' the man leadin' him off his hoss, and then
skyuted up the grade.  For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge
Boompointer's he mout have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on
their knees ef he liked!  Sarved 'em right, too.  Instead of
stringin' him up afore the door, or shootin' him on sight, they
must allow to take him down afore the hull committee 'for an
example.'  'Example' be blowed!  Ther' 's example enough when some
stranger comes unbeknownst slap onter a man hanged to a tree and
plugged full of holes.  THAT'S an example, and HE knows what it
means.  Wot more do ye want?  But then those Vigilantes is allus
clingin' and hangin' onter some mere scrap o' the law they're
pretendin' to despise.  It makes me sick!  Why, when Jake Myers
shot your ole Aunt Viney's second husband, and I laid in wait for
Jake afterwards in the Butternut Hollow, did I tie him to his hoss
and fetch him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an example'
before I plugged him?  No!" in deep disgust.  "No!  Why, I just
meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes out, and I
just rode up to him, and I said"--

But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before.  Even one's
dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration.  "I
know, dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--
did HE get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"

"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
away, too.  So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
stranger' to Rube.  He won't swaller it."

"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
it, and say MORE; I'll tell him that ef HE manages to get away too,
I'll marry him--there!  But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"

Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun
from the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow
who had dropped a calf in the far pasture.  Inclined as he was to
Reuben's wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was
conscious that he was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent
in the Clay family.  It certainly would be a kind of mesalliance.

Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room
to make her bed.  Here she was confronted with a possible prospect
of that proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and
on which she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious
young man of refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-
frame.  Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him
and enjoyed, it, like your true humorist, and then, catching sight
of her own handsome face in the little mirror, smiled again.  But
wasn't it funny about that horse-thief getting off after all?  Good
Lordy!  Fancy Reuben hearing he was alive and going round with that
kiss of hers set on his lips!  She laughed again, a little more
abstractedly.  And he had returned it like a man, holding her tight
and almost breathless, and he going to be hung the next minute!
Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by force, chance, or
stratagem.  In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of the locality
known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet kiss" from
Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and fair
play.  She had never been kissed like this before--she would never
again; and yet the man was alive!  And behold, she could see in the
mirror that she was blushing!

She should hardly know him again.  A young man with very bright
eyes, a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the
face, and no beard; no, none that she could feel.  Yet he was not
at all like Reuben, not a bit.  She took Reuben's picture from the
window, and laid it on her workbox.  And to think she did not even
know this young man's name!  That was queer.  To be kissed by a man
whom she might never know!  Of course he knew hers.  She wondered
if he remembered it and her.  But of course he was so glad to get
off with his life that he never thought of anything else.  Yet she
did not give more than four or five minutes to these speculations,
and, like a sensible girl, thought of something else.  Once again,
however, in opening the closet, she found the brown holland gown
she had worn on the day before; thought it very unbecoming, and
regretted that she had not worn her best gown on her visit to Red
Pete's cottage.  On such an occasion she really might have been
more impressive.

When her father came home that night she asked him the news.  No,
they had NOT captured the second horse-thief, who was still at
large.  Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the
despised law.  It remained, then, to see whether the horse-thief
was fool enough to try to get rid of the animal.  Red Pete's body
had been delivered to his widow.  Perhaps it would only be
neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the funeral.  But Salomy
Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly, nor yet did she explain
to her father that, as the other man was still living, she did not
care to undergo a second disciplining at the widow's hands.
Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with that of the widow
with a new and singular satisfaction.  It might have been Red Pete
who had escaped.  But he had not the grit of the nameless one.  She
had already settled his heroic quality.

"Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy."

Salomy Jane started.

"Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking
by yer today?"

Salomy Jane had not.  But she became interested and self-reproachful,
for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father's enemies.
"He wouldn't dare to go by here unless he knew you were out," she
said quickly.

"That's what gets me," he said, scratching his grizzled head.
"I've been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them
Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer's Crossing.  He was a kind of
friend o' Pete's wife.  That's why I thought yer might find out ef
he'd been there."  Salomy Jane grew more self-reproachful at her
father's self-interest in her "neighborliness."  "But that ain't
all," continued Mr. Clay.  "Thar was tracks over the far pasture
that warn't mine.  I followed them, and they went round and round
the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin', and
then I lost 'em in the woods again.  It's just like that sneakin'
hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in wait for me and afraid to meet a
man fair and square in the open."

"You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a
little prowlin'," said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in
her dark eyes.  "Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon enough and
let you know whar he's hiding."

"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father decisively.
"This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got
more head for it than some men I know."

Nevertheless, that night, after her father had gone to bed, Salomy
Jane sat by the open window of the sitting-room in an apparent
attitude of languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and
ear.  It was a fine moonlit night.  Two pines near the door,
solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest, cast long
shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their spiced breath
in the windows.  For there was no frivolity of vine or flower round
Salomy Jane's bower.  The clearing was too recent, the life too
practical for vanities like these.  But the moon added a vague
elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the
sheds, gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with
merciful indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the
gaunt scars of burnt vegetation before the door.  Even Salomy Jane
was affected by it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn
with the breath of the pines.  Then she suddenly sat upright.

Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction
of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her
to determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty
ground; her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the
spot where the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a
quarter of a mile from where she sat, and within the clearing.  It
was no errant "stock," for the foot was shod with iron; it was a
mounted trespasser by night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.

She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than
shelter, and passed out of the door.  A sudden impulse made her
seize her father's shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not
that she feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse.
She made directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines
as long as she could.  At the fringe she halted; whoever was there
must pass her before reaching the house.

Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature.  Everything was
deadly still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon
there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns, and
then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight.  It was the
horse-thief--the man she had kissed!

For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect
and stirred her temperate blood.  The news they had told her was
NOT true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost!  He looked as
white and spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same
clothes, as when she saw him last.  He had evidently seen her
approaching, and moved quickly to meet her.  But in his haste he
stumbled slightly; she reflected suddenly that ghosts did not
stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her.  And it was no
assassin of her father that had been prowling around--only this
unhappy fugitive.  A momentary color came into her cheek; her
coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of sauciness
in her voice that she said:--

"I reckoned you were a ghost."

"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I reckon
I'd have come back here all the same."

"It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a levity
that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and
half expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of
a moment ago.  "Then it was YOU who was prowlin' round and makin'
tracks in the far pasture?"

"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."

She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her
own.  "Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely.  "HOW did you
get here?"

"You helped me!"

"I?"

"Yes.  That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to
get away.  I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or
dead."

Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the
situation seemed to her now.  And every word he said she knew was
the truth.  Yet her cool common sense struggled against it.

"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be
ketched again?" she said pertly.

He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward
as she resumed her self-possession.  His voice, too, was broken, as
if by exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--

"I'll tell you.  You did more for me than you think.  You made
another man o' me.  I never had a man, woman, or child do to me
what you did.  I never had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who
picked me up 'on shares.'  I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'.
I want to begin by doin' the square thing to you"--  He stopped,
breathed hard, and then said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar,
staked out.  I want to give him to you.  Judge Boompointer will
give you a thousand dollars for him.  I ain't lyin'; it's God's
truth!  I saw it on the handbill agin a tree.  Take him, and I'll
get away afoot.  Take him.  It's the only thing I can do for you,
and I know it don't half pay for what you did.  Take it; your
father can get a reward for you, if you can't."

Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man
who made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by
anything that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent
with justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane
nevertheless dissented, from another and weaker reason.

"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
starvin'.  I'll get suthin'."  She turned towards the house.

"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand.  At
the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting
perhaps another kiss.  But he dropped her hand.  She turned again
with a saucy gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and
slipped away, the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the
moonlight, until she reached the house.

Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long dust-
coat and hat of her father's to her burden.  They would serve as a
disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she thought
everybody must now know as she did.  Then she rejoined him
breathlessly.  But he put the food and whiskey aside.

"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral.  You'll
find him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got
lost and joined the other hosses."

Then she burst out.  "But you--YOU--what will become of you?
You'll be ketched!"

"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice, "ef--ef"--

"Ef what?" she said tremblingly.  "Ef you'll put the heart in me
again,--as you did!" he gasped.

She tried to laugh--to move away.  She could do neither.  Suddenly
he caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned
again and again.  Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two
days before, but no longer the same.  For the cool, lazy Salomy
Jane had been transformed into another woman--a passionate,
clinging savage.  Perhaps something of her father's blood had
surged within her at that supreme moment.  The man stood erect and
determined.

"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly.  It was a woman's quickest
way of defining her feelings.

"Dart."

"Yer first name?"

"Jack."

"Let me go now, Jack.  Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup.
I'll come again."

He released her.  Yet she lingered a moment.  "Put on those
things," she said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth,
"and lie close till I come."  And then she sped away home.

But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and
something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back.  She
stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been standing.  Had
she seen him then, she might have returned.  But he had
disappeared.  She gave her first sigh, and then ran quickly again.
It must be nearly ten o'clock!  It was not very long to morning!

She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods
and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp "crack!"

She stopped, paralyzed.  Another "crack!' followed, that echoed
over to the far corral.  She recalled herself instantly and dashed
off wildly to the woods again.

As she ran she thought of one thing only.  He had been "dogged" by
one of his old pursuers and attacked.  But there were two shots,
and he was unarmed.  Suddenly she remembered that she had left her
father's gun standing against the tree where they were talking.
Thank God! she may again have saved him.  She ran to the tree; the
gun was gone.  She ran hither and thither, dreading at every step
to fall upon his lifeless body.  A new thought struck her; she ran
to the corral.  The horse was not there!  He must have been able to
regain it, and escaped, AFTER the shots had been fired.  She drew a
long breath of relief, but it was caught up in an apprehension of
alarm.  Her father, awakened from his sleep by the shots, was
hurriedly approaching her.

"What's up now, Salomy Jane?" he demanded excitedly.

"Nothin'," said the girl with an effort.  "Nothin', at least, that
I can find."  She was usually truthful because fearless, and a lie
stuck in her throat; but she was no longer fearless, thinking of
HIM.  "I wasn't abed; so I ran out as soon as I heard the shots
fired," she answered in return to his curious gaze.

"And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found," he said
reproachfully.  "Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he fired them
shots to lure me out, he might have potted me, without a show, a
dozen times in the last five minutes."

She had not thought since of her father's enemy!  It might indeed
have been he who had attacked Jack.  But she made a quick point of
the suggestion.  "Run in, dad, run in and find the gun; you've got
no show out here without it."  She seized him by the shoulders from
behind, shielding him from the woods, and hurried him, half
expostulating, half struggling, to the house.

But there no gun was to be found.  It was strange; it must have
been mislaid in some corner!  Was he sure he had not left it in the
barn?  But no matter now.  The danger was over; the Larrabee trick
had failed; he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would
make a search together.  At the same time she had inwardly resolved
to rise before him and make another search of the wood, and
perhaps--fearful joy as she recalled her promise!--find Jack alive
and well, awaiting her!

Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father.  But
towards morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun
was well up the horizon.  Far different was it with his daughter:
she lay with her face to the window, her head half lifted to catch
every sound, from the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her
head to the far-off moan of the rising wind in the pine trees.
Sometimes she fell into a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living
over every moment of the stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's
arm still around her, his kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered
voice in her ears--the birth of her new life!  This was followed
again by a period of agonizing dread--that he might even then be
lying, his life ebbing away, in the woods, with her name on his
lips, and she resting here inactive, until she half started from
her bed to go to his succor.  And this went on until a pale opal
glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler pink on the
summit of the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly began to
dress.  Still so sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that she
lingered yet a moment to select the brown holland skirt and yellow
sunbonnet she had worn when she first saw him.  And she had only
seen him twice!  Only TWICE!  It would be cruel, too cruel, not to
see him again!

She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn
breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a
guttering candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust
himself out of the house until she returned from her search, and
leaving the note open on the table, swiftly ran out into the
growing day.

Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud
knocking.  At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as
his daughter's regular morning summons, and was responded to by a
grunt of recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets.  Then
he awoke with a start and a muttered oath, remembering the events
of last night, and his intention to get up early, and rolled out of
bed.  Becoming aware by this time that the knocking was at the
outer door, and hearing the shout of a familiar voice, he hastily
pulled on his boots, his jean trousers, and fastening a single
suspender over his shoulder as he clattered downstairs, stood in
the lower room.  The door was open, and waiting upon the threshold
was his kinsman, an old ally in many a blood-feud--Breckenridge
Clay!

"You ARE a cool one, Mad!" said the latter in half-admiring
indignation.

"What's up?" said the bewildered Madison.

"YOU ought to be, and scootin' out o' this," said Breckenridge
grimly.  "It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but here Phil
Larrabee's friends hev just picked him up, drilled through with
slugs and deader nor a crow, and now they're lettin' loose
Larrabee's two half-brothers on you.  And you must go like a derned
fool and leave these yer things behind you in the bresh," he went
on querulously, lifting Madison Clay's dust-coat, hat, and shotgun
from his horse, which stood saddled at the door.  "Luckily I picked
them up in the woods comin' here.  Ye ain't got more than time to
get over the state line and among your folks thar afore they'll be
down on you.  Hustle, old man!  What are you gawkin' and starin'
at?"

Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered--horror-stricken.
The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him
clearly--hopelessly!  The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in
the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the
disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the
taking of his hat and coat for a disguise!  SHE had killed Phil
Larrabee in that disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot!
She, his own child, Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's
crime; had disgraced him by usurping his right, and taking a mean
advantage, by deceit, of a foe!

"Gimme that gun," he said hoarsely.

Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering
suspicion.  Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been
discharged.  It was true!  The gun dropped from his hand.

"Look here, old man," said Breckenridge, with a darkening face,
"there's bin no foul play here.  Thar's bin no hiring of men, no
deputy to do this job.  YOU did it fair and square--yourself?"

"Yes, by God!" burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice.  "Who says
I didn't?"

Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for
the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his
memory, Breckenridge said curtly, "Then wake up and 'lite' out, ef
ye want me to stand by you."

"Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss," said Madison slowly, yet
not without a certain dignity of manner.  "I've suthin' to say to
Salomy Jane afore I go."  He was holding her scribbled note, which
he had just discovered, in his shaking hand.

Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent relations
of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away.  Left
to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and
straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her
note, turned it over, and wrote on the back:--


You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole father to
find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too, by a low-down,
underhanded, woman's trick!  I've said I done it, and took the
blame myself, and all the sneakiness of it that folks suspect.  If
I get away alive--and I don't care much which--you needn't foller.
The house and stock are yours; but you ain't any longer the
daughter of your disgraced father,

MADISON CLAY.


He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and
a led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and
triumphant.  "You're in nigger luck, Mad!  I found that stole hoss
of Judge Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in
the corral.  Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side
of the state line."

"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.

"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take
him.  I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell
Judge Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when
you're safe.  The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and
call it quits.  So ef you've writ to Salomy Jane, come."

Madison Clay no longer hesitated.  Salomy Jane might return at any
moment,--it would be part of her "fool womanishness,"--and he was
in no mood to see her before a third party.  He laid the note on
the table, gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly
believed he was leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped
on the stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.

But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view
of the open door.  The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones,
birds, and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at
night by shy, stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by
any of the Clay family.  It was known in the district that Clay had
flown across the state line, his daughter was believed to have
joined him the next day, and the house was supposed to be locked
up.  It lay off the main road, and few passed that way.  The
starving cattle in the corral at last broke bounds and spread over
the woods.  And one night a stronger blast than usual swept through
the house, carried the note from the table to the floor, where,
whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.

But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her,
Salomy Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened.
For as she entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she
saw the figure of Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards
her.  The unaffected cry of joy that rose from her lips died there
as she caught sight of his face in the open light.

"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm passionately.

"No," he said.  "But I wouldn't mind that if"--

"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard
the shootin', but I DID come," she went on feverishly.  "I ran back
here when I heard the two shots, but you were gone.  I went to the
corral, but your hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got away."

"I DID get away," said Dart gloomily.  "I killed the man, thinkin'
he was huntin' ME, and forgettin' I was disguised.  He thought I
was your father."

"Yes," said the girl joyfully, "he was after dad, and YOU--you
killed him."  She again caught his hand admiringly.

But he did not respond.  Possibly there were points of honor which
this horse-thief felt vaguely with her father.  "Listen," he said
grimly.  "Others think it was your father killed him.  When I did
it--for he fired at me first--I ran to the corral again and took my
hoss, thinkin' I might be follered.  I made a clear circuit of the
house, and when I found he was the only one, and no one was
follerin', I come back here and took off my disguise.  Then I heard
his friends find him in the wood, and I know they suspected your
father.  And then another man come through the woods while I was
hidin' and found the clothes and took them away."  He stopped and
stared at her gloomily.

But all this was unintelligible to the girl.  "Dad would have got
the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so what's the
difference?"

"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his place."

She did not understand, but turned her head to her master.  "Then
you'll go back with me and tell him ALL?" she said obediently.

"Yes," he said.

She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together.
She foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he
did not love as she did.  SHE would not have taken these risks
against their happiness.

But alas for ethics and heroism.  As they were issuing from the
wood they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time
to hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of
Judge Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.

Salomy Jane turned to her lover.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to
lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal,
fastidious parent.  But I am confronted by certain facts, on which
this romance is based.  A month later a handbill was posted on one
of the sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold
by auction to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of
Madison Clay, Esq., and it was sold accordingly.  Still later--by
ten years--the chronicler of these pages visited a certain "stock"
or "breeding farm," in the "Blue Grass Country," famous for the
popular racers it has produced.  He was told that the owner was the
"best judge of horse-flesh in the country."  "Small wonder," added
his informant, "for they say as a young man out in California he
was a horse-thief, and only saved himself by eloping with some rich
farmer's daughter.  But he's a straight-out and respectable man
now, whose word about horses can't be bought; and as for his wife,
she's a beauty!  To see her at the 'Springs,' rigged out in the
latest fashion, you'd never think she had ever lived out of New
York or wasn't the wife of one of its millionaires."



THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN


He was such a large, strong man that, when he first set foot in the
little parallelogram I called my garden, it seemed to shrink to
half its size and become preposterous.  But I noticed at the same
time that he was holding in the open palm of his huge hand the
roots of a violet, with such infinite tenderness and delicacy that
I would have engaged him as my gardener on the spot.  But this
could not be, as he was already the proud proprietor of a market-
garden and nursery on the outskirts of the suburban Californian
town where I lived.  He would, however, come for two days in the
week, stock and look after my garden, and impart to my urban
intellect such horticultural hints as were necessary.  His name was
"Rutli," which I presumed to be German, but which my neighbors
rendered as "Rootleigh," possibly from some vague connection with
his occupation.  His own knowledge of English was oral and
phonetic.  I have a delightful recollection of a bill of his in
which I was charged for "fioletz," with the vague addition of
"maine cains."  Subsequent explanation proved it to be "many
kinds."

Nevertheless, my little garden bourgeoned and blossomed under his
large, protecting hand.  I became accustomed to walk around his
feet respectfully when they blocked the tiny paths, and to expect
the total eclipse of that garden-bed on which he worked, by his
huge bulk.  For the tiniest and most reluctant rootlet seemed to
respond to his caressing paternal touch; it was a pretty sight to
see his huge fingers tying up some slender stalk to its stick with
the smallest thread, and he had a reverent way of laying a bulb or
seed in the ground, and then gently shaping and smoothing a small
mound over it, which made the little inscription on the stick above
more like an affecting epitaph than ever.  Much of this gentleness
may have been that apology for his great strength, common with
large men; but his face was distinctly amiable, and his very light
blue eyes were at times wistful and doglike in their kindliness.  I
was soon to learn, however, that placability was not entirely his
nature.

The garden was part of a fifty vara lot of land, on which I was
simultaneously erecting a house.  But the garden was finished
before the house was, through certain circumstances very
characteristic of that epoch and civilization.  I had purchased the
Spanish title, the only LEGAL one, to the land, which, however, had
been in POSSESSION of a "squatter."  But he had been unable to hold
that possession against a "jumper,"--another kind of squatter who
had entered upon it covertly, fenced it in, and marked it out in
building sites.  Neither having legal rights, they could not invoke
the law; the last man held possession.  There was no doubt that in
due course of litigation and time both these ingenuous gentlemen
would have been dispossessed in favor of the real owner,--myself,--
but that course would be a protracted one.  Following the usual
custom of the locality, I paid a certain sum to the jumper to yield
up peaceably HIS possession of the land, and began to build upon
it.  It might be reasonably supposed that the question was settled.
But it was not.  The house was nearly finished when, one morning, I
was called out of my editorial sanctum by a pallid painter, looking
even more white-leaded than usual, who informed me that my house
was in the possession of five armed men!  The entry had been made
peaceably during the painters' absence to dinner under a wayside
tree.  When they returned, they had found their pots and brushes in
the road, and an intimation from the windows that their reentrance
would be forcibly resisted as a trespass.

I honestly believe that Rutli was more concerned than myself over
this dispossession.  While he loyally believed that I would get
back my property, he was dreadfully grieved over the inevitable
damage that would be done to the garden during this interval of
neglect and carelessness.  I even think he would have made a truce
with my enemies, if they would only have let him look after his
beloved plants.  As it was, he kept a passing but melancholy
surveillance of them, and was indeed a better spy of the actions of
the intruders than any I could have employed.  One day, to my
astonishment, he brought me a moss-rose bud from a bush which had
been trained against a column of the veranda.  It appeared that he
had called, from over the fence, the attention of one of the men to
the neglected condition of the plant, and had obtained permission
to "come in and tie it up."  The men, being merely hirelings of the
chief squatter, had no personal feeling, and I was not therefore
surprised to hear that they presently allowed Rutli to come in
occasionally and look after his precious "slips."  If they had any
suspicions of his great strength, it was probably offset by his
peaceful avocation and his bland, childlike face.  Meantime, I had
begun the usual useless legal proceeding, but had also engaged a
few rascals of my own to be ready to take advantage of any want of
vigilance on the part of my adversaries.  I never thought of Rutli
in that connection any more than they had.

A few Sundays later I was sitting in the little tea-arbor of
Rutli's nursery, peacefully smoking with him.  Presently he took
his long china-bowled pipe from his mouth, and, looking at me
blandly over his yellow mustache, said:--

"You vonts sometimes to go in dot house, eh?"

I said, "Decidedly."

"Mit a revolver, and keep dot house dose men out?"

"Yes!"

"Vell!  I put you in dot house--today!"

"Sunday?"

"Shoost so!  It is a goot day!  On der Suntay DREE men vill out go
to valk mit demselluffs, and visky trinken.  TWO," holding up two
gigantic fingers, apparently only a shade or two smaller than his
destined victims, "stay dere.  Dose I lift de fence over."

I hastened to inform him that any violence attempted against the
parties WHILE IN POSSESSION, although that possession was illegal,
would, by a fatuity of the law, land him in the county jail.  I
said I would not hear of it.

"But suppose dere vos no fiolence?  Suppose dose men vos villin',
eh?  How vos dot for high?"

"I don't understand."

"So!  You shall NOT understand!  Dot is better.  Go away now and
dell your men to coom dot house arount at halluff past dree.  But
YOU coom, mit yourselluff alone, shoost as if you vos spazieren
gehen, for a valk, by dat fence at dree!  Ven you shall dot front
door vide open see, go in, and dere you vos!  You vill der rest
leef to me!"

It was in vain that I begged Rutli to divulge his plan, and pointed
out again the danger of his technically breaking the law.  But he
was firm, assuring me that I myself would be a witness that no
assault would be made.  I looked into his clear, good-humored eyes,
and assented.  I had a burning desire to right my wrongs, but I
think I also had considerable curiosity.

I passed a miserable quarter of an hour after I had warned my
partisans, and then walked alone slowly down the broad leafy street
towards the scene of contest.  I have a very vivid recollection of
my conflicting emotions.  I did not believe that I would be killed;
I had no distinct intention of killing any of my adversaries; but I
had some considerable concern for my loyal friend Rutli, whom I
foresaw might be in some peril from the revolver in my unpracticed
hand.  If I could only avoid shooting HIM, I would be satisfied.  I
remember that the bells were ringing for church,--a church of which
my enemy, the chief squatter, was a deacon in good standing,--and I
felt guiltily conscious of my revolver in my hip-pocket, as two or
three church-goers passed me with their hymn-books in their hands.
I walked leisurely, so as not to attract attention, and to appear
at the exact time, a not very easy task in my youthful excitement.
At last I reached the front gate with a beating heart.  There was
no one on the high veranda, which occupied three sides of the low
one-storied house, nor in the garden before it.  But the front door
was open; I softly passed through the gate, darted up the veranda
and into the house.  A single glance around the hall and bare,
deserted rooms, still smelling of paint, showed me it was empty,
and with my pistol in one hand and the other on the lock of the
door, I stood inside, ready to bolt it against any one but Rutli.
But where was HE?

The sound of laughter and a noise like skylarking came from the
rear of the house and the back yard.  Then I suddenly heard Rutli's
heavy tread on the veranda, but it was slow, deliberate, and so
exaggerated in its weight that the whole house seemed to shake with
it.  Then from the window I beheld an extraordinary sight!  It was
Rutli, swaying from side to side, but steadily carrying with
outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly
grasping their collars.  Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as
with the violets.  His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to
my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms,
wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who
lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena.
He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house,
walked down the steps to the gate, and then gravely deposited them
OUTSIDE.  I heard him say, "Dot vins der pet, ain't it?" and
immediately after the sharp click of the gate-latch.

Without understanding a thing that had happened, I rightly
conceived this was the cue for my appearance with my revolver at
the front door.  As I opened it I still heard the sound of
laughter, which, however, instantly stopped at a sentence from
Rutli, which I could not hear.  There was an oath, the momentary
apparition of two furious and indignant faces over the fence; but
these, however, seemed to be instantly extinguished and put down by
the enormous palms of Rutli clapped upon their heads.  There was a
pause, and then Rutli turned around and quietly joined me in the
doorway.  But the gate was not again opened until the arrival of my
partisans, when the house was clearly in my possession.

Safe inside with the door bolted, I turned eagerly to Rutli for an
explanation.  It then appeared that during his occasional visits to
the garden he had often been an object of amusement and criticism
to the men on account of his size, which seemed to them ridiculously
inconsistent with his great good humor, gentleness, and delicacy of
touch.  They had doubted his strength and challenged his powers.  He
had responded once or twice before, lifting weights or even carrying
one of his critics at arm's length for a few steps.  But he had
reserved his final feat for this day and this purpose.  It was for a
bet, which they had eagerly accepted, secure in their belief in his
simplicity, the sincerity of his motives in coming there, and glad
of the opportunity of a little Sunday diversion.  In their security
they had not locked the door when they came out, and had not noticed
that HE had opened it.  This was his simple story.  His only comment,
"I haf von der pet, but I dinks I shall nod gollect der money."  The
two men did not return that afternoon, nor did their comrades.
Whether they wisely conceived that a man who was so powerful in play
might be terrible in earnest; whether they knew that his act, in
which they had been willing performers, had been witnessed by
passing citizens, who supposed it was skylarking; or whether their
employer got tired of his expensive occupation, I never knew.  The
public believed the latter; Rutli, myself, and the two men he had
evicted alone kept our secret.

From that time Rutli and I became firm friends, and, long after I
had no further need of his services in the recaptured house, I often
found myself in the little tea-arbor of his prosperous nursery.  He
was frugal, sober, and industrious; small wonder that in that
growing town he waxed rich, and presently opened a restaurant in the
main street, connected with his market-garden, which became famous.
His relations to me never changed with his changed fortunes; he was
always the simple market-gardener and florist who had aided my first
housekeeping, and stood by me in an hour of need.  Of all things
regarding himself he was singularly reticent; I do not think he had
any confidants or intimates, even among his own countrymen, whom I
believed to be German.  But one day he quite accidentally admitted
he was a Swiss.  As a youthful admirer of the race I was delighted,
and told him so, with the enthusiastic addition that I could now
quite understand his independence, with his devoted adherence to
another's cause.  He smiled sadly, and astonished me by saying that
he had not heard from Switzerland since he left six years ago.  He
did not want to hear anything; he even avoided his countrymen lest
he should.  I was confounded.

"But," I said, "surely you have a longing to return to your
country; all Swiss have!  You will go back some day just to breathe
the air of your native mountains."

"I shall go back some days," said Rutli, "after I have made mooch,
mooch money, but not for dot air."

"What for, then?"

"For revenge--to get efen."

Surprised, and for a moment dismayed as I was, I could not help
laughing.  "Rutli and revenge!"  Impossible!  And to make it the
more absurd, he was still smoking gently and regarding me with
soft, complacent eyes.  So unchanged was his face and manner that
he might have told me he was going back to be married.

"You do not oonderstand," he said forgivingly.  "Some days I shall
dell to you id.  Id is a story.  You shall make it yourselluff for
dose babers dot you write.  It is not bretty, berhaps, ain't it,
but it is droo.  And de endt is not yet."

Only that Rutli never joked, except in a ponderous fashion with
many involved sentences, I should have thought he was taking a
good-humored rise out of me.  But it was not funny.  I am afraid I
dismissed it from my mind as a revelation of something weak and
puerile, quite inconsistent with his practical common sense and
strong simplicity, and wished he had not alluded to it.  I never
asked him to tell me the story.  It was a year later, and only when
he had invited me to come to the opening of a new hotel, erected by
him at a mountain spa of great resort, that he himself alluded to it.

The hotel was a wonderful affair, even for those days, and Rutli's
outlay of capital convinced me that by this time he must have made
the "mooch money" he coveted.  Something of this was in my mind
when we sat by the window of his handsomely furnished private
office, overlooking the pines of a Californian canyon.  I asked him
if the scenery was like Switzerland.

"Ach! no!" he replied; "but I vill puild a hotel shoost like dis
dare."

"Is that a part of your revenge?" I asked, with a laugh.

"Ah! so! a bart."

I felt relieved; a revenge so practical did not seem very malicious
or idiotic.  After a pause he puffed contemplatively at his pipe,
and then said, "I dell you somedings of dot story now."

He began.  I should like to tell it in his own particular English,
mixed with American slang, but it would not convey the simplicity
of the narrator.  He was the son of a large family who had lived
for centuries in one of the highest villages in the Bernese
Oberland.  He attained his size and strength early, but with a
singular distaste to use them in the rough regular work on the
farm, although he was a great climber and mountaineer, and, what
was at first overlooked as mere boyish fancy, had an insatiable
love and curious knowledge of plants and flowers.  He knew the
haunts of Edelweiss, Alpine rose, and blue gentian, and had brought
home rare and unknown blossoms from under the icy lips of glaciers.
But as he did this when his time was supposed to be occupied in
looking after the cows in the higher pastures and making cheeses,
there was trouble in that hard-working, practical family.  A giant
with the tastes and disposition of a schoolgirl was an anomaly in a
Swiss village.  Unfortunately again, he was not studious; his
record in the village school had been on a par with his manual
work, and the family had not even the consolation of believing that
they were fostering a genius.  In a community where practical
industry was the highest virtue, it was not strange, perhaps, that
he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew the long climbs
and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes in quest
of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it.  Abstemious,
frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's
table were given him grudgingly.  He often went hungry rather than
ask the bread he had failed to earn.  How his great frame was
nurtured in those days he never knew; perhaps the giant mountains
recognized some kin in him and fed and strengthened him after their
own fashion.  Even his gentleness was confounded with cowardice.
"Dot vos de hardtest," he said simply; "it is not goot to be
opligit to half crush your brudder, ven he would make a laugh of
you to your sweetheart."  The end came sooner than he expected,
and, oddly enough, through this sweetheart.  "Gottlieb," she said
to him one day, "the English Fremde who stayed here last night met
me when I was carrying some of those beautiful flowers you gave me.
He asked me where they were to be found, and I told him only YOU
knew.  He wants to see you; go to him.  It may be luck to you."
Rutli went.  The stranger, an English Alpine climber of scientific
tastes, talked with him for an hour.  At the end of that time, to
everybody's astonishment, he engaged this hopeless idler as his
personal guide for three months, at the sum of five francs a day!
It was inconceivable, it was unheard of!  The Englander was as mad
as Gottlieb, whose intellect had always been under suspicion!  The
schoolmaster pursed up his lips, the pastor shook his head; no good
could come of it; the family looked upon it as another freak of
Gottlieb's, but there was one big mouth less to feed and more room
in the kitchen, and they let him go.  They parted from him as
ungraciously as they had endured his presence.

Then followed two months of sunshine in Rutli's life--association
with his beloved plants, and the intelligent sympathy and direction
of a cultivated man.  Even in altitudes so dangerous that they had
to take other and more experienced guides, Rutli was always at his
master's side.  That savant's collection of Alpine flora excelled
all previous ones; he talked freely with Rutli of further work in
the future, and relaxed his English reserve so far as to confide to
him that the outcome of their collection and observation might be a
book.  He gave a flower a Latin name, in which even the ignorant
and delighted Rutli could distinguish some likeness to his own.
But the book was never compiled.  In one of their later and more
difficult ascents they and their two additional guides were
overtaken by a sudden storm.  Swept from their feet down an ice-
bound slope, Rutli alone of the roped-together party kept a
foothold on the treacherous incline.  Here this young Titan, with
bleeding fingers clenched in a rock cleft, sustained the struggles
and held up the lives of his companions by that precious thread for
more than an hour.  Perhaps he might have saved them, but in their
desperate efforts to regain their footing the rope slipped upon a
jagged edge of outcrop and parted as if cut by a knife.  The two
guides passed without an outcry into obscurity and death; Rutli,
with a last despairing exertion, dragged to his own level his
unconscious master, crippled by a broken leg.

Your true hero is apt to tell his tale simply.  Rutli did not dwell
upon these details, nor need I.  Left alone upon a treacherous ice
slope in benumbing cold, with a helpless man, eight hours
afterwards he staggered, half blind, incoherent, and inarticulate,
into a "shelter" hut, with the dead body of his master in his
stiffened arms.  The shelter-keepers turned their attention to
Rutli, who needed it most.  Blind and delirious, with scarce a
chance for life, he was sent the next day to a hospital, where he
lay for three months, helpless, imbecile, and unknown.  The dead
body of the Englishman was identified, and sent home; the bodies of
the guides were recovered by their friends; but no one knew aught
of Rutli, even his name.  While the event was still fresh in the
minds of those who saw him enter the hut with the body of his
master, a paragraph appeared in a Berne journal recording the
heroism of this nameless man.  But it could not be corroborated nor
explained by the demented hero, and was presently forgotten.  Six
months from the day he had left his home he was discharged cured.
He had not a kreutzer in his pocket; he had never drawn his wages
from his employer; he had preferred to have it in a lump sum that
he might astonish his family on his return.  His eyes were still
weak, his memory feeble; only his great physical strength remained
through his long illness.  A few sympathizing travelers furnished
him the means to reach his native village, many miles away.  He
found his family had heard of the loss of the Englishman and the
guides, and had believed he was one of them.  Already he was
forgotten.

"Ven you vos once peliefed to be det," said Rutli, after a
philosophic pause and puff, "it vos not goot to ondeceif beoples.
You oopset somedings, soomdimes always.  Der hole dot you hef made
in der grount, among your frients and your family, vos covered up
alretty.  You are loocky if you vill not fint some vellars
shtanding upon id!  My frent, ven you vos DINK det, SHTAY det, BE
det, and you vill lif happy!"

"But your sweetheart?" I said eagerly.

A slight gleam of satire stole into Rutli's light eyes.  "My
sweetheart, ven I vos dinks det, is der miller engaged do bromply!
It is mooch better dan to a man dot vos boor and plint and grazy!
So!  Vell, der next day I pids dem goot-py, und from der door I
say, 'I am det now; but ven I next comes pack alife, I shall dis
village py! der lants, der houses all togedders.  And den for
yourselluffs look oudt!'"

"Then that's your revenge?  That is what you really intend to do?"
I said, half laughing, yet with an uneasy recollection of his
illness and enfeebled mind.

"Yes.  Look here!  I show you somedings."  He opened a drawer of
his desk and took out what appeared to be some diagrams, plans, and
a small water-colored map, like a surveyor's tracing.  "Look," he
said, laying his finger on the latter, "dat is a map from my
fillage.  I hef myselluff made it out from my memory.  Dot,"
pointing to a blank space, "is der mountain side high up, so far.
It is no goot until I vill a tunnel make or der grade lefel.  Dere
vas mine fader's house, dere vos der church, der schoolhouse, dot
vos de burgomaster's house," he went on, pointing to the respective
plots in this old curving parallelogram of the mountain shelf.  "So
was the fillage when I leave him on the 5th of March, eighteen
hundred and feefty.  Now you shall see him shoost as I vill make
him ven I go back."  He took up another plan, beautifully drawn and
colored, and evidently done by a professional hand.  It was a
practical, yet almost fairylike transformation of the same spot!
The narrow mountain shelf was widened by excavation, and a
boulevard stretched on either side.  A great hotel, not unlike the
one in which we sat, stood in an open terrace, with gardens and
fountains--the site of his father's house.  Blocks of pretty
dwellings, shops, and cafes filled the intermediate space.  I laid
down the paper.

"How long have you had this idea?"

"Efer since I left dere, fifteen years ago."

"But your father and mother may be dead by this time?"

"So, but dere vill be odders.  Und der blace--it vill remain."

"But all this will cost a fortune, and you are not sure"--

"I know shoost vot id vill gost, to a cend."

"And you think you can ever afford to carry out your idea?"

"I VILL affort id.  Ven you shall make yet some moneys and go to
Europe, you shall see.  I VILL infite you dere first.  Now coom and
look der house around."

        .        .        .        .        .        .

I did NOT make "some moneys," but I DID go to Europe.  Three years
after this last interview with Rutli I was coming from Interlaken
to Berne by rail.  I had not heard from him, and I had forgotten
the name of his village, but as I looked up from the paper I was
reading, I suddenly recognized him in the further end of the same
compartment I occupied.  His recognition of me was evidently as
sudden and unexpected.  After our first hand-grasp and greeting, I
said:--

"And how about our new village?"

"Dere is no fillage."

"What!  You have given up the idea?"

"Yes.  There is no fillage, olt or new."

"I don't understand."

He looked at me a moment.  "You have not heard?"

"No."

He gently picked up a little local guidebook that lay in my lap,
and turning its leaves, pointed to a page, and read as follows:--

"5 M. beyond, the train passes a curve R., where a fine view of the
lake may be seen.  A little to the R. rises the steep slopes of the
----, the scene of a terrible disaster.  At three o'clock on March
5, 1850, the little village of ----, lying midway of the slope,
with its population of 950 souls, was completely destroyed by a
landslip from the top of the mountain.  So sudden was the
catastrophe that not a single escape is recorded.  A large portion
of the mountain crest, as will be observed when it is seen in
profile, descended to the valley, burying the unfortunate village
to a depth variously estimated at from 1000 ft. to 1800 ft.  The
geological causes which produced this extraordinary displacement
have been fully discussed, but the greater evidence points to the
theory of subterranean glaciers.  5 M. beyond ---- the train
crosses the R. bridge."

I laid down the guide-book in breathless astonishment.

"And you never heard of this in all these years?"

"Nefer!  I asked no questions, I read no pooks.  I have no ledders
from home."

"And yet you"--  I stopped, I could not call him a fool; neither
could I, in the face of his perfect composure and undisturbed eyes,
exhibit a concern greater than his own.  An uneasy recollection of
what he confessed had been his mental condition immediately after
his accident came over me.  Had he been the victim of a strange
hallucination regarding his house and family all these years?  Were
these dreams of revenge, this fancy of creating a new village, only
an outcome of some shock arising out of the disaster itself, which
he had long since forgotten?

He was looking from the window.  "Coom," he said, "ve are near der
blace.  I vill show id to you."  He rose and passed out to the rear
platform.  We were in the rear car, and a new panorama of the lake
and mountains flashed upon us at every curve of the line.  I
followed him.  Presently he pointed to what appeared to be a sheer
wall of rock and stunted vegetation towering two or three thousand
feet above us, which started out of a gorge we were passing.  "Dere
it vos!" he said.  I saw the vast stretch of rock face rising
upward and onward, but nothing else.  No debris, no ruins, nor even
a swelling or rounding of the mountain flank over that awful tomb.
Yet, stay! as we dashed across the gorge, and the face of the
mountain shifted, high up, the sky-line was slightly broken as if a
few inches, a mere handful, of the crest was crumbled away.  And
then--both gorge and mountain vanished.

I was still embarrassed and uneasy, and knew not what to say to
this man at my side, whose hopes and ambition had been as quickly
overthrown and buried, and whose life-dream had as quickly
vanished.  But he himself, taking his pipe from his lips, broke the
silence.

"It vos a narrow esgabe!"

"What was?"

"Vy, dis dings.  If I had stayed in my fader's house, I vould haf
been det for goot, and perried too!  Somedimes dose dings cooms
oudt apout right, don't id?"

Unvanquished philosopher!  As we stood there looking at the flying
landscape and sinking lesser hills, one by one the great snow peaks
slowly arose behind them, lifting themselves, as if to take a last
wondering look at the man they had triumphed over, but had not
subdued.



THE PASSING OF ENRIQUEZ


When Enriquez Saltillo ran away with Miss Mannersley, as already
recorded in these chronicles,* her relatives and friends found it
much easier to forgive that ill-assorted union than to understand
it.  For, after all, Enriquez was the scion of an old Spanish-
Californian family, and in due time would have his share of his
father's three square leagues, whatever incongruity there was
between his lively Latin extravagance and Miss Mannersley's Puritan
precision and intellectual superiority.  They had gone to Mexico;
Mrs. Saltillo, as was known, having an interest in Aztec
antiquities, and he being utterly submissive to her wishes.  For
myself from my knowledge of Enriquez's nature, I had grave doubts
of his entire subjugation, although I knew the prevailing opinion
was that Mrs. Saltillo's superiority would speedily tame him.
Since his brief and characteristic note apprising me of his
marriage, I had not heard from him.  It was, therefore, with some
surprise, a good deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge
of reproach that, two years after, I looked up from some proofs, in
the sanctum of the "Daily Excelsior," to recognize his handwriting
on a note that was handed to me by a yellow Mexican boy.


* See "The Devotion of Enriquez," in Selected Stories by Bret Harte
Gutenberg #1312.


A single glance at its contents showed me that Mrs. Saltillo's
correct Bostonian speech had not yet subdued Enriquez's peculiar
Spanish-American slang:--

"Here we are again,--right side up with care,--at 1110 Dupont
Street, Telegraph Hill.  Second floor from top.  'Ring and push.'
'No book agents need apply.'  How's your royal nibs?  I kiss your
hand!  Come at six,--the band shall play at seven,--and regard your
friend 'Mees Boston,' who will tell you about the little old nigger
boys, and your old Uncle 'Ennery."

Two things struck me: Enriquez had not changed; Mrs. Saltillo had
certainly yielded up some of her peculiar prejudices.  For the
address given, far from being a fashionable district, was known as
the "Spanish quarter," which, while it still held some old Spanish
families, was chiefly given over to half-castes and obscurer
foreigners.  Even poverty could not have driven Mrs. Saltillo to
such a refuge against her will; nevertheless, a good deal of
concern for Enriquez's fortune mingled with my curiosity, as I
impatiently waited for six o'clock to satisfy it.

It was a breezy climb to 1110 Dupont Street; and although the
street had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation,
and were accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to
the front door, which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty
feet below.  I now painfully appreciated Enriquez's adaptation of
the time-honored joke about the second floor.  An invincible smell
of garlic almost took my remaining breath away as the door was
opened to me by a swarthy Mexican woman, whose loose camisa seemed
to be slipping from her unstable bust, and was held on only by the
mantua-like shawl which supplemented it, gripped by one brown hand.
Dizzy from my ascent to that narrow perch, which looked upon
nothing but the distant bay and shores of Contra Costa, I felt as
apologetic as if I had landed from a balloon; but the woman greeted
me with a languid Spanish smile and a lazy display of white teeth,
as if my arrival was quite natural.  Don Enriquez, "of a fact," was
not himself in the casa, but was expected "on the instant."  "Donna
Urania" was at home.

"Donna Urania"?  For an instant I had forgotten that Mrs. Saltillo's
first name was Urania, so pleasantly and spontaneously did it fall
from the Spanish lips.  Nor was I displeased at this chance of
learning something of Don Enriquez's fortunes and the Saltillo
menage before confronting my old friend.  The servant preceded me to
the next floor, and, opening a door, ushered me into the lady's
presence.

I had carried with me, on that upward climb, a lively recollection
of Miss Mannersley as I had known her two years before.  I
remembered her upright, almost stiff, slight figure, the graceful
precision of her poses, the faultless symmetry and taste of her
dress, and the atmosphere of a fastidious and wholesome cleanliness
which exhaled from her.  In the lady I saw before me, half
reclining in a rocking-chair, there was none of the stiffness and
nicety.  Habited in a loose gown of some easy, flexible, but rich
material, worn with that peculiarly indolent slouch of the Mexican
woman, Mrs. Saltillo had parted with half her individuality.  Even
her arched feet and thin ankles, the close-fitting boots or small
slippers of which were wont to accent their delicacy, were now lost
in a short, low-quartered kid shoe of the Spanish type, in which
they moved loosely.  Her hair, which she had always worn with a
certain Greek simplicity, was parted at one side.  Yet her face,
with its regularity of feature, and small, thin, red-lipped mouth,
was quite unchanged; and her velvety brown eyes were as beautiful
and inscrutable as ever.

With the same glance I had taken in her surroundings, quite as
incongruous to her former habits.  The furniture, though of old and
heavy mahogany, had suffered from careless alien hands, and was
interspersed with modern and unmatchable makeshifts, yet preserving
the distinctly scant and formal attitude of furnished lodgings.  It
was certainly unlike the artistic trifles and delicate refinements
of her uncle's drawing-room, which we all knew her taste had
dictated and ruled.  The black and white engravings, the outlined
heads of Minerva and Diana, were excluded from the walls for two
cheap colored Catholic prints,--a soulless Virgin, and the mystery
of the Bleeding Heart.  Against the wall, in one corner, hung the
only object which seemed a memento of their travels,--a singular-
looking upright Indian "papoose-case" or cradle, glaringly
decorated with beads and paint, probably an Aztec relic.  On a
round table, the velvet cover of which showed marks of usage and
abusage, there were scattered books and writing materials; and my
editorial instinct suddenly recognized, with a thrill of
apprehension, the loose leaves of an undoubted manuscript.  This
circumstance, taken with the fact of Donna Urania's hair being
parted on one side, and the general negligee of her appearance, was
a disturbing revelation.

My wandering eye apparently struck her, for after the first
greeting she pointed to the manuscript with a smile.

"Yes; that is THE manuscript.  I suppose Enriquez told you all
about it?  He said he had written."

I was dumfounded.  I certainly had not understood ALL of Enriquez's
slang; it was always so decidedly his own, and peculiar.  Yet I
could not recall any allusion to this.

"He told me something of it, but very vaguely," I ventured to say
deprecatingly; "but I am afraid that I thought more of seeing my
old friend again than of anything else."

"During our stay in Mexico," continued Mrs. Saltillo, with
something of her old precision, "I made some researches into Aztec
history, a subject always deeply interesting to me, and I thought I
would utilize the result by throwing it on paper.  Of course it is
better fitted for a volume of reference than for a newspaper, but
Enriquez thought you might want to use it for your journal."

I knew that Enriquez had no taste for literature, and had even
rather depreciated it in the old days, with his usual extravagance;
but I managed to say very pleasantly that I was delighted with his
suggestion and should be glad to read the manuscript.  After all,
it was not improbable that Mrs. Saltillo, who was educated and
intelligent, should write well, if not popularly.  "Then Enriquez
does not begrudge you the time that your work takes from him," I
added laughingly.  "You seem to have occupied your honeymoon
practically."

"We quite comprehend our respective duties," said Mrs. Saltillo
dryly; "and have from the first.  We have our own lives to live,
independent of my uncle and Enriquez's father.  We have not only
accepted the responsibility of our own actions, but we both feel
the higher privilege of creating our own conditions without
extraneous aid from our relatives."

It struck me that this somewhat exalted statement was decidedly a
pose, or a return of Urania Mannersley's old ironical style.  I
looked quietly into her brown, near-sighted eyes; but, as once
before, my glance seemed to slip from their moist surface without
penetrating the inner thought beneath.  "And what does Enriquez do
for HIS part?" I asked smilingly.

I fully expected to hear that the energetic Enriquez was utilizing
his peculiar tastes and experiences by horse-breaking, stock-
raising, professional bull-fighting, or even horse-racing, but was
quite astonished when she answered quietly:--

"Enriquez is giving himself up to geology and practical metallurgy,
with a view to scientific, purely scientific, mining."

Enriquez and geology!  In that instant all I could remember of it
were his gibes at the "geologian," as he was wont to term Professor
Dobbs, a former admirer of Miss Mannersley's.  To add to my
confusion Mrs. Saltillo at the same moment absolutely voiced my
thought.

"You may remember Professor Dobbs," she went on calmly, "one of the
most eminent scientists over here, and a very old Boston friend.
He has taken Enriquez in hand.  His progress is most satisfactory;
we have the greatest hopes of him."

"And how soon do you both hope to have some practical results of
his study?" I could not help asking a little mischievously; for I
somehow resented the plural pronoun in her last sentence.

"Very soon," said Mrs. Saltillo, ignoring everything but the
question.  "You know Enriquez's sanguine temperament.  Perhaps he
is already given to evolving theories without a sufficient basis of
fact.  Still, he has the daring of a discoverer.  His ideas of the
oolitic formation are not without originality, and Professor Dobbs
says that in his conception of the Silurian beach there are gleams
that are distinctly precious."

I looked at Mrs. Saltillo, who had reinforced her eyes with her old
piquant pince-nez, but could detect no irony in them.  She was
prettily imperturbable, that was all.  There was an awkward
silence.  Then it was broken by a bounding step on the stairs, a
wide-open fling of the door, and Enriquez pirouetted into the room:
Enriquez, as of old, unchanged from the crown of his smooth, coal-
black hair to the tips of his small, narrow Arabian feet; Enriquez,
with his thin, curling mustache, his dancing eyes set in his
immovable face, just as I had always known him!

He affected to lapse against the door for a minute, as if staggered
by a resplendent vision.  Then he said:--

"What do I regard?  Is it a dream, or have I again got them--thees
jimjams?  My best friend and my best--I mean my ONLY--wife!
Embrace me!"

He gave me an enthusiastic embrace and a wink like sheet-lightning,
passed quickly to his wife, before whom he dropped on one knee,
raised the toe of her slipper to his lips, and then sank on the
sofa in simulated collapse, murmuring, "Thees is too mooch of white
stone for one day!"

Through all this I saw his wife regarding him with exactly the same
critically amused expression with which she had looked upon him in
the days of their strange courtship.  She evidently had not tired
of his extravagance, and yet I feel as puzzled by her manner as
then.  She rose and said: "I suppose you have a good deal to say to
each other, and I will leave you by yourselves."  Turning to her
husband, she added, "I have already spoken about the Aztec
manuscript."

The word brought Enriquez to his feet again.  "Ah!  The little old
nigger--you have read?"  I began to understand.  "My wife, my best
friend, and the little old nigger, all in one day.  Eet is
perfect!"  Nevertheless, in spite of this ecstatic and overpowering
combination, he hurried to take his wife's hand; kissing it, he led
her to a door opening into another room, made her a low bow to the
ground as she passed out, and then rejoined me.

"So these are the little old niggers you spoke of in your note," I
said, pointing to the manuscript.  "Deuce take me if I understood
you!"

"Ah, my leetle brother, it is YOU who have changed!" said Enriquez
dolorously.  "Is it that you no more understand American, or have
the 'big head' of the editor?  Regard me!  Of these Aztecs my wife
have made study.  She have pursued the little nigger to his cave,
his grotto, where he is dead a thousand year.  I have myself
assist, though I like it not, because thees mummy, look you,
Pancho, is not lively.  And the mummy who is not dead, believe me!
even the young lady mummy, you shall not take to your heart.  But
my wife"--he stopped, and kissed his hand toward the door whence
she had flitted--"ah, SHE is wonderful!  She has made the story of
them, the peecture of them, from the life and on the instant!  You
shall take them, my leetle brother, for your journal; you shall
announce in the big letter: 'Mooch Importance.  The Aztec, He is
Found.'  'How He Look and Lif.'  'The Everlasting Nigger.'  You
shall sell many paper, and Urania shall have scoop in much
spondulics and rocks.  Hoop-la!  For--you comprehend?--my wife and
I have settled that she shall forgif her oncle; I shall forgif my
father; but from them we take no cent, not a red, not a scad!  We
are independent!  Of ourselves we make a Fourth of July.  United we
stand; divided we shall fall over!  There you are!  Bueno!"

It was impossible to resist his wild, yet perfectly sincere,
extravagance, his dancing black eyes and occasional flash of white
teeth in his otherwise immovable and serious countenance.
Nevertheless, I managed to say:--

"But how about yourself, Enriquez, and this geology, you know?"

His eyes twinkled.  "Ah, you shall hear.  But first you shall take
a drink.  I have the very old Bourbon.  He is not so old as the
Aztec, but, believe me, he is very much liflier.  Attend!  Hol'
on!"  He was already rummaging on a shelf, but apparently without
success; then he explored a buffet, with no better results, and
finally attacked a large drawer, throwing out on the floor, with
his old impetuosity, a number of geological specimens, carefully
labeled.  I picked up one that had rolled near me.  It was labeled
"Conglomerate sandstone."  I picked up another: it had the same
label.

"Then you are really collecting?" I said, with astonishment.

"Ciertamente," responded Enriquez,--"what other fool shall I look?
I shall relate of this geology when I shall have found this beast
of a bottle.  Ah, here he have hide!"  He extracted from a drawer a
bottle nearly full of spirits,--tippling was not one of Enriquez's
vices.  "You shall say 'when.'  'Ere's to our noble selfs!"

When he had drunk, I picked up another fragment of his collection.
It had the same label.  "You are very rich in 'conglomerate
sandstone,'" I said.  "Where do you find it?"

"In the street," said Enriquez, with great calmness.

"In the street?" I echoed.

"Yes, my friend!  He ees call the 'cobblestone,' also the 'pouding-
stone,' when he ees at his home in the country.  He ees also a
small 'boulder.'  I pick him up; I crack him; he made three
separate piece of conglomerate sandstone.  I bring him home to my
wife in my pocket.  She rejoice; we are happy.  When comes the
efening, I sit down and make him a label; while my wife, she sit
down and write of the Aztec.  Ah, my friend, you shall say of the
geology it ees a fine, a BEAUTIFUL study; but the study of the
wife, and what shall please her, believe me, ees much finer!
Believe your old Uncle 'Ennery every time!  On thees question he
gets there; he gets left, nevarre!"

"But Professor Dobbs, your geologian, what does HE say to this
frequent recurrence of the conglomerate sandstone period in your
study?" I asked quickly.

"He say nothing.  You comprehend?  He ees a profound geologian, but
he also has the admiration excessif for my wife Urania."  He
stopped to kiss his hand again toward the door, and lighted a
cigarette.  "The geologian would not that he should break up the
happy efening of his friends by thees small detail.  He put aside
his head--so; he say, 'A leetle freestone, a leetle granite, now
and then, for variety; they are building in Montgomery Street.'  I
take the hint, like a wink to the horse that has gone blind.  I
attach to myself part of the edifice that is erecting himself in
Montgomery Street.  I crack him; I bring him home.  I sit again at
the feet of my beautiful Urania, and I label him 'Freestone,'
'Granite;' but I do not say 'from Parrott's Bank'--eet is not
necessary for our happiness."

"And you do this sort of thing only because you think it pleases
your wife?" I asked bluntly.

"My friend," rejoined Enriquez, perching himself on the back of the
sofa, and caressing his knees as he puffed his cigarette
meditatively, "you have ask a conundrum.  Gif to me an easier one!
It is of truth that I make much of these thing to please Urania.
But I shall confess all.  Behold, I appear to you, my leetle
brother, in my camisa--my shirt!  I blow on myself; I gif myself
away."

He rose gravely from the sofa, and drew a small box from one of the
drawers of the wardrobe.  Opening it, he discovered several
specimens of gold-bearing quartz, and one or two scales of gold.
"Thees," he said, "friend Pancho, is my own geology; for thees I am
what you see.  But I say nothing to Urania; for she have much
disgust of mere gold,--of what she calls 'vulgar mining,'--and
believe me, a fear of the effect of 'speculation' upon my
temperamento--you comprehend my complexion, my brother?  Reflect
upon it, Pancho!  I, who am the filosofo, if that I am anything!"
He looked at me with great levity of eye and supernatural gravity
of demeanor.  "But eet ees the jealous affection of the wife, my
friend, for which I make play to her with the humble leetle
pouding-stone rather than the gold quartz that affrights."

"But what do you want with them, if you have no shares in anything
and do not speculate?" I asked.

"Pardon!  That ees where you slip up, my leetle friend."  He took
from the same drawer a clasped portfolio, and unlocked it,
producing half a dozen prospectuses and certificates of mining
shares.  I stood aghast as I recognized the names of one or two
extravagant failures of the last ten years,--"played-out" mines
that had been galvanized into deceptive life in London, Paris, and
New York, to the grief of shareholders abroad and the laughter of
the initiated at home.  I could scarcely keep my equanimity.  "You
do not mean to say that you have any belief or interest in this
rubbish?" I said quickly.

"What you call 'rubbish,' my good Pancho, ees the rubbish that the
American speculator have dump himself upon them in the shaft, the
rubbish of the advertisement, of the extravagant expense, of the
salary, of the assessment, of the 'freeze-out.'  For thees, look
you, is the old Mexican mine.  My grandfather and hees father have
both seen them work before you were born, and the American knew not
there was gold in California."

I knew he spoke truly.  One or two were original silver mines in
the south, worked by peons and Indian slaves, a rope windlass, and
a venerable donkey.

"But those were silver mines," I said suspiciously, "and these are
gold specimens."

"They are from the same mother," said the imperturbable Enriquez,--
"the same mine.  The old peons worked him for SILVER, the precious
dollar that buy everything, that he send in the galleon to the
Philippines for the silk and spice!  THAT is good enough for HIM!
For the gold he made nothing, even as my leetle wife Urania.  And
regard me here!  There ees a proverb of my father's which say that
'it shall take a gold mine to work a silver mine,' so mooch more he
cost.  You work him, you are lost!  Naturalmente, if you turn him
round, if it take you only a silver mine to work a gold mine, you
are gain.  Thees ees logic!"

The intense gravity of his face at this extraordinary deduction
upset my own.  But as I was never certain that Enriquez was not
purposely mystifying me, with some ulterior object, I could not
help saying a little wickedly:--

"Yes, I understand all that; but how about this geologian?  Will he
not tell your wife?  You know he was a great admirer of hers."

"That shall show the great intelligence of him, my Pancho.  He will
have the four S's,' especially the secreto!"

There could be no serious discussion in his present mood.  I
gathered up the pages of his wife's manuscript, said lightly that,
as she had the first claim upon my time, I should examine the Aztec
material and report in a day or two.  As I knew I had little chance
in the hands of these two incomprehensibles together, I begged him
not to call his wife, but to convey my adieus to her, and, in spite
of his embraces and protestations, I managed to get out of the
room.  But I had scarcely reached the front door when I heard
Enriquez's voice and his bounding step on the stairs.  In another
moment his arm was round my neck.

"You must return on the instant!  Mother of God!  I haf forget, SHE
haf forget, WE all haf forget!  But you have not seen him!"

"Seen whom?"

"El nino, the baby!  You comprehend, pig!  The criaturica, the
leetle child of ourselfs!"

"The baby?" I said confusedly.  "IS there--is there a BABY?"

"You hear him?" said Enriquez, sending an appealing voice upward.
"You hear him, Urania?  You comprehend.  This beast of a leetle
brother demands if there ees one!"

"I beg your pardon," I said, hurriedly reascending the stairs.  On
the landing I met Mrs. Saltillo, but as calm, composed, and precise
as her husband was extravagant and vehement.  "It was an oversight
of Enriquez's," she said quietly, reentering the room with us; "and
was all the more strange, as the child was in the room with you all
the time."

She pointed to the corner of the wall, where hung what I had
believed to be an old Indian relic.  To my consternation, it WAS a
bark "papoose-case," occupied by a LIVING child, swathed and
bandaged after the approved Indian fashion.  It was asleep, I
believe, but it opened a pair of bright huckleberry eyes, set in
the smallest of features, that were like those of a carved ivory
idol, and uttered a "coo" at the sound of its mother's voice.  She
stood on one side with unruffled composure, while Enriquez threw
himself into an attitude before it, with clasped hands, as if it
had been an image of the Holy Child.  For myself, I was too
astounded to speak; luckily, my confusion was attributed to the
inexperience of a bachelor.

"I have adopted," said Mrs. Saltillo, with the faintest touch of
maternal pride in her manner, "what I am convinced is the only
natural and hygienic mode of treating the human child.  It may be
said to be a reversion to the aborigine, but I have yet to learn
that it is not superior to our civilized custom.  By these bandages
the limbs of the infant are kept in proper position until they are
strong enough to support the body, and such a thing as malformation
is unknown.  It is protected by its cradle, which takes the place
of its incubating-shell, from external injury, the injudicious
coddling of nurses, the so-called 'dancings' and pernicious
rockings.  The supine position, as in the adult, is imposed only at
night.  By the aid of this strap it may be carried on long
journeys, either by myself or by Enriquez, who thus shares with me,
as he fully recognizes, its equal responsibility and burden."

"It--certainly does not--cry," I stammered.

"Crying," said Mrs. Saltillo, with a curve of her pretty red lip.
"is the protest of the child against insanitary and artificial
treatment.  In its upright, unostentatious cradle it is protected
against that injudicious fondling and dangerous promiscuous
osculation to which, as an infant in human arms, it is so often
subjected.  Above all, it is kept from that shameless and
mortifying publicity so unjust to the weak and unformed animal.
The child repays this consideration by a gratifying silence.  It
cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or actions;
it cannot participate in our pleasures.  Why should it be forced
into premature contact with them, merely to feed our vanity or
selfishness?  Why should we assume our particular parental accident
as superior to the common lot?  If we do not give our offspring
that prominence before our visitors so common to the young wife and
husband, it is for that reason solely; and this may account for
what seemed the forgetfulness of Enriquez in speaking of it or
pointing it out to you.  And I think his action in calling you back
to see it was somewhat precipitate.  As one does not usually
introduce an unknown and inferior stranger without some previous
introduction, he might have asked you if you wished to see the baby
before he recalled you."

I looked from Urania's unfathomable eyes to Enriquez's impenetrable
countenance.  I might have been equal to either of them alone, but
together they were invincible.  I looked hopelessly at the baby.
With its sharp little eyes and composed face, it certainly was a
marvelous miniature of Enriquez.  I said so.

"It would be singular if it was not," said Mrs. Saltillo dryly;
"and as I believe it is by no means an uncommon fact in human
nature, it seems to me strange that people should insist upon it as
a discovery.  It is an inheritance, however, that in due time
progress and science will no doubt interrupt, to the advancement of
the human race.  I need not say that both Enriquez and myself look
forward to it with confident tranquillity."

There was clearly nothing for me to do now but to shake hands again
and take my leave.  Yet I was so much impressed with the unreality
of the whole scene that when I reached the front door I had a
strong impulse to return suddenly and fall in upon them in their
relaxed and natural attitudes.  They could not keep up this pose
between themselves; and I half expected to see their laughing faces
at the window, as I glanced up before wending my perilous way to
the street.

I found Mrs. Saltillo's manuscript well written and, in the
narrative parts, even graphic and sparkling.  I suppressed some
general remarks on the universe, and some correlative theories of
existence, as not appertaining particularly to the Aztecs, and as
not meeting any unquenchable thirst for information on the part of
the readers of the "Daily Excelsior."  I even promoted my fair
contributor to the position of having been commissioned, at great
expense, to make the Mexican journey especially for the "Excelsior."
This, with Mrs. Saltillo's somewhat precise preraphaelite drawings
and water-colors, vilely reproduced by woodcuts, gave quite a
sensational air to her production, which, divided into parts, for
two or three days filled a whole page of the paper.  I am not aware
of any particular service that it did to ethnology; but, as I
pointed out in the editorial column, it showed that the people of
California were not given over by material greed to the exclusion of
intellectual research; and as it was attacked instantly in long
communications from one or two scientific men, it thus produced more
copy.

Briefly, it was a boom for the author and the "Daily Excelsior."  I
should add, however, that a rival newspaper intimated that it was
also a boom for Mrs. Saitillo's HUSBAND, and called attention to
the fact that a deserted Mexican mine, known as "El Bolero," was
described graphically in the Aztec article among the news, and
again appeared in the advertising columns of the same paper.  I
turned somewhat indignantly to the file of the "Excelsior," and,
singularly enough, found in the elaborate prospectus of a new gold-
mining company the description of the El Bolero mine as a QUOTATION
from the Aztec article, with extraordinary inducements for the
investment of capital in the projected working of an old mine.  If
I had had any difficulty in recognizing in the extravagant style
the flamboyant hand of Enriquez in English writing, I might have
read his name plainly enough displayed as president of the company.
It was evidently the prospectus of one of the ventures he had shown
me.  I was more amused than indignant at the little trick he had
played upon my editorial astuteness.  After all, if I had thus
benefited the young couple I was satisfied.  I had not seen them
since my first visit, as I was very busy,--my communications with
Mrs. Saltillo had been carried on by letters and proofs,--and when
I did finally call at their house, it was only to find that they
were visiting at San Jose.  I wondered whether the baby was still
hanging on the wall, or, if he was taken with them, who carried
him.

A week later the stock of El Bolero was quoted at par.  More than
that, an incomprehensible activity had been given to all the
deserted Mexican mines, and people began to look up scrip hitherto
thrown aside as worthless.  Whether it was one of those extraordinary
fevers which attacked Californian speculation in the early days, or
whether Enriquez Saltillo had infected the stock-market with his
own extravagance, I never knew; but plans as wild, inventions as
fantastic, and arguments as illogical as ever emanated from his own
brain, were set forth "on 'Change" with a gravity equal to his own.
The most reasonable hypothesis was that it was the effect of the
well-known fact that the Spanish Californian hitherto had not been a
mining speculator, nor connected in any way with the gold production
on his native soil, deeming it inconsistent with his patriarchal
life and landed dignity, and that when a "son of one of the oldest
Spanish families, identified with the land and its peculiar character
for centuries, lent himself to its mineral exploitations,"--I beg to
say that I am quoting from the advertisement in the "Excelsior,"--
"it was a guerdon of success."  This was so far true that in a week
Enriquez Saltillo was rich, and in a fair way to become a millionaire.


It was a hot afternoon when I alighted from the stifling Wingdam
coach, and stood upon the cool, deep veranda of the Carquinez
Springs Hotel.  After I had shaken off the dust which had lazily
followed us, in our descent of the mountain road, like a red smoke,
occasionally overflowing the coach windows, I went up to the room I
had engaged for my brief holiday.  I knew the place well, although
I could see that the hotel itself had lately been redecorated and
enlarged to meet the increasing requirements of fashion.  I knew
the forest of enormous redwoods where one might lose one's self in
a five minutes' walk from the veranda.  I knew the rocky trail that
climbed the mountain to the springs, twisting between giant
boulders.  I knew the arid garden, deep in the wayside dust, with
its hurriedly planted tropical plants, already withering in the dry
autumn sunshine, and washed into fictitious freshness, night and
morning by the hydraulic irrigating-hose.  I knew, too, the cool,
reposeful night winds that swept down from invisible snow-crests
beyond, with the hanging out of monstrous stars, that too often
failed to bring repose to the feverish guests.  For the
overstrained neurotic workers who fled hither from the baking
plains of Sacramento, or from the chill sea-fogs of San Francisco,
never lost the fierce unrest that had driven them here.
Unaccustomed to leisure, their enforced idleness impelled them to
seek excitement in the wildest gayeties; the bracing mountain air
only reinvigorated them to pursue pleasure as they had pursued the
occupations they had left behind.  Their sole recreations were
furious drives over break-neck roads; mad, scampering cavalcades
through the sedate woods; gambling parties in private rooms, where
large sums were lost by capitalists on leave; champagne suppers;
and impromptu balls that lasted through the calm, reposeful night
to the first rays of light on the distant snowline.  Unimaginative
men, in their temporary sojourn they more often outraged or
dispossessed nature in her own fastnesses than courted her for
sympathy or solitude.  There were playing-cards left lying behind
boulders, and empty champagne bottles forgotten in forest depths.

I remembered all this when, refreshed by a bath, I leaned from the
balcony of my room and watched the pulling up of a brake, drawn by
six dusty, foam-bespattered horses, driven by a noted capitalist.
As its hot, perspiring, closely veiled yet burning-faced fair
occupants descended, in all the dazzling glory of summer toilets,
and I saw the gentlemen consult their watches with satisfaction,
and congratulate their triumphant driver, I knew the characteristic
excitement they had enjoyed from a "record run," probably for a
bet, over a mountain road in a burning sun.

"Not bad, eh?  Forty-four minutes from the summit!"

The voice seemed at my elbow.  I turned quickly, to recognize an
acquaintance, a young San Francisco broker, leaning from the next
balcony to mine.  But my attention was just then preoccupied by the
face and figure, which seemed familiar to me, of a woman who was
alighting from the brake.

"Who is that?" I asked; "the straight slim woman in gray, with the
white veil twisted round her felt hat?"

"Mrs. Saltillo," he answered; "wife of 'El Bolero' Saltillo, don't
you know.  Mighty pretty woman, if she is a little stiffish and set
up."

Then I had not been mistaken!  "Is Enriquez--is her husband--here?"
I asked quickly.

The man laughed.  "I reckon not.  This is the place for other
people's husbands, don't you know."

Alas! I DID know; and as there flashed upon me all the miserable
scandals and gossip connected with this reckless, frivolous
caravansary, I felt like resenting his suggestion.  But my
companion's next words were more significant:--

"Besides, if what they say is true, Saltillo wouldn't be very
popular here."

"I don't understand," I said quickly.

"Why, after all that row he had with the El Bolero Company."

"I never heard of any row," I said, in astonishment.

The broker laughed incredulously.  "Come! and YOU a newspaper man!
Well, maybe they DID try to hush it up, and keep it out of the
papers, on account of the stock.  But it seems he got up a reg'lar
shindy with the board, one day; called 'em thieves and swindlers,
and allowed he was disgracing himself as a Spanish hidalgo by
having anything to do with 'em.  Talked, they say, about Charles V.
of Spain, or some other royal galoot, giving his ancestors the land
in trust!  Clean off his head, I reckon.  Then shunted himself off
the company, and sold out.  You can guess he wouldn't be very
popular around here, with Jim Bestley, there," pointing to the
capitalist who had driven the brake, "who used to be on the board
with him.  No, sir.  He was either lying low for something, or was
off his head.  Think of his throwing up a place like that!"

"Nonsense!" I said indignantly.  "He is mercurial, and has the
quick impulsiveness of his race, but I believe him as sane as any
who sat with him on the board.  There must be some mistake, or you
haven't got the whole story."  Nevertheless, I did not care to
discuss an old friend with a mere acquaintance, and I felt secretly
puzzled to account for his conduct, in the face of his previous
cleverness in manipulating the El Bolero, and the undoubted
fascination he had previously exercised over the stockholders.  The
story had, of course, been garbled in repetition.  I had never
before imagined what might be the effect of Enriquez's peculiar
eccentricities upon matter-of-fact people,--I had found them only
amusing,--and the broker's suggestion annoyed me.  However, Mrs.
Saltillo was here in the hotel, and I should, of course, meet her.
Would she be as frank with me?

I was disappointed at not finding her in the drawing-room or on the
veranda; and the heat being still unusually oppressive, I strolled
out toward the redwoods, hesitating for a moment in the shade
before I ran the fiery gauntlet of the garden.  To my surprise, I
had scarcely passed the giant sentinels on its outskirts before I
found that, from some unusual condition of the atmosphere, the cold
undercurrent of air which generally drew through these pillared
aisles was withheld that afternoon; it was absolutely hotter than
in the open, and the wood was charged throughout with the acrid
spices of the pine.  I turned back to the hotel, reascended to my
bedroom, and threw myself in an armchair by the open window.  My
room was near the end of a wing; the corner room at the end was
next to mine, on the same landing.  Its closed door, at right
angles to my open one, gave upon the staircase, but was plainly
visible from where I sat.  I remembered being glad that it was
shut, as it enabled me without offense to keep my own door open.

The house was very quiet.  The leaves of a catalpa, across the
roadway, hung motionless.  Somebody yawned on the veranda below.  I
threw away my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes.  I think I
had not lost consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was
awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building.  As I
staggered to my feet, I saw the four pictures hanging against the
wall swing outwardly from it on their cords, and my door swing back
against the wall.  At the same moment, acted upon by the same
potential impulse, the door of the end room in the hall, opposite
the stairs, also swung open.  In that brief moment I had a glimpse
of the interior of the room, of two figures, a man and a woman, the
latter clinging to her companion in abject terror.  It was only for
an instant, for a second thrill passed through the house, the
pictures clattered back against the wall, the door of the end room
closed violently on its strange revelation, and my own door swung
back also.  Apprehensive of what might happen, I sprang toward it,
but only to arrest it an inch or two before it should shut, when,
as my experience had taught me, it might stick by the subsidence of
the walls.  But it did stick ajar, and remained firmly fixed in
that position.  From the clattering of the knob of the other door,
and the sound of hurried voices behind it, I knew that the same
thing had happened there when that door had fully closed.

I was familiar enough with earthquakes to know that, with the
second shock or subsidence of the earth, the immediate danger was
passed, and so I was able to note more clearly what else was
passing.  There was the usual sudden stampede of hurrying feet, the
solitary oath and scream, the half-hysterical laughter, and
silence.  Then the tumult was reawakened to the sound of high
voices, talking all together, or the impatient calling of absentees
in halls and corridors.  Then I heard the quick swish of female
skirts on the staircase, and one of the fair guests knocked
impatiently at the door of the end room, still immovably fixed.  At
the first knock there was a sudden cessation of the hurried
whisperings and turning of the doorknob.

"Mrs. Saltillo, are you there?  Are you frightened?" she called.

"Mrs. Saltillo"!  It was SHE, then, who was in the room!  I drew
nearer my door, which was still fixed ajar.  Presently a voice,--
Mrs. Saltillo's voice,--with a constrained laugh in it, came from
behind the door: "Not a bit.  I'll come down in a minute."

"Do," persisted the would-be intruder.  "It's all over now, but
we're all going out into the garden; it's safer."

"All right," answered Mrs. Saltillo.  "Don't wait, dear.  I'll
follow.  Run away, now."

The visitor, who was evidently still nervous, was glad to hurry
away, and I heard her retreating step on the staircase.  The
rattling of the door began again, and at last it seemed to yield to
a stronger pull, and opened sufficiently to allow Mrs. Saltillo to
squeeze through.  I withdrew behind my door.  I fancied that it
creaked as she passed, as if, noticing it ajar, she had laid an
inquiring hand upon it.  I waited, but she was not followed by any
one.  I wondered if I had been mistaken.  I was going to the bell-
rope to summon assistance to move my own door when a sudden
instinct withheld me.  If there was any one still in that room, he
might come from it just as the servant answered my call, and a
public discovery would be unavoidable.  I was right.  In another
instant the figure of a man, whose face I could not discern,
slipped out of the room, passed my door, and went stealthily down
the staircase.

Convinced of this, I resolved not to call public attention to my
being in my own room at the time of the incident; so I did not
summon any one, but, redoubling my efforts, I at last opened the
door sufficiently to pass out, and at once joined the other guests
in the garden.  Already, with characteristic recklessness and
audacity, the earthquake was made light of; the only dictate of
prudence had resolved itself into a hilarious proposal to "camp
out" in the woods all night, and have a "torch-light picnic."  Even
then preparations were being made for carrying tents, blankets, and
pillows to the adjacent redwoods; dinner and supper, cooked at
campfires, were to be served there on stumps of trees and fallen
logs.  The convulsion of nature had been used as an excuse for one
of the wildest freaks of extravagance that Carquinez Springs had
ever known.  Perhaps that quick sense of humor which dominates the
American male in exigencies of this kind kept the extravagances
from being merely bizarre and grotesque, and it was presently known
that the hotel and its menage were to be appropriately burlesqued
by some of the guests, who, attired as Indians, would personate the
staff, from the oracular hotel proprietor himself down to the smart
hotel clerk.

During these arrangements I had a chance of drawing near Mrs.
Saltillo.  I fancied she gave a slight start as she recognized me;
but her greetings were given with her usual precision.  "Have you
been here long?" she asked.

"I have only just come," I replied laughingly; "in time for the
shock."

"Ah, you felt it, then?  I was telling these ladies that our
eminent geologist, Professor Dobbs, assured me that these seismic
disturbances in California have a very remote centre, and are
seldom serious."

"It must be very satisfactory to have the support of geology at
such a moment," I could not help saying, though I had not the
slightest idea whose the figure was that I had seen, nor, indeed,
had I recognized it among the guests.  She did not seem to detect
any significance in my speech, and I added: "And where is Enriquez?
He would enjoy this proposed picnic to-night."

"Enriquez is at Salvatierra Rancho, which he lately bought from his
cousin."

"And the baby?  Surely, here is a chance for you to hang him up on
a redwood tonight, in his cradle."

"The boy," said Mrs. Saltillo quickly, "is no longer in his cradle;
he has passed the pupa state, and is now free to develop his own
perfected limbs.  He is with his father.  I do not approve of
children being submitted to the indiscriminate attentions of a
hotel.  I am here myself only for that supply of ozone indicated
for brain exhaustion."

She looked so pretty and prim in her gray dress, so like her old
correct self, that I could not think of anything but her mental
attitude, which did not, by the way, seem much like mental
depression.  Yet I was aware that I was getting no information of
Enriquez's condition or affairs, unless the whole story told by the
broker was an exaggeration.  I did not, however, dare to ask more
particularly.

"You remember Professor Dobbs?" she asked abruptly.

This recalled a suspicion awakened by my vision, so suddenly that I
felt myself blushing.  She did not seem to notice it, and was
perfectly composed.

"I do remember him.  Is he here?"

"He is; that is what makes it so particularly unfortunate for me.
You see, after that affair of the board, and Enriquez's withdrawal,
although Enriquez may have been a little precipitate in his
energetic way, I naturally took my husband's part in public; for
although we preserve our own independence inviolable, we believe in
absolute confederation as against society."

"But what has Professor Dobbs to do with the board?" I interrupted.

"The professor was scientific and geological adviser to the board,
and it was upon some report or suggestion of his that Enriquez took
issue, against the sentiment of the board.  It was a principle
affecting Enriquez's Spanish sense of honor."

"Do tell me all about it," I said eagerly; "I am very anxious to
know the truth."

"As I was not present at the time," said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my
eagerness with a gentle frigidity, "I am unable to do so.  Anything
else would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte.  I do not
approve of gossip."

"But what did Enriquez tell you?  You surely know that."

"THAT, being purely confidential, as between husband and wife,--
perhaps I should say partner and partner,--of course you do not
expect me to disclose.  Enough that I was satisfied with it.  I
should not have spoken to you about it at all, but that, through
myself and Enriquez, you are an acquaintance of the professor's,
and I might save you the awkwardness of presenting yourself with
him.  Otherwise, although you are a friend of Enriquez, it need not
affect your acquaintance with the professor."

"Hang the professor!" I ejaculated.  "I don't care a rap for HIM."

"Then I differ with you," said Mrs. Saltillo, with precision.  "He
is distinctly an able man, and one cannot but miss the contact of
his original mind and his liberal teachings."

Here she was joined by one of the ladies, and I lounged away.  I
dare say it was very mean and very illogical, but the unsatisfactory
character of this interview made me revert again to the singular
revelation I had seen a few hours before.  I looked anxiously for
Professor Dobbs; but when I did meet him, with an indifferent nod of
recognition, I found I could by no means identify him with the
figure of her mysterious companion.  And why should I suspect him at
all, in the face of Mrs. Saltillo's confessed avoidance of him?
Who, then, could it have been?  I had seen them but an instant, in
the opening and the shutting of a door.  It was merely the shadowy
bulk of a man that flitted past my door, after all.  Could I have
imagined the whole thing?  Were my perceptive faculties--just
aroused from slumber, too insufficiently clear to be relied upon?
Would I not have laughed had Urania, or even Enriquez himself, told
me such a story?

As I reentered the hotel the clerk handed me a telegram.  "There's
been a pretty big shake all over the country," he said eagerly.
"Everybody is getting news and inquiries from their friends.
Anything fresh?"  He paused interrogatively as I tore open the
envelope.  The dispatch had been redirected from the office of the
"Daily Excelsior."  It was dated, "Salvatierra Rancho," and
contained a single line: "Come and see your old uncle 'Ennery."

There was nothing in the wording of the message that was unlike
Enriquez's usual light-hearted levity, but the fact that he should
have TELEGRAPHED it to me struck me uneasily.  That I should have
received it at the hotel where his wife and Professor Dobbs were
both staying, and where I had had such a singular experience,
seemed to me more than a mere coincidence.  An instinct that the
message was something personal to Enriquez and myself kept me from
imparting it to Mrs. Saltillo.  After worrying half the night in
our bizarre camp in the redwoods, in the midst of a restless
festivity which was scarcely the repose I had been seeking at
Carquinez Springs, I resolved to leave the next day for Salvatierra
Rancho.  I remembered the rancho,--a low, golden-brown, adobe-
walled quadrangle, sleeping like some monstrous ruminant in a
hollow of the Contra Costa Range.  I recalled, in the midst of this
noisy picnic, the slumberous coolness of its long corridors and
soundless courtyard, and hailed it as a relief.  The telegram was a
sufficient excuse for my abrupt departure.  In the morning I left,
but without again seeing either Mrs. Saltillo or the professor.

It was late the next afternoon when I rode through the canada that
led to the rancho.  I confess my thoughts were somewhat gloomy, in
spite of my escape from the noisy hotel; but this was due to the
sombre scenery through which I had just ridden, and the monotonous
russet of the leagues of wild oats.  As I approached the rancho, I
saw that Enriquez had made no attempt to modernize the old casa,
and that even the garden was left in its lawless native luxuriance,
while the rude tiled sheds near the walled corral contained the old
farming implements, unchanged for a century, even to the ox-carts,
the wheels of which were made of a single block of wood.  A few
peons, in striped shirts and velvet jackets, were sunning
themselves against a wall, and near them hung a half-drained
pellejo, or goatskin water-bag.  The air of absolute shiftlessness
must have been repellent to Mrs. Saltillo's orderly precision, and
for a moment I pitied her.  But it was equally inconsistent with
Enriquez's enthusiastic ideas of American progress, and the
extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the improvements
he would make when he had a fortune.  I was feeling uneasy again,
when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky
trail that joined my own.  At the same instant a horseman dashed
past me at full speed.  I had barely time to swerve my own horse
aside to avoid a collision, yet in that brief moment I recognized
the figure of Enriquez.  But his face I should have scarcely known.
It was hard and fixed.  His upper lip and thin, penciled mustache
were drawn up over his teeth, which were like a white gash in his
dark face.  He turned into the courtyard of the rancho.  I put
spurs to my horse, and followed, in nervous expectation.  He turned
in his saddle as I entered.  But the next moment he bounded from
his horse, and, before I could dismount, flew to my side and
absolutely lifted me from the saddle to embrace me.  It was the old
Enriquez again; his face seemed to have utterly changed in that
brief moment.

"This is all very well, old chap," I said; "but do you know that
you nearly ran me down, just now, with that infernal half-broken
mustang?  Do you usually charge the casa at that speed?"

"Pardon, my leetle brother!  But here you shall slip up.  The
mustang is not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all!  Look at his
hoof--never have a shoe been there.  For myself--attend me!  When I
ride alone, I think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea
he go like a cannon-ball!  Consequent, if I ride not thees horse
like the cannon-ball, my thought HE arrive first, and where are
you?  You get left!  Believe me that I fly thees horse, thees old
Mexican plug, and your de' uncle 'Ennery and his leetle old idea
arrive all the same time, and on the instant."

It WAS the old Enriquez!  I perfectly understood his extravagant
speech and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if
others did.

"Tak'-a-drink!" he said, all in one word.  "You shall possess the
old Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz!  Name your poison,
gentlemen!"

He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the
veranda, and seated me before a small round table still covered
with the chocolate equipage of the morning.  A little dried-up old
Indian woman took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.

"Mirar the leetle old one!" said Enriquez, with unflinching
gravity.  "Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh!  She is not truly
an Aztec, but she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS!
Possibly she haf not the beauty which ravishes, which devastates.
But she shall attent you to the hot water, to the bath.  Thus shall
you be protect, my leetle brother, from scandal."

"Enriquez," I burst out suddenly, "tell me about yourself.  Why did
you leave the El Bolero board?  What was the row about?"

Enriquez's eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.

"Ah," he said, "you have heard?"

"Something; but I want to know the truth from you."

He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass
hammock, on which he sat, swinging his feet.  Then, pointing to
another hammock, he said: "Tranquillize yourself there.  I will
relate; but, truly, it ees nothing."

He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments seemed
quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his finger-
ends--everywhere, in fact, but his mouth.  That and his mustache
remained fixed.  Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with
his little finger:--

"First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row.  The
other themself make the row, the shindig.  They make the dance, the
howl, the snap of the finger, the oath, the 'Helen blazes,' the
'Wot the devil,' the 'That be d--d,' the bad language; they
themselves finger the revolver, advance the bowie-knife, throw off
the coat, square off, and say 'Come on.'  I remain as you see me
now, little brother--tranquil."  He lighted another cigarette, made
his position more comfortable in the hammock, and resumed: "The
Professor Dobbs, who is the geologian of the company, made a report
for which he got two thousand dollar.  But thees report--look you,
friend Pancho--he is not good for the mine.  For in the hole in the
ground the Professor Dobbs have found a 'hoss.'"

"A what?" I asked.

"A hoss," repeated Enriquez, with infinite gravity.  "But not,
leetle Pancho, the hoss that run, the hoss that buck-jump, but what
the miner call a 'hoss,' a something that rear up in the vein and
stop him.  You pick around the hoss; you pick under him; sometimes
you find the vein, sometimes you do not.  The hoss rear up, and
remain!  Eet ees not good for the mine.  The board say, 'D--- the
hoss!'  'Get rid of the hoss.'  'Chuck out the hoss.'  Then they
talk together, and one say to the Professor Dobbs: 'Eef you cannot
thees hoss remove from the mine, you can take him out of the
report.'  He look to me, thees professor.  I see nothing; I remain
tranquil.  Then the board say: 'Thees report with the hoss in him
is worth two thousand dollar, but WITHOUT the hoss he is worth five
thousand dollar.  For the stockholder is frighted of the rearing
hoss.  It is of a necessity that the stockholder should remain
tranquil.  Without the hoss the report is good; the stock shall
errise; the director shall sell out, and leave the stockholder the
hoss to play with.'  The professor he say, 'Al-right;' he scratch
out the hoss, sign his name, and get a check for three thousand
dollar."

"Then I errise--so!"  He got up from the hammock, suiting the
action to the word, and during the rest of his narrative, I
honestly believe, assumed the same attitude and deliberate
intonation he had exhibited at the board.  I could even fancy I saw
the reckless, cynical faces of his brother directors turned upon
his grim, impassive features.  "I am tranquil.  I smoke my
cigarette.  I say that for three hundred year my family have held
the land of thees mine; that it pass from father to son, and from
son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that NEVARRE
THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT!  I say it was a gift by a Spanish
Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel,
and not for the cheat and the swindle!  I say that this mine was
worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the
cheat and swindler.  I say that if they have struck the hoss in the
mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss
that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a
hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out by a Yankee
geologian; and that hoss is Enriquez Saltillo!"

He paused, and laid aside his cigarette.

"Then they say, 'Dry up,' and 'Sell out;' and the great bankers
say, 'Name your own price for your stock, and resign.'  And I say,
'There is not enough gold in your bank, in your San Francisco, in
the mines of California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman.  When
I leave, I leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre!
Then the banker he say, 'And you will go and blab, I suppose?'  And
then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache--so! and I say:
'Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The Saltillo haf for three hundred
year no stain, no blot upon him.  Eet is not now--the last of the
race--who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and
dishonor!'  And then it is that the band begin to play, and the
animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the row he
haf begin!"

I ran over to him, and fairly hugged him.  But he put me aside with
a gentle and philosophical calm.  "Ah, eet is nothing, Pancho.  It
is, believe me, all the same a hundred years to come, and where are
you, then?  The earth he turn round, and then come el temblor, the
earthquake, and there you are!  Bah! eet is not of the board that I
have asked you to come; it is something else I would tell you.  Go
and wash yourself of thees journey, my leetle brother, as I have"--
looking at his narrow, brown, well-bred hands--"wash myself of the
board.  Be very careful of the leetle old woman, Pancho; do not
wink to her of the eye!  Consider, my leetle brother, for one
hundred and one year he haf been as a nun, a saint!  Disturb not
her tranquillity."

Yes, it was the old Enriquez; but he seemed graver,--if I could use
that word of one of such persistent gravity; only his gravity
heretofore had suggested a certain irony rather than a melancholy
which I now fancied I detected.  And what was this "something else"
he was to "tell me later"?  Did it refer to Mrs. Saltillo?  I had
purposely waited for him to speak of her, before I should say
anything of my visit to Carquinez Springs.  I hurried through my
ablutions in the hot water, brought in a bronze jar on the head of
the centenarian handmaid; and even while I was smiling over
Enriquez's caution regarding this aged Ruth, I felt I was getting
nervous to hear his news.

I found him in his sitting-room, or study,--a long, low apartment
with small, deep windows like embrasures in the outer adobe wall,
but glazed in lightly upon the veranda.  He was sitting quite
abstractedly, with a pen in his hand, before a table, on which a
number of sealed envelopes were lying.  He looked SO formal and
methodical for Enriquez.

"You like the old casa, Pancho?" he said in reply to my praise of
its studious and monastic gloom.  "Well, my leetle brother, some
day that is fair--who knows?--it may be at your disposicion; not of
our politeness, but of a truth, friend Pancho.  For, if I leave it
to my wife"--it was the first time he had spoken of her--"for my
leetle child," he added quickly, "I shall put in a bond, an
obligacion, that my friend Pancho shall come and go as he will."

"The Saltillos are a long-lived race," I laughed.  "I shall be a
gray-haired man, with a house and family of my own by that time."
But I did not like the way he had spoken.

"Quien sabe?" he only said, dismissing the question with the
national gesture.  After a moment he added: "I shall tell you
something that is strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like
the banker say, 'Thees Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a
crank, a lunatico;' but it ees a FACT; believe me, I have said!"

He rose, and, going to the end of the room, opened a door.  It
showed a pretty little room, femininely arranged in Mrs. Saltillo's
refined taste.  "Eet is pretty; eet is the room of my wife.  Bueno!
attend me now."  He closed the door, and walked back to the table.
"I have sit here and write when the earthquake arrive.  I have feel
the shock, the grind of the walls on themselves, the tremor, the
stagger, and--that--door--he swing open!"

"The door?" I said, with a smile that I felt was ghastly.

"Comprehend me," he said quickly; "it ees not THAT which ees
strrange.  The wall lift, the lock slip, the door he fell open; it
is frequent; it comes so ever when the earthquake come.  But eet is
not my wife's room I see; it is ANOTHER ROOM, a room I know not.
My wife Urania, she stand there, of a fear, of a tremble; she
grasp, she cling to someone.  The earth shake again; the door shut.
I jump from my table; I shake and tumble to the door.  I fling him
open.  Maravilloso! it is the room of my wife again.  She is NOT
there; it is empty; it is nothing!"

I felt myself turning hot and cold by turns.  I was horrified, and--
and I blundered.  "And who was the other figure?" I gasped.

"Who?" repeated Enriquez, with a pause, a fixed look at me, and a
sublime gesture.  "Who SHOULD it be, but myself, Enriquez Saltillo?"

A terrible premonition that this was a chivalrous LIE, that it was
NOT himself he had seen, but that our two visions were identical,
came upon me.  "After all," I said, with a fixed smile, "if you
could imagine you saw your wife, you could easily imagine you saw
yourself too.  In the shock of the moment you thought of HER
naturally, for then she would as naturally seek your protection.
You have written for news of her?"

"No," said Enriquez quietly.

"No?" I repeated amazedly.

"You understand, Pancho!  Eef it was the trick of my eyes, why
should I affright her for the thing that is not?  If it is the
truth, and it arrive to ME, as a warning, why shall I affright her
before it come?"

"Before WHAT comes?  What is it a warning of?" I asked impetuously.

"That we shall be separated!  That I go, and she do not."

To my surprise, his dancing eyes had a slight film over them.  "I
don't understand you," I said awkwardly.

"Your head is not of a level, my Pancho.  Thees earthquake he
remain for only ten seconds, and he fling open the door.  If he
remain for twenty seconds, he fling open the wall, the hoose
toomble, and your friend Enriquez is feenish."

"Nonsense!" I said.  "Professor--I mean the geologists--say that
the centre of disturbance of these Californian earthquakes is some
far-away point in the Pacific and there never will be any serious
convulsions here."

"Ah, the geologist," said Enriquez gravely, "understand the hoss
that rear in the mine, and the five thousand dollar, believe me, no
more.  He haf lif here three year.  My family haf lif here three
hundred.  My grandfather saw the earth swallow the church of San
Juan Baptista."

I laughed, until, looking up, I was shocked to see for the first
time that his dancing eyes were moist and shining.  But almost
instantly he jumped up, and declared that I had not seen the garden
and the corral, and, linking his arm in mine, swept me like a
whirlwind into the patio.  For an hour or two he was in his old
invincible spirits.  I was glad I had said nothing of my visit to
Carquinez Springs and of seeing his wife; I determined to avoid it
as long as possible; and as he did not again refer to her, except
in the past, it was not difficult.  At last he infected me with his
extravagance, and for a while I forgot even the strangeness of his
conduct and his confidences.  We walked and talked together as of
old.  I understood and enjoyed him perfectly, and it was not
strange that in the end I began to believe that this strange
revelation was a bit of his extravagant acting, got up to amuse me.
The coincidence of his story with my own experience was not, after
all, such a wonderful thing, considering what must have been the
nervous and mental disturbance produced by the earthquake.  We
dined together, attended only by Pedro, an old half-caste body-
servant.  It was easy to see that the household was carried on
economically, and, from a word or two casually dropped by Enriquez,
it appeared that the rancho and a small sum of money were all that
he retained from his former fortune when he left the El Bolero.
The stock he kept intact, refusing to take the dividend upon it
until that collapse of the company should occur which he
confidently predicted, when he would make good the swindled
stockholders.  I had no reason to doubt his perfect faith in this.

The next morning we were up early for a breezy gallop over the
three square miles of Enriquez's estate.  I was astounded, when I
descended to the patio, to find Enriquez already mounted, and
carrying before him, astride of the horn of his saddle, a small
child,--the identical papoose of my memorable first visit.  But the
boy was no longer swathed and bandaged, although, for security, his
plump little body was engirt by the same sash that encircled his
father's own waist.  I felt a stirring of self-reproach; I had
forgotten all about him!  To my suggestion that the exercise might
be fatiguing to him, Enriquez shrugged his shoulders:--

"Believe me, no!  He is ever with me when I go on the pasear.  He
is not too yonge.  For he shall learn 'to rride, to shoot, and to
speak the truth,' even as the Persian chile.  Eet ees all I can gif
to him."

Nevertheless, I think the boy enjoyed it, and I knew he was safe
with such an accomplished horseman as his father.  Indeed, it was a
fine sight to see them both careering over the broad plain,
Enriquez with jingling spurs and whirling riata, and the boy, with
a face as composed as his father's, and his tiny hand grasping the
end of the flapping rein with a touch scarcely lighter than the
skillful rider's own.  It was a lovely morning; though warm and
still, there was a faint haze--a rare thing in that climate--on the
distant range.  The sun-baked soil, arid and thirsty from the long
summer drought, and cracked into long fissures, broke into puffs of
dust, with a slight detonation like a pistol-shot, at each stroke
of our pounding hoofs.  Suddenly my horse swerved in full gallop,
almost lost his footing, "broke," and halted with braced fore feet,
trembling in every limb.  I heard a shout from Enriquez at the same
instant, and saw that he too had halted about a hundred paces from
me, with his hand uplifted in warning, and between us a long chasm
in the dry earth, extending across the whole field.  But the
trembling of the horse continued until it communicated itself to
me.  I was shaking, too, and, looking about for the cause, when I
beheld the most weird and remarkable spectacle I had ever
witnessed.  The whole llano, or plain, stretching to the horizon-
line, was DISTINCTLY UNDULATING!  The faint haze of the hills was
repeated over its surface, as if a dust had arisen from some
grinding displacement of the soil.  I threw myself from my horse,
but the next moment was fain to cling to him, as I felt the thrill
under my very feet.  Then there was a pause, and I lifted my head
to look for Enriquez.  He was nowhere to be seen!  With a terrible
recollection of the fissure that had yawned between us, I sprang to
the saddle again, and spurred the frightened beast toward that
point.  BUT IT WAS GONE, TOO!  I rode backward and forward
repeatedly along the line where I had seen it only a moment before.
The plain lay compact and uninterrupted, without a crack or
fissure.  The dusty haze that had arisen had passed as mysteriously
away; the clear outline of the valley returned; the great field was
empty!

Presently I was aware of the sound of galloping hoofs.  I remembered
then--what I had at first forgotten--that a few moments before we
had crossed an arroyo, or dried bed of a stream, depressed below the
level of the field.  How foolish that I had not remembered!  He had
evidently sought that refuge; there were his returning hoofs.  I
galloped toward it, but only to meet a frightened vaquero, who had
taken that avenue of escape to the rancho.

"Did you see Don Enriquez?" I asked impatiently.

I saw that the man's terror was extreme, and his eyes were staring
in their sockets.  He hastily crossed himself:--

"Ah, God, yes!"

"Where is he?" I demanded.

"Gone!"

"Where?"

He looked at me with staring, vacant eyes, and, pointing to the
ground, said in Spanish: "He has returned to the land of his
fathers!"

We searched for him that day and the next, when the country was
aroused and his neighbors joined in a quest that proved useless.
Neither he nor his innocent burden was ever seen again of men.
Whether he had been engulfed by mischance in some unsuspected
yawning chasm in that brief moment, or had fulfilled his own
prophecy by deliberately erasing himself for some purpose known
only to himself, no one ever knew.  His country-people shook their
heads and said "it was like a Saltillo."  And the few among his
retainers who knew him and loved him, whispered still more
ominously: "He will yet return to his land to confound the
Americanos."

Yet the widow of Enriquez did NOT marry Professor Dobbs.  But she
too disappeared from California, and years afterward I was told
that she was well known to the ingenuous Parisians as the usual
wealthy widow "from South America."




End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Stories in Light and Shadow.