Selected Stories
by Bret Harte
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

MIGGLES

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

BROWN OF CALAVERAS

HIGH-WATER MARK

A LONELY RIDE

THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT

MLISS

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

BARKER'S LUCK

A YELLOW DOG

A MOTHER OF FIVE

BULGER'S REPUTATION

IN THE TULES

A CONVERT OF THE MISSION

THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH

THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ

INTRODUCTION

The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious
forcing, into four quite distinct parts. First, we have the
precocious boyhood, with its eager response to the intellectual
stimulation of cultured parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek
with amazing facility; devoured voraciously the works of
Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving, Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and,
with creditable success, attempted various forms of composition.
Then, compelled by economic necessity, he left school at thirteen,
and for three years worked first in a lawyer's office, and then in
a merchant's counting house.

The second period, that of his migration to California, includes
all that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output.
Arriving in California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-
teacher, drug-store clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and
itinerant journalist. He worked for a while on the NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA (from which he was dismissed for objecting editorially
to the contemporary California sport of murdering Indians), then on
the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved his first moderate acclaim.
In this latter year he married Anne Griswold of New York. In 1864
he was given the secretaryship of the California mint, a virtual
sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing. The first
volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES, CONDENSED
NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS were
published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which had
aspirations of becoming "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," was
established, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he
wrote most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF
ROARING CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM
TRUTHFUL JAMES, among others. The combination of Irvingesque
romantic glamor and Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to
picturesquely novel material, with the addition of a trick ending,
was fantastically popular. Editors began to clamor for his
stories; the University of California appointed him Professor of
recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him the
practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to
one year's literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the
ascendant.

However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed,
were the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the
OVERLAND MONTHLY. Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the
East, he left California (permanently, as it proved). The East,
however, was financially unappreciative. Harte wrote an
unsuccessful novel and collaborated with Mark Twain on an
unremunerative play. His attempts to increase his income by
lecturing were even less rewarding. From his departure from
California in 1872 to his death thirty years later, Harte's
struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and to
these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "a
peculiarly characteristic Western American literature."  Henceforth
Harte accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer,
and as an entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an
artist."

The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a
throat cancer. He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--
perhaps intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him
when circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his
death, the separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained
permanent. Harte, however, continued to provide for them as
liberally as he was able. In Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF
SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION, and UNSER KARL. In 1880
he transferred to the more lucrative consulship of Glasgow, and
ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of his stay
there. In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably for
political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.
He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his
death.

Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp. His
mining experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his
portraits of mining life are wholly impressionistic. "No one,"
Mark Twain wrote, "can talk the quartz dialect correctly without
learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse."  Yet, Twain
added elsewhere, "Bret Harte got his California and his
Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of them into
his tales alive."  That is, perhaps, the final comment. Much could
be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over the
life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings are
obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that
"There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons
which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte."  The
figure is perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for
admiration. First, Harte originated a new and incalculably
influential type of story: the romantically picturesque "human-
interest" story. "He created the local color story," Prof.
Blankenship remarks, "or at least popularized it, and he gave new
form and intent to the short story."  Character motivating action
is central to this type of story, rather than mood dominating
incident. Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful one,
admirably suited to his subjects. He can manage the humorous or
the pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more
remarkable than his excesses. His sentences have both force and
flow; his backgrounds are crisply but carefully sketched; his
characters and caricatures have their own logical consistency.
Finally, granted the desirability of the theatric finale, it is
necessary to admit that Harte always rings down his curtain
dramatically and effectively.

ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a
fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called
together the entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not
only deserted, but "Tuttle's grocery" had contributed its gamblers,
who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day
that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the
bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude
cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried
on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated.
It was a name familiar enough in the camp,--"Cherokee Sal."

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and,
it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was
the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore
extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex.
Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a
martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing
womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse
had come to her in that original isolation which must have made
the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was,
perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when
she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met
only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates.
Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings.
Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation
of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he
had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.

It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by
no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing.
People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with
no possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody
had been introduced AB INITIO. Hence the excitement.

"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as
"Kentuck," addressing one of the loungers. "Go in there, and see
what you kin do. You've had experience in them things."

Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other
climes, had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was
owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring
Camp--a city of refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd
approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the
majority. The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife,
and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the
issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these
were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all
were reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their
past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face,
with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the
melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the
coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in
height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The
term "roughs" applied to them was a distinction rather than a
definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears,
etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions
did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had
but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.

Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around
the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills
and a river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of
a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon.
The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon
she lay,--seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in
the stars above.

A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering.
By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were
freely offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that
"Sal would get through with it;" even that the child would survive;
side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In
the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those
nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the
swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and
the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,--a cry
unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped
moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It
seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a
barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or
some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour
she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the
stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame,
forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much,
except in speculation as to the fate of the child. "Can he live
now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only
other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the
settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness,
but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the
ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as
successful.

When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour,
the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already
formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the
low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly
outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-
box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay
the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed
a hat. Its use was soon indicated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with
a singular mixture of authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--
"gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table,
and out at the back door. Them as wishes to contribute anything
toward the orphan will find a hat handy."  The first man entered
with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and
so unconsciously set an example to the next. In such communities
good and bad actions are catching. As the procession filed in
comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather to
Stumpy in the character of showman; "Is that him?" "Mighty small
specimen;" "Has n't more 'n got the color;" "Ain't bigger nor a
derringer."  The contributions were as characteristic: A silver
tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold
specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from
Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring
(suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he "saw
that pin and went two diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible
(contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the
initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of
surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for 5 pounds;
and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these
proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on
his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his
right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the
curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half
curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his
groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked
foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert
itself in his weather-beaten cheek. "The damned little cuss!" he
said, as he extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and
care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held
that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and
examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original
remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy
repeating it. "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton,
holding up the member, "the damned little cuss!"

It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt
in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed
that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related
with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his
characteristic condemnation of the newcomer. It seemed to relieve
him of any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the
weaknesses of the nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed,
he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly. Then he
walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling with
demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood-tree he paused and
retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down to
the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at
the door. It was opened by Stumpy. "How goes it?" said Kentuck,
looking past Stumpy toward the candle-box. "All serene!" replied
Stumpy. "Anything up?"  "Nothing."  There was a pause--an
embarrassing one--Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck had
recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy. "Rastled with
it,--the damned little cuss," he said, and retired.

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp
afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there
was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done
with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and
enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard to the manner
and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprang up. It
was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce
personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at
Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to
Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female attention could
be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and
unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed
parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be
entertained. "Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog
would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us."  A disbelief in
the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other
places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with
objection. It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed
to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that
"they didn't want any more of the other kind."  This unkind
allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first
spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the camp's regeneration.
Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in
interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office.
But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the
mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There
was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that
pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent
for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag
of gold-dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be
got,--lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills,--damn the
cost!"

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating
climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material
deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In
that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,--that air pungent
with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and
exhilarating,--he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle
chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus.
Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good
nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and
mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the
helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name
became apparent. He had generally been known as "The Kid,"
"Stumpy's Boy," "The Coyote" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and
even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "The damned little cuss."
But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at
last dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers
are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the
baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp. It was certain that
of late they had been successful. "Luck" was the name agreed upon,
with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience. No allusion was
made to the mother, and the father was unknown. "It's better,"
said the philosophical Oakhurst, "to take a fresh deal all round.
Call him Luck, and start him fair."  A day was accordingly set
apart for the christening. What was meant by this ceremony the
reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of the
reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was
one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the
greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days
in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to
stand godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove
with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a
mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. "It ain't
my style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eyeing
the faces around him," but it strikes me that this thing ain't
exactly on the squar. It's playing it pretty low down on this yer
baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't goin' to understand. And
ef there's goin' to be any godfathers round, I'd like to see who's
got any better rights than me."  A silence followed Stumpy's
speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that the first
man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped of his
fun. "But," said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
"we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you
Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the
State of California, so help me God."  It was the first time that
the name of the Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in
the camp. The form of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous
than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw
it and nobody laughed. "Tommy" was christened as seriously as he
would have been under a Christian roof and cried and was comforted
in as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost
imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin
assigned to "Tommy Luck"--or "The Luck," as he was more frequently
called--first showed signs of improvement. It was kept
scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed,
and papered. The rose wood cradle, packed eighty miles by mule,
had, in Stumpy's way of putting it, "sorter killed the rest of the
furniture."  So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity.
The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to see
"how 'The Luck' got on" seemed to appreciate the change, and in
self-defense the rival establishment of "Tuttle's grocery"
bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The
reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended
to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy
imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor
and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to
Kentuck--who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits
of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second
cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay--to
be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet
such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still
shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary
laws neglected. "Tommy," who was supposed to spend his whole
existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed
by noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp its
infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of
Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian
gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts,
and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D--n
the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new
personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed
to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by
"Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian
colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious
recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a
muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of
each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa."  It was a fine sight
to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with
the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either
through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,--it
contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious
deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the
desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length
under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes
and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that
this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o'
think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his
elbow, "is 'evingly."  It reminded him of Greenwich.

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch
from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on
a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were
working in the ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to
decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and
generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles,
azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had
suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and
significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden
carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a
fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the
creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and
were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many
treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for
Tommy."  Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of
fairyland had before, it is to he hoped that Tommy was content. He
appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine
gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes,
that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet,
and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "corral,"--a
hedge of tessellated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed,--he
dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained
with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five
minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated without a
murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his
sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of
prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of
superstition. "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one
day, in a breathless state of excitement "and dern my skin if he
was a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There
they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-
jawin' at each other just like two cherrybums."  Howbeit, whether
creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking
at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels
chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and
playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden
shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send
wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous
gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the
bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush
times," and the luck was with them. The claims had yielded
enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked
suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to
immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on
either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly
preempted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with
the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The
expressman--their only connecting link with the surrounding world--
sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say,
"They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over any
street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their
houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty
rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby."

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further
improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel in the following
spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there
for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female
companionship. The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost
these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general
virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection
for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be
carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly
yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.
And it did.

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The
snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a
river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was
transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the
hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and
debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and
Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them
gulches," said Stumpy. "It been here once and will be here again!"
And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and
swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling
timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and
blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the
scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy,
nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found
the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy,
The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning
with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.

It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they
said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below.
Did anybody know them, and did they belong here?

It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly
crushed and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in
his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw
that the child was cold and pulseless. "He is dead," said one.
Kentuck opened his eyes. "Dead?" he repeated feebly. "Yes, my
man, and you are dying too."  A smile lit the eyes of the expiring
Kentuck. "Dying!" he repeated; "he's a-taking me with him. Tell
the boys I've got The Luck with me now;" and the strong man,
clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a
straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to
the unknown sea.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of
Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he
was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the
preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together,
ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There
was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a settlement unused to
Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause
was another question. "I reckon they're after somebody," he
reflected; "likely it's me."  He returned to his pocket the
handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of
Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of
any further conjecture.

In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody."  It had lately
suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses,
and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous
reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that
had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town
of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of
two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the
gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other
objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were
ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily
established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in
judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a
possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from
his pockets of the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice,"
said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an
entire stranger--carry away our money."  But a crude sentiment of
equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate
enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local
prejudice.

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none
the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges.
He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was
at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage
in favor of the dealer.

A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker
Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who
was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation
the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a
young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won
the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected
sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no
comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the
escort. Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of
Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point.
The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from
Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle
Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He
listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart
out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die
in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out
of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good humor
characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own
riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess
rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer
sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes
with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of
"Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole
party in one sweeping anathema.

The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced
the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to
offer some invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain
range. It was distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced
season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions
of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras.
The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling
out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going
no farther, and the party halted.

The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded
amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of
naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice
that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable
spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew
that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and
the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he
pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary
on the folly of "throwing up their hand before the game was played
out."  But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency
stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite
of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less
under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother
Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against
a rock, calmly surveying them.

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which
required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his
own language, he "couldn't afford it."  As he gazed at his
recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah
trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time
seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his black
clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic
of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his
annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable
companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help
feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was
most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious.
He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above
the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at
the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so,
suddenly he heard his own name called.

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of
the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as
the "Innocent" of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before
over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the
entire fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless
youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful
speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a
good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it
over again."  He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently
from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic
greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker
Flat to seek his fortune. "Alone?"  No, not exactly alone; in fact
(a giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst
remember Piney? She that used to wait on the table at the
Temperance House? They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake
Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to
Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired
out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a
stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree,
where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her
lover.

Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less
with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
fortunate. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently
to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle
Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a
superior power that would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to
dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even
pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of
making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by
assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded
with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log
house near the trail. "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said
the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and I can shift for
myself."

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to
retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he
confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his
leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he
returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the air
had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently
amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest
and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was
holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. "Is
this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he
surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered
animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the
alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a
jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram
his fist into his mouth.

As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked
the tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and
gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine
boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they
unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might
have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the
malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon
this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to
the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the
door, and in a few minutes were asleep.

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed
and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now
blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood
to leave it--snow!

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the
sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where
Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped
to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the
mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks
were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with
his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent
slumbered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled
face; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly
as though attended by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst,
drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and
waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of
snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen
of the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the
valley, and summed up the present and future in two words--"snowed
in!"

A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the
party, had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious
fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and
prudence they might last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr.
Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board
us. If you ain't--and perhaps you'd better not--you can wait till
Uncle Billy gets back with provisions."  For some occult reason,
Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's
rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from
the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a
warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the
facts of their associate's defection. "They'll find out the truth
about us all when they find out anything," he added, significantly,
"and there's no good frightening them now."

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of
Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
seclusion. "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the
snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together."  The cheerful gaiety
of the young man, and Mr. Oakhurst's calm, infected the others.
The Innocent with the aid of pine boughs extemporized a thatch for
the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the
blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. "I
reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney.
The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened
her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
requested Piney not to "chatter."  But when Mr. Oakhurst returned
from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy
laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his
thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had
prudently cached. "And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky,"
said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing
fire through the still-blinding storm and the group around it that
he settled to the conviction that it was "square fun."

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.
It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say
cards once" during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an
accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his
pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation
of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant
melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a
pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening
was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining
hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a
certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather
than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the
others, who at last joined in the refrain:

     "I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
      And I'm bound to die in His army."

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in
token of the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst,
whose professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest
possible amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson
somehow managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty.
He excused himself to the Innocent by saying that he had "often
been a week without sleep."  "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!"
replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of
luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired. The luck gives in first.
Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer
thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to
change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes
you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you
come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your
cards right along you're all right. For," added the gambler, with
cheerful irrelevance,

     "'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
       And I'm bound to die in His army.'"

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-
curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing
store of provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the
peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a
kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful
commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow
piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of
white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still
clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral
village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and
from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative
attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain
degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the
Duchess. "Just you go out there and cuss, and see."  She then set
herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess
were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a
soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the
fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.

When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of
the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps
by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the
aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was
proposed by Piney--storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his
female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this
plan would have failed too but for the Innocent. Some months
before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious
translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed to narrate the principal
incidents of that poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and
fairly forgotten the words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.
And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked
the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and
the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son
of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most
especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-heels," as the
Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles."

So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week
passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them,
and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the
land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until
at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of
dazzling white that towered twenty feet above their heads. It
became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from
the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And
yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect
and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst
settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess,
more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only
Mother Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken
and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her
side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness,
"but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the
bundle from under my head and open it."  Mr. Oakhurst did so. It
contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched.
"Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney.
"You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's what they
call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again and,
turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.

The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to
the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a
pair of snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle.
"There's one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said,
pointing to Piney; "but it's there," he added, pointing toward
Poker Flat. "If you can reach there in two days she's safe."  "And
you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll stay here," was the curt reply.

The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?"
said the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to
accompany him. "As far as the canyon," he replied. He turned
suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame
and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement.

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and
the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that
someone had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few
days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from
Piney.

The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each
other's faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney,
accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her
arm around the Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the
rest of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury,
and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess
crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney,
can you pray?"  "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess,
without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the
younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her
virgin breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of
snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged
birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the
rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all
human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the
spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when
voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when
pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could
scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which
was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized
this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other's
arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees,
they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie
knife. It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:

         BENEATH THIS TREE
          LIES THE BODY
                OF
          JOHN OAKHURST,
    WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
     ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
               AND
        HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
     ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet
in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he
who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts
of Poker Flat.

MIGGLES

We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the
passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy
vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last
poetical quotation. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his
arm passed through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it--
altogether a limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged
himself and been cut down too late. The French lady on the back
seat was asleep, too, yet in a half-conscious propriety of
attitude, shown even in the disposition of the handkerchief which
she held to her forehead and which partially veiled her face. The
lady from Virginia City, traveling with her husband, had long since
lost all individuality in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils, furs,
and shawls. There was no sound but the rattling of wheels and the
dash of rain upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and we
became dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently in the
midst of an exciting colloquy with someone in the road--a colloquy
of which such fragments as "bridge gone," "twenty feet of water,"
"can't pass," were occasionally distinguishable above the storm.
Then came a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the
parting adjuration:

"Try Miggles's."

We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of
a horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our
way to Miggles's.

Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our authority, did not
remember the name, and he knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe
traveler thought Miggles must keep a hotel. We only knew that we
were stopped by high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was
our rock of refuge. A ten minutes splashing through a tangled by-
road, scarcely wide enough for the stage, and we drew up before a
barred and boarded gate in a wide stone wall or fence about eight
feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and evidently Miggles did not keep
a hotel.

The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely locked.
Miggles! O Miggles!"

No answer.

"Migg-ells! You Miggles!" continued the driver, with rising wrath.

"Migglesy!" joined the expressman, persuasively. "O Miggy! Mig!"

But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles. The
Judge, who had finally got the window down, put his head out and
propounded a series of questions, which if answered categorically
would have undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, but which the
driver evaded by replying that "if we didn't want to sit in the
coach all night, we had better rise up and sing out for Miggles."

So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately.
And when we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the
roof called for "Maygells!" whereat we all laughed. While we were
laughing, the driver cried "Shoo!"

We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of "Miggles" was
repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and
supplemental "Maygells."

"Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.

"Extraordinary damned skunk!" roared the driver, contemptuously.
"Come out of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles!
Don't hide in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,"
continued Yuba Bill, now dancing about in an excess of fury.

"Miggles!" continued the voice. "O Miggles!"

"My good man! Mr. Myghail!" said the Judge, softening the
asperities of the name as much as possible. "Consider the
inhospitality of refusing shelter from the inclemency of the
weather to helpless females. Really, my dear sir--"  But a
succession of "Miggles," ending in a burst of laughter, drowned his
voice.

Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road,
he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the
enclosure. We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering
darkness all that we could distinguish was that we were in a
garden--from the rosebushes that scattered over us a minute spray
from their dripping leaves--and before a long, rambling wooden
building.

"Do you know this Miggles?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.

"No, nor, don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer
Stage Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.

"But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge as he thought of the
barred gate.

"Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better
go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in,"
and he pushed open the door of the building.

A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on
the large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously
papered, and the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque
pattern; somebody sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace.
All this we saw as we crowded together into the room, after the
driver and expressman.

"Hello, be you Miggles?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.

The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully
toward it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face.
It was a man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large
eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous
solemnity which I had sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes
wandered from Bill's face to the lantern, and finally fixed their
gaze on that luminous object, without further recognition.

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

"Miggles! Be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know"; and Yuba
Bill shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.

To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable
stranger apparently collapsed--sinking into half his size and an
undistinguishable heap of clothing.

"Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and
hopelessly retiring from the contest.

The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious
invertebrate back into his original position. Bill was dismissed
with the lantern to reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that
from the helplessness of this solitary man there must be attendants
near at hand, and we all drew around the fire. The Judge, who had
regained his authority, and had never lost his conversational
amiability--standing before us with his back to the hearth--charged
us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:

"It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has
reached that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and
yellow leaf,' or has suffered some premature abatement of his
mental and physical faculties. Whether he is really the Miggles--"

Here he was interrupted by "Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!"
and, in fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key
as it had once before been delivered unto us.

We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm. The Judge, in
particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to
come directly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon
discovered in a large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the
fireplace, and who immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence
which contrasted singularly with his previous volubility. It was,
undoubtedly, his voice which we had heard in the road, and our
friend in the chair was not responsible for the discourtesy. Yuba
Bill, who re-entered the room after an unsuccessful search, was
loath to accept the explanation, and still eyed the helpless sitter
with suspicion. He had found a shed in which he had put up his
horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical. "Thar ain't
nobody but him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar damned
old skeesicks knows it.

But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based. Bill
had scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the
porch, the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and
with flash of white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter
absence of ceremony or diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the
door, and, panting, leaned back against it.

"Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!"

And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman,
whose wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of
the feminine curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of
whose head, topped by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little
feet and ankles, hidden somewhere in the recesses of her boy's
brogans, all was grace--this was Miggles, laughing at us, too, in
the most airy, frank, offhand manner imaginable.

"You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath, and holding one
little hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless
discomfiture of our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba
Bill, whose features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous
and imbecile cheerfulness--"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles
away when you passed down the road. I thought you might pull up
here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--
and--and--I'm out of breath--and--that lets me out."

And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head,
with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over
us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the
attempt; laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands
crossed lightly on her lap.

The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant
compliment.

"I'll trouble you for that thar harpin," said Miggles, gravely.
Half a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing
hairpin was restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the
room, looked keenly in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes
looked back at hers with an expression we had never seen before.
Life and intelligence seemed to struggle back into the rugged face.
Miggles laughed again--it was a singularly eloquent laugh--and
turned her black eyes and white teeth once more toward us.

"This afflicted person is--" hesitated the Judge.

"Jim," said Miggles.

"Your father?"

"No."

"Brother?"

"No."

"Husband?"

Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady
passengers who I had noticed did not participate in the general
masculine admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, "No; it's Jim."

There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers moved closer to
each other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and
the tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at
this emergency. But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious,
broke the silence. "Come," she said briskly, "you must be hungry.
Who'll bear a hand to help me get tea?"

She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba Bill was
engaged like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the
expressman was grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the
arduous duty of slicing bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each
man his good-humored and voluble counsel. And when Miggles,
assisted by the Judge and our Hibernian "deck passenger," set the
table with all the available crockery, we had become quite joyous,
in spite of the rain that beat against windows, the wind that
whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered together in
the corner, or the magpie who uttered a satirical and croaking
commentary on their conversation from his perch above. In the now
bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were papered with
illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and
discrimination. The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from
candle boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the
skin of some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an
ingenious variation of a flour barrel. There was neatness, and
even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few details of
the long low room.

The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a social
triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in
guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet
bearing throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any
concealment on her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our
prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of each other--of
everything but our host and hostess. It must be confessed that
Miggles's conversation was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and
that at times she employed expletives the use of which had
generally been yielded to our sex. But they were delivered with
such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually followed by
a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest that it
seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.

Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy
body against the outer walls of the house. This was shortly
followed by a scratching and sniffling at the door. "That's
Joaquin," said Miggles, in reply to our questioning glances; "would
you like to see him?"  Before we could answer she had opened the
door, and disclosed a half-grown grizzly, who instantly raised
himself on his haunches, with his forepaws hanging down in the
popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at Miggles,
with a very singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba Bill.
"That's my watch dog," said Miggles, in explanation. "Oh, he don't
bite," she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into a
corner. "Does he, old Toppy?" (the latter remark being addressed
directly to the sagacious Joaquin). "I tell you what, boys,"
continued Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA
MINOR, "you were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when
you dropped in tonight."  "Where was he?" asked the Judge. "With
me," said Miggles. "Lord love you; he trots round with me nights
like as if he was a man."

We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind.
Perhaps we all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking
through the rainy woods, with her savage guardian at her side. The
Judge, I remember, said something about Una and her lion; but
Miggles received it as she did other compliments, with quiet
gravity. Whether she was altogether unconscious of the admiration
she excited--she could hardly have been oblivious of Yuba Bill's
adoration--I know not; but her very frankness suggested a perfect
sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the younger members
of our party.

The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to
the opinions of those of her own sex who were present. In fact,
the repast over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers
that no pine boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice
upon the hearth could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and,
suddenly declaring that it was time to "turn in," offered to show
the ladies to their bed in an adjoining room. "You boys will have
to camp out here by the fire as well as you can," she added, "for
thar ain't but the one room."

Our sex--by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger
portion of humanity--has been generally relieved from the
imputation of curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am
constrained to say that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than
we crowded together, whispering, snickering, smiling, and
exchanging suspicions, surmises, and a thousand speculations in
regard to our pretty hostess and her singular companion. I fear
that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a
voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference
of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the
midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and Miggles
re-entered.

But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had
flashed upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for
a moment on the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to
have left behind her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a
moment before. Coming into the room, she drew a low stool beside
the paralytic's chair, sat down, drew the blanket over her
shoulders, and saying, "If it's all the same to you, boys, as we're
rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight," took the invalid's
withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon the dying fire.
An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory to more
confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous
curiosity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the roof,
wandering gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary
brightness, until, in a lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly
lifted up her head, and, throwing her hair over her shoulder,
turned her face upon the group and asked:

"Is there any of you that knows me?"

There was no reply.

"Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53. Everybody knew me
there, and everybody had the right to know me. I kept the Polka
saloon until I came to live with Jim. That's six years ago.
Perhaps I've changed some."

The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned
her head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she
again spoke, and then more rapidly:

"Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's
no great harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim
here"--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--"used to
know me, if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I
reckon he spent all he had. And one day--it's six years ago this
winter--Jim came into my back room, sat down on my sofy, like as
you see him in that chair, and never moved again without help. He
was struck all of a heap, and never seemed to know what ailed him.
The doctors came and said as how it was caused all along of his way
of life--for Jim was mighty free and wild-like--and that he would
never get better, and couldn't last long anyway. They advised me
to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he was no good to anyone
and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was something in
Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I said 'No.'
I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen like
yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of
travel, you see, and I brought my baby here."

With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke,
slowly shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the
ruined man between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow
behind it, as if she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions.
Silent and expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed,
and smitten with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an
invisible arm around her.

Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:

"It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about
yer, for I was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any
woman to help me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the
Indians hereabout, who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything
sent from the North Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The
Doctor would run up from Sacramento once in a while. He'd ask to
see 'Miggles's baby,' as he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd
say, 'Miggles; you're a trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem
so lonely after that. But the last time he was here he said, as he
opened the door to go, 'Do you know, Miggles, your baby will grow
up to be a man yet and an honor to his mother; but not here,
Miggles, not here!'  And I thought he went away sad--and--and--"
and here Miggles's voice and head were somehow both lost completely
in the shadow.

"The folks about here are very kind," said Miggles, after a pause,
coming a little into the light again. "The men from the fork used
to hang around here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the
women are kind--and don't call. I was pretty lonely until I picked
up Joaquin in the woods yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and
taught him to beg for his dinner; and then thar's Polly--that's the
magpie--she knows no end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of
evenings with her talk, and so I don't feel like as I was the only
living being about the ranch. And Jim here," said Miggles, with
her old laugh again, and coming out quite into the firelight, "Jim-
-why, boys, you would admire to see how much he knows for a man
like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he looks at 'em just
as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're sitting alone,
I read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord!" said Miggles,
with her frank laugh, "I've read him that whole side of the house
this winter. There never was such a man for reading as Jim."

"Why," asked the Judge, "do you not marry this man to whom you have
devoted your youthful life?"

"Well, you see," said Miggles, "it would be playing it rather low
down on Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then,
too, if we were man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound
to do what I do now of my own accord."

"But you are young yet and attractive--"

"It's getting late," said Miggles, gravely, "and you'd better all
turn in. Good night, boys"; and, throwing the blanket over her
head, Miggles laid herself down beside Jim's chair, her head
pillowed on the low stool that held his feet, and spoke no more.
The fire slowly faded from the hearth; we each sought our blankets
in silence; and presently there was no sound in the long room but
the pattering of the rain upon the roof and the heavy breathing of
the sleepers.

It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream. The
storm had passed, the stars were shining, and through the
shutterless window the full moon, lifting itself over the solemn
pines without, looked into the room. It touched the lonely figure
in the chair with an infinite compassion, and seemed to baptize
with a shining flood the lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in
the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him she loved. It even
lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half-
reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then I fell
asleep and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me,
and "All aboard" ringing in my ears.

Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone. We
wandered about the house and lingered long after the horses were
harnessed, but she did not return. It was evident that she wished
to avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we
had come. After we had helped the ladies into the coach, we
returned to the house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic
Jim, as solemnly settling him back into position after each
handshake. Then we looked for the last time around the long low
room, at the stool where Miggles had sat, and slowly took our seats
in the waiting coach. The whip cracked, and we were off!

But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six
horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk.
For there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her
hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and
her white teeth flashing a last "good-by."  We waved our hats in
return. And then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination,
madly lashed his horses forward, and we sank back in our seats. We
exchanged not a word until we reached the North Fork, and the stage
drew up at the Independence House. Then, the Judge leading, we
walked into the barroom and took our places gravely at the bar.

"Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?" said the Judge, solemnly
taking off his white hat.

They were.

"Well, then, here's to MIGGLES. GOD BLESS HER!"

Perhaps He had. Who knows?

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of
it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy
Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these
appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in
the case of "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as
shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of
that chemical in his daily bread; or for some unlucky slip, as
exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned
that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term
"iron pyrites."  Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude
heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's
real name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported
statement. "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston,
addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of
such Cliffords!"  He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose
name happened to be really Clifford, as "Jay-bird Charley"--an
unhallowed inspiration of the moment that clung to him ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any
other than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a
separate and distinct individuality we only learned later. It
seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco,
ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got any farther than
Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young person who
waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals. One
morning he said something to her which caused her to smile not
unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his
upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He
followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more
toast and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of
the peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something
more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it
was current at Sandy Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all
sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the
reason that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took
occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at
which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--
this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and
where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the
peace. Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply and
seriously, as was his fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when
Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without his Partner's
wife--she having smiled and retreated with somebody else--
Tennessee's Partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet
him with affection. The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see
the shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation might
have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's
Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In
fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical
detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the
Bar. He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.
In these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised;
his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted
could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of
crime. At last Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he
overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward
related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote
and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the
following words: "And now, young man, I'll trouble you for your
knife, your pistols, and your money. You see your weppings might
get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation to
the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San
Francisco. I shall endeavor to call."  It may be stated here that
Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around
him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his
revolver at the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up
Grizzly Canyon; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a
small man on a gray horse. The men looked at each other a moment
in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and
independent; and both types of a civilization that in the
seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the
nineteenth, simply "reckless."  "What have you got there?--I call,"
said Tennessee, quietly. "Two bowers and an ace," said the
stranger, as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife.
"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers'
epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode back with his
captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with
the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was
that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was
stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on
the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness
of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp. Lights
moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering
reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the
pines the windows of the old loft above the express office stood
out staringly bright; and through their curtainless panes the
loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the
dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned
with remoter passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent
with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to
justify, in their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest
and indictment. The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not
vengeful. The excitement and personal feeling of the chase were
over; with Tennessee safe in their hands they were ready to listen
patiently to any defense, which they were already satisfied was
insufficient. There being no doubt in their own minds, they were
willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist.
Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged, on general
principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than
his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be
more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned,
evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had
created. "I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his
invariable but good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge--who
was also his captor--for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not
shot him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this
human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless,
when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's
Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at
once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to
whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him
as a relief.

For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout,
with a square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in
a loose duck "jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red
soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint,
and was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet
a heavy carpetbag he was carrying, it became obvious, from
partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material
with which his trousers had been patched had been originally
intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great
gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each person in the
room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face
on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady
himself, and thus addressed the Judge:

"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd
just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--
my pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather
before on the Bar."

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other
meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket
handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his face diligently.

"Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?" said the
Judge, finally.

"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. "I
come yar as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off
and on, wet and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't
allers my ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar
ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you
sez to me, sez you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez
you, 'Do you know anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--
confidential-like, as between man and man--'What should a man
know of his pardner?'"

"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently,
feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning
to humanize the Court.

"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't for me to
say anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's
Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of
his old pardner. Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a
stranger, and he fetches that stranger. And you lays for HIM, and
you fetches HIM; and the honors is easy. And I put it to you,
bein' a far-minded man, and to you, gentlemen, all, as far-minded
men, ef this isn't so."

"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions
to ask this man?"

"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. "I play this yer
hand alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this:
Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a
stranger, and on this yer camp. And now, what's the fair thing?
Some would say more; some would say less. Here's seventeen hundred
dollars in coarse gold and a watch--it's about all my pile--and
call it square!"  And before a hand could be raised to prevent him,
he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon the table.

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to
their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a
suggestion to "throw him from the window" was only overridden by a
gesture from the Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently
oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's Partner improved the
opportunity to mop his face again with his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the
use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense
could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and
sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his
rough hand trembled slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment
as he slowly returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not
yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the
tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had not offered
enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and saying, "This yer is a
lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the
jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him back. "If
you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."
For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth,
and, saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's
Partner took it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was
passin' to see how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively
fall, and adding that it was a warm night, again mopped his face
with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled
insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted,
weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the
mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of
Tennessee's fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely
guarded, to meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly
reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all
future evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was
present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the
reader. But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed
amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods
and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all,
the infinite Serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported,
as not being a part of the social lesson. And yet, when the weak
and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and
responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that
dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed,
the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the RED DOG
CLARION was right.

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the
ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn
to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at
the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized
the venerable "Jenny" and the two-wheeled cart as the property of
Tennessee's Partner--used by him in carrying dirt from his claim;
and a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself, sitting
under a buckeye tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing
face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of
the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the committee."  He
didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait."  He was not
working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the
"diseased," he would take him. "Ef thar is any present," he added,
in his simple, serious way, "as would care to jine in the fun'l,
they kin come."  Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have
already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar--perhaps it was from
something even better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers
accepted the invitation at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands
of his Partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed
that it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a
section of sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of
pine. The cart was further decorated with slips of willow, and
made fragrant with buckeye blossoms. When the body was deposited
in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew over it a piece of tarred
canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with his
feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. The
equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was habitual
with "Jenny" even under less solemn circumstances. The men--half
curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled along
beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the
homely catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the road or
some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company
fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming
the external show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had
at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary
trombone, desisted, from a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not
having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be content with
the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Canyon--by this time clothed in
funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their
moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the
track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs
upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity,
sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the
cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from
higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their wings, fluttered
before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were
reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely
outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building
of the California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of
decay superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough
enclosure, which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's
matrimonial felicity had been used as a garden, but was now
overgrown with fern. As we approached it we were surprised to find
that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the
broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers
of assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had
displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin
on his back and deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave.
He then nailed down the board which served as a lid; and mounting
the little mound of earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly
mopped his face with his handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a
preliminary to speech; and they disposed themselves variously on
stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, "has been running
free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come
home. And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best
friend do? Why, bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been
running free, and we brings him home from his wandering."  He
paused, and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully
on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't the first time that I've
packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't the first
time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help
himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have waited for
him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he
couldn't speak, and didn't know me. And now that it's the last
time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--
"you see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen,"
he added, abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the
fun'l's over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for
your trouble."

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the
grave, turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments'
hesitation gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge
that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they
could see Tennessee's Partner, his work done, sitting upon the
grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face buried in his red
bandanna handkerchief. But it was argued by others that you
couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that distance; and
this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had
cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a
suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling
on him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses.
But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly
to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny
grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above
Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed. One night, when the pines
beside the cabin were swaying in the storm, and trailing their
slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen
river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from
the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put
'Jinny' in the cart"; and would have risen from his bed but for the
restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his
singular fancy: "There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old girl.
How dark it is! Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,
old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down
right in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of
the hill. Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--
all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee!
Pardner!"

And so they met.

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty
much the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before.
How long he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't
care; how long he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite
and unconsidered. A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical
condition, suffused and saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in
particular, was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red
Gulch to attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist
had erected a temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the
inscription, "Effects of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods,"
with a hand pointing to McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine,
was, like most local satire, personal; and was a reflection upon
the unfairness of the process rather than a commentary upon the
impropriety of the result. With this facetious exception, Sandy
had been undisturbed. A wandering mule, released from his pack,
had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curiously at
the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy which
the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty boots, and
curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in
the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside
him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around
until they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open
meadow with gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs
of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams,
dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man. The sun sank
lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not. And then the repose
of this philosopher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been,
by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

"Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock that she had just
dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on
the azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking
her way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little
shivers of disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she
came suddenly upon Sandy!

Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when
she had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became
overbold, and halted for a moment--at least six feet from this
prostrate monster--with her white skirts gathered in her hand,
ready for flight. But neither sound nor motion came from the bush.
With one little foot she then overturned the satirical headboard,
and muttered "Beasts!"--an epithet which probably, at that moment,
conveniently classified in her mind the entire male population of
Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain rigid notions
of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the
demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so
justly celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a
newcomer, perhaps fairly earned the reputation of being "stuck-up."

As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy
temperature, and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To
pick it up and to place it over his face was a work requiring some
courage, particularly as his eyes were open. Yet she did it, and
made good her retreat. But she was somewhat concerned, on looking
back, to see that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was sitting
up and saying something.

The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was
satisfied that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful;
that from childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no
people but condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and
that his right to dispense with them when he pleased was
inalienable. This was the statement of his inner consciousness.
Unfortunately, its outward expression was vague, being limited to a
repetition of the following formula--"Su'shine all ri'! Wasser
maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?"

Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of
distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.

"Wass up? Wasser maar?" continued Sandy, in a very high key.

"Get up, you horrid man!" said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed;
"get up, and go home."

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.

"Wass I go home for?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.

"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person
with great disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and
vest, threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging
wildly forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of
the river.

"Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and
then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse
and locked herself in.

That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the
blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her
husband ever got drunk. "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger,
reflectively, "let's see: Abner hasn't been tight since last
'lection."  Miss Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying
in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt
him; but this would have involved an explanation, which she did not
then care to give. So she contented herself with opening her gray
eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger--a fine specimen of
Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject
altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in
Boston: "I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community
the least objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course.
I do not know anything that could make the women tolerable."

In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except
that her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously,
another direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a
fresh cluster of azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her
desk. This was not strange, as her little flock were aware of her
fondness for flowers, and invariably kept her desk bright with
anemones, syringas, and lupines; but, on questioning them, they one
and all professed ignorance of the azaleas. A few days later,
Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the window, was
suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous laughter that
threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss Mary could
get from him was, that someone had been "looking in the winder."
Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle with
the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came
plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and
inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of,
in her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe,
also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation,
was amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-
colored, silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of
barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech
which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she
contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with
supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination.
When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas
with a new sense of revelation. And then she laughed, and the
little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously very
happy.

It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged
boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of
water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that
Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the
spring herself. At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path,
and a blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her
burden. Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry. "If you carried
more of that for yourself," she said, spitefully, to the blue arm,
without deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, "you'd do
better."  In the submissive silence that followed she regretted the
speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled.
Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which Miss
Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek. The
next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in
the newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box
seat to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention,
on the ground that he had a habit of "cussin' on upgrades," and
gave her half the coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having
once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a
decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a
barroom. The overdressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was
doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never
daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the
priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue
skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights
passed over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the
sedate and proper woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger,
that the balsamic odors of the firs "did her chest good," for
certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was
firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which the
patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless
ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and
took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the
straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless
engines, the cheap finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of
paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism
takes upon itself in such localities--what infinite relief was
theirs! The last heap of ragged rock and clay passed, the last
unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting woods opened their long
files to receive them! How the children--perhaps because they had
not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother--
threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with uncouth
caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary
herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the
purity of spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran
like a crested quail at the head of her brood until, romping,
laughing, and panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat
hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and
violently, in the heart of the forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!

The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that
ensued need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that
Miss Mary had already established some acquaintance with this ex-
drunkard. Enough that he was soon accepted as one of the party;
that the children, with that quick intelligence which Providence
gives the helpless, recognized a friend, and played with his blond
beard and long silken mustache, and took other liberties--as the
helpless are apt to do. And when he had built a fire against a
tree, and had shown them other mysteries of woodcraft, their
admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such foolish, idle,
happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the
schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the
sloping hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very
much the same attitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was
the similitude greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous
nature that had found a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be
feared was now finding an equal intoxication in love.

I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know
that he longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a
savage, or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this
sallow-faced, gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to
present him in a heroic attitude, I stay my hand with great
difficulty at this moment, being only withheld from introducing
such an episode by a strong conviction that it does not usually
occur at such times. And I trust that my fairest reader, who
remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some uninteresting
stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues,
will forgive the omission.

So they sat there, undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead
and the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow
below. What they said matters little. What they thought--which
might have been interesting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers
only learned how Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's
house, to come to California, for the sake of health and
independence; how Sandy was an orphan, too; how he came to
California for excitement; how he had lived a wild life, and how he
was trying to reform; and other details, which, from a woodpecker's
viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and a waste of
time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when
the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at
the outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of
her weary life.

As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of
Red Gulch--to use a local euphuism--"dried up" also. In another
day Miss Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch
would know her no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse,
her cheek resting on her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those
daydreams in which Miss Mary--I fear to the danger of school
discipline --was lately in the habit of indulging. Her lap was
full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories. She was so
preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a gentle tapping
at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted
itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and
opened the door. On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion
and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid,
irresolute bearing.

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her
anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was
only fastidious; but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-
unconsciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and gathered
closer her own chaste skirts. It was, perhaps, for this reason
that the embarrassed stranger, after a moment's hesitation, left
her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the dust beside the door,
and then sat down at the farther end of a long bench. Her voice
was husky as she began:

"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to
my Tommy."

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the
poor attention she could give him.

"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war
paint," and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench
nearer the schoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that! and if I
am his mother, there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than
him. And if I ain't much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer,
angeler teacher lives than he's got."

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.

"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,"
she went on, hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in
broad day, to do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me,
miss--not for me, but for the darling boy."

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting
her lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her
knees, she went on, in a low voice:

"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and
I ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last
year, of sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked
of bringing a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I
knew it was all right, and I could keep my boy a little longer.
And O, miss, he loves you so much; and if you could hear him talk
about you, in his pretty way, and if he could ask you what I ask
you now, you couldn't refuse him.

"It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should
take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I
ain't goin' to cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my
Tommy--God bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--
to--take him with you."

She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
fallen on her knees beside her.

"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some
good school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to
forget his mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can
do will be kindness to what he will learn with me. Only take him
out of this wicked life, this cruel place, this home of shame and
sorrow. You will; I know you will--won't you? You will--you must
not, you cannot say no! You will make him as pure, as gentle as
yourself; and when he has grown up, you will tell him his father's
name--the name that hasn't passed my lips for years--the name of
Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy! Miss Mary!--do not
take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You will take my
boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to look on
such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!"

Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her
way to the open window. She stood there, leaning against the
casement, her eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading
from the western sky. There was still some of its light on her
pure young forehead, on her white collar, on her clasped white
hands, but all fading slowly away. The suppliant had dragged
herself, still on her knees, beside her.

"I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but
I cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see
it in your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I
see it in your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!"

The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with
something of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The
sun had set on Red Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's
voice sounded pleasantly.

"I will take the boy. Send him to me tonight."

The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips.
She would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she
dared not. She rose to her feet.

"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary,
suddenly.

"No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it."

"Go to him at once--tonight--now! Tell him what you have done.
Tell him I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--
see--the child again. Wherever it may be, he must not come;
wherever I may take it, he must not follow! There, go now, please--
I'm weary, and--have much yet to do!"

They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman
turned.

"Good night."

She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment
the young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her
own pure breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked
the door.

It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane
Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for
the schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the
highroad, in obedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he
suddenly reined up his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy
hopped out at the command of Miss Mary. "Not that bush, Tommy--the
next."

Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a
tall azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.

"All right now?"

"All right."

And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.

BROWN OF CALAVERAS

A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and
boot heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it
evident that one of the inside passengers was a woman. A
disposition on the part of loungers at the stations to congregate
before the window, and some concern in regard to the appearance of
coats, hats, and collars, further indicated that she was lovely.
All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the box seat, noted with the smile
of cynical philosophy. Not that he depreciated the sex, but that
he recognized therein a deceitful element, the pursuit of which
sometimes drew mankind away from the equally uncertain
blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr. Hamlin
was a professional exponent.

So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped
down, he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil
was fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and
grave indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing
to good breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-
contained air he was a marked contrast to the other passengers,
with their feverish restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even
Bill Masters, a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his
overflowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness and
barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese, I fear
cut but an unromantic figure beside this lonely calculator of
chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric gravity.

The driver called "All aboard!" and Mr. Hamlin returned to the
coach. His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the
level of the open window, when, at the same moment, what appeared
to him to be the finest eyes in the world suddenly met his. He
quietly dropped down again, addressed a few words to one of the
inside passengers, effected an exchange of seats, and as quietly
took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin never allowed his philosophy to
interfere with decisive and prompt action.

I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the
other passengers--particularly those who were making themselves
most agreeable to the lady. One of them leaned forward, and
apparently conveyed to her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's
profession in a single epithet. Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or
whether he recognized in the informant a distinguished jurist from
whom, but a few evenings before, he had won several thousand
dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed no sign; his
black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the legal
gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of his
neighbor. An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from his
maternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling
wheels rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the
stage drew up at the International Hotel for dinner. The legal
gentleman and a member of Congress leaped out, and stood ready to
assist the descending goddess, while Colonel Starbottle, of
Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and shawl. In this
multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion and
delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach,
took the lady's hand--with that decision and positiveness which a
hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire--and in an instant
had dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again
lifted her to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear,
came from that other cynic, "Yuba Bill," the driver. "Look
keerfully arter that baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with
affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily
bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession to the waiting-
room.

Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled,
and awaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill,
and out into the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one
leaving pleasant fancy behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by
the roadside shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after
him, recognizing the man by his horse, and speculating what "was up
with Comanche Jack."  Yet much of this interest centered in the
horse, in a community where the time made by "French Pete's" mare
in his run from the Sheriff of Calaveras eclipsed all concern in
the ultimate fate of that worthy.

The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself.
He checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used
as a cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly
from his fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape
changed and became more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and
sycamore disclosed some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering
vine trailed over the porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her
cradled babe under the roses of another. A little farther on Mr.
Hamlin came upon some barelegged children wading in the willowy
creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage peculiar to himself
that they were emboldened to climb up his horse's legs and over his
saddle, until he was fain to develop an exaggerated ferocity of
demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some kisses and coin. And
then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of
habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so
singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender,
that I wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin's
voice was not cultivated; the subject of his song was some
sentimental lunacy borrowed from the Negro minstrels; but there
thrilled through all some occult quality of tone and expression
that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to
see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket
and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through
the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that
overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from
his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred
spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the
superiority of man. With a superior predatory capacity, HE
couldn't sing.

But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and
at his former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded
hillsides, stumps, and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of
woodland and ravine, and indicated his approach to civilization.
Then a church steeple came in sight, and he knew that he had
reached home. In a few moments he was clattering down the single
narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races, ditches,
and tailings at the foot of the hill, and dismounted before the
gilded windows of the "Magnolia" saloon. Passing through the long
barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a dark passage,
opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in a dimly
lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the
locality, showed signs of abuse. The inlaid center table was
overlaid with stained disks that were not contemplated in the
original design. The embroidered armchairs were discolored, and
the green velvet lounge, on which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was
soiled at the foot with the red soil of Wingdam.

Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, looking at a
highly colored painting above him representing a young creature of
opulent charms. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that
he had never seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he
should, he would not, probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he
was thinking of another style of beauty. But just then someone
knocked at the door. Without rising, he pulled a cord that
apparently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open, and a man
entered.

The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust--a vigor not borne out
in the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and
disfigured by dissipation. He appeared to be also under the
influence of liquor, for he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said,
"I thought Kate was here," stammered, and seemed confused and
embarrassed.

Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam
coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.

"You didn't come up on the stage," continued the newcomer, "did
you?"

"No," replied Hamlin; "I left it at Scott's Ferry. It isn't due
for half an hour yet. But how's luck, Brown?"

Damn bad," said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of
weak despair; "I'm cleaned out again, Jack," he continued, in a
whining tone that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure,
"can't you help me with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup? You see
I've got to send money home to the old woman, and--you've won
twenty times that amount from me."

The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack
overlooked it, and handed the sum to his visitor. "The old-woman
business is about played out, Brown," he added, by way of
commentary; "why don't you say you want to buck agin' faro? You
know you ain't married!"

"Fact, sir," said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere
contact of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some
dignity to his frame. "I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if
I do say it--in the States. It's three year since I've seen her,
and a year since I've writ to her. When things is about straight,
and we get down to the lead, I'm going to send for her."

"And Kate?" queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.

Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but
poorly carried out, and said:

"Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know. But
come, what do you say to a little game? Give us a show to double
this hundred."

Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. Perhaps he
knew that the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred
that it should flow back into his own coffers rather than any
other. He nodded his head, and drew his chair toward the table.
At the same moment there came a rap upon the door.

"It's Kate," said Mr. Brown.

Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened. But, for the
first time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved
and abashed, and for the first time in his life the hot blood
crimsoned his colorless cheeks to his forehead. For before him
stood the lady he had lifted from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown--
dropping his cards with a hysterical laugh--greeted as:

"My old woman, by thunder!"

They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her
husband. I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the
story. And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head
of "Touching Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching
incidents, peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our
city. The wife of one of Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the
effete civilization of the East and its inhospitable climate,
resolved to join her noble husband upon these golden shores.
Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long
journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be
easier imagined than described. The meeting is said to have been
indescribably affecting. We trust her example may be followed."

Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful
speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily
improved. He bought out his partners in the "Nip and Tuck" lead,
with money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two
after his wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's
theory that Brown had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have
been furnished by Mr. Jack Hamlin. He built and furnished the
"Wingdam House," which pretty Mrs. Brown's great popularity kept
overflowing with guests. He was elected to the Assembly, and gave
largess to churches. A street in Wingdam was named in his honor.

Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and
fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's
popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient. The most
uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not
interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was
maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an
outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence. Much of
this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex whom she had
supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like
most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,
whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be
remembered, too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had
been the unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps
not more ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished
an older Greek democracy. I think that Brown was dimly conscious
of this. But his only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX
reputation naturally precluded any open intimacy with the family,
and whose visits were infrequent.

It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,
large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh
incense of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another
incense which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent. Beside her
sat Colonel Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a later addition
to her court in the shape of a foreign tourist. She was in good
spirits.

"What do you see down the road?" inquired the gallant Colonel, who
had been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's
attention was diverted.

"Dust," said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. "Only Sister Anne's 'flock
of sheep.'"

The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther
back than last week's paper, took a more practical view. "It ain't
sheep," he continued; "it's a horseman. Judge, ain't that Jack
Hamlin's gray?"

But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was
growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the
parlor.

Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after
dinner. Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's
companions; perhaps, like other weak natures, he found pleasure in
the exercise of absolute power over inferior animals. He had a
certain gratification in the training of a chestnut mare, whom he
could beat or caress as pleased him, which he couldn't do with Mrs.
Brown. It was here that he recognized a certain gray horse which
had just come in, and, looking a little farther on, found his
rider. Brown's greeting was cordial and hearty, Mr. Hamlin's
somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request, he followed
him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small
room looking out upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished
with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.

"This yer's my home, Jack," said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw
himself upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair. "Her
room's t'other end of the hall. It's more'n six months since we've
lived together, or met, except at meals. It's mighty rough papers
on the head of the house, ain't it?" he said, with a forced laugh.
"But I'm glad to see you, Jack, damn glad," and he reached from the
bed, and again shook the unresponsive hand of Jack Hamlin.

"I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable;
though, for the matter of that, it's all round town. Don't strike
a light. We can talk here in the moonshine. Put up your feet on
that winder, and sit here beside me. Thar's whisky in that jug."

Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. Brown of
Calaveras turned his face to the wall and continued:

"If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind. But it's
loving her, and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate,
and no one to put down the brake; that's what gits me! But I'm
glad to see ye, Jack, damn glad."

In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his
companion's hand again. He would have detained it, but Jack
slipped it into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked,
listlessly, "How long has this been going on?"

"Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't
know how much I loved her till then. And she hasn't been the same
woman since.

"But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about,
and I'm glad you've come. It ain't that she doesn't love me any
more; it ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along,
for, perhaps, I staked her love and lost it, as I did everything
else at the Magnolia; and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some
women, and thar ain't no great harm done, 'cept to the fools. But,
Jack, I think--I think she loves somebody else. Don't move, Jack;
don't move; if your pistol hurts ye, take it off.

"It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and
lonesome, and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I've
ketched her lookin' at me sort of timid and pitying. And she
writes to somebody. And for the last week she's been gathering her
own things--trinkets, and furbelows, and jew'lry--and, Jack, I
think she's goin' off. I could stand all but that. To have her
steal away like a thief--"  He put his face downward to the pillow,
and for a few moments there was no sound but the ticking of a clock
on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and moved to the open
window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and the bed and
its occupant were in shadow. "What shall I do, Jack?" said the
voice from the darkness.

The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: "Spot
the man, and kill him on sight."

"But, Jack?"

"He's took the risk!"

"But will that bring HER back?"

Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.

"Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table. It's
a comfort to see ye, if nothin' else."

Jack hesitated, and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from
his pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown's
face was turned to the wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the
cards, he cut them, and dealt one card on the opposite side of the
table and toward the bed, and another on his side of the table for
himself. The first was a deuce, his own card, a king. He then
shuffled and cut again. This time "dummy" had a queen, and himself
a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. It brought
his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. "Two out of
three," said Jack, audibly.

"What's that, Jack?" said Brown.

"Nothing."

Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and
his imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes
confusing.

Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the
anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown
slept. Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on
the town of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully--its harsh outlines
softened and subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in
the moonlight that flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the
gurgling of water in the ditches, and the sighing of the pines
beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the firmament, and as he did
so a star shot across the twinkling field. Presently another, and
then another. The phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin a fresh
augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star should fall--
He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the
phenomenon was not repeated.

The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached
the table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the
flickering candlelight. It contained only a single line, written
in pencil, in a woman's hand:

"Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three."

The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke. "Are you there Jack?"

"Yes."

"Don't go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times. I
thought that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the
parson, Jack, was--who do you think?--you!"

The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed--the paper still
in his hand.

"It's a good sign, ain't it?" queried Brown.

"I reckon. Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?"

The "old man," thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the
assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.

"Smoke?"

Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.

"Light?"

Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for
his companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and
dropped the fragment--a fiery star--from the open window. He
watched it as it fell, and then returned to his friend.

"Old man," he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, "in
ten minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We
won't see each other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice:
sell out all you've got, take your wife with you, and quit the
country. It ain't no place for you, nor her. Tell her she must
go; make her go, if she won't. Don't whine because you can't be a
saint, and she ain't an angel. Be a man--and treat her like a
woman. Don't be a damn fool. Good-by."

He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like
a deer. At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler
and backed him against the wall. "Saddle my horse in two minutes,
or I'll--"  The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.

"The missis said you was to have the buggy," stammered the man.

"Damn the buggy!"

The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded
hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.

"Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?" said the man, who, like all his
class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really
concerned in his welfare.

"Stand aside!"

The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was
into the road. In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes,
he was but a moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a
star just loosed from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.

But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles
away, heard a voice, pure as a skylark’s, singing afield. They who
were asleep turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and
love and olden days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers,
already at work, ceased their labors and leaned upon their picks,
to listen to a romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy
sunrise.

HIGH-WATER MARK

When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools,
and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward
the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks,
with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant
dampness. And if you choose to indulge your fancy--although the
flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line
of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent
waters, and made the dead certainty of the returning tide a gloomy
reflection which no present sunshine could dissipate. The greener
meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and made no positive
attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation should be
complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and
soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.

The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and
syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power
of written expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls
at all cheerful and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron
standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a
reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful
curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit
to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive
kingfisher--an ornithological Marius--reviewing the desolate
expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of
the marsh continually, but evidently couldn’t make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the
reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a
glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on
the birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to
with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of
extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh
was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it
when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly
over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those
who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint
marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the
great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went
forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and
thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide
or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the
glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor furrow on
the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and shut
out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way,
started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the
boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around
like the floating hair of a corpse, and knew by these signs that
they were lost upon Dedlow Marsh and must make a night of it, and a
gloomy one at that--then you might know something of Dedlow Marsh
at high water.

Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never
failed to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon
Dedlow Marsh. Although the event was briefly recorded in the
counry paper, I had the story, in all its eloquent detail, from the
lips of the principal actor. I cannot hope to catch the varying
emphasis and peculiar coloring of feminine delineation, for my
narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give at least its substance.

She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-
sized river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary
formed by the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which
constituted the southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in
which she lived was a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few
feet by stout piles, and was three miles distant from the
settlements upon the river. Her husband was a logger--a profitable
business in a county where the principal occupation was the
manufacture of lumber.

It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb
of a high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to
the lower end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little
cabin when the voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the
southeastern sky, and she remembered hearing her husband say to his
companions that they must endeavor to complete their voyage before
the coming of the southwesterly gale which he saw brewing. And
that night it began to storm and blow harder than she had ever
before experienced, and some great trees fell in the forest by the
river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.

But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew
that one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong
hand, and that had he feared for her he would not have left her.
This, and her domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly
baby, helped to keep her mind from dwelling on the weather, except,
of course, to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs at
Utopia in the dreary distance. But she noticed that day, when she
went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide
was up to the little fence of their garden-patch, and the roar of
the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear
distinctly. And she began to think that she would like to have
someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had
not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she
would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he might have returned in the
storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long
exposure for baby, who was croupy and ailing.

But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like
sleeping or even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but
she still "sat and sat," and even tried to read. I don't know
whether it was a Bible or some profane magazine that this poor
woman read, but most probably the latter, for the words all ran
together and made such sad nonsense that she was forced at last to
put the book down and turn to that dearer volume which lay before
her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled, and
try to look forward to its mysterious future. And, rocking the
cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still was
wide-awake as ever.

It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her
clothes. How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke
with a dreadful choking in her throat, and found herself standing,
trembling all over, in the middle of the room, with her baby
clasped to her breast, and she was "saying something."  The baby
cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it when
she heard a scratching at the door. She opened it fearfully, and
was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who crawled,
dripping with water, into the room. She would like to have looked
out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to see how
things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
could hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and then
walked up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a
little while. Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she
thought she heard once or twice something scrape slowly against the
clapboards, like the scraping of branches. Then there was a little
gurgling sound, "like the baby made when it was swallowing"; then
something went "click-click" and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up
in bed. When she did so she was attracted by something else that
seemed creeping from the back door toward the center of the room.
It wasn't much wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to
the width of her hand, and began spreading all over the floor. It
was water.

She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing
but water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw
nothing but water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that
open, she saw nothing but water. Then she remembered hearing her
husband once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that
fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that he would
rather live near the bay than the river, whose banks might overflow
at any time. But was it the tide? So she ran again to the back
door, and threw out a stick of wood. It drifted away toward the
bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her
lips. It was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not the tide!

It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither
faint nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his
merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful
moment--that fear dropped from her like a garment, and her
trembling ceased. It was then and thereafter that she never lost
her self-command, through all the trials of that gloomy night.

She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a
table upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the
floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice
moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet
doors all flew open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping
against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree,
which had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture, had
floated down to the house. Luckily its long roots dragged in the
soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for had it
struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and
bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock. The hound
had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots
shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her mind. She
drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe,
waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung
again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining
a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its
roots, she held in the other her moaning child. Then something
cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she
had just quitted fell forward--just as cattle fall on their knees
before they lie down--and at the same moment the great redwood tree
swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black
night.

For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her
crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the
uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the
deserted and water-swept cabin. She remembered even then, and she
wonders how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she
wished she had put on another dress and the baby's best clothes;
and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he,
when he returned, would have something to come to, and it wouldn't
be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what had become
of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint. But
she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half
a revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water. The hound,
who kept distracting her by running up and down the tree and
howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for
some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the
tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of
him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone. The light
which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was
quenched suddenly. She could not then tell whither she was
drifting. The outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed
dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a line with the
river. It must be about slack water, and she had probably reached
the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing
waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was present
danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to sea
or crushed in the floating drift. That peril averted, if she were
carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till
daylight. Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from
the river, and the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then
again it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her
heart. She found at about this time that she was so chilled and
stiffened in her cramped position that she could scarcely move, and
the baby cried so when she put it to her breast that she noticed
the milk refused to flow; and she was so frightened at that, that
she put her head under her shawl, and for the first time cried
bitterly.

When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind
her, and she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped
up the water to cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt
as her tears. There was a relief, though, for by this sign she
knew that she was drifting with the tide. It was then the wind
went down, and the great and awful silence oppressed her. There
was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of the great trunk
on which she rested, and around her all was black gloom and quiet.
She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know that
she had not lost her voice. She thought then--it was queer, but
she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the night
when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of
mariners clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to
rafts, and beaten to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank
God that she was thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby,
who had fallen into a fretful sleep. Suddenly, away to the
southward, a great light lifted itself out of the gloom, and
flashed and flickered, and flickered and flashed again. Her heart
fluttered quickly against the baby's cold cheek. It was the
lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet wondering,
the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then
seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and the
current gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by the
position of the light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the
Dedlow Marsh.

Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not
been for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would
have felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to
make all her impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly
fell, a great flock of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and
crying. Then the plover flew up and piped mournfully as they
wheeled around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lit upon it like a
gray cloud. Then the heron flew over and around her, shrieking and
protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs only a few yards
from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird, larger than
a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled around and
around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite over
her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that
she thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to
attract her attention. But when she did so, the child was so
chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under the little lashes
which it didn't raise at all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird
flew away, and she fainted.

Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much,
after all, to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses
it was bright sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused
noise of guttural voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an
Indian "hushaby," and rocking herself from side to side before a
fire built on the marsh, before which she, the recovered wife and
mother, lay weak and weary. Her first thought was for her baby,
and she was about to speak, when a young squaw, who must have been
a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought her the
"mowitch," pale but living, in such a queer little willow cradle
all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed
and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw showed
their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
"Plenty get well, skeena mowitch," "wagee man come plenty soon,"
and she could have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then
she found that they had been gathering berries on the marsh in
their queer, comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw couldn't resist
the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came down and
discovered the "wagee" woman and child. And of course she gave the
garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and when HE came at
last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older in his
anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to the
canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman
was his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away
back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another
house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called
it after her, "Mary's Ark!"  But you may guess the next house was
built above high-water mark. And that's all.

Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the
Dedlow Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle
over it at high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog,
as I have, to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to
appreciate duly the blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.

A LONELY RIDE

As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark
night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me
assure the reader that I have no ulterior design in making this
assertion. A long course of light reading has forewarned me what
every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such
a statement. The storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such
obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in danger of
being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic,
or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be
detected. I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred
to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti
than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had not yet
reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will
in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these
depressing circumstances long enough to have made the slightest
impression on me.

I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on
the vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was
visible on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion
clung tenaciously to its wheels. I opened the door; the stage
creaked easily, and in the gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned
me, like ghostly hands, to come in now and have my sufferings out
at once.

I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which
struck me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of
the hotel, who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected
with the stage company, gravely descended, and walking toward the
conveyance, tried the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor.
Hardly had he resumed his position when another individual, equally
disinterested, impassively walked down the steps, proceeded to the
back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated carefully on the axle,
and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel. A third spectator
wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the
portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and
expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his
column. There was something so weird in this baptism that I grew
quite nervous.

Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal
annoyances, winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk
at the stage office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka
House, from a social viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the
prevailing opinion--so common to many honest people--that a serious
style of deportment and conduct toward a stranger indicates high
gentility and elevated station. Obeying this principle, all
hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general remark merged
into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of several bad cases of
diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the dining-room,
with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard
and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano,
harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to a
diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an
old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and
shadowy curls. "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the
face is open disgrace.'"  I heard no more. Dreading some
susceptibility to sincere expression on the subject of female
loveliness, I walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought shame and
sorrow to the household.

It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me
that I stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about
to mount, was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the
hotel. He had the wearied look which was the distinguishing
expression of Wingdam. Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and
receipted for, he took no further notice of me. I looked longingly
at the box seat, but he did not respond to the appeal. I flung my
carpetbag into the chasm, dived recklessly after it, and--before I
was fairly seated--with a great sigh, a creaking of unwilling
springs, complaining bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we
moved away. Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the
piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved solemnly
upon us.

To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that
encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely
distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at
the open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely
that, leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the
fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon
the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our
progress, more the guidance of some mysterious instinct than any
apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security
to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part
of the driver would have destroyed.

I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that
rest so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak
delusion. When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that
the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly
uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame. At
last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic
effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined
species of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling
regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my
attention painfully. Slowly this thumping merged into a senseless
echo of the mysterious female of the hotel parlor, and shaped
itself into this awful and benumbing axiom--"Praise-to-the-face-is-
open-disgrace. Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace."  Inequalities
of the road only quickened its utterance or drawled it to an
exasperating length.

It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no
use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the
many instances where praise to the face had redounded to the
everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell
sentimentally on modest genius and courage lifted up and
strengthened by open commendation; of no use to except to the
mysterious female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
generation on selfish and mechanically repeated axioms--all this
failed to counteract the monotonous repetition of this sentence.
There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was about to accept
it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of darkness and
necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some other
annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
moments. How quiet the driver was!

Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not
lying gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with
blackened face who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither?
The thing is perfectly feasible. And what is this fancy now being
jolted out of me? A story? It's of no use to keep it back--
particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a
Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so
well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident--
a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility.
My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my country
seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so dark
that when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who
holds the carriage door. But what of that?--PESTE! I am heavy
with sleep. The same obscurity also hides the old familiar
indecencies of the statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and
it opens and shuts behind me smartly. Then I find myself in a
trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor
Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There is nothing for me
to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say, "PARBLEU!" draw my
rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two after outside
a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled
linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am
rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an
intimate friend.

Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing
the driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the
darkness. I could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
woods, relieving a lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this
picture glimmered sadly. I noticed again the infinite depth of
patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the vandal
who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven
melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again the
mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude
to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the
smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of this calm
and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern. When
I awoke the full moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full moon
of NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so
palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until
the CASTA DIVA is sung--the "inconstant moon" that then and
thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of
the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed
Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut
from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back
with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping springs
essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast
improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond
delusion.

My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A
familiar sound had assured me of his presence in the full
possession of at least one of his most important functions.
Frequent and full expectoration convinced me that his lips were as
yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and soothed my anxious
ear. With this load lifted from my mind, and assisted by the mild
presence of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of
her splendor outside my cavern--I looked around the empty vehicle.
On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I picked it up with an
interest that, however, soon abated. There was no scent of the
roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No bend or twist
in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character.
I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's."  I tried to
imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it
might have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which
provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was
reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at last
slipped listlessly through my fingers.

I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I
was unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my
childish recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist
those impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
the heavens, had begun to separate the formless masses of the
shadowy landscape. Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages,
changed places before my window. The sharp outlines of the distant
hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the dry,
cold, dewless air of a California summer night. I was wondering
how late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night
traveled as slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been
spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity
attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of
Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage leaped
forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I addressed
the driver:

"I thought you changed horses on the road?"

"So we did. Two hours ago."

"That's odd. I didn't notice it."

"Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully
place for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!"

THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT

His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with
us, in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous
way. He probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us
young fellows would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned
to go, and how sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show
daguerreotypes and locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the
man of no account used to sit by and listen with a pained,
mortified expression on his plain face, and say nothing. I think
he had nothing to say. He had no associates except when we
patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal of sport
to us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind. He
never got his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how we
all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,
and--  But you know that time-honored joke. And then we had such a
splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the
sight of him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a
fancy to him, and send him little delicacies and books from the
cabin. You ought to have witnessed the rich scene that took place
when he came up, stammering and very sick, to thank her! Didn't
she flash up grandly and beautifully and scornfully? So like
"Medora," Rattler said--Rattler knew Byron by heart--and wasn't old
Fagg awfully cut up? But he got over it, and when Rattler fell
sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him. You see he was a
good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and spirit.

He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly
by, mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring
apostrophe of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite
seriously, if he thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember
Rattler's reply, but I know we all laughed very much, and I have no
doubt it was something good for Rattler was smart.

When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand "feed."
We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of
course we didn't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and
it was necessary, you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little
discretion. But Old Fagg, as we called him--he was only about
twenty-five years old, by the way--was the source of immense
amusement to us that day. It appeared that he had conceived the
idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and actually started off
afoot. We had a good time, and shook hands with one another all
around, and so parted. Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet some
of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each
other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know
that we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker
swore he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a
very contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who
borrowed money at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter
in a restaurant, didn't like to meet such people.

When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at
Mugginsville, in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it.
I stopped at the Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and
rode round the town and out to the claim. One of those individuals
whom newspaper correspondents call "our intelligent informant," and
to whom in all small communities the right of answering questions
is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed out to me. Habit had
enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he never
pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and added:
"You see, stranger," (he addressed the bank before him) "gold is
sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his
pick) but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the
point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the
pick for a period). He was green, and let the boys about here jump
him"--and the rest of his sentence was confided to his hat, which
he had removed to wipe his manly brow with his red bandanna.

I asked him who was the original proprietor.

"His name war Fagg."

I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer. He had
worked hard, he said, and was getting on "so-so."  I took quite a
liking to him and patronized him to some extent. Whether I did so
because I was beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as
Rattler and Mixer is not necessary for me to state.

You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
shareholders were done! Well, the next thing I heard was that
Rattler, who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at
Mugginsville keeping bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville
Hotel, and that old Fagg had struck it rich, and didn't know what
to do with his money. All this was told me by Mixer, who had been
there, settling up matters, and likewise that Fagg was sweet upon
the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid hotel. And so by
hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old Robins, the hotel
man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie Robins and Fagg.
Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing, and would do
just as her father wished. I thought it would be a good thing for
Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man he
might be of some account. So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to
look after things.

It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for
me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had
tried to snub me two years ago. I talked to him about old Fagg and
Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful. He
never liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't.
Did Nellie like anybody else? He turned around to the mirror
behind the bar and brushed up his hair! I understood the conceited
wretch. I thought I'd put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry
up matters. I had a long talk with him. You could see by the way
the poor fellow acted that he was badly stuck. He sighed, and
promised to pluck up courage to hurry matters to a crisis. Nellie
was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet respect for old
Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already taken captive by
Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and pleasing.
I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I. We are more apt
to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic
worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them,
quite as convenient. The difficulty with women is that their
feelings are apt to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you
know, reasoning is out of the question. This is what old Fagg
would have known had he been of any account. But he wasn't. So
much the worse for him.

It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when
in walked old Fagg. I was surprised to see him down, but we talked
over the current topics in that mechanical manner of people who
know that they have something else to say, but are obliged to get
at it in that formal way. After an interval Fagg in his natural
manner said:

"I'm going home!"

"Going home?"

"Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States. I
came to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I
have executed a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs. I
have some papers I'd like to leave with you. Will you take charge
of them?"

"Yes," I said. "But what of Nellie?"

His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in
one of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld. At
length he said:

"I shall not marry Nellie--that is"--he seemed to apologize
internally for the positive form of expression--"I think that I had
better not."

"David Fagg," I said with sudden severity, "you're of no account!"

To my astonishment his face brightened. "Yes," said he, "that's
it!--I'm of no account! But I always knew it. You see I thought
Rattler loved that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him
better than she did me, and would be happier I dare say with him.
But then I knew that old Robins would have preferred me to him, as
I was better off--and the girl would do as he said--and, you see, I
thought I was kinder in the way--and so I left. But," he
continued, as I was about to interrupt him, "for fear the old man
might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough to set him up in
business for himself in Dogtown. A pushing, active, brilliant
fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be in
his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know,
if he doesn't. Good-by."

I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be
at all amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to
attend to it, and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer
arrived, and a terrible incident occupied the papers for days
afterward. People in all parts of the State conned eagerly the
details of an awful shipwreck, and those who had friends aboard
went away by themselves, and read the long list of the lost under
their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant, the noble, and
loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was the first
to read the name of David Fagg. For the "man of no account" had
"gone home!"

MLISS

CHAPTER I

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler
undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side
of a great red mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket."  Seen from the
red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white
houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside.
The red stage topped with red-shirted passengers is lost to view
half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly
in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred
yards of the town. It is probably owing to this sudden twist in
the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually
attended with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting from the
vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident traveler is apt to
walk straight out of town under the impression that it lies in
quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men,
two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with
a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had
just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's
Pocket.

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were
huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than
the work of man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its
narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an
enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step
smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their sallow depths
unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the
great yellow torrent below, and here and there were the ruins of
some cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the hearthstone
open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of
a "pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand
dollars were expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and
in tunneling. And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a
pocket, and subject like other pockets to depletion. Although
Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that five
thousand dollars was the first and last return of his labor. The
mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume
steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune. Then Smith
went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into
saloonkeeping. Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking
a great deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard,
and then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had
never been anything else. But the settlement of Smith's Pocket,
like that of most discoveries, was happily not dependent on the
fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and
found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with its two
fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two
first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was
overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making
outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface,
look still more homely, and putting personal insult on that greater
portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness without the
luxury of adornment. Then there was a Methodist Church, and hard
by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountainside, a
graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one
night in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him,
carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed
to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and
had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the
noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit
of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had
been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise did not
disturb his work. But the opening of the door, and the tapping
continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly
startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad.
Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black
hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet
streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was
Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew
"Mliss," as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red
Mountain. Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce,
ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character,
were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's
weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She
wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and
quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's
craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless,
stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road. The miners'
camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these
voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that a
larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss. The Rev.
Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the hotel as
servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her
to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates
occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap
witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a
sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and
placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the
starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-
faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had
her ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such
the character of Mliss as she stood before the master. It was
shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and
asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her
hard glance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come
here when them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me.
That's why. You keep school, don't you? I want to be teached!"

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled
hair and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master
would have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing
more. But with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his
species, her boldness awakened in him something of that respect
which all original natures pay unconsciously to one another in any
grade. And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on still
rapidly, her hand on that door latch and her eyes on his:

"My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with
him. Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"

"Well?" said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly,
for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her
nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She
stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers;
and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little
teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and
something like a blush struggled up to her cheek and tried to
assert itself through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn
of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God to
strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her face on
the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.

The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
When, with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs
the MEA CULPA of childish penitence--that "she'd be good, she
didn't mean to," etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left
Sabbath school.

Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why? Oh, yes. What did he
(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell
her that God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to
go to Sabbath school for? SHE didn't want to be "beholden" to
anybody who hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in
the little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant
with the sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected
himself with a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way,
however, and after a moment of serious silence he asked about her
father.

Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for
her? Why did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks
say, "Old Bummer Smith's Mliss!" when she passed? Yes; oh yes.
She wished he was dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her
sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could
what you or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories
from childish lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or
I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and
the omnipresent shadow of her drunken father. Then, raising her to
her feet, he wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding her come
early in the morning, he walked with her down the road. There he
bade her "good night."  The moon shone brightly on the narrow path
before them. He stood and watched the bent little figure as it
staggered down the road, and waited until it had passed the little
graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and
stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against the
far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the
lines of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of
never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass
sobbing and crying into the night. Then, the little schoolhouse
seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed,
and her coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with
the comb, in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant
look shone occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and
more subdued. Then began a series of little trials and self-
sacrifices, in which master and pupil bore an equal part, and which
increased the confidence and sympathy between them. Although
obedient under the master's eye, at times during recess, if
thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in
ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding
himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the
master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople
on the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from
such evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course
of the master in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady
persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back
afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her
past life, as though it were but her natural progress down the
narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their
first meeting. Remembering the experience of the evangelical
McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the
course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words
which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the
wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her
eyes, it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer
people had made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was
enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization; and
often a rough shake of the hand, and words of homely commendation
from a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of
the young master, and set him to thinking if it was altogether
deserved.

Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and
the master was sitting late one evening over the moral and
sententious copies, when there came a tap at the door and again
Mliss stood before him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and
there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black
eyes to remind him of his former apparition. "Are you busy?" she
asked. "Can you come with me?"--and on his signifying his
readiness, in her old willful way she said, "Come, then, quick!"

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As
they entered the town the master asked her whither she was going.
She replied, "To see my father."

It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial
title, or indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man."
It was the first time in three months that she had spoken of him at
all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him
since her great change. Satisfied from her manner that it was
fruitless to question her purpose, he passively followed. In out-
of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in
gambling hells and dance houses, the master, preceded by Mliss,
came and went. In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of
low dens, the child, holding the master's hand, stood and anxiously
gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of
her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to
the child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor
upon her but for the interference of the master. Others,
recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour
slipped by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a
cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume,
where she thought he still might be. Thither they crossed--a
toilsome half-hour's walk--but in vain. They were returning by the
ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the
town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report
rang out on the clear night air. The echoes caught it, and carried
it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all
along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the
outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from the
hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to
fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master turned toward
Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had
gone. Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail
to the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached
the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village. Midway
of the crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe. For high
above him on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure
of his late companion crossing swiftly in the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a
central point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among
a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the
child appeared, and, taking the master's hand, led him silently
before what seemed a ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was
quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her look that of one
to whom some long-expected event had at last happened--an
expression that to the master in his bewilderment seemed almost
like relief. The walls of the cavern were partly propped by
decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared to be some
ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant. The
master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.
It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet
in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.

CHAPTER II

The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly
described in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that
Mliss had "struck a good lead."  So when there was a new grave
added to the little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a
little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER
came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of
one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of
noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear
brother with the past. "He leaves an only child to mourn his
loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to
the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley."  The Rev. McSnagley, in
fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly
attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of her father,
made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial effects
of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation drove most
of the children into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-
white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse to
be comforted.

The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in
little whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the
upspringing breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the
green wave which in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew
sere and dry and hard. In those days the master, strolling in the
little churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised
to find a few wild flowers plucked from the damp pine forests
scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little pine
cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented grass,
which the children loved to keep in their desks, intertwined with
the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood anemone, and
here and there the master noticed the dark-blue cowl of the
monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something in the odd
association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his
esthetic sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a
prostrate pine on a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes
of lifeless branches, her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and
crooning to herself one of the Negro melodies of her younger life.
Recognizing him at a distance, she made room for him on her
elevated throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality and
patronage that would have been ridiculous had it not been so
terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab apples. The
master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious and
deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in
her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as
long as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had
tested her integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange
feeling which had overcome him on seeing them died away.

Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became
known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and
kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her
maidenhood as the "Per-rairie Rose."  Being one of those who
contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a
long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last
subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of
"order," which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as
"Heaven's first law."  But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her
own "Jeemes" sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature
asserted itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard
"between meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes,
leaving those important articles on the threshold, for the delight
of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were
"keerless" of their clothes. So with but one exception, however
much the "Prairie Rose" might have trimmed and pruned and trained
her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly
wild and straggling. That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher,
aged fifteen. She was the realization of her mother's immaculate
conception--neat, orderly, and dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie"
was a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy,
Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad,"
and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential
moments. It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear
that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the
master and as an example for Mliss and others. For "Clytie" was
quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's physical
peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's
Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in
April and languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the
schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal. A few were jealous of the
master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's
eyes to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was
romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention;
that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she
usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her
eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service
she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a
round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her
copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when
she did so. I don't remember whether I have stated that the master
was a young man--it's of little consequence, however; he had been
severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her
first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and
factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps
an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this asceticism.
He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she returned to
the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and did not find
it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he endeavored
to make himself particularly agreeable --partly from the fact, I
imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to
school. Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the
subject, it appeared that they had left the school together, but
the willful Mliss had taken another road. The afternoon brought
her not. In the evening he called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly
heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search
of her, without discovering a trace that might lead to her
discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice, but
that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with
his innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that
the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was
almost as terrible, muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of
soap and water. Sick at heart, the master returned to the
schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he
found a note lying before him addressed to himself, in Mliss's
handwriting. It seemed to be written on a leaf torn from some old
memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been
sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the
master read as follows:

RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come
back. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary
Jennings, and my Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from
a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to
Clytie Morpher. Don't you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is
of her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin. That is all and no
more at present from

Yours respectfully,

MELISSA SMITH.

The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon
lifted its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the
trail that led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the
coming and going of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he
tore the missive into fragments and scattered them along the road.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the
palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the
hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few
dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and
so came to the wooded ridge where he had once found Mliss. There
he found the prostrate pine and tasseled branches, but the throne
was vacant. As he drew nearer, what might have been some
frightened animal started through the crackling limbs. It ran up
the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered itself in some
friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat, found the
nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he met
the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other
without speaking. She was first to break the silence.

"What do you want?" she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action. "I want some crab
apples," he said humbly.

"Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of
Clytemnerestera?"  (It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express
her contempt in additional syllables to that classical young
woman's already long-drawn title.)  "O you wicked thing!"

"I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday.
I am famished!" and the young man in a state of remarkable
exhaustion leaned against the tree.

Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life
she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by
his heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she
said:

"Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind
you don't tell," for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and
squirrels.

But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length
she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and
questioned:

"If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch
me?"

The master promised.

"Hope you'll die if you do!"

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid
down the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the
munching of the pine nuts. "Do you feel better?" she asked, with
some solicitude. The master confessed to a recuperated feeling,
and then, gravely thanking her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As
he expected, he had not gone far before she called him. He turned.
She was standing there quite white, with tears in her widely opened
orbs. The master felt that the right moment had come. Going up to
her, he took both her hands, and looking in her tearful eyes, said,
gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first evening you came to see
me?"

Lissy remembered.

"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
something and be better, and I said--"

"Come," responded the child, promptly.

"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he
was lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to
come and teach him to be better?"

The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master
waited patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the
couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and
gazed at them. A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of
the fallen tree, and there stopped.

"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the
child smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked,
and a long pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs
full on the doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly
she took the master's hand in her quick way. What she said was
scarcely audible, but the master, putting the black hair back from
her forehead, kissed her; and so, hand in hand, they passed out of
the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit road.

CHAPTER III

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars,
Mliss still retained an offensive attitude in regard to
Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely lulled
in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was only that the
round curves and plump outline offered more extended pinching
surface. But while such ebullitions were under the master's
control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like
many other professed readers of character, was safer in a
posteriori than a priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it
was emphatically Mliss's doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its
unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs.
Morpher. It had been the old-time companion of Mliss's wanderings,
and bore evident marks of suffering. Its original complexion was
long since washed away by the weather and anointed by the slime of
ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in days past. Its one
gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers had been. Mliss
had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other
children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the
schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles.
Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she would to herself, it
knew no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another
doll and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and
curiously. The master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a
slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to
Clytemnestra. It became evident before long that Mliss had also
noticed the same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen
head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with
a string round its neck to and from school. At other times,
setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and
inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she
considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences
upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites
of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine
away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now
consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help
noticing in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless,
and vigorous perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the
doubts of childhood. Her answers in class were always slightly
dashed with audacity. Of course she was not infallible. But her
courage and daring in passing beyond her own depth and that of the
floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed
all errors of judgment. Children are not better than grown people
in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed
above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master
was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and
judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and
entertained his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He
could not but see that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and
willful. That there was but one better quality which pertained to
her semisavage disposition--the faculty of physical fortitude and
self-sacrifice, and another, though not always an attribute of the
noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both fearless and sincere; perhaps
in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and
had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think
sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices,
when he determined to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This
decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley
were not friends. But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of
their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition
that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to
the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the
rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to
McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed
that the master was looking "peartish," and hoped he had got over
the "neuralgy" and "rheumatiz."  He himself had been troubled with
a dumb "ager" since last conference. But he had learned to "rastle
and pray."

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain,
Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. "She is
an adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young
family," added Mr. McSnagley; "and there's that mannerly young gal-
-so well behaved--Miss Clytie."  In fact, Clytie's perfections
seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several
minutes upon them. The master was doubly embarrassed. In the
first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all
this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly
confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest
born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say
something natural, found it convenient to recall another
engagement, and left without asking the information required, but
in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr.
McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the
close communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in
the master's manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one
of their long postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting
a stump, looked full in his face with big, searching eyes. "You
ain't mad?" said she, with an interrogative shake of the black
braids. "No."  "Nor bothered?"  "No."  "Nor hungry?"  (Hunger was
to Mliss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)
"No."  "Nor thinking of her?"  "Of whom, Lissy?"  "That white
girl."  (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who was a
very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)  "No."  "Upon your
word?"  (A substitute for "Hope you'll die!" proposed by the
master.)  "Yes."  "And sacred honor?"  "Yes."  Then Mliss gave him
a fierce little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or
three days after that she condescended to appear more like other
children, and be, as she expressed it, "good."

Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket,
and as his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's
Pocket eventually becoming the capital of the State not entirely
definite, he contemplated a change. He had informed the school
trustees privately of his intentions, but educated young men of
unblemished moral character being scarce at that time, he consented
to continue his school term through the winter to early spring.
None else knew of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people of Wingdam
as "Duchesny."  He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or
any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of a
constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he
never really believed he was going to do anything before it was
done.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct,
perhaps, which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was
foolish, romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that
she would do better under the control of an older and sterner
teacher. Then she was nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the
rules of Red Mountain, would be a woman. He had done his duty.
After Smith's death he addressed letters to Smith's relatives, and
received one answer from a sister of Melissa's mother. Thanking
the master, she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic States
for California with her husband in a few months. This was a slight
superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for
Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving,
sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide
her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent
mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been
gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a
few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest
Home, or Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's
Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing
timid children in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a
witness box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-
possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will
imagine that in the present instance Mliss and Clytie were
preeminent, and divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness
of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid
self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other
little ones were timid and blundering. Mliss's readiness and
brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number and provoked
the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously
awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose athletic forms
were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces
looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the
pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the
vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive
funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was
tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping
time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered
orbits of the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
"Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it had been a
doing of it since the creashun, eh?"  Mliss nodded a scornful
affirmative. "Well, war that the truth?" said McSnagley, folding
his arms. "Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips
tightly. The handsome outlines at the windows peered further in
the schoolroom, and a saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and
soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings,
turned toward the child and whispered, "Stick to it, Mliss!"  The
reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his
look on Clytie. That young woman softly elevated her round, white
arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn
in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary silence. Clytie's
round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big eyes were very
bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin rested
softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:

"Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!"
There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant
expression on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and
a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss
skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a
loud snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of
astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from the windows, as Mliss
brought her red fist down on the desk, with the emphatic
declaration:

"It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!"

CHAPTER IV

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were
visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine
forests exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already
budding, the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.
On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain at its southern
aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up from its broad-
leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells. Again the
billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just
tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little
graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the
mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General
superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating
that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would
perform, for a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and
"screaming farces"; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there
would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would
include singing, dancing, etc. These announcements occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much
excitement and great speculation among the master's scholars. The
master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was sacred
and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the
master and Mliss "assisted."

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and
felt something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect
upon her excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
each stroke of her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips
were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried breath. Her
widely opened lids threw up and arched her black eyebrows. She did
not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss
seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate
extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-
hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller" and ogling the
master at the same moment. But when the performance was over, and
the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep
breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a half-
apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, "Now take me
home!" and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once
more in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to
ridicule the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss
thought that the young lady who acted so beautifully was really in
earnest, and in love with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes.
Well, if she were in love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
"Why?" said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the drooping lid. "Oh!
well, he couldn't support his wife at his present salary, and pay
so much a week for his fine clothes, and then they wouldn't receive
as much wages if they were married as if they were merely lovers--
that is," added the master, "if they are not already married to
somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty young countess
takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs
the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As to
the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and
must cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of
that mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for
I bought some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy,
he is a pretty good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I
don't think people ought to take advantage of it and give him black
eyes and throw him in the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me
two dollars and a half a long time, before I would throw it up in
his face, as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam."

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in
his eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss
had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species
of sardonic humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her
speech. But the young man continued in this strain until they had
reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal
charge. Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and
rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed
Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company,
Mliss was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon
ramble was for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide. As he was putting away his books and preparing
to leave the schoolhouse, a small voice piped at his side, "Please,
sir?"  The master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.

"Well, my little man," said the master, impatiently, "what is it?
quick!"

"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
agin."

"What's that, sir?" said the master, with that unjust testiness
with which we always receive disagreeable news.

"Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now;
and please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a
speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted
right off by heart," and the little fellow paused in a collapsed
condition.

"What actor?" asked the master.

"Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold
chain," said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke
out his breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant
tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road.
Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with
his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped
suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him. "Where were they
talking?" asked the master, as if continuing the conversation.

"At the Arcade," said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master paused. "Run down
home," said he to the boy. "If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade
and tell me. If she isn't there, stay home; run!"  And off trotted
the short-legged Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building
containing a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young
man crossed the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-
by turned and looked after him. He looked at his clothes, took out
his handkerchief, and wiped his face before he entered the barroom.
It contained the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as he
entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly and with such a
strange expression that the master stopped and looked again, and
then saw it was only his own reflection in a large mirror. This
made the master think that perhaps he was a little excited, and so
he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of the
tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
advertisements.

He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and
into the billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter
apartment a person was standing by one of the tables with a broad-
brimmed glazed hat on his head. The master recognized him as the
agent of the dramatic company; he had taken a dislike to him at
their first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing his beard
and hair. Satisfied that the object of his search was not there,
he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had noticed the master,
but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in which vulgar
natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand, he
pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The
master stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their
glances met, the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to
speak, something kept rising in his throat and retarded his
utterance, and his own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant,
low, and resonant. "I understand," he began, "that Melissa Smith,
an orphan, and one of my scholars, has talked with you about
adopting your profession. Is that so?"

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an
imaginary shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions.
Then, walking round the table, he recovered the ball and placed it
upon the spot. This duty discharged, getting ready for another
shot, he said:

"S'pose she has?"

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table
in his gloved hand, he went on:

"If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her
guardian, and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do
the kind of life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I
have already brought her out of an existence worse than death--out
of the streets and the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so
again. Let us talk like men. She has neither father, mother,
sister, or brother. Are you seeking to give her an equivalent for
these?"

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master,
"but she is better than she was. I believe that I have some
influence over her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will
take no further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
leave her to me. I am willing--"  But here something rose again in
the master's throat, and the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised
his head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

"Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young
man!"

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the
glance than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all
these. The best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a
blow. The master felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy
finding expression in the one act, he struck the brute full in his
grinning face. The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
another, and tore the glove and skin from the master's hand from
knuckle to joint. It opened up the corners of the fellow's mouth,
and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of
many feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp
quick reports followed each other in rapid succession. Then they
closed again about his opponent, and the master was standing alone.
He remembered picking bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve
with his left hand. Someone was holding his other hand. Looking
at it, he saw it was still bleeding from the blow, but his fingers
were clenched around the handle of a glittering knife. He could
not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the
master to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him
as well as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss."  "It's
all right, my boy," said Mr. Morpher. "She's home!"  And they
passed out into the street together. As they walked along Mr.
Morpher said that Mliss had come running into the house a few
moments before, and had dragged him out, saying that somebody was
trying to kill the master at the Arcade. Wishing to be alone, the
master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the agent again
that night, and parted from him, taking the road toward the
schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door open-
-still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most
sensitive organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown
out by his late adversary still rankled in his heart. It was
possible, he thought, that such a construction might be put upon
his affection for the child, which at best was foolish and
Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily abnegated his authority
and affection? And what had everybody else said about her? Why
should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged
tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had
been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and
risked his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing?
What would the people say? What would his friends say? What would
McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to
meet was Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk,
told the child, in a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished
to be alone. As she rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting
down, buried his head in his hands. When he looked up again she
was still standing there. She was looking at his face with an
anxious expression.

"Did you kill him?" she asked.

"No!" said the master.

"That's what I gave you the knife for!" said the child, quickly.

"Gave me the knife?" repeated the master, in bewilderment.

"Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit
him. Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to
you. Why didn't you stick him?" said Mliss rapidly, with an
expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture of the little
red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

"Yes," said Mliss. "If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with
the play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you
wouldn't tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell
the Doctor so. I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those
Morphers. I'd rather die first."

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and,
holding them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and
in the queer pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into
when unduly excited:

"That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the
play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I
won't stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you
let me, if you didn't hate and despise me too!"

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over
the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the
corner of her apron as if they had been wasps.

"If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss, fiercely, "to keep me from
the play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why
shouldn't I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I
always carry it here," and she struck her breast with her clenched
fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his
and looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:

"Lissy, will you go with ME?"

The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, "Yes."

"But now--tonight?"

"Tonight."

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that
had once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it
seemed she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered
brightly above them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned,
and behind them the school of Red Mountain closed upon them
forever.

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered
by the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent;
its foam clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden;
the air was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor
Commandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep
embrasured window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt
breath of the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried
cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window
of the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the
year now about to pass away. But, like the garrison at the
Presidio, there was little to review; the year, like its
predecessors, had been uneventful--the days had slipped by in a
delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or
interruption. The regularly recurring feasts and saints' days, the
half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport ship and
rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal
life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure.
Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of
Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the
wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last
earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on
the other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In
short, it was that glorious Indian summer of California history
around which so much poetical haze still lingers--that bland,
indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of
American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire
that burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of
copybooks, the work of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As
he turned over the leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed
the fair round Scripture text--the first pious pothooks of the
pupils of San Carlos--an audible commentary fell from his lips:
"'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah, little one, excellent!--
'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ! that upstroke of
thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see it!"  A film
of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right, alas!
twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed
it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued:
"'The Ishmaelites having arrived--'"

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old
soldier, the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned
quickly toward the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should
have been hanging. But it was not there, and as he recalled that
the last time he had seen that weapon it was being ridden up and
down the gallery by Pepito, the infant son of Bautista, the
tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented himself with frowning
upon the intruder.

But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful.
He was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea
boots of a mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there
was little about him that was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more
fluent than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder. He was
master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in
Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now
driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged
permission to ride out the gale under the headlands of the blessed
Trinity, and no more. Water he did not need, having taken in a
supply at Bodega. He knew the strict surveillance of the Spanish
port regulations in regard to foreign vessels, and would do nothing
against the severe discipline and good order of the settlement.
There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he glanced
toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the open
unguarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had
discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and
was then sound asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he
was accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old
order issued ten years before, regarding the American ship
COLUMBIA, there was no precedent to guide him. The storm was
severe, and a sentiment of humanity urged him to grant the
stranger's request. It is but just to the Commander to say that
his inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with his decision.
He would have denied with equal disregard of consequences that
right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded so gracefully
to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only that there
should be no communication between the ship and shore. "For
yourself, Senor Captain," he continued, "accept my hospitality.
The fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your
distinguished presence"; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made
the semblance of withdrawing from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled
fort, the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century
previous. and the shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting
the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the reckless spirit
of a man who never let slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled
his brain, but a timely reflection of the commercial unimportance
of the transaction checked him. He only took a capacious quid of
tobacco as the Commander gravely drew a settle before the fire, and
in honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief that bound
his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes
me not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to
relate. I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker,
and under the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his
host, he became still more loquacious. And think of a man with a
twenty years' budget of gossip! The Commander learned, for the
first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies; of the French
Revolution; of the great Napoleon, whose achievements, perhaps,
Peleg colored more highly than the Commander's superiors would have
liked. And when Peleg turned questioner, the Commander was at his
mercy. He gradually made himself master of the gossip of the
Mission and Presidio, the "small-beer" chronicles of that pastoral
age, the conversion of the heathen, the Presidio schools, and even
asked the Commander how he had lost his eye! It is said that at
this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced from about his
person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled trifles,
and even forced some of them upon his host. It is further alleged
that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of
aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and
behaved in a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting
high-flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice
divers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion;
chiefly in regard to a "little one" who was his, the Commander's,
"soul"! These allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of a
serious chronicler, should be received with great caution, and are
introduced here as simple hearsay. That the Commander, however,
took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries
of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous manner about
the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of this
narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had
abated, took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the
GENERAL COURT. When the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that
the holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in
the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses;
that for many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the
settlement; that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice
or seed, were found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and
that several bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing
resemblance to oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of
provender, were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith. But
when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee trader's
word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations, and
the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon the
confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject this part of
the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander.
The sun was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up
in bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the
remembrance of the previous night came back to him, he jumped from
his couch and ran to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A
sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his
eyes. Not content with this, he consulted the metallic mirror
which hung beside his crucifix. There was no mistake; the
Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as good, save for
the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation,
but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare
miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to
the heathen, through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos
himself. That their beloved Commander, the temporal defender of
the Faith, should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation
was most fit and seemly. The Commander himself was reticent; he
could not tell a falsehood--he dared not tell the truth. After
all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the powers of his
right eye were actually restored, was it wise and discreet for him
to undeceive them? For the first time in his life the Commander
thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text which has
been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
"all things to all men."  Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little
settlement. The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous,
seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon the beholder. No one
could look at it without winking. It was cold, hard, relentless,
and unflinching. More than that, it seemed to be endowed with a
dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing through and into the
inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The soldiers of the
garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their commander,
and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning. The
servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that
seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school
smirched their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor
Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke
when her patron stood beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion,
self-accusation, and timidity took the place of trust, confidence,
and security throughout San Carlos. Whenever the Right Eye of the
Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he
only saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the
crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most
trusty retainers stammered, blushed, and faltered before him.
Self-accusations, confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or
extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The
very children that he loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be
conscious of some hidden sin. The result of this constant
irritation showed itself more plainly. For the first half-year the
Commander's voice and eye were at variance. He was still kind,
tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however, his voice
took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,
impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was
plain that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the
eye to the Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to
ascribe the right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the
special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of
witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel, the evil one. It would have
fared ill with Hermenegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but
Commander or amenable to local authority. But the reverend father,
Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power over the political executive,
and all attempts at spiritual advice failed signally. He retired
baffled and confused from his first interview with the Commander,
who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful power of
his glance. The holy Father contradicted himself, exposed the
fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed
himself to several undoubted heresies. When the Commander stood up
at mass, if the officiating priest caught that skeptical and
searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined. Even the power
of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the
affections of the people and the good order of the settlement
departed from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the
white walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue
the leathern jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to
have borrowed his dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and
seamed with drought; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and
vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed and ardently prayed for, came
not. The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the Commander.
Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among the
Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more firmly,
tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and looked up
his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the
hour of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer
attended the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such
times to some solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent
meditation. The firelight played upon the low beams and rafters,
but left the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting
thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and looking down, saw the
figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee. "Ah,
littlest of all," said the Commander, with something of his old
tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his native
speech--"sweet one, what doest thou here? Art thou not afraid of
him whom everyone shuns and fears?"

"No," said the little Indian, readily, "not in the dark. I hear
your voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I
see not your eye, Senor Commandante. That only I fear--and that, O
senor, O my father," said the child, lifting her little arms
towards his--"that I know is not thine own!"

The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself,
he kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A
few hours later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he
sought his own couch and slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through
the low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were
flitting through the parade ground, which the Commander might have
seen had he not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly
to the couch and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration.
Something glittered in the firelight as the savage lifted his arm;
another moment and the sore perplexities of Hermenegildo
Salvatierra would have been over, when suddenly the savage started
and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The Commander slept
peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and unaltered,
glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the earth
in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast
upon the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of
a moment. Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians
were speedily driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the
Commander received a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand
to that mysterious organ, it was gone. Never again was it found,
and never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of
the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The
rain returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored
between priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over
the sere hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their
martial preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and
pastoral content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San
Carlos. And far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master,
Peleg Scudder, trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians,
and offering glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to
the chiefs.

NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD

PART I--IN THE FIELD

It was near the close of an October day that I began to be
disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding
since sunrise, and my course through the depressing monotony of the
long level landscape affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream
than a business journey, performed under that sincerest of natural
phenomena--a California sky. The recurring stretches of brown and
baked fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard
outline of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving
cattle, seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic
picture that never changed. Active exercise might have removed
this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since
given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader
under that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and
dry seasons were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant
hills. In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid
for the slow hectic which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else
Nature was too practical for such thin disguises. She merely
turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old
diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite
any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue
heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little
ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere.
Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the
shadows deepened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the
watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse forward. A half-
hour's active spurring brought me to a corral, and a little beyond
a house, so low and broad it seemed at first sight to be half-
buried in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like
some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping
with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly
boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the
daily sunshine. No projection for the wind by night to grow
musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden
shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its
uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though
bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded existence. The
tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed against the
rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to
the rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building
by a slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing
there, and met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without
speaking, led the way to the principal room. As I entered, four
young men who were reclining by the fire slightly altered their
attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither
curiosity nor interest. A hound started from a dark corner with a
growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,
and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I instantly received the
impression that for a long time the group by the fire had not
uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated
my business.

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu
Santo Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of
township lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of private
grants. There had been some intervention to the old survey by a
Mr. Tryan who had preempted adjacent--"settled land warrants,"
interrupted the old man. "Ah, yes! Land warrants--and then this
was Mr. Tryan?"

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting
other public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face.
It was certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular
effect of that mining operation known as "ground sluicing"; the
harder lines of underlying character were exposed, and what were
once plastic curves and soft outlines were obliterated by some
powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing
atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement
of the contest, with a fluency, which, like the wind without,
showed frequent and unrestrained expression. He told me--what I
had already learned--that the boundary line of the old Spanish
grant was a creek, described in the loose phraseology of the DESENO
as beginning in the VALDA or skirt of the hill, its precise
location long the subject of litigation. I listened and answered
with little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the wind
which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd face,
which was again reflected in the resemblance that the silent group
by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the wind
was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark
addressed to the recumbent figures.

"Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to
Altascar's, tomorrow?"

There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no
decided answer.

"Kin you go, Kerg?"

"Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?"

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he
was lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.

"Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?"

"Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to
pack her and the baby agin."

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited
for the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was
one of the finest things I had ever seen.

"Wise?"

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and
patched boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.

"I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war
down the river."

"Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum
teeth to get the money from you even then."

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's
parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the
family, sank back in honorable retirement.

"Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with
wimmin and children, p'r'aps you'll go," said Tryan, with a nervous
twitching, intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably
mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:

"Got no saddle."

"Wot's gone of your saddle?"

"Kerg, there"--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain
might have worn at the sacrifice.

"You lie!" returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around
his head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which
fearlessly met his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon
dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his
face. He allowed me to take the chair from his hand, and I was
trying to pacify him by the assurance that I required no guide when
the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice:

"Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and
introduce you to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't
pertickler."

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some
domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was
followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man
entered. Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a
shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the
corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly together and his very
handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he
made upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as
guide, and he cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called
him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting
the prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame,
listening to the wind which continually shook the tenement.
Besides the one chair which had acquired a new importance in my
eyes, I presently discovered a crazy table in one corner, with an
ink bottle and pen; the latter in that greasy state of
decomposition peculiar to country taverns and farmhouses. A goodly
array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a
dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the
horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the
inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the
shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it
difficult to believe I had ever known a different existence. My
profession had often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among
those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness made me
feel so lonely and uncomfortable I shrank closer to myself, not
without grave doubts--which I think occur naturally to people in
like situations--that this was the general rule of humanity and I
was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It was a relief
when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a
general movement in the family. We walked across the dark
platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length
was occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed
woman was already taking her repast as she at the same time gave
nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of
introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no notice of
me, I was enabled to slip into a seat without discomposing or
interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace, and the attention of
the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of
the table often betrayed the presence of the "wellspring of
pleasure."  The conversation generally referred to the labors of
the day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts of missing
stock. Yet the supper was such a vast improvement upon the
previous intellectual feast that when a chance allusion of mine to
the business of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the interest
grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed bitterly against the
system of ranch-holding by the "greasers," as he was pleased to
term the native Californians. As the same ideas have been
sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be
worthy of record.

"Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer
doors. Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine
grants--most of 'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More
fools the 'Merrikans for lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em?
'Merrikan and blood money.

"Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot
for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers,
not so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin'
home and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and
missions, and crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich?
Them sort things wurent allowed in Mizzoori."

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and
met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act
did not escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of
seeing that the rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance
against us.

"It was agin Nater, and agin God," added Tryan. "God never
intended gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and
crucifixens. That's why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never
intended such a climate for lazy lopers. She never gin six months'
sunshine to be slept and smoked away."

How long he continued and with what further illustration I could
not say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-
room. I was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door
leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a bed.

"You'd better sleep there tonight," he said; "you'll be more
comfortable, and I'll call you early."

I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which
were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and
vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The "boys"
returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger
log was thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a
furnace, but it did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the
hard faces that it lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had
served as chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mattresses,
and each received its owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had
not returned, and I missed George. I sat there until, wakeful and
nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall. There was
no sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of the
sleepers. At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my
hat and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the
wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the
familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed
relief. I ran not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square
outline of the house was lost in the alder bushes. An
uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten
flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I noticed a slight
elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded
by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as
resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view
of the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The
ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow
sung in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the
star, I sought the house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform.
The door of the lower building was open, and the old man was
sitting beside the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a
look in his face as though he were hunting up prophecies against
the "Greaser."  I turned to enter, but my attention was attracted
by a blanketed figure lying beside the house, on the platform. The
broad chest heaving with healthy slumber, and the open, honest face
were familiar. It was George, who had given up his bed to the
stranger among his people. I was about to wake him, but he lay so
peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I went to bed with
a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure
soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and
grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my
bed, ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of
the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind
had been magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the
windows. A dash of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin
basin, helped to brighten me. It was still early, but the family
had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in
the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had already "packed"
his relatives away. I felt more cheerful--there are few troubles
Youth cannot distance with the start of a good night's rest. After
a substantial breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we
were mounted and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and
baked with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me,
overflowed its banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that
morning's ride, the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against
the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and the expanding track
before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan,
musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata. He
rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride and
unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by
the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all
equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit
that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we
again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be "Chu Chu," staid
and respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of
plank roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her
small white feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust.
"Give her her head; don't you see she likes it?" and Chu Chu seems
to like it, and whether bitten by native tarantula into native
barbarism or emulous of the roan, "blood" asserts itself, and in a
moment the peaceful servitude of years is beaten out in the music
of her clattering hoofs. The creek widens to a deep gully. We
dive into it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving cloud
of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are scattered over the plain,
grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds. George
makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include
them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, "Ours!"

"About how many, George?"

"Don't know."

"How many?"

"'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head," says George, reflecting. "We
don't know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run."

"What are they worth?"

"About thirty dollars a head."

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the
laughing George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of
the Tryan household is expressed in that look, for George averts
his eye and says, apologetically:

"I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he
says it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep
movin'. In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles
should fall through, and we'd have to get up and move stakes
further down."

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center
of the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and
in a few moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable
horns and hoofs. "TORO!" shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm,
and the band opens a way for the swinging riata. I can feel their
steaming breaths, and their spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering
flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove
might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range
the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines,
economically got up to meet the exigencies of a six months'
rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle with the distracting
wind and the blinding dust.

"That's not our brand," says George; "they're strange stock," and
he points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological
sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is
chasing. But the herd are closing round us with low mutterings,
and George has again recourse to the authoritative "TORO," and with
swinging riata divides the "bossy bucklers" on either side. When
we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I venture to ask
George if they ever attack anyone.

"Never horsemen--sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know,
but curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they
meet a chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in
the pursuit of knowledge. But," adds George, "here's the lower
bench of the foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that
White building you see yonder is the casa."

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe
building, baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our
horses in the charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were
basking lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep
shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon us, as sudden and
grateful as a plunge in cool water, from its contrast with the
external glare and heat. In the center of a low-ceiled apartment
sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied about his head,
the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving his
gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added
to the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of
tenderness and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the
heart by so much devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes
were still dazzled by the effect of the outer sunshine, and at
first I did not see the white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who
slipped into the corridor as we entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which
would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had
just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he
listened calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the
smoke curling placidly from his lips showed his regular
respiration. When I had finished, he offered quietly to accompany
us to the line of demarcation. George had meanwhile disappeared,
but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English, in the
corridor, betrayed his vicinity. When he returned again, a little
absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most self-
possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk cap beneath
that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect.
A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting.
Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an
hour from the time of our arrival we were again "loping" in the
staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed
down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the
silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that
there might be further intervention or appeal, but the proffered
oil and wine were returned with a careless shrug of the shoulders
and a sententious "QUE BUENO?--Your courts are always just."

The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing
monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised
to find the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during
our interview the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in
his yellow cheek. I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed
out the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.

"The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this
initial point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe,
gentlemen."

Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of
dried grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He
presently arose from his stooping posture, and advancing to within
a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:

"And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my
land in the fashion of my country."

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

"I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take
the LLANO!--and take this with it. May the drought seize your
cattle till their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying
lawyers! May it be the curse and torment of your old age, as you
and yours have made it of mine!"

We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only
the passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility
but ill concealing his triumph, interrupted:

"Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than
the cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on
the side of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers."

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet
sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power
of his native invective.

"Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!--open not, I say, your lying,
Judas lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-
r-r-ramba!"

With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant
thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it
had been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the
saddle and galloped away.

George turned to me:

"Will you go back with us tonight?"

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire,
and the roaring wind, and hesitated.

"Well then, goodby."

"Goodby, George."

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far
when I turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that
afternoon, and was already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of
dust traveled before it, and a picturesque figure occasionally
emerging therefrom was my last indistinct impression of George
Tryan.

PART II--IN THE FLOOD

Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was
again in the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible
visitation had erased the memory of that event as completely as I
supposed it had obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted.
The great flood of 1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some
indefinite yearning, I took my carpetbag and embarked for the
inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the
GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was
the pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two
weeks, and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as
they silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of
relief to friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed
soberly on the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted
by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details. But with that
human disposition to seize upon any circumstance that might give
chance event the exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half-
conscious of something more than curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky
greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged
levee of Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey
us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned
myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called "Joe," and,
wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material, about as
suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been, took my seat
in the stern sheets of his boat. It was no slight inward struggle
to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the
only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable
earth, but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a rapid
current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy
thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid
water which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at
right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had
revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular
rectangles by huddling houses on street corners, where they
presented abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them in
compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-
arched doorways. The water was over the top of the fences
surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and
private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as
roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the
visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer
echoed to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the
occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the
few signs of life and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I
lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who
sings to the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his
brother of the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee "Giuseppe" has
the advantage of earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic
description of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of
self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony
from which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half-
clothed and famished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses
the proffered fare, for--am I not a citizen of San Francisco, which
was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not
he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society? No! Giuseppe is
poor, but cannot take my money. Still, if I must spend it, there
is the Howard Society, and the women and children without food and
clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal,
bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and
plenty, and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite.
But here Giuseppe tells me of the "Relief Boat" which leaves for
the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the
lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to
the account of others, and am accepted of those who go forth to
succor and help the afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my
carpetbag, and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery
deck of "Relief Boat No. 3."

An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was
once the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only
defined by tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that
breaks over a vast inland sea. Stretches of "tule" land fertilized
by its once regular channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are
now cleanly erased. The cultivated profile of the old landscape
had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards
that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood. The roofs of a
few farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke curling
from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an undaunted life
within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting the
fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or swing in
eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are stranded
everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the
moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck
from the lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from
the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling,
sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and
vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of
the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from
temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their
individual misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and
transfer a number of our passengers. From them we learn how
inward-bound vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel
of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar. There is a
voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the
use of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty "Godspeed"
on either side. But our signal lights are not far distant before a
familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable Yankee cheer--which
scatters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated
banks far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up
near us--the wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift
in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us
over the waste. As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed
advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over
the submerged prairie. I borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and
in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one
of the boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark yet,
although the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our
oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of
the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the
silence is broken by the "bow oar":

"Light ahead."

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a
twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as
if by the shifting position of some black object apparently
drifting close upon us.

"Stern, all; a steamer!"

"Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!" is the reply of the
coxswain. "It's a house, and a big one too."

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of
the darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines
through a window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection
is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart.

"There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her
alongside. Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window;
no! here's another!"

In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the
floor to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the
farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket,
holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book
he holds with the other. I spring toward him with an exclamation:

"Joseph Tryan!"

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand
gently on his shoulder, and say:

"Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are
they? The boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?"

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet
glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the
blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his head over his book
again, taking no further notice of us. The men look at me
compassionately, and hold their peace. I make one more effort:

"Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your
ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!"

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently
he repeated to himself "The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--
Espiritu Santo" over and over again, as though it were a lesson he
was trying to fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me
fearfully by the hand and said:

"Hush!"

We were silent.

"Listen!"  He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear,
"I'm a MOVING OFF!"

"Moving off?"

"Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't
you hear?--there! listen!"

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

"It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all
night. I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the
old man to move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They
whispered under the door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their
cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why don't they quit?"

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any
further traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude.
It is so much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a
superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have
returned, I tell them briefly what I know of him, and the old man
murmurs again:

"Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone,
gone for the hides and hoofs," and he groans bitterly.

"There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted
far, and perhaps the family are safe by this time," says the
coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to
the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though
its strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers
in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in
the sky shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I
had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a
blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then
the figure of the old man often started before me, and a sense of
uneasiness about George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting
dreams. I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the morning by
the engineer, who told me one of the old man's sons had been picked
up and was now on board.

"Is it George Tryan?" I ask quickly.

"Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is," adds the
engineer, with a smile at some luscious remembrance. "You'll find
him for'ard."

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and
rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes
that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking
that circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness.
He puts me at my ease by at once addressing me:

"These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's
become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!"

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he
has at last pulled on his feet.

"So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He
must have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the
old woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!"

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was
evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage
of the contending emotions to ask about George.

"Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running
about the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have
saved suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say
you," to a passing boatman, "when are you goin' to give us some
grub? I'm hungry 'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn
butcher when things is dried up, and save hides, horns, and
taller."

I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.

"Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?" I ask.

"Thar ain't much to do now," says the practical young man. "I'll
have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight.
The land ain't worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some
time. Wonder whar the ole man'll drive stakes next."

"I meant as to your father and George, Wise."

"Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the
old woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween
this and Altascar's ef he ain't thar now."

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

"Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if
George helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built
too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah," says Wise,
with reflective admiration, "those greasers ain't the darned fools
people thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er
Californy."  But the appearance of "grub" cut this rhapsody short.

"I shall keep on a little farther," I say, "and try to find
George."

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned
upon him.

"I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage--workin' on
shares, eh!"

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion
of me, and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's
safety might warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of
George's self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he
had helped and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return
until I had seen him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to
the lower VALDA of the foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon
perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last
look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite
passive and composed. Then our boat head swung round, pulled by
sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our
course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that
we were in the creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the
wrecks of barns were seen, and we passed many half-submerged
willows hung with farming implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the "LLANO DE
ESPIRITU SANTO."  As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower
fresh water into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride
of October over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines
of the distant hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds.
The men are rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from its
tension, growing benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too,
is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the creek, and
with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect the tops
of chimisal, which shows the tide to have somewhat fallen. There
is a black mound, bearing to the north of the line of alder, making
an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the right to avoid, I
recognize. We pull close alongside and I call to the men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, "L. E.
S. I."  Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was
George's. It had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the
loose gravelly soil of the mound was deeply dented with horses'
hoofs. The stake was covered with horsehairs. It was a record,
but no clue.

The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
resting and rowing by turns, and oftener "poling" the shallower
surface, but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My
recollection of the old survey enables me to guess the relative
position of the meanderings of the creek, and an occasional simple
professional experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the
fullest faith in my ability. Night overtakes us in our impeded
progress. Our condition looks more dangerous than it really is,
but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this mode of
navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of perfect safety and
speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about eight
o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few
hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the
white walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights
are moving in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose
characterizes the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar
met me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who
had dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still
unconsciously held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him
about George and my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was
even his wont, he gravely laid his hand on my shoulder.

"POCO A POCO, senor--not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you
have cold. Necessary it is you should have peace."

He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac,
which he gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and
threw themselves before the fire in the larger room. The repose of
the building was intensified that night, and I even fancied that
the footsteps on the corridor were lighter and softer. The old
Spaniard's habitual gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out
from the world as well as the whistling storm, behind those ancient
walls with their time-worn inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two
smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my
men ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and
weariness kept down the instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.

"You have eat?"

I said, "Yes," to please him.

"BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always."

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of
his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience
rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it
almost tenderly before him.

"It was made by me, senor."

"I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar," I said. "If I could
find him--"

"He is here."

"Here! and"--but I could not say "well!"  I understood the gravity
of the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of
the building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the
clue to the broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we
crossed the corridor to a somber apartment. A few tall candles
were burning in sconces before the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows,
and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury
which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single
item of their household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying,
as I had seen him once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater
sacrifice than that he had known was here, and his generous heart
was stilled forever.

"He was honest and brave," said the old man, and turned away.
There was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her
graceful outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that
buried her downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and,
retiring presently, left the loving and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting
shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that
morning met the horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how
that, farther on, he found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no
marks or bruises on his person; that he had probably become
exhausted in fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached
the mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely given
to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse. These
incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great
chamber that evening--women and children--most of them succored
through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
above.

He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange
perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the
dusty plain. A little slab of sandstone with the initials "G. T."
is his monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of
the new survey of the "Espiritu Santo Rancho."

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a
quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling
complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for
gentle-womanliness. She always dressed becomingly, and in what
Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion. She had only two
blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a
slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single
drop of vitriol-- happily the only drop of an entire phial--thrown
upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty
face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the
eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally
incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was
thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor
of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an
exaggerated dimple."  Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of
the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more
particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you,
you ever laid your two blank eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New
Orleans. And this woman had a scar--a line extending, blank me,
from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir, thrilled you,
sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to
perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I said to her,
'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank
you?'  And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself,
purposely, I did, blank me.'  These were her very words, sir, and
perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank
sum you can name and prove it, blank me."

Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been
in love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that
their love was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own
husband. He alone had been known to express skepticism.

The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction
was Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to
marry this Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced;
but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that
legal formality had made it perhaps less novel, and probably less
sacrificial. I would not have it inferred from this that she was
deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its highest moral expression.
Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion of her second
divorce), "The cold world does not understand Clara yet"; and
Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of
a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the
whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read those
lines entitled "Infelissimus," commencing "Why waves no cypress
o'er this brow?" originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of
sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous
indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable
jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had
suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire
absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.

Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a
metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the
medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of
Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California
scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for
the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of
California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr.
Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between
Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr.
Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden
sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several
mining camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the
dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may
have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman.
Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as brief as was consistent with
some previous legal formalities--they were married; and Mr.
Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.

The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.
Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from
that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of
California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect
logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty
in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on
the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs.
Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the AVALANCHE.
It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity
in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed it
out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism,
signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by
extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of
Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of
Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit
to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language
with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian
Territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed, the next week's
INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be an answer
to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a
Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed "A.
S. S."

The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of
the AVALANCHE. "An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday
last, between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER and the well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in
front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots were fired by the parties
without injury to either, although it is said that a passing
Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from
the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for
him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's
firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known, although
it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that
points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations
have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those
that are posted."

Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these
trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. "The
old man's head is level," said one long-booted philosopher. "Ef
the colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops
the colonel, Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure
thing."  During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick
one day left her husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown
Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back. Here she staid
for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say
that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.

It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick,
unattended, left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street
toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits
of Fiddletown. The few loungers at that early hour were
preoccupied with the departure of the Wingdown coach at the other
extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of
the settlement without discomposing observation. Here she took a
cross street or road, running at right angles with the main
thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town.
The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And
here she was joined by Colonel Starbottle.

The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port
which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned
and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his
arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs.
Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance
of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough
and a slight strut, took his place at her side.

"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at
Dutch Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a
Chinaman; and you need fear no trouble from him. I," he continued,
with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of
his button, "I will see that you are protected in the removal of
your property."

"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered
the lady as they walked along. "It's so pleasant to meet someone
who has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened
and heartless as this."  And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes,
but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her
companion.

"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously
up and down the street--"yes, certainly."  Perceiving, however,
that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to
inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact,
had been the possession of too much soul. That many women--as a
gentleman she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--
but many beautiful women had often sought his society, but being
deficient, madam, absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could
not reciprocate. But when two natures thoroughly in sympathy,
despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community
and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society--when two
souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then--
but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a
certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible,
and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard
something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was
quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their
destination.

It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint,
very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose
foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced
enclosure in which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect
silence, it had a new, uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and
painters had just left it. At the farther end of the lot, a
Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was no other sign of
occupancy. "The coast," as the colonel had said, was indeed
"clear."  Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel would
have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. "Come for me
in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she
said, as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and
pressed it with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly
returned; for the gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his
chest, and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled
boots would permit. When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the
door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly
upstairs to what had been her bedroom.

Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove
she had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the
bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its
marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other
recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite
white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand
upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully,
half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond
hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-
healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down
to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety
eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned away with
a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung
her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a
moment, thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the
next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling
of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for
the first time sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was
hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a
certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing,
before the mirror. And then suddenly she became aware of a child's
voice close beside her, and she stopped. And then the child's
voice repeated, "Is it Mamma?"

Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a
little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine,
but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red,
was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she
was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish
timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to
come upon children who are left much to themselves. She was
holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own
workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A
long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her
shoulders and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps
she had but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child,
still standing in the doorway, again asked, "Is it Mamma?" she
answered sharply, "No, it isn't," and turned a severe look upon the
intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the
distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:

"Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?"

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it
off the child's shoulders, and said angrily:

"How dared you take my things, you bad child?"

"Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!"
she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid
her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts
with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.

"What's your name, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing
the small and not very white hands from her garments.

"Tarry."

"Tarry?"

"Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline."

"Caroline?"

"Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick."

"Whose child ARE you?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly,
to keep down a rising fear.

"Why, yours," said the little creature with a laugh. "I'm your
little durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol'
mamma's dorn away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid
my ol' mamma now. I live wid you and Papa."

"How long have you been here?" asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.

"I fink it's free days," said Carry reflectively.

"You think! Don't you know?" sneered Mrs. Tretherick. "Then,
where did you come from?"

Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With
a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and
answered:

"Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last
week."

"Last week! You said three days just now," returned Mrs.
Tretherick with severe deliberation.

"I mean a monf," said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer
helplessness and confusion.

"Do you know what you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick
shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before
her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.

But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of
Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself
forever.

"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling
exceedingly uncomfortable. "Wipe your face now, and run away, and
don't bother. Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away. "Where's
your papa?"

"He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn"--she hesitated--
"two, free, days."

"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
curiously.

"John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the
beds."

"Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any
more," said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit.
"Stop--where are you going?" she added as the child began to ascend
the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

"Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma."

"I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set
to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She
tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung:
she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the
while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the
past few moments. She said to herself she saw it all. Tretherick
had sent for this child of his first wife--this child of whose
existence he had never seemed to care--just to insult her, to fill
her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or
perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn, but RED--of
course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if
so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been
prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for
when needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--
business, as he said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but
no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then
state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be
there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in
exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been so
shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself
sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of
a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her
husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a
red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just
packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her
sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her
husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds. She
pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a
beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the
editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was
Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at
least, understood her. He--she laughed the reckless, light laugh
of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as
it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was
she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She
fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and
creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing
on the floor above. This, as she remembered, was only an open
attic that had been used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty
consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door
partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single
small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half
illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this
sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red
aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll
between her knees. She appeared to be talking to it; and it was
not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing
the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the doll
severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay
there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.
Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the
conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single
exception. After she had informed the doll that she was not her
mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that
if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her
very much."

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense
of humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene
affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood
tingling to her cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably
lonely in the situation. The unfurnished vacant room, the half-
lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a
pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the
one animate, self-centered figure--all these touched more or less
deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman. She could not
help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what
a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room
were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then
she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the
tread of the colonel's cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in
the hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and
exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of
her wrongs. "Don't tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged
beforehand; for I know it was!" she almost screamed. "And think,"
she added, "of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own
child alone here in that way."

"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to
comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate
of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he
intended. He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant,
tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant,
experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in
perfect affinity.

"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in
answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing
her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man.
"It's of no use: my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as
soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with
the proof of his vileness. I will put him face to face with his
infamy."

I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity
afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's
own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some
unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite
longing of his own sentimental nature. But, before he could say
anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking
timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.

"That's her," said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest
emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration
of grammatical construction.

"Ah!" said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental
affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected.
"Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How
are you? You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little
girl?"  The colonel's impulse also was to expand his chest and
swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be
ineffective with a child of six or seven. Carry, however, took no
immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the
chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding
herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an
attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
resemblance to the "Madonna and Child."  Mrs. Tretherick simpered,
but did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause
for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to
the child, said in a whisper: "Go now. Don't come here again, but
meet me tonight at the hotel."  She extended her hand: the colonel
bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was
gone.

"Do you think," said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and
a prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls
just visible in the folds of her dress--"do you think you will be
'dood' if I let you stay in here and sit with me?"

"And let me tall you Mamma?" queried Carry, looking up.

"And let you call me Mamma!" assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
embarrassed laugh.

"Yeth," said Carry promptly.

They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught
sight of the trunk.

"Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?" she said with a quick nervous
look, and a clutch at the woman's dress.

"No-o," said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.

"Only playing your dowin' away," suggested Carry with a laugh.
"Let me play too."

Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and
presently reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely
proceeded to pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they
were not many. A question or two regarding them brought out some
further replies from the child; and before many minutes had
elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier
history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take
Carry upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures.
They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had apparently
ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures; and when lost in
thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded, and ran her
fingers through the scarlet curls.

"You don't hold me right, Mamma," said Carry at last, after one or
two uneasy shiftings of position.

"How should I hold you?" asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
half-embarrassed laugh.

"Dis way," said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm
around Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--
"dis way--dere."  After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike
some small animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe
in that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult
sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began
to thrill her. She began by remembering an old pain that she had
forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these
years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust--days of an
overshadowing fear--days of preparation for something that was to
be prevented, that WAS prevented, with mortal agony and fear. She
thought of a life that might have been--she dared not say HAD been-
-and wondered. It was six years ago; if it had lived, it would
have been as old as Carry. The arms which were folded loosely
around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their
clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-
sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as
if she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the
gust that shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.

A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily
in her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to
do it now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that
they might have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the
slowly declining sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and
abandonment, yet a desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay,
or despair.

Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his
husks, he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes
and sunbeams.

When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking
Mr. Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and
much diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER openly alluded to the "forcible abduction" of the
child with the same freedom, and it is to be feared the same
prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor's poetry. All
of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite
sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly
indicated, fully coincided in the views of the INTELLIGENCER. The
majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had
shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was
enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair
abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick
as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far
as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They
reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing
that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in
barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed
favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish
thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of
gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's
kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer
colt: but thet she should shake YOU, Kernel, diet she should jist
shake you--is what gits me. And they do say thet you jist hung
around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them corriders, and
histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in and out
o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?"  It was another generous and
tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
on the colonel's wounds. "The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to
the stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked
you, and offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your
looks, and ud employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well,
I'll tell the boys it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories
DO get round."

Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further
deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento
coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San
Francisco. It was true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal
value. But nobody doubted it. Even those who were skeptical of
the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth
admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern. But it would
appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious
chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.

It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick
that Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two
passing Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped
with long poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An
animated conversation at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother
Mongolians--a conversation characterized by that usual shrill
volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and
scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of
it. Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on
his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing, regarded their
heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of
his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the
group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of
yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the
dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron,
freshly washed, ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were
the initials "C. T."  Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his
blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile
of guileless satisfaction.

Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. "Me no likee
Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now."  Mr. Tretherick violently
suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and
withdrew.

Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed
him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. "If you bring me an
answer, I'll double that--sabe, John?"  Ah Fe nodded. An interview
equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place
between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been
the youthful editor of the AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that,
after proceeding some distance on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke
the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside
down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and
in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he
met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony of Colonel
Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side
of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions
of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese
laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as
peculiarly affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature,
rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the
insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample
retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended
Ah Fe's pilgrimage.

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the
top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated
Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one
addicted to opium-smoking. At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing
stranger--purely an act of Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat
he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives. At
Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or
other, and discharged with a severe reprimand--possibly for not
being it, and so delaying the course of justice. At San Francisco
he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by
carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at
last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where
his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm
of the law.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant,
and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes
to Chy Fook's several clients.

It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept
hill of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that
made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan
fancy. There was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor
shade within or without, only one monotonous, universal neutral
tint over everything. There was a fierce unrest in the wind-
whipped streets: there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray
houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission Ridge
was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver. As
he put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his
defective intelligence and heathen experience, this "God's own
climate," as was called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness,
softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah Fe illogically
confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at
this hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and
turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.

It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the
little strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare
veranda, and above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one
sat. Ah Fe rang the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his
basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as if he were some necessary
domestic animal. Ah Fe silently mounted the stairs, and entering
the open door of the front chamber, put down the basket and stood
passively on the threshold.

A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with
a child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe
instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his
immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her
own placidly. She evidently did not recognize him as she began to
count the clothes. But the child, curiously examining him,
suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.

"Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in
Fiddletown."

For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The
child clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said
shortly: "Me John--Ah Fe--allee same. Me know you. How do?"

Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at
Ah Fe. Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that
sharpened Carry's perception, she even then could not distinguish
him above his fellows. With a recollection of past pain, and an
obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when he had
left Fiddletown.

"Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San
Flisco. Likee washee. Likee Tally."

Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to
consider how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his
curt directness and sincerity. But she said, "Don't tell anybody
you have seen me," and took out her pocketbook.

Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe,
without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily
furnished. Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy,
saw that both Mrs. Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet
it is my duty to state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly
and firmly over the half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to
him.

Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of
extraordinary contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from
apparently no particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon
the basket with the remark:

"One piecee washman flagittee."

Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his
efforts were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right
ear, a many-folded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this
carefully, he at last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces,
which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick.

"You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money.
Me fetchee money to you. All lightee."

"But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John," said Mrs.
Tretherick earnestly. "There must be some mistake. It belongs to
some other person. Take it back, John."

Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's
extended hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.

"Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He
say, 'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.'  Me
no takee back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me
fetchee money you. Me no takee back."

Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she
MIGHT have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event,
she had no right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by
refusing it. So she said: "Very well, John, I will keep it. But
you must come again and see me--" here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated
with a new and sudden revelation of the fact that any man could
wish to see any other than herself--"and, and--Carry."

Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic
laugh without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he
shut the door carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower
hall he, however, found an unexpected difficulty in opening the
front door, and, after fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment,
looked around for some help or instruction. But the Irish handmaid
who had let him in was contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and
did not appear.

There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall
simply record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a
scarf, evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was
lying. As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested
lightly on the table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own
volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from
Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly, and with an
insinuating, snakelike motion; and then disappeared somewhere in
the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying the least interest
or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated his experiments
upon the lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red damask, moved
by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself
under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same hidden
channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps
upon the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but
patiently shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind
him again, and stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that
now shrouded earth and sky.

From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's
figure until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present
loneliness, she felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may
have ascribed to the higher emotions and the consciousness of a
good deed that certain expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of
the bosom, that was really due to the hidden presence of the scarf
and tablecloth under his blouse. For Mrs. Tretherick was still
poetically sensitive. As the gray fog deepened into night, she
drew Carry closer toward her, and, above the prattle of the child,
pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic recollection at once
bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah Fe linked her
again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary interval
between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry
stopped suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw
her small arms around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.

Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever
dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to
transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval and
episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its
fond excuses, and weak apologies. It would seem, however, that her
experience had been hard. Her slender stock of money was soon
exhausted. At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse,
although appealing to the highest emotions of the human heart, and
compelling the editorial breast to the noblest commendation in the
editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray the expenses
of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage, but failed
signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was different
from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was
certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range,
was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had
admirers enough in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection
among the audience. In this strait, it occurred to her that she
had a voice--a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation,
but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally obtained
position in a church choir. She held it for three months, greatly
to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much to the
satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
her during the singing of the last hymn.

I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that
slanted through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall
very tenderly on her beautiful head with its stacked masses of
deerskin-colored hair, on the low black arches of her brows, and to
deepen the pretty fringes that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet.
Very pleasant it was to watch the opening and shutting of that
small straight mouth, with its quick revelation of little white
teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek
as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of
admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your
eye like a racer under the spur.

And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the
soprano--a little lady who possessed even more than the usual
unprejudiced judgment of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct
was simply shameful; that her conceit was unbearable; that, if she
considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she (the soprano) would
like to know it; that her conduct on Easter Sunday with the basso
had attracted the attention of the whole congregation; and that she
herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up during the service; that
her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her singing in the
choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she had waived
this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick
had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who
sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to
me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a
note at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger
longer with the congregation--an act that could be attributed only
to a defective moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular
dry goods clerk on weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently
behind his eyebrows on the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would
put up with it no longer. The basso alone--a short German with a
heavy voice, for which he seemed reluctantly responsible, and
rather grieved at its possession--stood up for Mrs. Tretherick, and
averred that they were jealous of her because she was "bretty."
The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel, wherein Mrs.
Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement and
epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to be
supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act
was marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the
usual soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with
triumph, but on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they
were beggars henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the
very bread out of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a
flood of penitent tears. They did not come so quickly as in her
old poetical days; but when they came they stung deeply. She was
roused by a formal visit from a vestryman--one of the music
committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new
neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She staid there two
hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that the
vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When
Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the
glass and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.

It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies
received a powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's
wife. That lady called upon several of the church members and on
Dr. Cope's family. The result was that, at a later meeting of the
music committee, Mrs. Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to
the size of the building and she was invited to resign. She did
so. She had been out of a situation for two months, and her scant
means were almost exhausted, when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was
tossed into her lap.

The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had
slipped away unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp
evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her
back to an active realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick
was wont to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding
some avenue of employment--she knew not what--open to her needs;
and Carry had noted this habit.

Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights,
and opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following
paragraph in the telegraphic column:

FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this
place, died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was
addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by
domestic trouble.

Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another
page of the paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in
a book. Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder
of the evening was unusually silent and cold. When Carry was
undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees
beside the bed, and, taking Carry's flaming head between her hands,
said:

"Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?"

"No," said Carry, after a moment's thought.

"But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give
you nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?"

Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. "Should YOU,
Mamma?"

Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. "Go to
sleep," she said sharply, and turned away.

But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around
her, and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at
last was broken up by sobs.

"Don't ky, Mamma," whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of
their recent conversation. "Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new
papa, if he loved you very much--very, very much!"

A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils
of the State. As I cannot record the event in finer language than
that used by the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture
to quote some of his graceful periods. "The relentless shafts of
the sly god have been lately busy among our gallant Solons. We
quote 'one more unfortunate.'  The latest victim is the Hon. C.
Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair enchantress in the case is a
beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a
fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of
San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary."

THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the
fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered
press. "The new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately
advented in the legislature with a little bill to change the name
of Tretherick to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate
down there. Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we
presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts."  It is but
just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by
no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coyness on the part
of the lady was added the impediment of a rival--a prosperous
undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs.
Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits
debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any
other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As this
gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous
rival. Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in
professionally to lay out a brother senator, who had unhappily
fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor; and either
deterred by physical consideration from rivalry, or wisely
concluding that the colonel was professionally valuable, he
withdrew from the field.

The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward
incident. During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the
charge of Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the
city, immediately on reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle
announced her intention of at once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's
to bring the child home. Colonel Starbottle, who had been
exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness which he had
endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally buttoned
his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking unsteadily
once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife with
his most imposing manner.

"I have deferred," said the colonel with an exaggeration of port
that increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of
speech--"I have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash
my duty ter dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal
happ'ness, to bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by
unpleasht revelashun. Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now.
The chile is gone!"

"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Starbottle.

There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment
nearly sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.

"I'll splain all in a minit," he said with a deprecating wave of
the hand. "Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly
event wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish
releash you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile. The mom't
Tretherick die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too.
Thash law. Who's chile b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead.
Chile can't b'long dead man. Damn nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh
your chile? no! whose chile then? Chile b'long to 'ts mother.
Unnerstan?"

"Where is she?" said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a
very low voice.

"I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm
lawyer, leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as
leshlator, and 'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother
at any coss--any coss."

"Where is she?" repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed
on the colonel's face.

"Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by
fav'rin gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!"

Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly
collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to
beam with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial
firmness upon her as she sat.

"Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's."  The colonel
paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently
in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and
ruffles, on the woman before him. "Why should dark shed-der cass
bligh on two sholes with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good
chile, but summonelse chile! Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't
gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht, you all's have me!"

Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. "YOU!" she cried, bringing
out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring--"You that I
married to give my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I
whistled to my side to keep the men off me--YOU!"

She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which
had been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom,
and then suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a
burning fire over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her
arched brows and mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening
of the head.

"Listen!" she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. "Hear me!
If you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the
child. If you ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you
must bring her back. For where she goes, I go; you hear me! Where
she has gone, look for me."

She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of
her arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some
imaginary bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked
the door. Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in
superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept
by, lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa.
Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his
foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not
entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he
succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the
narcotic quantity of his potations.

Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her
valuables and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before
in the course of this remarkable history. Perhaps some
recollection of this was in her mind; for she stopped to lean her
burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she saw again the figure of the
child standing in the doorway, and heard once more a childish voice
asking, "Is it Mamma?"  But the epithet now stung her to the quick,
and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with a tear
that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced that, in turning
over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper with a broken
sandal string. She uttered a great cry here--the first she had
uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to
her sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it
through her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden
fit of coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she
put to her feverish lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint.
The window seemed to recede before her, the floor to sink beneath
her feet; and staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with
the sandal and handkerchief pressed to her breast. Her face was
quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and there was a spot upon
her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still another on the
white counterpane of the bed.

The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the
white curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly
over the roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-
wrapping all things in an uncertain light and a measureless peace.
She lay there very quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty
bride. And on the other side of the bolted door the gallant
bridegroom, from his temporary couch, snored peacefully.

A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any
other time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A
driving snowstorm that had whitened every windward hedge, bush,
wall, and telegraph pole, played around this soft Italian Capital,
whirled in and out of the great staring wooden Doric columns of its
post office and hotel, beat upon the cold green shutters of its
best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff, dark figures in its
streets. From the level of the street, the four principal churches
of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires
were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near the railroad
station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous
locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal
row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a
few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter
location. But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for
Young Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola
plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue.
There was no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it
was a public institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty
face at its window, were clearly visible all over the township.

The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express
brought but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single
passenger alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting
sleigh toward the Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again,
with that passionless indifference to human sympathies or curiosity
peculiar to express trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into
the station again; the station door was locked; and the
stationmaster went home.

The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and
confectionery saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even
the admirable regulations of the Institute failed to entirely
develop the physical and moral natures of its pupils. They
conformed to the excellent dietary rules in public, and in private
drew upon the luxurious rations of their village caterer. They
attended church with exemplary formality, and flirted informally
during service with the village beaux. They received the best and
most judicious instruction during school hours, and devoured the
trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was an
aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young
creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even
Mistress Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the
exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared
that the sight of "them young things" did her good, and had even
been known to shield them by shameless equivocation.

"Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five,
we'll be missed," said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with
an aquiline nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader,
as she rose from her seat. "Have you got the books, Addy?"  Addy
displayed three dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof.
"And the provisions, Carry?"  Carry showed a suspicious parcel
filling the pocket of her sack. "All right, then. Come, girls,
trudge--Charge it," she added, nodding to her host as they passed
toward the door. "I'll pay you when my quarter's allowance comes."

"No, Kate," interposed Carry, producing her purse, "let me pay;
it's my turn."

"Never!" said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, "even if you
do have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California.
Never! Come, girls, forward, march!"

As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their
feet. Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. "Sakes alive, galls!
ye mussn't go out in sich weather. Better let me send word to the
Institoot, and make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor."  But
the last sentence was lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks
as the girls, hand in hand, ran down the steps into the storm, and
were at once whirled away.

The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast.
It was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow.
For some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience
kept them bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut
from the highroad across an open field, their strength gave out,
the laugh grew less frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's
brown eyes. When they reached the road again, they were utterly
exhausted. "Let us go back," said Carry.

"We'd never get across that field again," said Addy.

"Let's stop at the first house, then," said Carry.

"The first house," said Addy, peering through the gathering
darkness, "is Squire Robinson's."  She darted a mischievous glance
at Carry that, even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick
blood to her cheek.

"Oh, yes!" said Kate with gloomy irony, "certainly; stop at the
squire's by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home
after by your dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from
Mrs. Robinson, and hopes that the young ladies may be excused this
time. No!" continued Kate with sudden energy. "That may suit YOU;
but I'm going back as I came--by the window, or not at all"  Then
she pounced suddenly, like a hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a
tendency to sit down on a snowbank and whimper, and shook her
briskly. "You'll be going to sleep next. Stay, hold your tongues,
all of you--what's that?"

It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of
the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. "Hold down your
heads, girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost."  But it
was not, for a voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly
and pleasant, asked if its owner could be of any help to them. As
they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome
sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by
a muffler of the same material, disclosing only a pair of long
mustaches, and two keen dark eyes. "It's a son of old Santa
Claus!" whispered Addy. The girls tittered audibly as they tumbled
into the sleigh; they had regained their former spirits. "Where
shall I take you?" said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried
whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To the Institute."  They
drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed
up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. "You know the
way better than I," he said. "Where do you go in?"  "Through the
back window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. "I
see!" responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting
quickly, removed the bells from the horses. "We can drive as near
as you please now," he added by way of explanation. "He certainly
is a son of Santa Claus," whispered Addy. "Hadn't we better ask
after his father?"  "Hush!" said Kate decidedly. "He is an angel,
I dare say."  She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was,
however, perfectly understood by her feminine auditors, "We are
looking like three frights."

Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet
from a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight.
There was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he
handed his fair companions to the ground, each was conscious of
undergoing an intense though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them
gravely to open the window, and then discreetly retired to the
sleigh until the difficult and somewhat discomposing ingress was
made. He then walked to the window. "Thank you and good night!"
whispered three voices. A single figure still lingered. The
stranger leaned over the window sill. "Will you permit me to light
my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck a match
outside."  By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very
charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out in
his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman
had detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand
at the head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years'
tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her
heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the
shoulder of Carry, her neighbor. "HE has come," she gasped in a
thrilling whisper. "Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never
clearly understood when Kate was in earnest. "Who?--Why, the man
who rescued us last night! I saw him drive to the door this
moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in a moment--there!" she
said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically
across her forehead with a tragic air.

"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. "I
don't know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism.
"Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish
his young wife, and warn her against us."

"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,"
rejoined Addy thoughtfully.

"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully.
"You can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful.