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 couldnt 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.

The junior partner of the firm of Sparlow & Kane, “Druggists and
Apothecaries,” of San Francisco, was gazing meditatively out of the
corner of the window of their little shop in Dupont Street. He
could see the dimly lit perspective of the narrow thoroughfare fade
off into the level sand wastes of Market Street on the one side,
and plunge into the half-excavated bulk of Telegraph Hill on the
other. He could see the glow and hear the rumble of Montgomery
Street–the great central avenue farther down the hill. Above the
housetops was spread the warm blanket of sea-fog under which the
city was regularly laid to sleep every summer night to the cool
lullaby of the Northwest Trades. It was already half-past eleven;
footsteps on the wooden pavement were getting rarer and more
remote; the last cart had rumbled by; the shutters were up along
the street; the glare of his own red and blue jars was the only
beacon left to guide the wayfarers. Ordinarily he would have been
going home at this hour, when his partner, who occupied the surgery
and a small bedroom at the rear of the shop, always returned to
relieve him. That night, however, a professional visit would
detain the “Doctor” until half-past twelve. There was still an
hour to wait. He felt drowsy; the mysterious incense of the shop,
that combined essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris
root–which always reminded him of the Arabian Nights–was
affecting him. He yawned, and then, turning away, passed behind
the counter, took down a jar labeled “Glycyrr. Glabra,” selected a
piece of Spanish licorice, and meditatively sucked it. Not
receiving from it that diversion and sustenance he apparently was
seeking, he also visited, in an equally familiar manner, a jar
marked “Jujubes,” and returned ruminatingly to his previous position.

If I have not in this incident sufficiently established the
youthfulness of the junior partner, I may add briefly that he was
just nineteen, that he had early joined the emigration to
California, and after one or two previous light-hearted essays at
other occupations, for which he was singularly unfitted, he had
saved enough to embark on his present venture, still less suited to
his temperament. In those adventurous days trades and vocations
were not always filled by trained workmen; it was extremely
probable that the experienced chemist was already making his
success as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his
partners, and Mr. Kane’s inexperienced position was by no means a
novel one. A slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an
American schoolboy’s acquaintance with chemistry and natural
philosophy, were deemed sufficient by his partner, a regular
physician, for practical cooperation in the vending of drugs and
putting up of prescriptions. He knew the difference between acids
and alkalies and the peculiar results which attended their
incautious combination. But he was excessively deliberate,
painstaking, and cautious. The legend which adorned the desk at
the counter, “Physicians’ prescriptions carefully prepared,” was
more than usually true as regarded the adverb. There was no danger
of his poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was
possible that an urgent “case” might have succumbed to the disease
while he was putting up the remedy. Nor was his caution entirely
passive. In those days the “heroic” practice of medicine was in
keeping with the abnormal development of the country; there were
“record” doses of calomel and quinine, and he had once or twice
incurred the fury of local practitioners by sending back their
prescriptions with a modest query.

The far-off clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested his
attention; looking down the street, he could see the lights of a
hackney carriage advancing towards him. They had already flashed
upon the open crossing a block beyond before his vague curiosity
changed into an active instinctive presentiment that they were
coming to the shop. He withdrew to a more becoming and dignified
position behind the counter as the carriage drew up with a jerk
before the door.

The driver rolled from his box and opened the carriage door to a
woman whom he assisted, between some hysterical exclamations on her
part and some equally incoherent explanations of his own, into the
shop. Kane saw at a glance that both were under the influence of
liquor, and one, the woman, was disheveled and bleeding about the
head. Yet she was elegantly dressed and evidently en fete, with
one or two “tricolor” knots and ribbons mingled with her finery.
Her golden hair, matted and darkened with blood, had partly escaped
from her French bonnet and hung heavily over her shoulders. The
driver, who was supporting her roughly, and with a familiarity that
was part of the incongruous spectacle, was the first to speak.

“Madame le Blank! ye know! Got cut about the head down at the fete
at South Park! Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on
some champagne bottles. See? Wants plastering up!”

“Ah brute! Hog! Nozzing of ze kine! Why will you lie? I dance!
Ze cowards, fools, traitors zere upset ze table and I fall. I am
cut! Ah, my God, how I am cut!”

She stopped suddenly and lapsed heavily against the counter. At
which Kane hurried around to support her into the surgery with the
one fixed idea in his bewildered mind of getting her out of the
shop, and, suggestively, into the domain and under the
responsibility of his partner. The hackman, apparently relieved
and washing his hands of any further complicity in the matter,
nodded and smiled, and saying, “I reckon I’ll wait outside,
pardner,” retreated incontinently to his vehicle. To add to Kane’s
half-ludicrous embarrassment the fair patient herself slightly
resisted his support, accused the hackman of “abandoning her,” and
demanded if Kane knew “zee reason of zees affair,” yet she
presently lapsed again into the large reclining-chair which he had
wheeled forward, with open mouth, half-shut eyes, and a strange
Pierrette mask of face, combined of the pallor of faintness and
chalk, and the rouge of paint and blood. At which Kane’s
cautiousness again embarrassed him. A little brandy from the
bottle labeled “Vini Galli” seemed to be indicated, but his
inexperience could not determine if her relaxation was from
bloodlessness or the reacting depression of alcohol. In this
dilemma he chose a medium course, with aromatic spirits of ammonia,
and mixing a diluted quantity in a measuring-glass, poured it
between her white lips. A start, a struggle, a cough–a volley of
imprecatory French, and the knocking of the glass from his hand
followed–but she came to! He quickly sponged her head of the
half-coagulated blood, and removed a few fragments of glass from a
long laceration of the scalp. The shock of the cold water and the
appearance of the ensanguined basin frightened her into a momentary
passivity. But when Kane found it necessary to cut her hair in the
region of the wound in order to apply the adhesive plaster, she
again endeavored to rise and grasp the scissors.

“You’ll bleed to death if you’re not quiet,” said the young man
with dogged gravity.

Something in his manner impressed her into silence again. He cut
whole locks away ruthlessly; he was determined to draw the edges of
the wound together with the strip of plaster and stop the bleeding–
if he cropped the whole head. His excessive caution for her
physical condition did not extend to her superficial adornment.
Her yellow tresses lay on the floor, her neck and shoulders were
saturated with water from the sponge which he continually applied,
until the heated strips of plaster had closed the wound almost
hermetically. She whimpered, tears ran down her cheeks; but so
long as it was not blood the young man was satisfied.

In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and presently the
sound of rapping on the counter. Another customer!

Mr. Kane called out, “Wait a moment,” and continued his ministrations.
After a pause the rapping recommenced. Kane was just securing the
last strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence. Then the
door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the
threshold. It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold
diggings–so recently that he evidently had not had time to change
his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high
boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, over which his coat was
slung like a hussar’s jacket from his shoulder. Kane would have
uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion, had not the intruder
himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that
was beyond the effect of any reproval. He literally gasped at the
spectacle before him. A handsomely dressed woman reclining in a
chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depending from her saturated
shoulders; tresses of golden hair filling her lap and lying on the
floor; a pail of ruddy water and a sponge at her feet, and a pale
young man bending over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of
yellow plaster!

“‘Scuse me, pard! I was just dropping in; don’t you hurry! I kin
wait,” he stammered, falling back, and then the door closed
abruptly behind him.

Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and neck of his
patient with a clean towel and his own handkerchief, threw her
gorgeous opera cloak over her shoulders, and assisted her to rise.
She did so, weakly but obediently; she was evidently stunned and
cowed in some mysterious way by his material attitude, perhaps, or
her sudden realization of her position; at least the contrast
between her aggressive entrance into the shop and her subdued
preparation for her departure was so remarkable that it affected
even Kane’s preoccupation.

“There,” he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor with an
encouraging smile, “I think this will do; we’ve stopped the
bleeding. It will probably smart a little as the plaster sets
closer. I can send my partner, Dr. Sparlow, to you in the
morning.”

She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile. “And zees
Doctor Sparrlow–eez he like you, M’sieu?”

“He is older, and very well known,” said the young man seriously.
“I can safely recommend him.”

“Ah,” she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her
quite pretty. “Ah–he ez older–your Doctor Sparrlow–but you are
strong, M’sieu.”

“And,” said Kane vaguely, “he will tell you what to do.”

“Ah,” she repeated again softly, with the same smile, “he will tell
me what to do if I shall not know myself. Dat ez good.”

Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless
white paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty
fashion dear to druggists’ clerks. As he handed it to her she felt
in her pocket and produced a handful of gold.

“What shall I pay for zees, M’sieu?”

Kane reddened a little–solely because of his slow arithmetical
faculties. Adhesive plaster was cheap–he would like to have
charged proportionately for the exact amount he had used; but the
division was beyond him! And he lacked the trader’s instinct.

“Twenty-five cents, I think,” he hazarded briefly.

She started, but smiled again. “Twenty-five cents for all zees–ze
medicine, ze strips for ze head, ze hair cut”–she glanced at the
paper parcel he had given her–”it is only twenty-five cents?”

“That’s all.”

He selected from her outstretched palm, with some difficulty, the
exact amount, the smallest coin it held. She again looked at him
curiously–half confusedly–and moved slowly into the shop. The
miner, who was still there, retreated as before with a gaspingly
apologetic gesture–even flattening himself against the window to
give her sweeping silk flounces freer passage. As she passed into
the street with a “Merci, M’sieu, good a’night,” and the hackman
started from the vehicle to receive her, the miner drew a long
breath, and bringing his fist down upon the counter, ejaculated,–

“B’gosh! She’s a stunner!”

Kane, a good deal relieved at her departure and the success of his
ministration, smiled benignly.

The stranger again stared after the retreating carriage, looked
around the shop, and even into the deserted surgery, and approached
the counter confidentially. “Look yer, pardner. I kem straight
from St. Jo, Mizzorri, to Gold Hill–whar I’ve got a claim–and I
reckon this is the first time I ever struck San Francisker. I
ain’t up to towny ways nohow, and I allow that mebbe I’m rather
green. So we’ll let that pass! Now look yer!” he added, leaning
over the counter with still deeper and even mysterious confidence,
“I suppose this yer kind o’ thing is the regular go here, eh?
nothin’ new to you! in course no! But to me, pard, it’s just
fetchin’ me! Lifts me clear outer my boots every time! Why, when
I popped into that thar room, and saw that lady–all gold,
furbelows, and spangles–at twelve o’clock at night, sittin’ in
that cheer and you a-cuttin’ her h’r and swabbin’ her head o’
blood, and kinder prospectin’ for ‘indications,’ so to speak, and
doin’ it so kam and indifferent like, I sez to myself, ‘Rube,
Rube,’ sez I, ‘this yer’s life! city life! San Francisker life! and
b’gosh, you’ve dropped into it! Now, pard, look yar! don’t you
answer, ye know, ef it ain’t square and above board for me to know;
I ain’t askin’ you to give the show away, ye know, in the matter of
high-toned ladies like that, but” (very mysteriously, and sinking
his voice to the lowest confidential pitch, as he put his hand to
his ear as if to catch the hushed reply), “what mout hev bin
happening, pard?”

Considerably amused at the man’s simplicity, Kane replied good-
humoredly: “Danced among some champagne bottles on a table at a
party, fell and got cut by glass.”

The stranger nodded his head slowly and approvingly as he repeated
with infinite deliberateness: “Danced on champagne bottles,
champagne! you said, pard? at a pahty! Yes!” (musingly and
approvingly). “I reckon that’s about the gait they take. She’d do
it.”

“Is there anything I can do for you? sorry to have kept you
waiting,” said Kane, glancing at the clock.

“O me! Lord! ye needn’t mind me. Why, I should wait for anythin’
o’ the like o’ that, and be just proud to do it! And ye see, I
sorter helped myself while you war busy.”

“Helped yourself?” said Kane in astonishment.

“Yes, outer that bottle.” He pointed to the ammonia bottle, which
still stood on the counter. “It seemed to be handy and popular.”

“Man! you might have poisoned yourself.”

The stranger paused a moment at the idea. “So I mout, I reckon,”
he said musingly, “that’s so! pizined myself jest ez you was
lookin’ arter that high-toned case, and kinder bothered you! It’s
like me!”

“I mean it required diluting; you ought to have taken it in water,”
said Kane.

“I reckon! It did sorter h’ist me over to the door for a little
fresh air at first! seemed rayther scaldy to the lips. But wot of
it that got thar,” he put his hand gravely to his stomach, “did me
pow’ful good.”

“What was the matter with you?” asked Kane.

“Well, ye see, pard” (confidentially again), “I reckon it’s suthin’
along o’ my heart. Times it gets to poundin’ away like a quartz
stamp, and then it stops suddent like, and kinder leaves me out
too.”

Kane looked at him more attentively. He was a strong, powerfully
built man with a complexion that betrayed nothing more serious than
the effects of mining cookery. It was evidently a common case of
indigestion.

“I don’t say it would not have done you some good if properly
administered,” he replied. “If you like I’ll put up a diluted
quantity and directions?”

“That’s me, every time, pardner!” said the stranger with an accent
of relief. “And look yer, don’t you stop at that! Ye just put me
up some samples like of anythin’ you think mout be likely to hit.
I’ll go in for a fair show, and then meander in every now and then,
betwixt times, to let you know. Ye don’t mind my drifting in here,
do ye? It’s about ez likely a place ez I struck since I’ve left
the Sacramento boat, and my hotel, just round the corner. Ye just
sample me a bit o’ everythin’; don’t mind the expense. I’ll take
your word for it. The way you–a young fellow–jest stuck to your
work in thar, cool and kam as a woodpecker–not minding how high-
toned she was–nor the jewelery and spangles she had on–jest got
me! I sez to myself, ‘Rube,’ sez I, ‘whatever’s wrong o’ your
insides, you jest stick to that feller to set ye right.’”

The junior partner’s face reddened as he turned to his shelves
ostensibly for consultation. Conscious of his inexperience, the
homely praise of even this ignorant man was not ungrateful. He
felt, too, that his treatment of the Frenchwoman, though
successful, might not be considered remunerative from a business
point of view by his partner. He accordingly acted upon the
suggestion of the stranger and put up two or three specifics for
dyspepsia. They were received with grateful alacrity and the
casual display of considerable gold in the stranger’s pocket in the
process of payment. He was evidently a successful miner.

After bestowing the bottles carefully about his person, he again
leaned confidentially towards Kane. “I reckon of course you know
this high-toned lady, being in the way of seein’ that kind o’
folks. I suppose you won’t mind telling me, ez a stranger. But”
(he added hastily, with a deprecatory wave of his hand), “perhaps
ye would.”

Mr. Kane, in fact, had hesitated. He knew vaguely and by report
that Madame le Blanc was the proprietress of a famous restaurant,
over which she had rooms where private gambling was carried on to a
great extent. It was also alleged that she was protected by a
famous gambler and a somewhat notorious bully. Mr. Kane’s caution
suggested that he had no right to expose the reputation of his
chance customer. He was silent.

The stranger’s face became intensely sympathetic and apologetic.
“I see!–not another word, pard! It ain’t the square thing to be
givin’ her away, and I oughtn’t to hev asked. Well–so long! I
reckon I’ll jest drift back to the hotel. I ain’t been in San
Francisker mor’ ‘n three hours, and I calkilate, pard, that I’ve
jest seen about ez square a sample of high-toned life as fellers ez
haz bin here a year. Well, hastermanyanner–ez the Greasers say.
I’ll be droppin’ in to-morrow. My name’s Reuben Allen o’ Mariposa.
I know yours; it’s on the sign, and it ain’t Sparlow.”

He cast another lingering glance around the shop, as if loath to
leave it, and then slowly sauntered out of the door, pausing in the
street a moment, in the glare of the red light, before he faded
into darkness. Without knowing exactly why, Kane had an instinct
that the stranger knew no one in San Francisco, and after leaving
the shop was going into utter silence and obscurity.

A few moments later Dr. Sparlow returned to relieve his wearied
partner. A pushing, active man, he listened impatiently to Kane’s
account of his youthful practice with Madame le Blanc, without,
however, dwelling much on his methods. “You ought to have charged
her more,” the elder said decisively. “She’d have paid it. She
only came here because she was ashamed to go to a big shop in
Montgomery Street–and she won’t come again.”

“But she wants you to see her to-morrow,” urged Kane, “and I told
her you would!”

“You say it was only a superficial cut?” queried the doctor, “and
you closed it? Umph! what can she want to see me for?” He paid
more attention, however, to the case of the stranger, Allen. “When
he comes here again, manage to let me see him.” Mr. Kane promised,
yet for some indefinable reason he went home that night not quite
as well satisfied with himself.

He was much more concerned the next morning when, after relieving
the doctor for his regular morning visits, he was startled an hour
later by the abrupt return of that gentleman. His face was marked
by some excitement and anxiety, which nevertheless struggled with
that sense of the ludicrous which Californians in those days
imported into most situations of perplexity or catastrophe.
Putting his hands deeply into his trousers pockets, he confronted
his youthful partner behind the counter.

“How much did you charge that French-woman?” he said gravely.

“Twenty-five cents,” said Kane timidly.

“Well, I’d give it back and add two hundred and fifty dollars if
she had never entered the shop.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Her head will be–and a mass of it, in a day, I reckon! Why, man,
you put enough plaster on it to clothe and paper the dome of the
Capitol! You drew her scalp together so that she couldn’t shut her
eyes without climbing up the bed-post! You mowed her hair off so
that she’ll have to wear a wig for the next two years–and handed
it to her in a beau-ti-ful sealed package! They talk of suing me
and killing you out of hand.”

“She was bleeding a great deal and looked faint,” said the junior
partner; “I thought I ought to stop that.”

“And you did–by thunder! Though it might have been better
business for the shop if I’d found her a crumbling ruin here, than
lathed and plastered in this fashion, over there! However,” he
added, with a laugh, seeing an angry light in his junior partner’s
eye, “she don’t seem to mind it–the cursing all comes from them.
She rather likes your style and praises it–that’s what gets me!
Did you talk to her much,” he added, looking critically at his
partner.

“I only told her to sit still or she’d bleed to death,” said Kane
curtly.

“Humph!–she jabbered something about your being ’strong’ and
knowing just how to handle her. Well, it can’t be helped now. I
think I came in time for the worst of it and have drawn their fire.
Don’t do it again. The next time a woman with a cut head and long
hair tackles you, fill up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack
her off to some of the big shops and make them pick it out.” And
with a good-humored nod he started off to finish his interrupted
visits.

With a vague sense of remorse, and yet a consciousness of some
injustice done him, Mr. Kane resumed his occupation with filters
and funnels, and mortars and triturations. He was so gloomily
preoccupied that he did not, as usual, glance out of the window, or
he would have observed the mining stranger of the previous night
before it. It was not until the man’s bowed shoulders blocked the
light of the doorway that he looked up and recognized him. Kane
was in no mood to welcome his appearance. His presence, too,
actively recalled the last night’s adventure of which he was a
witness–albeit a sympathizing one. Kane shrank from the illusions
which he felt he would be sure to make. And with his present ill
luck, he was by no means sure that his ministrations even to him
had been any more successful than they had been to the Frenchwoman.
But a glance at his good-humored face and kindling eyes removed
that suspicion. Nevertheless, he felt somewhat embarrassed and
impatient, and perhaps could not entirely conceal it. He forgot
that the rudest natures are sometimes the most delicately sensitive
to slights, and the stranger had noticed his manner and began
apologetically.

“I allowed I’d just drop in anyway to tell ye that these thar pills
you giv’ me did me a heap o’ good so far–though mebbe it’s only
fair to give the others a show too, which I’m reckoning to do.” He
paused, and then in a submissive confidence went on: “But first I
wanted to hev you excuse me for havin’ asked all them questions
about that high-toned lady last night, when it warn’t none of my
business. I am a darned fool.”

Mr. Kane instantly saw that it was no use to keep up his attitude
of secrecy, or impose upon the ignorant, simple man, and said
hurriedly: “Oh no. The lady is very well known. She is the
proprietress of a restaurant down the street–a house open to
everybody. Her name is Madame le Blanc; you may have heard of her
before?”

To his surprise the man exhibited no diminution of interest nor
change of sentiment at this intelligence. “Then,” he said slowly,
“I reckon I might get to see her again. Ye see, Mr. Kane, I rather
took a fancy to her general style and gait–arter seein’ her in
that fix last night. It was rather like them play pictures on the
stage. Ye don’t think she’d make any fuss to seein’ a rough old
‘forty-niner’ like me?”

“Hardly,” said Kane, “but there might be some objection from her
gentlemen friends,” he added, with a smile,–”Jack Lane, a gambler,
who keeps a faro bank in her rooms, and Jimmy O’Ryan, a prize-
fighter, who is one of her ‘chuckers out.’”

His further relation of Madame le Blanc’s entourage apparently gave
the miner no concern. He looked at Kane, nodded, and repeated
slowly and appreciatively: “Yes, keeps a gamblin’ and faro bank and
a prize-fighter–I reckon that might be about her gait and style
too. And you say she lives”–

He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop quickly, shut
the door behind him, and turned the key in the lock. It was done
so quickly that Kane instinctively felt that the man had been
loitering in the vicinity and had approached from the side street.
A single glance at the intruder’s face and figure showed him that
it was the bully of whom he had just spoken. He had seen that
square, brutal face once before, confronting the police in a riot,
and had not forgotten it. But today, with the flush of liquor on
it, it had an impatient awkwardness and confused embarrassment that
he could not account for. He did not comprehend that the genuine
bully is seldom deliberate of attack, and is obliged–in common
with many of the combative lower animals–to lash himself into a
previous fury of provocation. This probably saved him, as perhaps
some instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger kept
him cool. He remained standing quietly behind the counter. Allen
glanced around carelessly, looking at the shelves.

The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruffian’s rage
and embarrassment. Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop
and clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which
jarred the glasses–yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and
void of purpose that he stopped in the midst of it and had to
content himself with glaring at Kane.

“Well,” said Kane quietly, “what does all this mean? What do you
want here?”

“What does it mean?” repeated the bully, finding his voice in a
high falsetto, designed to imitate Kane’s. “It means I’m going to
play merry h-ll with this shop! It means I’m goin’ to clean it out
and the blank hair-cuttin’ blank that keeps it. What do I want
here? Well–what I want I intend to help myself to, and all h-ll
can’t stop me! And” (working himself to the striking point) “who
the blank are you to ask me?” He sprang towards the counter, but
at the same moment Allen seemed to slip almost imperceptibly and
noiselessly between them, and Kane found himself confronted only by
the miner’s broad back.

“Hol’ yer hosses, stranger,” said Allen slowly, as the ruffian
suddenly collided with his impassive figure. “I’m a sick man
comin’ in yer for medicine. I’ve got somethin’ wrong with my
heart, and goin’s on like this yer kinder sets it to thumpin’.”

“Blank you and your blank heart!” screamed the bully, turning in a
fury of amazement and contempt at this impotent interruption.
“Who”–but his voice stopped. Allen’s powerful right arm had
passed over his head and shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned
his elbows against his sides. Held rigidly upright, he attempted
to kick, but Allen’s right leg here advanced, and firmly held his
lower limbs against the counter that shook to his struggles and
blasphemous outcries. Allen turned quietly to Kane, and, with a
gesture of his unemployed arm, said confidentially:

“Would ye mind passing me down that ar Romantic Spirits of Ammonyer
ye gave me last night?”

Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle.

“Thar,” said Allen, taking out the stopper and holding the pungent
spirit against the bully’s dilated nostrils and vociferous mouth,
“thar, smell that, and taste it, it will do ye good; it was
powerful kammin’ to me last night.”

The ruffian gasped, coughed, choked, but his blaspheming voice died
away in a suffocating hiccough.

“Thar,” continued Allen, as his now subdued captive relaxed his
struggling, “ye ‘r’ better, and so am I. It’s quieter here now,
and ye ain’t affectin’ my heart so bad. A little fresh air will
make us both all right.” He turned again to Kane in his former
subdued confidential manner.

“Would ye mind openin’ that door?”

Kane flew to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide open. The
bully again began to struggle, but a second inhalation of the
hartshorn quelled him, and enabled his captor to drag him to the
door. As they emerged upon the sidewalk, the bully, with a final
desperate struggle, freed his arm and grasped his pistol at his
hip-pocket, but at the same moment Allen deliberately caught his
hand, and with a powerful side throw cast him on the pavement,
retaining the weapon in his own hand. “I’ve one of my own,” he
said to the prostrate man, “but I reckon I’ll keep this yer too,
until you’re better.”

The crowd that had collected quickly, recognizing the notorious and
discomfited bully, were not of a class to offer him any sympathy,
and he slunk away followed by their jeers. Allen returned quietly
to the shop. Kane was profuse in his thanks, and yet oppressed
with his simple friend’s fatuous admiration for a woman who could
keep such ruffians in her employ. “You know who that man was, I
suppose?” he said.

“I reckon it was that ‘er prize-fighter belongin’ to that high-
toned lady,” returned Allen simply. “But he don’t know anything
about rastlin‘, b’gosh; only that I was afraid o’ bringin’ on that
heart trouble, I mout hev hurt him bad.”

“They think”–hesitated Kane, “that–I–was rough in my treatment
of that woman and maliciously cut off her hair. This attack was
revenge–or”–he hesitated still more, as he remembered Dr.
Sparlow’s indication of the woman’s feeling–”or that bully’s idea
of revenge.”

“I see,” nodded Allen, opening his small sympathetic eyes on Kane
with an exasperating air of secrecy–”just jealousy.”

Kane reddened in sheer hopelessness of explanation. “No; it was
earning his wages, as he thought.”

“Never ye mind, pard,” said Allen confidentially. “I’ll set ‘em
both right. Ye see, this sorter gives me a show to call at that
thar restaurant and give him back his six-shooter, and set her on
the right trail for you. Why, Lordy! I was here when you was
fixin’ her–I’m testimony o’ the way you did it–and she’ll
remember me. I’ll sorter waltz round thar this afternoon. But I
reckon I won’t be keepin’ you from your work any longer. And look
yar!–I say, pard!–this is seein’ life in ‘Frisco–ain’t it?
Gosh! I’ve had more high times in this very shop in two days, than
I’ve had in two years of St. Jo. So long, Mr. Kane!” He waved his
hand, lounged slowly out of the shop, gave a parting glance up the
street, passed the window, and was gone.

The next day being a half-holiday for Kane, he did not reach the
shop until afternoon. “Your mining friend Allen has been here,”
said Doctor Sparlow. “I took the liberty of introducing myself,
and induced him to let me carefully examine him. He was a little
shy, and I am sorry for it, as I fear he has some serious organic
trouble with his heart and ought to have a more thorough
examination.” Seeing Kane’s unaffected concern, he added, “You
might influence him to do so. He’s a good fellow and ought to take
some care of himself. By the way, he told me to tell you that he’d
seen Madame le Blanc and made it all right about you. He seems to
be quite infatuated with the woman.”

“I’m sorry he ever saw her,” said Kane bitterly.

“Well, his seeing her seems to have saved the shop from being
smashed up, and you from getting a punched head,” returned the
Doctor with a laugh. “He’s no fool–yet it’s a freak of human
nature that a simple hayseed like that–a man who’s lived in the
backwoods all his life, is likely to be the first to tumble before
a pot of French rouge like her.”

Indeed, in a couple of weeks, there was no further doubt of Mr.
Reuben Allen’s infatuation. He dropped into the shop frequently on
his way to and from the restaurant, where he now regularly took his
meals; he spent his evenings in gambling in its private room. Yet
Kane was by no means sure that he was losing his money there
unfairly, or that he was used as a pigeon by the proprietress and
her friends. The bully O’Ryan was turned away; Sparlow grimly
suggested that Allen had simply taken his place, but Kane
ingeniously retorted that the Doctor was only piqued because Allen
had evaded his professional treatment. Certainly the patient had
never consented to another examination, although he repeatedly and
gravely bought medicines, and was a generous customer. Once or
twice Kane thought it his duty to caution Allen against his new
friends and enlighten him as to Madame le Blanc’s reputation, but
his suggestions were received with a good-humored submission that
was either the effect of unbelief or of perfect resignation to the
fact, and he desisted. One morning Dr. Sparlow said cheerfully:–

“Would you like to hear the last thing about your friend and the
Frenchwoman? The boys can’t account for her singling out a fellow
like that for her friend, so they say that the night that she cut
herself at the fete and dropped in here for assistance, she found
nobody here but Allen–a chance customer! That it was he who cut
off her hair and bound up her wounds in that sincere fashion, and
she believed he had saved her life.” The Doctor grinned maliciously
as he added: “And as that’s the way history is written you see your
reputation is safe.”

It may have been a month later that San Francisco was thrown into a
paroxysm of horror and indignation over the assassination of a
prominent citizen and official in the gambling-rooms of Madame le
Blanc, at the hands of a notorious gambler. The gambler had
escaped, but in one of those rare spasms of vengeful morality which
sometimes overtakes communities who have too long winked at and
suffered the existence of evil, the fair proprietress and her whole
entourage were arrested and haled before the coroner’s jury at the
inquest. The greatest excitement prevailed; it was said that if
the jury failed in their duty, the Vigilance Committee had arranged
for the destruction of the establishment and the deportation of its
inmates. The crowd that had collected around the building was
reinforced by Kane and Dr. Sparlow, who had closed their shop in
the next block to attend. When Kane had fought his way into the
building and the temporary court, held in the splendidly furnished
gambling saloon, whose gilded mirrors reflected the eager faces of
the crowd, the Chief of Police was giving his testimony in a formal
official manner, impressive only for its relentless and impassive
revelation of the character and antecedents of the proprietress.
The house had been long under the espionage of the police; Madame
le Blanc had a dozen aliases; she was “wanted” in New Orleans, in
New York, in Havana! It was in her house that Dyer, the bank
clerk, committed suicide; it was there that Colonel Hooley was set
upon by her bully, O’Ryan; it was she–Kane heard with reddening
cheeks–who defied the police with riotous conduct at a fete two
months ago. As he coolly recited the counts of this shameful
indictment, Kane looked eagerly around for Allen, whom he knew had
been arrested as a witness. How would he take this terrible
disclosure? He was sitting with the others, his arm thrown over
the back of his chair, and his good-humored face turned towards the
woman, in his old confidential attitude. She, gorgeously dressed,
painted, but unblushing, was cool, collected, and cynical.

The Coroner next called the only witness of the actual tragedy,
“Reuben Allen.” The man did not move nor change his position. The
summons was repeated; a policeman touched him on the shoulder.
There was a pause, and the officer announced: “He has fainted, your
Honor!”

“Is there a physician present?” asked the Coroner.

Sparlow edged his way quickly to the front. “I’m a medical man,”
he said to the Coroner, as he passed quickly to the still, upright,
immovable figure and knelt beside it with his head upon his heart.
There was an awed silence as, after a pause, he rose slowly to his
feet.

“The witness is a patient, your Honor, whom I examined some weeks
ago and found suffering from valvular disease of the heart. He is
dead.”

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.

He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one
of the Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only
known the “dugout” or canoe as a means of conveyance across the
scant streams whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a
necessity. The long, narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen,
known familiarly as a “prairie schooner,” in which he journeyed
across the plains to California in ‘53, did not help his conception
by that nautical figure. And when at last he dropped upon the land
of promise through one of the Southern mountain passes he halted
all unconsciously upon the low banks of a great yellow river amidst
a tangled brake of strange, reed-like grasses that were unknown to
him. The river, broadening as it debouched through many channels
into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE of his
journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into
the great stream itself, he found the prospect “good” according to
his lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted
wagon into a temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and
“settle.”

There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings
he had passed were few and far between; the land would be his by
discovery and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-
reliance made him independent of neighbors. He took his first meal
in his new solitude under a spreading willow, but so near his
natural boundary that the waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but
a few feet from him. The sun sank, deepening the gold of the river
until it might have been the stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin
Morse had no imagination; he was not even a gold-seeker; he had
simply obeyed the roving instincts of the frontiersman in coming
hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it was his; he was
alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with less
concern over his three thousand miles’ transference of habitation
than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. When the
sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and
went quietly to sleep.

But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a
deep throbbing through the silence of the night–a pulsation that
seemed even to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As
it came nearer it separated itself into a labored, monotonous
panting, continuous, but distinct from an equally monotonous but
fainter beating of the waters, as if the whole track of the river
were being coursed and trodden by a multitude of swiftly trampling
feet. A strange feeling took possession of him–half of fear, half
of curious expectation. It was coming nearer. He rose, leaped
hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night was dark;
at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky pierced
with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed to
be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
constellation–a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him
and apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he
involuntarily drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of
where he stood, and resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk,
whose vagueness, topped by enormous towers, was yet illuminated by
those open squares of light that he had taken for stars, but which
he saw now were brilliantly lit windows.

Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across
the meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all
this was nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted
curtains and open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this
strange and wonderful spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women
moved through brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one
a banquet seemed to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants;
in another were men playing cards around marble-topped tables; in
another the light flashed back again from the mirrors and
glistening glasses and decanters of a gorgeous refreshment saloon;
in smaller openings there was the shy disclosure of dainty white
curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate apartments.

Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified. It was as if some
invisible Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world
of which he had never dreamed. It was THE world–a world of which
he knew nothing in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western
isolation–sweeping by him with the rush of an unknown planet. In
another moment it was gone; a shower of sparks shot up from one of
the towers and fell all around him, and then vanished, even as he
remembered the set piece of “Fourth of July” fireworks had vanished
in his own rural town when he was a boy. The darkness fell with it
too. But such was his utter absorption and breathless
preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself, and
he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the
low banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!

He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later
from the opposite direction on its return trip. He watched it the
next night and the next. Hereafter he never missed it, coming or
going–whatever the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and
lonely life. He felt he could not have slept without seeing it go
by. Oddly enough, his interest and desire did not go further.
Even had he the time and money to spend in a passage on the boat,
and thus actively realize the great world of which he had only
these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness kept him from
it. It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs that his
ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was dimly
conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling
with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien
criticism. For there was much that he did not understand, and some
things that grated upon his lonely independence.

One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little
longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the
retreating boat. Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain
irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,
diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank.
Looking at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the
water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a
black arm in an unskillful swimmer’s overhand stroke. It was a
struggling man. But it was quickly evident that the current was
too strong and the turbulence of the shallow water too great for
his efforts. Without a moment’s hesitation, clad as he was in only
his shirt and trousers, Morse strode into the reeds, and the next
moment, with a call of warning, was swimming toward the now wildly
struggling figure. But, from some unknown reason, as Morse
approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent protest and
desperately turned away, throwing off Morse’s extended arm.

Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man,
Morse, a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and
propelled him at arm’s length, still struggling, apparently with as
much reluctance as incapacity, toward the bank. As their feet
touched the reeds and slimy bottom the man’s resistance ceased, and
he lapsed quite listlessly in Morse’s arms. Half lifting, half
dragging his burden, he succeeded at last in gaining the strip of
meadow, and deposited the unconscious man beneath the willow tree.
Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.

But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up
and wringing the water from his clothes. He then saw for the first
time, by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly
dressed and of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that
bright and fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in
his solitude. He eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the
whisky. Then he rose to his feet, staggered a few steps forward,
and glanced curiously around him at the still motionless wagon, the
few felled trees and evidence of “clearing,” and even at the rude
cabin of logs and canvas just beginning to rise from the ground a
few paces distant, and said, impatiently:

“Where the devil am I?”

Morse hesitated. He was unable to name the locality of his
dwelling-place. He answered briefly:

“On the right bank of the Sacramento.”

The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
resentment. “Oh! ” he said, with ironical gravity, “and I suppose
that this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River.
Thank you!”

Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only
settled there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.

“What’s your nearest town, then?”

“Thar ain’t any. Thar’s a blacksmith’s shop and grocery at the
crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it’s got no name as I’ve
heard on.”

The stranger’s look of suspicion passed. “Well he said, in an
imperative fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of
habit as the occasion, “I want a horse, and mighty quick, too.”

“H’ain’t got any.”

“No horse? How did you get to this place?”

Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.

The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said,
with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: “Pike–aren’t you?”

Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California
slang for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt,
he replied simply:

“I’m from Pike County, Mizzouri.”

“Well,” said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, “you must
beg or steal a horse from your neighbors.”

“Thar ain’t any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles.”

“Then send fifteen miles! Stop.” He opened his still clinging
shirt and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. “There!
there’s two hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a
horse. Sabe?”

“Thar ain’t anyone to send,” said Morse, quietly.

“Do you mean to say you are all alone here?”

“Yes.

“And you fished me out–all by yourself?”

“Yes.

The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly
stretched out his hand and grasped his companion’s.

“All right; if you can’t send, I reckon I can manage to walk over
there tomorrow.”

“I was goin’ on to say,” said Morse, simply, “that if you’ll lie by
tonight, I’ll start over sunup, after puttin’ out the cattle, and
fetch you back a horse afore noon.”

“That’s enough.” He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse.
“Did you never hear,” he said, with a singular smile, “that it was
about the meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a
drowning man?”

“No,” said Morse, simply. “I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
DIDN’T.”

“That depends upon the man you save,” said the stranger, with the
same ambiguous smile, “and whether the SAVING him is only putting
things off. Look here,” he added, with an abrupt return to his
imperative style, “can’t you give me some dry clothes?”

Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a “hickory shirt,” well
worn, but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The
stranger put them on while his companion busied himself in
collecting a pile of sticks and dry leaves.

“What’s that for?” said the stranger, suddenly.

“A fire to dry your clothes.”

The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.

“Not any fire tonight if I know it,” he said, brusquely. Before
Morse could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in
another tone, dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the
tree, “Now, tell me all about yourself, and what you are doing
here.”

Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for
a “location.” He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial
bottom and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he
hoped soon to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself
to a sitting position, and, taking a penknife from his damp
clothes, began to clean his nails in the bright moonlight–an
occupation which made the simple Morse wander vaguely in his
narration.

“And you don’t know that this hole will give you chills and fever
till you’ll shake yourself out of your boots?”

Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.

“And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up
and walk over you and your cabin and your stock?”

“No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back.”

The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.

“If you’ve got to get up at sunrise, we’d better be turning in. I
suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?”

Morse pointed to the wagon. “Thar’s a shakedown in the wagon bed;
you kin lie there.” Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the
inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous
conversation.

“I shouldn’t like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow’ful
kempany o’ nights. I never seed one afore I kem here,” and then,
with the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of
further preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of
his late experiences. The stranger listened with a singular
interest and a quietly searching eye.

“Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw
me. What else did you see? Anything before that–before you saw
me in the water?”

“No–the boat had got well off before I saw you at all.”

“Ah,” said the stranger. “Well, I’m going to turn in.” He walked
to the wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it
with his wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A
moment later he seemed to be in a profound slumber.

It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy,
that he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination
of this man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature
independent and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question
his right or to resent his rudeness. He had accepted his guest’s
careless or premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his
accident as a matter of course, and had never dreamed of
questioning him. That it was a natural accident of that great
world so apart from his own experiences he did not doubt, and
thought no more about it. The advent of the man himself was
greater to him than the causes which brought him there. He was as
yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious
stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with
even the slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his
hand felt yet warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive
grasp, as if it had been a woman’s. There is a simple intuition of
friendship in some lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly
akin to love at first sight. Even the audacities and insolence of
this stranger affected Morse as he might have been touched and
captivated by the coquetries or imperiousness of some bucolic
virgin. And this reserved and shy frontiersman found himself that
night sleepless, and hovering with an abashed timidity and
consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his guest, as if he
had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of some
slumbering Amaryllis.

He was off by daylight–after having placed a rude breakfast by the
side of the still sleeping guest–and before midday he had returned
with a horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the
amount he had paid for the horse, the man said curtly:

“What’s that for?”

“Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse.”

The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing
the pouch in his belt, he shook Morse’s hand again and mounted the
horse.

“So your name’s Martin Morse! Well–goodby, Morsey!”

Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. “You didn’t tell
me your name,” he said. “In case–”

“In case I’m WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack.” He
smiled, and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and
cantered away.

Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods
and living over his experiences of the previous night, until he
fancied he could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow
strip of meadow was haunted by him. There was the tree under which
he had first placed him, and that was where he had seen him sitting
up in his dripping but well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments
he had worn and returned lingered a new scent of some delicate
soap, overpowering the strong alkali flavor of his own. He was
early by the river side, having a vague hope, he knew not why, that
he should again see him and recognize him among the passengers. He
was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the rising
moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the
stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the
water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but
had been dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint
resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night. But a
second glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline
showed him that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far
different from his former companion. There was a bruise upon his
matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed
bloodless, white, and waxen. An inexplicable fear came upon him,
not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres
and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some
moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the
far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely knowing why, he
dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as
if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then, to
his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the
steamboat and the beat of its paddles were “slowing” as the vague
bulk came in sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested
wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through
the sedge that half submerged him. The flashing of three or four
lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him
dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid
his house and wagon completely from view. A vague murmur of voices
from the deck was suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his
relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through
the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away. A sense of
relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious that
for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.

When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its
clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of
formality and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some
law papers from their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs’ and
electors’ notices which he had seen in the papers. He then buried
the corpse in a shallow trench, which he dug by the light of the
moon. He had no question of responsibility; his pioneer training
had not included coroners’ inquests in its experience; in giving
the body a speedy and secure burial from predatory animals he did
what one frontiersman would do for another–what he hoped might be
done for him. If his previous unaccountable feelings returned
occasionally, it was not from that; but rather from some uneasiness
in regard to his late guest’s possible feelings, and a regret that
he had not been here at the finding of the body. That it would in
some way have explained his own accident he did not doubt.

The boat did not “slow up” the next night, but passed as usual; yet
three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its
coming with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity–which
was his nearest approach to imagination. He was then able to
examine it more closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he
now began to call “his friend” in his verbal communings with
himself–but whom he did not seem destined to again discover; until
one day, to his astonishment, a couple of fine horses were brought
to his clearing by a stock-drover. They had been “ordered” to be
left there. in vain Morse expostulated and questioned.

“Your name’s Martin Morse, ain’t it?” said the drover, with
business brusqueness; “and I reckon there ain’t no other man o’
that name around here?”

“No,” said Morse.

“Well, then, they’re YOURS.”

“But who sent them?” insisted Morse. “What was his name, and where
does he live?”

“I didn’t know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o’
buyers,” said the drover dryly; “but the horses is ‘Morgan,’ you
can bet your life.” He grinned as he rode away.

That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to
his again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he
lived in that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals
were of great service to him in “rounding up” the stock he now
easily took in for pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having
a partner or a hired man. The idea that this superior gentleman in
fine clothes might ever appear to him in the former capacity had
even flitted through his brain, but he had rejected it with a sigh.
But the thought that, with luck and industry, he himself might, in
course of time, approximate to Captain Jack’s evident station, DID
occur to him, and was an incentive to energy. Yet it was quite
distinct from the ordinary working man’s ambition of wealth and
state. It was only that it might make him more worthy of his
friend. The great world was still as it had appeared to him in the
passing boat–a thing to wonder at–to be above–and to criticize.

For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke
with listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his
daily labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and
a feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river,
as if his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in
its yellow stream. But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange
dreams assailed him of dead bodies arising with swollen and
distorted lips to touch his own as he strove to drink, or of his
mysterious guest battling with him in its current, and driving him
ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe his parched and crackling
limbs in its flood, he would be confronted with the dazzling lights
of the motionless steamboat and the glare of stony eyes–until he
fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he knew not, until
one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man sitting by
his bed and a Negress in the doorway.

“You’ve had a sharp attack of ‘tule fever,’” said the stranger,
dropping Morse’s listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes,
“but you’re all right now, and will pull through.”

“Who are you?” stammered Morse feebly.

“Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento.”

“How did you come here?”

“I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
There she is.” He pointed to the smiling Negress.

“WHO ordered you?”

The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. “One of your
friends, of course.”

“But what was his name?”

“Really, I don’t remember. But don’t distress yourself. He has
settled for everything right royally. You have only to get strong
now. My duty is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse.
Only when you are strong again, I say–and HE says–keep back
farther from the river.”

And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him
through the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him
nothing more. He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for
a new and strange phase of his simple, childish affection for his
benefactor, partly superinduced by his illness, was affecting him.
He was beginning to feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was
dimly conscious that his mysterious guest was only coldly returning
his hospitality and benefits, while holding aloof from any
association with him–and indicating the immeasurable distance that
separated their future intercourse. He had withheld any kind
message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even his NAME.
The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled beneath
the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach or
resentment. He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
reimburse him for the doctor’s bill, although he had sent away the
nurse.

He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river,
with a faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack’s advice might
mysteriously be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out
his location and abandoning it, that he might escape the cold
surveillance of his heartless friend. All this was undoubtedly
childish–but there is an irrepressible simplicity of youth in all
deep feeling, and the worldly inexperience of the frontiersman left
him as innocent as a child. In this phase of his unrequited
affection he even went so far as to seek some news of Captain Jack
at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish quest, even to take
the steamboat from thence to Stockton.

What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it
contained for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal,
insincere, and–had he ever understood or used the word in his
limited vocabulary–VULGAR. Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that
the prevailing sentiment and action of those who frequented it–and
for whom it was built–were of a lower grade than his own. And,
strangely enough, this gave him none of his former sense of
critical superiority, but only of his own utter and complete
isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman’s clothes from
deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone,
unchallenged, unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in
spirit, as he had so often done in his dreams.

His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no
interruption; to him their speech was almost foreign in its
allusions to things he did not understand, or, worse, seemed
inconsistent with their eagerness and excitement. How different
from all this were his old recollections of slowly oncoming teams,
uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in his former
wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man to man,
and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here
this continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this
lull of passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of
the feverish haste of speed and exertion.

The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of
gossip and news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and
books in the reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the
staterooms, were all dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the
perpetual throb of the demon of hurry and unrest. And when at last
a horrible fascination dragged him into the engine room, and he saw
the cruel relentless machinery at work, he seemed to recognize and
understand some intelligent but pitiless Moloch, who was dragging
this feverish world at its heels.

Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he
could view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by
certain signs unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching
his own locality. He knew that his cabin and clearing would be
undiscernible behind the fringe of willows on the bank, but he
already distinguished the points where a few cottonwoods struggled
into a promontory of lighter foliage beyond them. Here voices fell
upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware that two men had lazily
crossed over from the other side of the boat, and were standing
before him looking upon the bank.

“It was about here, I reckon,” said one, listlessly, as if
continuing a previous lagging conversation, “that it must have
happened. For it was after we were making for the bend we’ve just
passed that the deputy, goin’ to the stateroom below us, found the
door locked and the window open. But both men–Jack Despard and
Seth Hall, the sheriff–weren’t to be found. Not a trace of ‘em.
The boat was searched, but all for nothing. The idea is that the
sheriff, arter getting his prisoner comf’ble in the stateroom, took
off Jack’s handcuffs and locked the door; that Jack, who was mighty
desp’rate, bolted through the window into the river, and the
sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him. Others allow–for the
chairs and things was all tossed about in the stateroom–that the
two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and chucked him out,
and then slipped cl’ar into the water himself, for the stateroom
window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap’n allows that
no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live. Anyhow, that
was all they ever knew of it.”

“And there wasn’t no trace of them found?” said the second man,
after a long pause.

“No. Cap’n says them paddles would hev’ just snatched ‘em and
slung ‘em round and round and buried ‘em way down in the ooze of
the river bed, with all the silt of the current atop of ‘em, and
they mightn’t come up for ages; or else the wheels might have
waltzed ‘em way up to Sacramento until there wasn’t enough left of
‘em to float, and dropped ‘em when the boat stopped.”

“It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take,” resumed
the second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.

“Bet your life! but he was desp’rate, and the sheriff had got him
sure! And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them
gamblers, and allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or
a pistol wasn’t to be washed out of life by water.”

The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and
motionless. Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly
out of this awful revelation–the thought that his friend was still
true to him–and that his strange absence and mysterious silence
were fully accounted for and explained. And with it came the more
thrilling fancy that this man was alive now to HIM alone.

HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the
question, while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in
reference to its effect upon the chances of Captain Jack and the
power it gave his enemies than his own conscience. He would rather
that his friend should have proven the proscribed outlaw who
retained an unselfish interest in him than the superior gentleman
who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought he understood
now the reason of his visitor’s strange and varying moods–even his
bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable curse
entailed upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he
recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack’s concern
in his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of
his protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.

There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his
farm, where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he
did so, returning on the same boat. He was now fully recovered
from his illness, and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to
put himself in a position to help the mysterious fugitive when the
time should come. The remote farm should always be a haven of
refuge for him, and in this hope he forbore to take any outside
help, remaining solitary and alone, that Captain Jack’s retreat
should be inviolate. And so the long, dry season passed, the hay
was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the first rains,
dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river, were all
that broke his unending solitude. In this enforced attitude of
waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new
idea. He was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the
exhortations of some camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the
idea that he might have been selected to work out the regeneration
of Captain Jack. What might not come of this meeting and communing
together in this lonely spot? That anything was due to the memory
of the murdered sheriff, whose bones were rotting in the trench
that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did not occur to him.
Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double consideration.
Friendship and love–and, for the matter of that, religion–are
eminently one-ideaed.

But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was
hanging out of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely
time to spring to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling
tank before the door fell out as from that inward pressure, and his
whole shanty collapsed like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards,
the roof sliding from over his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he
was swept from his feet against it, and thence out into what might
have been another world! For the rain had ceased, and the full
moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water! It was
not an overflow, but the whole rushing river magnified and repeated
a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for breath and clung to
the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither. But it was
bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift glance
toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping
torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the
wooded foothills. It was the great flood of ‘54. In its awe-
inspiring completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval
Deluge.

As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the
bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.
Here he was for the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from
this height was only the more appalling. Every sign of his
clearing, all evidence of his past year’s industry, had
disappeared. He was now conscious for the first time of the lowing
of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together on a slight
eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the flood.
The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with
the burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and
cabin which they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely
lodged in a bough. The habitual solitude of his locality was now
strangely invaded by drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and
fence rails from unknown and remote neighbors, and he could faintly
hear the far-off calling of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar
of his wrecked and shattered house. When day broke he was cold and
hungry.

Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution
of the waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at
last spread before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence
impressed him. In the afternoon rain again began to fall on this
gray, nebulous expanse, until the whole world seemed made of
aqueous vapor. He had but one idea now–the coming of the evening
boat, and he would reserve his strength to swim to it. He did not
know until later that it could no longer follow the old channel of
the river, and passed far beyond his sight and hearing. With his
disappointment and exposure that night came a return of his old
fever. His limbs were alternately racked with pain or benumbed and
lifeless. He could scarcely retain his position–at times he
scarcely cared to–and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
quick plunge downward. In other moments of lucid misery he was
conscious of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead
face of the murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by
the flood, staring at him from the water; to this was added the
hallucination of noises. He heard voices, his own name called by a
voice he knew–Captain Jack’s!

Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance
and plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head
he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light–
of the black hull of a tug not many yards away–of moving figures–
the sensation of a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a
strong hand upon his collar, and–unconsciousness!

When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and
rowed through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was
taken in through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel
and cared for. But all his questions yielded only the information
that the tug–a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public
Relief Association–had been dispatched for him with special
directions, by a man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the
one who had plunged in for him at the last moment. The man had
left the boat at Stockton. There was nothing more? Yes!–he had
left a letter. Morse seized it feverishly. It contained only a
few lines:

We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from
drowning, and shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.

CAPTAIN JACK.

The astounded man attempted to rise–to utter an exclamation–but
fell back, unconscious.

Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed–and then only as
an impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to
restock the farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-
packer offered him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to
the mountains–for he knew tracks and passes and could ride. The
mountains gave him back a little of the vigor he had lost in the
river valley, but none of its dreams and ambitions. One day, while
tracking a lost mule, he stopped to slake his thirst in a
waterhole–all that the summer had left of a lonely mountain
torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast also, he
was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some bits
of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp
with him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a
fortune. Nobody wondered. To the Californian’s superstition it
was perfectly natural. It was “nigger luck”–the luck of the
stupid, the ignorant, the inexperienced, the nonseeker–the irony
of the gods!

But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration
succumbed to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day,
with a crowd of excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he
found himself on the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An
eager, frantic crowd had already assembled there–a desperado was
to be lynched! Pushing his way through the crowd for a nearer view
of the exciting spectacle, the changed and reckless Morse was
stopped by armed men only at the foot of a cart, which upheld a
quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around his neck, was
scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end of the rope
drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the doomed
man caught those of Morse–his expression changed–a kindly smile
lit his face–he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an
easy gesture of farewell.

And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed
guard, and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one
adversary and seized another in his hopeless fight toward the cart
when the half-astonished crowd felt that something must be done.
It was done with a sharp report, the upward curl of smoke and the
falling back of the guard as Morse staggered forward FREE–with a
bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did not fall until he
reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with his arms
outstretched and his head at the doomed man’s feet.

There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless
act of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then
recoiled aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from
the doomed man himself would have set him free. But they say–and
it is credibly recorded–that as Captain Jack Despard looked down
upon the hopeless sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he
flung upon the crowd a curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened
as they were, their blood ran cold, and then leaped furiously to
their cheeks.

“And now,” he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with
a jerk of his head–”Go on, and be damned to you! I’m ready.”

They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
Despard were buried in the same grave.

The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last
half hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound
medieval dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the
steamship that carried him hither; and the accents of his own
tongue, the idioms of his own people, and the sympathetic community
of New World tastes and expressions still filled his mind until he
woke up, or rather, as it seemed to him, was falling asleep in the
past of this Old World town which had once held his ancestors.
Although a republican, he had liked to think of them in quaint
distinctive garb, representing state and importance–perhaps even
aristocratic pre-eminence–content to let the responsibility of
such “bad eminence” rest with them entirely, but a habit of
conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led him
also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in
a doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of
his progenitors. For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in
Europe, he was not a snob, and it struck him–as an American–that
it was, perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved
than as having degenerated. In these ingenuous meditations he had
passed the long rows of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs
and unpatched dilapidations were yet far removed from squalor,
until he had reached the road bordered by poplars, all so unlike
his own country’s waysides–and knew that he had wandered far from
his hotel.

He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the
way he had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or
turning that would eventually bring him to the market place and his
hotel, and yet extend his experience of the town. He turned at
right angles into a narrow grass lane, which was, however, as
neatly kept and apparently as public as the highway. A few
moments’ walking convinced him that it was not a thoroughfare and
that it led to the open gates of a park. This had something of a
public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be at least a
pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on the
exonerating quality of a stranger’s ignorance. The park lay in the
direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a
park of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable
urban space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he
wandered on, until he became conscious that he must have again lost
his way, and he diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset
hedge to the right, whose line he had been following.

As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side,
speaking in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet,
met no one, and being now impressed with the fact that for a public
place the park was singularly deserted, he was conscious that his
position was getting serious, and he determined to take this only
chance of inquiring his way. The hedge was thinner in some places
than in others, and at times he could see not only the light
through it but even the moving figures of the speakers, and the
occasional white flash of a summer gown. At last he determined to
penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged on the other side.
But here he paused motionless. He found himself behind a somewhat
formal and symmetrical group of figures with their backs toward
him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his own, and
all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but
which now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures
were in uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated
from the others that he was enabled to see the house between her
and her companions, he was confronted by the pretty back,
shoulders, and blond braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced
that he had unwittingly intruded upon some august ceremonial, he
instantly slipped back into the hedge, but so silently that his
momentary presence was evidently undetected. When he regained the
park side he glanced back through the interstices; there was no
movement of the figures nor break in the silence to indicate that
his intrusion had been observed. With a long breath of relief he
hurried from the park.

It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little
modern adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval
reflections, and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained
porter in the courtyard was in regard to the park. There was no
public park in Alstadt! The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof
Gardens–the Schloss, which was in the direction he indicated. The
Schloss was the residency of the hereditary Grand Duke. JA WOHL!
He was stopping there with several Hoheiten. There was naturally a
party there–a family reunion. But it was a private enclosure. At
times, when the Grand Duke was not in residence,” it was open to
the public. In point of fact, at such times tickets of admission
were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige each. There was
not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and dairy–the
pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.

But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the
modern life of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long
walk, he passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on
the landing near his room. As he entered his apartment he had a
vague impression, without exactly knowing why, that the landlord
and the military stranger had just left it. This feeling was
deepened by the evident disarrangement of certain articles in his
unlocked portmanteau and the disorganization of his writing case.
A wave of indignation passed over him. It was followed by a knock
at the door, and the landlord blandly appeared with the stranger.

“A thousand pardons,” said the former, smilingly, “but Herr
Sanderman, the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you.
I hope we are not intruding?”

“Not NOW,” said the American, dryly.

The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.

“I have to ask only a few formal questions,” said the Ober-
Inspector in excellent but somewhat precise English, “to supplement
the report which, as a stranger, you may not know is required by
the police from the landlord in regard to the names and quality of
his guests who are foreign to the town. You have a passport?”

“I have,” said the American still more dryly. “But I do not keep
it in an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case.”

“An admirable precaution,” said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
“May I see it? Thanks,” he added, glancing over the document which
the American produced from his pocket. “I see that you are a born
American citizen–and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have
prevented this little contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman,
that your name is German?”

“It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two
centuries ago,” said Hoffman, curtly.

“We are indeed honored by your return to it,” returned Sanderman
suavely, “but it was the circumstance of your name being a local
one, and the possibility of your still being a German citizen
liable to unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble.”
His manner was clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that
all the time his own face and features were undergoing a profound
scrutiny from the speaker.

“And you are making sure that you will know me again?” said
Hoffman, with a smile.

“I trust, indeed, both,” returned Sanderman, with a bow, “although
you will permit me to say that your description here,” pointing to
the passport, “scarcely does you justice. ACH GOTT! it is the same
in all countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN.”

Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without
knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in
the remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.

The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the
door. “I hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by
doing anything I can to render your visit here a pleasant one.
Perhaps,” he added, “it is not for long.”

But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he
imagined was a possible sneer.

“I have not yet determined my movements,” he said.

The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
military salute and departed.

Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile
urbanity of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the
official visit to his guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and
even introduced him to a singularly artistic-looking man of middle
age, wearing an order in his buttonhole, whom he met casually in
the hall.

“Our Court photographer,” explained the landlord with some fervor,
“at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten
and Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses.”

“I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would
give me a visit,” said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman
with an intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the
Police Inspector, “and I would be charmed if he would avail himself
of my poor skill to transmit his picturesque features to my unique
collection.”

Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he
was conscious of being struck with this second examination of his
face, and the allusion to his personality.

The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air. The
Herr would still like to see the Schloss? Hoffman, who had quite
forgotten his adventure in the park, looked vacant. JA WOHL–the
Hof authorities had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated
to the hotel proprietor that he might have permission to visit the
model farm and dairy. As the American still looked indifferent the
porter pointed out with some importance that it was a Ducal
courtesy not to be lightly treated; that few, indeed, of the
burghers themselves had ever been admitted to this eccentric whim
of the late Grand Duchess. He would, of course, be silent about
it; the Court would not like it known that they had made an
exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would enter
quickly and boldly alone. There would be a housekeeper or a
dairymaid to show him over the place.

More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American,
was inclined to classify as a “free pass” to a somewhat heavy “side
show,” he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning
after breakfast set out to visit the model farm and dairy.
Dismissing his driver, as he had been instructed, Hoffman entered
the gateway with a mingling of expectancy and a certain amusement
over the “boldness” which the porter had suggested should
characterize his entrance. Before him was a beautifully kept lane
bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which seemed to sink into
the distance. He was instinctively following it when he became
aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the livery
of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast of
him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory
military salute preserving a ceremonious silence. There was
something so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful,
rural industry that by the time they had reached the bottom of the
lane the American had quite recovered his good humor. But here a
new astonishment awaited him. Nestling before him in a green
amphitheater lay a little wooden farm-yard and outbuildings, which
irresistibly suggested that it had been recently unpacked and set
up from a box of Nuremberg toys. The symmetrical trees, the
galleried houses with preternaturally glazed windows, even the
spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the white-fenced barnyards
were all unreal, wooden and toylike.

Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was
quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,
he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion.
The mysterious chasseur had disappeared. But under the arch of an
arbor, which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass,
and pink tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.

At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for
another. For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden
china–so daintily delicate and unique it was in color and
arrangement. It was that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten
medieval peasant garb of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage,
lace sleeves, and helmeted metallic comb. But, after the Dresden
method, the pale yellow of her hair was repeated in her bodice, the
pink of her cheeks was in the roses of her chintz overskirt. The
blue of her eyes was the blue of her petticoat; the dazzling
whiteness of her neck shone again in the sleeves and stockings.
Nevertheless she was real and human, for the pink deepened in her
cheeks as Hoffman’s hat flew from his head, and she recognized the
civility with a grave little curtsy.

“You have come to see the dairy,” she said in quaintly accurate
English; “I will show you the way.”

“If you please,” said Hoffman, gaily, “but–”

“But what?” she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely
astonished eyes.

Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment.
Nothing daunted, however, he went on:

“Couldn’t we shake all that?”

The look of wonder returned. “Shake all that?” she repeated. “I
do not understand.”

“Well! I’m not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick
of showing them. I think, too, I’ve about sized the whole show.
Wouldn’t it be better if we sat down in that arbor–supposing it
won’t fall down–and you told me all about the lot? It would save
you a heap of trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than
trapesing round. Of course,” he said, with a quick transition to
the gentlest courtesy, “if you’re conscientious about this thing
we’ll go on and not spare a cow. Consider me in it with you for
the whole morning.”

She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming
laugh. It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a
certain barbaric trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had
not entirely overlaid.

“I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,”
he said to himself as he laughed too.

But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle
but singular significance she said:

“I think you must see the dairy.”

Hoffman’s hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the
brown curls on his forehead. “By all means,” he said instantly,
and began walking by her side in modest but easy silence. Now that
he thought her a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.

Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:

“But you Americans–in your rich and prosperous country, with your
large lands and your great harvests–you must know all about
farming.”

“Never was in a dairy in my life,” said Hoffman gravely. “I’m from
the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept
in cellars.”

Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand. Then
she apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of
mischief in her eyes:

“Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the
Grand Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?”

“No. The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of ‘em–standing like
wax figures–the other side of the park lodge, the other day–and
got away as soon as I could. I think I prefer the cows.”

Her head was slightly turned away. He had to content himself with
looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly
buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside
him.

“Of course,” he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, “if
it’s part of your show to trot out the family, why I’m in that,
too. I dare say you could make them interesting.”

“But why,” she said with her head still slightly turned away toward
a figure–a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time,
Hoffman perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur
had done–”why did you come here at all?”

“The first time was a fool accident,” he returned frankly. “I was
making a short cut through what I thought was a public park. The
second time was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom
I found going through my things, but who apologized–as I suppose–
by getting me an invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I
thought it only the square thing to both of ‘em to accept it. But
I’m mighty glad I came; I wouldn’t have missed YOU for a thousand
dollars. You see I haven’t struck anyone I cared to talk to
since.” Here he suddenly remarked that she hadn’t looked at him,
and that the delicate whiteness of her neck was quite suffused with
pink, and stopped instantly. Presently he said quite easily:

“Who’s the chorus?”

“The lady?”

“Yes. She’s watching us as if she didn’t quite approve, you know–
just as if she didn’t catch on.”

“She’s the head housekeeper of the farm. Perhaps you would prefer
to have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?”

The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
petticoats.

“Please don’t; I’ll stay without your setting that paperweight on
me. But here’s the dairy. Don’t let her come inside among those
pans of fresh milk with that smile, or there’ll be trouble.”

The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and
the figure passed on as they entered the dairy. It was beautifully
clean and fresh. With a persistence that he quickly recognized as
mischievous and ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability
accepted with even greater gravity and assumption of interest, she
showed him all the details. From thence they passed to the
farmyard, where he hung with breathless attention over the names of
the cows and made her repeat them. Although she was evidently
familiar with the subject, he could see that her zeal was fitful
and impatient.

“Suppose we sit down,” he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic
seat in the center of the green.

“Sir down?” she repeated wonderingly. “What for?”

“To talk. We’ll knock off and call it half a day.”

“But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,”
she said quickly.

“Am I? I don’t think these particulars were in my invitation.”

She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a
bright eye around the field.

“Come,” he said gently, “there are no other sightseers waiting, and
your conscience is clear,” and he moved toward the rustic seat.

“Certainly not–there,” she added in a low voice.

They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung
the miniature stream.

“You are not staying long in Alstadt?” she said.

“No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from.”

They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his
trousers, but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him
fixedly in the eye said:

“Ah, you have relations here?”

“Yes, but they are dead two hundred years.”

She laughed again with a slight expression of relief. They had
entered the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she
suddenly stopped and sat down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise
he found that they were quite alone.

“Tell me about these relatives,” she said, slightly drawing aside
her skirt to make room for him on the seat.

He did not require a second invitation. He not only told her all
about his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more
recent and more nearly related to him; about his own life, his
vocation–he was a clever newspaper correspondent with a roving
commission–his ambitions, his beliefs and his romance.

“And then, perhaps, of this visit–you will also make ‘copy’?”

He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but
shook his head.

“No,” he said gravely. “No–this is YOU. The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER
is big pay and is rich, but it hasn’t capital enough to buy you
from me.

He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly
around it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even
then–as if in forgetfulness or indifference–permitted her hand to
rest unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to
gallantry, neither was it a rejection of an unconscious
familiarity.

“But you haven’t told me about yourself,” he said.

“Oh, I”–she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a
laugh and a sidelong glance, “of what importance is that to you?
It is the Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you
Americans seek to know. I am–what I am–as you see.”

“You bet,” said Hoffman with charming decision.

“I WHAT?”

“You ARE, you know, and that’s good enough for me, but I don’t even
know your name.”

She laughed again, and after a pause, said: “Elsbeth.”

“But I couldn’t call you by your first name on our first meeting,
you know.”

“Then you Americans are really so very formal–eh?” she said slyly,
looking at her imprisoned hand.

“Well, yes,” returned Hoffman, disengaging it. “I suppose we are
respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write
to?”

“You are neither to write nor inquire.”

“What?” She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes
in which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated,
but for the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented
her words with a slight pressure.

“You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your
landlord: ‘Pack up my luggage. I have finished with this old town
and my ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see,
and I shall leave Alstadt tomorrow!’”

“Thank you! I don’t catch on.”

“Of what necessity should you? I have said it. That should be
enough for a chivalrous American like you.” She again
significantly looked down at her hand.

“If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I
can say no more,” he said seriously; “but give me some reason for
it.”

“Ah so!” she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Then 1
must tell you. You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess.
Well! THEY KNOW YOU. The day before yesterday you were wandering
in the park, as you admit. You say, also, you got through the
hedge and interrupted some ceremony. That ceremony was not a Court
function, Mr. Hoffman, but something equally sacred–the
photographing of the Ducal family before the Schloss. You say that
you instantly withdrew. But after the photograph was taken the
plate revealed a stranger standing actually by the side of the
Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the Grand Duke
himself. That stranger was you!”

“And the picture was spoiled,” said the American, with a quiet
laugh.

“I should not say that,” returned the lady, with a demure glance at
her companion’s handsome face, “and I do not believe that the
Princess–who first saw the photograph–thought so either. But she
is very young and willful, and has the reputation of being very
indiscreet, and unfortunately she begged the photographer not to
destroy the plate, but to give it to her, and to say nothing about
it, except that the plate was defective, and to take another.
Still it would have ended there if her curiosity had not led her to
confide a description of the stranger to the Police Inspector, with
the result you know.”

“Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled
into a family group that was being photographed?”

“Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her
curiosity about you,” corrected the fair stranger.

“But look here! I’ll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay
for the plate.”

“Then you do want to see the Princess?” said the young girl
smiling; “you are like the others.”

“Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don’t see how they
can prevent it if I choose to remain.”

“Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with
your passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for
examination. You will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of
the town and be ordered to leave it. You will be shadowed by the
police until you quarrel with them–like a free American–and you
are conducted to the frontier. Perhaps you will strike an officer
who has insulted you, and then you are finished on the spot.”

The American’s crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat
over his curls.

“Suppose I am content to risk it–having first laid the whole
matter and its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that
he could make it hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they
happened to ‘down me.’ By Jove! I shouldn’t mind being the martyr
of an international episode if they’d spare me long enough to let
me get the first ‘copy’ over to the other side.” His eyes
sparkled.

“You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story,
and you have no evidence. They would demand to know your
informant, and I should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is
already talked about, made a subject of scandal. But no matter!
It is right that an American’s independence shall not be interfered
with.”

She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and
slightly turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the
handkerchief away, and in so doing possessed himself of her other
hand.

“Look here, Miss–Miss–Elsbeth. You know I wouldn’t give you
away, whatever happened. But couldn’t I get hold of that
photographer–I saw him, he wanted me to sit to him–and make him
tell me?”

“He wanted you to sit to him,” she said hurriedly, “and did you?”

“No,” he replied. “He was a little too fresh and previous, though
I thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else.”

“Ah!” She said something to herself in German which he did not
understand, and then added aloud:

“You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you
shall not sit for him.”

“How can I if I’m fired out of the place like this?” He added
ruefully, “But I’d like to make him give himself away to me
somehow.”

“He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go
near him nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you
with his instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you
must go. I must see the Princess.”

“Let me go, too. I will explain it to her,” said Hoffman.

She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her
hands. “Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see.
You are curious–you, too; you wish to see this lady who is
interested in you. I ought to have known it. You are all alike.”

He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as
a charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry–but
retained her hands.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I wish to see her that I may have the right
to see you–that you shall not lose your place here through me;
that I may come again.”

“You must never come here again.”

“Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you
have an afternoon off. You shall show me the town–the houses of
my ancestors–their tombs; possibly–if the Grand Duke rampages–
the probable site of my own.”

She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
questioning blue ones. “Do not you Americans know that it is not
the fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women
to walk together–unless they are VERLOBT?”

“VER–which?”

“Engaged.” She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
mischievously.

“So much the better.”

“ACH GOTT!” She made a gesture of hopelessness at his
incorrigibility, and again attempted to withdraw her hands.

“I must go now.”

“Well then, good-by.”

It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive
hands. Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and
instantly released her. She as instantly vanished.

“Elsbeth,” he called quickly. “Elsbeth!”

Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color
from the dense foliage–quite to his astonishment.

“Hush,” she said, with her finger on her lips. “Are you mad?”

“I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess,” he
laughed as her head disappeared.

He strolled back toward the gate. Scarcely had he quitted the
shrubbery before the same chasseur made his appearance with
precisely the same salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance,
accompanied him to the gate. At the corner of the street he hailed
a droshky and was driven to his hotel.

The landlord came up smiling. He trusted that the Herr had greatly
enjoyed himself at the Schloss. It was a distinguished honor–in
fact, quite unprecedented. Hoffman, while he determined not to
commit himself, nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless
anxious to learn something more of her relations to the Schloss.
So pretty, so characteristic, and marked a figure must be well
known to sightseers. Indeed, once or twice the idea had crossed
his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left him more
conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had deemed
possible. He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown
by the same attendants.

“ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue
when he was in residence.”

“And were these attendants in costume?”

“There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants.”

Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet–he knew
not why. But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it
was not entrusted to everyday menials–and he briefly described it.

His host’s blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious
and arch intelligence.

“ACH GOTT! yes!” He remembered now (with his finger on his nose)
that when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were
filled with shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of
the Grand Duke’s own theatrical company, who assumed the characters
with great vivacity. Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke
had treated the Herr to this special courtesy. Yes–there was one
pretty, blonde young lady–the Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most
popular soubrette, who would play it to the life! And the
description fitted her to a hair! Ah, there was no doubt of it;
many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.

But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight. Ah, it
would be a great joke–quite colossal! if he took a front seat
where she could see him. And the good man rubbed his hands in
gleeful anticipation.

Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only
equal to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true
one, and that he himself had been ridiculously deceived. The
mystery of his fair companion’s costume, which he had accepted as
part of the “show”; the inconsistency of her manner and her evident
occupation; her undeniable wish to terminate the whole episode with
that single interview; her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic
innocence; her perfect self-control and experienced acceptance of
his gallantry under the simulated attitude of simplicity–all now
struck him as perfectly comprehensible. He recalled the actress’s
inimitable touch in certain picturesque realistic details in the
dairy–which she had not spared him; he recognized it now even in
their bowered confidences (how like a pretty ballet scene their
whole interview on the rustic bench was!), and it breathed through
their entire conversation–to their theatrical parting at the
close! And the whole story of the photograph was, no doubt, as
pure a dramatic invention as the rest! The Princess’s romantic
interest in him–that Princess who had never appeared (why had he
not detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)–was
all a part of it. The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by
the police was a necessary culmination to the little farce. Thank
Heaven! he had not “risen” at the Princess, even if he had given
himself away to the clever actress in her own humble role. Then
the humor of the whole situation predominated and he laughed until
the tears came to his eyes, and his forgotten ancestors might have
turned over in their graves without his heeding them. And with
this humanizing influence upon him he went to the theater.

It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance
was a special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to
himself. He tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close
to the next box, where there was a solitary occupant–an officer–
apparently as lonely as himself. He had made up his mind that when
his fair deceiver appeared he would let her see by his significant
applause that he recognized her, but bore no malice for the trick
she had played on him. After all, he had kissed her–he had no
right to complain. If she should recognize him, and this
recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and their
better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant
artifice. Her vocation was certainly a more independent and
original one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and
inequality he cared nothing. He found himself longing for the
glance of her calm blue eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the
seriousness of her sweetly restrained lips. There was no doubt
that he should know her even as the heroine of DER CZAR UND DER
ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him. He was becoming impatient. And
the performance evidently was waiting. A stir in the outer
gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms into the
royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
cause. As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged
from the background of uniforms and took their places in the front
of the box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic
Princess. Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of
diamonds that startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.

He leaned over to his neighbor. “Who is the young lady in the
box?”

“The Princess Alexandrine.”

“I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes.”

“It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the
daughter of the Grand Duke–there is none other there.”

“Thank you.”

He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage. Then
be rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box. When
he reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at
the royal box. Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a
moment motionless in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful
smile, and she waved her fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture
of farewell.

The next morning he left Alstadt. There was some little delay at
the Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk
it was accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to
him by the Customhouse Inspector. Hoffman did not open it until he
was alone.

There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a
narrow, irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself
standing side by side with a young German girl, who, in the
estimation of his compatriots, is by no means stylish and only
passably good-looking. When he is joked by his friends about the
post of honor given to this production, and questioned as to the
lady, he remains silent. The Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie
Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt, among her other royal qualities,
knew whom to trust.

As night crept up from the valley that stormy afternoon, Sawyer’s
Ledge was at first quite blotted out by wind and rain, but
presently reappeared in little nebulous star-like points along the
mountain side, as the straggling cabins of the settlement were one
by one lit up by the miners returning from tunnel and claim. These
stars were of varying brilliancy that evening, two notably so–one
that eventually resolved itself into a many-candled illumination of
a cabin of evident festivity; the other into a glimmering taper in
the window of a silent one. They might have represented the
extreme mutations of fortune in the settlement that night: the
celebration of a strike by Robert Falloner, a lucky miner; and the
sick-bed of Dick Lasham, an unlucky one.

The latter was, however, not quite alone. He was ministered to by
Daddy Folsom, a weak but emotional and aggressively hopeful
neighbor, who was sitting beside the wooden bunk whereon the
invalid lay. Yet there was something perfunctory in his attitude:
his eyes were continually straying to the window, whence the
illuminated Falloner festivities could be seen between the trees,
and his ears were more intent on the songs and laughter that came
faintly from the distance than on the feverish breathing and
unintelligible moans of the sufferer.

Nevertheless he looked troubled equally by the condition of his
charge and by his own enforced absence from the revels. A more
impatient moan from the sick man, however, brought a change to his
abstracted face, and he turned to him with an exaggerated
expression of sympathy.

“In course! Lordy! I know jest what those pains are: kinder ez ef
you was havin’ a tooth pulled that had roots branchin’ all over ye!
My! I’ve jest had ‘em so bad I couldn’t keep from yellin’! That’s
hot rheumatics! Yes, sir, I oughter know! And” (confidentially)
“the sing’ler thing about ‘em is that they get worse jest as
they’re going off–sorter wringin’ yer hand and punchin’ ye in the
back to say ‘Good-by.’ There!” he continued, as the man sank
exhaustedly back on his rude pillow of flour-sacks. “There! didn’t
I tell ye? Ye’ll be all right in a minit, and ez chipper ez a jay
bird in the mornin’. Oh, don’t tell me about rheumatics–I’ve bin
thar! On’y mine was the cold kind–that hangs on longest–yours is
the hot, that burns itself up in no time!”

If the flushed face and bright eyes of Lasham were not enough to
corroborate this symptom of high fever, the quick, wandering laugh
he gave would have indicated the point of delirium. But the too
optimistic Daddy Folsom referred this act to improvement, and went
on cheerfully: “Yes, sir, you’re better now, and”–here he assumed
an air of cautious deliberation, extravagant, as all his assumptions
were–”I ain’t sayin’ that–ef–you–was–to–rise–up” (very
slowly) “and heave a blanket or two over your shoulders–jest by way
o’ caution, you know–and leanin’ on me, kinder meander over to Bob
Falloner’s cabin and the boys, it wouldn’t do you a heap o’ good.
Changes o’ this kind is often prescribed by the faculty.” Another
moan from the sufferer, however, here apparently corrected Daddy’s
too favorable prognosis. “Oh, all right! Well, perhaps ye know
best; and I’ll jest run over to Bob’s and say how as ye ain’t
comin’, and will be back in a jiffy!”

“The letter,” said the sick man hurriedly, “the letter, the letter!”

Daddy leaned suddenly over the bed. It was impossible for even his
hopefulness to avoid the fact that Lasham was delirious. It was a
strong factor in the case–one that would certainly justify his
going over to Falloner’s with the news. For the present moment,
however, this aberration was to be accepted cheerfully and humored
after Daddy’s own fashion. “Of course–the letter, the letter,” he
said convincingly; “that’s what the boys hev bin singin’ jest now–

     'Good-by, Charley; when you are away,
      Write me a letter, love; send me a letter, love!'

That’s what you heard, and a mighty purty song it is too, and
kinder clings to you. It’s wonderful how these things gets in your
head.”

“The letter–write–send money–money–money, and the photograph–
the photograph–photograph–money,” continued the sick man, in the
rapid reiteration of delirium.

“In course you will–to-morrow–when the mail goes,” returned Daddy
soothingly; “plenty of them. Jest now you try to get a snooze,
will ye? Hol’ on!–take some o’ this.”

There was an anodyne mixture on the rude shelf, which the doctor
had left on his morning visit. Daddy had a comfortable belief that
what would relieve pain would also check delirium, and he
accordingly measured out a dose with a liberal margin to allow of
waste by the patient in swallowing in his semi-conscious state. As
he lay more quiet, muttering still, but now unintelligibly, Daddy,
waiting for a more complete unconsciousness and the opportunity to
slip away to Falloner’s, cast his eyes around the cabin. He
noticed now for the first time since his entrance that a crumpled
envelope bearing a Western post-mark was lying at the foot of the
bed. Daddy knew that the tri-weekly post had arrived an hour
before he came, and that Lasham had evidently received a letter.
Sure enough the letter itself was lying against the wall beside
him. It was open. Daddy felt justified in reading it.

It was curt and businesslike, stating that unless Lasham at once
sent a remittance for the support of his brother and sister–two
children in charge of the writer–they must find a home elsewhere.
That the arrears were long standing, and the repeated promises of
Lasham to send money had been unfulfilled. That the writer could
stand it no longer. This would be his last communication unless
the money were sent forthwith.

It was by no means a novel or, under the circumstances, a shocking
disclosure to Daddy. He had seen similar missives from daughters,
and even wives, consequent on the varying fortunes of his
neighbors; no one knew better than he the uncertainties of a
miner’s prospects, and yet the inevitable hopefulness that buoyed
him up. He tossed it aside impatiently, when his eye caught a
strip of paper he had overlooked lying upon the blanket near the
envelope. It contained a few lines in an unformed boyish hand
addressed to “my brother,” and evidently slipped into the letter
after it was written. By the uncertain candlelight Daddy read as
follows:–

Dear Brother, Rite to me and Cissy rite off. Why aint you done it?
It’s so long since you rote any. Mister Recketts ses you dont care
any more. Wen you rite send your fotograff. Folks here ses I aint
got no big bruther any way, as I disremember his looks, and cant
say wots like him. Cissy’s kryin’ all along of it. I’ve got a
hedake. William Walker make it ake by a blo. So no more at
present from your loving little bruther Jim.

The quick, hysteric laugh with which Daddy read this was quite
consistent with his responsive, emotional nature; so, too, were the
ready tears that sprang to his eyes. He put the candle down
unsteadily, with a casual glance at the sick man. It was notable,
however, that this look contained less sympathy for the ailing “big
brother” than his emotion might have suggested. For Daddy was
carried quite away by his own mental picture of the helpless
children, and eager only to relate his impressions of the incident.
He cast another glance at the invalid, thrust the papers into his
pocket, and clapping on his hat slipped from the cabin and ran to
the house of festivity. Yet it was characteristic of the man, and
so engrossed was he by his one idea, that to the usual inquiries
regarding his patient he answered, “he’s all right,” and plunged at
once into the incident of the dunning letter, reserving–with the
instinct of an emotional artist–the child’s missive until the
last. As he expected, the money demand was received with indignant
criticisms of the writer.

“That’s just like ‘em in the States,” said Captain Fletcher;
“darned if they don’t believe we’ve only got to bore a hole in the
ground and snake out a hundred dollars. Why, there’s my wife–with
a heap of hoss sense in everything else–is allus wonderin’ why I
can’t rake in a cool fifty betwixt one steamer day and another.”

“That’s nothin’ to my old dad,” interrupted Gus Houston, the
“infant” of the camp, a bright-eyed young fellow of twenty; “why,
he wrote to me yesterday that if I’d only pick up a single piece of
gold every day and just put it aside, sayin’ ‘That’s for popper and
mommer,’ and not fool it away–it would be all they’d ask of me.”

“That’s so,” added another; “these ignorant relations is just the
ruin o’ the mining industry. Bob Falloner hez bin lucky in his
strike to-day, but he’s a darned sight luckier in being without
kith or kin that he knows of.”

Daddy waited until the momentary irritation had subsided, and then
drew the other letter from his pocket. “That ain’t all, boys,” he
began in a faltering voice, but gradually working himself up to a
pitch of pathos; “just as I was thinking all them very things, I
kinder noticed this yer poor little bit o’ paper lyin’ thar
lonesome like and forgotten, and I–read it–and well–gentlemen–
it just choked me right up!” He stopped, and his voice faltered.

“Go slow, Daddy, go slow!” said an auditor smilingly. It was
evident that Daddy’s sympathetic weakness was well known.

Daddy read the child’s letter. But, unfortunately, what with his
real emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it
extravagantly, and interpolated a child’s lisp (on no authority
whatever), and a simulated infantile delivery, which, I fear, at
first provoked the smiles rather than the tears of his audience.
Nevertheless, at its conclusion the little note was handed round
the party, and then there was a moment of thoughtful silence.

“Tell you what it is, boys,” said Fletcher, looking around the
table, “we ought to be doin’ suthin’ for them kids right off! Did
you,” turning to Daddy, “say anythin’ about this to Dick?”

“Nary–why, he’s clean off his head with fever–don’t understand a
word–and just babbles,” returned Daddy, forgetful of his roseate
diagnosis a moment ago, “and hasn’t got a cent.”

“We must make up what we can amongst us afore the mail goes to-
night,” said the “infant,” feeling hurriedly in his pockets.
“Come, ante up, gentlemen,” he added, laying the contents of his
buckskin purse upon the table.

“Hold on, boys,” said a quiet voice. It was their host Falloner,
who had just risen and was slipping on his oilskin coat. “You’ve
got enough to do, I reckon, to look after your own folks. I’ve
none! Let this be my affair. I’ve got to go to the Express Office
anyhow to see about my passage home, and I’ll just get a draft for
a hundred dollars for that old skeesicks–what’s his blamed name?
Oh, Ricketts”–he made a memorandum from the letter–”and I’ll send
it by express. Meantime, you fellows sit down there and write
something–you know what–saying that Dick’s hurt his hand and
can’t write–you know; but asked you to send a draft, which you’re
doing. Sabe? That’s all! I’ll skip over to the express now and
get the draft off, and you can mail the letter an hour later. So
put your dust back in your pockets and help yourselves to the
whiskey while I’m gone.” He clapped his hat on his head and
disappeared.

“There goes a white man, you bet!” said Fletcher admiringly, as the
door closed behind their host. “Now, boys,” he added, drawing a
chair to the table, “let’s get this yer letter off, and then go
back to our game.”

Pens and ink were produced, and an animated discussion ensued as to
the matter to be conveyed. Daddy’s plea for an extended explanatory
and sympathetic communication was overruled, and the letter was
written to Ricketts on the simple lines suggested by Falloner.

“But what about poor little Jim’s letter? That ought to be
answered,” said Daddy pathetically.

“If Dick hurt his hand so he can’t write to Ricketts, how in
thunder is he goin’ to write to Jim?” was the reply.

“But suthin’ oughter be said to the poor kid,” urged Daddy
piteously.

“Well, write it yourself–you and Gus Houston make up somethin’
together. I’m going to win some money,” retorted Fletcher,
returning to the card-table, where he was presently followed by all
but Daddy and Houston.

“Ye can’t write it in Dick’s name, because that little brother
knows Dick’s handwriting, even if he don’t remember his face.
See?” suggested Houston.

“That’s so,” said Daddy dubiously; “but,” he added, with elastic
cheerfulness, we can write that Dick ’says.’ See?”

“Your head’s level, old man! Just you wade in on that.”

Daddy seized the pen and “waded in.” Into somewhat deep and
difficult water, I fancy, for some of it splashed into his eyes,
and he sniffled once or twice as he wrote. “Suthin’ like this,” he
said, after a pause:–

DEAR LITTLE JIMMIE,–Your big brother havin’ hurt his hand, wants
me to tell you that otherways he is all hunky and A1. He says he
don’t forget you and little Cissy, you bet! and he’s sendin’ money
to old Ricketts straight off. He says don’t you and Cissy mind
whether school keeps or not as long as big Brother Dick holds the
lines. He says he’d have written before, but he’s bin follerin’ up
a lead mighty close, and expects to strike it rich in a few days.

“You ain’t got no sabe about kids,” said Daddy imperturbably;
“they’ve got to be humored like sick folks. And they want
everythin’ big–they don’t take no stock in things ez they are–
even ef they hev ‘em worse than they are. ‘So,’” continued Daddy,
reading to prevent further interruption, “‘he says you’re just to
keep your eyes skinned lookin’ out for him comin’ home any time–
day or night. All you’ve got to do is to sit up and wait. He
might come and even snake you out of your beds! He might come with
four white horses and a nigger driver, or he might come disguised
as an ornary tramp. Only you’ve got to be keen on watchin’.’ (Ye
see,” interrupted Daddy explanatorily, “that’ll jest keep them kids
lively.) ‘He says Cissy’s to stop cryin’ right off, and if Willie
Walker hits yer on the right cheek you just slug out with your left
fist, ‘cordin’ to Scripter.’ Gosh,” ejaculated Daddy, stopping
suddenly and gazing anxiously at Houston, “there’s that blamed
photograph–I clean forgot that.”

“And Dick hasn’t got one in the shop, and never had,” returned
Houston emphatically. “Golly! that stumps us! Unless,” he added,
with diabolical thoughtfulness, “we take Bob’s? The kids don’t
remember Dick’s face, and Bob’s about the same age. And it’s a
regular star picture–you bet! Bob had it taken in Sacramento–in
all his war paint. See!” He indicated a photograph pinned against
the wall–a really striking likeness which did full justice to
Bob’s long silken mustache and large, brown determined eyes. “I’ll
snake it off while they ain’t lookin’, and you jam it in the
letter. Bob won’t miss it, and we can fix it up with Dick after
he’s well, and send another.”

Daddy silently grasped the “infant’s” hand, who presently secured
the photograph without attracting attention from the card-players.
It was promptly inclosed in the letter, addressed to Master James
Lasham. The “infant” started with it to the post-office, and Daddy
Folsom returned to Lasham’s cabin to relieve the watcher that had
been detached from Falloner’s to take his place beside the sick
man.

Meanwhile the rain fell steadily and the shadows crept higher and
higher up the mountain. Towards midnight the star points faded out
one by one over Sawyer’s Ledge even as they had come, with the
difference that the illumination of Falloner’s cabin was
extinguished first, while the dim light of Lasham’s increased in
number. Later, two stars seemed to shoot from the centre of the
ledge, trailing along the descent, until they were lost in the
obscurity of the slope–the lights of the stage-coach to Sacramento
carrying the mail and Robert Falloner. They met and passed two
fainter lights toiling up the road–the buggy lights of the doctor,
hastily summoned from Carterville to the bedside of the dying Dick
Lasham.

The slowing up of his train caused Bob Falloner to start from a
half doze in a Western Pullman car. As he glanced from his window
he could see that the blinding snowstorm which had followed him for
the past six hours had at last hopelessly blocked the line. There
was no prospect beyond the interminable snowy level, the whirling
flakes, and the monotonous palisades of leafless trees seen through
it to the distant banks of the Missouri. It was a prospect that
the mountain-bred Falloner was beginning to loathe, and although it
was scarcely six weeks since he left California, he was already
looking back regretfully to the deep slopes and the free song of
the serried ranks of pines.

The intense cold had chilled his temperate blood, even as the rigors
and conventions of Eastern life had checked his sincerity and
spontaneous flow of animal spirits begotten in the frank intercourse
and brotherhood of camps. He had just fled from the artificialities
of the great Atlantic cities to seek out some Western farming lands
in which he might put his capital and energies. The unlooked-for
interruption of his progress by a long- forgotten climate only
deepened his discontent. And now–that train was actually backing!
It appeared they must return to the last station to wait for a
snow-plough to clear the line. It was, explained the conductor,
barely a mile from Shepherdstown, where there was a good hotel and a
chance of breaking the journey for the night.

Shepherdstown! The name touched some dim chord in Bob Falloner’s
memory and conscience–yet one that was vague. Then he suddenly
remembered that before leaving New York he had received a letter
from Houston informing him of Lasham’s death, reminding him of his
previous bounty, and begging him–if he went West–to break the
news to the Lasham family. There was also some allusion to a joke
about his (Bob’s) photograph, which he had dismissed as unimportant,
and even now could not remember clearly. For a few moments his
conscience pricked him that he should have forgotten it all, but now
he could make amends by this providential delay. It was not a task
to his liking; in any other circumstances he would have written, but
he would not shirk it now.

Shepherdstown was on the main line of the Kansas Pacific Road, and
as he alighted at its station, the big through trains from San
Francisco swept out of the stormy distance and stopped also. He
remembered, as he mingled with the passengers, hearing a childish
voice ask if this was the Californian train. He remembered hearing
the amused and patient reply of the station-master: “Yes, sonny–
here she is again, and here’s her passengers,” as he got into the
omnibus and drove to the hotel. Here he resolved to perform his
disagreeable duty as quickly as possible, and on his way to his
room stopped for a moment at the office to ask for Ricketts’
address. The clerk, after a quick glance of curiosity at his new
guest, gave it to him readily, with a somewhat familiar smile. It
struck Falloner also as being odd that he had not been asked to
write his name on the hotel register, but this was a saving of time
he was not disposed to question, as he had already determined to
make his visit to Ricketts at once, before dinner. It was still
early evening.

He was washing his hands in his bedroom when there came a light tap
at his sitting-room door. Falloner quickly resumed his coat and
entered the sitting-room as the porter ushered in a young lady
holding a small boy by the hand. But, to Falloner’s utter
consternation, no sooner had the door closed on the servant than
the boy, with a half-apologetic glance at the young lady, uttered a
childish cry, broke from her, and calling, “Dick! Dick!” ran
forward and leaped into Falloner’s arms.

The mere shock of the onset and his own amazement left Bob without
breath for words. The boy, with arms convulsively clasping his
body, was imprinting kisses on Bob’s waistcoat in default of
reaching his face. At last Falloner managed gently but firmly to
free himself, and turned a half-appealing, half-embarrassed look
upon the young lady, whose own face, however, suddenly flushed
pink. To add to the confusion, the boy, in some reaction of
instinct, suddenly ran back to her, frantically clutched at her
skirts, and tried to bury his head in their folds.

“He don’t love me,” he sobbed. “He don’t care for me any more.”

The face of the young girl changed. It was a pretty face in its
flushing; in the paleness and thoughtfulness that overcast it it
was a striking face, and Bob’s attention was for a moment distracted
from the grotesqueness of the situation. Leaning over the boy she
said in a caressing yet authoritative voice, “Run away for a moment,
dear, until I call you,” opening the door for him in a maternal way
so inconsistent with the youthfulness of her figure that it struck
him even in his confusion. There was something also in her dress
and carriage that equally affected him: her garments were somewhat
old-fashioned in style, yet of good material, with an odd incongruity
to the climate and season.

Under her rough outer cloak she wore a polka jacket and the
thinnest of summer blouses; and her hat, though dark, was of rough
straw, plainly trimmed. Nevertheless, these peculiarities were
carried off with an air of breeding and self-possession that was
unmistakable. It was possible that her cool self-possession might
have been due to some instinctive antagonism, for as she came a
step forward with coldly and clearly-opened gray eyes, he was
vaguely conscious that she didn’t like him. Nevertheless, her
manner was formally polite, even, as he fancied, to the point of
irony, as she began, in a voice that occasionally dropped into the
lazy Southern intonation, and a speech that easily slipped at times
into Southern dialect:–

“I sent the child out of the room, as I could see that his advances
were annoying to you, and a good deal, I reckon, because I knew
your reception of them was still more painful to him. It is quite
natural, I dare say, you should feel as you do, and I reckon
consistent with your attitude towards him. But you must make some
allowance for the depth of his feelings, and how he has looked
forward to this meeting. When I tell you that ever since he
received your last letter, he and his sister–until her illness
kept her home–have gone every day when the Pacific train was due
to the station to meet you; that they have taken literally as
Gospel truth every word of your letter”–

“My letter?” interrupted Falloner.

The young girl’s scarlet lip curled slightly. “I beg your pardon–
I should have said the letter you dictated. Of course it wasn’t in
your handwriting–you had hurt your hand, you know,” she added
ironically. “At all events, they believed it all–that you were
coming at any moment; they lived in that belief, and the poor
things went to the station with your photograph in their hands so
that they might be the first to recognize and greet you.”

“With my photograph?” interrupted Falloner again.

The young girl’s clear eyes darkened ominously. “I reckon,” she
said deliberately, as she slowly drew from her pocket the
photograph Daddy Folsom had sent, “that that is your photograph.
It certainly seems an excellent likeness,” she added, regarding him
with a slight suggestion of contemptuous triumph.

In an instant the revelation of the whole mystery flashed upon him!
The forgotten passage in Houston’s letter about the stolen
photograph stood clearly before him; the coincidence of his
appearance in Shepherdstown, and the natural mistake of the
children and their fair protector, were made perfectly plain. But
with this relief and the certainty that he could confound her with
an explanation came a certain mischievous desire to prolong the
situation and increase his triumph. She certainly had not shown
him any favor.

“Have you got the letter also?” he asked quietly.

She whisked it impatiently from her pocket and handed it to him.
As he read Daddy’s characteristic extravagance and recognized the
familiar idiosyncrasies of his old companions, he was unable to
restrain a smile. He raised his eyes, to meet with surprise the
fair stranger’s leveled eyebrows and brightly indignant eyes, in
which, however, the rain was fast gathering with the lightning.

“It may be amusing to you, and I reckon likely it was all a
California joke,” she said with slightly trembling lips; “I don’t
know No’thern gentlemen and their ways, and you seem to have
forgotten our ways as you have your kindred. Perhaps all this may
seem so funny to them: it may not seem funny to that boy who is now
crying his heart out in the hall; it may not be very amusing to
that poor Cissy in her sick-bed longing to see her brother. It may
be so far from amusing to her, that I should hesitate to bring you
there in her excited condition and subject her to the pain that you
have caused him. But I have promised her; she is already expecting
us, and the disappointment may be dangerous, and I can only implore
you–for a few moments at least–to show a little more affection
than you feel.” As he made an impulsive, deprecating gesture, yet
without changing his look of restrained amusement, she stopped him
hopelessly. “Oh, of course, yes, yes, I know it is years since you
have seen them; they have no right to expect more; only–only–
feeling as you do,” she burst impulsively, “why–oh, why did you
come?”

Here was Bob’s chance. He turned to her politely; began gravely,
“I simply came to”–when suddenly his face changed; he stopped as
if struck by a blow. His cheek flushed, and then paled! Good God!
What had he come for? To tell them that this brother they were
longing for–living for–perhaps even dying for–was dead! In his
crass stupidity, his wounded vanity over the scorn of the young
girl, his anticipation of triumph, he had forgotten–totally
forgotten–what that triumph meant! Perhaps if he had felt more
keenly the death of Lasham the thought of it would have been
uppermost in his mind; but Lasham was not his partner or associate,
only a brother miner, and his single act of generosity was in the
ordinary routine of camp life. If she could think him cold and
heartless before, what would she think of him now? The absurdity
of her mistake had vanished in the grim tragedy he had seemed to
have cruelly prepared for her. The thought struck him so keenly
that he stammered, faltered, and sank helplessly into a chair.

The shock that he had received was so plain to her that her own
indignation went out in the breath of it. Her lip quivered.
“Don’t you mind,” she said hurriedly, dropping into her Southern
speech; “I didn’t go to hurt you, but I was just that mad with the
thought of those pickaninnies, and the easy way you took it, that I
clean forgot I’d no call to catechise you! And you don’t know me
from the Queen of Sheba. Well,” she went on, still more rapidly,
and in odd distinction to her previous formal slow Southern
delivery, “I’m the daughter of Colonel Boutelle, of Bayou Sara,
Louisiana; and his paw, and his paw before him, had a plantation
there since the time of Adam, but he lost it and six hundred
niggers during the Wah! We were pooh as pohverty–paw and maw and
we four girls–and no more idea of work than a baby. But I had an
education at the convent at New Orleans, and could play, and speak
French, and I got a place as school-teacher here; I reckon the
first Southern woman that has taught school in the No’th!
Ricketts, who used to be our steward at Bayou Sara, told me about
the pickaninnies, and how helpless they were, with only a brother
who occasionally sent them money from California. I suppose I
cottoned to the pooh little things at first because I knew what it
was to be alone amongst strangers, Mr. Lasham; I used to teach them
at odd times, and look after them, and go with them to the train to
look for you. Perhaps Ricketts made me think you didn’t care for
them; perhaps I was wrong in thinking it was true, from the way you
met Jimmy just now. But I’ve spoken my mind and you know why.”
She ceased and walked to the window.

Falloner rose. The storm that had swept through him was over.
The quick determination, resolute purpose, and infinite patience
which had made him what he was were all there, and with it a
conscientiousness which his selfish independence had hitherto kept
dormant. He accepted the situation, not passively–it was not in
his nature–but threw himself into it with all his energy.

“You were quite right,” he said, halting a moment beside her; “I
don’t blame you, and let me hope that later you may think me less
to blame than you do now. Now, what’s to be done? Clearly, I’ve
first to make it right with Tommy–I mean Jimmy–and then we must
make a straight dash over to the girl! Whoop!” Before she could
understand from his face the strange change in his voice, he had
dashed out of the room. In a moment he reappeared with the boy
struggling in his arms. “Think of the little scamp not knowing his
own brother!” he laughed, giving the boy a really affectionate, if
slightly exaggerated hug, and expecting me to open my arms to the
first little boy who jumps into them! I’ve a great mind not to
give him the present I fetched all the way from California. Wait a
moment.” He dashed into the bedroom, opened his valise–where he
providentially remembered he had kept, with a miner’s superstition,
the first little nugget of gold he had ever found–seized the tiny
bit of quartz of gold, and dashed out again to display it before
Jimmy’s eager eyes.

If the heartiness, sympathy, and charming kindness of the man’s
whole manner and face convinced, even while it slightly startled,
the young girl, it was still more effective with the boy. Children
are quick to detect the false ring of affected emotion, and Bob’s
was so genuine–whatever its cause–that it might have easily
passed for a fraternal expression with harder critics. The child
trustfully nestled against him and would have grasped the gold, but
the young man whisked it into his pocket. “Not until we’ve shown
it to our little sister–where we’re going now! I’m off to order a
sleigh.” He dashed out again to the office as if he found some
relief in action, or, as it seemed to Miss Boutelle, to avoid
embarrassing conversation. When he came back again he was carrying
an immense bearskin from his luggage. He cast a critical look at
the girl’s unseasonable attire.

“I shall wrap you and Jimmy in this–you know it’s snowing
frightfully.”

Miss Boutelle flushed a little. “I’m warm enough when walking,”
she said coldly. Bob glanced at her smart little French shoes, and
thought otherwise. He said nothing, but hastily bundled his two
guests downstairs and into the street. The whirlwind dance of the
snow made the sleigh an indistinct bulk in the glittering darkness,
and as the young girl for an instant stood dazedly still, Bob
incontinently lifted her from her feet, deposited her in the
vehicle, dropped Jimmy in her lap, and wrapped them both tightly in
the bearskin. Her weight, which was scarcely more than a child’s,
struck him in that moment as being tantalizingly incongruous to the
matronly severity of her manner and its strange effect upon him.
He then jumped in himself, taking the direction from his companion,
and drove off through the storm.

The wind and darkness were not favorable to conversation, and only
once did he break the silence. “Is there any one who would be
likely to remember–me–where we are going?” he asked, in a lull of
the storm.

Miss Boutelle uncovered enough of her face to glance at him
curiously. “Hardly! You know the children came here from the
No’th after your mother’s death, while you were in California.”

“Of course,” returned Bob hurriedly; “I was only thinking–you know
that some of my old friends might have called,” and then collapsed
into silence.

After a pause a voice came icily, although under the furs: “Perhaps
you’d prefer that your arrival be kept secret from the public? But
they seem to have already recognized you at the hotel from your
inquiry about Ricketts, and the photograph Jimmy had already shown
them two weeks ago.” Bob remembered the clerk’s familiar manner
and the omission to ask him to register. “But it need go no
further, if you like,” she added, with a slight return of her
previous scorn.

“I’ve no reason for keeping it secret,” said Bob stoutly.

No other words were exchanged until the sleigh drew up before a
plain wooden house in the suburbs of the town. Bob could see at a
glance that it represented the income of some careful artisan or
small shopkeeper, and that it promised little for an invalid’s
luxurious comfort. They were ushered into a chilly sitting-room
and Miss Boutelle ran upstairs with Jimmy to prepare the invalid
for Bob’s appearance. He noticed that a word dropped by the woman
who opened the door made the young girl’s face grave again, and
paled the color that the storm had buffeted to her cheek. He
noticed also that these plain surroundings seemed only to enhance
her own superiority, and that the woman treated her with a
deference in odd contrast to the ill-concealed disfavor with which
she regarded him. Strangely enough, this latter fact was a relief
to his conscience. It would have been terrible to have received
their kindness under false pretenses; to take their just blame of
the man he personated seemed to mitigate the deceit.

The young girl rejoined him presently with troubled eyes. Cissy
was worse, and only intermittently conscious, but had asked to see
him. It was a short flight of stairs to the bedroom, but before he
reached it Bob’s heart beat faster than it had in any mountain
climb. In one corner of the plainly furnished room stood a small
truckle bed, and in it lay the invalid. It needed but a single
glance at her flushed face in its aureole of yellow hair to
recognize the likeness to Jimmy, although, added to that strange
refinement produced by suffering, there was a spiritual exaltation
in the child’s look–possibly from delirium–that awed and
frightened him; an awful feeling that he could not lie to this
hopeless creature took possession of him, and his step faltered.
But she lifted her small arms pathetically towards him as if she
divined his trouble, and he sank on his knees beside her. With a
tiny finger curled around his long mustache, she lay there silent.
Her face was full of trustfulness, happiness, and consciousness–
but she spoke no word.

There was a pause, and Falloner, slightly lifting his head without
disturbing that faintly clasping finger, beckoned Miss Boutelle to
his side. “Can you drive?” he said, in a low voice.

“Yes.”

“Take my sleigh and get the best doctor in town to come here at
once. Bring him with you if you can; if he can’t come at once,
drive home yourself. I will stay here.”

“But”–hesitated Miss Boutelle.

“I will stay here,” he repeated.

The door closed on the young girl, and Falloner, still bending over
the child, presently heard the sleigh-bells pass away in the storm.
He still sat with his bent head, held by the tiny clasp of those
thin fingers. But the child’s eyes were fixed so intently upon him
that Mrs. Ricketts leaned over the strangely-assorted pair and
said–

“It’s your brother Dick, dearie. Don’t you know him?”

The child’s lips moved faintly. “Dick’s dead,” she whispered.

“She’s wandering,” said Mrs. Ricketts. “Speak to her.” But Bob,
with his eyes on the child’s, lifted a protesting hand. The little
sufferer’s lips moved again. “It isn’t Dick–it’s the angel God
sent to tell me.”

She spoke no more. And when Miss Boutelle returned with the doctor
she was beyond the reach of finite voices. Falloner would have
remained all night with them, but he could see that his presence in
the contracted household was not desired. Even his offer to take
Jimmy with him to the hotel was declined, and at midnight he
returned alone.

What his thoughts were that night may be easily imagined. Cissy’s
death had removed the only cause he had for concealing his real
identity. There was nothing more to prevent his revealing all to
Miss Boutelle and to offer to adopt the boy. But he reflected this
could not be done until after the funeral, for it was only due to
Cissy’s memory that he should still keep up the role of Dick Lasham
as chief mourner. If it seems strange that Bob did not at this
crucial moment take Miss Boutelle into his confidence, I fear it
was because he dreaded the personal effect of the deceit he had
practiced upon her more than any ethical consideration; she had
softened considerably in her attitude towards him that night; he
was human, after all, and while he felt his conduct had been
unselfish in the main, he dared not confess to himself how much her
opinion had influenced him. He resolved that after the funeral he
would continue his journey, and write to her, en route, a full
explanation of his conduct, inclosing Daddy’s letter as corroborative
evidence. But on searching his letter-case he found that he had
lost even that evidence, and he must trust solely at present to
her faith in his improbable story.

It seemed as if his greatest sacrifice was demanded at the funeral!
For it could not be disguised that the neighbors were strongly
prejudiced against him. Even the preacher improved the occasion to
warn the congregation against the dangers of putting off duty until
too late. And when Robert Falloner, pale, but self-restrained,
left the church with Miss Boutelle, equally pale and reserved, on
his arm, he could with difficulty restrain his fury at the passing
of a significant smile across the faces of a few curious bystanders.
“It was Amy Boutelle, that was the ‘penitence’ that fetched him, you
bet!” he overheard, a barely concealed whisper; and the reply, “And
it’s a good thing she’s made out of it too, for he’s mighty rich!”

At the church door he took her cold hand into his. “I am leaving
to-morrow morning with Jimmy,” he said, with a white face. “Good-
by.”

“You are quite right; good-by,” she replied as briefly, but with
the faintest color. He wondered if she had heard it too.

Whether she had heard it or not, she went home with Mrs. Ricketts
in some righteous indignation, which found–after the young lady’s
habit–free expression. Whatever were Mr. Lasham’s faults of
omission it was most un-Christian to allude to them there, and an
insult to the poor little dear’s memory who had forgiven them.
Were she in his shoes she would shake the dust of the town off her
feet; and she hoped he would. She was a little softened on
arriving to find Jimmy in tears. He had lost Dick’s photograph–or
Dick had forgotten to give it back at the hotel, for this was all
he had in his pocket. And he produced a letter–the missing letter
of Daddy, which by mistake Falloner had handed back instead of the
photograph. Miss Boutelle saw the superscription and Californian
postmark with a vague curiosity.

“Did you look inside, dear? Perhaps it slipped in.”

Jimmy had not. Miss Boutelle did–and I grieve to say, ended by
reading the whole letter.

Bob Falloner had finished packing his things the next morning, and
was waiting for Mr. Ricketts and Jimmy. But when a tap came at the
door, he opened it to find Miss Boutelle standing there. “I have
sent Jimmy into the bedroom,” she said with a faint smile, “to look
for the photograph which you gave him in mistake for this. I think
for the present he prefers his brother’s picture to this letter,
which I have not explained to him or any one.” She stopped, and
raising her eyes to his, said gently: “I think it would have only
been a part of your goodness to have trusted me, Mr. Falloner.”

“Then you will forgive me?” he said eagerly.

She looked at him frankly, yet with a faint trace of coquetry that
the angels might have pardoned. “Do you want me to say to you what
Mrs. Ricketts says were the last words of poor Cissy?”

A year later, when the darkness and rain were creeping up Sawyer’s
Ledge, and Houston and Daddy Folsom were sitting before their
brushwood fire in the old Lasham cabin, the latter delivered
himself oracularly.

“It’s a mighty queer thing, that news about Bob! It’s not that
he’s married, for that might happen to any one; but this yer
account in the paper of his wedding being attended by his ‘little
brother.’ That gets me! To think all the while he was here he was
lettin’ on to us that he hadn’t kith or kin! Well, sir, that
accounts to me for one thing,–the sing’ler way he tumbled to that
letter of poor Dick Lasham’s little brother and sent him that
draft! Don’t ye see? It was a feller feelin’! Knew how it was
himself! I reckon ye all thought I was kinder soft reading that
letter o’ Dick Lasham’s little brother to him, but ye see what it
did.”

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!”

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.

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!”

Some forty years ago, on the northern coast of California, near the
Golden Gate, stood a lighthouse. Of a primitive class, since
superseded by a building more in keeping with the growing magnitude
of the adjacent port, it attracted little attention from the
desolate shore, and, it was alleged, still less from the desolate
sea beyond. A gray structure of timber, stone, and glass, it was
buffeted and harried by the constant trade winds, baked by the
unclouded six months’ sun, lost for a few hours in the afternoon
sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots from the Farallones.
It was kept by a recluse–a preoccupied man of scientific tastes,
who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants, had applied to
the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a means of
securing the seclusion he valued more than gold. Some believed that
he was the victim of an early disappointment in love–a view
charitably taken by those who also believed that the government
would not have appointed “a crank” to a position of responsibility.
Howbeit, he fulfilled his duties, and, with the assistance of an
Indian, even cultivated a small patch of ground beside the
lighthouse. His isolation was complete! There was little to attract
wanderers here: the nearest mines were fifty miles away; the virgin
forest on the mountains inland were penetrated only by sawmills and
woodmen from the Bay settlements, equally remote. Although by the
shore-line the lights of the great port were sometimes plainly
visible, yet the solitude around him was peopled only by Indians,–a
branch of the great northern tribe of “root-diggers,”–peaceful and
simple in their habits, as yet undisturbed by the white man, nor
stirred into antagonism by aggression. Civilization only touched
him at stated intervals, and then by the more expeditious sea from
the government boat that brought him supplies. But for his
contiguity to the perpetual turmoil of wind and sea, he might have
passed a restful Arcadian life in his surroundings; for even his
solitude was sometimes haunted by this faint reminder of the great
port hard by that pulsated with an equal unrest. Nevertheless, the
sands before his door and the rocks behind him seemed to have been
untrodden by any other white man’s foot since their upheaval from
the ocean. It was true that the little bay beside him was marked on
the map as “Sir Francis Drake’s Bay,” tradition having located it as
the spot where that ingenious pirate and empire-maker had once
landed his vessels and scraped the barnacles from his adventurous
keels. But of this Edgar Pomfrey–or “Captain Pomfrey,” as he was
called by virtue of his half-nautical office–had thought little.

For the first six months he had thoroughly enjoyed his seclusion.
In the company of his books, of which he had brought such a fair
store that their shelves lined his snug corners to the exclusion of
more comfortable furniture, he found his principal recreation.
Even his unwonted manual labor, the trimming of his lamp and
cleaning of his reflectors, and his personal housekeeping, in which
his Indian help at times assisted, he found a novel and interesting
occupation. For outdoor exercise, a ramble on the sands, a climb
to the rocky upland, or a pull in the lighthouse boat, amply
sufficed him. “Crank” as he was supposed to be, he was sane enough
to guard against any of those early lapses into barbarism which
marked the lives of some solitary gold-miners. His own taste, as
well as the duty of his office, kept his person and habitation
sweet and clean, and his habits regular. Even the little
cultivated patch of ground on the lee side of the tower was
symmetrical and well ordered. Thus the outward light of Captain
Pomfrey shone forth over the wilderness of shore and wave, even
like his beacon, whatever his inward illumination may have been.

It was a bright summer morning, remarkable even in the monotonous
excellence of the season, with a slight touch of warmth which the
invincible Northwest Trades had not yet chilled. There was still a
faint haze off the coast, as if last night’s fog had been caught in
the quick sunshine, and the shining sands were hot, but without the
usual dazzling glare. A faint perfume from a quaint lilac-colored
beach-flower, whose clustering heads dotted the sand like bits of
blown spume, took the place of that smell of the sea which the
odorless Pacific lacked. A few rocks, half a mile away, lifted
themselves above the ebb tide at varying heights as they lay on the
trough of the swell, were crested with foam by a striking surge, or
cleanly erased in the full sweep of the sea. Beside, and partly
upon one of the higher rocks, a singular object was moving.

Pomfrey was interested but not startled. He had once or twice seen
seals disporting on these rocks, and on one occasion a sea-lion,–
an estray from the familiar rocks on the other side of the Golden
Gate. But he ceased work in his garden patch, and coming to his
house, exchanged his hoe for a telescope. When he got the mystery
in focus he suddenly stopped and rubbed the object-glass with his
handkerchief. But even when he applied the glass to his eye for a
second time, he could scarcely believe his eyesight. For the
object seemed to be a woman, the lower part of her figure submerged
in the sea, her long hair depending over her shoulders and waist.
There was nothing in her attitude to suggest terror or that she was
the victim of some accident. She moved slowly and complacently
with the sea, and even–a more staggering suggestion–appeared to
be combing out the strands of her long hair with her fingers. With
her body half concealed she might have been a mermaid!

He swept the foreshore and horizon with his glass; there was
neither boat nor ship–nor anything that moved, except the long
swell of the Pacific. She could have come only from the sea; for
to reach the rocks by land she would have had to pass before the
lighthouse, while the narrow strip of shore which curved northward
beyond his range of view he knew was inhabited only by Indians.
But the woman was unhesitatingly and appallingly white, and her
hair light even to a golden gleam in the sunshine.

Pomfrey was a gentleman, and as such was amazed, dismayed, and
cruelly embarrassed. If she was a simple bather from some vicinity
hitherto unknown and unsuspected by him, it was clearly his
business to shut up his glass and go back to his garden patch–
although the propinquity of himself and the lighthouse must have
been as plainly visible to her as she was to him. On the other
hand, if she was the survivor of some wreck and in distress–or, as
he even fancied from her reckless manner, bereft of her senses, his
duty to rescue her was equally clear. In his dilemma he determined
upon a compromise and ran to his boat. He would pull out to sea,
pass between the rocks and the curving sand-spit, and examine the
sands and sea more closely for signs of wreckage, or some
overlooked waiting boat near the shore. He would be within hail if
she needed him, or she could escape to her boat if she had one.

In another moment his boat was lifting on the swell towards the
rocks. He pulled quickly, occasionally turning to note that the
strange figure, whose movements were quite discernible to the naked
eye, was still there, but gazing more earnestly towards the nearest
shore for any sign of life or occupation. In ten minutes he had
reached the curve where the trend opened northward, and the long
line of shore stretched before him. He swept it eagerly with a
single searching glance. Sea and shore were empty. He turned
quickly to the rock, scarcely a hundred yards on his beam. It was
empty too! Forgetting his previous scruples, he pulled directly
for it until his keel grated on its submerged base. There was
nothing there but the rock, slippery with the yellow-green slime of
seaweed and kelp–neither trace nor sign of the figure that had
occupied it a moment ago. He pulled around it; there was no cleft
or hiding-place. For an instant his heart leaped at the sight of
something white, caught in a jagged tooth of the outlying reef, but
it was only the bleached fragment of a bamboo orange-crate, cast
from the deck of some South Sea trader, such as often strewed the
beach. He lay off the rock, keeping way in the swell, and
scrutinizing the glittering sea. At last he pulled back to the
lighthouse, perplexed and discomfited.

Was it simply a sporting seal, transformed by some trick of his
vision? But he had seen it through his glass, and now remembered
such details as the face and features framed in their contour of
golden hair, and believed he could even have identified them. He
examined the rock again with his glass, and was surprised to see
how clearly it was outlined now in its barren loneliness. Yet he
must have been mistaken. His scientific and accurate mind allowed
of no errant fancy, and he had always sneered at the marvelous as
the result of hasty or superficial observation. He was a little
worried at this lapse of his healthy accuracy,–fearing that it
might be the result of his seclusion and loneliness,–akin to the
visions of the recluse and solitary. It was strange, too, that it
should take the shape of a woman; for Edgar Pomfrey had a story–
the usual old and foolish one.

Then his thoughts took a lighter phase, and he turned to the memory
of his books, and finally to the books themselves. From a shelf he
picked out a volume of old voyages, and turned to a remembered
passage: “In other seas doe abound marvells soche as Sea Spyders of
the bigness of a pinnace, the wich they have been known to attack
and destroy; Sea Vypers which reach to the top of a goodly maste,
whereby they are able to draw marinners from the rigging by the
suction of their breathes; and Devill Fyshe, which vomit fire by
night which makyth the sea to shine prodigiously, and mermaydes.
They are half fyshe and half mayde of grate Beauty, and have been
seen of divers godly and creditable witnesses swymming beside
rocks, hidden to their waist in the sea, combing of their hayres,
to the help of whych they carry a small mirrore of the bigness of
their fingers.” Pomfrey laid the book aside with a faint smile.
To even this credulity he might come!

Nevertheless, he used the telescope again that day. But there was
no repetition of the incident, and he was forced to believe that he
had been the victim of some extraordinary illusion. The next
morning, however, with his calmer judgment doubts began to visit
him. There was no one of whom he could make inquiries but his
Indian helper, and their conversation had usually been restricted
to the language of signs or the use of a few words he had picked
up. He contrived, however, to ask if there was a “waugee” (white)
woman in the neighborhood. The Indian shook his head in surprise.
There was no “waugee” nearer than the remote mountain-ridge to
which he pointed. Pomfrey was obliged to be content with this.
Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have thought
of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he
believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of
asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing him to look at
her that morning. The next day, however, something happened which
forced him to resume his inquiries. He was rowing around the
curving spot when he saw a number of black objects on the northern
sands moving in and out of the surf, which he presently made out as
Indians. A nearer approach satisfied him that they were wading
squaws and children gathering seaweed and shells. He would have
pushed his acquaintance still nearer, but as his boat rounded the
point, with one accord they all scuttled away like frightened
sandpipers. Pomfrey, on his return, asked his Indian retainer if
they could swim. “Oh, yes!” “As far as the rock?” “Yes.” Yet
Pomfrey was not satisfied. The color of his strange apparition
remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian woman.

Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was
nearly a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection
of the rock. Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly
enough, upon another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the
account of Sir Francis Drake’s occupation of the bay before him. He
had always thought it strange that the great adventurer had left no
trace or sign of his sojourn there; still stranger that he should
have overlooked the presence of gold, known even to the Indians
themselves, and have lost a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams
and a treasure to which the cargoes of those Philippine galleons he
had more or less successfully intercepted were trifles. Had the
restless explorer been content to pace those dreary sands during
three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of penetrating the inland
forests behind the range, or of even entering the nobler bay beyond?
Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as wild and
unsupported as the “marvells” of the other volume? Pomfrey had the
skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.

Two weeks had passed and he was returning from a long climb inland,
when he stopped to rest in his descent to the sea. The panorama of
the shore was before him, from its uttermost limit to the
lighthouse on the northern point. The sun was still one hour high,
it would take him about that time to reach home. But from this
coign of vantage he could see–what he had not before observed–
that what he had always believed was a little cove on the northern
shore was really the estuary of a small stream which rose near him
and eventually descended into the ocean at that point. He could
also see that beside it was a long low erection of some kind,
covered with thatched brush, which looked like a “barrow,” yet
showed signs of habitation in the slight smoke that rose from it
and drifted inland. It was not far out of his way, and he resolved
to return in that direction. On his way down he once or twice
heard the barking of an Indian dog, and knew that he must be in the
vicinity of an encampment. A camp-fire, with the ashes yet warm,
proved that he was on the trail of one of the nomadic tribes, but
the declining sun warned him to hasten home to his duty. When he
at last reached the estuary, he found that the building beside it
was little else than a long hut, whose thatched and mud-plastered
mound-like roof gave it the appearance of a cave. Its single
opening and entrance abutted on the water’s edge, and the smoke he
had noticed rolled through this entrance from a smouldering fire
within. Pomfrey had little difficulty in recognizing the purpose
of this strange structure from the accounts he had heard from
“loggers” of the Indian customs. The cave was a “sweat-house”–a
calorific chamber in which the Indians closely shut themselves,
naked, with a “smudge” or smouldering fire of leaves, until,
perspiring and half suffocated, they rushed from the entrance and
threw themselves into the water before it. The still smouldering
fire told him that the house had been used that morning, and he
made no doubt that the Indians were encamped near by. He would
have liked to pursue his researches further, but he found he had
already trespassed upon his remaining time, and he turned somewhat
abruptly away–so abruptly, in fact, that a figure, which had
evidently been cautiously following him at a distance, had not time
to get away. His heart leaped with astonishment. It was the woman
he had seen on the rock.

Although her native dress now only disclosed her head and hands,
there was no doubt about her color, and it was distinctly white,
save for the tanning of exposure and a slight red ochre marking on
her low forehead. And her hair, long and unkempt as it was, showed
that he had not erred in his first impression of it. It was a
tawny flaxen, with fainter bleachings where the sun had touched it
most. Her eyes were of a clear Northern blue. Her dress, which
was quite distinctive in that it was neither the cast off finery of
civilization nor the cheap “government” flannels and calicoes
usually worn by the Californian tribes, was purely native, and of
fringed deerskin, and consisted of a long, loose shirt and leggings
worked with bright feathers and colored shells. A necklace, also
of shells and fancy pebbles, hung round her neck. She seemed to be
a fully developed woman, in spite of the girlishness of her flowing
hair, and notwithstanding the shapeless length of her gaberdine-
like garment, taller than the ordinary squaw.

Pomfrey saw all this in a single flash of perception, for the next
instant she was gone, disappearing behind the sweat-house. He ran
after her, catching sight of her again, half doubled up, in the
characteristic Indian trot, dodging around rocks and low bushes as
she fled along the banks of the stream. But for her distinguishing
hair, she looked in her flight like an ordinary frightened squaw.
This, which gave a sense of unmanliness and ridicule to his own
pursuit of her, with the fact that his hour of duty was drawing
near and he was still far from the lighthouse, checked him in full
career, and he turned regretfully away. He had called after her at
first, and she had not heeded him. What he would have said to her
he did not know. He hastened home discomfited, even embarrassed–
yet excited to a degree he had not deemed possible in himself.

During the morning his thoughts were full of her. Theory after
theory for her strange existence there he examined and dismissed.
His first thought, that she was a white woman–some settler’s wife–
masquerading in Indian garb, he abandoned when he saw her moving;
no white woman could imitate that Indian trot, nor would remember
to attempt it if she were frightened. The idea that she was a
captive white, held by the Indians, became ridiculous when he
thought of the nearness of civilization and the peaceful, timid
character of the “digger” tribes. That she was some unfortunate
demented creature who had escaped from her keeper and wandered into
the wilderness, a glance at her clear, frank, intelligent, curious
eyes had contradicted. There was but one theory left–the most
sensible and practical one–that she was the offspring of some
white man and Indian squaw. Yet this he found, oddly enough, the
least palatable to his fancy. And the few half-breeds he had seen
were not at all like her.

The next morning he had recourse to his Indian retainer, “Jim.”
With infinite difficulty, protraction, and not a little
embarrassment, he finally made him understand that he had seen a
“white squaw” near the “sweat-house,” and that he wanted to know
more about her. With equal difficulty Jim finally recognized the
fact of the existence of such a person, but immediately afterwards
shook his head in an emphatic negation. With greater difficulty
and greater mortification Pomfrey presently ascertained that Jim’s
negative referred to a supposed abduction of the woman which he
understood that his employer seriously contemplated. But he also
learned that she was a real Indian, and that there were three or
four others like her, male and female, in that vicinity; that from
a “skeena mowitch” (little baby) they were all like that, and that
their parents were of the same color, but never a white or “waugee”
man or woman among them; that they were looked upon as a distinct
and superior caste of Indians, and enjoyed certain privileges with
the tribe; that they superstitiously avoided white men, of whom
they had the greatest fear, and that they were protected in this by
the other Indians; that it was marvelous and almost beyond belief
that Pomfrey had been able to see one, for no other white man had,
or was even aware of their existence.

How much of this he actually understood, how much of it was lying
and due to Jim’s belief that he wished to abduct the fair stranger,
Pomfrey was unable to determine. There was enough, however, to
excite his curiosity strongly and occupy his mind to the exclusion
of his books–save one. Among his smaller volumes he had found a
travel book of the “Chinook Jargon,” with a lexicon of many of the
words commonly used by the Northern Pacific tribes. An hour or
two’s trial with the astonished Jim gave him an increased
vocabulary and a new occupation. Each day the incongruous pair
took a lesson from the lexicon. In a week Pomfrey felt he would be
able to accost the mysterious stranger. But he did not again
surprise her in any of his rambles, or even in a later visit to the
sweat-house. He had learned from Jim that the house was only used
by the “bucks,” or males, and that her appearance there had been
accidental. He recalled that he had had the impression that she
had been stealthily following him, and the recollection gave him a
pleasure he could not account for. But an incident presently
occurred which gave him a new idea of her relations towards him.

The difficulty of making Jim understand had hitherto prevented
Pomfrey from intrusting him with the care of the lantern; but with
the aid of the lexicon he had been able to make him comprehend its
working, and under Pomfrey’s personal guidance the Indian had once
or twice lit the lamp and set its machinery in motion. It remained
for him only to test Jim’s unaided capacity, in case of his own
absence or illness. It happened to be a warm, beautiful sunset,
when the afternoon fog had for once delayed its invasion of the
shore-line, that he left the lighthouse to Jim’s undivided care,
and reclining on a sand-dune still warm from the sun, lazily
watched the result of Jim’s first essay. As the twilight deepened,
and the first flash of the lantern strove with the dying glories of
the sun, Pomfrey presently became aware that he was not the only
watcher. A little gray figure creeping on all fours suddenly
glided out of the shadow of another sand-dune and then halted,
falling back on its knees, gazing fixedly at the growing light. It
was the woman he had seen. She was not a dozen yards away, and in
her eagerness and utter absorption in the light had evidently
overlooked him. He could see her face distinctly, her lips parted
half in wonder, half with the breathless absorption of a devotee.
A faint sense of disappointment came over him. It was not him she
was watching, but the light! As it swelled out over the darkening
gray sand she turned as if to watch its effect around her, and
caught sight of Pomfrey. With a little startled cry–the first she
had uttered–she darted away. He did not follow. A moment before,
when he first saw her, an Indian salutation which he had learned
from Jim had risen to his lips, but in the odd feeling which her
fascination of the light had caused him he had not spoken. He
watched her bent figure scuttling away like some frightened animal,
with a critical consciousness that she was really scarce human, and
went back to the lighthouse. He would not run after her again!
Yet that evening he continued to think of her, and recalled her
voice, which struck him now as having been at once melodious and
childlike, and wished he had at least spoken, and perhaps elicited
a reply.

He did not, however, haunt the sweat-house near the river again.
Yet he still continued his lessons with Jim, and in this way,
perhaps, although quite unpremeditatedly, enlisted a humble ally.
A week passed in which he had not alluded to her, when one morning,
as he was returning from a row, Jim met him mysteriously on the
beach.

“S’pose him come slow, slow,” said Jim gravely, airing his newly
acquired English; “make no noise–plenty catchee Indian maiden.”
The last epithet was the polite lexicon equivalent of squaw.

Pomfrey, not entirely satisfied in his mind, nevertheless softly
followed the noiselessly gliding Jim to the lighthouse. Here Jim
cautiously opened the door, motioning Pomfrey to enter.

The base of the tower was composed of two living rooms, a storeroom
and oil-tank. As Pomfrey entered, Jim closed the door softly
behind him. The abrupt transition from the glare of the sands and
sun to the semi-darkness of the storeroom at first prevented him
from seeing anything, but he was instantly distracted by a
scurrying flutter and wild beating of the walls, as of a caged
bird. In another moment he could make out the fair stranger,
quivering with excitement, passionately dashing at the barred
window, the walls, the locked door, and circling around the room in
her desperate attempt to find an egress, like a captured seagull.
Amazed, mystified, indignant with Jim, himself, and even his
unfortunate captive, Pomfrey called to her in Chinook to stop, and
going to the door, flung it wide open. She darted by him, raising
her soft blue eyes for an instant in a swift, sidelong glance of
half appeal, half-frightened admiration, and rushed out into the
open. But here, to his surprise, she did not run away. On the
contrary, she drew herself up with a dignity that seemed to
increase her height, and walked majestically towards Jim, who at
her unexpected exit had suddenly thrown himself upon the sand, in
utterly abject terror and supplication. She approached him slowly,
with one small hand uplifted in a menacing gesture. The man
writhed and squirmed before her. Then she turned, caught sight of
Pomfrey standing in the doorway, and walked quietly away. Amazed,
yet gratified with this new assertion of herself, Pomfrey
respectfully, but alas! incautiously, called after her. In an
instant, at the sound of his voice, she dropped again into her
slouching Indian trot and glided away over the sandhills.

Pomfrey did not add any reproof of his own to the discomfiture of
his Indian retainer. Neither did he attempt to inquire the secret
of this savage girl’s power over him. It was evident he had spoken
truly when he told his master that she was of a superior caste.
Pomfrey recalled her erect and indignant figure standing over the
prostrate Jim, and was again perplexed and disappointed at her
sudden lapse into the timid savage at the sound of his voice.
Would not this well-meant but miserable trick of Jim’s have the
effect of increasing her unreasoning animal-like distrust of him?
A few days later brought an unexpected answer to his question.

It was the hottest hour of the day. He had been fishing off the
reef of rocks where he had first seen her, and had taken in his
line and was leisurely pulling for the lighthouse. Suddenly a
little musical cry not unlike a bird’s struck his ear. He lay on
his oars and listened. It was repeated; but this time it was
unmistakably recognizable as the voice of the Indian girl, although
he had heard it but once. He turned eagerly to the rock, but it
was empty; he pulled around it, but saw nothing. He looked towards
the shore, and swung his boat in that direction, when again the cry
was repeated with the faintest quaver of a laugh, apparently on the
level of the sea before him. For the first time he looked down,
and there on the crest of a wave not a dozen yards ahead, danced
the yellow hair and laughing eyes of the girl. The frightened
gravity of her look was gone, lost in the flash of her white teeth
and quivering dimples as her dripping face rose above the sea.
When their eyes met she dived again, but quickly reappeared on the
other bow, swimming with lazy, easy strokes, her smiling head
thrown back over her white shoulder, as if luring him to a race.
If her smile was a revelation to him, still more so was this first
touch of feminine coquetry in her attitude. He pulled eagerly
towards her; with a few long overhand strokes she kept her
distance, or, if he approached too near, she dived like a loon,
coming up astern of him with the same childlike, mocking cry. In
vain he pursued her, calling her to stop in her own tongue, and
laughingly protested; she easily avoided his boat at every turn.
Suddenly, when they were nearly abreast of the river estuary, she
rose in the water, and, waving her little hands with a gesture of
farewell, turned, and curving her back like a dolphin, leaped into
the surging swell of the estuary bar and was lost in its foam. It
would have been madness for him to have attempted to follow in his
boat, and he saw that she knew it. He waited until her yellow
crest appeared in the smoother water of the river, and then rowed
back. In his excitement and preoccupation he had quite forgotten
his long exposure to the sun during his active exercise, and that
he was poorly equipped for the cold sea-fog which the heat had
brought in earlier, and which now was quietly obliterating sea and
shore. This made his progress slower and more difficult, and by
the time he had reached the lighthouse he was chilled to the bone.

The next morning he woke with a dull headache and great weariness,
and it was with considerable difficulty that he could attend to his
duties. At nightfall, feeling worse, he determined to transfer the
care of the light to Jim, but was amazed to find that he had
disappeared, and what was more ominous, a bottle of spirits which
Pomfrey had taken from his locker the night before had disappeared
too. Like all Indians, Jim’s rudimentary knowledge of civilization
included “fire-water;” he evidently had been tempted, had fallen,
and was too ashamed or too drunk to face his master. Pomfrey,
however, managed to get the light in order and working, and then,
he scarcely knew how, betook himself to bed in a state of high
fever. He turned from side to side racked by pain, with burning
lips and pulses. Strange fancies beset him; he had noticed when he
lit his light that a strange sail was looming off the estuary–a
place where no sail had ever been seen or should be–and was
relieved that the lighting of the tower might show the reckless or
ignorant mariner his real bearings for the “Gate.” At times he had
heard voices above the familiar song of the surf, and tried to rise
from his bed, but could not. Sometimes these voices were strange,
outlandish, dissonant, in his own language, yet only partly
intelligible; but through them always rang a single voice, musical,
familiar, yet of a tongue not his own–hers! And then, out of his
delirium–for such it proved afterwards to be–came a strange
vision. He thought that he had just lit the light when, from some
strange and unaccountable reason, it suddenly became dim and defied
all his efforts to revive it. To add to his discomfiture, he could
see quite plainly through the lantern a strange-looking vessel
standing in from the sea. She was so clearly out of her course for
the Gate that he knew she had not seen the light, and his limbs
trembled with shame and terror as he tried in vain to rekindle the
dying light. Yet to his surprise the strange ship kept steadily
on, passing the dangerous reef of rocks, until she was actually in
the waters of the bay. But stranger than all, swimming beneath her
bows was the golden head and laughing face of the Indian girl, even
as he had seen it the day before. A strange revulsion of feeling
overtook him. Believing that she was luring the ship to its
destruction, he ran out on the beach and strove to hail the vessel
and warn it of its impending doom. But he could not speak–no
sound came from his lips. And now his attention was absorbed by
the ship itself. High-bowed and pooped, and curved like the
crescent moon, it was the strangest craft that he had ever seen.
Even as he gazed it glided on nearer and nearer, and at last
beached itself noiselessly on the sands before his own feet. A
score of figures as bizarre and outlandish as the ship itself now
thronged its high forecastle–really a castle in shape and warlike
purpose–and leaped from its ports. The common seamen were nearly
naked to the waist; the officers looked more like soldiers than
sailors. What struck him more strangely was that they were one and
all seemingly unconscious of the existence of the lighthouse,
sauntering up and down carelessly, as if on some uninhabited
strand, and even talking–so far as he could understand their old
bookish dialect–as if in some hitherto undiscovered land. Their
ignorance of the geography of the whole coast, and even of the sea
from which they came, actually aroused his critical indignation;
their coarse and stupid allusions to the fair Indian swimmer as the
“mermaid” that they had seen upon their bow made him more furious
still. Yet he was helpless to express his contemptuous anger, or
even make them conscious of his presence. Then an interval of
incoherency and utter blankness followed. When he again took up
the thread of his fancy the ship seemed to be lying on her beam
ends on the sand; the strange arrangement of her upper deck and
top-hamper, more like a dwelling than any ship he had ever seen,
was fully exposed to view, while the seamen seemed to be at work
with the rudest contrivances, calking and scraping her barnacled
sides. He saw that phantom crew, when not working, at wassail and
festivity; heard the shouts of drunken roisterers; saw the placing
of a guard around some of the most uncontrollable, and later
detected the stealthy escape of half a dozen sailors inland, amidst
the fruitless volley fired upon them from obsolete blunderbusses.
Then his strange vision transported him inland, where he saw these
seamen following some Indian women. Suddenly one of them turned
and ran frenziedly towards him as if seeking succor, closely
pursued by one of the sailors. Pomfrey strove to reach her,
struggled violently with the fearful apathy that seemed to hold his
limbs, and then, as she uttered at last a little musical cry, burst
his bonds and–awoke!

As consciousness slowly struggled back to him, he could see the
bare wooden-like walls of his sleeping-room, the locker, the one
window bright with sunlight, the open door of the tank-room, and
the little staircase to the tower. There was a strange smoky and
herb-like smell in the room. He made an effort to rise, but as he
did so a small sunburnt hand was laid gently yet restrainingly upon
his shoulder, and he heard the same musical cry as before, but this
time modulated to a girlish laugh. He raised his head faintly.
Half squatting, half kneeling by his bed was the yellow-haired
stranger.

With the recollection of his vision still perplexing him, he said
in a weak voice, “Who are you?”

Her blue eyes met his own with quick intelligence and no trace of
her former timidity. A soft, caressing light had taken its place.
Pointing with her finger to her breast in a childlike gesture, she
said, “Me–Olooya.”

“Olooya!” He remembered suddenly that Jim had always used that
word in speaking of her, but until then he had always thought it
was some Indian term for her distinct class.

“Olooya,” he repeated. Then, with difficulty attempting to use her
own tongue, he asked, “When did you come here?”

“Last night,” she answered in the same tongue. “There was no
witch-fire there,” she continued, pointing to the tower; “when it
came not, Olooya came! Olooya found white chief sick and alone.
White chief could not get up! Olooya lit witch-fire for him.”

“You?” he repeated in astonishment. “I lit it myself.”

She looked at him pityingly, as if still recognizing his delirium,
and shook her head. “White chief was sick–how can know? Olooya
made witch-fire.”

He cast a hurried glance at his watch hanging on the wall beside
him. It had run down, although he had wound it the last thing
before going to bed. He had evidently been lying there helpless
beyond the twenty-four hours!

He groaned and turned to rise, but she gently forced him down
again, and gave him some herbal infusion, in which he recognized
the taste of the Yerba Buena vine which grew by the river. Then
she made him comprehend in her own tongue that Jim had been
decoyed, while drunk, aboard a certain schooner lying off the shore
at a spot where she had seen some men digging in the sands. She
had not gone there, for she was afraid of the bad men, and a slight
return of her former terror came into her changeful eyes. She knew
how to light the witch-light; she reminded him she had been in the
tower before.

“You have saved my light, and perhaps my life,” he said weakly,
taking her hand.

Possibly she did not understand him, for her only answer was a
vague smile. But the next instant she started up, listening
intently, and then with a frightened cry drew away her hand and
suddenly dashed out of the building. In the midst of his amazement
the door was darkened by a figure–a stranger dressed like an
ordinary miner. Pausing a moment to look after the flying Olooya,
the man turned and glanced around the room, and then with a coarse,
familiar smile approached Pomfrey.

“Hope I ain’t disturbin’ ye, but I allowed I’d just be neighborly
and drop in–seein’ as this is gov’nment property, and me and my
pardners, as American citizens and tax-payers, helps to support it.
We’re coastin’ from Trinidad down here and prospectin’ along the
beach for gold in the sand. Ye seem to hev a mighty soft berth of
it here–nothing to do–and lots of purty half-breeds hangin’
round!”

The man’s effrontery was too much for Pomfrey’s self-control,
weakened by illness. “It is government property,” he answered
hotly, “and you have no more right to intrude upon it than you have
to decoy away my servant, a government employee, during my illness,
and jeopardize that property.”

The unexpectedness of this attack, and the sudden revelation of the
fact of Pomfrey’s illness in his flushed face and hollow voice
apparently frightened and confused the stranger. He stammered a
surly excuse, backed out of the doorway, and disappeared. An hour
later Jim appeared, crestfallen, remorseful, and extravagantly
penitent. Pomfrey was too weak for reproaches or inquiry, and he
was thinking only of Olooya.

She did not return. His recovery in that keen air, aided, as he
sometimes thought, by the herbs she had given him, was almost as
rapid as his illness. The miners did not again intrude upon the
lighthouse nor trouble his seclusion. When he was able to sun
himself on the sands, he could see them in the distance at work on
the beach. He reflected that she would not come back while they
were there, and was reconciled. But one morning Jim appeared,
awkward and embarrassed, leading another Indian, whom he introduced
as Olooya’s brother. Pomfrey’s suspicions were aroused. Except
that the stranger had something of the girl’s superiority of
manner, there was no likeness whatever to his fair-haired
acquaintance. But a fury of indignation was added to his
suspicions when he learned the amazing purport of their visit. It
was nothing less than an offer from the alleged brother to sell his
sister to Pomfrey for forty dollars and a jug of whiskey!
Unfortunately, Pomfrey’s temper once more got the better of his
judgment. With a scathing exposition of the laws under which the
Indian and white man equally lived, and the legal punishment of
kidnaping, he swept what he believed was the impostor from his
presence. He was scarcely alone again before he remembered that
his imprudence might affect the girl’s future access to him, but it
was too late now.

Still he clung to the belief that he should see her when the
prospectors had departed, and he hailed with delight the breaking
up of the camp near the “sweat-house” and the disappearance of the
schooner. It seemed that their gold-seeking was unsuccessful; but
Pomfrey was struck, on visiting the locality, to find that in their
excavations in the sand at the estuary they had uncovered the
decaying timbers of a ship’s small boat of some ancient and
obsolete construction. This made him think of his strange dream,
with a vague sense of warning which he could not shake off, and on
his return to the lighthouse he took from his shelves a copy of the
old voyages to see how far his fancy had been affected by his
reading. In the account of Drake’s visit to the coast he found a
footnote which he had overlooked before, and which ran as follows:
“The Admiral seems to have lost several of his crew by desertion,
who were supposed to have perished miserably by starvation in the
inhospitable interior or by the hands of savages. But later
voyagers have suggested that the deserters married Indian wives,
and there is a legend that a hundred years later a singular race of
half-breeds, bearing unmistakable Anglo-Saxon characteristics, was
found in that locality.” Pomfrey fell into a reverie of strange
hypotheses and fancies. He resolved that, when he again saw
Olooya, he would question her; her terror of these men might be
simply racial or some hereditary transmission.

But his intention was never fulfilled. For when days and weeks had
elapsed, and he had vainly haunted the river estuary and the rocky
reef before the lighthouse without a sign of her, he overcame his
pride sufficiently to question Jim. The man looked at him with
dull astonishment.

“Olooya gone,” he said.

“Gone!–where?”

The Indian made a gesture to seaward which seemed to encompass the
whole Pacific.

“How? With whom?” repeated his angry yet half-frightened master.

“With white man in ship. You say you no want Olooya–forty dollars
too much. White man give fifty dollars–takee Olooya all same.”