THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 PS1825 
 
 .Al 
 
 1892b 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00008660558 
 
 t the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on 
 under "Date Due." If not on hold it may 
 ng it to the library. 
 
 
 This book is due a 
 last date stamped 
 renewed by bringi 
 
 the 
 be 
 
 DATE Dirx 
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 DATE 
 
 DUE RLl ' 
 
 r - l^i— 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S 
 CLIENT 
 
 AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 BRET HARTE p$ /?Z5 
 
 THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
Copyright, 1892, 
 By BRET HARTE. 
 
 All rights reserved* 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Colonel Starbottle's Client . • . t 
 
 The Postmistress of Laurel Run ... 75 
 
 A Night at " Hays" 108 
 
 Johnson's " Old Woman " 148 
 
 The New Assistant at Pine Clearing School 175 
 In a Pioneer Restaurant r 215 
 
 A Treasure of The Galleon . 243 
 Out of a Pioneer's Trunk ...» 255 
 The Ghosts of Stukeley Castlb • • » 268 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/colonelstarbottlOOhart 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It may be remembered that it was the 
 habit of that gallant " war-horse" of the 
 Calaveras democracy, Colonel Starbottle, at 
 the close of a political campaign, to return 
 to his original profession of the Law. Per- 
 haps it could not be called a peaceful retire- 
 ment. The same fiery - tongued eloquence 
 and full-breasted chivalry which had in turns 
 thrilled and overawed freemen at the polls 
 were no less fervid and embattled before a 
 jury. Yet the Colonel was counsel for two 
 or three pastoral Ditch companies and cer- 
 tain bucolic corporations, and although he 
 managed to import into the simplest question 
 of contract more or less abuse of opposing 
 counsel, and occasionally mingled precedents 
 of law with antecedents of his adversary, his 
 legal victories were seldom complicated by 
 bloodshed. He was only once shot at by a 
 
2 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 free-handed judge, and twice assaulted by 
 an over-sensitive litigant. Nevertheless, it 
 was thought merely prudent, while prepar- 
 ing the papers in the well known case of 
 ^ The Arcadian Shepherds' Association of 
 Tuolumne versus the Kedron Vine and Fig 
 Tree Growers of Calaveras," that the Colo- 
 nel should seek with a shotgun the seclu- 
 sion of his partner's law office in the sylvan 
 outskirts of Rough and Ready for that com- 
 plete rest and serious preoccupation which 
 Marysville could not afford. 
 
 It was an exceptionally hot day. The 
 painted shingles of the plain wooden one- 
 storied building in which the Colonel sat 
 were warped and blistering in the direct rays 
 of the fierce, untempered sun. The tin sign 
 bearing the dazzling legend, " Starbottle and 
 Bungstarter, Attorneys and Counselors," 
 glowed with an insufferable light ; the two 
 pine-trees still left in the clearing around 
 the house, ineffective as shade, seemed only 
 to have absorbed the day-long heat through 
 every scorched and crisp twig and fibre, to 
 radiate it again with the pungent smell of a 
 slowly smouldering fire ; the air was motion- 
 lews yet vibrating in the sunlight ; on distant 
 shallows the half -dried river was flashing and 
 intolerable. 
 
COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. g 
 
 Seated in a wooden armchair before a 
 table covered with books and papers, yet 
 with that apparently haughty attitude to* 
 wards it affected by gentlemen of abdominal 
 fullness, Colonel Starbottle supported him- 
 self with one hand grasping the arm of his 
 chair and the other vigorously plying a huge 
 palm-leaf fan* He was perspiring freely* 
 He had taken off his characteristic blue 
 frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, and collar, and, 
 stripped only to his ruffled shirt and white 
 drill trousers, presented the appearance from 
 the opposite side of the table of having 
 hastily risen to work in his nightgown. A 
 glass with a thin sediment of sugar and lem- 
 on-peel remaining in it stood near his elbow. 
 Suddenly a black shadow fell on the staring, 
 uncarpeted hall. It was that of a stranger 
 who had just entered from the noiseless dust 
 of the deserted road. The Colonel cast a 
 rapid glance at his sword-cane, which lay on 
 the table. 
 
 But the stranger, although sallow and 
 morose-looking, was evidently of pacific in- 
 tent. He paused on the threshold in a kind 
 of surly embarrassment. 
 
 " I reckon this is Colonel Starbottle, 9 ' he 
 said at last, glancing gloomily round him, as 
 
4 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 if the interview was not entirely of his own 
 seeking. " Well, I 've seen you often enough, 
 though you don't know me. My name 's Jo 
 Corbin. I guess," he added, still discon- 
 tentedly, " I have to consult you about some- 
 thing." 
 
 " Corbin ? " repeated the Colonel in his 
 jauntiest manner. " Ah ! Any relation to 
 old Maje Corbin of Nashville, sir?" 
 
 "No," said the stranger briefly. "I'm 
 from Shelby ville." 
 
 " The Major," continued the Colonel, half 
 closing his eyes as if to follow the Major 
 into the dreamy past, " the old Major, sir, 
 a matter of five or six years ago, was one 
 of my most intimate political friends, — in 
 fact, sir, my most intimate friend. Take 
 ja chyar! " 
 
 But the stranger had already taken one, 
 and during the Colonel's reminiscence had 
 leaned forward, with his eyes on the ground, 
 discontentedly swinging his soft hat between 
 his legs. " Did you know Tom Frisbee, of 
 Yolo?" he asked abruptly. 
 
 "Er— no." 
 
 " Nor even heard anything about Frisbee, 
 nor what happened to him ? " continued the 
 man, with aggrieved melancholy. 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 5 
 
 In point of fact the Colonel did not think 
 that he had. 
 
 " Nor anything about his being killed over 
 at Fresno?" said the stranger, with a de- 
 sponding implication that the interview after 
 all was a failure. 
 
 "If — er — if you could — er — give me a 
 hint or two," suggested the Colonel blandly. 
 
 " There was n't much," said the stranger, 
 "if you don't remember." He paused, then 
 rising, he gloomily dragged his chair slowly 
 beside the table, and taking up a paper- 
 weight examined it with heavy dissatisfac- 
 tion. " You see," he went on slowly, " I 
 killed him — it was a quo'll. He was my 
 pardner, but I reckon he must have drove 
 me hard. Yes, sir," he added with ag- 
 grieved reflection, " I reckon he drove iuq 
 hard." 
 
 The Colonel smiled courteously, slightly 
 expanding his chest under the homicidal re- 
 lation, as if, having taken it in and made 
 it a part of himself, he was ready, if neces- 
 sary, to become personally responsible for it. 
 Then lifting his empty glass to the light, he 
 looked at it with half closed eyes, in polite 
 imitation of his companion's examination of 
 the paper-weight, and set it down again. A 
 
6 COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 casual spectator from the window might 
 have imagined that the two were engaged in 
 an amicable inventory of the furniture. 
 
 " And the — er — actual circumstances ? " 
 asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Oh, it was fair enough fight. They HI 
 tell you that. And so would Ae, 1 reckon — 
 if he could. He was ugly and bedev'lin', 
 but I did n't care to quo'll, and give him the 
 go-by all the time. He kept on, followed 
 me cut of the shanty, drew, and fired twice. 
 I" — he stopped and regarded his hat a mo- 
 ment as if it was a corroborating witness — 
 "I — I closed with him — I had to — it 
 was my only chance, and that ended it — 
 and with his own revolver. I never drew 
 mine." 
 
 " I see," said the Colonel, nodding, 
 "clearly justifiable and honorable as re- 
 gards the code. And you wish me to de- 
 fend you? " 
 
 The stranger's gloomy expression of as- 
 tonishment now turned to blank hopeless- 
 ness. 
 
 " I knew you did n't understand," he said, 
 despairingly. " Why, all that was two 
 years ago. It's all settled and done and 
 gone. The jury found for me at the in- 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 7 
 
 quest. It ain't that I want to see you about. 
 It 's something arising out of it." 
 
 " Ah," said the Colonel, affably, " a ven- 
 detta, perhaps. Some friend or relation of 
 his taken up the quarrel ? " 
 
 The stranger looked abstractedly at Star- 
 bottle. "You think a relation might; or 
 would feel in that sort of way? " 
 
 " Why, blank it all, sir," said the Colonel, 
 " nothing is more common. Why, in '52 
 one of my oldest friends, Doctor Byrne, of 
 St. Jo, the seventh in a line from old Gen- 
 eral Byrne, of St. Louis, was killed, sir, by 
 Pinkey Kiggs, seventh in a line from Sen- 
 ator Eiggs, of Kentucky. Original cause, 
 sir, something about a d — d roasting ear, 
 or a blank persimmon in 1832 ; forty-seven 
 men wiped out in twenty years. Fact, sir." 
 
 " It ain't that," said the stranger, moving 
 hesitatingly in his chair. "If it was any- 
 thing of that sort I would n't mind, — it 
 might bring matters to a wind-up, and I 
 should n't have to come here and have this 
 cursed talk with you." 
 
 It was so evident that this frank and un- 
 affected expression of some obscure disgust 
 with his own present position had no other 
 implication, that the Colonel did not except 
 
8 COLONEL ST ARB OTTLE* S CLI&NT. 
 
 to it. Yet the man did not go on. He 
 stopped and seemed lost in sombre contem- 
 plation of his hat. 
 
 The Colonel leaned back in his chair, 
 fanned himself elegantly, wiped his fore- 
 head with a large pongee handkerchief, and 
 looking at his companion, whose shadowed 
 abstraction seemed to render him impervi- 
 ous to the heat, said : — 
 
 " My dear Mr. Corbin, I perfectly under- 
 stand you. Blank it all, sir, the temperature 
 in this infernal hole is quite enough to ren- 
 der any confidential conversation between 
 gentlemen upon delicate matters utterly im- 
 possible. It 's almost as near Hades, sir, as 
 they make it, — as I trust you and I, Mr. 
 Corbin, will ever experience. I propose," 
 continued the Colonel, with airy geniality, 
 " some light change and refreshment. The 
 bar-keeper of the Magnolia is — er — I may 
 say, sir, facile princeps in the concoction of 
 mint juleps, and there is a back room where 
 I have occasionally conferred with political 
 leaders at election time. It is but a step, 
 sir — in fact, on Main Street — round the 
 corner." 
 
 The stranger looked up and then rose 
 mechanically as the Colonel resumed hia 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 9 
 
 coat and waistcoat, but not his collar and 
 cravat, which lay limp and dejected among 
 his papers. Then, sheltering himself be- 
 neath a large-brimmed Panama hat, and 
 hooking his cane on his arm, he led the way, 
 fan in hand, into the road, tiptoeing in his 
 tight, polished boots through the red, impal- 
 pable dust with his usual jaunty manner, 
 yet not without a profane suggestion of 
 burning ploughshares. The stranger strode 
 in silence by his side in the burning sun, 
 impenetrable in his own morose shadow. 
 
 But the Magnolia was fragrant, like its 
 namesake, with mint and herbal odors, cool 
 with sprinkled floors, and sparkling with 
 broken ice on its counters, like dewdrops 
 on white, unfolded petals — and slightly so- 
 porific with the subdued murmur of droning 
 loungers, who were heavy with its sweets. 
 The gallant Colonel nodded with confidential 
 affability to the spotless-shirted bar-keeper, 
 and then taking Corbin by the arm frater- 
 nally conducted him into a small apartment 
 in the rear of the bar-room. It was evi- 
 dently used as the office of the proprietor, 
 and contained a plain desk, table, and chairs. 
 At the rear window, Nature, not entirely 
 evicted, looked in with a few straggling 
 
10 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 buckeyes and a dusty myrtle, over the body 
 of a lately-felled pine-tree, that flaunted from 
 an upflung branch a still green spray as if it 
 were a drooping banner lifted by a dead but 
 rigid arm. From the adjoining room the 
 faint, monotonous click of billiard balls, 
 languidly played, came at intervals like the 
 dry notes of cicale in the bushes. 
 
 The bar - keeper brought two glasses 
 crowned with mint and diademed with 
 broken ice. The Colonel took a long pull 
 at his portion, and leaned back in his chair 
 with a bland gulp of satisfaction and dream- 
 ily patient eyes. The stranger mechanically 
 sipped the contents of his glass, and then, 
 without having altered his reluctant expres- 
 sion, drew from his breast-pocket a number 
 of old letters. Holding them displayed in 
 his fingers like a difficult hand of cards, and 
 with something of the air of a dispirited 
 player, he began : — 
 
 " You see, about six months after this yer 
 trouble I got this letter." He picked out a 
 well worn, badly written missive, and put it 
 into Colonel Starbottle's hands, rising at the 
 same time and leaning over him as he read. 
 " You see, she that writ it says as how she 
 had n't heard from her son for a long time, 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 11 
 
 but owing to his having spoken once about 
 me, she was emboldened to write and ask me 
 if I knew what had gone of him." He was 
 pointing his finger at each line of the letter 
 as he read it, or rather seemed to translate 
 it from memory with a sad familiarity. 
 "Now," he continued in parenthesis, "you 
 see this kind o' got me. I knew he had got 
 relatives in Kentucky. I knew that all this 
 trouble had been put in the paper with his 
 name and mine, but this here name of Mar- 
 tha Jeffcourt at the bottom did n't seem to 
 jibe with it. Then I remembered that he 
 had left a lot of letters in his trunk in the 
 shanty, and I looked 'em over. And I found 
 that his name was Tom Jeffcourt, and that 
 he 'd been passin' under the name of Frisbee 
 all this time." 
 
 " Perfectly natural and a frequent occur- 
 rence," interposed the Colonel cheerfully. 
 " Only last year I met an old friend whom 
 we '11 call Stidger, of New Orleans, at the 
 Union Club, 'Frisco. 6 How are you, Stid- 
 ger ? ' I said ; c I have n't seen you since we 
 used to meet — driving over the Shell Road 
 in '53.' 6 Excuse me, sir,' said he, 4 my 
 name is not Stidger, it 's Brown.' I looked 
 him in the eye, sir, and saw him quiver. 
 
12 COLONEL S TARB TTLE" S CLIENT. 
 
 4 Then I must apologize to Stidger,' I said, 
 6 for supposing him capable of changing his 
 name.' He came to me an hour after, all 
 in a tremble. 6 For God's sake, Star,' he 
 said, — always called me Star, — 6 don't go 
 back on me, but you know family affairs — 
 another woman, beautiful creature,' etc., 
 etc., — yes, sir, perfectly common, but a 
 blank mistake. When a man once funks 
 his own name he '11 turn tail on anything. 
 Sorry for this man, Friezecoat, or Turncoat, 
 or whatever 's his d — d name ; but it 's so." 
 
 The suggestion did not, however, seem to 
 raise the stranger's spirits or alter his man- 
 ner. " His name was Jeff court, and this 
 here was his mother," he went on drearily ; 
 " and you see here she says " — pointing to the 
 letter again — "she 's been expecting money 
 from him and it don't come, and she 's 
 mighty hard up. And that gave me an 
 idea. I don't know," he went on, regarding 
 the Colonel with gloomy doubt, " as you '11 
 think it was much ; I don't know as you 
 would n't call it a d — d fool idea, but I got 
 it all the same." He stopped, hesitated, 
 and went on. "You see this man, Frisbee 
 or Jeffcourt, was my pardner. We were 
 good friends up to the killing, and then he 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTL&S CLIENT. 13 
 
 drove me hard. I think I told you he drove 
 me hard, — did n't I ? Well, he did. But 
 the idea I got was this. Considerin' I killed 
 him after all, and so to speak disappointed 
 them, I reckoned I 'd take upon myself the 
 care of that family and send 'em money 
 every month." 
 
 The Colonel slightly straitened his clean- 
 shaven mouth. " A kind of expiation or 
 amercement by fine, known to the Mosaic, 
 Roman, and old English law. Gad, sir, the 
 Jews might have made you marry his widow 
 or sister. An old custom, and I think su- 
 perseded — sir, properly superseded — by 
 the alternative of ordeal by battle in the 
 mediaeval times. I don't myself fancy these 
 pecuniary fashions of settling wrongs, — but 
 go on." 
 
 " 1 wrote her," continued Corbin, " that 
 her son was dead, but that he and me had 
 some interests together in a claim, and that 
 I was very glad to know where to send her 
 what would be his share every month. I 
 thought it no use to tell her I killed him, 
 — may be she might refuse to take it. I 
 sent her a hundred dollars every month 
 since. Sometimes it's been pretty hard 
 sleddin' to do it, for I ain't rich ; sometimes 
 
14 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 I 've had to borrow the money, but I reck- 
 oned that I was only paying for my share in 
 this here business of his bein' dead, and I 
 did it." 
 
 "And I understand you that this Jeff- 
 court really had no interest in your claim ? " 
 
 Corbin looked at him in dull astonish- 
 ment. " Not a cent, of course ; I thought I 
 told you that. But that were n't his fault, 
 for he never had anything, and owed me 
 money. In fact," he added gloomily, "it 
 was because I had n't any more to give him 
 — bavin' sold my watch for grub — that he 
 quo'lled with me that day, and up and called 
 me a 4 sneakin' Yankee hound.' I told 
 you he drove me hard." 
 
 The Colonel coughed slightly and resumed 
 his jaunty manner. " And the — er — ■ 
 mother was, of course, grateful and satis- 
 fied?" 
 
 " Well, no, — not exactly." He stopped 
 again and took up his letters once more, 
 sorted and arranged them as if to play out 
 his unfinished but hopeless hand, and draw- 
 ing out another, laid it before the Colonel. 
 "You see, this Mrs. Jeff court, after a time, 
 reckoned she ought to have more money 
 than I sent her, and wrote saying that she 
 
COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 15 
 
 had always understood from her son (he 
 that never wrote but once a year, remem- 
 ber) that this claim of ours (that she never 
 knew of, you know) was paying much more 
 than I sent her — and she wanted a return 
 of accounts and papers, or she 'd write to 
 some lawyer, mighty quick. Well, I reck- 
 oned that all this was naturally in the line 
 of my trouble, and I did manage to scrape 
 together fifty dollars more for two months 
 and sent it. But that did n't seem to satisfy 
 her — as you see." He dealt Colonel Star- 
 bottle another letter from his baleful hand 
 with an unchanged face. " When I got 
 that, — well, I just up and told her the whole 
 thing. I sent her the account of the fight 
 from the newspapers, and told her as how 
 her son was the Frisbee that was my pard- 
 ner, and how he never had a cent in the 
 world — but how I 'd got that idea to help 
 her, and was willing to carry it out as long 
 as I could." 
 
 "Did you keep a copy of that letter?" 
 asked the Colonel, straitening his mask-like 
 mouth. 
 
 " No," said Corbin moodily. " What was 
 ihe good ? I know'd she 'd got the letter, 
 — and she did, — for that is what she wrote 
 
16 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 back." He laid another letter before the 
 Colonel, who hastily read a few lines and 
 then brought his fat white hand violently on 
 the desk. 
 
 " Why, d — n it all, sir, this is blackmail ! 
 As infamous a case of threatening and chan- 
 tage as I ever heard of." 
 
 " Well," said Corbin, dejectedly, " I 
 don't know. You see she allows that I mur- 
 dered Frisbee to get hold of his claim, and 
 that I 'm trying to buy her off, and that if 
 I don't come down with twenty thousand 
 dollars on the nail, and notes for the rest, 
 she '11 prosecute me. Well, mebbe the thing 
 looks to her like that — mebbe you know 
 I 've got to shoulder that too. Perhaps it 's 
 all in the same line." 
 
 Colonel Starbottle for a moment regarded 
 Corbin critically. In spite of his chivalrous 
 attitude towards the homicidal faculty, the 
 Colonel was not optimistic in regard to the 
 baser pecuniary interests of his fellow-man. 
 It was quite on the cards that his companion 
 might have murdered his partner to get 
 possession of the claim. It was true that 
 Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unre- 
 corded and hitherto unknown responsibility 
 that had never been even suspected, and was 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 17 
 
 virtually self-imposed. But that might have 
 been the usual one unerring blunder of 
 criminal sagacity and forethought. It was 
 equally true that he did not look or act like 
 a mean murderer; but that was nothing. 
 However, there was no evidence of these 
 reflections in the Colonel's face. Rather he 
 suddenly beamed with an excess of polite- 
 ness. "Would you — er — mind, Mr. Cor- 
 bin, whilst I am going over those letters 
 again, to — er — step across to my office — 
 and — er — bring me the copy of ' Wood's 
 Digest ' that lies on my table ? It will save 
 some time." 
 
 The stranger rose, as if the service was 
 part of his self-imposed trouble, and as 
 equally hopeless with the rest, and taking 
 his hat departed to execute the commission. 
 As soon as he had left the building Colonel 
 Starbottle opened the door and mysteriously 
 beckoned the bar-keeper within. 
 
 " Do you remember anything of the kill- 
 ing of a man named Frisbee over in Fresno 
 three years ago? " 
 
 The bar - keeper whistled meditatively. 
 " Three years ago — Frisbee ? — Fresno ? — 
 no? Yes — but that was only one of his 
 names. He was Jack Walker over here. 
 
18 COLONEL S TARB TTLE' S CLIENT. 
 
 Yes— and by Jove ! that feller that was 
 here with you killed him. Darn my skin, 
 but I thought I recognized him." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know all that," said the 
 Colonel, impatiently. " But did Frisbee 
 have any property? Did he have any 
 means of his own ? " 
 
 " Property? " echoed the bar-keeper with 
 scornful incredulity. " Property ? Means ? 
 The only property and means he ever had 
 was the free lunches or drinks he took in at 
 somebody else's expense. Why, the only 
 chance he ever had of earning a square meal 
 was when that fellow that was with you just 
 now took him up and made him his partner. 
 And the only way he could get rid of him 
 was to kill him ! And I did n't think he 
 had it in him. Rather a queer kind o' chap, 
 — good deal of hayseed about him. Showed 
 up at the inquest so glum and orkerd that 
 if the boys had n't made up their minds this 
 yer Frisbee orter been killed — it might 
 have gone hard with him." 
 
 "Mr. Corbin," said Colonel Starbottle, 
 with a pained but unmistakable hauteur 
 and a singular elevation of his shirt frill, as 
 if it had become of its own accord erectile, 
 " Mr. Corbin — er — er — is the distant rela- 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 19 
 
 tive of old Major Corbin, of Nashville — er 
 
 — one of my oldest political friends. When 
 Mr. Corbin — er — returns, you can conduct 
 him to me. And, if you please, replenish 
 the glasses." 
 
 When the bar-keeper respectfully showed 
 Mr. Corbin and " Wood's Digest " into the 
 room again, the Colonel was still beaming 
 and apologetic. 
 
 "A thousand thanks, sir, but except to 
 show you the law if you require it — hardly 
 necessary. I have — er — glanced over the 
 woman's letters again; it would be better, 
 perhaps, if you had kept copies of your own 
 
 — but still these tell the whole story and 
 your own. The claim is preposterous ! 
 You have simply to drop the whole thing. 
 Stop your remittances, stop your correspon- 
 dence, — pay no heed to any further letters 
 and wait results. You need fear nothing 
 further, sir ; I stake my professional reputa- 
 tion on it." 
 
 The gloom of the stranger seemed only to 
 increase as the Colonel reached his trium- 
 phant conclusion. 
 
 66 1 reckoned you 'd say that," he said 
 slowly, "but it won't do. I shall go on 
 paying as far as I can. It 's my trouble and 
 I '11 see it through." 
 
20 COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 " But, my dear sir, consider," gasped the 
 Colonel. " You are in the hands of an in- 
 famous harpy, who is using her son's blood 
 to extract money from you. You have 
 already paid a dozen times more than the 
 life of that d — d sneak was worth; and 
 more than that — the longer you keep on 
 paying you are helping to give color to 
 their claim and estopping your own defense. 
 And Gad, sir, you 're making a precedent 
 for this sort of thing! you are offering a 
 premium to widows and orphans. A gentle- 
 man won't be able to exchange shots with 
 another without making himself liable for 
 damages. I am willing to admit that your 
 feelings — though, in my opinion — er — ex- 
 aggerated — do you credit ; but I am sat- 
 isfied that they are utterly misunderstood — 
 sir." 
 
 " Not by all of them," said Corbin darkly, 
 
 " Eh? " returned the Colonel quickly. 
 
 " There was another letter here which I 
 did n't particularly point out to you," said 
 Corbin, taking up the letters again, " for I 
 reckoned it wasn n't evidence, so to speak, 
 being from his cousin, — a girl, — and cal- 
 culated you 'd read it when I was out." 
 
 The Colonel coughed hastily. " I was in 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 21 
 
 fact — er — just about to glance over it 
 when you came in." 
 
 " It was written," continued Corbin, se- 
 lecting a letter more bethumbed than the 
 others, " after the old woman had threatened 
 me. This here young woman allows that 
 she is sorry that her aunt has to take money 
 of me on account of her cousin being killed, 
 and she is still sorrier that she is so bitter 
 against me. She says she had n't seen her 
 cousin since he was a boy, and used to play 
 with her, and that she finds it hard to be- 
 lieve that he should ever grow up to change 
 his name and act so as to provoke anybody 
 to lift a hand against him. She says she 
 supposed it must be something in that dread- 
 ful California that alters people and makes 
 everybody so reckless. I reckon her head 's 
 level there, ain't it?" 
 
 There was such a sudden and unexpected 
 lightening of the man's face as he said it, 
 such a momentary relief to his persistent 
 gloom, that the Colonel, albeit inwardly dis- 
 senting from both letter and comment, 
 smiled condescendingly. 
 
 " She 's no slouch of a scribe neither," 
 continued Corbin animatedly. " Read that." 
 
 He handed his companion the letter, point- 
 
22 COLONEL S TARB OTTLE' S CLIENT. 
 
 ing to a passage with his finger. The Colo 
 nel took it with, I fear, a somewhat lowered 
 opinion of his client, and a new theory of the 
 case. It was evident that this weak submis- 
 sion to the aunt's conspiracy was only the 
 result of a greater weakness for the niece. 
 Colonel Starbottle had a wholesome distrust 
 of the sex as a business or political factor. 
 He began to look over the letter, but was 
 evidently slurring it with superficial polite- 
 ness, when Corbin said : — 
 " Read it out loud." 
 
 The Colonel slightly lifted his shoulders, 
 fortified himself with another sip of the 
 julep, and, leaning back, oratorically began 
 to read, — the stranger leaning over him and 
 following line by line with shining eyes. 
 
 " ' When I say I am sorry for you, it is be- 
 cause I think it must be dreadful for you to 
 be going round with the blood of a fellow- 
 creature on your hands. It must be awful 
 for you in the stillness of the night season to 
 hear the voice of the Lord saying, " Cain, 
 where is thy brother?" and you saying, 
 " Lord, I have slayed him dead." It must 
 be awful for you when the pride of your 
 wrath was surfitted, and his dum senseless 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 23 
 
 corps was before you, not to know that it is 
 written, " Vengeance is mine, I will repay," 
 saith the Lord. ... It was no use for you 
 to say, " I never heard that before," remem- 
 bering your teacher and parents. Yet verily 
 I say unto you, "Though your sins be as 
 scarlet, they shall be washed whiter than 
 snow," saith the Lord — Isaiah i. 18 ; and 
 " Heart hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot 
 heal." — My hymn book, 1st Presbyterian 
 Church, page 79. Mr. Corbin, I pity your 
 feelins at the grave of my pore dear cousin, 
 knowing he is before his Maker, and you 
 can't bring him baak.' Umph ! — er — er 
 — very good — very good indeed," said the 
 Colonel, hastily refolding the letter. 44 Very 
 well meaning and — er " — 
 
 44 Go on," said Corbin over his shoulder, 
 44 you have n't read all." 
 
 44 Ah, true. I perceive I overlooked some- 
 thing. Urn — um. 4 May God forgive 
 you, Mr. Corbin, as I do, and make aunty 
 think better of you, for it was good what 
 you tried to do for her and the fammely, 
 and I 've always said it when she was raging 
 round and wanting money of you. I don't 
 believe you meant to do it anyway, owin' to 
 your kindness of heart to the ophanless and 
 
24 COLONEL S J 1 ARB T TLE 1 S CLIENT. 
 
 the widow since you did it. Anser this let- 
 ter, and don't mind what aunty says. So 
 no more at present from — Yours very re- 
 spectfully, Sally Dows. 
 
 " 'P. S. — There 's been some troubel in 
 our township, and some fitin'. May the 
 Lord change ther hearts and make them as 
 a little child, for if you are still young you 
 may grow up different. I have writ a short 
 prayer for you to say every night. You can 
 coppy it out and put it at the head of your 
 bed. It is this : O Lord make me sorry for 
 having killed Sarah Dows' cousin. Give 
 me, O Lord, that peace that the world can- 
 not give, and which fadeth not away ; for my 
 yoke is heavy, and my burden is harder than 
 I can bear.' " 
 
 The Colonel's deliberate voice stopped. 
 There was a silence in the room, and the air 
 seemed stifling. The click of the billiard 
 balls came distinctly through the partition 
 from the other room. Then there was 
 another click, a stamp on the floor, and a 
 voice crying coarsely : " Curse it all — missed 
 again ! " 
 
 To the stranger's astonishment, the Colo- 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 25 
 
 nel was on his feet in an instant, gasping 
 with inarticulate rage. Flinging the door 
 open, he confronted the startled bar-keeper 
 empurpled and stertorous, 
 
 "Blank it all, sir, do you call this a sa- 
 loon for gentlemen, or a corral for swearing 
 cattle? Or do you mean to say that the 
 conversation of two gentlemen upon delicate 
 professional — and — er — domestic affairs 
 — is to be broken upon by the blank pro- 
 fanity of low-bred hounds over their pica- 
 yune gambling ! Take them my kyard, 
 sir," choked the Colonel, who was always 
 Southern and dialectic in his excited as in 
 his softest moments, "and tell them that 
 Colonel Starbottle will nevah dyarken these 
 doahs again." 
 
 Before the astonished bar-keeper could 
 reply, the Colonel had dashed back into the 
 room, clapped his hat on his head, and seized 
 his book, letters, and cane. " Mr. Corbin," 
 he said with gasping dignity, " I will take 
 these papahs, and consult them again in my 
 own office — where, if you will do me the 
 honor, sir, to call at ten o'clock to-morrow, 
 I will give you my opinion." He strode out 
 of the saloon beside the half awe-stricken, 
 half -amused, yet all discreetly silent loungers, 
 
26 COLONEL S TARB TTLE' S CLIENT. 
 
 followed by his wondering but gloomy client 
 At the door they parted, — the Colonel tip- 
 toeing towards his office as if dancing with 
 rage, the stranger darkly plodding through 
 the stifling dust in the opposite direction, 
 with what might have been a faint sugges- 
 tion to his counselor, that the paths of the 
 homicide did not lie beside the still cool 
 waters. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 house of Captain Masterton Dows, 
 at Pineville, Kentucky, was a fine specimen 
 of Southern classical architecture, being an 
 ekact copy of Major Fauquier's house in 
 Virginia, which was in turn only a slight 
 variation from a well-known statesman's his- 
 torical villa in Alabama, that everybody 
 knew was designed from a famous Greek 
 temple on the Piraeus. Not but that it 
 shared this resemblance with the County 
 Court House and the Odd Fellows' Hall, 
 but the addition of training jessamine and 
 Cherokee rose to the columns of the portico, 
 and over the colonnade leading to its offices, 
 showed a certain domestic distinction. And 
 the sky line of its incongruously high roof 
 was pleasantly broken against adjacent green 
 pines, butternut, and darker cypress. 
 
 A nearer approach showed the stuccoed 
 gateposts — whose red brick core was re- 
 vealed through the dropping plaster — open- 
 ing in a wall of half -rough stone, half -wooden 
 
28 COLONEL STARBOTTL E'S CLIENT. 
 
 palisade, equally covered with shining moss 
 and parasitical vines, which hid a tangled 
 garden left to its own unkempt luxuriance. 
 Yet there was a reminiscence of past for- 
 mality and even pretentiousness in a wide 
 box-bordered terrace and one or cwo stuccoed 
 vases prematurely worn and time-stainec 5 • 
 while several rare exotics had, however, 
 thriven so unwisely and well in that stimu- 
 lating soil as to lose their exclusive refinement 
 and acquire a certain temporary vulgarity. 
 A few, with the not uncommon enthusiasm 
 of aliens, had adopted certain native pecul- 
 iarities with a zeal that far exceeded any 
 indigenous performance. But dominant 
 through all was the continual su^estion of 
 precocious fruition and premature decay that 
 lingered like a sad perfume in the garden, 
 but made itself persistent if less poetical in 
 the house. 
 
 Here the fluted wooden columns of the 
 portico and colonnade seemed to have taken 
 upon themselves a sodden and unwholesome 
 age unknown to stone and mortar. Moss 
 and creeper clung to paint that time had 
 neither dried nor mellowed, but left still 
 glairy in its white consistency. There were 
 rusty red blotches around inflamed nail- 
 
COLONEL ST ABBOTT LE* 8 CLIENT. 29 
 
 holes in the swollen wood, as of punctures 
 in living flesh ; along the entablature and 
 cornices and in the dank gutters decay had 
 taken the form of a mild deliquescence; 
 and the pillars were spotted as if Nature 
 had dropped over the too early ruin a few 
 unclean tears. The house itself was lifted 
 upon a broad wooden foundation painted to 
 imitate marble with such hopeless mendacity 
 that the architect at the last moment had 
 added a green border, and the owner per- 
 mitted a fallen board to remain off so as to 
 allow a few privileged fowls to openly ex- 
 plore the interior. When Miss Sally Dows 
 played the piano in the drawing-room she 
 was at times accompanied by the uplifted 
 voice of the sympathetic hounds who sought 
 its quiet retreat in ill-health or low spirits, 
 and from whom she was separated only by 
 an imperfectly carpeted floor of yawning 
 seams. The infant progeny of " Mammy 
 Judy," an old nurse, made this a hiding- 
 place from domestic justice, where they were 
 eventually betrayed by subterranean gig- 
 gling that had once or twice brought bash- 
 ful confusion to the hearts of Miss Sally's 
 admirers, and mischievous security to that 
 finished coquette herself. 
 
30 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 It was a pleasant September afternoon, on 
 possibly one of these occasions, that Miss 
 Sally, sitting before the piano, alternately 
 striking a few notes with three pink fingers 
 and glancing at her reflection in the polished 
 rosewood surface of the lifted keyboard case, 
 was heard to utter this languid protest: — 
 
 " Quit that kind of talk, Chet, unless you 
 just admire to have every word of it repeated 
 all over the county. Those little niggers of 
 Mammy Judy's are lying round somewhere 
 and are mighty 'cute, and sassy, I tell you. 
 It 's nothin' to me, sure, but Miss Hilda 
 might n't like to hear of it. So soon after 
 your particular attention to her at last 
 night's pawty too." 
 
 Here a fresh-looking young fellow of six- 
 and-twenty, leaning uneasily over the piano 
 from the opposite side, was heard to murmur 
 that he did n't care what Miss Hilda heard, 
 nor the whole world, for the matter of that. 
 " But," he added, with a faint smile, "folks 
 allow that you know how to play up some- 
 times, and put on the loud pedal, when you 
 don't want Mammy's niggers to hear." 
 
 " Indeed," said the young lady demurely. 
 "Like this?" 
 
 She put out a distracting little foot, 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 31 
 
 clothed in the white stocking and cool black 
 prunella slipper then de rigueur in the 
 State, and, pressing it on the pedal, begasi 
 to drum vigorously on the keys. In vain 
 the amorous Chet protested in a voice which 
 the instrument drowned. Perceiving which 
 the artful young lady opened her blue eyes 
 mildly and said : — 
 
 " I reckor it is so ; it does kind of pre- 
 vent you hearing what you don't want to 
 hear." 
 
 " You know well enough what I mean," 
 said the youth gloomily. "And that ain't 
 all that folks say. They allow that you 're 
 doin' a heap too much correspondence with 
 that Calif ornian rough that killed Tom J eff- 
 court over there." 
 
 "Do they? " said the young lady, with a 
 slight curl of her pretty lip. " Then per- 
 haps they allow that if it was n't for me he 
 would n't be sending a hundred dollars a 
 month to Aunt Martha ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the fatuous youth ; " but they 
 allow he killed Tom for his money. And 
 they do say it 's mighty queer doin's in yo' 
 writin' religious letters to him, and Tom 
 your own cousin." 
 
 " Oh, they tell those lies here, do they ? 
 
32 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 But do they say anything about how, when 
 the same lies were told over in California, the 
 lawyer they 've got over there, called Colonel 
 Starbottle, — a Southern man too, — got up 
 and just wrote to Aunt Martha that she 'd 
 better quit that afore she got prosecuted? 
 They did n't tell you that, did they, Mister 
 Chester Brooks ? " 
 
 But here the unfortunate Brooks, after 
 the fashion of all jealous lovers, deserted his 
 allies for his fair enemy. " I don't cotton 
 to what they say, Sally, but you do write to 
 him, and I don't see what you've got to 
 write about — you and him. J ule Jeffcourt 
 says that when you got religion at Louis- 
 ville during the revival, you felt you had a 
 call to write and save sinners, and you did 
 that as your trial and probation, but that 
 since you backslided and are worldly again, 
 and go to parties, you just keep it up for 
 foolin' and flirtin' ! She ain't goin' to 
 weaken on the man that shot her brother, 
 just because he 's got a gold mine and — a 
 mustache ! " 
 
 " She takes his money all the same," said 
 Miss Sally. 
 
 " She don't, — her mother does. She says 
 if she was a man she 'd have blood for 
 blood ! " 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 33 
 
 "My!" said Miss Sally, in affected con« 
 sternation. " It 's a wonder she don't apply 
 to you to act for her." 
 
 " If it was my brother he killed, I 'd chal- 
 lenge him quick enough," said Chet, flush- 
 ing through his thin pink skin and light 
 hair. 
 
 " Marry her, then, and that '11 make you 
 one of the family. I reckon Miss Hilda can 
 bear it," rejoined the young lady pertly. 
 
 " Look here, Miss Sally," said the young 
 fellow with a boyish despair that was not 
 without a certain pathos in its implied infe- 
 riority, " I ain't gifted like you — I ain't on 
 yo' level no how ; I can't pass yo' on the road, 
 and so I reckon I must take yo' dust as yo' 
 make it. But there is one thing, Miss Sally, 
 I want to tell you. You know what 's going 
 on in this country, — you 've heard your 
 father say what the opinion of the best men 
 is, and what 's likely to happen if the Yanks 
 force that nigger worshiper, Lincoln, on the 
 South. You know that we're drawing the 
 line closer every day, and spottin' the men 
 that ain't sound. Take care, Miss Sally, 
 you ain't sellin' us cheap to some Northern 
 Abolitionist who 'd like to set Marm Judy's 
 little niggers to something worse than eaves- 
 
34 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 dropping down there, and mebbe teach 'em 
 to kindle a fire underneath yo' own floV 
 
 He had become quite dialectic in his ap- 
 peal, as if youthfully reverting to some ac- 
 cent of the nursery, or as if he were exhort- 
 ing her in some recognized shibboleth of a 
 section. Miss Sally rose and shut down the 
 piano. Then leaning over it on her elbows, 
 her rounded little chin slightly elevated with 
 languid impertinence, and one saucy foot 
 kicked backwards beyond the hem of her 
 white cotton frock, she said : " And let me 
 tell you, Mister Chester Brooks, that it 's 
 just such God-forsaken, infant phenomenons 
 as you who want to run the whole country 
 that make all this fuss, when you ain't no 
 more fit to be trusted with matches than 
 J udy's children. What do you know of Mr. 
 Jo Corbin, when you don't even know that 
 he 's from Shelbyville, and as good a Suth'- 
 ner as you, and if he has n't got niggers it 's 
 because they don't use them in his parts ? 
 Yo'r for all the world like one o' Mrs. 
 Johnson's fancy bantams that ain't quit of 
 the shell afore they square off at their own 
 mother. My goodness ! Sho ! Sho-o-o ! " 
 And suiting the action to the word the 
 young lady, still indolently, even in her sin> 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 35 
 
 illation, swirled around, caught her skirts at 
 the side with each hand, and lazily shaking 
 them before her in the accepted feminine 
 method of frightening chickens as she re- 
 treated backwards, dropped them suddenly 
 In a profound curtsey and swept out of the 
 parlor. 
 
 Nevertheless, as she entered the sitting- 
 room she paused to listen, then, going to the 
 window, peeped through the slits of the 
 Venetian blind and saw her youthful ad- 
 mirer, more dejected in the consciousness of 
 his wasted efforts and useless attire, mount 
 his showy young horse, as aimlessly spirited 
 as himself, and ride away. Miss Sally did 
 not regret this ; neither had she been en- 
 tirely sincere in her defense of her myste- 
 rious correspondent. But, like many of her 
 sex, she was trying to keep up by the active 
 stimulus of opposition an interest that she 
 had begun to think if left to itself might 
 wane. She was conscious that her cousin 
 Julia, although impertinent and illogical, 
 was right in considering her first epistolary 
 advances to Corbin as a youthful convert's 
 religious zeal. But now that her girlish en- 
 thusiasm was spent, and the revival itself 
 had proved as fleeting an excitement as the 
 
36 COLONEL STAIiBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 old " Tournament of Love and Beauty, 5 ' 
 which it had supplanted, she preferred to 
 believe that she enjoyed the fascinating im- 
 propriety because it was the actual result of 
 her religious freedom. Perhaps she had a 
 vague idea that Corbin's conversion would 
 expiate her present preference for dress 
 and dancing. She had certainly never 
 flirted with him ; they had never exchanged 
 photographs ; there was not a passage in his 
 letters that might not have been perused by 
 her parents, — which, I fear, was probably 
 one reason why she had never shown her 
 correspondence ; and beyond the fact that 
 this letter-writing gave her a certain impor- 
 tance in her own eyes and those of her com- 
 panions, it might really be stopped. She 
 even thought of writing at once to him that 
 her parents objected to its further con- 
 tinuance, but remembering that his usual 
 monthly letter was now nearly due, she con- 
 cluded to wait until it came. 
 
 It is to be feared that Miss Sally had little 
 help in the way of family advice, and that 
 the moral administration of the Dows house- 
 hold was as prematurely developed and as 
 precociously exhausted as the estate and 
 mansion themselves. Captain Dows' mar- 
 
COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 37 
 
 riage with Josephine J effeourt, the daughter 
 of a " poor white," had been considered a 
 mesalliance by his family, and his own sister, 
 Miranda Dows, had abandoned her brother's 
 roof and refused to associate with the Jeff- 
 courts, only returning to the house and an 
 armed neutrality at the death of Mrs. Dows 
 a few years later. She had taken charge of 
 Miss Sally, sending her to school at Nash- 
 ville until she was recalled by her father two 
 years ago. It may be imagined that Miss 
 Sally's correspondence with Jeff court's mur- 
 derer had afforded her a mixed satisfaction ; 
 it was at first asserted that Miss Sally's 
 forgiveness was really prompted by " Miss 
 Mirandy," as a subtle sarcasm upon the 
 family. When, however, that forgiveness 
 seemed to become a source of revenue to 
 the impoverished Jeffcourts, her Christian 
 interference had declined. 
 
 For this reason, possibly, the young girl 
 did not seek her aunt in the bedroom, the 
 dining-room, or the business-room, where 
 Miss Miranda frequently assisted Captain 
 Dows in the fatuous and prejudiced mis- 
 management of the house and property, nor 
 in any of the vacant guest-rooms, which, in 
 their early wreck of latter-day mahogany 
 
38 COLOXEL S TARE T TL E ' S CLIENT. 
 
 and rosewood, seemed to have been unoccu* 
 pied for ages, but went directly to her own 
 room. This was in the " L." a lately added 
 wing that had escaped the gloomy archi- 
 tectural tyranny of the main bi , and 
 gave Miss Sally light, ventilation, the fresh- 
 ness and spice of new pine boards and clean 
 paper, and a separate entrance and windows 
 on a cool veranda all to herself. Intended 
 as a concession to the young lady's traveled 
 taste, it was really a reversion to the hner 
 simplicity of the pioneer. 
 
 New as the apartment appeared to be, it 
 was old enough to contain the brief little 
 records of her maidenhood : the childish 
 piers and pictures ; the sporting epoch 
 with its fox-heads, opossum and wild-cat 
 skins, riding-whip, and the goshawk in a 
 cage, which Miss Sally believed could be 
 trained as a falcon : the religious interval of 
 illustrated texts. 4i Rock of Ages," cardboard 
 crosses, and the certificate of her member* 
 -hip with " The Daughters of Sion ; * at the 
 1 of her little bed, down to the last de- 
 cadence of frivolity shown in the be-ribboned 
 guitar in the corner, and the dance cards, 
 favors, and rosettes, military buttons, dried 
 bouquets, and other love gages on the man- 
 telpiece. 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 39 
 
 The young girl opened a drawer of her 
 table and took out a small packet of letters 
 tied up with a green ribbon. As she did so 
 she heard the sound of hoofs in the rear 
 courtyard. This was presently followed by 
 a step on the veranda, and she opened the 
 door to her father with the letters still in 
 her hand. There was neither the least em- 
 barrassment nor self-consciousness in her 
 manner. 
 
 Captain Dows, superficially remarkable 
 only for a certain odd combination of high 
 military stock and turned-over planter's col- 
 lar, was slightly exalted by a sympathetic 
 mingling of politics and mint julep at Pine- 
 ville Court House. " I was passing by the 
 post-office at the Cross Roads last week, 
 dear, 9 ' he began, cheerfully, " and I thought 
 of you, and reckoned it was about time that 
 my Pussy got one of her letters from her 
 rich Calif ornian friend — and sure enough 
 there was one. I clean forgot to give it to 
 you then, and only remembered it passing 
 there to-day. I did n't get to see if there 
 was any gold-dust in it," he continued, with 
 great archness, and a fatherly pinch of her 
 cheek ; " though I suspect that is n't the 
 kind of currency he sends to you." 
 
40 COLONEL STARBOTTLE' S CLIENT. 
 
 " It is from Mr. Corbin," said Miss Sallys 
 taking it with a languid kind of doubt ; " and 
 only now, paw, I was just thinking that I 'd 
 sort of drop writing any more ; it makes a 
 good deal of buzzing amongst the neigh- 
 bors, and I don't see much honey nor comb 
 in it." 
 
 " Eh," said the Captain, apparently more 
 astonished than delighted at his daughter's 
 prudence. " Well, child, suit yourself ! It 's 
 mighty mean, though, for I was just think- 
 ing of telling you that J udge Head is an old 
 friend of this Colonel Starbottle, who is your 
 friend's friend and lawyer, and he says that 
 Colonel Starbottle is with us, and working 
 for the cause out there, and has got a list 
 of all the So'thern men in California that 
 are sound and solid for the South. Read 
 says he should n't wonder if he 'd make Cali- 
 fornia wheel into line too." 
 
 " I don't see what that 's got to do with 
 Mr. Corbin," said the young girl, impa- 
 tiently, flicking the still unopened letter 
 against the packet in her hand. 
 
 " Well," said the Captain, with cheerful 
 vagueness, " I thought it might interest you, 
 — that's all," and lounged judicially away. 
 
 "Paw thinks," said Miss Sally, still 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 41 
 
 standing in the doorway, ostentatiously ad* 
 dressing her pet goshawk, but with one eye 
 following her retreating parent, " Paw 
 thinks that everybody is as keen bent on 
 politics as he is. There 's where paw slips 
 up, Jim. 5 ' 
 
 Reentering the room, scratching her little 
 nose thoughtfully with the edge of Mr. Cor- 
 bin's letter, she went to the mantelpiece 
 and picked up a small ivory-handled dagger, 
 the gift of Joyce Masterton, aged eighteen, 
 presented with certain verses addressed to a 
 " Daughter of the South," and cut open the 
 envelope. The first glance was at her own 
 name, and then at the signature. There 
 was no change in the formality ; it was 
 " Dear Miss Sarah," and " Yours respect- 
 fully, Jo Corbin," as usual. She was still 
 secure. But her pretty brows contracted 
 slightly as she read as follows : — 
 
 " I 've always allowed I should feel easier 
 in my mind if I could ever get to see Mrs. 
 Jeff court, and that may be she might feel 
 easier in hers it I stood before her, face to 
 face. Even if she did n't forgive me at once, 
 it might do her good to get off what she 
 had on her mind against me. But as there 
 
42 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIEXT. 
 
 was n't any chance of her coming to me, and 
 it was out of the question my coming to her 
 and still keeping up enough work in the 
 mines to send her the regular in one v. it 
 couldn't he done. But at last I've got a 
 partner to run the machine when I 'in away. 
 I shall be at Shelbyville by the time this 
 reaches you. where I shall stay a day or two 
 to give you time to break the news to Mrs. 
 Jeffcourt. and then come on. You will do 
 this for me in your Christian kindness. Miss 
 Dows — won't you? and if you could soften 
 her mind so as to make it less hard for me I 
 shall be grateful. 
 
 " P. S. — I forgot to say I have had him 
 exhumed — you know who I mean — and 
 ,am bringing him with me in a patent metal- 
 lic burial casket. — the best that could be 
 got in 'Frisco, and will see that he is prop- 
 erly buried in your own graveyard. It 
 seemed to me that it would be the best thing 
 I could do, and might work upon her feel- 
 ings — as it has on mine. Don't you ? 
 
 J. C." 
 
 Miss Sally felt the tendrils of her fair 
 hair stir with consternation. The letter 
 had arrived a week ago ; perhaps he was in 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 43 
 
 Pineville at that very moment ! She must 
 go at once to the J eff courts, — it was only a 
 mile distant. Perhaps she might be still in 
 time ; but even then it was a terribly short 
 notice for such a meeting. Yet she stopped 
 to select her newest hat from the closet, and 
 to tie it with the largest of bows under her 
 pretty chin ; and then skipped from the 
 veranda into a green lane that ran beside 
 the garden boundary. There, hidden by a 
 hedge, she dropped into a long, swinging 
 trot, that even in her haste still kept the 
 languid deliberation characteristic of her 
 people, until she had reached the road. 
 Two or three hounds in the garden started 
 joyously to follow her, but she drove them 
 back with a portentous frown, and an ill- 
 aimed stone, and a suppressed voice. Yet 
 in that backward glance she could see that 
 her little Eumenides — Mammy Judy's 
 children — were peering at her from below 
 the wooden floor of the portico, which they 
 were grasping with outstretched arms and 
 bowed shoulders, as if they were black cary- 
 atides supporting — as indeed their race had 
 done for many a year — the pre-doomed and 
 decaying mansion of their master. 
 
CHAPTER IH. 
 
 Happily Miss Sally thought more of her 
 present mission than of the past errors of her 
 people. The faster she walked the more 
 vividly she pictured the possible complica- 
 tions of this meeting. She knew the dull, 
 mean nature of her aunt, and the utter hope- 
 lessness of all appeal to anything but her 
 selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous es- 
 say of Corbin only an aggravation of her 
 worst instincts. Even the dead body of her 
 son would not only whet her appetite for 
 pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility 
 in the eyes of their emotional but ignorant 
 neighbors. She had still less to hope from 
 Julia J eff court's more honest and human in- 
 dignation but equally bigoted and preju- 
 diced intelligence. It is true they were only 
 women, and she ought to have no fear of 
 that physical revenge which Julia had spo- 
 ken of, but she reflected that Miss Jeff- 
 court's unmistakable beauty, and what was 
 believed to be a "truly Southern spirit," 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE' S CLIENT. 45 
 
 had gained her many admirers who might 
 easily take her wrongs upon their shoulders. 
 If her father had only given her that letter 
 before, she might have stopped CorbnVs 
 coming at all ; she might even have met him 
 in time to hurry him and her cousin's pro- 
 vocative remains out of the country. In the 
 midst of these reflections she had to pass 
 the little hillside cemetery. It was a spot 
 of great natural beauty, cypress-shadowed 
 and luxuriant. It was justly celebrated in 
 Pineville, and, but for its pretentious tomb- 
 stones, might have been peaceful and sugges- 
 tive. Here she recognized a figure just turn- 
 ing from its gate. It was Julia Jeffcourt. 
 
 Her first instinct — that she was too late 
 and that her cousin had come to the ceme- 
 tery to make some arrangements for the im- 
 pending burial — was, however, quickly dis- 
 sipated by the young girl's manner. 
 
 " Well, Sally Dows, you here ! who 'd have 
 thought of seeing you to-day ? Why, Chet 
 Brooks allowed that you danced every set 
 last night and did n't get home till daylight. 
 And you — you that are going to show up at 
 another party to-night too ! Well, I reckon 
 I have n't got that much ambition these times. 
 And out with your new bonnet too." 
 
46 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 There was a slight curl of her handsome lip 
 as she looked at her cousin. She was cer- 
 tainly a more beautiful girl than Miss Sally ; 
 very tall, dark and luminous of eye, with a 
 brunette pallor of complexion, suggesting, it 
 was said, that remote mixture of blood which 
 was one of the unproven counts of Miss Mi- 
 randa's indictment against her family. Miss 
 Sally smiled sweetly behind her big bow. 
 " If you reckon to tie to everything that 
 Chet Brooks says, you '11 want lots of string, 
 and you won't be safe then. You ought to 
 have heard him run on about this one, and 
 that one, and that other one, not an hour 
 ago in our parlor. I had to pack him off, 
 saying he was even making Judy's niggers 
 tired." She stopped and added with polite 
 languor, " I suppose there 's no news up at 
 yo' house either? Everything 's going on as 
 usual — and — you get yo' California draft 
 regularly ? " 
 
 A good deal of the white of Julia's 
 beautiful eyes showed as she turned indig- 
 nantly on the speaker. "I wish, cousin 
 Sally, you 5 d just let up talking to me about 
 that money. You know as well as I do that 
 I allowed to maw I would n't take a cent of 
 it from the first ! I might have had all the 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 47 
 
 gowns and bonnets " — with a look at Miss 
 Sally's bows — " I wanted from her ; she even 
 offered to take me to St. Louis for a rig-out 
 — if I 'd been willing to take blood money. 
 But I'd rather stick to this old sleazy 
 mou'nin' for Tom" — she gave a dramatic 
 pluck at her faded black skirt — " than flaunt 
 round in white muslins and China silks at ten 
 dollars a yard, paid for by his murderer." 
 
 " You know black 's yo' color always, — 
 taking in your height and complexion, Jule," 
 said Miss Sally demurely, yet not without a 
 feminine consciousness that it really did set 
 off her cousin's graceful figure to perfection. 
 " But you can't keep up this gait always. 
 You know some day you might come upon 
 this Mr. Corbin." 
 
 " He 'd better not cross my path," she said 
 passionately. 
 
 " I 've heard girls talk like that about a 
 man and then get just green and yellow 
 after him," said Miss Sally critically. " But 
 goodness me! speaking of meeting people 
 reminds me I clean forgot to stop at the 
 stage office and see about bringing over the 
 new overseer. Lucky I met you, Jule ! 
 Good -by, dear. Come in to-night, and 
 we '11 all go to the party together." And 
 
48 COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 with a little nod she ran off before her in- 
 dignant cousin could frame a suitably crush- 
 ing reply to her Parthian insinuation. 
 
 But at the stage office Miss Sally only 
 wrote a few lines on a card, put it in an en- 
 velope, which she addressed to Mr. Joseph 
 Corbin, and then seating herself with easy 
 carelessness on a long packing-box, languidly 
 summoned the proprietor. 
 
 u You 're always on hand yourself at 
 Kirby station when the kyars come in to 
 bring passengers to Pineville, Mr. Sledge ? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " Yo' have n't brought any strangers over 
 lately?" 
 
 " Well, last week Squire Farnham of 
 Green Eidge — if he kin be called a stran- 
 ger — as used to live in the very house yo' 
 father " — 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Miss Sally, impa- 
 tiently, " but if an entire stranger comes to 
 take a seat for Pineville, you ask him if 
 that's his name," handing the letter, "and 
 give it to him if it is. And — Mr. Sledge — 
 it 's nobody's business but — yours and mine." 
 
 " I understand, Miss Sally," with a slow, 
 paternal, tolerating wink. " He '11 get it, 
 and nobody else, sure." 
 
COLONEL 8TARB0TTL&S CLIENT. 49 
 
 44 Thank you ; I hope Mrs. Sledge is get- 
 ting round again." 
 
 "Pow'fully, Miss Sally." 
 
 Having thus, as she hoped, stopped the 
 arrival o£ the unhappy Corbin, Miss Sally 
 returned home to consider the best means of 
 finally disposing of him. She had insisted 
 upon his stopping at Kirby and holding no 
 communication with the Jeff courts until he 
 heard from her, and had strongly pointed 
 out the hopeless infelicity of his plan. She 
 dare not tell her Aunt Miranda, knowing 
 that she would be too happy to precipitate 
 an interview that would terminate disas- 
 trously to both the Jeff courts and Corbin. 
 She might have to take her father into her 
 confidence, — a dreadful contingency. 
 
 She was dressed for the evening party, 
 which was provincially early ; indeed, it was 
 scarcely past nine o'clock when she had 
 finished her toilet, when there came a rap 
 at her door. It was one of Mammy Judy's 
 children. 
 
 44 Dey is a gemplum, Miss Sally." 
 
 44 Yes, yes," said Miss Sally, impatiently, 
 thinking only of her escort. 46 1 '11 be there 
 in a minute. Run away. He can wait." 
 
 44 And he said I was to guv yo' dis yer," 
 
50 COLONEL S TARB TTLE* S CLIENT. 
 
 continued the little negro with portentous 
 gravity, presenting a card. 
 
 Miss Sally took it with a smile. It was a 
 plain card on which was written with a 
 pencil in a hand she hurriedly recognized, 
 " Joseph Corbin." 
 
 Miss Sally's smile became hysterically 
 rigid, and pushing the boy aside with a little 
 cry, she darted along the veranda and en- 
 tered the parlor from a side door and ves- 
 tibule. To her momentary relief she saw 
 that her friends had not yet arrived: a 
 single figure — a stranger's — rose as she 
 entered. 
 
 Even in her consternation she had time 
 to feel the added shock of disappointment. 
 She had always present in her mind an ideal 
 picture of this man whom she had never 
 seen or even heard described. J oseph Cor- 
 bin had been tall, dark, with flowing hair 
 and long mustache. He had flashing fiery 
 eyes which were capable of being subdued 
 by a single glance of gentleness — her own. 
 He was tempestuous, quick, and passionate, 
 but in quarrel would be led by a smile. 
 He was a combination of an Italian brigand 
 and a poker player whom she had once met 
 on a Mississippi steamboat. He would wear 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 51 
 
 a broad-brimmed soft hat, a red shirt, show- 
 ing his massive throat and neck — and high 
 boots ! Alas ! the man before her was of 
 medium height, with light close-cut hair, 
 hollow cheeks that seemed to have been 
 lately scraped with a razor, and light gray- 
 troubled eyes. A suit of cheap black, ill 
 fitting, hastily acquired, and provincial even 
 for Pineville, painfully set off these imperfec- 
 tions, to which a white cravat in a hopelessly 
 tied bow was superadded. A terrible idea 
 that this combination of a country under- 
 taker and an ill-paid circuit preacher on 
 probation was his best holiday tribute to her, 
 and not a funeral offering to Mr. Jeffcourt, 
 took possession of her. And when, with 
 feminine quickness, she saw his eyes wan- 
 der over her own fine clothes and festal fig- 
 ure, and sink again upon the floor in a kind 
 of hopeless disappointment equal to her own, 
 she felt ready to cry. But the more terrible 
 sound of laughter approaching the house 
 from the garden recalled her. Her friends 
 were coming. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," she broke out des- 
 perately, " did n't you get my note at the 
 station telling you not to come ? " 
 
 His face grew darker, and then took up 
 
52 COLONEL S TARE TTLE' 8 CLIENT. 
 
 its look of hopeless resignation, as if this 
 last misfortune was only an accepted part 
 of his greater trouble, as he sat down again, 
 and to Miss Sally's horror, listlessly swung 
 his hat to and fro under his chair. 
 
 " No," he said, gloomily, " I did n't go to 
 no station. I walked here all the way from 
 Shelby ville. I thought it might seem more 
 like the square thing to her for me to do. 
 I sent him by express ahead in the box. 
 It 's been at the stage office all day." 
 
 With a sickening conviction that she had 
 been sitting on her cousin's body while she 
 wrote that ill-fated card, the young girl man- 
 aged to gasp out impatiently : " But you 
 must go — yes — go now, at once ! Don't 
 talk now, but go." 
 
 " I did n't come here," he said, rising 
 with a kind of slow dignity, "to interfere 
 with things I did n't kalkilate to see," glan- 
 cing again at her dress, as the voices came 
 nearer, " and that I ain't in touch with, — 
 but to know if you think I 'd better bring 
 him — or " — 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, for the 
 door had opened suddenly, and a half-dozen 
 laughing girls and their escorts burst into 
 the Norn. But among them, a little haughty 
 
COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 53 
 
 and still irritated from her last interview, 
 was her cousin Julia Jeffcourt, erect and 
 beautiful in a sombre silk. 
 
 " Go," repeated Miss Sally, in an ago- 
 nized whisper. " You must not be known 
 here." 
 
 But the attention of Julia had been ar- 
 rested by her cousin's agitation, and her eye 
 fell on Corbin, where it was fixed with some 
 fatal fascination that seemed in turn to en- 
 thrall and possess him also. To Miss Sally's 
 infinite dismay the others fell back and al- 
 lowed these two black figures to stand out, 
 then to move towards each other with the 
 same terrible magnetism. They were so 
 near she could not repeat her warning to 
 him without the others hearing it. And all 
 hope died when Corbin, turning deliberately 
 towards her with a grave gesture in the di- 
 rection of Julia, said quietly : — 
 
 " Interduce me." 
 
 Miss Sally hesitated, and then gasped 
 hastily, " Miss Jeffcourt." 
 
 " Yer don't say my name. Tell her I 'm 
 Joseph Corbin of 'Frisco, California, who 
 killed her brother." He stopped and turned 
 towards her. " I came here to try and fix 
 things again — and I 've brought him.' 9 
 
54 COLONEL S TARE TTLE 1 S CLIENT. 
 
 In the wondering silence that ensued the 
 others smiled vacantly, breathlessly, and ex- 
 pectantly, until Corbin advanced and held 
 out his hand, when Julia Jeffcourt, drawing 
 hers back to her bosom with the palms out- 
 ward, uttered an inarticulate cry and — and 
 spat in his face ! 
 
 With that act she found tongue — revil- 
 ing him, the house that harbored him, the 
 insolence that presented him, the insult that 
 had been put upon her ! " Are you men ! " 
 she added passionately, " who stand here 
 with the man before you that killed my 
 brother, and see him offer me his filthy vil- 
 lainous hand — and dare not strike him 
 down ! " 
 
 And they dared not. Violently, blindly, 
 stupidly moved through all their instincts, 
 though they gathered hysterically around 
 him, there was something in his dull self- 
 containment that was unassailable and awful. 
 For he wiped his face and breast with his 
 handkerchief without a tremor, and turned 
 to them with even a suggestion of relief. 
 
 " She 's right, gentlemen," he said gravely. 
 44 She 's right. It might have been otherwise. 
 I might have allowed that it might be other- 
 wise, — but she 's right. I 'm a Soth'n man 
 
COLONEL S TARE TTLE* 3 CLIENT. 55 
 
 myself, gentlemen, and I reckon to under- 
 stand what she has done. I killed the only 
 man that had a right to stand up for her, 
 and she has now to stand up for herself. 
 But if she wants — and you see she allows 
 she wants — to pass that on to some of 
 you, or all of you, I 'm willing. As many 
 as you like, and in what way you like — I 
 waive any chyce of weapon — I 'm ready, 
 gentlemen. I came here — with him — for 
 that purpose." 
 
 Perhaps it may have been his fateful 
 resignation ; perhaps it may have been his 
 exceeding readiness, — but there was no 
 response. He sat down again, and again 
 swung his hat slowly and gloomily to and 
 fro under his chair. 
 
 "I've got him in a box at the stage of- 
 fice," he went on, apparently to the carpet. 
 u I had him dug up that I might bring him 
 here, and mebbe bury some of the trouble 
 and difference along with his friends. It 
 might be," he added, with a slightly glow- 
 ering upward glance, as to an overruling, 
 but occasionally misdirecting Providence, — 
 " it might be from the way things are piling 
 up on me that some one might have rung in 
 another corpse instead o' Aim, but so far as 
 
56 COLONEL STARROTTLE'S CLIENT, 
 
 I can judge, allowin' for the space of time 
 and nat'ral wear and tear — it 's him ! " 
 
 He rose slowly and moved towards the 
 door in a silence that was as much the result 
 of some conviction that any violent demon- 
 stration against him would be as grotesque 
 and monstrous as the situation, as of any- 
 thing he had said. Even the flashing indig- 
 nation of Julia J eff court seemed to become 
 suddenly as unnatural and incongruous as 
 her brother's chief mourner himself, and 
 although she shrank from his passing figure 
 she uttered no word. Chester Brooks's 
 youthful emotions, following the expression 
 of Miss Sally's face, lost themselves in a 
 vague hysteric smile, and the other gentle- 
 men looked sheepish. Joseph Corbin halted 
 at the door. 
 
 " Whatever," he said, turning to the com- 
 pany, 44 ye make up your mind to do about 
 me, I reckon ye 'd better do it after the 
 funeral. Tm always ready. But Ae, what 
 with being in a box and changing climate, 
 had better go first" He paused, and with 
 a suggestion of delicacy in the momentary 
 dropping of his eyelids, added, — " for 
 reasons" 
 
 He passed out through the door, on to 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 57 
 
 the portico and thence into the garden. It 
 was noticed at the time that the half-dozen 
 hounds lingering there rushed after him with 
 their usual noisy demonstrations, but that 
 they as suddenly stopped, retreated violently 
 to the security of the basement, and there 
 gave relief to their feelings in a succession 
 of prolonged howls. 
 
s 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Miss Sally 
 did not feel some contrition over the ineffec- 
 tive part she had played in this last episode. 
 But Joseph Corbin had committed the un- 
 pardonable sin to a woman of destroying her 
 own illogical ideas of him, which was worse 
 than if he had affronted the preconceived 
 ideas of others, in which case she might still 
 defend him. Then, too, she was no longer 
 religious, and had no" call " to act as peace- 
 maker. Nevertheless she resented Julia 
 Jeffcourt's insinuations bitterly, and the 
 cousins quarreled — not the first time in 
 their intercourse — and it was reserved for 
 the latter to break the news of Corbin's ar- 
 rival with the body to Mrs. J eff court. 
 
 How this was done and what occurred at 
 that interview has not been recorded. But 
 it was known the next day that, while Mrs. 
 Jeffcourt accepted the body at Corbin's 
 hands, — and it is presumed the funeral ex- 
 penses also, — he was positively forbidden 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 59 
 
 to appear either at the services at the house 
 or at the church. There had been some 
 wild talk among the younger and many of 
 the lower members of the community, no- 
 tably the "poor" non-slave-holding whites, 
 of tarring and feathering Joseph Corbin, 
 and riding him on a rail out of the town on 
 the day of the funeral, as a propitiatory sac- 
 rifice to the manes of Thomas Jeffcourt ; but 
 it being pointed out by the undertaker that 
 it might involve some uncertainty in the set- 
 tlement of his bill, together with some rea- 
 sonable doubt of the thorough resignation of 
 Corbin, whose previous momentary aberra- 
 tion in that respect they were celebrating, 
 the project was postponed until after the 
 funeral. And here an unlooked-for inci- 
 dent occurred. 
 
 There was to be a political meeting at 
 Kirby on that day, when certain distin- 
 guished Southern leaders had gathered from 
 the remoter Southern States. At the insti- 
 gation of Captain Dows it was adjourned at 
 the hour of the funeral to enable members 
 to attend, and it was even rumored, to the 
 great delight of Pineville, that a distin- 
 guished speaker or two might come over 
 to " improve the occasion " with some slight 
 
60 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 allusion to tlie engrossing topic of " South* 
 ern Rights." This combined appeal to the 
 domestic and political emotions of Pine- 
 ville was irresistible. The Second Baptist 
 Church was crowded. After the religious 
 service there was a pause, and J udge Reed, 
 stepping forward amid a breathless silence, 
 said that they were peculiarly honored by the 
 unexpected presence in their midst " of that 
 famous son of the South, Colonel Starbottle," 
 who had lately returned to his native soil 
 from his adopted home in California. Every 
 eye was fixed on the distinguished stranger 
 as he rose. 
 
 Jaunty and gallant as ever, femininely 
 smooth-faced, yet polished and high colored 
 as a youthful mask; pectorally expansive, 
 and unfolding the white petals of his waist- 
 coat through the swollen lapels of his coat, 
 like a bursting magnolia bud, Colonel Star- 
 bottle began. The present associations were, 
 he might say, singularly hallowed to him ; 
 not only was Pineville — a Southern centre 
 — the recognized nursery of Southern chiv- 
 alry, Southern beauty (a stately inclination 
 to the pew in which Miss Sally and Julia 
 Jeff court sat), Southern intelligence, and 
 Southern independence, but it was the home 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 61 
 
 of the lamented dead who had been, like 
 himself and another he should refer to later, 
 an adopted citizen of the Golden State, a 
 seeker of the Golden Fleece, a companion of 
 Jason. It was the home, fellow-citizens and 
 friends, of the sorrowing sister of the de- 
 ceased, a young lady whom he, the speaker 9 
 had as yet known only through the chival- 
 rous blazon of her virtues and graces by her 
 attendant knights (a courteous wave to- 
 wards the gallery where Joyce Masterton 9 
 Chester Brooks, Calhoun Bangs tarter, and 
 the embattled youth generally of Pineville 
 became empurpled and idiotic) ; it was the 
 home of the afflicted widowed mother, also 
 personally unknown to him, but with whom 
 he might say he had had — er — er — pro- 
 fessional correspondence. But it was not 
 this alone that hallowed the occasion, it was 
 a sentiment that should speak in trumpet- 
 like tones throughout the South in this 
 uprising of an united section. It was the 
 forgetfulness of petty strife, of family feud^ 
 of personal wrongs in the claims of party I 
 It might not be known that he, the speaker, 
 was professionally cognizant of one of these 
 regrettable — should he say accidents? — 
 arising from the chivalrous challenge and 
 
62 COLONEL STAKBCTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 equally chivalrous response o£ two fiery 
 Southern spirits, to which they primarily owe 
 their coming here that day. And he should 
 take it as his duty, his solemn duty, in that 
 sacred edifice to proclaim to the world that 
 in his knowledge as a professional man — as 
 a man of honor, as a Southerner, as a gentle- 
 man, that the — er — circumstances which 
 three years ago led to the early demise of 
 our lamented friend and brother, reflected 
 only the highest credit equally on both of 
 the parties. He said this on his own re- 
 sponsibility — in or out of this sacred edifice 
 — and in or out of that sacred edifice he 
 was personally responsible, and prepared to 
 give the fullest satisfaction for it. He was 
 also aware that it might not be known — 
 or understood — that since that boyish epi- 
 sode the survivor had taken the place of the 
 departed in the bereaved family and min- 
 istered to their needs with counsel and — 
 «er — er — pecuniary aid, and had followed 
 the body afoot across the continent that it 
 might rest with its kindred dust. He was 
 aware that an unchristian — he would say 
 but for that sacred edifice — a dastardly 
 attempt had been made to impugn the sur- 
 vivor's motives — to suggest an unseemly 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 63 
 
 discord between him and the family, but be, 
 the speaker, would never forget the letter 
 breathing with Christian forgiveness and 
 replete with angelic simplicity sent by a 
 member of that family to his client, which 
 came under his professional eye (here the 
 professional eye for a moment lingered on 
 the hysteric face of Miss Sally) ; he did not 
 envy the head or heart of a man who could 
 peruse these lines — of which the mere rec- 
 ollection — er — er — choked the utterance 
 of even a professional man like — er — him- 
 self — without emotion. 64 And what, my 
 friends and fellow - citizens," suddenly con- 
 tinued the Colonel, replacing his white hand- 
 kerchief in his coat-tail, "was the reason 
 why my client, Mr. J oseph Corbin — whose 
 delicacy keeps him from appearing among 
 these mourners — comes here to bury all 
 differences, all animosities, all petty pas- 
 sions? Because he is a son of the South; 
 because as a son of the South, as the repre- 
 sentative, and a distant connection, I believe, 
 of my old political friend, Major Corbin, of 
 Nashville, he wishes here and everywhere, 
 at this momentous crisis, to sink everything 
 in the one all-pervading, all-absorbing, one 
 and indivisible unity of the South in its 
 
64 COLONEL S TARB TTLE' S CLIENT. 
 
 resistance to the Northern Usurper ! That, 
 my friends, is the great, the solemn, the 
 Christian lesson of this most remarkable 
 occasion in my professional, political, ?,nd 
 social experience." 
 
 Whatever might have been the calmer 
 opinion, there was no doubt that the gallant 
 Colonel had changed the prevailing illogical 
 emotion of Pineville by the substitution of 
 another equally illogical, and Miss Sally was 
 not surprised when her father, touched by 
 the Colonel's allusion to his daughter's epis- 
 tolary powers, insisted upon bringing Joseph 
 Corbin home with him, and offering him the 
 hospitality of the Dows mansion. Although 
 the stranger seemed to yield rather from the 
 fact that the Dows were relations of the J eff- 
 courts than from any personal preference, 
 when he was fairly installed in one of the 
 appropriately gloomy guest chambers, Mis3 
 Sally set about the delayed work of recon- 
 ciliation — theoretically accepted by her fa- 
 ther, and cynically tolerated by her Aunt 
 Miranda. But here a difficulty arose which 
 she had not foreseen. Although Corbin had 
 evidently forgiven her defection on that 
 memorable evening, he had not apparently 
 got over the revelation of her giddy worldii- 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 65 
 
 ness, and was resignedly apathetic and dis- 
 trustful of her endeavors. She was at first 
 amused, and then angry. And her patience 
 was exhausted when she discovered that he 
 actually seemed more anxious to conciliate 
 Julia Jeffcourt than her mother. 
 
 " But she spat in your face," she said 9 
 indignantly. 
 
 " That 's so,' 9 he replied, gloomily ; " but I 
 reckoned you said something in one of your 
 letters about turning the other cheek when 
 you were smitten. Of course, as you don't 
 believe it now," he added with his upward 
 glance, " I suppose that 's been played on me, 
 too." 
 
 But here Miss Sally's spirit lazily re- 
 belled. 
 
 " Look here, Mr. Joseph Jeremiah Cor- 
 bin," she returned with languid imperti- 
 nence, " if instead of cavortin' round on yo' 
 knees trying to conciliate an old woman 
 who never had a stroke of luck till you 
 killed her son, and a young girl who won't 
 be above letting on afore you think it that 
 your conciliatin' her means sparkin' her ; 
 if instead of that foolishness you 'd turn your 
 hand to trying to conciliate the folks here 
 and keep 'em from going into that fool's act 
 
66 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 of breaking up these United States ; if in- 
 stead of digging up second-hand corpses 
 that 's already been put out of sight once 
 you 'd set to work to try and prevent the 
 folks about here from digging up their old 
 cranks and their old whims, and their old 
 women fancies, you'd be doing something 
 like a Christian and a man ! What 's yo' 
 blood-guiltiness — I 'd like to know — along- 
 side of the blood-guiltiness of those fools who 
 are just wild to rush into it, led by such 
 turkey - cocks as yo' friend Colonel Star- 
 bottle? And you 've been five years in 
 California — a free State — and that's all 
 yo' 've toted out of it — a dead body ! There 
 now, don't sit there and swing yo' hat under 
 that chyar, but rouse out and come along 
 with me to the pawty if you can shake a 
 foot, and show Miss Pinkney and the gyrls 
 yo' fit for something mo' than to skirmish 
 round as a black japanned spittoon for Julia 
 Jeff court ! " It is not recorded that Corbin 
 accepted this cheerful invitation, but for a 
 few days afterwards he was more darkly 
 observant of, and respectful to, Miss Sally, 
 Strange indeed if he had not noticed — al- 
 though always in his resigned fashion — the 
 dull green stagnation of the life around him, 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE' 8 CLIENT. 67 
 
 or when not accepting it as part of his 
 trouble he had not chafed at the arrested 
 youth and senile childishness of the people. 
 Stranger still if he had not at times been 
 startled to hear the outgrown superstitions 
 and follies of his youth voiced again by 
 grown-up men, and perhaps strangest of all 
 if he had not vaguely accepted it all as the 
 hereditary curse of that barbarism under 
 which he himself had survived and suffered. 
 
 The reconciliation between himself and 
 Mrs. Jeffcourt was superficially effected, so 
 far as a daily visit by him to the house indi- 
 cated it to the community, but it was also 
 known that J ulia was invariably absent on 
 these occasions. What happened at those 
 interviews did not transpire, but it may be 
 surmised that Mrs. J eff court, perhaps recog- 
 nizing the fact that Corbin was really giving 
 her all that he had to give, or possibly hav- 
 ing some lurking fear of Colonel Starbottle, 
 was so far placated as to exhibit only the 
 average ingratitude of her species towards 
 a regular benefactor. She consented to the 
 erection of a small obelisk over her son's 
 grave, and permitted Corbin to plant a few 
 flowering shrubs, which he daily visited and 
 took care of. It is said that on one of these 
 
68 COLONEL STABBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 pilgrimages he encountered Miss Julia, 
 apparently on the same errand, who haugh- 
 tily retired. It was further alleged, on the 
 authority of one of Mammy Judy's little 
 niggers, that those two black mourning fig- 
 ures had been seen at nightfall sitting oppo- 
 site to each other at the head and foot of 
 the grave, and " glowerin' " at one another 
 " like two hants." But when it was asserted 
 on the same authority that their voices had 
 been later overheard uplifted in some vehe- 
 ment discussion over the grave of the im- 
 passive dead, great curiosity was aroused. 
 Being pressed by the eager Miss Sally to 
 repeat some words or any words he had 
 heard them say, the little witness glibly 
 replied, " Marse Linkum " (Lincoln), and 
 "The Souf," and so, for the time, ship- 
 wrecked his testimony. But it was recalled 
 six months afterwards. It was then that 
 a pleasant spring day brought madness and 
 enthusiasm to a majority of Pineville, and 
 bated breath and awe to a few, and it was 
 known with the tidings that the South had 
 appealed to arms, that among those who 
 had first responded to the call was Joseph 
 Corbin, an alleged "Union man," who had, 
 however, volunteered to take that place in 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 69 
 
 her ranks which might have been filled by 
 the man he had hilled. And then people 
 forgot all about him, 
 
 A year passed. It was the same place ; 
 the old familiar outlines of home and garden 
 and landscape. But seen now, in the chok- 
 ing breathlessness of haste, in the fitful 
 changing flashes of life and motion around 
 it, in intervals of sharp suspense or dazed 
 bewilderment, it seemed to be recognized no 
 longer. Men who had known it all their 
 lives, hurrying to the front in compact 
 masses, scurrying to the rear in straggling 
 line, or opening their ranks to let artillery 
 gallop by, stared at it vaguely, and clattered 
 or scrambled on again. The smoke of a 
 masked battery in the woods struggled and 
 writhed to free itself from the clinging tree- 
 tops behind it, and sank back into a gray 
 encompassing cloud. The dust thrown up 
 by a column of passing horse poured over 
 the wall in one long wave, and whitened the 
 garden with its ashes. Throughout the dim 
 empty house one no longer heard the sound 
 of cannon, only a dull intermittent concus- 
 sion was felt, silently bringing flakes of 
 plaster from the walls, or sliding fragments 
 
70 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 of glass from the shattered windows. A shell, 
 lifted from the ominous distance, hung un- 
 certain in the air and then descended swiftly 
 through the roof ; the whole house dilated 
 with flame for an instant, smoke rolled slowly 
 from the windows, and even the desolate 
 chimneys started into a hideous mockery of 
 life, and then all was still again. At such 
 awful intervals the sun shone out brightly, 
 touched the green of the still sleeping woods 
 and the red and white of a flower in the gar- 
 den, and something in a gray uniform writhed 
 out of the dust of the road, staggered to the 
 wall, and died. 
 
 A mile down this road, growing more and 
 more obscure with those rising and falling 
 apparitions or the shapeless and rugged 
 heaps terrible in their helpless inertia by 
 hedge and fence, arose the cemetery hill. 
 Taken and retaken thrice that afternoon, 
 the dead above it far outnumbered the dead 
 below ; and when at last the tide of battle 
 swept around its base into the dull, rever- 
 berating woods, and it emerged from the 
 smoke, silenced and abandoned, only a few 
 stragglers remained. One of them, leaning 
 on his musket, was still gloomily facing the 
 woods. 
 
COLONEL 8 TARE TTLE 1 S CLIENT. 71 
 
 "Joseph Corbin," said a low, hurried 
 voice. 
 
 He started and glanced quickly at the 
 tombs around him. Perhaps it was because 
 he had been thinking of the dead, — but the 
 voice sounded like his. Yet it was only the 
 sister, who had glided, pale and haggard 9 
 from the thicket. 
 
 " They are coming through the woods,' 9 
 she said quickly. " Run, or you '11 be taken. 
 Why do you linger ? " 
 
 " You know why," he said gloomily. 
 
 " Yes, but you have done yo' duty. You 
 have done his work. The task is finished 
 now, and yo' free." 
 
 He did not reply, but remained gazing at 
 the woods. 
 
 "Joseph," she said more gently, laying 
 her trembling hand on his arm, "Joseph, 
 fly — and — take me with you. For I was 
 wrong, and I want you to forgive me. I 
 knew your heart was not in this, and I ought 
 not to have asked you. Joseph — listen ! 
 I never wanted to avenge myself nor him 
 when I spat on your face. I wanted to 
 avenge myself on her. I hated her, because 
 I thought she wanted to work upon you and 
 use you for herself." 
 
72 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 " Your mother," he said, looking at her. 
 
 " No," she said, with widely opened eyes ; 
 " you know who I mean — Miss Sally." 
 
 He looked at her wonderingly for a mo- 
 ment, but quickly bent his head again in the 
 direction of the road. " They are coming," 
 he said, starting. " You must go. This is 
 no place for you. Stop ! it 's too late : you 
 cannot go now until they have passed. 
 Come here — crouch down here — over this 
 grave — so." 
 
 He almost forced her — kneeling down — 
 upon the mound below the level of the 
 shrubs, and then ran quickly himself a few 
 paces lower down the hill to a more exposed 
 position. She understood it. He wished to 
 attract attention to himself. He was suc- 
 cessful — a few hurried shots followed from 
 the road, but struck above him. 
 
 He clambered back quickly to where she 
 was still crouching. 
 
 " They were the vedettes," he said, " but 
 they have fallen back on the main skirmish 
 line and will be here in force in a moment. 
 Go — while you can." She had not moved. 
 He tried to raise her — her hat fell off — he 
 saw blood oozing from where the vedette's 
 bullet that had missed him had pierced her 
 brain. 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 73 
 
 And yet he saw in that pale dead face only 
 the other face which he remembered now had 
 been turned like this towards his own. It 
 was very strange. And this was the end, 
 and this was his expiation ! He raised his 
 own face humbly, blindly, despairingly to the 
 inscrutable sky ; it looked back upon him 
 from above as coldly as the dead face had 
 from below. 
 
 Yet out of this he struck a faint idea that 
 he voiced aloud in nearly the same words 
 which he had used to Colonel Starbottle 
 only three years ago. " It was with his own 
 pistol too," he said, and took up his musket. 
 
 He walked deliberately down the hill, oc- 
 casionally trying the stock of his musket in 
 the loose earth, and at last suddenly re- 
 mained motionless, in the attitude of leaning 
 over it. At the same moment there was a 
 distant shout ; two thin parallel streams of 
 blue and steel came issuing through the 
 woods like a river, appeared to join tumultu- 
 ously in the open before the hill, and out of 
 the tumult a mounted officer called upon 
 him to surrender. 
 
 He did not reply. 
 
 " Come down from there, Johnny Reb, I 
 want to speak to you," called a young cor- 
 poral. 
 
74 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT. 
 
 He did not move. 
 
 " It 's time to go home, Johnny. 99 
 
 No response. 
 
 The officer, who had been holding down 
 his men with an unsworded but masterful 
 hand, raised it suddenly. A dozen shots fol- 
 lowed. The men leaped forward, and dash- 
 ing Corbin contemptuously aside streamed 
 up the hill past him. 
 
 But he had neither heard nor cared. For 
 they found he had already deliberately trans- 
 fixed himself through the heart on his own 
 bayonet. 
 
THE 
 
 POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The mail stage had just passed Laurel 
 Run, — so rapidly that the whirling cloud of 
 dust dragged with it down the steep grade 
 from the summit hung over the level long 
 after the stage had vanished, and then, drift- 
 ing away, slowly sifted a red precipitate over 
 the hot platform of the Laurel Run post- 
 office. 
 
 Out of this cloud presently emerged the 
 neat figure of the postmistress with the mail- 
 bag which had been dexterously flung at her 
 feet from the top of the passing vehicle. A 
 dozen loungers eagerly stretched out their 
 hands to assist her, but the warning : " It 's 
 agin the rules, boys, for any but her to touch 
 it," from a bystander, and a coquettish 
 shake of the head from the postmistress her- 
 
76 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 self — much more effective than any official 
 interdict — withheld them. The bag was 
 not heavy, — Laurel Run was too recent a 
 settlement to have attracted much corre- 
 spondence, — and the young woman, having 
 pounced upon her prey with a certain feline 
 instinct, dragged it, not without difficulty, 
 behind the partitioned inclosure in the office, 
 and locked the door. Her pretty face, mo- 
 mentarily visible through the window, was 
 slightly flushed with the exertion, and the 
 loose ends of her fair hair, wet with perspi- 
 ration, curled themselves over her forehead 
 into tantalizing little rings. But the win- 
 dow shutter was quickly closed, and this 
 momentary but charming vision withdrawn 
 from the waiting public. 
 
 " Guv'ment oughter have more sense than 
 to make a woman pick mail-bags outer the 
 road," said Jo Simmons sympathetically. 
 " 'T ain't in her day's work anyhow ; Guv'- 
 ment oughter hand 'em over to her like a 
 lady ; it 's rich enough and ugly enough." 
 
 " 'T ain't Guv'ment ; it 's that stage com- 
 pany's airs and graces," interrupted a new- 
 comer. "They think it mighty fine to go 
 beltin' by, makin' everybody take their dust, 
 just because stoppirf ain't in their contract. 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 77 
 
 Why, if that expressman who chucked down 
 the bag had any feelin's for a lady " — but 
 he stopped here at the amused faces of his 
 auditors. 
 
 " Guess you don't know much o' that ex- 
 pressman's feelin's, stranger," said Simmons 
 grimly. 66 Why, you oughter see him just 
 nussin' that bag like a baby as he comes 
 tearin' down the grade, and then rise up and 
 sorter heave it to Mrs. Baker ez if it was 
 a five-dollar bokay ! His feelin's for her ! 
 Why, he 's give himself so dead away to her 
 that we 're looking for him to forget what 
 he 's doin' next, and just come sailin' down 
 hisself at her feet." 
 
 Meanwhile, on the other side of the parti- 
 tion, Mrs. Baker had brushed the red dust 
 from the padlocked bag, and removed what 
 seemed to be a supplementary package at- 
 tached to it by a wire. Opening it she 
 found a handsome scent-bottle, evidently a 
 superadded gift from the devoted express- 
 man. This she put aside with a slight smile 
 and the murmured word, " Foolishness." 
 But when she had unlocked the bag, even 
 its sacred interior was also profaned by a 
 covert parcel from the adjacent postmaster 
 at Burnt Ridge, containing a gold "speci- 
 
78 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 men" brooch and some circus tickets. It 
 was laid aside with the other. This also 
 was vanity and — presumably — vexation of 
 spirit. 
 
 There were seventeen letters in all, of 
 which five were for herself — and yet the 
 proportion was small that morning. Two 
 of them were marked "Official Business," 
 and were promptly put by with feminine 
 discernment; but in another compartment 
 than that holding the presents. Then the 
 shutter was opened, and the task of delivery 
 commenced. 
 
 It was accompanied with a social peculiar- 
 ity that had in time become a habit of Lau- 
 rel Run. As the young woman delivered 
 the letters, in turn, to the men who were pa- 
 tiently drawn up in Indian file, she made 
 that simple act a medium of privileged but 
 limited conversation on special or general 
 topics, — gay or serious as the case might be, 
 or the temperament of the man suggested. 
 That it was almost always of a complimen- 
 tary character on their part may be readily 
 imagined ; but it was invariably character- 
 ized by an element of refined restraint, and, 
 whether from some implied understanding 
 or individual sense of honour, it never 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 79 
 
 passed the bounds of conventionality or a 
 certain delicacy of respect. The delivery 
 was consequently more or less protracted, 
 but when each man had exchanged his three 
 or four minutes' conversation with the fair 
 postmistress, — a conversation at times im- 
 peded by bashf ulness or timidity, on his part 
 solely, or restricted often to vague smiling, 
 — he resignedly made way for the next. It 
 was a formal levee, mitigated by the infor- 
 mality of rustic tact, great good-humor, 
 and infinite patience, and would have been 
 amusing had it not always been terribly in 
 earnest and at times touching. For it was 
 peculiar to the place and the epoch, and in- 
 deed implied the whole history of Mrs. 
 Baker. 
 
 She was the wife of John Baker, foreman 
 of " The Last Chance," now for a year ly- 
 ing dead under half a mile of crushed and 
 beaten-in tunnel at Burnt Eidge. There 
 had been a sudden outcry from the depths 
 at high hot noontide one day, and John had 
 rushed from his cabin — his young, foolish, 
 flirting wife clinging to him — to answer 
 that despairing cry of his imprisoned men. 
 There was one exit that he alone knew 
 which might be yet held open, among falling 
 
80 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 walls and tottering timbers, long enough to 
 set them free. For one moment only the 
 strong man hesitated between her entreat- 
 ing arms and his brothers' despairing cry. 
 But she rose suddenly with a pale face, and 
 said, " Go, John ; I will wait for you here." 
 He went, the men were freed — but she had 
 waited for him ever since ! 
 
 Yet in the shock of the calamity and in 
 the after struggles of that poverty which 
 had come to the ruined camp, she had 
 scarcely changed. But the men had. Al- 
 though she was to all appearances the same 
 giddy, pretty Betsy Baker, who had been so 
 disturbing to the younger members, they 
 seemed to be no longer disturbed by her. 
 A certain subdued awe and respect, as if the 
 martyred spirit of John Baker still held his 
 arm around her, appeared to have come 
 upon them all. They held their breath as 
 this pretty woman, whose brief mourning 
 had not seemed to affect her cheerfulness or 
 even playfulness of spirit, passed before 
 them. But she stood by her cabin and the 
 camp — the only woman in a settlement of 
 forty men — during the darkest hours of 
 their fortune. Helping them to wash and 
 cook, and ministering to their domestic 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 81 
 
 needs, the sanctity of her cabin was, how- 
 ever, always kept as inviolable as if it had 
 been his tomb. No one exactly knew why, 
 for it was only a tacit instinct ; but even one 
 or two who had not scrupled to pay court 
 to Betsy Baker during John Baker's life, 
 shrank from even a suggestion of familiarity 
 towards the woman who had said that she 
 would "wait for him there." 
 
 When brighter days came and the settle- 
 ment had increased by one or two families, 
 and laggard capital had been hurried up to 
 relieve the still beleaguered and locked-up 
 wealth of Burnt Ridge, the needs of the com- 
 munity and the claims of the widow of John 
 Baker were so well told in political quarters 
 that the post-office of Laurel Run was created 
 expressly for her. Every man participated 
 in the building of the pretty yet substan- 
 tial edifice — the only public building of Lau- 
 rel Run — that stood in the dust of the great 
 highway, half a mile from the settlement. 
 There she was installed for certain hours of 
 the day, for she could not be prevailed upon 
 to abandon John's cabin, and here, with all 
 the added respect due to a public functionary, 
 she was secure in her privacy. 
 
 But the blind devotion of Laurel Run to 
 
82 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 John Baker's relict did not stop here. In 
 its zeal to assure the Government authorities 
 of the necessity for a post-office, and to secure 
 a permanent competency to the postmistress, 
 there was much embarrassing extravagance. 
 During the first week the sale of stamps at 
 Laurel Run post-office was unprecedented in 
 the annals of the Department. Fancy prices 
 were given for the first issue ; then they were 
 bought wildly, recklessly, unprofitably, and 
 on all occasions. Complimentary congratu- 
 lation at the little window invariably ended 
 with " and a dollar's worth of stamps, Mrs. 
 Baker." It was felt to be supremely delicate 
 to buy only the highest priced stamps, with- 
 out reference to their adequacy; then mere 
 quantity was sought; then outgoing letters 
 were all over-paid and stamped in outrageous 
 proportion to their weight and even size. The 
 imbecility of this, and its probable effect on 
 the reputation of Laurel Run at the General 
 Post-office, being pointed out by Mrs. Baker, 
 stamps were adopted as local currency, and 
 even for decorative purposes on mirrors and 
 the walls of cabins. Everybody wrote let- 
 ters, with the result, however, that those sent 
 were ludicrously and suspiciously in excess of 
 those received. To obviate this, select parties 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 83 
 
 made forced journeys to Hickory Hill, the 
 next post-office, with letters and circulars ad- 
 dressed to themselves at Laurel Run. How 
 long the extravagance would have continued 
 is not known, but it was not until it was ru* 
 mored that, in consequence of this excessive 
 flow of business, the Department had con- 
 cluded that a postmaster would be better 
 fitted for the place that it abated, and a com- 
 promise was effected with the General Office 
 by a permanent salary to the postmistress. 
 
 Such was the history of Mrs. Baker, who 
 had just finished her afternoon levee, nodded 
 a smiling "good-by" to her last customer, 
 and closed her shutter again. Then she took 
 up her own letters, but, before reading them, 
 glanced, with a pretty impatience, at the two 
 official envelopes addressed to herself, which 
 she had shelved. They were generally a " lot 
 of new rules," or notifications, or " absurd " 
 questions which had nothing to do with Lau- 
 rel Run and only bothered her and " made 
 her head ache," and she had usually referred 
 them to her admiring neighbor at Hickory 
 Hill for explanation, who had generally re- 
 turned them to her with the brief indorse- 
 ment, "Purp stuff, don't bother," or, " Hog 
 wash, let it slide." She remembered now that 
 
84 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 he had not returned the last two. With 
 knitted brows and a slight pout she put aside 
 her private correspondence and tore open the 
 first one. It referred with official curtness to 
 an unanswered communication of the previ- 
 ous week, and was " compelled to remind her 
 of rule 47. " Again those horrid rules ! She 
 opened the other ; the frown deepened on her 
 brow, and became fixed. 
 
 It was a summary of certain valuable 
 money letters that had miscarried on the 
 route, and of which they had given her pre- 
 vious information. For a moment her cheeks 
 blazed. How dare they ; what did they 
 mean ! Her waybills and register were al- 
 ways right ; she knew the names of every 
 man, woman, and child in her district ; no 
 such names as those borne by the missing 
 letters had ever existed at Laurel Run ; no 
 such addresses had ever been sent from Lau- 
 rel Run post-office. It was a mean insinua- 
 tion ! She would send in her resignation at 
 once ! She would get " the boys " to write 
 an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb, — 
 Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Gov- 
 ernment as a purely personal institution, — 
 and she would find out who it was that had 
 put them up to this , prying, crawling impu- 
 
TEE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 85 
 
 deuce ! It was probably that wall-eyed old 
 wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Cross* 
 ing, who was jealous of her. " Eemind her 
 of their previous unanswered communica- 
 tion," indeed ! Where was that communica- 
 tion, anyway ? She remembered she had sent 
 it to her admirer at Hickory Hill. Odd that 
 he had n't answered it. Of course, he knew 
 about this meanness — could he, too, have 
 dared to suspect her ! The thought turned 
 her crimson again. He, Stanton Green, was 
 an old "Laurel Kunner," a friend of John's, 
 a little " triflin' " and " presoomin'," but still 
 an old loyal pioneer of the camp ! " Why 
 had n't he spoke up ? " 
 
 There was the soft, muffled fall of a horse's 
 hoof in the thick dust of the highway, the 
 jingle of dismounting spurs, and a firm tread 
 on the platform. No doubt one of the boys 
 returning for a few supplemental remarks 
 under the feeble pretense of forgotten 
 stamps. It had been done before, and she 
 had resented it as " cayotin' round ; " but 
 now she was eager to pour out her wrongs to 
 the first comer. She had her hand impul- 
 sively on the door of the partition, when she 
 stopped with a new sense of her impaired 
 dignity. Could she confess this to her wor- 
 
86 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 shipers ? But here the door opened in hei 
 very face, and a stranger entered. 
 
 He was a man of fifty, compactly and 
 strongly built. A squarely -cut goatee, 
 slightly streaked with gray, fell straight 
 from his thin-lipped but handsome mouth; 
 his eyes were dark, humorous, yet searching. 
 But the distinctive quality that struck Mrs. 
 Baker was the blending of urban ease with 
 frontier frankness. He was evidently a man 
 who had seen cities and knew countries as 
 well. And while he was dressed with the 
 comfortable simplicity of a Californian 
 mounted traveler, her inexperienced but 
 feminine eye detected the keynote of his re- 
 spectability in the carefully-tied bow of his 
 cravat. The Sierrean throat was apt to be 
 open, free, and unfettered. 
 
 " Good-morning, Mrs. Baker," he said, 
 pleasantly, with his hat already in his hand. 
 " I 'm Harry Home, of San Francisco." As 
 he spoke his eye swept approvingly over the 
 neat inclosure, the primly-tied papers, and 
 well-kept pigeon-holes ; the pot of flowers on 
 her desk ; her china-silk mantle, and killing 
 little chip hat and ribbons hanging against 
 the wall ; thence to her own pink, flushed 
 face, bright blue eyes, tendriled clinging 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 87 
 
 hair, and then — fell upon the leathern mail- 
 bag still lying across the table. Here it 
 became fixed on the unfortunate wire of 
 the amorous expressman that yet remained 
 hanging from the brass wards of the lock, 
 and he reached his hand toward it. 
 
 But little Mrs. Baker was before him, and 
 had seized it in her arms. She had been 
 too preoccupied and bewildered to resent his 
 first intrusion behind the partition, but this 
 last familiarity with her sacred official prop- 
 erty — albeit empty — capped the climax of 
 her wrongs. 
 
 " How dare you touch it ! " she said in- 
 dignantly. " How dare you come in here ! 
 Who are you, anyway? Go outside, at 
 once ! " 
 
 The stranger fell back with an amused, 
 deprecatory gesture, and a long silent laugh. 
 " I 'm afraid you don't know me, after all ! " 
 he said pleasantly. " I 'm Harry Home, the 
 Department Agent from the San Francisco 
 office. My note of advice, No. 201, with my 
 name on the envelope, seems to have mis- 
 carried too." 
 
 Even in her fright and astonishment it 
 flashed upon Mrs. Baker that she had sent that 
 notice, too, to Hickory Hill. But with it all 
 
88 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 the feminine secretive instinct within her was 
 now thoroughly aroused, and she kept silent 
 
 "I ought to have explained," he went on 
 smilingly ; " but you are quite right, Mrs. 
 Baker," he added, nodding towards the bag. 
 " As far as you knew, I had no business to 
 go near it. Glad to see you know how to 
 defend Uncle Sam's property so well. I was 
 only a bit puzzled to know" (pointing to the 
 wire) " if that thing was on the bag when it 
 was delivered to you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Baker saw no reason to conceal the 
 truth. After all, this official was a man 
 like the others, and it was just as well that 
 he should understand her power. " It 's 
 only the expressman's foolishness," she 
 said, with a slightly coquettish toss of her 
 head. " He thinks it smart to tie some non- 
 sense on that bag with the wire when he 
 flings it down." 
 
 Mr. Home, with his eyes on her pretty 
 face, seemed to think it a not inhuman or 
 unpardonable folly. " As long as he does n't 
 meddle with the inside of the bag, I suppose 
 you must put up with it," he said laugh- 
 ingly. A dreadful recollection, that the 
 Hickory Hill postmaster had used the inside 
 of the bag to convey his foolishness, came 
 
TEE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 89 
 
 across her. It would never do to confess it 
 now. Her face must have shown some agi- 
 tation, for the official resumed with a half- 
 paternal, half-reassuring air : " But enough 
 of this. Now, Mrs. Baker, to come to my 
 business here. Briefly, then, it does n't con- 
 cern you in the least, except so far as it may 
 relieve you and some others, whom the De- 
 partment knows equally well, from a certain 
 responsibility, and, perhaps, anxiety. We 
 are pretty well posted down there in all that 
 concerns Laurel Run, and I think " (with 
 a slight bow) " we 've known all about you 
 and John Baker. My only business here 
 is to take your place to-night in receiving 
 the " Omnibus Way Bag," that you know 
 arrives here at 9.30, does n't it ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Mrs. Baker hurriedly; 
 " but it never has anything for us, except " 
 — (she caught herself up quickly, with a 
 stammer, as she remembered the sighing 
 Green's occasional offerings) " except a no- 
 tification from Hickory Hill post-office. It 
 leaves there," she went on with an affec- 
 tation of precision, "at half past eight ex- 
 actly, and it 's about an hour's run — seven 
 miles by road." 
 
 "Exactly," said Mr. Home. " Well, 1 
 
90 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 will receive the bag, open it, and dispatch 
 it again. You can, if you choose, take a 
 holiday." 
 
 " But," said Mrs. Baker, as she remem- 
 bered that Laurel Run always made a point 
 of attending her evening levee on account 
 of the superior leisure it offered, " there are 
 the people who come for letters, you know." 
 
 " I thought you said there were no letters 
 at that time," said Mr. Home quickly. 
 
 " No — but — but " — (with a slight hys- 
 terical stammer) " the boys come all the 
 same." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Home dryly. 
 
 " And — O Lord ! " — But here the 
 spectacle of the possible discomfiture of 
 Laurel Run at meeting the bearded face of 
 Mr. Home, instead of her own smooth 
 cheeks, at the window, combined with her 
 nervous excitement, overcame her so that, 
 throwing her little frilled apron over her 
 head, she gave way to a paroxym of hys- 
 terical laughter. Mr. Home waited with 
 amused toleration for it to stop, and, when 
 she had recovered, resumed. " Now, I 
 should like to refer an instant to my first 
 communication to you. Have you got it 
 handy?" 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 91 
 
 Mrs. Baker's face fell. "No; I sent it 
 over to Mr. Green, of Hickory Hill, for in- 
 formation." 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 Terrified at the sudden seriousness of the 
 man's voice, she managed to gasp out, how- 
 ever, that, after her usual habit, she had not 
 opened the official letters, but had sent them 
 to her more experienced colleague for advice 
 and information ; that she never could un- 
 derstand them herself, — they made her head 
 ache, and interfered with her other duties, — 
 but he understood them, and sent her word 
 what to do. Remembering also his usual 
 style of indorsement, she grew red again. 
 
 " And what did he say ? " 
 
 " Nothing ; he did n't return them." 
 
 " Naturally," said Mr. Home, with a pe- 
 culiar expression. After a few moments' 
 silent stroking of his beard, he suddenly 
 faced the frightened woman. 
 
 " You oblige me, Mrs. Baker, to speak 
 more frankly to you than I had intended. 
 You have — unwittingly, I believe — given 
 information to a man whom the Government 
 suspects of peculation. You have, without 
 knowing it, warned the postmaster at Hick- 
 ory Hill that he is suspected ; and, as you 
 
92 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 might have frustrated our plans for tracing 
 a series of embezzlements to their proper 
 source, you will see that you might have 
 also done great wrong to yourself as his only 
 neighbor and the next responsible person. 
 In plain words, we have traced the disap- 
 pearance of money letters to a point when 
 it lies between these two offices. Now, I 
 have not the least hesitation in telling you 
 that we do not suspect Laurel Run, and 
 never have suspected it. Even the result 
 of your thoughtless act, although it warned 
 him, confirms our suspicion of his guilt. 
 As to the warning, it has failed, or he has 
 grown reckless, for another letter has been 
 missed since. To-night, however, will settle 
 all doubt in the matter. When I open that 
 bag in this office to-night, and do not find 
 a certain decoy letter in it, which was last 
 checked at Heavy Tree Crossing, I shall 
 know that it remains in Green's possession 
 at Hickory Hill." 
 
 She was sitting back in her chair, white 
 and breathless. He glanced at her kindly, 
 and then took up his hat. " Come, Mrs. 
 Baker, don't let this worry you. As I told 
 you at first, you have nothing to fear. Even 
 your thoughtlessness and ignorance of rules 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 9S 
 
 have contributed to show your own innocence. 
 Nobody will ever be the wiser for this ; we 
 do not advertise our affairs in the Depart- 
 ment. Not a soul but yourself knows the 
 real cause of my visit here. I will leave you 
 here alone for a while, so as to divert any 
 suspicion. You will come, as usual, this 
 evening, and be seen by your friends ; I will 
 only be here when the bag arrives, to open 
 it. Good-by, Mrs. Baker ; it 's a nasty bit 
 of business, but it 's all in the day's work. 
 I Ve seen worse, and, thank God, you 're out 
 of it." 
 
 She heard his footsteps retreat into the 
 outer office and die out of the platform ; the 
 jingle of his spurs, and the hollow beat of his 
 horse's hoofs that seemed to find a dull echo 
 in her own heart, and she was alone. 
 
 The room was very hot and very quiet ; 
 she could hear the warping and creaking of 
 the shingles under the relaxing of the nearly 
 level sunbeams. The office clock struck 
 seven. In the breathless silence that fol- 
 lowed, a woodpecker took up his interrupted 
 work on the roof, and seemed to beat out 
 monotonously on her ear the last words of the 
 stranger : Stanton Green — a thief ! Stan- 
 ton Green, one of the " boys " John had 
 
94 TEE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 helped out of the falling tunnel! Stanton 
 Green, whose old mother in the States still 
 wrote letters to him at Laurel Run, in a few 
 hours to be a disgraced and ruined man for- 
 ever ! She remembered now, as a thought- 
 less woman remembers, tales of his extrava- 
 gance and fast living, of which she had taken 
 no heed, and, with a sense of shame, of pres- 
 ents sent her, that she now clearly saw must 
 have been far beyond his means. What 
 would the boys say ? What would J ohn have 
 said ? Ah ! what would John have done ! 
 
 She started suddenly to her feet, white and 
 cold as on that day that she had parted from 
 John Baker before the tunnel. She put on 
 her hat and mantle, and going to that little 
 iron safe that stood in the corner, unlocked 
 it and took out its entire contents of gold 
 and silver. She had reached the door when 
 another idea seized her, and opening her desk 
 she collected her stamps to the last sheet, 
 and hurriedly rolled them up under her cape. 
 Then with a glance at the clock, and a rapid 
 survey of the road from the platform, she 
 slipped from it, and seemed to be swallowed 
 up in the waiting woods beyond. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Once v/ithin the friendly shadows of the 
 long belt of pines, Mrs. Baker kept them un- 
 til she had left the limited settlement of Lau- 
 rel Run far to the right, and came upon an 
 open slope of Burnt Ridge, where she knew 
 J o Simmons' mustang, Blue Lightning, would 
 be quietly feeding. She had often ridden 
 him before, and when she had detached the 
 fifty-foot reata from his head-stall, he per- 
 mitted her the further recognized familiarity 
 of twining her fingers in his bluish mane 
 and climbing on his back. The tool-shed of 
 Burnt Ridge Tunnel, where Jo's saddle and 
 bridle always hung, was but a canter far- 
 ther on. She reached it unperceived, and — 
 another trick of the old days — quickly ex- 
 temporized a side-saddle from Simmons' 
 Mexican tree, with its high cantle and horn 
 bow, and the aid of a blanket. Then leap- 
 ing to her seat, she rapidly threw off her 
 mantle, tied it by its sleeves around her 
 waist, tucked it under one knee, and let it 
 
96 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 fall over her horse's flanks. By this time 
 Blue Lightning was also struck with a flash 
 of equine recollection and pricked up his 
 ears. Mrs. Baker uttered a little chirping 
 cry which he remembered, and the next 
 moment they w r ere both careering over the 
 Ridge. 
 
 The trail that she had taken, though pre- 
 cipitate, difficult, and dangerous in places, 
 was a clear gain of two miles on the stage 
 road. There was less chance of her being 
 followed or meeting any one. The greater 
 canons were already in shadow; the pines 
 on the farther ridges were separating their 
 masses, and showing individual silhouettes 
 against the sky, but the air was still warm, 
 and the cool breath of night, as she well knew 
 it, had not yet begun to flow down the moun- 
 tain. The lower range of Burnt Ridge was 
 still uneclipsed by the creeping shadow of the 
 mountain ahead of her. Without a watch, 
 but with this familiar and slowly changing 
 dial spread out before her, she knew the 
 time to a minute. Heavy Tree Hill, a 
 lesser height in the distance, was already 
 wiped out by that shadowy index finger — 
 half past seven ! The stage would be at 
 Hickory Hill just before half past eight ; she 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 97 
 
 ought to anticipate it, if possible, — it would 
 stay ten minutes to change horses, — she 
 must arrive before it left ! 
 
 There was a good two-mile level before 
 the rise of the next range. Now, Blue 
 Lightning ! all you know ! And that was 
 much, — for with the little chip hat and flut- 
 tering ribbons well bent down over the blu- 
 ish mane, and the streaming gauze of her 
 mantle almost level with the horse's back, 
 she swept down across the long tableland 
 like a skimming blue -jay. A few more 
 bird-like dips up and down the undulations, 
 and then came the long, cruel ascent of the 
 Divide. 
 
 Acrid with perspiration, caking with 
 dust, slithering in the slippery, impalpable 
 powder of the road, groggily staggering in 
 a red dusty dream, coughing, snorting, head- 
 tossing ; becoming suddenly dejected, with 
 slouching haunch and limp legs on easy 
 slopes, or wildly spasmodic and agile on 
 sharp acclivities, Blue Lightning began to 
 have ideas and recollections ! Ah ! she was 
 a devil for a lark — this lightly-clinging, 
 caressing, blarneying, cooing creature — up 
 there! He remembered her now. Ha! 
 very well then. Hoop-la ! And suddenly 
 
98 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 leaping out like a rabbit, bucking, trotting 
 bard, ambling lightly, "loping" on three 
 legs and recreating himself, — as only a Cali- 
 fornia mustang could, — the invincible Blue 
 Lightning at last stood triumphantly upon 
 the summit. The evening star had just 
 pricked itself through the golden mist of the 
 horizon line, — eight o'clock ! She could do 
 it now ! But here, suddenly, her first hesi- 
 tation seized her. She knew her horse, she 
 knew the trail, she knew herself, — but did 
 she know the man to whom she was riding ? 
 A cold chill crept over her, and then she 
 shivered in a sudden blast ; it was Night at 
 last swooping down from the now invisible 
 Sierras, and possessing all it touched. But 
 it was only one long descent to Hickory Hill 
 now, and she swept down securely on its 
 wings. Half -past eight ! The lights of the 
 settlement were just ahead of her — but so, 
 too, were the two lamps of the waiting stage 
 before the post-office and hotel. 
 
 Happily the lounging crowd were gath- 
 ered around the hotel, and she slipped into 
 the post-office from the rear, unperceived. 
 As she stepped behind the partition, its only 
 occupant — a good-looking young fellow with 
 a reddish mustache — turned towards her 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 99 
 
 with a flush of delighted surprise. But it 
 changed at the sight of the white, determined 
 face and the brilliant eyes that had never 
 looked once towards him, but were fixed 
 upon a large bag, whose yawning mouth was 
 still open and propped up beside his desk. 
 
 " Where is the through money letter that 
 came in that bag? " she said quickly. 
 
 " What — do - — you — mean ? " he stam- 
 mered, with a face that had suddenly grown 
 whiter than her own. 
 
 " I mean that it 's a decoy, checked at 
 Heavy Tree Crossing, and that Mr. Home, of 
 San Francisco, is now waiting at my office 
 to know if you have taken it ! " 
 
 The laugh and lie that lie had at first 
 tried to summon to mouth and lips never 
 reached them. For, under the spell of her 
 rigid, truthful face, he turned almost mechan- 
 ically to his desk, and took out a package. 
 
 " Good God ! you 've opened it already ! " 
 she cried, pointing to the broken seal. 
 
 The expression on her face, more than 
 anything she had said, convinced him that 
 she knew all. He stammered under the new 
 alarm that her despairing tone suggested. 
 u Yes ! — I was owing some bills — the col- 
 lector was waiting here for the money, and 
 
100 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 I took something from the packet. But I 
 was going to make it up by next mail — I 
 swear it." 
 
 " How much have you taken ? " 
 
 " Only a trifle. I" — 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 " A hundred dollars ! " 
 
 She dragged the money she had brought 
 from Laurel Run from her pocket, and 
 counting out the sum, replaced it in the open 
 package. He ran quickly to get the sealing- 
 wax, but she motioned him away as she 
 dropped the package back into the mail-bag. 
 " No ; as long as the money is found in the 
 bag the package may have been broken acci- 
 dentally. Now burst open one or two of those 
 other packages a little — so ;" she took out 
 a packet of letters and bruised their official 
 wrappings under her little foot until the 
 tape fastening was loosened. " Xow give me 
 something heavy." She caught up a brass 
 two-pound weight, and in the same feverish 
 but collected haste wrapped it in paper, 
 sealed it, stamped it, and, addressing it in a 
 large printed hand to herself at Laurel Hill, 
 dropped it in the bag. Then she closed it 
 and locked it ; he would have assisted her, 
 but she again waved him away. " Send for 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 101 
 
 the expressman, and keep yourself out of 
 the way for a moment," she said curtly. 
 
 An attitude of weak admiration and fool- 
 ish passion had taken the place of his former 
 tremulous fear. He obeyed excitedly, but 
 without a word. Mrs. Baker wiped her 
 moist forehead and parched lips, and shook 
 out her skirt. Well might the young ex- 
 pressman start at the unexpected revelation 
 of those sparkling eyes and that demurely 
 smiling mouth at the little window. 
 
 " Mrs. Baker ! " 
 
 She put her finger quickly to her lips, and 
 threw a world of unutterable and enigmatical 
 meaning into her mischievous face. 
 
 " There 's a big San Francisco swell takin' 
 my place at Laurel to-night, Charley." 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " And it 's a pity that the Omnibus Way 
 Bag happened to get such a shaking up and 
 banging round already, coming here." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 " I say," continued Mrs. Baker, with great 
 gravity and dancing eyes, " that it would be 
 just awful if that keerful city clerk found 
 things kinder mixed up inside when he comes 
 to open it. I would n't give him trouble for 
 the world, Charley." 
 
102 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 " No, ma'am, it ain't like you." 
 " So you '11 be particularly careful on my 
 account." 
 
 " Mrs. Baker," said Charley, with infinite 
 gravity, " if that bag should tumble off a 
 dozen times between this and Laurel Hill ? 
 I '11 hop down and pick it up myself." 
 
 "Thank you! shake !" 
 
 They shook hands gravely across the win- 
 dow-ledge. 
 
 " And you ain't going down with us, Mrs. 
 Baker?" 
 
 " Of course not ; it would n't do, — for 1 
 
 airtt here, — don't you see ? " 
 " Of course ! " 
 
 She handed him the bag through the door. 
 He took it carefully, but in spite of his great 
 precaution fell over it twice on his way to 
 the road, where from certain exclamations 
 and shouts it seemed that a like miserable 
 mischance attended its elevation to the boot. 
 Then Mrs. Baker came back into the office, 
 and, as the wheels rolled away, threw herself 
 into a chair, and inconsistently gave way for 
 the first time to an outburst of tears. Then 
 her hand was grasped suddenly and she 
 found Green on his knees before her. She 
 started to her feet. 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 103 
 
 " Don't move," he said, with weak hysteric 
 passion, " but listen to me, for God's sake ! 
 I am ruined, I know, even though you have 
 just saved me from detection and disgrace. 
 I have been mad ! — a fool, to do what I have 
 done, I know, but you do not know all — 
 you do not know why I did it — you cannot 
 think of the temptation that has driven me 
 to it. Listen, Mrs. Baker. I have been 
 striving to get money, honestly, dishonestly 
 — any way, to look well in your eyes — to 
 make myself worthy of you — to make my- 
 self rich, and to be able to offer you a home 
 and take you away from Laurel Run. It 
 was all for you, it was all for love of you, 
 Betsy, my darling. Listen to me ! " 
 
 In the fury, outraged sensibility, indigna- 
 tion, and infinite disgust that filled her little 
 body at that moment, she should have been 
 i large, imperious, goddess-like, and command- 
 ing. But God is at times ironical with suf- 
 fering womanhood. She could only writhe 
 her hand from his grasp with childish con- 
 tortions; she could only glare at him with 
 eyes that were prettily and piquantly bril- 
 liant ; she could only slap at his detaining 
 hand with a plump and velvety palm, and 
 when she found her voice it was high fal- 
 
104 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 setto. And all she could say was, " Leave 
 me be, looney, or I '11 scream ! " 
 
 He rose, with a weak, confused laugh, half 
 of miserable affectation and half of real 
 anger and shame. 
 
 " What did you come riding over here for, 
 then ? What did you take all this risk for ? 
 Why did you rush over here to share my dis- 
 grace — for you are as much mixed up with 
 this now as I am — if you did n't calculate 
 to share everything else with me ? What 
 did you come here for, then, if not for me? " 
 
 "What did /come here for? " said Mrs. 
 Baker, with every drop of red blood gone 
 from her cheek and trembling lip. " What 
 — did — I — come here for ? Well ! — I 
 came here for John Baker's sake ! John 
 Baker, who stood between you and death at 
 Burnt Ridge, as I stand between you and 
 damnation at Laurel Run, Mr. Green ! Yes, 
 John Baker, lying under half of Burnt 
 Ridge, but more to me this day than any liv- 
 ing man crawling over it — in — in " — oh, 
 fatal climax! — "in a month o' Sundays! 
 What did I come here for ? 1 came here as 
 John Baker's livin' wife to carry on dead 
 John Baker's work. Yes, dirty work this 
 time, may be, Mr. Green ! but his work and 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 105 
 
 for him only — precious ! That 's what I 
 came here for ; that 's what I live for ; that 's 
 what I 'in waiting for — to be up to him 
 and his work always ! That 's me — Betsy 
 Baker!" 
 
 She walked up and down rapidly, tying 
 her chip hat under her chin again. Then 
 she stopped, and taking her chamois purse 
 from her pocket, laid it sharply on the desk. 
 
 " Stanton Green, don't be a fool ! Rise 
 up out of this, and be a man again. Take 
 enough out o' that bag to pay what you owe 
 Gov'ment, send in your resignation, and keep 
 the rest to start you in an honest life else- 
 where. But light out o' Hickory Hill afore 
 this time to-morrow." 
 
 She pulled her mantle from the wall and 
 opened the door. 
 
 " You are going ? " he said bitterly, 
 
 " Yes." Either she could not hold seri- 
 ousness long in her capricious little fancy, or, 
 with feminine tact, she sought to make the 
 parting less difficult for him, for she broke 
 into a dazzling smile. " Yes, I 'm goin' to 
 run Blue Lightning agin Charley and that 
 way bag back to Laurel Run, and break the 
 record." 
 
106 THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 
 
 It is said that she did ! Perhaps owing to 
 the fact that the grade of the return journey 
 to Laurel Run was in her favor, and that 
 she could avoid the long, circuitous ascent to 
 the summit taken by the stage, or that, ow- 
 ing to the extraordinary difficulties in the 
 carriage of the way bag, — which had to be 
 twice rescued from under the wheels of the 
 stage, — she entered the Laurel Run post- 
 office as the coach leaders came trotting up 
 the hill. Mr. Home was already on the 
 platform. 
 
 " You '11 have to ballast your next way 
 bag, boss," said Charley, gravely, as it es- 
 caped his clutches once more in the dust of 
 the road, " or you '11 have to make a new 
 contract with the company. We 've lost 
 ten minutes in five miles over that bucking 
 thing." 
 
 Home did not reply, but quickly dragged 
 his prize into the office, scarcely noticing 
 Mrs. Baker, who stood beside him pale and 
 breathless. As the bolt of the bag was 
 drawn, revealing its chaotic interior, Mrs. 
 Baker gave a little sigh. Home glanced 
 quickly at her, emptied the bag upon the 
 floor, and picked up the broken and half- 
 filled money parcel. Then he collected the 
 
THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN. 107 
 
 scattered coins and counted them. " It 's 
 all right, Mrs. Baker/' he said gravely. 
 " He 's safe this time." 
 
 " I 'm so glad ! " said little Mrs. Baker, 
 with a hypocritical gasp. 
 
 " So am I," returned Home, with increas- 
 ing gravity, as he took the coin, " for, from 
 all I have gathered this afternoon, it seems 
 he was an old pioneer of Laurel Run, a friend 
 of your husband's, and, I think, more fool 
 than knave ! " He was silent for a moment, 
 clicking the coins against each other ; then 
 he said carelessly : " Did he get quite away, 
 Mrs. Baker?" 
 
 " I 'm sure I don't know what you 're talk- 
 ing about," said Mrs. Baker, with a lofty air 
 of dignity, but a somewhat debasing color. 
 "I don't see why I should know anything 
 about it, or why he should go away at all." 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Home, laying his hand 
 gently on the widow's shoulder, " well, you 
 see, it might have occurred to his friends 
 that the coins were marked/ That is, no 
 doubt, the reason why he would take their 
 good advice and go. But, as I said before, 
 Mrs. Baker, you're all right, whatever hap- 
 pens, — the Government stands by you ! " 
 
A NIGHT AT " HAYSJ 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 It was difficult to say if Hays' f armhouse, 
 or "Hays," as it was familiarly called, 
 looked any more bleak and cheerless that 
 winter afternoon than it usually did in the 
 strong summer sunshine. Painted a cold 
 merciless white, with scant projections for 
 shadows, a roof of white-pine shingles, 
 bleached lighter through sun and wind, and 
 covered with low, white-capped chimneys, it 
 looked even more stark and chilly than the 
 drifts which had climbed its low roadside 
 fence, and yet seemed hopeless of gaining a 
 foothold on the glancing walls, or slippery, 
 wind-swept roof. The storm, which had 
 already heaped the hollows of the road with 
 snow, hurled its finely-granulated flakes 
 against the building, but they were whirled 
 along the gutters and ridges, and disappeared 
 in smokelike puffs across the icy roof. The 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 109 
 
 granite outcrop in the hilly field beyond had 
 long ago whitened and vanished ; the dwarf 
 firs and larches which had at first taken un- 
 couth shapes in the drift blended vaguely 
 together, and then merged into an unbroken 
 formless wave. But the gaunt angles and 
 rigid outlines of the building remained sharp 
 and unchanged. It would seem as if the 
 rigors of winter had only accented their 
 hardness, as the fierceness of summer had 
 previously made them intolerable. 
 
 It was believed that some of this unyield- 
 ing grimness attached to Hays himself. Cer- 
 tain it is that neither hardship nor prosperity 
 had touched his character. Years ago his 
 emigrant team had broken down in this wild 
 but wooded defile of the Sierras, and he had 
 been forced to a winter encampment, with only 
 , a rude log-cabin for shelter, on the very verge 
 of the promised land. Unable to enter it 
 himself, he was nevertheless able to assist the 
 better-equipped teams that followed him with 
 wood and water and a coarse forage gathered 
 from a sheltered slope of wild oats. This 
 was the beginning of a rude " supply station " 
 which afterwards became so profitable that 
 when spring came and Hays' team were suf- 
 ficiently recruited to follow the flood of im* 
 
110 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS" 
 
 migrating gold-seekers to the placers and 
 valleys, there seemed no occasion for it. His 
 fortune had been already found in the belt of 
 arable slope behind the wooded defile, and in 
 the miraculously located coign of vantage on 
 what was now the great highway of travel 
 and the only oasis and first relief of the weary 
 journey ; the breaking down of his own team 
 at that spot had not only been the salvation 
 of those who found at " Hays " the means of 
 prosecuting the last part of their pilgrimage, 
 but later provided the equipment of return- 
 ing teams. 
 
 The first two years of this experience had, 
 not been without hardship and danger. He 
 had been raided by Indians and besieged for 
 three days in his stockaded cabin ; he had 
 been invested by wintry drifts of twenty feet 
 of snow, cut off equally from incoming teams 
 from the pass and the valley below. During 
 the second year his wife had joined him with 
 four children, but whether the enforced sep- 
 aration had dulled her conjugal affection, or 
 whether she was tempted by a natural femi- 
 nine longing for the land of promise beyond, 
 she sought it one morning with a fascinating 
 teamster, leaving her two sons and two 
 daughters behind her; two years later the 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS" 111 
 
 elder of the daughters followed the mother's 
 example, with such maidenly discretion, how- 
 ever, as to forbear compromising herself by 
 any previous matrimonial formality whatever. 
 From that day Hays had no further personal 
 intercourse with the valley below. He put 
 up a hotel a mile away from the farmhouse 
 that he might not have to dispense hospitality 
 to his customers, nor accept their near com- 
 panionship. Always a severe Presbyterian, 
 and an uncompromising deacon of a far-scat- 
 tered and scanty community who occasionally 
 held their service in one of his barns, he 
 grew more rigid, sectarian, and narrow day 
 by day. He was feared, and although nei- 
 ther respected nor loved, his domination and 
 endurance were accepted. A grim landlord, 
 hard creditor, close-fisted patron, and a smile- 
 less neighbor who neither gambled nor drank, 
 "Old Hays," as he was called, while yet 
 scarce fifty, had few acquaintances and fewer 
 friends. There were those who believed that 
 his domestic infelicities were the result of 
 his unsympathetic nature ; it never occurred 
 to any one (but himself probably) that they 
 might have been the cause. In those Sierran 
 altitudes, as elsewhere, the belief in original 
 sin — popularly known as " pure cussedness " 
 
112 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 — dominated and overbore any considera* 
 tion of passive, impelling circumstances or 
 temptation, unless they had been actively 
 demonstrated with a revolver. The passive 
 expression of harshness, suspicion, distrust, 
 and moroseness was looked upon as inher- 
 ent wickedness. 
 
 The storm raged violently as Hays 
 emerged from the last of a long range of 
 outbuildings and sheds, and crossed the 
 open space between him and the farmhouse. 
 Before he had reached the porch, with its 
 scant shelter, he had floundered through a 
 snowdrift, and faced the full fury of the 
 storm. But the snow seemed to have 
 glanced from his hard angular figure as it 
 had from his roof -ridge, for when he entered 
 the narrow hall- way his pilot jacket was un- 
 marked, except where a narrow line of pow- 
 dered flakes outlined the seams as if worn. 
 To the right was an apartment, half office, 
 half sitting-room, furnished with a dark and 
 chilly iron safe, a sofa and chairs covered 
 with black and coldly shining horsehair. 
 Here Hays not only removed his upper coat 
 but his under one also, and drawing a chair 
 before the fire sat down in his shirt-sleeves. 
 It was his usual rustic pioneer habit, and 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 113 
 
 might have been some lingering reminis- 
 cence of certain remote ancestors to whom 
 clothes were an impediment. He was warm- 
 ing his hands and placidly ignoring his 
 gaunt arms in their thinly-clad "hickory 55 
 sleeves, when a young girl of eighteen saun- 
 tered, half perfunctorily, half inquisitively 
 into the room. It was his only remaining 
 daughter. Already elected by circumstances 
 to a dry household virginity, her somewhat 
 large features, sallow complexion, and taste- 
 less, unattractive dress, did not obviously 
 suggest a sacrifice. Since her sister's de- 
 parture she had taken sole charge of her 
 father's domestic affairs and the few rude 
 servants he employed, with a certain in- 
 herited following of his own moods and 
 methods. To the neighbors she was known 
 as " Miss Hays," — a dubious respect that, 
 in a community of familiar " Sallies," 
 "Mamies," " Pussies," was grimly prophetic. 
 Yet she rejoiced in the Oriental appellation 
 of " Zuleika." To this it is needless to add 
 that it was impossible to conceive any one 
 who looked more decidedly Western. 
 
 " Ye kin put some things in my carpet bag 
 agin the time the sled comes round," said 
 her father meditatively, without looking up. 
 
114 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS" 
 
 " Then you 're not coming back to- 
 night ? " asked the girl curiously. " What 's 
 goin' on at the summit, father ? " 
 
 "JT am," he said grimly. "You don't 
 reckon I kalkilate to stop thar ! I 'm going 
 on as far as Horseley's to close up that con- 
 tract afore the weather changes." 
 
 " I kinder allowed it was funny you 'd 
 go to the hotel to-night. There 's a dance 
 there ; those two Wetherbee girls and 
 Mamie Harris passed up the road an hour 
 ago on a wood-sled, nigh blown to pieces 
 and sittin' up in the snow like skeert white 
 rabbits." 
 
 Hays' brow darkened heavily. 
 " Let 'em go," he said, in a hard voice 
 that the fire did not seem to have softened. 
 " Let 'em go for all the good their fool- 
 parents will ever get outer them, or the herd 
 of wayside cattle they 've let them loose 
 among." 
 
 "I reckon they haven't much to do at 
 home, or are hard put for company, to travel 
 six miles in the snow to show off their prin- 
 kin' to a lot of idle louts shiny with bear's 
 grease and scented up with doctor's stuff," 
 added the girl, shrugging her shoulders, 
 with a touch of her father's mood and man- 
 tier. 
 
A NIGHT AT " HAYS:' 
 
 115 
 
 Perhaps it struck Hays at tliat moment 
 tliat her attitude was somewhat monstrous 
 and unnatural for one still young and pre- 
 sumably like other girls, for, after glancing 
 at her under his heavy brows, he said, in a 
 gentler tone : — 
 
 " Never you mind, Zuly. When your 
 brother Jack comes home he '11 know what's 
 what, and have all the proper New York 
 ways and style. It's nigh on three years 
 now that he 's had the best training Dr. 
 Dawson's Academy could give, — • sayin' no- 
 thing of the pow'ful Christian example of one 
 of the best preachers in the States. They 
 may n't have worldly, ungodly fandangoes 
 where he is, and riotous livin', and scarlet 
 abominations, but I've been told that they 've 
 i tea circles,' and 6 assemblies,' and ; harmony 
 concerts ' of young folks — and dancin' — 
 yes, fine square dancin' under control. No, 
 I ain't stinted him in anythin'. You kin 
 remember that, Zuleika, when you hear any 
 more gossip and backbitin' about your fa- 
 ther's meanness. I ain't spared no money 
 for him." 
 
 " I reckon not," said the girl, a little 
 sharply. " Why, there 's that draft fur two 
 hundred and fifty dollars that kem only last 
 week from the Doctor's fur extras." 
 
116 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 " Yes," replied Hays, with a slight knit< 
 ting of the brows, "the Doctor mout hev 
 writ more particklers, but parsons ain't alius 
 business men. I reckon these here extrys 
 were to push Jack along in the term, as the 
 Doctor knew I wanted him back here in the 
 spring, now that his brother has got to be 
 too stiff-necked and self-opinionated to do 
 his father's work." It seemed from this 
 that there had been a quarrel between Hays 
 and his eldest son, who conducted his branch 
 business at Sacramento, and who had in a 
 passion threatened to set up a rival estab- 
 lishment to his father's. And it was also 
 evident from the manner of the girl that she 
 was by no means a strong partisan of her 
 father in the quarrel. 
 
 " You 'd better find out first how all the 
 schoolin' and trainin' of Jack's is goin' to 
 jibe with the Ranch, and if he ain't been 
 eddicated out of all knowledge of station 
 business or keer for it. New York ain't 
 Hays' Ranch, and these yer 6 assemblies ' and 
 4 harmony ' doin's and their airs and graces 
 may put him out of conceit with our plain 
 wave I reckon ye did n't take that to mind 
 when you 've been hustlin' round payin' two 
 hundred and fifty dollar drafts for Jack and 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS" 117 
 
 ijuo'llin' with Bijah ! I ain't sayin' nothin', 
 father, only mebbe if Bijah had had drafts 
 and extrys flourished around him a little 
 more, mebbe he 'd have been more polite and 
 not so rough spoken. Mebbe," she contin- 
 ued with a little laugh, " even /'d be a little 
 more in the style to suit Master Jack when 
 he comes ef I had three hundred dollars' 
 worth of convent schoolin' like Mamie Har- 
 ris." 
 
 " Yes, and you 'd have only made yourself 
 fair game for ev'ry schemin', lazy sport or 
 counter-jumper along the road from this to 
 Sacramento ! " responded Hays savagely. 
 
 Zuleika laughed again constrainedly, but 
 in a way that might have suggested that this 
 dreadful contingency was still one that it 
 was possible to contemplate without entire 
 consternation. As she moved slowly towards 
 the door she stopped, with her hand on the 
 lock, and said tentatively : "I reckon you 
 won't be wantin' any supper before you go ? 
 You 're almost sure to be offered suthin' 
 up at Horseley's, while if I have to cook you 
 up suthin' now and still have the men's reg- 
 ular supper to get at seven, it makes all the 
 expense of an extra meal." 
 
 Hays hesitated. He would have preferred 
 
118 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 his supper now, and had his daughter pressed 
 him would have accepted it. But economy, 
 which was one of Zuleika's inherited in- 
 stincts, vaguely appearing to him to be a 
 virtue, interchangeable with chastity and ab- 
 stemiousness, was certainly to be encouraged 
 in a young girl. It hardly seems possible 
 that with an eye single to the integrity of 
 the larder she could ever look kindly on 
 the blandishments of his sex, or, indeed, be 
 exposed to them. He said simply : " Don't 
 cook for me," and resumed his attitude be- 
 fore the fire as the girl left the room. 
 
 As he sat there, grim and immovable as 
 one of the battered fire-dogs before him, the 
 wind in the chimney seemed to carry on a 
 deep- throated, dejected, and confidential con- 
 versation with him, but really had very little 
 to reveal. There were no haunting reminis- 
 cences of his married life in this room, which 
 he had always occupied in preference to the 
 company or sitting-room beyond. There 
 were no familiar shadows of the past lurking 
 in its corners to pervade his reverie. When 
 he did reflect, which was seldom, there was 
 always in his mind a vague idea of a central 
 injustice to which he had been subjected, 
 that was to be avoided by circuitous move- 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 119 
 
 ment, to be hidden by work, but never to be 
 surmounted. And to-night he was going 
 out in the storm, which he could understand 
 and fight, as he had often done before, and 
 he was going to drive a bargain with a man 
 like himself and get the better of him if he 
 could, as he had done before, and another 
 day would be gone, and that central injustice 
 which he could not understand would be 
 circumvented, and he would still be holding 
 his own in the world. And the God of 
 Israel whom he believed in, and who was a 
 hard but conscientious Providence, some- 
 thing like himself, would assist him perhaps 
 some day to the understanding of this same 
 vague injustice which He was, for some 
 strange reason, permitting. But never more 
 unrelenting and unsparing of others than 
 when under conviction of Sin himself, and 
 never more harsh and unforgiving than when 
 fresh from the contemplation of the Divine 
 Mercy, he still sat there grimly holding his 
 hand to a warmth that never seemed to get 
 nearer his heart than that, when his daugh- 
 ter reentered the room with his carpet-bag. 
 
 To rise, put on his coat and overcoat, se- 
 cure a fur cap on his head by a woolen com- 
 forter, covering his ears and twined round 
 
120 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 his throat, and to rigidly offer a square and 
 weather-beaten cheek to his daughter's dusty- 
 kiss, did not, apparently, suggest any linger- 
 ing or hesitation. The sled was at the door, 
 which, for a tumultuous moment, opened on 
 the storm and the white vision of a horse 
 knee-deep in a drift, and then closed behind 
 him. Zuleika shot the bolt, brushed some 
 flakes of the invading snow from the mat, 
 and, after frugally raking down the fire on 
 the hearth her father had just quitted, re- 
 tired through the long passage to the kitchen 
 and her domestic supervision. 
 
 It was a few hours later, supper had long 
 past ; the " hands " had one by one returned 
 to their quarters under the roof or in the 
 adjacent lofts, and Zuleika and the two maids 
 had at last abandoned the kitchen for their 
 bedrooms beyond. Zuleika herself, by the 
 light of a solitary candle, had entered the 
 office and had dropped meditatively into a 
 chair, as she slowly raked the warm ashes 
 over the still smouldering fire. The barking 
 of dogs had momentarily attracted her at- 
 tention, but it had suddenly ceased. It was 
 followed, however, by a more startling inci- 
 dent, — a slight movement outside, and an 
 attempt to raise the window ! 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 121 
 
 She was not frightened ; perhaps there 
 was little for her to fear ; it was known that 
 Hays kept no money in the house, the safe 
 was only used for securities and contracts, 
 and there were half a dozen men within call. 
 It was, therefore, only her usual active, 
 burning curiosity for novel incident that 
 made her run to the window and peer out ; 
 but it was with a spontaneous cry of aston- 
 ishment she turned and darted to the front 
 door, and opened it to the muffled figure of 
 a young man. 
 
 " Jack ! Saints alive ! Why, of all 
 things ! " she gasped, incoherently. 
 
 He stopped her with an impatient gesture 
 , and a hand that prevented her from closing 
 the door again. 
 
 " Dad ain't here ? " he asked quickly. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "When '11 he be back?" 
 " Not to-night." 
 
 " Good," he said, turning to the door 
 again. She could see a motionless horse and 
 sleigh in the road, with a woman holding 
 the reins. 
 
 He beckoned to the woman, who drove to 
 the door and jumped out. Tall, handsome, 
 and audacious, she looked at Zuleika with a 
 
122 
 
 A NIGHT AT 11 HAYS. 1 ' 
 
 quick laugh of confidence, as at some recog- 
 nized absurdity. 
 
 " Go in there," said the young man, open- 
 ing the door of the office ; "I '11 come back 
 in a minute." 
 
 As she entered, still smiling, as if taking 
 part in some humorous but risky situation, 
 he turned quickly to Zuleika and said in a 
 low voice : " Where can we talk ? " 
 
 The girl held out her hand and glided hur- 
 riedly through the passage until she reached 
 a door, which she opened. By the light of a 
 dying fire he could see it was her bedroom. 
 Lighting a candle on the mantel, she looked 
 eagerly in his face as he threw aside his muf- 
 fler and opened his coat. It disclosed a 
 spare, youthful figure, and a thin, weak face 
 that a budding mustache only seemed to 
 make still more immature. For an instant 
 brother and sister gazed at each other. As- 
 tonishment on her part, nervous impatience 
 on bis, apparently repressed any demonstra- 
 tion of family affection. Yet when she was 
 about to speak he stopped her roughly. 
 
 "There now; don't talk. I know what 
 you 're goin' to say — could say it myself if 
 I wanted to — and it 's no use. Well then, 
 here I am. You saw her. Well, she 's my 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 123 
 
 wife — we've been married three months. 
 Yes, my wife; married three months ago. 
 I 'm here because I ran away from school — 
 that is, I have n y t been there for the last three 
 months. I came out with her last steamer ; 
 we went up to the Summit Hotel last night — 
 where they did n't know me — until we could 
 see how the land lay, before popping down 
 on dad. I happened to learn that he was 
 out to-night, and I brought her down here to 
 have a talk. We can go back again before 
 he comes, you know, unless 9 ' - — 
 
 " But," interrupted the girl, with sudden 
 practicality, " you say you ain't been at Doc- 
 tor Dawson's for three months ! Why, only 
 / last week he drew on dad for two hundred 
 and fifty dollars for your extras ! " 
 
 He glanced around him and then arranged 
 his necktie in the glass above the mantel 
 with a nervous laugh. 
 
 " OA, that ! I fixed that up, and got the 
 money for it in New York to pay our pas- 
 sage with. It 's all right, you know." 
 
CHAPTER H. 
 
 The girl stood looking at the ingenious 
 forger with an odd, breathless smile. It 
 was difficult to determine, however, if grati- 
 fied curiosity were not its most dominant ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " And you 've got a wife — and that 's 
 her ? " she resumed. 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Where did you first meet her ? Who is 
 
 she?" 
 
 " She 's an actress — mighty popular in 
 'Frisco — I mean New York. Lot o' chaps 
 tried to get her — I cut 'em out. For all 
 dad's trying to keep me at Dawson's — I 
 ain't such a fool, eh ? " 
 
 Nevertheless, as he stood there stroking 
 his fair mustache, his astuteness did not 
 seem to impress his sister to enthusiastic as- 
 sent. Yet she did not relax her breathless, 
 inquisitive smile as she went on : — 
 
 " And what are you going to do about 
 dad?" 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 125 
 
 He turned upon her querulously. 
 " Well, that 's what I want to talk about." 
 "You'll catch it! " she said impressively. 
 But here her brother's nervousness broke 
 out into a weak, impotent fury. It was evi- 
 dent, too, that in spite of its apparent spon^ 
 taneous irritation its intent was studied. 
 Catch it! Would he? Oh, yes! Well, 
 she 'd see who 'd catch it ! Not him. No, 
 he 'd had enough of this meanness, and 
 wanted it ended ! He was n't a woman to 
 be treated like his sister, — like their mother 
 — like their brother, if it came to that, for 
 he knew how he was to be brought back to 
 take Bijah's place in the spring ; he 'd heard 
 the whole story. No, he was going to stand 
 up for his rights, — he was going to be 
 treated as the son of a man who was worth 
 half a million ought to be treated ! He 
 was n't going to be skimped, while his fa- 
 ther was wallowing in money that he did n't 
 know what to do with, — money that by 
 rights ought to have been given to their mo- 
 ther and their sister. Why, even the law 
 would n't permit such meanness — if he was 
 dead. No, he 'd come back with Lottie, his 
 wife, to show his father that there was one 
 of the family that could n't be fooled and 
 
126 A NIGHT AT "HAYS" 
 
 bullied, and wouldn't put up with it any- 
 longer. There was going to be a fair divi- 
 sion of the property, and his sister Annie's 
 property, and hers — Zuleika's — too, if 
 she 'd have the pluck to speak up for her% 
 self. All this and much more he said. Yet 
 even while his small fury was genuine and 
 characteristic, there was such an evident in- 
 congruity between himself and his speech 
 that it seemed to fit him loosely, and in a 
 measure flapped in his gestures like an- 
 other's garment. Zuleika, who had exhib- 
 ited neither disgust nor sympathy with his 
 rebellion, but had rather appeared to enjoy 
 it as a novel domestic performance, the mo- 
 rality of which devolved solely upon the per- 
 former, retained her curious smile. And 
 then a knock at the door startled them. 
 
 It was the stranger, — slightly apologetic 
 and still humorous, but firm and self-confi- 
 dent withal. She was sorry to interrupt 
 their family council, but the fire was going 
 «out where she sat, and she would like a cup 
 of tea or some refreshment. She did not 
 look at Jack, but, completely ignoring him, 
 addressed herself to Zuleika with what 
 seemed to be a direct challenge; in that 
 feminine eye-grapple there was a quick, in- 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 127 
 
 stinctive, and final struggle between the two 
 women. The stranger triumphed. Zulei- 
 ka's vacant smile changed to one of submis- 
 sion, and then, equally ignoring her brother 
 in this double defeat, she hastened to the 
 kitchen to do the visitor's bidding. The 
 woman closed the door behind her, and took 
 Zuleika's place before the fire. 
 
 " Well ? " she said, in a half -contemptuous 
 toleration. 
 
 " Well ? " said Jack, in an equally ill-dis- 
 guised discontent, but an evident desire to 
 placate the woman before him. " It 's all 
 right, you know. I 've had my say. It '11 
 come right, Lottie, you '11 see/' 
 
 The woman smiled again, and glanced 
 around the bare walls of the room. 
 
 " And I suppose," she said, drily, " when 
 it comes right I 'm to take the place of your 
 sister in the charge of this workhouse and 
 succeed to the keys of that safe in the other 
 room ? " 
 
 " It '11 come all right, I tell you ; you can 
 fix things up here any way you '11 like when 
 we get the old man straight," said Jack, with 
 the iteration of feebleness. " And as to that 
 safe, I 've seen it chock full of securities." 
 
 " It '11 hold one less to-night," she said, 
 looking at the fire. 
 
128 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " he asked, 
 in querulous suspicion. 
 
 She drew a paper from her pocket. 
 
 " It 's that draft of yours that you were 
 crazy enough to sign Dawson's name to. 
 It was lying out there on the desk. I reckon 
 it is n't a thing you care to have kept as 
 evidence, even by your father." 
 
 She held it in the flames until it was con- 
 sumed. 
 
 " By Jove, your head is level, Lottie ! " 
 he said, with an admiration that was not, 
 however, without a weak reserve of suspi- 
 cion. 
 
 " No, it is n't, or I would n't be here," she 
 said, curtly. Then she added, as if dismiss- 
 ing the subject, " Well, what did you tell 
 her?" 
 
 " Oh, I said I met you in New York. 
 You see I thought she might think it queer 
 if she knew I only met you in San Francisco 
 three weeks ago. Of course I said we were 
 married." 
 
 She looked at him with weary astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " And of course, whether things go right 
 or not, she '11 find out that I 've got a hus- 
 band living, that I never met you in New 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 129 
 
 York, but on the steamer, and that you 've 
 lied. I don't see the use of it. You said 
 you were going to tell the whole thing 
 squarely and say the truth, and that 's why I 
 came to help you." 
 
 " Yes ; but don't you see, hang it all ! " 
 he stammered, in the irritation of weak con- 
 fusion, " I had to tell her something. Father 
 won't dare to tell her the truth, no more than 
 he will the neighbors. He '11 hush it up, 
 you bet ; and when we get this thing fixed 
 you '11 go and get your divorce, you know, 
 and we '11 be married privately on the 
 square." 
 
 He looked so vague, so immature, yet so 
 fatuously self-confident, that the woman ex- 
 tended her hand with a laugh and tapped 
 him on the back as she might have patted 
 a dog. Then she disappeared to follow Zu- 
 leika in the kitchen. 
 
 When the two women returned together 
 they were evidently on the best of terms. 
 So much so that the man, with the easy re- 
 action of a shallow nature, became sanguine 
 and exalted, even to an ostentatious exhibi- 
 tion of those New York graces on which the 
 paternal Hays had set such store. He com- 
 placently explained the methods by which he 
 
130 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 had deceived Dr. Dawson ; how he had him- 
 self written a letter from his father com- 
 manding him to return to take his brother's 
 place, and how he had shown it to the Doc- 
 tor and been three months in San Francisco 
 looking for work and assisting Lottie at the 
 theatre, until a conviction of the righteous- 
 ness of his cause, perhaps combined with the 
 fact that they were also short of money and 
 she had no engagement, impelled him to his 
 present heroic step. All of which Zuleika 
 listened to with childish interest, but superior 
 appreciation of his companion. The fact 
 that this woman was an actress, an abomi- 
 nation vaguely alluded to by her father as 
 being even more mysteriously wicked than 
 her sister and mother, and correspondingly 
 exciting, as offering a possible permanent 
 relief to the monotony of her home life, 
 seemed to excuse her brother's weakness. 
 She was almost ready to become his partisan 
 — after she had seen her father. 
 
 They had talked largely of their plans ; 
 they had settled small details of the future 
 and the arrangement of the property ; they 
 had agreed that Zuleika should be relieved of 
 her household drudgery, and sent to a fashion- 
 able school in San Francisco with a music 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 131 
 
 teacher and a dressmaker. They had dis- 
 cussed everything but the precise manner in 
 which the revelation should be conveyed to 
 Hays. There was still plenty of time for 
 that, for he would not return until to-morrow 
 at noon, and it was already tacitly under- 
 stood that the vehicle of transmission should 
 be a letter from the Summit Hotel. The 
 possible contingency of a sudden outburst of 
 human passion not entirely controlled by re- 
 ligious feeling was to be guarded against. 
 
 They were sitting comfortably before the 
 replenished fire ; the wind was still moaning 
 in the chimney, when, suddenly, in a lull of 
 the storm the sound of sleigh-bells seemed to 
 fill the room. It was followed by a voice 
 from without, and, with a hysterical cry, Zu- 
 leika started to her feet. The same breath- 
 less smile with which she had greeted her 
 brother an hour ago was upon her lips as she 
 gasped : — 
 
 " Lord, save us ! — but it 's dad come 
 back!" 
 
 I grieve to say that here the doughty re- 
 dresser of domestic wrongs and retriever of 
 the family honor lapsed white-faced in his 
 chair idealess and tremulous. It was his 
 frailer companion who rose to the occasion 
 
132 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 and even partly dragged him with her. 
 " Go back to the hotel," she said quickly, 
 " and take the sled with you, — you are not 
 fit to face him now ! But he does not know 
 me, and I will stay ! 99 To the staring Zu- 
 leika : "I am a stranger stopped by a bro- 
 ken sleigh on my way to the hotel. Leave 
 the rest to me. Now clear out, both of you. 
 1 '11 let him in." 
 
 She looked so confident, self-contained, 
 and superior, that the thought of opposition 
 never entered their minds, and as an im- 
 patient rapping rose from the door they let 
 her, with a half -impatient, half -laughing ges- 
 ture, drive them before her from the room. 
 When they had disappeared in the distance, 
 she turned to the front door, unbolted and 
 opened it. Hays blundered in out of the 
 snow with a muttered exclamation, and then, 
 as the light from the open office door re- 
 vealed a stranger, started and fell back. 
 
 " Miss Hays is busy," said the woman 
 quietly, " I am afraid, on my account. But 
 my sleigh broke down on the way to the 
 hotel and I was forced to get out here. I 
 suppose this is Mr. Hays ? " 
 
 A strange woman — by her dress and ap- 
 pearance a very worldling — and even braver 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 133 
 
 in looks and apparel than many he had seen 
 in the cities — seemed, in spite of all his 
 precautions, to have fallen short of the hotel 
 and been precipitated upon him ! Yet under 
 the influence of some odd abstraction he was 
 affected by it less than he could have be- 
 lieved. He even achieved a rude bow as he 
 bolted the door and ushered her into the 
 office. More than that, he found himself 
 explaining to the fair trespasser the reasons 
 of his return to his own home. For, like a 
 direct man, he had a consciousness of some 
 inconsistency in his return — or in the cir- 
 cumstances that induced a change of plans 
 which might conscientiously require an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 " You see, ma'am, a rather singular thing 
 happened to me after I passed the summit. 
 Three times I lost the track, got off it some- 
 how, and found myself traveling in a circle. 
 The third time, when I struck my own tracks 
 again, I concluded I 'd just follow them back 
 here. I suppose I might have got the road 
 again by tryin' and fightin' the snow — but 
 ther's some things not worth the fightin'. 
 This was a matter of business, and, after all, 
 ma'am, business ain't everything is it ? " 
 
 He was evidently in some unusual mood, 
 
134 A NIGHT AT 11 EATS.' 9 
 
 the mood that with certain reticent natures 
 often compels them to make their brief con- 
 fidences to utter strangers rather than impart 
 them to those intimate friends who might 
 remind them of their weakness. She agreed 
 with him pleasantly, but not so obviously as 
 to excite suspicion. " And you preferred to 
 let your business go, and come back to the 
 comfort of your own home and family." 
 
 " The comfort of my home and family ? " 
 he repeated in a dry, deliberate voice. 
 " Well, I reckon I ain't been tempted much 
 by that. That is n't what I meant." But 
 he went back to the phrase, repeating it 
 grimly, as if it were some mandatory text. 
 " The comfort of my oicn home and fain- 
 ily 1 Well, Satan hasn't set that trap for 
 my feet yet, ma'am. No ; ye saw my daugh- 
 ter ? well, that 's all my family ; ye see this 
 room? that's all my home. My wife ran 
 away from me ; my daughter cleared out too, 
 my eldest son as was with me here has 
 quo'lled with me and reckons to set up a 
 rival business agin me. No," he said, still 
 more meditatively and deliberately; "it 
 was n't to come back to the comforts of my 
 own home and family that I faced round on 
 Heavy Tree Hill, I reckon." 
 
A NIGHT AT " RAYS. ' 
 
 135 
 
 As the woman, for certain reasons, had no 
 desire to check this auspicious and unlooked 
 for confidence, she waited patiently. Hays 
 remained silent for an instant, warming his 
 hands before the fire, and then looked up 
 interrogatively. 
 
 " A professor of religion, ma'am, or under 
 conviction ? " 
 
 " Not exactly," said the lady smiling. 
 
 "Excuse me, but in spite of your fine 
 clothes I reckoned you had a serious look 
 just now. A reader of Scripture, may be? " 
 
 " I know the Bible." 
 
 " You remember when the angel with the 
 flamin' sword appeared unto Saul on the 
 road to Damascus ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " It mout hev been suthin' in that style 
 that stopped me," he said slowly and tenta- 
 tively. " Though nat'rally / did n't see 
 anything, and only had the queer feelin'. 
 It might hev been that shied my mare off 
 the track." 
 
 "But Saul was up to some wickedness, 
 was n't he ? " said the lady smilingly, " while 
 you were simply going somewhere on busi- 
 ness?" 
 
 " Yes," said Hays thoughtfully, " but my 
 
136 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 business might hev seemed like persecution. 
 I don't mind tellin' you what it was if you' d 
 care to listen. But mebbe you're tired. 
 Mebbe you want to retire. You know," 
 he went on with a sudden hospitable out- 
 burst, " you need n't be in any hurry to go ; 
 we kin take care of you here to-night, and 
 it '11 cost you nothin'. And I '11 send you 
 on w T ith my sleigh in the mornin'. Per'aps 
 you 'd like suthin' to eat — a cup of tea — 
 or — I '11 call Zuleika; " and he rose with an 
 expression of awkward courtesy. 
 
 But the lady, albeit with a self-satisfied 
 sparkle in her dark eyes, here carelessly as- 
 sured him that Zuleika had already given 
 her refreshment, and, indeed, was at that 
 moment preparing her own room for her. 
 She begged he would not interrupt his in- 
 teresting story. 
 
 Hays looked relieved. 
 
 " Well, I reckon I won't call her, for what 
 I was goin' to say ain't exackly the sort o' 
 thin' for an innocent, simple sort o' thing 
 like her to hear — I mean," he interrupted 
 himself hastily — " that folks of more expe- 
 rience of the world like you and me don't 
 mind speakin' of — I 'm sorter takin' it for 
 granted that you're a married woman, 
 ma'am." 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS. 19 137 
 
 The lady, who had regarded him with a 
 sudden rigidity, here relaxed her expression 
 and nodded. 
 
 "Well," continued Hays, resuming his 
 place by the fire, " you see this yer man I 
 was goin' to see lives about four miles be- 
 yond the summit on a ranch that furnishes 
 most of the hay for the stock that side of the 
 Divide. He 's bin holdin' off his next year's 
 contracts with me, hopin' to make better 
 terms from the prospects of a late spring 
 and higher prices. He held his head mighty 
 high and talked big of waitin' his own time. 
 I happened to know he could n't do it." 
 
 He put his hands on his knees and stared 
 at the fire, and then went on : — 
 
 " Ye see this man had had crosses and 
 family trials. He had a wife that left him 
 to jine a lot of bally dancers and painted 
 women in the 'Frisco playhouses when he 
 was livin' in the southern country. You '11 
 say that was like my own case, — and mebbe 
 that was why it came to him to tell me about 
 it, — but the difference betwixt him and me 
 was that instead of restin' unto the Lord and 
 findin' Him, and pluckin' out the eye that 
 offended him 'cordin' to Scripter, as I did, 
 he followed after her tryin' to get her back, 
 
138 
 
 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 until, findin' that was n 't no use, he took a 
 big disgust and came up here to hide hisself , 
 where there was n't no playhouse nor play- 
 actors, and no wimmen but Injin squaws. 
 He preempted the land, and nat'rally, there 
 bein' no one ez cared to live there but him- 
 self, he had it all his own way, made it pay, 
 and, as I was sayin' before, held his head 
 high for prices. Well — you ain't gettin 5 
 tired, ma'am? " 
 
 " No," said the lady, resting her cheek on 
 her hand and gazing on the fire, " it 's all 
 very interesting ; and so odd that you two 
 men, with nearly the same experiences, 
 should be neighbors." 
 
 " Say buyer and seller, ma'am, not neigh- 
 bors — at least Scriptoorily — nor friends. 
 Well, — now this is where the Speshal Prov- 
 idence comes in, — only this afternoon Jim 
 Briggs, hearin' me speak of Horseley's off- 
 ishness " — 
 
 " Whose offishness ? " asked the lady. 
 
 " Horseley's offishness, — Horseley 's the 
 name of the man I 'm talkin' about. Well, 
 hearin' that, he says : " You hold on, Hays, 
 and he '11 climb down. That wife of his 
 has left the stage — got sick of it — and is 
 driftin' round in 'Frisco with some fellow* 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 139 
 
 When Horseley gets to hear that, you can't 
 keep him here, — he '11 settle up, sell out, and 
 realize on everything he's got to go after 
 her agin, — you bet. That 's what Briggs 
 said. Well, that 's what sent me up to Horse- 
 ley's to-night — to get there, drop the news, 
 and then pin him down to that contract." 
 
 " It looked like a good stroke of business 
 and a fair one," said the lady in an odd 
 voice. It was so odd that Hays looked up. 
 But she had somewhat altered her position, 
 and was gazing at the ceiling, and with her 
 hand to her face seemed to have just recov- 
 ered from a slight yawn, at which he hesita- 
 ted with a new and timid sense of politeness. 
 
 " You' re gettin' tired, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! " she said in the same 
 voice, but clearing her throat with a little 
 cough. " And why did n't you see this Mr. 
 Horseley after all ? Oh, I forgot ! — you 
 said you changed your mind from something 
 you 'd heard." 
 
 He had turned his eyes to the fire again, 
 but without noticing as he did so that she 
 slowly moved her face, still half hidden by 
 her hand, towards him and was watching 
 him intently. 
 
 "No," he said, slowly, "nothin' I heard, 
 
140 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 somethin' I felt. It mout hev been that that 
 set me off the track. It kem to me all of a 
 sudden that he might be sittin* thar calm 
 and peaceful like ez I might be here, hevin' 
 forgot all about her and his trouble, and 
 here was me goin' to drop down upon him 
 and start it all fresh agin. It looked a 
 little like persecution — yes, like persecution. 
 I got rid of it, sayin' to myself it was busi- 
 ness. But I 'd got off the road meantime, 
 and had to find it again, and whenever I got 
 back to the track and was pointed for his 
 house, it all seemed to come back on me and 
 set me off agin. When that had happened 
 three times, I turned round and started for 
 home." 
 
 " And do you mean to say," said the lady, 
 with a discordant laugh, " that you believe, 
 because you did n't go there and break the 
 news, that nobody else will ? That he won't 
 hear of it from the first man he meets ? " 
 
 " He don't meet any one up where he 
 lives, and only Briggs and myself know it, 
 and I '11 see that Briggs don't tell. But it 
 was mighty queer this whole thing comin' 
 upon me suddenly, — was n't it ? " 
 
 " Very queer," replied the lady ; " for " — ? 
 with the same metallic laugh — "you don't 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 141 
 
 seem to be given to this kind of weakness 
 with your own family." 
 
 If there was any doubt as to the sarcastic 
 suggestion of her voice, there certainly could 
 be none in the wicked glitter of her eyes 
 fixed upon his face under her shading hand. 
 But haply he seemed unconscious of both, 
 and even accepted her statement without an 
 ulterior significance. 
 
 " Yes," he said, communingly, to the glar- 
 ing embers of the hearth, " it must have been 
 a special revelation." 
 
 There was something so fatuous and one- 
 idea'd in his attitude and expression, so mon- 
 strously inconsistent and inadequate to what 
 was going on around him, and so hopelessly 
 stupid — if a mere simulation — that the 
 angry suspicion that he was acting a part 
 slowly faded from her eyes, and a hysterical 
 smile began to twitch her set lips. She still 
 gazed at him. The wind howled drearily in 
 the chimney ; all that was economic, grim, 
 and cheerless in the room seemed to gather 
 as flitting shadows around that central fig- 
 ure. Suddenly she arose with such a quick 
 rustling of her skirts that he lifted his eyes 
 with a start ; for she was standing immedi- 
 ately before him, her hands behind her, her 
 
142 ^ NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 handsome, audacious face bent smilingly for* 
 ward, and her bold, brilliant eyes within a 
 foot of his own. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Hays, do you want to know 
 what this warning or special revelation of 
 yours really meant ? Well, it had nothing 
 whatever to do with that man on the summit. 
 No. The whole interest, gist, and meaning 
 of it was simply this, that you should turn 
 round and come straight back here and " — 
 she drew back and made him an exagger- 
 ated theatrical curtsey — " have the supreme 
 pleasure of making my acquaintance ! That 
 was all. And now, as you 5 ve had it, in five 
 minutes I must be off. You ? ve offered me 
 already your horse and sleigh to go to the 
 summit. I accept it and go ! Good-by ! 99 
 
 He knew nothing of a woman's coquettish 
 humor ; he knew still less of that mimic 
 stage from which her present voice, gesture, 
 and expression were borrowed ; he had no 
 knowledge of the burlesque emotions which 
 that voice, gesture, and expression were sup- 
 posed to portray, and finally and fatally he 
 was unable to detect the feminine hysteric 
 jar and discord that underlay it all. He 
 thought it was strong, characteristic, and 
 real, and accepted it literally. He rose. 
 
A NIGHT AT "BAYS." 
 
 143 
 
 " Ef you allow you can't stay, why I '11 go 
 and get the horse. I reckon he ain't bin put 
 up yet." 
 
 " Do, please." 
 
 He grimly resumed his coat and hat and 
 disappeared through the passage into the 
 kitchen, whence, a moment later, Zuleika 
 came flying. 
 
 " Well, what has happened ? " she said 
 eagerly. 
 
 " It 's all right," said the woman quickly, 
 " though he knows nothing yet. But I 've 
 got things fixed generally, so that he '11 be 
 quite ready to have it broken to him by this 
 time to-morrow. But don't you say any- 
 thing till I 've seen Jack and you hear from 
 him. Remember." 
 
 She spoke rapidly ; her cheeks were quite 
 glowing from some sudden energy ; so were 
 Zuleika's with the excitement of curiosity. 
 Presently the sound of sleigh-bells again 
 filled the room. It was Hays leading the 
 horse and sleigh to the door, beneath a sky 
 now starlit and crisp under a northeast 
 wind. The fair stranger cast a significant 
 glance at Zuleika, and whispered hurriedly, 
 "You know he must not come with me. 
 You must keep him here." 
 
144 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 She ran to the door muffled and hooded, 
 leaped into the sleigh, and gathered up the 
 reins. 
 
 "But you cannot go alone," said Hays, 
 with awkward courtesy. " I was kalkila- 
 tin' " — 
 
 "You're too tired to go out again, dad, 5 ' 
 broke in Zuleika's voice quickly. " You 
 ain't fit ; you 're all gray and krinkly now, 
 like as when you had one of your last spells. 
 She '11 send the sleigh back to-morrow." 
 
 " I can find my way," said the lady 
 briskly ; M there 's only one turn off, I be- 
 lieve, and that " — 
 
 " Leads to the stage station three miles 
 west. You need n't be afraid of gettin' off 
 on that, for you '11 likely see the down stage 
 crossin' your road ez soon ez you get clear 
 of the ranch." 
 
 " Good-night," said the lady. An arc of 
 white spray sprang before the forward run- 
 ner, and the sleigh vanished in the road. 
 
 Father and daughter returned to the of- 
 fice. 
 
 " You did n't get to know her, dad, did 
 ye ? " queried Zuleika. 
 
 " No," responded Hays gravely, " except 
 to see she wasn't no backwoods or moun- 
 
A NIGHT AT "BAYS." 
 
 145 
 
 taineering sort. Now, there's the kind o£ 
 woman, Zuly, as knows her own mind and 
 yours too ; that a man iike your brother 
 Jack oughter pick out when he marries." 
 
 Zuleika's face beamed behind her father. 
 " You ain't goin' to sit up any longer, dad ? " 
 she said, as she noticed him resume his seat 
 by the fire. " It 's gettin' late, and you look 
 mighty tuckered out with your night's 
 work." 
 
 "Do you know what she said, Zuly?" 
 returned her father, after a pause, which 
 turned out to have been a long, silent laugh. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " She said," he repeated slowly, " that 
 she reckoned I came back here to-night to 
 have the pleasure of her acquaintance ! " He 
 brought his two hands heavily down upon 
 his knees, rubbing them down deliberately 
 towards his ankles, and leaning forward with 
 his face to the fire and a long-sustained 
 smile of complete though tardy apprecia- 
 tion. 
 
 He was still .n this attitude when Zuleika 
 left him. The wind crooned over him confi- 
 dentially, but he still sat there, given up ap- 
 parently to some posthumous enjoyment of 
 his visitor's departing witticism. 
 
146 A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 It was scarcely daylight when Zuleika, 
 while dressing, heard a quick tapping upon 
 her shutter. She opened it to the scared 
 and bewildered face of her brother. 
 
 " What happened with her and father last 
 night ? " he said hoarsely. 
 
 " Nothing — why ? " 
 
 " Head that. It was brought to me half 
 an hour ago by a man in dad's sleigh, from 
 the stage station." 
 
 He handed her a crumpled note with 
 trembling fingers. She took it and read : — 
 
 " The game 's up and I 'm out of it ! Take 
 my advice and clear out of it too, until you 
 can come back in better shape. Don't be 
 such a fool as to try and follow me. Your 
 father is n't one, and that 's where you 've 
 slipped up." 
 
 "He shall pay for it, whatever he's 
 done," said her brother with an access of 
 wild passion. " Where is he ?" 
 
 " Why, Jack, you would n't dare to see 
 him now? " 
 
 "Wouldn't I?" He turned and ran, 
 convulsed with passion, before the windows 
 towards the front of the house. Zuleika 
 slipped out of her bedroom and ran to her 
 father's room. He was not there. Already 
 
A NIGHT AT "HAYS." 
 
 147 
 
 she could hear her brother hammering fran- 
 tically against the locked front door. 
 
 The door of the office was partly open. 
 Her father was still there. Asleep ? Yes, 
 for he had apparently sunk forward before 
 the cold hearth. But the hands that he had 
 always been trying to warm were colder than 
 the hearth or ashes, and he himself never 
 again spoke nor stirred, 
 
 • • • . • . . O • 
 
 It was deemed providential by the neigh- 
 bors that his youngest and favorite son, 
 alarmed by news of his father's failing 
 health, had arrived from the Atlantic States 
 just at the last moment. But it was thought 
 singular that after the division of the prop- 
 erty he entirely abandoned the Ranch, and 
 that even pending the division his beautiful 
 but fastidious Eastern bride declined to visit 
 it with her husband* 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN. 1 
 
 It was growing dark, and the Sonora 
 trail was becoming more indistinct before 
 me at every step. The difficulty had in- 
 creased over the grassy slope, where the 
 overflow from some smaller watercourse 
 above had worn a number of diverging gul- 
 lies so like the trail as to be un distinguish- 
 able from it. Unable to determine which 
 was the right one, I threw the reins over the 
 mule's neck and resolved to trust to that 
 superior animal's sagacity, of which I had 
 heard so much. But I had not taken into 
 account the equally well-known weaknesses of 
 sex and species, and Chu Chu had already 
 shown uncontrollable signs of wanting her 
 own way. Without a moment's hesitation, 
 feeling the relaxed bridle, she lay down and 
 rolled over. 
 
 In this perplexity the sound of horse's 
 hoofs ringing out of the rocky canon beyond 
 was a relief, even if momentarily embarrass- 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." 
 
 149 
 
 ing. An instant afterwards a horse and 
 rider appeared cantering round the hill on 
 what was evidently the lost trail, and pulled 
 up as I succeeded in forcing Chu Chu to her 
 legs again. 
 
 44 Is that the trail from Sonora ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes ; " but with a critical glance at the 
 mule, "I reckon you ain't going thar to* 
 night." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 44 It's a matter of eighteen miles, and 
 most of it a blind trail through the woods 
 after you take the valley." 
 
 44 Is it worse than this ? " 
 
 44 What 's the matter with this trail ? Ye 
 ain't expecting a racecourse or a shell road 
 over the foothills — are ye ? " 
 
 44 No. Is there any hotel where I can 
 stop?" 
 
 44 Nary." 
 
 44 Nor any house ? " 
 44 No." 
 
 44 Thank you. Good-night." 
 
 He had already passed on, when he halted 
 again and turned in his saddle. 44 Look yer. 
 Just a spell over yon canon y.e '11 find a patch 
 o' buckeyes ; turn to*the right and ye '11 see 
 a trail. That '11 take ye to a shanty. You 
 ask if it 's Johnson's." 
 
150 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 "Who 's Johnson?" 
 
 " 1 am. You ain't lookin' for Vanderbilt 
 or God Almighty up here, are you ? Well, 
 then, you hark to me, will you ? You say 
 to my old woman to give you supper and a 
 shakedown somewhar to-night. Say / sent 
 you. So long." 
 
 He was gone before I could accept or 
 decline. An extraordinary noise proceeded 
 from Chu Chu, not unlike a suppressed 
 chuckle. I looked sharply at her ; she 
 coughed affectedly, and, with her head and 
 neck stretched to their greatest length, ap- 
 peared to contemplate her neat little off fore 
 shoe with admiring abstraction. But as 
 soon as I had mounted she set off abruptly, 
 crossed the rocky canon, apparently sighted 
 the patch of buckeyes of her own volition, 
 and without the slightest hesitation found 
 the trail to the right, and in half an hour 
 stood before the shanty. 
 
 It was a log cabin with an additional 
 " lean-to " of the same material, roofed with 
 bark, and on the other side a larger and 
 more ambitious " extension " built of rough, 
 unplaned, and unpainted redwood boards, 
 lightly shingled. The " lean-to " was evi- 
 dently used as a kitchen, and the central 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN. 11 151 
 
 cabin as a living-room. The barking of a 
 dog as I approached called four children of 
 different sizes to the open door, where al- 
 ready an enterprising baby was feebly essay- 
 ing to crawl over a bar of wood laid across 
 the threshold to restrain it. 
 
 " Is this Johnson's house ? " 
 
 My remark was really addressed to the 
 eldest, a boy of apparently nine or ten, but 
 I felt that my attention was unduly fasci- 
 nated by the baby, who at that moment had 
 toppled over the bar, and was calmly eyeing 
 me upside down, while silently and heroi- 
 cally suffocating in its petticoats. The boy 
 disappeared without replying, but presently 
 returned with a taller girl of fourteen or 
 fifteen. I was struck with the way that, as 
 she reached the door, she passed her hands 
 rapidly over the heads of the others as if 
 counting them, picked up the baby, reversed 
 it, shook out its clothes, and returned it to 
 the inside, without even looking at it. The 
 act was evidently automatic and habitual, 
 
 I repeated my question timidly. 
 
 Yes, it was Johnson's, but he had just 
 gone to King's Mills. I replied, hurriedly, 
 that I knew it, — that I had met him be- 
 yond the canon. As I had lost my way and 
 
152 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 could n't get to Sonora to-night, he had been 
 good enough to say that I might stay there 
 until morning. My voice was slightly raised 
 for the benefit of Mr, Johnson's "old wo- 
 man," who, I had no doubt, was inspecting 
 me furtively from some corner. 
 
 The girl drew the children away, except 
 the boy. To him she said simply, " Show 
 the stranger whar to stake out his mule, 
 5 Dolphus," and disappeared in the " exten- 
 sion " without another word. I followed my 
 little guide, who was perhaps more actively 
 curious, but equally unresponsive. To my 
 various questions he simply returned a smile 
 of exasperating vacuity. But he never took 
 his eager eyes from me, and I was satisfied 
 that not a detail of my appearance escaped 
 him. Leading the way behind the house to 
 a little wood, whose only "clearing" had 
 been effected by decay or storm, he stood 
 silently apart while I picketed Chu Chu, 
 neither offering to assist me nor opposing 
 any interruption to my survey of the local- 
 ity. There was no trace of human cultiva- 
 tion in the surroundings of the cabin ; the 
 wilderness still trod sharply on the heels 
 of the pioneer's fresh footprints, and even 
 seemed to obliterate them. For a few yards 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN:' 
 
 153 
 
 around the actual dwelling there was an un- 
 savory fringe of civilization in the shape of 
 cast-off clothes, empty bottles, and tin cans, 
 and the adjacent thorn and elder bushes 
 blossomed un wholesomely with bits of torn 
 white paper and bleaching dish-cloths. This 
 hideous circle never widened ; Nature always 
 appeared to roll back the intruding debris ; 
 no bird nor beast carried it away ; no ani- 
 mal ever forced the' uncleanly barrier ; civil- 
 ization remained grimly trenched in its own 
 exuvia. The old terrifying girdle of fire 
 around the hunter's camp was not more 
 deterring to curious night prowlers than this 
 coarse and accidental outwork. 
 
 When I regained the cabin I found it 
 empty, the doors of the lean-to and extension 
 closed, but there was a stool set before a rude 
 table, upon which smoked a tin cup of coffee, 
 a tin dish of hot saleratus biscuit, and a plate 
 of fried beef. There was something odd and 
 depressing in this silent exclusion of my pres- 
 ence. Had Johnson's " old woman " from 
 some dark post of observation taken a dislike 
 to my appearance, or was this churlish with- 
 drawal a peculiarity of Sierran hospitality ? 
 Or was Mrs. J ohnson young and pretty, and 
 hidden under the restricting ban of John- 
 
154 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN 1 ' 
 
 son's jealousy, or was she a deformed crip- 
 ple, or even a bedridden crone ? From the 
 extension at times came a murmur of voices, 
 but never the accents of adult womanhood. 
 The gathering darkness, relieved only by a 
 dull glow from the smouldering logs in the 
 adobe chimney, added to my loneliness. In 
 the circumstances I knew I ought to have 
 put aside the repast and given myself up to 
 gloomy and pessimistic reflection ; but Na- 
 ture is often inconsistent, and in that keen 
 mountain air, I grieve to say, my physical 
 and moral condition was not in that perfect 
 accord always indicated by romancers. I 
 had an appetite and I gratified it ; dyspepsia 
 and ethical reflections might come later. I 
 ate the saleratus biscuit cheerfully, and was 
 meditatively finishing my coffee when a 
 gurgling sound from the rafters above at- 
 tracted my attention. I looked up; under 
 the overhang of the bark roof three pairs of 
 round eyes were fixed upon me. They be- 
 longed to the children I had previously seen, 
 who, in the attitude of Raphael's cherubs, 
 had evidently been deeply interested spec- 
 tators of my repast. As our eyes met an 
 inarticulate giggle escaped the lips of the 
 youngest. 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 155 
 
 I never could understand why the shy 
 amusement of children over their elders is 
 not accepted as philosophically by its object 
 as when it proceeds from an equal. We 
 fondly believe that when Jones or Brown 
 laughs at us it is from malice, ignorance, 
 or a desire to show his superiority, but there 
 is always a haunting suspicion in our minds 
 that these little critics really see something 
 in us to laugh at. I, however, smiled affably 
 in return, ignoring any possible grotesque- 
 ness in my manner of eating in private. 
 
 " Come here, J ohnny," I said blandly. 
 
 The two elder ones, a girl and a boy, dis- 
 appeared instantly, as if the crowning joke 
 ot this remark was too much for them. 
 From a scraping and kicking against the log 
 wall I judged that they had quickly dropped 
 to the ground outside. The younger one, 
 the giggler, remained fascinated, but ready 
 to fly at a moment's warning. 
 
 "Come here, Johnny, boy," I repeated 
 gently. " I want you to go to your mother, 
 please, and tell her " — 
 
 But here the child, who had been working 
 its face convulsively, suddenly uttered a lu- 
 gubrious howl and disappeared also. I ran 
 to the front door and looked out in time to 
 
156 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN. 1 * 
 
 see the tallest girl, wlio had received me, 
 walking away with it under her arm, pushing 
 the boy ahead of her and looking back over 
 her shoulder, not unlike a youthful she-bear 
 conducting her cubs from danger. She dis- 
 appeared at the end of the extension, where 
 there was evidently another door. 
 
 It was very extraordinary. It was not 
 strange that I turned back to the cabin with 
 a chagrin and mortification which for a mo- 
 ment made me entertain the wild idea of 
 saddling Chu Chu, and shaking the dust of 
 that taciturn house from my feet. But the 
 ridiculousness of such an act, to say nothing 
 of its ingratitude, as quickly presented itself 
 to me. Johnson had offered me only food 
 and shelter ; I could have claimed no more 
 from the inn I had asked him to direct me 
 to. I did not reenter the house, but, light- 
 ing my last cigar, began to walk gloomily 
 up and down the trail. With the outcoming 
 of the stars it had grown lighter ; through 
 a wind opening in the trees I could see the 
 heavy bulk of the opposite mountain, and 
 beyond it a superior crest denned by a red 
 line of forest fire, which, however, cast no 
 reflection on the surrounding earth or sky. 
 Faint woodland currents of air, still warm 
 
JOHNSON'S 11 OLD WOMAN.'* 157 
 
 from the afternoon sun, stirred the leaves 
 around me with long-drawn aromatic breaths. 
 But these in time gave way to the steady 
 Sierran night wind sweeping down from the 
 higher summits, and rocking the tops of the 
 tallest pines, yet leaving the tranquillity of 
 the dark lower aisles unshaken. It was very 
 quiet ; there was no cry nor call of beast or 
 bird in the darkness ; the long rustle of the 
 tree-tops sounded as faint as the far-off wash 
 of distant seas. Nor did the resemblance 
 cease there ; the close-set files of the pines 
 and cedars, stretching in illimitable ranks to 
 the horizon, were filled with the immeasur- 
 able loneliness of an ocean shore. In this 
 vast silence I began to think I understood 
 the taciturnity of the dwellers in the solitary 
 cabin. 
 
 When I returned, however, I was sur- 
 prised to find the tallest girl standing by the 
 door. As I approached she retreated before 
 me, and pointing to the corner where a com- 
 mon cot bed had been evidently just put up, 
 said, " Ye can turn in thar, only ye '11 have 
 to rouse out early when 'Dolphus does the 
 chores," and was turning towards the exten- 
 sion again, when I stopped her almost ap- 
 pealingly. 
 
158 JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN" 
 
 " One moment, please. Can I see your 
 mother ? " 
 
 She stopped and looked at me with a sin- 
 gular expression. Then she said sharply : — 
 
 " You know, fust rate, she 's dead." 
 
 She was turning away again, but I think 
 she must have seen my concern in my face, 
 for she hesitated. "But," I said quickly, 
 " I certainly understood your father, that is, 
 Mr. Johnson," I added, interrogatively, " to 
 say that — that I was to speak to " — 1 
 did n't like to repeat the exact phrase — " his 
 wife" 
 
 " I don't know what he was playin' ye 
 for," she said shortly, " Mar has been dead 
 mor 'n a year." 
 
 " But," I persisted, " is there no grown- 
 up woman here ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Then who takes care of you and the 
 children? " 
 "I do." 
 
 " Yourself and your father — eh ? " 
 
 " Dad ain't here two days running, and 
 then on'y to sleep." 
 
 " And you take the entire charge of the 
 house ? " 
 
 " Yes, and the log tallies." 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." 159 
 
 "The log tallies?" 
 
 "Yes; keep count and measure the logs 
 that go by the slide." 
 
 It flashed upon me that I had passed the 
 slide or declivity on the hillside, where logs 
 were slipped down into the valley, and I in- 
 ferred that Johnson's business was cutting 
 timber for the mill. 
 
 "But you're rather young for all this 
 work," I suggested. 
 
 " I 'm goin' on sixteen," she said gravely. 
 
 Indeed, for the matter of that, she might 
 have been any age. Her face, on which sun- 
 burn took the place of complexion, was al- 
 ready hard and set. But on a nearer view 
 I was struck with the fact that her eyes, 
 which were not large, were almost indistin- 
 guishable from the presence of the most sin- 
 gular eyelashes I had ever seen. Intensely 
 black, intensely thick, and even tangled in 
 their profusion, they bristled rather than 
 fringed her eyelids, obliterating everything 
 but the shining black pupils beneath, which 
 were like certain lustrous hairy mountain 
 berries. It was this woodland suggestion 
 that seemed to uncannily connect her with 
 the locality. I went on playfully : — 
 
 "That's not very old — but tell me — 
 
160 JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN:* 
 
 does your father, or did your father, ever 
 speak of you as his 6 old woman ? ' " 
 
 She nodded. " Then you thought I was 
 mar ? " she said, smiling. 
 
 It was such a relief to see her worn face 
 relax its expression of pathetic gravity — al- 
 though this operation quite buried her eyes 
 in their black thickest hedge again — that I 
 continued cheerfully : " It was n't much of a 
 mistake, considering all you do for the house 
 and family." 
 
 " Then you did n't tell Billy ' to go and be 
 dead in the ground with mar,' as he 'lows 
 you did ? " she said half suspiciously, yet 
 trembling on the edge of a smile. 
 
 No, I had not, but I admitted that my 
 asking him to go to his mother might have 
 been open to this dismal construction by a 
 sensitive infant mind. She seemed mollified, 
 and again turned to go. 
 
 " Good-night, Miss — you know your fa- 
 ther did n't tell me your real name," I said. 
 
 " Karline ! " 
 
 " Good-night, Miss Karline." 
 I held out my hand. 
 
 She looked at it and then at me through 
 her intricate eyelashes. Then she struck it 
 aside briskly, but not unkindly, said " Quit 
 
JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN' 1 161 
 
 foolin', now," as she might have said to one 
 of the children, and disappeared through the 
 inner door. Not knowing whether to be 
 amused or indignant, I remained silent a 
 moment. Then I took a turn outside in the 
 increasing darkness, listened to the now hur- 
 rying wind over the tree-tops, reentered the 
 cabin, closed the door, and went to bed. 
 
 But not to sleep. Perhaps the responsi- 
 bility towards these solitary children, which 
 Johnson had so lightly shaken off, devolved 
 upon me as I lay there, for I found my- 
 self imagining a dozen emergencies of their 
 unprotected state, with which the elder girl 
 could scarcely grapple. There was little to 
 fear from depredatory man or beast — des- 
 peradoes of the mountain trail never stooped 
 to ignoble burglary, bear or panther seldom 
 approached a cabin — but there was the 
 chance of sudden illness, fire, the accidents 
 that beset childhood, to say nothing of the 
 narrowing moral and mental effect of their 
 isolation at that tender age. It was scanda- 
 lous in J ohnson to leave them alone. 
 
 In the silence I found I could hear quite 
 distinctly the sound of their voices in the 
 extension, and it was evident that Caroline 
 was putting them to bed. Suddenly a voice 
 
162 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN:' 
 
 was uplifted — her own ! She began to sing 
 and the others to join her. It was the repe- 
 tition of a single verse of a well-known lugu- 
 brious negro melody. "All the world am 
 sad and dreary," wailed Caroline, in a high 
 head-note, " everywhere I roam." " Oh, dark- 
 ieth," lisped the younger girl in response, 
 " how my heart growth weary, far from the 
 old folkth at h-o-o-me." This was repeated 
 two or three times before the others seemed 
 to get the full swing of it, and then the lines 
 rose and fell sadly and monotonously in the 
 darkness. I don't know why, but I at once 
 got the impression that those motherless 
 little creatures were under a vague belief 
 that their performance was devotional, and 
 was really filling the place of an evening 
 hymn. A brief and indistinct kind of reci- 
 tation, followed by a dead silence, broken 
 only by the slow creaking of new timber, as 
 if the house were stretching itself to sleep 
 too, confirmed my impression. Then all be- 
 came quiet again. 
 
 But I was more wide awake than before. 
 Finally I rose, dressed myself, and dragging 
 my stool to the fire, took a book from my 
 knapsack, and by the light of a guttering 
 candle, which I discovered in a bottle in the 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN: 9 163 
 
 corner of the hearth, began to read. Pres- 
 ently I fell into a doze. How long I slept 
 I could not tell, for it seemed to me that a 
 dreamy consciousness of a dog barking at 
 last forced itself upon me so strongly that 
 I awoke. The barking appeared to come 
 from behind the cabin in the direction of the 
 clearing where I had tethered Chu Chu. I 
 opened the door hurriedly, ran round the 
 cabin towards the hollow, and was almost at 
 once met by the bulk of the frightened Chu 
 Chu, plunging out of the darkness towards 
 me, kept only in check by her reata in the 
 hand of a blanketed shape slowly advancing 
 with a gun over its shoulder out of the hol- 
 low. Before I had time to recover from my 
 astonishment I was thrown into greater con- 
 fusion by recognizing the shape as none other 
 than Caroline ! 
 
 Without the least embarrassment or even 
 self - consciousness of her appearance, she 
 tossed the end of the reata to me with the 
 curtest explanation as she passed by. Some 
 prowling bear or catamount had frightened 
 the mule. I had better tether it before the 
 cabin away from the wind. 
 
 " But I thought wild beasts never came so 
 near," I said quickly. 
 
164 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN:' 
 
 " Mule meat 's mighty temptin'," said the 
 girl sententiously and passed on. I wanted 
 to thank her ; I wanted to say how sorry I 
 was that she had been disturbed ; I wanted 
 to compliment her on her quiet midnight 
 courage, and yet warn her against reckless- 
 ness; I wanted to know whether she had 
 been accustomed to such alarms ; and if the 
 gun she carried was really a necessity. But 
 I could only respect her reticence, and I was 
 turning away when I was struck by a more 
 inexplicable spectacle. As she neared the 
 end o£ the extension I distinctly saw the tall 
 figure of a man, moving with a certain diffi- 
 dence and hesitation that did not, however, 
 suggest any intention of concealment, among 
 the trees ; the girl apparently saw him at 
 the same moment and slightly slackened her 
 pace. Not more than a dozen feet separated 
 them. He said something that was inaudi- 
 ble to my ears, — but whether from his hesi- 
 tation or the distance I could not determine. 
 There was no such uncertainty in her reply, 
 however, which was given in her usual curt 
 , fashion : " All right. You can trapse along 
 thome now and turn in." 
 ' She turned the corner of the extension 
 and disappeared. The tall figure of the 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." 165 
 
 man wavered hesitatingly for a moment, and 
 then vanished also. But I was too much 
 excited by curiosity to accept this unsatisfac- 
 tory conclusion, and, hastily picketing Chu 
 Chu a few rods from the front door, I ran 
 after him, with an instinctive feeling that 
 he had not gone far. I was right. A few 
 paces distant he had halted in the same du- 
 bious, lingering way, " Hallo ! " I said. 
 
 He turned towards me in the like awk- 
 ward fashion, but with neither astonishment 
 nor concern. 
 
 " Come up and take a drink with me be- 
 fore you go," I said, "if you're not in a 
 hurry. I 'm alone here, and since I have 
 turned out I don't see why we might n't have 
 a smoke and a talk together." 
 
 "I dursn't." 
 
 I looked up at the six feet of strength 
 before me and repeated wonderingly, " Dare 
 not?" 
 
 " She would n't like it." He made a 
 movement with his right shoulder towards 
 the extension. 
 
 " Who?" 
 
 " Miss Karline." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " I said. " She is n't in the 
 sabin, — you won't see her. Come along." 
 
166 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN:' 
 
 He hesitated, although from what I could 
 discern of his bearded face it was weakly 
 smiling. 
 " Come." 
 
 He obeyed, following me not unlike Chu 
 Chu, I fancied, with the same sense of supe- 
 rior size and strength and a slight whitening 
 of the eye, as if ready to shy at any moment. 
 At the door he " backed." Then he entered 
 sideways. I noticed that he cleared the 
 doorway at the top and the sides only by a 
 hair's breadth. 
 
 By the light of the fire I could see that, 
 in spite of his full first growth of beard, he 
 was young, — even younger than myself, — 
 and that he was by no means bad-looking. 
 As he still showed signs of retreating at any 
 moment, I took my flask and tobacco from 
 my saddle-bags, handed them to him, pointed 
 to the stool, and sat down myself upon the 
 bed. 
 
 " You live near here? " 
 
 " Yes," he said a little abstractedly, as if 
 listening for some interruption, " at Ten Mile 
 Crossing." 
 
 "Why, that's two miles away." 
 
 " I reckon." 
 
 " Then you don't live here — on the clear- 
 ing?" 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN:' 167 
 
 « No. I b'long to the mill at 4 Ten Mile/ " 
 
 " You were on your way home ? " 
 
 "No," lie hesitated, looking at his pipe; 
 " I kinder meander round here at this time, 
 when Johnson 's away, to see if everything 's 
 goin' straight." 
 
 " I see — you 're a friend of the family." 
 
 " 'Deed no ! " He stopped, laughed, looked 
 confused, and added, apparently to his 
 pipe, " That is, a sorter friend. Not much. 
 She" — he lowered his voice as if that po- 
 tential personality filled the whole cabin — 
 " would n't like it." 
 
 " Then at night, when Johnson 's away, 
 you do sentry duty round the house ? " 
 
 "Yes, 'sentry dooty,' that's it," — he 
 seemed impressed with the suggestion — 
 " that 's it ! Sentry dooty. You 've struck 
 it, pardner." 
 
 "And how often is Johnson away ? " 
 
 44 'Bout two or three times a week on an 
 average." 
 
 44 But Miss Caroline appears to be able to 
 take care of herself. She has no fear." 
 
 44 Fear ! Fear was n't hangin' round when 
 she was born!" He paused. 44 No, sir. 
 Did ye ever look into them eyes ? " 
 
 I had n't, on account of the lashes. But 
 I did n't care to say this, and only nodded. 
 
168 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 " There ain't the created thing livin' or 
 dead, that she can't stand straight up to and 
 look at." 
 
 I wondered if he had fancied she experi- 
 enced any difficulty in standing up before 
 that innocently good-humored face, but I 
 could not resist saying : — 
 
 " Then I don't see the use of your walking 
 four miles to look after her." 
 
 I was sorry for it the next minute, for he 
 seemed to have awkwardly broken his pipe, 
 and had to bend down for a long time af- 
 terwards to laboriously pick up the smallest 
 fragments of it. At last he said, cautiously : 
 
 "Ye noticed them bits o' flaimin' round 
 the chillern's throats ? " 
 
 I remembered that I had, but was uncer- 
 tain whether it was intended as a preventive 
 of cold or a child 's idea of decoration. I 
 nodded. 
 
 " That 's their trouble. One night, when 
 old Johnson had been off for three days to 
 Coulterville, I was prowling round here and 
 I did n't git to see no one, though there was 
 a light burnin' in the shanty all night. The 
 next night I was here again, — the same light 
 twinklin', but no one about. I reckoned 
 that was mighty queer, and I jess crep' up to 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN. 11 169 
 
 the house an' listened. I heard suthin' like 
 a little cough oncet in a while, and at times 
 suthin' like a little moan. I did n't durst to 
 sing out for I knew she would n't like it, but 
 whistled keerless like, to let the chillern 
 know I was there. But it didn 't seem to 
 take. I was jess goin' off, when — darn my 
 skin ! — if I did n't come across the bucket 
 of water I 'd fetched up from the spring that 
 mornin\ standin' there full, and never taken 
 in ! When I saw that I reckoned I 'd jess 
 wade in, anyhow, and I knocked. Pooty 
 soon the door was half opened, and I saw her 
 eyes blazin' at me like them coals. Then she 
 'lowed I 'd better 6 git up and git,' and shet 
 the door to ! Then I 'lowed she might tell 
 me what was up — through the door. Then 
 she said, through the door, as how the chil- 
 lern lay all sick with that hoss-distemper, 
 diphthery. Then she 'lowed she 'd use a doc- 
 tor ef I 'd fetch him. Then she 'lowed again 
 I 'd better take the baby that had n't ketched 
 it yet along with me, and leave it where it 
 was safe. Then she passed out the baby 
 through the door all wrapped up in a blan- 
 kit like a papoose, and you bet I made tracks 
 with it. I knowed thar was n 't no good go- 
 ing to the mill, so I let out for White's, four 
 
170 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." 
 
 miles beyond, whar there was White's old 
 mother. I told her how things were pointing 
 and she lent me a hoss, and I jess rounded 
 on Doctor Green at Mountain Jim's, and 
 had him back here afore sun-up ! And then 
 I heard she wilted, — regularly played out, 
 you see, — for she had it all along wuss than 
 the lot, and never let on or whimpered ! " 
 
 " It was well you persisted in seeing her 
 that night," I said, watching the rapt ex- 
 pression of his face. He looked up quickly, 
 became conscious of my scrutiny, and dropped 
 his eyes again, smiled feebly, and drawing 
 a circle in the ashes with the broken pipe* 
 stem, said : — 
 
 " But she did n't like it, though." 
 
 I suggested, a little warmly, that if she al- 
 lowed her father to leave her alone at night 
 with delicate children, she had no right to 
 choose tvho should assist her in an emergency. 
 It struck me afterwards that this was not 
 very complimentary to him, and I added 
 hastily that I wondered if she expected some 
 young lady to be passing along the trail at 
 midnight ! But this reminded me of John- 
 son's style of argument, and I stopped. 
 
 "Yes," he said meekly, "and ef she 
 did n't keer enough for herself and her bro* 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 171 
 
 thers and sisters, she orter remember them 
 Beazeley chillern." 
 
 " Beazeley children ? " I repeated wonder- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Yes ; them two little ones, the size of 
 Mirandy ; they 're Beazeley's." 
 
 " Who is Beazeley, and what are his chil- 
 dren doing here ? " 
 
 " Beazeley up and died at the mill, and 
 she bedevilled her father to let her take his 
 two young 'uns here." 
 
 "You don't mean to say that with her 
 other work she 's taking care of other peo- 
 ple's children too ? " 
 
 " Yes, and eddicatin' them." 
 
 " Educating them ? " 
 
 " Yes ; teachin' them to read and write 
 and do sums. One of our loggers ketched 
 her at it when she was keepin' tally." 
 
 We were both silent for some moments. 
 
 " I suppose you know Johnson ? " I said 
 finally. 
 
 " Not much." 
 
 "But you call here at other times than 
 when you 're helping her ? " 
 
 u Never been in the house before." 
 
 He looked slowly around him as he spoke, 
 raising his eyes to the bare rafters above, 
 
172 JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN." 
 
 and drawing a few long breaths, as if he 
 were inhaling the aura of some unseen pres- 
 ence. He appeared so perfectly gratified 
 and contented, and I was so impressed with 
 this humble and silent absorption of the sa- 
 cred interior, that I felt vaguely conscious 
 that any interruption of it was a profana- 
 tion, and I sat still, gazing at the dying fire. 
 Presently he arose, stretched out his hand, 
 shook mine warmly, said, " I reckon I '11 
 meander along," took another long breath, 
 this time secretly, as if conscious of my eyes, 
 and then slouched sideways out of the house 
 into the darkness again, where he seemed 
 suddenly to attain his full height, and so 
 looming, disappeared. I shut the door, 
 went to bed, and slept soundly. 
 
 So soundly that when I awoke the sun 
 was streaming on my bed from the open 
 door. On the table before me my break- 
 fast was already laid. When I had dressed 
 and eaten it, struck by the silence, I went 
 to the door and looked out. 'Dolphus was 
 holding Chu Chu by the reata a few paces 
 from the cabin. 
 
 " Where 's Caroline ? " I asked. 
 
 He pointed to the woods and said: 
 u Over yon : keeping tally." 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN." 173 
 
 " Did she leave any message ? " 
 
 " Said I was to git your mule for you." 
 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 "Yes ; said you was to go." 
 
 I went, but not until I had scrawled a 
 Jew words of thanks on a leaf of my note- 
 book, which I wrapped about my last Span- 
 ish dollar, addressed it to " Miss Johnson," 
 and laid it upon the table. 
 
 It was more than a year later that in the 
 bar-room of the Mariposa Hotel a hand was 
 laid upon my sleeve. I looked up. It was 
 Johnson. 
 
 He drew from his pocket a Spanish dol- 
 lar. "I reckoned," he said, cheerfully, 
 " I 'd run again ye somewhar some time. 
 My old woman told me to give ye that when 
 I did, and say that she ' did n't keep no 
 hotel.' But she allowed she 'd keep the let- 
 ter, and has spelled it out to the chillern." 
 
 Here was the opportunity I had longed 
 for to touch Johnson's pride and affection 
 in the brave but unprotected girl. " I want 
 to talk to you about Miss Johnson," I said, 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I reckon so," he said, with an exasper- 
 ating smile. " Most fellers do. But she 
 
174 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 ain't Miss Johnson no more. She's mar- 
 ried." 
 
 " Not to that big chap over from Ten 
 Mile Mills ?" I said breathlessly. 
 
 " What 's the matter with him" said John- 
 son. " Ye did n't expect her to marry a 
 nobleman, did ye ? " 
 
 I said I did n't see why she should n't — 
 and believed that she had. 
 
THE NEW ASSISTANT AT PINE 
 CLEARING SCHOOL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The schoolmistress of Pine Clearing was 
 taking a last look around her schoolroom 
 before leaving it for the day. She might 
 have done so with pride, for the schoolroom 
 was considered a marvel of architectural 
 elegance by the citizens, and even to the or- 
 dinary observer was a pretty, villa-like struc- 
 ture, with an open cupola and overhanging 
 roof of diamond-shaped shingles and a deep 
 Elizabethan porch. But it was the monu- 
 ment of a fierce struggle between a newer 
 civilization and a barbarism of the old days, 
 which had resulted in the clearing away of 
 the pines — -and a few other things as in« 
 congruous to the new life and far less inno- 
 cent, though no less sincere. It had cost 
 the community fifteen thousand dollars, and 
 the lives of two of its citizens. 
 
178 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 Happily there was no stain of this on the 
 clean white walls, the beautifully-written gilt 
 texts, or the shining blackboard that had 
 offered no record which could not be daily 
 wiped away. And, certainly, the last person 
 in the world to suggest any reminiscences of 
 its belligerent foundation was the person of 
 the schoolmistress. Mature, thin, precise, — - 
 not pretty enough to have excited Homeric 
 feuds, nor yet so plain as to preclude certain 
 soothing graces, — she was the widow of a 
 poor Congregational minister, and had been 
 expressly imported from San Francisco to 
 squarely mark the issue between the regen- 
 erate and unregenerate life. Low-voiced, 
 gentlewomanly, with the pallor of ill-health 
 perhaps unduly accented by her mourning, 
 which was still cut modishly enough to show 
 off her spare but good figure, she was sup- 
 posed to represent the model of pious, scho- 
 lastic refinement. The Opposition — sullen 
 in ditches and at the doors of saloons, or in 
 the fields truculent as their own cattle — 
 nevertheless had lowered their crests and 
 buttoned their coats over their revolutionary 
 red shirts when she went by. 
 
 As she was stepping from the threshold, 
 she was suddenly confronted by a brisk busi- 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 177 
 
 ness-looking man, who was about to enter, 
 "Just in time to catch you, Mrs. Martin," 
 he said hurriedly; then, quickly correct- 
 ing his manifest familiarity, he added : " I 
 mean, I took the liberty of running in here 
 on my way to the stage office. That matter 
 you spoke of is all arranged. I talked it 
 over with the other trustees, wrote to Sam 
 Barstow, and he 's agreeable, and has sent 
 somebody up, and," he rapidly consulted his 
 watch, " he ought to be here now ; and I 'm 
 on my way to meet him with the other 
 trustees." 
 
 Mrs. Martin, who at once recognized her 
 visitor as the Chairman of the School Board, 
 received the abrupt information with the 
 slight tremulousness, faint increase of color, 
 and hurried breathing of a nervous woman, 
 
 44 But," she said, 44 it was only a sugges- 
 tion of mine, Mr. Sperry ; I really have no 
 right to ask — I had no idea " — 
 
 44 It 's all right, ma'am, — never you mind. 
 We put the case square to Barstow. We 
 allowed that the school was getting too large 
 for you to tackle, — I mean, you know, to 
 superintend single-handed; and that these 
 Pike County boys they 're running in on us 
 are a little too big and sassy for a lady like 
 
178 
 
 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 you to lasso and throw down — I mean, to 
 sorter control — don't you see ? But, bless 
 you, Sam Barstow saw it all in a minit ! He 
 just jumped at it. I 've got his letter here 
 — hold on " — he hastily produced a letter 
 from his pocket, glanced over it, suddenly 
 closed it again with embarrassed quickness, 
 yet not so quickly but that the woman's 
 quicker eyes were caught, and nervously 
 fascinated by the expression " I 'm d — d " 
 in a large business hand — and said in awk- 
 ward haste, " No matter about reading it 
 now — keep you too long — but he 's agreed 
 all right, you know. Must go now — they '11 
 be waiting. Only I thought I 'd drop in 
 a-passin', to keep you posted ; " and, taking 
 off his hat, he began to back from the porch. 
 
 " Is — is — this gentleman who is to as- 
 sist me — a — a mature professional man — 
 or a — graduate?" hesitated Mrs. Martin, 
 with a faint smile. 
 
 " Don't really know — I reckon Sam — 
 Mr. Barstow — fixed that all right. Must 
 really go now ; " and, still holding his hat 
 in his hand as a polite compromise for his 
 undignified haste, he fairly ran off. 
 
 Arrived at the stage office, he found the 
 two other trustees awaiting him, and the 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 179 
 
 still more tardy stage-coach. One, a large, 
 smooth-faced, portly man, was the Presby- 
 terian minister ; the other, of thinner and 
 more serious aspect, was a large mill-owner, 
 
 " I presume," said the Rev. Mr. Peaseley, 
 slowly, " that as our good brother Barstow, 
 in the urgency of the occasion, has, to some 
 extent, anticipated our functions in enga- 
 ging this assistant, he is — a — a — ■ satisfied 
 with his capacity? " 
 
 " Sam knows what he 's about," said the 
 mill-owner cheerfully, " and as he 's regu- 
 larly buckled down to the work here, and 
 will go his bottom dollar on it, you can 
 safely leave things to him." 
 
 " He certainly has exhibited great zeal," 
 said the reverend gentleman patronizingly. 
 
 " Zeal," echoed Sperry enthusiastically, 
 " zeal ? Why, he runs Pine Clearing as he 
 runs his bank and his express company in 
 Sacramento, and he 's as well posted as if he 
 were here ail the time. Why, look here ; " 
 he nudged the mill-owner secretly, and, as 
 the minister's back was momentarily turned, 
 pulled out the letter he had avoided reading 
 to Mrs. Martin, and pointed to a paragraph. 
 "I'll be d— d, " said the writer, " but I '11 
 have peace and quietness at Pine Clearing, if 
 
180 
 
 THE NE W ASSISTANT 
 
 I have to wipe out or make over the whole 
 Pike County gang. Draw on me for a piano 
 if you think Mrs. Martin can work it. But 
 don't say anything to Peaseley first, or he '11 
 want it changed for a harmonium, and that 
 lets us in for psalm-singing till you can't 
 rest. Mind ! I don't object to Church in- 
 fluence — it 's a good hold ! — but you must 
 run it with other things equal, and not let it 
 run you. I 've got the schoolhouse insured 
 for thirty thousand dollars — special rates 
 too." 
 
 The mill-owner smiled. " Sam's head is 
 level ! But," he added, " he don't say much 
 about the new assistant he 's sending." 
 
 " Only here," he says, " I reckon the man 
 I send will do all round ; for Pike County 
 has its claims as well as Boston." 
 
 " What does that mean ? " asked the mill- 
 owner. 
 
 " I reckon he means he don't want Pine 
 Clearing to get too high-toned any more 
 than he wants it too low down. He 's mighty 
 square in his averages — is Sam." 
 
 Here speculation was stopped by the rapid 
 oncoming of the stage-coach in all the impo- 
 tent fury of a belated arrival. " Had to go 
 round by Montezuma to let off Jack Hill," 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 181 
 
 curtly explained the driver, as he swung 
 himself from the box, and entered the hotel 
 bar-room in company with the new express- 
 man, who had evidently taken Hill's place 
 on the box-seat. Autocratically indifferent 
 to further inquiry, he called out cheerfully : 
 " Come along, boys, and hear this yer last 
 new yarn about Sam Barstow, — it 's the 
 biggest thing out." And in another mo- 
 ment the waiting crowd, with glasses in their 
 hands, were eagerly listening to the repeti- 
 tion of the u yarn " from the new express- 
 man, to the apparent exclusion of other mat- 
 ters, mundane and practical. 
 
 Thus debarred from information, the three 
 trustees could only watch the passengers as 
 they descended, and try to identify their ex- 
 pected stranger. But in vain : the bulk of 
 the passengers they already knew, the others 
 were ordinary miners and laborers; there 
 was no indication of the new assistant among 
 them. Pending further inquiry they were 
 obliged to wait the conclusion of the express- 
 man's humorous recital. This was evidently 
 a performance of some artistic merit, depend- 
 ing upon a capital imitation of an Irishman, 
 a German Jew, and another voice, which 
 was universally recognized and applauded as 
 
182 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 being " Sam's style all over ! " But for the 
 presence of the minister, Sperry and the 
 mill-owner would have joined the enthusi- 
 astic auditors, and inwardly regretted the 
 respectable obligations of their official po- 
 sition. 
 
 When the story-teller had concluded 
 amidst a general call for more drinks, Sperry 
 approached the driver. The latter recog- 
 nizing him, turned to his companion care- 
 lessly, said, "Here 's one of 'em," and was 
 going away when Sperry stopped him. 
 
 " We were expecting a young man." 
 
 " Yes," said the driver, impatiently, " and 
 there he is, I reckon." 
 
 " We don't mean the new expressman," 
 said the minister, smiling blandly, "but a 
 young man who " — 
 
 " That ain't no new expressman," returned 
 the driver in scornful deprecation of his in- 
 terlocutor's ignorance. " He only took Hill's 
 place from Montezuma. He 's the new kid 
 reviver and polisher for that University 
 you're runnin' here. I say — you fellers 
 oughter get him to tell you that story of Sam 
 Barstow and the Chinaman. It 'd limber 
 you fellers up to hear it." 
 
 "I fear there's some extraordinary mis- 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 183 
 
 take here," said Mr. Peaseley, with a chilling 
 Christian smile. 
 
 " Not a bit of it. He 's got a letter from 
 Sam for one of ye. Yere, Charley — what *s 
 your name ! Com yere. Yere 's all yer 
 three bosses waiting for ye." 
 
 And the supposed expressman and late 
 narrator of amusing stories came forward and 
 presented his credentials as the assistant 
 teacher of Pine Clearing. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Even the practical Mr. Sperry was takes* 
 aback. The young man before him was 
 squarely built, with broad shoulders, and a 
 certain air of muscular activity. But his face, 
 although good-humored, was remarkable for 
 offering not the slightest indication of stu- 
 dious preoccupation or mental training. A 
 large mouth, light blue eyes, a square jaw, 
 the other features being indistinctive — were 
 immobile as a mask — except that, unlike a 
 mask, they seemed to actually reflect the 
 vacuity of the mood within, instead of con- 
 cealing it. But as he saluted the trustees 
 they each had the same feeling that even 
 this expression was imported and not instinc- 
 tive. His face was clean-shaven, and his 
 hair cut so short as to suggest that a wig of 
 some kind was necessary to give it charac- 
 teristic or even ordinary human semblance. 
 His manner, self-assured yet lacking reality, 
 and his dress of respectable cut and material, 
 yet worn as if it did not belong to him, com- 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 185 
 
 pleted a picture as unlike a student or school- 
 master as could be possibly conceived. 
 
 Yet there was the letter in Mr. Peaseley's 
 hands from Barstow, introducing Mr. Charles 
 Twing as the first assistant teacher in the 
 Pine Clearing Free Academy ! 
 
 The three men looked hopelessly at each 
 other. An air of fatigued righteousness and 
 a desire to be spiritually at rest from other 
 trials pervaded Mr. Peaseley. Whether or 
 not the young man felt the evident objection 
 he had raised, he assumed a careless posi- 
 tion, with his back and elbows against the 
 bar ; but even the attitude was clearly not 
 his own. 
 
 " Are you personally known to Mr. Bar- 
 stow ? " asked Sperry, with a slight business 
 asperity. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " That is — you are quite well acquainted 
 with him?" 
 
 " If you 'd heard me gag his style a min- 
 ute ago, so that everybody here knew who it 
 was, you 'd say so." 
 
 Mr. Peaseley's eyes sought the ceiling, and 
 rested on the hanging lamp, as if nothing 
 short of direct providential interference 
 could meet the occasion. Yet, as the eyes 
 
186 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 of his brother trustees were bent on him ex- 
 pectantly, he nerved himself to say some- 
 thing. 
 
 " I suppose, Mr. — Mr. Twing, you have 
 properly understood the great — I may say, 
 very grave, intellectual, and moral responsi- 
 bilities of the work you seek to undertake — 
 and the necessity of supporting it by example, 
 by practice, by personal influence both in the 
 school and out of it. Sir, I presume, sir, 
 you feel that you are fully competent to un- 
 dertake this ? " 
 
 " I reckon he does ! " 
 
 " Who does?" 
 
 " Sam Barstow, or he would n't have se- 
 lected me. I presume " (with the slightest 
 possible and almost instinctive imitation of 
 the reverend gentleman's manner) " his head 
 is considered level." 
 
 Mr. Peaseley withdrew his eyes from the 
 ceiling. " I have," he said to his compan- 
 ions, with a pained smile, " an important 
 choir meeting to attend this afternoon. I 
 fear I must be excused." As he moved to- 
 wards the door, the others formally follow- 
 ing him, until out of the stranger's hearing, 
 he added : " I wash my hands of this. After 
 so wanton and unseemly an exhibition of 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 187 
 
 utter incompetency, and even o£ understand- 
 ing of the trust imposed upon him — upon 
 us — my conscience forbids me to interfere 
 further. But the real arbiter in this matter 
 will be — thank Heaven ! — the mistress her- 
 self. You have only to confront her at once 
 with this man. Her decision will be speedy 
 and final. For even Mr. Barstow will not 
 dare to force so outrageous a character upon 
 a delicate, refined woman, in a familiar and 
 confidential capacity." 
 
 " That 's so," said Sperry eagerly ; " she '11 
 settle it. And, of course," added the mill- 
 owner, " that will leave us out of any diffi- 
 culty with Sam." 
 
 The two men returned to the hapless 
 stranger, relieved, yet constrained by the 
 sacrifice to which they felt they were leading 
 him. It would be necessary, they said, to 
 introduce him to his principal, Mrs. Martin, 
 at once. They might still find her at the 
 schoolhouse, distant but a few steps. They 
 said little else, the stranger keeping up an 
 ostentatious whistling, and becoming more 
 and more incongruous, they thought, as they 
 neared the pretty schoolhouse. Here they 
 did find Mrs. Martin, who had, naturally, 
 lingered after the interview with Sperry. 
 
188 
 
 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 She came forward to meet them, with the 
 nervous shyness and slightly fastidious hesi- 
 tation that was her nature. They saw, or 
 fancied they saw, the same surprise and dis- 
 appointment they had themselves experienced 
 pass over her sensitive face, as she looked at 
 him ; they felt that their vulgar charge ap- 
 peared still more outrageous by contrast with 
 this delicate woman and her pretty, refined 
 surroundings ; but they saw that he enjoyed 
 it, and was even — if such a word could be 
 applied to so self-conscious a man — more at 
 ease in her presence ! 
 
 "I reckon you and me will pull together 
 very well, ma'am," he said confidently. 
 
 They looked to see her turn her back 
 upon him ; faint, or burst out crying ; but 
 she did neither, and only gazed at him 
 quietly. 
 
 " It 's a mighty pretty place you Ve got 
 here — and I like it, and if %ve can't run it, 
 I don't know who can. Only just let me 
 know what you want, ma'am, and you can 
 count on me every time." 
 
 To their profound consternation Mrs. Mar- 
 tin smiled faintly. 
 
 "It rests with you only, Mrs. Martin," 
 said Sperry quickly and significantly. " It 's 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 189 
 
 your say, you know ; you 're the only one to 
 be considered or consulted here." 
 
 " Only just say what you want me to do," 
 continued Twing, apparently ignoring the 
 trustees ; " pick out the style of job ; give 
 me a hint or two how to work it, or what 
 you 'd think would be the proper gag to 
 fetch 'em, and I 'm there, ma'am. It may 
 be new at first, but I '11 get at the business 
 of it quick enough." 
 
 Mrs* Martin smiled — this time quite per- 
 ceptibly—with the least little color in her 
 cheeks and eyes. " Then you 've had no ex- 
 perience in teaching? " she said. 
 
 « Well — no." 
 
 " You are not a graduate of any college ? " 
 " Not much." 
 
 The two trustees looked at each other. 
 Even Mr. Peaseley had not conceived such 
 a damning revelation. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Martin slowly, "per- 
 haps Mr. Twing had better come early to- 
 morroio morning and hegin." 
 
 " Begin ?" gasped Mr. Sperry in breath- 
 less astonishment. 
 
 "Certainly," said Mrs. Martin in timid 
 explanation. " If he is new to the work the 
 sooner the better." 
 
190 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 Mr. Sperry could only gaze blankly at his 
 brother official. Had they heard aright? 
 Was this the recklessness of nervous excite- 
 ment in a woman of delicate health, or had 
 the impostor cast some glamour upon her ? 
 Or was she frightened of Sam Barstow and 
 afraid to reject his candidate? The last 
 thought was an inspiration. He drew her 
 quickly aside. " One moment, Mrs. Mar- 
 tin ! You said to me an hour ago that you 
 did n't intend to have asked Mr. Barstow to 
 send you an assistant. I hope that, merely 
 because he has done so, you don't feel 
 obliged to accept this man against your 
 better judgment?" 
 
 " Oh no, " said Mrs. Martin quietly. 
 
 The case seemed hopeless. And Sperry 
 had the miserable conviction that by having 
 insisted upon Mrs. Martin's judgment be- 
 ing final they had estopped their own right 
 ±o object. But how could they have fore- 
 seen her extraordinary taste ? He, however, 
 roused himself for a last appeal. 
 
 " Mrs. Martin, " he said in a lower voice, 
 " I ought to tell you that the Reverend Mr. 
 Peaseley strongly doubts the competency of 
 that young man." 
 
 " Did n't Mr. Barstow make a selection at 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 191 
 
 your request ? " asked Mrs. Martin, with a 
 faint little nervous cough. 
 « Yes — but" — 
 
 " Then his competency only concerns me 
 — and I don't see what Mr. Peaseley has to 
 say about it." 
 
 Could he believe his senses ? There was 
 a decided flush in the woman's pale face, 
 and the first note of independence and asper- 
 ity in her voice. 
 
 That night, in the privacy of his conjugal 
 chamber, Mr. Sperry relieved his mind to 
 another of the enigmatical sex, — the stout 
 Southwestern partner of his joys and trou- 
 bles. But the result was equally unsatisfac- 
 tory. "Well, Abner," said the lady, " I 
 never could see, for all your men's praises 
 of Mrs. Martin, what that feller can see in 
 her to like ! " 
 
CHAPTER in. 
 
 Mrs. Martin was early at the school* 
 house the next morning, yet not so early but 
 that she discovered that the new assistant 
 had been there before her. This was shown 
 in some rearrangement of the school seats 
 and benches. They were placed so as to 
 form a horseshoe before her desk, and at 
 the further extremity of this semicircle was 
 a chair evidently for himself. She was a 
 little nettled at his premature action, al- 
 though admitting the utility of the change, 
 but she was still more annoyed at his ab- 
 sence at such a moment. It was nearly 
 the school hour when he appeared, to her 
 surprise, marshaling a file of some of the 
 smaller children whom he had evidently 
 picked up en route, and who were, to her 
 greater surprise, apparently on the best of 
 terms with him. " Thought I 'd better rake 
 'em in, introduce myself to 'em, and get 'em 
 to know me before school begins. Excuse 
 me," he went on hastily, " but I Ve a lot 
 
AT FINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 193 
 
 more coming up, and I 'd better make my- 
 self square with them outside" But Mrs, 
 Martin had apparently developed a certain 
 degree of stiffness since their evening's in- 
 terview. 
 
 " It seems to me quite as important, Mr, 
 Twing," she said drily, " that you should 
 first learn some of your own duties, which I 
 came here early to teach you." 
 
 "Not at all," he said cheerfully. " To- 
 day I take my seat, as I 've arranged it, you 
 see, over there with them, and watch 'em 
 go through the motions. One rehearsal 's 
 enough for me. At the same time, I can 
 chip in if necessary." And before she could 
 reply he was out of the schoolhouse again, 
 hailing the new-comers. This was done 
 with apparently such delight to the children 
 and with some evidently imported expression 
 into his smooth mask-like face, that Mrs. 
 Martin had to content herself with watching 
 him with equal curiosity. She was turning 
 away with a sudden sense of forgotten dig- 
 nity, when a shout of joyous, childish laugh- 
 ter attracted her attention to the window. 
 The new assistant, with half a dozen small 
 children on his square shoulders, walking 
 with bent back and every simulation of ad- 
 
194 THE NE W ASSISTANT 
 
 vanced senility, was evidently personating, 
 with the assistance of astonishingly distorted 
 features, the ogre of a Christmas pantomime. 
 As his eye caught hers the expression van- 
 ished, the mask-like face returned ; he set 
 the children down, and moved away. And 
 when school began, although he marshaled 
 them triumphantly to the very door, — with 
 what contortion of face or simulation of char- 
 acter she was unable to guess, — after he had 
 entered the schoolroom and taken his seat 
 every vestige of his previous facial aberra- 
 tion was gone, and only his usual stolidity 
 remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, 
 the hundred delighted little eyes before her 
 dwelt at first eagerly and hopefully upon 
 his face, but, as she had not expected, rec- 
 ognizing from the blankness of his demeanor 
 that the previous performance was intended 
 for them exclusively, the same eager eyes 
 were presently dropped again upon their 
 books in simple imitation, as if he were one 
 of themselves. Mrs. Martin breathed freely, 
 and lessons began. 
 
 Yet she was nervously conscious, mean- 
 while, of a more ill-omened occurrence. 
 This was the non-arrival of several of her 
 oldest pupils, notably, the refractory and in- 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 195 
 
 corrigible Pike County contingent to whom 
 Sperry had alluded. For the past few days 
 they had hovered on the verge of active in- 
 subordination, and had indulged in vague 
 mutterings which she had resolutely deter- 
 mined not to hear. It was, therefore, with 
 some inward trepidations, not entirely re- 
 lieved by T wing's presence, that she saw the 
 three Mackinnons and the two Hardees slouch 
 into the school a full hour after the lessons 
 had begun. They did not even excuse them- 
 selves, but were proceeding with a surly and 
 ostentatious defiance to their seats, when 
 Mrs. Martin was obliged to look up, and — 
 as the eldest Hardee filed before her — to 
 demand an explanation. The culprit ad- 
 dressed — a dull, heavy-looking youth of 
 nineteen — hesitated with an air of mingled 
 doggedness and sheepishness, and then, with- 
 out replying, nudged his companion. It was 
 evidently a preconcerted signal of rebellion, 
 for the boy nudged stopped, and, turning 
 a more intelligent, but equally dissatisfied, 
 face upon the schoolmistress, began deter- 
 minedly : — 
 
 " Wot 's our excuse for coming an hour 
 late ? Well, we ain't got none. We don't 
 call it an hour late — we don't. We call it 
 
196 * TEE NEW ASSISTAXT 
 
 the right time. We call it the right time for 
 our lessons, for we don't allow to come here 
 to sing hymns with babbies. We don't want 
 to know ' where, oh where, are the Hebrew 
 children ? ' They ain't nothin' to us Ameri- 
 cans. And we don't want any more Daniels 
 in the Lions' Den played off on us. We have 
 enough of 'em in Sunday-school. We ain't 
 hankerin' much for grammar and dictionary 
 hogwash, and we don't want no Boston parts 
 o' speech rung in on us the first thing in the 
 mo'nin'. We ain't Boston — we 're Pike 
 County — we are. We reckon to do our 
 sums, and our figgerin', and our sale and 
 barter, and our interest tables and weights 
 and measures when the time comes, and our 
 geograffy when it 's on, and our readin' and 
 writin' and the American Constitution in 
 reg'lar hours, and then we calkilate to git 
 up and git afore the po'try and the Boston 
 airs and graces come round. That 's our 
 rights and what our fathers pay school taxes 
 for 5 and we want 'em." 
 
 He stopped, looking less towards the 
 schoolmistress than to his companions, for 
 whom perhaps, after the schoolboy fashion, 
 this attitude was taken. Mrs. Martin sat, 
 quite white and self-contained, with her eyes 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 197 
 
 fixed on the frayed rim of the rebel's straw 
 hat which he still kept on his head. Then 
 she said quietly : — 
 
 " Take off your hat, sir." 
 
 The boy did not move. 
 
 " He can't, 9 ' said a voice cheerfully. 
 
 It was the new assistant. The whole 
 school faced rapidly towards him. The rebel 
 leader and his followers, who had not noticed 
 him before, stared at the interrupter, who 
 did not, however, seem to exhibit any of the 
 authority of office, but rather the comment 
 and criticism of one of themselves. " Wot 
 you mean ? " asked the boy indignantly. 
 
 " I mean you can't take off your hat be- 
 cause you 've got some things stowed away 
 in it you don't want seen," said Twing, with 
 an immovable face. 
 
 "Wot things?" exclaimed the boy an- 
 grily. Then suddenly recollecting himself, 
 he added, a Go along! You can't fool me! 
 Think you '11 make me take off my hat — 
 don't you ? " 
 
 " Well," said Twing, advancing to the 
 side of the rebel, " look here then ! " With 
 a dexterous movement and a slight struggle 
 from the boy, he lifted the hat. A half-dozen 
 apples, a bird's nest, two birds' eggs, and a 
 
198 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 fluttering half -fledged bird fell from it. A 
 wave of delight and astonishment ran along 
 the benches, a blank look of hopeless be- 
 wilderment settled upon the boy's face, and 
 the gravity of the situation disappeared for- 
 ever in the irrepressible burst of laughter, in 
 which even his brother rebels joined. The 
 smallest child who had been half-frightened, 
 half-fascinated by the bold, bad, heroic atti- 
 tude of the mutineer, was quick to see the 
 ridiculousness of that figure crowned with 
 cheap schoolboy plunder. The eloquent pro- 
 test of his wrongs was lost in the ludicrous 
 appearance of the protester. Even Mrs. 
 Martin felt that nothing she could say at 
 that moment could lift the rebellion into 
 seriousness again. But Twing was evidently 
 not satisfied. 
 
 " Beg Mrs. Martin's pardon, and say you 
 were foolin' with the boys," he said in a low 
 voice. 
 
 The discomfited rebel hesitated. 
 
 " Say it, or I '11 show what you 've got in 
 your pockets ! " said Twing in a terribly sig- 
 nificant aside. 
 
 The boy mumbled an apology to Mrs. 
 Martin, scrambled in a blank, hopeless way 
 to his seat, and the brief rebellion ignomin- 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 199 
 
 iously ended. But two things struck Mrs. 
 Martin as peculiar. She overheard the cul- 
 prit say, with bated breath and evident sin- 
 cerity, to his comrades : " Had n't nothing in 
 iny hat, anyway ! " and one of the infant class 
 was heard to complain, in a deeply-injured 
 way, that the bird's nest was his, and had 
 been " stoled " from his desk. And there 
 still remained the fact for which Twing's un- 
 doubted fascination over the children had 
 somewhat prepared her — that at recess the 
 malcontents — ■ one and all — seemed to have 
 forgiven the man who had overcome them, 
 and gathered round him with unmistakable 
 interest. All this, however, did not blind 
 her to the serious intent of the rebellion, or 
 of Twing's unaccountable assumption of her 
 prerogative. While he was still romping 
 with the children she called him in. 
 
 " I must remind you," she said, with a 
 slight nervous asperity, " that this outra- 
 geous conduct of Tom Hardee was evidently 
 deliberated and prepared by the others, and 
 cannot end in this way." 
 
 He looked at her with a face so exasper- 
 atingly expressionless that she could have 
 slapped it as if it had belonged to one of 
 the older scholars, and said, — " But it has 
 ended. It 's a dead frost." 
 
200 
 
 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 u I don't know what you mean ; and 1 
 must remind you also that in this school we 
 neither teach nor learn slang." 
 
 His immobile face changed for an instant 
 to a look of such decided admiration that she 
 felt her color rise ; but he wiped his expres- 
 sion away with his hand as if it had been 
 some artificial make-up, and said awkwardly, 
 but earnestly : — 
 
 " Excuse me — won't you ? But, look 
 here, Mrs. Martin, I found out early this 
 morning, when I was squaring myself with 
 the other children, that there was this row 
 hangin' on — in fact, that there was a sort 
 of idea that Pike County was n't having a 
 fair show — excuse me — in the running of 
 the school, and that Peaseley and Barstow 
 were a little too much on in every scene. In 
 fact, you see, it was just what Tom said." 
 
 " This is insufferable," said Mrs. Martin, 
 her eyes growing darker as her cheeks grew 
 red. " They shall go home to their parents, 
 and tell them from me " — 
 
 " That they 're all mistaken — excuse me 
 — but that's just what they Ve goiri to do. 
 I tell you, Mrs. Martin, their little game 's 
 busted — I beg pardon — but it 's all over. 
 You'll have no more trouble with them." 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 201 
 
 " And you think that just because you 
 found Tom had something in his hat, and 
 exposed him?" said Mrs. Martin scornfully. 
 
 "Torn JiadnH anything in his hat," said 
 Twing, wiping his mouth slowly. 
 
 " Nothing ? " repeated Mrs. Martin. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " But I saw you take the things out." 
 
 " That was only a trick ! He had nothing 
 except what I had up my sleeve, and forced 
 on him. He knew it, and that frightened 
 him, and made him look like a fool, and so 
 bursted up his conspiracy. There 's nothin' 
 boys are more afraid of than ridicule, or the 
 man or boy that make 'em ridiculous." 
 
 " I won't ask you if you call this fair to 
 the boy, Mr. Twing?" said Mrs. Martin 
 hotly; "but is this your idea of discipline?" 
 
 " I call it fair, because Tom knew it was 
 some kind of a trick, and was n't deceived. 
 I call it discipline if it made him do what 
 was right afterwards, and makes him afraid 
 or unwilling to do anything to offend me or 
 you again. He likes me none the worse for 
 giving him a chance of being laughed out 
 of a thing instead of being driven out of it. 
 And," he added, with awkward earnestness, 
 w if you '11 just leave all this to me, and only 
 
202 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 consider me here to take this sort of work 
 which ain't a lady's — off your hands, we '11 
 just strike our own line between the Pease- 
 leys and Pike County — and run this school 
 in spite of both." 
 
 A little mollified, a good deal puzzled, and 
 perhaps more influenced by the man's man- 
 ner than she had imagined, Mrs. Martin said 
 nothing, but let the day pass without dismiss- 
 ing the offenders. And on returning home 
 that evening she was considerably surprised 
 to receive her landlady's extravagant con- 
 gratulations on the advent of her new assist- 
 ant. " And they do say, Mrs. Martin," con- 
 tinued that lady enthusiastically, " that your 
 just setting your foot down square on that 
 Peaseley and that Barstow, both of 'em — 
 and choosing your own assistant yourself — 
 a plain young fellow with no frills and fan- 
 cies, but one that you could set about making 
 all the changes you like, was just the biggest 
 thing you ever did for Pine Clearing." 
 
 " And — they — consider him quite — 
 competent?" said Mrs. Martin, with timid 
 color and hesitating audacity. 
 
 " Competent ! You ask my Johnny." 
 
 Nevertheless, Mrs. Martin was somewhat 
 formally early at the schoolhouse the next 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 203 
 
 morning. " Perhaps," she said, with an odd 
 mixture of dignity and timidity, " we 'd bet- 
 ter, before school commences, go over the 
 lessons for the day." 
 
 "I have" he said quickly. "I told you 
 one rehearsal was enough for me." 
 
 "You mean you have looked over them?" 
 
 " Got 'em by heart. Letter perfect. 
 Want to hear me ? Listen." 
 
 She did. He had actually committed to 
 memory, and without a lapse, the entire text 
 of rules, questions, answers, and examples o£ 
 the lessons for the day. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Before a month had passed, Mr. T wing's 
 success was secure and established. So were 
 a few of the changes he had quietly insti- 4 
 tuted. The devotional singing and Scrip- 
 ture reading which had excited the discon- 
 tent of the Pike County children and their 
 parents was not discontinued, but half an 
 hour before recess was given up to some sec- 
 ular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which 
 the little ones under T wing's really wonder- 
 ful practical tuition exhibited such quick and 
 pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro 
 minstrel camp-meeting song attained suffi- 
 cient popularity to be lifted by general ac- 
 cord to promotion to the devotional exercises, 
 where it eventually ousted the objectiona- 
 ble " Hebrew children " on the question of 
 melody alone. Grammar was still taught 
 at Pine Clearing School in spite of the Har- 
 dees and Mackinnons, but Twing had man- 
 aged to import into the cognate exercises of 
 recitation a wonderful degree of enthusiasm 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 205 
 
 and excellence. Dialectical Pike County, 
 that had refused to recognize the governing 
 powers of the nominative case, nevertheless 
 came out strong in classical elocution, and 
 Tom Hardee, who had delivered his ungram- 
 matical protest on behalf of Pike County, 
 was no less strong, if more elegant, in his 
 impeachment of Warren Hastings as Ed- 
 mund Burke, with the equal sanction of his 
 parents. The trustees, Sperry and J ackson, 
 had marveled, but were glad enough to ac- 
 cept the popular verdict — only Mr. Peaseley 
 still retained an attitude of martyr-like for- 
 bearance and fatigued toleration towards the 
 new assistant and his changes. As to Mrs. 
 Martin, she seemed to accept the work of 
 Mr. Twing after his own definition of it — 
 as of a masculine quality ill-suited to a lady's 
 tastes and inclinations; but it was notice- 
 able that while she had at first repelled any 
 criticism of him whatever, she had lately 
 been given to explaining his position to her 
 friends, and had spoken of him with some- 
 what labored and ostentatious patronage. 
 Yet when they were alone together she 
 frankly found him very amusing, and his 
 presumption and vulgarity so clearly unin- 
 tentional that it no longer offended her. 
 
206 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 They were good friends without having any 
 confidences beyond the duties of the school ; 
 she had asked no further explanation of the 
 fact that he had been selected by Mr. Bar- 
 stow without reference to any special antece- 
 dent training. What his actual antecedents 
 were she had never cared to know, nor he 
 apparently to reveal ; that he had been en- 
 gaged in some other occupations of superior 
 or inferior quality would not have been re- 
 markable in a community where the principal 
 lawyer had been a soldier, and the miller a 
 doctor. The fact that he admired her was 
 plain enough to her ; that it pleased her, but 
 carried with it no ulterior thought or respon- 
 sibility, might have been equally clear to 
 others. Perhaps it was so to him. 
 
 Howbeit, this easy mutual intercourse 
 was one day interrupted by what seemed a 
 trifling incident. The piano, which Mr. Bar- 
 stow had promised, duly made its appear- 
 ance in the schoolhouse, to the delight of 
 the scholars and the gentle satisfaction of 
 Mrs. Martin, who, in addition to the rudi- 
 mentary musical instruction of the younger 
 girls, occasionally played upon it herself in 
 a prim, refined, and conscientious fashion. 
 To this, when she was alone after school 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 207 
 
 hours, she sometimes added a faint, color- 
 less voice of limited range and gentlewo- 
 manly expression. It was on one of these 
 occasions that Twing, becoming an acci- 
 dental auditor of this chaste, sad piping, was 
 not only permitted to remain to hear the end 
 of a love song of strictly guarded passion in 
 the subjunctive mood, but at the close was 
 invited to try his hand — a quick, if not a 
 cultivated one — at the instrument. He did 
 so. Like her, he added his voice. Like 
 hers, it was a love song. But there the si- 
 militude ended. Negro in dialect, illiterate 
 in construction, idiotic in passion, and pre- 
 sumably addressed to the "Rose of Ala- 
 bama," in the very extravagance of its 
 childish infatuation it might have been a 
 mockery of the schoolmistress's song but for 
 one tremendous fact ! In unrestrained feel- 
 ing, pathetic yearning, and exquisite tender- 
 ness of expression, it was unmistakably and 
 appallingly personal and sincere. It was 
 true the lips spoken of were "lubly," the 
 eyes alluded to were like " lightenin' bugs," 
 but from the voice and gestures of the 
 singer Mrs. Martin confusedly felt that they 
 were intended for hers, and even the refrain 
 that "she dressed so neat and looked so 
 
208 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 sweet" was glaringly allusive to her own 
 modish mourning. Alternately flushing and 
 paling, with a hysteric smile hovering round 
 her small reserved mouth, the unfortunate 
 gentlewoman was fain to turn to the window 
 to keep her countenance until it was con- 
 cluded. She did not ask him to repeat it, 
 nor did she again subject herself to this 
 palpable serenade, but a few days after- 
 wards, as she was idly striking the keys in 
 the interval of a music lesson, one of her 
 little pupils broke out, " Why, Mrs. Martin, 
 if yo ain't a pickin' out that pow'ful pretty 
 tune that Mr. Twing sings ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, when Twing, a week or two 
 later, suggested that he might sing the same 
 song as a solo at a certain performance to 
 be given by the school children in aid of 
 a local charity, she drily intimated that it 
 was hardly of a character to suit the enter- 
 tainment. " But," she added, more gently, 
 " you recite so well ; why not give a recita- 
 tion?" 
 
 He looked at her with questioning and 
 troubled eyes, — the one expression he 
 seemed to have lately acquired. " But that 
 would be in public 1 There '11 be a lot of 
 people there," he said doubtfully. 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 209 
 
 A little amused at this first apparent sign 
 of a wanfc of confidence in himself, she said, 
 with a reassuring smile, " So much the bet- 
 ter, — you do it really too well to have it 
 thrown away entirely on children." 
 
 " Do you wish it ? " he said suddenly. 
 
 Somewhat confused, but more irritated by 
 his abruptness, she replied, " Why not ? " 
 But when the day came, and before a 
 crowded audience, in which there was a fair 
 sprinkling of strangers, she regretted her 
 rash suggestion. For when the pupils had 
 gone through certain calisthenic exercises — 
 admirably taught and arranged by him — 
 and "spoken their pieces," he arose, and ? 
 fixing his eyes on her, began Othello's de- 
 fense before the Duke and Council. Here, 
 as on the previous occasion, she felt herself 
 personally alluded to in his account of his 
 wooing. Desdemona, for some occult rea- 
 son, vicariously appeared for her in the un- 
 warrantable picture of his passion, and to 
 this was added the absurd consciousness 
 which she could not put aside that the audi- 
 ence, following with enthusiasm his really 
 strong declamation, was also following his 
 suggestion and adopting it. Yet she was 
 also conscious, and, as she thought, as incon- 
 
210 
 
 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 sistently, of being pleased and even proud 
 of his success. At the conclusion the ap- 
 plause was general, and a voice added with 
 husky admiration and familiarity : — 
 
 " Brayvo, Johnny Walker ! " 
 
 Twing's face became suddenly white as a 
 Pierrot mask. There was a dead silence, in 
 which the voice continued, " Give us 6 Sugar 
 in the Gourd,' Johnny.'' 
 
 A few hisses, and cries of " Hush ! " " Put 
 him out ! " followed. Mrs. Martin raised 
 her eyes quickly to where her assistant had 
 stood bowing his thanks a moment before. 
 He was gone ! 
 
 More concerned than she cared to confess, 
 vaguely fearful that she was in some way 
 connected with his abrupt withdrawal, and 
 perhaps a little remorseful that she had al- 
 lowed her personal feelings to interfere with 
 her frank recognition of his triumph, she 
 turned back to the schoolroom, after the 
 little performers and their audience had de- 
 parted, in the hope that he might return. 
 It was getting late, the nearly level rays of 
 the sun were lying on the empty benches at 
 the lower end of the room, but the desk 
 where she sat with its lid raised was in deep 
 shadow. Suddenly she heard his voice in a 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL. 211 
 
 rear hall, but it was accompanied by an- 
 other's, — the same voice which had inter* 
 rupted the applause. Before she could either 
 withdraw, or make herself known, the two 
 men had entered the room, and were passing 
 slowly through it. She understood at once 
 that Twing had slipped out into a janitor's 
 room in the rear, where he had evidently 
 forced an interview and explanation from 
 his interrupter, and now had been waiting 
 for the audience to disperse before emerg- 
 ing by the front door. They had evidently 
 overlooked her in the shadow. 
 
 44 But," said the stranger, as if following 
 an aggrieved line of apology, " if Barstow 
 knew who you were, and what you 'd done, 
 and still thought you good enough to rastle 
 round here and square up them Pike County 
 fellers and them kids — what in thunder do 
 you care if the others do find you out, as 
 long as Barstow sticks to you ? " 
 
 44 1 've told you why, Dick," returned 
 Twing gloomily. 
 
 44 Oh, the schoolma'am ! " 
 
 44 Yes, she 's a saint, an angel. More than 
 that — she's a lady, Dick, to the tip of her 
 fingers, who knows nothing of the world 
 outside a parson's study. She took me on 
 
212 THE NEW ASSISTANT 
 
 trust — - without a word — when the trustees 
 hung back and stared. She 's never asked 
 me about myself, and now when she knows 
 who and what I have been — she '11 loathe 
 me!" 
 
 " But look here, Jim," said the stranger 
 anxiously. " I '11 say it 's all a lie. 1 11 
 come here and apologize to you afore her^ 
 and say I took you for somebody else. 
 I'll" — 
 
 " It 's too late," said Twing moodily. 
 " And what '11 you do?" 
 " Leave here." 
 
 They had reached the door together. To 
 Mrs. Martin's terror, as the stranger passed 
 out, Twing, instead of following him as she 
 expected, said " Good-night," and gloomily 
 reentered the schoolroom. Here he paused 
 a moment, and then throwing himself on 
 one of the benches, dropped his head upon a 
 desk with his face buried in his hands — like 
 a very schoolboy. 
 
 What passed through Mrs. Martin's mind 
 I know not. For a moment she sat erect and 
 rigid at her desk. Then she slipped quietly 
 down, and, softly as one of the last shadows 
 cast by the dying sun, glided across the floor 
 to where he sat. 
 
AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL, 213 
 
 "Mrs. Martin," lie said, starting to his 
 feet. 
 
 " 1 have heard all," she said faintly. " I 
 could n't help it. I was here when you came 
 in. But I want to tell you that I am con- 
 tent to know you only as you seem to be, — 
 as I have always found you here, — strong 
 and loyal to a duty laid upon you by those 
 who had a full knowledge of all you had 
 been." 
 
 " Did you ? Do you know what I have 
 been ? " 
 
 Mrs. Martin looked frightened, trembled 
 a moment, and, recovering herself with an 
 effort, said gently, " I know nothing of your 
 past." 
 
 " Nothing ? " he repeated, with a mirthless 
 attempt at laughter, and a quick breath. 
 " Not that I 've been a — a — mountebank, 
 a variety actor — a clown, you know, for the 
 amusement of the lowest, at twenty-five cents 
 a ticket. That I 'm ' Johnny Walker,' the 
 song and dance man — the all-round man — 
 selected by Mr. Barstow to teach these boors 
 a lesson as to what they wanted ! " 
 
 She looked at him a moment — timidly, 
 yet thoughtfully. " Then you are an actor 
 — a person who simulates what he does not 
 feel?" 
 
214 THE NEW ASSISTANT. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And all the time you have been here you 
 have been acting the schoolmaster — play- 
 ing a part — for — for Mr. Bar stow ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Always?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The color came softly to her face again, 
 and her voice was very low. " And when 
 you sang to me that day, and when you 
 looked at me — as you did — an hour or two 
 ago — while you were entertaining — you 
 were — only — acting ? " 
 
 Mr. T wing's answer was not known, but 
 it must have been a full and complete one, 
 for it was quite dark when he left the school- 
 room — not for the last time — with its 
 mistress on his arm. 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 There was probably no earthly reason why 
 the "Poco M4s d Menos" Club of San Fran- 
 cisco should have ever existed, or why its 
 five harmless, indistinctive members should 
 not have met and dined together as ordinary 
 individuals. Still less was there any justifi- 
 cation for the gratuitous opinion which ob- 
 tained, that it was bold, bad, and brilliant. 
 Looking back upon it over a quarter of a 
 century and half a globe, I confess I cannot 
 recall a single witticism, audacity, or humor- 
 ous characteristic that belonged to it. Yet 
 there was no doubt that we were thought to 
 be extremely critical and satirical, and I am 
 inclined to think we honestly believed it. 
 To take our seats on Wednesdays and Sat- 
 urdays at a specially reserved table at the 
 restaurant we patronized, to be conscious of 
 being observed by the other guests, and of 
 
216 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 our waiter confidentially imparting our fame 
 to strangers behind the shaken-out folds of a 
 napkin, and of knowing that the faintest in- 
 dication of merriment from our table thrilled 
 the other guests with anticipatory smiles, 
 was, I am firmly convinced, all that we ever 
 did to justify our reputations. Nor, strictly 
 speaking, were we remarkable as individuals ; 
 an assistant editor, a lawyer, a young army 
 quartermaster, a bank clerk and a mining 
 secretary — we could not separately chal- 
 lenge any special social or literary distinc- 
 tion. Yet I am satisfied that the very name 
 of our Club — a common Spanish colloquial- 
 ism, literally meaning " a little more or less/' 
 and adopted in Californian slang to express 
 an unknown quantity — was supposed to be 
 replete with deep and convulsing humor. 
 
 My impression is that our extravagant 
 reputation, and, indeed, our continued exist- 
 ence as a Club, was due solely to the pro- 
 prietor of the restaurant and two of his 
 waiters, and that we were actually " run" by 
 them. When the suggestion of our meeting 
 regularly there was first broached to the pro- 
 prietor — a German of slow but deep emo- 
 tions — he received it with a " So " of such 
 impressive satisfaction that it might have 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 217 
 
 been the beginning of our vainglory. From 
 that moment he became at once our patron 
 and our devoted slave. To linger near our 
 table once or twice during dinner with an 
 air of respectful vacuity, — as of one who 
 knew himself too well to be guilty of the 
 presumption of attempting to understand 
 our brilliancy, — to wear a certain parental 
 pride and unconsciousness in our fame, and 
 yet to never go further in seeming to com- 
 prehend it than to obligingly translate the 
 name of the Club as "a leedle more and nod 
 quide so much " — was to him sufficient hap- 
 piness. That he ever experienced any busi- 
 ness profit from the custom of the Club, or 
 its advertisement, may be greatly doubted ; 
 on the contrary, that a few plain customers, 
 nettled at our self-satisfaction, might have 
 resented his favoritism seemed more prob- 
 able. Equally vague, disinterested, and 
 loyal was the attachment of the two waiters, 
 — one an Italian, faintly reminiscent of bet- 
 ter days and possibly superior extraction; 
 the other a rough but kindly Western man, 
 who might have taken this menial position 
 from temporary stress of circumstances, yet 
 who continued in it from sheer dominance 
 of habit and some feebleness of will. They 
 
£18 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 both vied with each other to please us. It 
 may have been they considered their attend- 
 ance upon a reputed intellectual company 
 less degrading than ministering to the purely 
 animal and silent wants of the average cus- 
 tomers. It may have been that they were 
 attracted by our general youthf ulness. In- 
 deed, I am inclined to think that they them- 
 selves were much more distinctive and inter- 
 esting than any members of the Club, and 
 it is to introduce them that I venture to re- 
 call so much of its history. 
 
 A few months after our advent at the 
 restaurant, one evening, Joe Tallant, the 
 mining secretary, one of our liveliest mem- 
 bers, was observed to be awkward and dis- 
 trait during dinner, forgetting even to offer 
 the usual gratuity to the Italian waiter who 
 handed him his hat, although he stared at 
 him with an imbecile smile. As we chanced 
 to leave the restaurant together, I was rally- 
 ing him upon his abstraction, when to my 
 surprise he said gravely : " Look here, one 
 of two things has got to happen : either we 
 must change our restaurant or I 'm going to 
 resign." 
 « Why?" 
 
 " Well, to make matters clear, I 'm obliged 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 219 
 
 to tell you something that in our business 
 we usually keep a secret. About three 
 weeks ago I had a notice to transfer twenty 
 feet of Gold Hill to a fellow named ' Tour- 
 nelli.' Well, Tournelli happened to call for 
 it himself, and who the devil do you suppose 
 Tournelli was? Why our Italian waiter. 
 I was regularly startled, and so was he. 
 But business is business ; so I passed him 
 over the stock and said nothing — nor did 
 he — neither there nor here. Day before 
 yesterday he had thirty feet more trans- 
 ferred to him, and sold out." 
 
 " Well? " I said impatiently. 
 
 " Well," repeated Tallant indignantly. 
 "Gold Hill's worth six hundred dollars a 
 foot. That 's eighteen thousand dollars cash. 
 And a man who 's good enough for that much 
 money is too good to wait upon me. Fancy 
 a man who could pay my whole year's salary 
 with five feet of stock slinging hash to me. 
 Fancy you tipping him with a quarter ! " 
 
 "But if he don't mind it — and prefers 
 to continue a waiter — why should you care ? 
 And we 're not supposed to know." 
 
 " That 's just it," groaned Tallant. 
 w That 's just where the sell comes in. Think 
 how he must chuckle over us ! No, sir 1 
 
220 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 There 's nothing aristocratic about me ; but| 
 by thunder, if I can't eat my dinner, and 
 feel I am as good as the man who waits on 
 me, I '11 resign from the Club." 
 
 After endeavoring to point out to him 
 the folly of such a proceeding, I finally sug- 
 gested that we should take the other mem- 
 bers of our Club into our confidence, and 
 abide by their decision ; to which he agreed. 
 But, to his chagrin, the others, far from par- 
 ticipating in his delicacy, seemed to enjoy 
 Tournelli's unexpected wealth with a vica- 
 rious satisfaction and increase of dignity as 
 if we were personally responsible for it. Al- 
 though it had been unanimously agreed that 
 we should make no allusions, jocose or seri- 
 ous, to him, nor betray any knowledge of it 
 before him, I am afraid our attitude at the 
 next dinner was singularly artificial. A 
 nervous expectancy when he approached us, 
 and a certain restraint during his presence, 
 a disposition to check any discussion of 
 shares or " strikes " in mining lest he should 
 think it personal, an avoidance of unneces- 
 sary or trifling " orders," and a singular 
 patience in awaiting their execution when 
 given ; a vague hovering between sympa- 
 thetic respect and the other extreme of in- 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 221 
 
 different bluntness in our requests, tended, 
 I think, to make that meal far from exhil- 
 arating. Indeed, the unusual depression 
 affected the unfortunate cause of it, who 
 added to our confusion by increased solici- 
 tude of service and — as if fearful of some 
 fault, or having incurred our disfavor — 
 by a deprecatory and exaggerated humility 
 that in our sensitive state seemed like the 
 keenest irony. At last, evidently interpret- 
 ing our constraint before him into a desire 
 to be alone, he retired to the door of a dis- 
 tant pantry, whence he surveyed us with 
 dark and sorrowful Southern eyes. Tallant, 
 who in this general embarrassment had been 
 imperfectly served, and had eaten nothing, 
 here felt his grievance reach its climax, and 
 in a sudden outbreak of recklessness he 
 roared out, " Hi, waiter — - you, Tournelli. 
 He may," he added, turning darkly to us, 
 " buy up enough stock to control the board 
 and dismiss me ; but, by thunder, if it costs 
 me my place, I 'm going to have some more 
 chicken ! " 
 
 It was probably this sensitiveness that 
 kept us from questioning him, even indi- 
 rectly, and perhaps led us into the wildest 
 surmises. He was acting secretly for a 
 
222 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 brotherhood or society of waiters ; he was a 
 silent partner of his German employer ; he 
 was a disguised Italian stockbroker, gaining 
 " points " from the unguarded conversation 
 of " operating " customers ; he was a politi- 
 cal refugee with capital ; he was a fugitive 
 Sicilian bandit, investing his ill-gotten 
 gains in California ; he was a dissipated 
 young nobleman, following some amorous 
 intrigue across the ocean, and acting as his 
 own Figaro or Leporello. I think a ma- 
 jority of us favored the latter hypothesis, 
 possibly because we were young, and his 
 appearance gave it color. His thin black 
 mustaches and dark eyes, we felt, were 
 Tuscan and aristocratic ; at least, they were 
 like the baritone who played those parts, 
 and he ought to know. Yet nothing could 
 be more exemplary and fastidious than his 
 conduct towards the few lady frequenters of 
 the " Poodle Dog " restaurant, who, I regret 
 to say, were not puritanically reserved or 
 conventual in manner. 
 
 But an unexpected circumstance presently 
 changed and divided our interest. It was 
 alleged by Clay, the assistant editor, that en- 
 tering the restaurant one evening he saw the 
 back and tails of a coat that seemed familiar 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 223 
 
 to him half-filling a doorway leading to the 
 restaurant kitchen. It was unmistakably the 
 figure of one of our Club members, — the 
 young lawyer, — Jack Manners. But what 
 was he doing there ? While the Editor was 
 still gazing after him, he suddenly disap- 
 peared, as if some one had warned him that 
 he was observed. As he did not reappear, 
 when Tournelli entered from the kitchen a 
 few moments later, the Editor called him and 
 asked for his fellow-member. To his sur- 
 prise the Italian answered, with every ap- 
 pearance of truthfulness, that he had not 
 seen Mr. Manners at all ! The Editor was 
 staggered ; but as he chanced, some hours 
 later, to meet Manners, he playfully rallied 
 him on his mysterious conference with the 
 Italian. Manners replied briefly that he 
 had had no interview whatever with Tour- 
 nelli, and changed the subject quickly. The 
 mystery — as we persisted in believing it — 
 was heightened when another member de- 
 posed that he had seen " Tom," the Western 
 waiter, coming from Manners's office. As 
 Manners had volunteered no information of 
 this, we felt that we could not without indeli- 
 cacy ask him if Tom was a client, or a messen- 
 ger from Tournelli. The only result was that 
 
224 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 our Club dinner was even more constrained 
 than before. Not only was " Tom " now in- 
 vested with a dark importance, but it was 
 evident that the harmony of the Club was 
 destroyed by these singular secret relations 
 of two of its members with their employes. 
 
 It chanced that one morning, arriving 
 from a delayed journey, I dropped into the 
 restaurant. It was that slack hour between 
 the lingering breakfast and coming lunch- 
 eon when the tables are partly stripped and 
 unknown doors, opened for ventilation, re- 
 veal the distant kitchen, and a mingled flavor 
 of cold coffee-grounds and lukewarm soups 
 hangs heavy on the air. To this cheerless- 
 ness was added a gusty rain without, that 
 filmed the panes of the windows and doors, 
 and veiled from the passer-by the usual 
 tempting display of snowy cloths and china. 
 
 As I seemed to be the only customer at 
 that hour, I selected a table by the window 
 for distraction. Tom had taken my order ; 
 the other waiters, including Tournelli, were 
 absent, with the exception of a solitary Ger- 
 man, who, in the interlude of perfunctory tri- 
 fling with the casters, gazed at me with that 
 abstracted irresponsibility which one waiter 
 assumes towards another's customer. Even 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 225 
 
 the proprietor had deserted his desk at the 
 counter. It seemed to be a favorable oppor- 
 tunity to get some information from Tom. 
 
 But he anticipated me. When he had 
 dealt a certain number of dishes around me, 
 as if they were cards and he was telling my 
 fortune, he leaned over the table and said, 
 with interrogating confidence : — 
 
 " I reckon you call that Mr. Manners of 
 yours a good lawyer ? " 
 
 We were very loyal to each other in the 
 Club, and I replied with youthful enthusi- 
 asm that he was considered one of the most 
 promising at the bar. And, remembering 
 Tournelli, I added confidently that whoever 
 engaged him to look after their property 
 interests had secured a treasure. 
 
 " But is he good in criminal cases — before 
 a police court, for instance?" continued Tom. 
 
 I believed — I don't know on what grounds 
 — that Manners was good in insurance and 
 admiralty law, and that he looked upon 
 criminal practice as low ; but I answered 
 briskly ■ — though a trifle startled — that as 
 a criminal lawyer he was perfect. 
 
 " He could advise a man, who had a row 
 hanging on, how to steer clear of being up 
 for murder — eh? " 
 
226 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 I trusted, with a desperate attempt at jo- 
 cosity, that neither he nor Tournelli had 
 been doing anything to require Manners's 
 services in that way. 
 
 " It would be too late, then" said Tom, 
 coolly, " and anybody could tell a man what 
 he ought to have done, or how to make the 
 best of what he had done; but the smart 
 thing in a lawyer would be to give a chap 
 points beforehand, and sorter tell him how 
 far he could go, and yet keep inside the law. 
 How he might goad a fellow to draw on him, 
 and then plug him — eh? " 
 
 I looked up quickly. There was nothing 
 in his ordinary, good-humored, but not very 
 strong face to suggest that he himself was 
 the subject of this hypothetical case. If he 
 were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian 
 certainly was not to be congratulated on 
 his ambassador's prudence ; and, above all, 
 Manners was to be warned of the interpreta- 
 tion which might be put upon his counsels, 
 and disseminated thus publicly. As I was 
 thinking what to say, he moved away, but 
 suddenly returned again. 
 
 "What made you think Tournelli had 
 been up to anything ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 "Nothing," I answered ; " I only thought 
 you and he, being friends " — 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 227 
 
 "You mean we're both waiters in the 
 same restaurant. Well, I don't know him 
 any better than I know that chap over 
 there," pointing to the other waiter. " He 's 
 a Greaser or an Italian, and, I reckon, goes 
 with his kind." 
 
 Why had we not thought of this before ? 
 Nothing would be more natural than that 
 the rich and imperious Tournelli should be 
 exclusive, and have no confidences with his 
 enforced associates. And it was evident 
 that Tom had noticed it and was jealous. 
 
 "I suppose he's rather a swell, isn't he?" 
 I suggested tentatively. 
 
 A faint smile passed over Tom's face. It 
 was partly cynical and partly suggestive of 
 that amused toleration of our youthful cre- 
 dulity which seemed to be a part of that dis- 
 composing patronage that everybody ex- 
 tended to the Club. As he said nothing, I 
 continued encouragingly : — 
 
 " Because a man 's a waiter, it does n't 
 follow that he 's always been one, or always 
 will be." 
 
 " No," said Tom, abstractedly ; " but it 's 
 about as good as anything else to lie low and 
 wait on." But here two customers entered, 
 and he turned to them, leaving me in doubt 
 
228 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT 
 
 whether to accept this as a verbal pleasantry 
 or an admission. Only one thing seemed 
 plain: I had certainly gained no informa- 
 tion, and only added a darker mystery to his 
 conference with Manners, which I deter- 
 mined I should ask Manners to explain. 
 
 I finished my meal in solitude. The rain 
 was still beating drearily against the win- 
 dows with an occasional accession of impulse 
 that seemed like human impatience. Vague 
 figures under dripping umbrellas, that hid 
 their faces as if in premeditated disguise, 
 hurried from the main thoroughfare. A 
 woman in a hooded waterproof like a dom- 
 ino, a Mexican in a black serape^ might 
 have been stage conspirators hastening to a 
 rendezvous. The cavernous chill and odor 
 which I had before noted as coming from 
 some sarcophagus of larder or oven, where 
 " funeral baked meats " might have been 
 kept in stock, began to oppress me. The 
 hollow and fictitious domesticity of this 
 common board had never before seemed so 
 hopelessly displayed. And Tom, the waiter, 
 his napkin twisted in his hand and his face 
 turned with a sudden dark abstraction to- 
 wards the window, appeared to be really 
 " lying low," and waiting for something out- 
 side his avocation. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The fact that Tom did not happen to be 
 on duty at the next Club dinner gave me 
 an opportunity to repeat his mysterious re- 
 mark to Manners, and to jokingly warn that 
 rising young lawyer against the indiscretion 
 of vague counsel. Manners, however, only 
 shrugged his shoulders. " I don't know what 
 he meant," he said carelessly ; " but since 
 he chooses to talk of his own affairs publicly, 
 / don't mind saying that they are neither 
 very weighty nor very dangerous. It 's 
 only the old story: the usual matrimonial 
 infidelities that are mixed up with the Cali- 
 f ornian emigration. He leaves the regular 
 wife behind, — fairly or unfairly, I can't say. 
 She gets tired waiting, after the usual style, 
 and elopes with somebody else. The West- 
 ern Penelope is n't built for waiting. But 
 she seems to have converted some of his 
 property into cash when she skipped from 
 St. Louis, and that 's where his chief concern 
 comes in. That 's what he wanted to see me 
 
230 iJf A PIONEER EES TA U RAN'i . 
 
 for ; that 's why he inveigled me into that in* 
 f ernal pantry of his one day to show me a plan 
 of his property, as if that was any good." 
 
 He paused disgustedly. We all felt, I 
 think, that Tom was some kind of an im- 
 postor, claiming the sympathies of the Club 
 on false pretenses. Nevertheless, the Quar- 
 termaster said, "Then you didn't do any- 
 thing for him — give him any advice, eh?" 
 
 " No ; for the property 's as much hers as 
 his, and he has n't got a divorce ; and, as 
 it 's doubtful whether he did n't desert her 
 first, he can't get one. He was surprised," 
 he added, with a grim smile, " when I told 
 him that he was obliged to support her, and 
 was even liable for her debts. But people 
 who are always talking of invoking the law 
 know nothing about it." We were surprised 
 too, although Manners was always convin- 
 cing us, in some cheerful but discomposing 
 way, that we were all daily and hour]y, in 
 our simplest acts, making ourself responsible 
 for all sorts of liabilities and actions, and 
 even generally preparing ourselves for ar- 
 rest and imprisonment. The Quartermaster 
 continued lazily : — 
 
 "Then you didn't give him any points 
 about shooting ? " 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 231 
 
 " No ; lie does n't even know the man she 
 went off with. It was eighteen months ago, 
 and I don't believe he'd evfen know her 
 again if he met her. But, if he is n't much 
 of a client, we shall miss him to-night as 
 a waiter, for the place is getting full, and 
 there are not enough to serve." 
 
 The restaurant was, indeed, unusually- 
 crowded that evening ; the more so that, the 
 private rooms above being early occupied, 
 some dinner parties and exclusive couples 
 had been obliged to content themselves with 
 the public dining saloon. A small table 
 nearest us, usually left vacant to insure a 
 certain seclusion to the Club, was arranged, 
 with a deprecatory apology from the proprie- 
 tor, for one of those couples, a man and 
 woman. The man was a well-known specula- 
 tor, — cool, yet reckless and pleasure-loving; 
 the woman, good-looking, picturesquely at- 
 tractive, self-conscious, and self-possessed. 
 Our propinquity was evidently neither novel 
 nor discomposing. As she settled her skirts 
 in her place, her bright, dark eyes swept 
 our table with a frank, almost childish, fa- 
 miliarity. The younger members of the 
 Club quite unconsciously pulled up their 
 collars and settled their neckties ; the elders 
 
232 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 as unconsciously raised their voices slightly, 
 and somewhat arranged their sentences. 
 Alas ! the simplicity and unaffectedness of 
 the Club were again invaded. 
 
 Suddenly there was a crash, the breaking 
 of glass, and an exclamation. Tournelli, no 
 doubt disorganized by the unusual hurry, on 
 his way to our table had dropped his tray, 
 impartially distributed a plate of asparagus 
 over an adjoining table, and, flushed and 
 nervous, yet with an affectation of studied 
 calmness, was pouring the sauce into the 
 young Quartermaster's plate, in spite of his 
 languid protests. At any other time we 
 would have laughed, but there was something 
 in the exaggerated agitation of the Italian 
 that checked our mirth. Why should he be 
 so upset by a trifling accident ? He could 
 afford to pay for the breakage ; he would 
 laugh at dismissal. Was it the sensitive- 
 ness of a refined nature, or — he was young 
 and good-looking — was he disconcerted by 
 the fact that our handsome neighbor had 
 witnessed his awkwardness? But she was 
 not laughing, and, as far as I could see, was 
 intently regarding the bill of fare. 
 
 " Waiter ! " called her companion, hailing 
 Tournelli. " Here ! " The Italian, with a 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 233 
 
 face now distinctly white, leaned over the 
 table, adjusting the glasses, Jbut did not 
 reply. 
 
 " Waiter ! " repeated the stranger, sharply. 
 Tournelli's face twitched, then became set as 
 a mask ; but he did not move. The stranger 
 leaned forward and pulled his apron from 
 behind. Tournelli started with flashing eyes, 
 and turned swiftly round. But the Quarter- 
 master's hand had closed on his wrist. 
 
 " That 's my knife, Tournelli." 
 
 The knife dropped from the Italian's fin- 
 gers. 
 
 " Better see what he wants. It may not 
 be that" said the young officer, coolly but 
 kindly. 
 
 Tournelli turned impatiently towards the 
 stranger. We alone had witnessed this in- 
 cident, and were watching him breathlessly. 
 Yet what bade fair a moment ago to be a 
 tragedy, seemed now to halt grotesquely. 
 For Tournelli, throwing open his linen jacket 
 with a melodramatic gesture, tapped his 
 breast, and with flashing eyes and suppressed 
 accents said, " Sare ; you wantah me ? Look 
 — I am herre ! " 
 
 The speculator leaned back in his chair 
 in good-humored astonishment. The lady's 
 
234 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 black eyes, without looking at Tournelli, 
 glanced backward round the room, and 
 slipped along our table, with half -defiant un- 
 concern ; and then she uttered a short hys- 
 terical laugh. 
 
 46 Ah ! ze lady — madame — ze signora — 
 eh — she wantah me?" continued Tournelli, 
 leaning on the table with compressed fingers, 
 and glaring at her. " Perhaps she wantah 
 Tournelli — eh?" 
 
 " Well, you might bring some with the 
 soup," blandly replied her escort, who seemed 
 to enjoy the Italian's excitement as a na- 
 tional eccentricity ; " but hurry up and set 
 the table, will you ? " 
 
 Then followed, on the authority of the 
 Editor, who understood Italian, a singular 
 scene. Secure, apparently, in his belief that 
 his language was generally uncomprehended, 
 Tournelli brought a decanter, and, setting 
 it on the table, said, " Traitress ! " in an in- 
 tense whisper. This was followed by the 
 cruets, which he put down with the excla- 
 mation, " Perjured fiend ! " Two glasses, 
 placed on either side of her, carried the word 
 " Apostate ! " to her ear ; and three knives 
 and forks, rattling more than was necessary, 
 and laid crosswise before her plate, were ac- 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 235 
 
 companied with " Tremble, wanton ! " Then, 
 as he pulled the tablecloth straight, and os- 
 tentatiously concealed a wine-stain with a 
 clean napkin, scarcely whiter than his lips, 
 he articulated under his breath : " Let him 
 beware ! he goes not hence alive ! I will 
 slice his craven heart — thus — and thou 
 shalt see it." He turned quickly to a side 
 table and brought back a spoon. " And this 
 is why I have not found you ; " another 
 spoon, " For this you have disappeared ; " a 
 purely perfunctory polishing of her fork, 
 ** For Aim, bah ! " an equally unnecessary 
 wiping of her glass, " Blood of God ! " — 
 more wiping — " It will end ! Yes " — 
 general wiping and a final flourish over the 
 whole table with a napkin — "I go, but at 
 the door I shall await you both." 
 
 She had not spoken yet, nor even lifted 
 her eyes. When she did so, however, she 
 raised them level with his, showed all her 
 white teeth — they were small and cruel- 
 looking — and said smilingly in his own 
 dialect : — 
 
 « Thief!" 
 
 Tournelli halted, rigid. 
 " You 're talking his lingo, eh ? 99 said her 
 escort good-humoredly. 
 
236 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well — tell him to bustle around and be 
 a little livelier with the dinner, won't you ? 
 This is only skirmishing." 
 
 " You hear," she continued to Tournelli 
 in a perfectly even voice ; " or shall it be a 
 policeman, and a charge of stealing? " 
 
 " Stealing ! " gasped Tournelli. " You 
 sav stealing ! " 
 
 " Yes — ten thousand dollars. You are 
 well disguised here, my little fellow ; it is a 
 good business — yours. Keep it while you 
 can." 
 
 I think he would have sprung upon her 
 there and then, but that the Quartermaster, 
 who was nearest him, and had been intently 
 watching his face, made a scarcely percepti- 
 ble movement as if ready to anticipate him. 
 He caught the officer's eye ; caught, I think, 
 in ours the revelation that he had been un- 
 derstood, drew back with a sidelong, sinuous 
 movement, and disappeared in the passage 
 to the kitchen. 
 
 I believe we all breathed more freely, 
 although the situation was still full enough 
 of impending possibilities to prevent peace- 
 ful enjoyment of our dinner. As the Editor 
 finished his hurried translation, it was sug* 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 237 
 
 gested that we ought to warn the unsuspect- 
 ing escort of Tournelli's threats. But it was 
 pointed out that this would be betraying the 
 woman, and that Jo Hays (her companion) 
 was fully able to take care of himself. " Be- 
 sides," said the Editor, aggrievedly, " you 
 fellows only think of yourselves, and you 
 don't understand the first principles of jour- 
 nalism. Do you suppose I ? m going to do 
 anything to spoil a half-column of leaded 
 brevier copy — from an eye-witness, too ? 
 No ; it 's a square enough fight as it stands. 
 We must look out for the woman, and not 
 let Tournelli get an unfair drop on Hays. 
 That is, if the whole thing isn't a bluff." 
 
 But the Italian did not return. Whether 
 he had incontinently fled, or was nursing his 
 wrath in the kitchen, or already fulfilling his 
 threat of waiting on the pavement outside 
 the restaurant, we could not guess. Another 
 waiter appeared with the dinners they had 
 ordered. A momentary thrill of excitement 
 passed over us at the possibility that Tour- 
 nelli had poisoned their soup ; but it pres- 
 ently lapsed, as we saw the couple partaking 
 of it comfortably, and chatting with appar- 
 ent unconcern. Was the scene we had just 
 witnessed only a piece of Southern exagger- 
 
238 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 ation? Was the woman a creature devoid 
 of nerves or feeling of any kind ; or was she 
 simply a consummate actress ? Yet she was 
 clearly not acting, for in the intervals of 
 conversation, and even while talking, her 
 dark eyes wandered carelessly around the 
 room, with the easy self-confidence of a pretty 
 woman. We were beginning to talk of 
 something else, when the Editor said sud- 
 denly, in a suppressed voice : — 
 
 " Hullo ! What 's the matter now ? " 
 
 The woman had risen, and was hurriedly 
 throwing her cloak over her shoulders. But 
 it was Tier face that was now ashen and agi- 
 tated, and we could see that her hands were 
 trembling. Her escort was assisting her, 
 but was evidently as astonished as ourselves. 
 " Perhaps," he suggested hopefully, " if you 
 wait a minute it will pass off." 
 
 " No, no," she gasped, still hurriedly wrest- 
 ling with her cloak. " Don't you see I 'm 
 suffocating here — I want air. You can fol- 
 low ! " She began to move off, her face 
 turned fixedly in the direction of the door. 
 We instinctively looked there — perhaps for 
 Tournelli. There was no one. Neverthe- 
 less, the Editor and Quartermaster had half- 
 risen from their seats. 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 239 
 
 M Helloo ! " said Manners suddenly. 
 u There 's Tom just come in. Call him ! " 
 
 Tom, evidently recalled from his brief fur- 
 lough by the proprietor on account of the 
 press of custom, had just made his appear- 
 ance from the kitchen. 
 
 " Tom, where 's Tournelli ? " asked the 
 Lawyer hurriedly, but following the retreat- 
 ing woman with his eyes. 
 
 "Skipped, they say. Somebody insulted 
 him," said Tom curtly. 
 
 " You did n't see him hanging round out- 
 side, eh ? Swearing vengeance ? " asked the 
 Editor. 
 
 " No," said Tom scornfully. 
 
 The woman had reached the door, and 
 darted out of it as her escort paused a mo- 
 ment at the counter to throw down a coin. 
 Yet in that moment she had hurried before 
 him through the passage into the street. I 
 turned breathlessly to the window. For an in- 
 stant her face, white as a phantom's, appeared 
 pressed rigidly against the heavy plate-glass, 
 her eyes staring with a horrible fascination 
 back into the room — I even imagined at us. 
 Perhaps, as it was evident that Tournelli was 
 not with her, she fancied he was still here ; 
 perhaps she had mistaken Tom for him ! How- 
 
240 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 ever, her escort quickly rejoined her ; their 
 shadows passed the window together — they 
 were gone. 
 
 Then a pistol-shot broke the quiet of the 
 street. 
 
 The Editor and Quartermaster rose and 
 ran to the door. Manners rose also, but lin- 
 gered long enough to whisper to me, " Don't 
 lose sight of Tom," and followed them. But 
 to my momentary surprise no one else moved. 
 I had forgotten, in the previous excitement, 
 that in those days a pistol-shot was not un- 
 usual enough to attract attention. A few 
 raised their heads at the sound of running 
 feet on the pavement, and the flitting of black 
 shadows past the windows. Tom had not 
 stirred, but, napkin in hand, and eyes fixed on 
 vacancy, was standing, as I had seen him once 
 before, in an attitude of listless expectation. 
 
 In a few minutes Manners returned. I 
 thought he glanced oddly at Tom, who was 
 still lingering in attendance, and I even fan- 
 cied he talked to us ostentatiously for his 
 benefit. " Yes, it was a row of Tournelli's. 
 He was waiting at the corner ; had rushed at 
 Hays with a knife, but had been met with a 
 derringer-shot through his hat. The lady, 
 who, it seems, was only a chance steamer ac* 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 241 
 
 quaintance of Hays', thought the attack must 
 have been meant for her, as she had recog- 
 nized in the Italian a man who had stolen 
 from her divorced husband in the States, two 
 years ago, and was a fugitive from justice. 
 At least that was the explanation given by 
 Hays, for the woman had fainted and been 
 driven off to her hotel by the Quartermaster, 
 and Tournelli had escaped. But the Editor 
 was on his track. " You did n't notice that 
 lady, Tom, did you ? " 
 
 Tom came out of an abstracted study, and 
 said : " No, she had her back to me all the 
 time." 
 
 Manners regarded him steadily for a mo- 
 ment without speaking, but in a way that I 
 could not help thinking was much more em- 
 barrassing to the bystanders than to him. 
 When we rose to leave, as he placed his usual 
 gratuity into Tom's hand, he said carelessly, 
 " You might drop into my office to-morrow 
 if you have anything to tell me" 
 
 44 I have n't," said Tom quietly. 
 
 44 Then I may have something to tell you" 
 
 Tom nodded, and turned away to his duties. 
 
 The Mining Secretary and myself could 
 scarcely wait to reach the street before we 
 turned eagerly on Manners. 
 
242 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well ; the woman you saw was Tom's 
 runaway wife, and Tournelli the man she 
 ran away with." 
 
 "And Tom knew it?" 
 
 " Can't say." 
 
 " And you mean to say that all this while 
 Tom never suspected Aim, and even did not 
 recognize her just now ? " 
 
 Manners lifted his hat and passed his fin- 
 gers through his hair meditatively. "Ask 
 me something easier, gentlemen," 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 Her father's house was nearly a mile from 
 the sea, but the breath of it was always 
 strong at the windows and doors in the early 
 morning, and when there were heavy " south- 
 westers " blowing in the winter, the wind 
 brought the sharp sting of sand to her cheek, 
 and the rain an odd taste of salt to her lips. 
 On this particular December afternoon, how- 
 ever, as she stood in the doorway, it seemed 
 to be singularly calm ; the southwest trades 
 blew but faintly, and scarcely broke the 
 crests of the long Pacific swell that lazily 
 rose and fell on the beach, which only a 
 slanting copse of scrub-oak and willow hid 
 from the cottage. Nevertheless, she knew 
 this league-long strip of shining sand much 
 better, it is to be feared, than the scanty 
 flower-garden, arid and stunted by its con- 
 tiguity. It had been her playground when 
 she first came there, a motherless girl of 
 twelve, and she had helped her father gather 
 
244 A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 its scattered driftwood — ■ as the fortunes of 
 the Millers were not above accepting these 
 occasional offerings of their lordly neighbor. 
 
 "I wouldn't go far to-day, Jenny," said 
 her father, as the girl stepped from the 
 threshold. " I don't trust the weather at 
 this season ; and besides you had better be 
 looking over your wardrobe for the Christ- 
 mas Eve party at Sol. Catlin's." 
 
 " Why, father, you don't intend to go to 
 that man's ? " said the girl, looking up with 
 a troubled face. 
 
 " Lawyer Miller," as he was called by his 
 few neighbors, looked slightly embarrassed. 
 " Why not ? " he asked in a faintly irritated 
 tone. 
 
 " Why not ? Why, father, you know how 
 vulgar and conceited he is, — how every- 
 body here truckles to him ! " 
 
 " Very likely ; he 's a very superior man 
 of his kind, — a kind they understand here, 
 too, — a great trapper, hunter, and pioneer.' 5 
 
 "But I don't believe in his trapping, 
 hunting, and pioneering," said the girl, petu- 
 lantly. " I believe it 's all as hollow and 
 boisterous as himself. It 's no more real, or 
 what one thinks it should be, than he is. 
 And he dares to patronize you — you, father, 
 an educated man and a gentleman ! " 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON, 245 
 
 " Say rather an unsuccessful lawyer who 
 was fool enough to believe that buying a 
 ranch could make him a farmer," returned 
 her father, but half jestingly. " I only wish 
 I was as good at my trade as he is." 
 
 " But you never liked him, — you always 
 used to ignore him ; you 've changed, fa- 
 ther" — She stopped suddenly, for her 
 recollection of her father's quiet siiperiority 
 and easy independence when he first came 
 there was in such marked contrast to his 
 late careless and weak concession to the rude 
 life around them, that she felt a pang of 
 vague degradation, which she feared her 
 voice might betray. 
 
 " Very well ! Do as you like," he replied, 
 with affected carelessness ; " only I thought, 
 as we cannot afford to go elsewhere this 
 Christmas, it might be well for us to take 
 what we could find here." 
 
 " Take what we could find here ! " It 
 was so unlike him — he who had always been 
 so strong in preserving their little domestic 
 refinements in their rude surroundings, that 
 their poverty had never seemed mean, nor 
 their seclusion ignoble. She turned away 
 to conceal her indignant color. She could 
 share the household work with a squaw and 
 
246 A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 Chinaman, she could fetch wood and water. 
 Catlin had patronizingly seen her doing it, 
 but to dance to his vulgar piping — never ! 
 
 She was not long in reaching the sands 
 that now lay before her, warm, sweet-scented 
 from short beach grass, stretching to a dim 
 rocky promontory, and absolutely untrod 
 by any foot but her own. It was this vir- 
 ginity of seclusion that had been charming 
 to her girlhood ; fenced in between the im- 
 penetrable hedge of scrub-oaks on the one 
 side, and the lifting green walls of breakers 
 tipped with chevaux de frise of white foam 
 on the other, she had known a perfect se- 
 curity for her sports and fancies that had 
 captivated her town-bred instincts and na- 
 tive fastidiousness. A few white -winged 
 sea-birds, as proud, reserved, and maiden- 
 like as herself, had been her only compan- 
 ions. And it was now the custodian of her 
 secret, — a secret as innocent and childlike 
 as her previous youthful fancies, — but still 
 a secret known only to herself. 
 
 One day she had come upon the rotting 
 ribs of a wreck on the beach. Its distance 
 from the tide line, its position, and its deep 
 imbedding of sand, showed that it was of 
 ancient origin. An omnivorous reader of 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 247 
 
 all that pertained to the history of Califor- 
 nia, Jenny had in fancy often sailed the seas 
 in one of those mysterious treasure-ships 
 that had skirted the coast in bygone days, 
 and she at once settled in her mind that her 
 discovery was none other than a castaway 
 Philippine galleon. Partly from her re- 
 serve, and partly from a suddenly conceived 
 plan, she determined to keep its existence 
 unknown to her father, as careful inquiry 
 on her part had found it was equally un- 
 known to the neighbors. For this shy, im- 
 aginative young girl of eighteen had con- 
 vinced herself that it might still contain a 
 part of its old treasure- She would dig for 
 it herself, without telling anybody. If she 
 failed, no one would know it ; if she were 
 successful, she would surprise her father and 
 perhaps retrieve their fortune by less vulgar 
 means than their present toil. Thanks to 
 the secluded locality and the fact that she 
 was known to spend her leisure moments in 
 wandering there, she could work without 
 suspicion. Secretly conveying a shovel and 
 a few tools to the spot the next day, she set 
 about her prodigious task. As the upper 
 works were gone, and the galleon not large, 
 in three weeks, working an hour or two each 
 
248 A TREASURE OF TEE GALLEON. 
 
 day, she had made a deep excavation in the 
 stern. She had found many curious things, 
 
 — the flotsam and jetsam of previous storms, 
 
 — but as yet, it is perhaps needless to say, 
 not the treasure. 
 
 To-day she was filled with the vague hope 
 of making her discovery before Christmas 
 Day. To have been able to take her father 
 something on that day — if only a few old 
 coins — the fruit of her own unsuspected 
 labor and intuition — not the result of vul- 
 gar barter or menial wage — would have 
 been complete happiness. It was perhaps a 
 somewhat visionary expectation for an edu- 
 cated girl of eighteen, but I am writing of a 
 young Californian girl, who had lived in the 
 fierce glamour of treasure-hunting, and in 
 whose sensitive individuality some of its 
 subtle poison had been instilled. Howbeit, 
 to-day she found nothing. She was sadly 
 hiding her pick and shovel, as was her cus- 
 tom, when she discovered the fresh track of 
 an alien foot in the sand. Robinson Crusoe 
 was not more astounded at the savage foot- 
 print than Jenny Miller at this damning 
 proof of the invasion of her sacred territory. 
 The footprints came from and returned to 
 the copse of shrubs. Some one might have 
 seen her at work ! 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 249 
 
 But a singular change in the weather, 
 overlooked in her excitement,^ here forced 
 itself upon her. A light film over sea and 
 sky, lifted only by fitful gusts of wind, 
 seemed to have suddenly thickened until it 
 became an opaque vault, narrowing in cir- 
 cumference as the wind increased. The 
 promontory behind her disappeared, as if 
 swallowed up, the distance before her seemed 
 to contract ; the ocean at her side, the 
 color of dull pewter, vanished in a sheet of 
 slanting rain, and by the time she reached 
 the house, half running, half carried along 
 by the quartering force of the wind, a full 
 gale was blowing. 
 
 It blew all the evening, reaching a climax 
 and fury at past midnight that was remem- 
 bered for many years along that coast. In 
 the midst of it they heard the booming of 
 cannon, and then the voices of neighbors in 
 the road. " There was," said the voices, " a 
 big steamer ashore just afore the house," 
 They dressed quickly and ran out. 
 
 Hugging the edge of the copse to breathe 
 and evade the fury of the wind, they strug- 
 gled to the sands. At first, looking out to 
 sea, the girl saw nothing but foam. But, 
 following the direction of a neighbor's 
 
250 A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 arm, for in that wild tumult man alone 
 seemed speechless, she saw directly before 
 her, so close upon her that she could have 
 thrown a pebble on board, the high bows of 
 a ship. Indeed, its very nearness gave her 
 the feeling that it was already saved, and 
 its occasional heavy roll to leeward, drunken, 
 helpless, ludicrous, but never awful, brought 
 a hysteric laugh to her lips. But when a 
 livid blue light, lit in the swinging top, 
 showed a number of black objects clinging 
 to bulwarks and rigging, and the sea, with 
 languid, heavy cruelty, pushing rather than 
 beating them away, one by one, she knew 
 that Death was there. 
 
 The neighbors, her father with the oth- 
 ers, had been running hopelessly to and fro, 
 or cowering in groups against the copse, 
 when suddenly they uttered a cry — their 
 first — of joyful welcome. And with that 
 shout, the man she most despised and hated, 
 Sol. Catlin, mounted on a " calico " mus« 
 tang, as outrageous and bizarre as himself 9 
 dashed among them. 
 
 In another moment, what had been fear, 
 bewilderment, and hesitation was changed 
 to courage, confidence, and action. The 
 men pressed eagerly around him, and as 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 251 
 
 eagerly dispersed under his quick command. 
 Galloping at his heels was a t^eam with the 
 whale-boat, brought from the river, miles 
 away. He was here, there, and everywhere ; 
 catching the line thrown by the rocket from 
 the ship, marshaling the men to haul it in, 
 answering the hail from those on board 
 above the tempest, pervading everything and 
 everybody with the fury of the storm ; loud, 
 imperious, domineering, self-asserting, all- 
 sufficient, and successful! And when the 
 boat was launched, the last mighty impulse 
 came from his shoulder. He rode at the 
 helm into the first hanging wall of foam, 
 erect and triumphant ! Dazzled, bewildered, 
 crying and laughing, she hated him more 
 than ever. 
 
 The boat made three trips, bringing off, 
 with the aid of the hawser, all but the sail- 
 ors she had seen perish before her own eyes. 
 The passengers, — they were few, — the cap- 
 tain and officers, found refuge in her father's 
 house, and were loud in their praises of Sol. 
 Catlin. But in that grateful chorus a single 
 gloomy voice arose, the voice of a wealthy 
 and troubled passenger. " I will give," he 
 said, " five thousand dollars to the man who 
 brings me a box of securities I left in my 
 
252 A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 stateroom." Every eye turned instinctively 
 to Sol. ; he answered only those of J en* 
 ny's. " Say ten thousand, and if the dod- 
 blasted hulk holds together two hours longer 
 I '11 do it, d — n me ! You hear me ! My 
 name 9 s Sol. Catlin, and when I say a thing, 
 by G — d, I do it." Jenny's disgust here 
 reached its climax. The hero of a night of 
 undoubted energy and courage had blotted 
 it out in a single moment of native vanity 
 and vulgar avarice. 
 
 He was gone ; not only two hours, but day- 
 light had come and they were eagerly seek- 
 ing him, when he returned among them, 
 dripping and — empty-handed. He had 
 reached the ship, he said, with another; 
 found the box, and trusted himself alone with 
 it to the sea. But in the surf he had to 
 abandon it to save himself. It had perhaps 
 drifted ashore, and might be found ; for him- 
 self, he abandoned his claim to the reward. 
 Had he looked abashed or mortified, Jenny 
 felt that she might have relented, but the 
 braggart was as all-satisfied, as confident and 
 boastful as ever. Nevertheless, as his eye 
 seemed to seek hers, she was constrained, 
 in mere politeness, to add her own to her 
 father's condolences. " I suppose," she hesi- 
 
A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 25$ 
 
 tated, in passing him, " that this is a mere 
 nothing to you after all that ,you did last 
 night that was really great and unselfish." 
 
 " Were you never disappointed, Miss ? " 
 he said, with exasperating abruptness. 
 
 A quick consciousness of her own thank- 
 less labor on the galleon, and a terrible idea 
 that he might have some suspicion of, and 
 perhaps the least suggestion that she might 
 have been disappointed in him, brought a 
 faint color to her cheek. But she replied 
 with dignity : — 
 
 "I really couldn't say. But certainly," 
 she added, with a new-found pertness, " you 
 don't look it." 
 
 " Nor do you, Miss," was his idiotic an* 
 swer. 
 
 A few hours later, alarmed at what she 
 had heard of the inroads of the sea, which 
 had risen higher than ever known to the 
 oldest settler, and perhaps mindful of yester- 
 day's footprints, she sought her old secluded 
 haunt. The wreck was still there, but the 
 sea had reached it. The excavation between 
 its gaunt ribs was filled with drift and the 
 seaweed carried there by the surges and en- 
 trapped in its meshes. And there, too, 
 caught as in a net, lay the wooden box of 
 
254 A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON. 
 
 securities Sol. Catlin had abandoned to the 
 sea. 
 
 This is the story as it was told to me. The 
 singularity of coincidences has challenged 
 some speculation. Jenny insisted at the 
 time upon sharing the full reward with Cat- 
 lin, but local critics have pointed out that 
 from subsequent events this proved nothing. 
 For she had married him ! 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 
 
 It was a slightly cynical, but fairly good- 
 humored crowd that had gathered before a 
 warehouse on Long Wharf in San Francisco 
 one afternoon in the summer of '51. Al- 
 though the occasion was an auction, the bid- 
 ders' chances more than usually hazardous, 
 and the season and locality famous for reck- 
 less speculation, there was scarcely any ex- 
 citement among the bystanders, and a lazy, 
 half -humorous curiosity seemed to have taken 
 the place of any zeal for gain. 
 
 It was an auction of unclaimed trunks and 
 boxes — the personal luggage of early emi- 
 grants — which had been left on storage in 
 hulk or warehouse at San Francisco, while 
 the owner was seeking his fortune in the 
 mines. The difficulty and expense of trans- 
 port, often obliging the gold-seeker to make 
 part of his journey on foot, restricted him to 
 the smallest impedimenta, and that of a kind 
 
256 OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 
 
 not often found in the luggage of ordinary 
 civilization. As a consequence, during the 
 emigration of '49, he was apt on landing 
 to avail himself of the invitation usually dis- 
 played on some of the doors of the rude hos- 
 telries on the shore : " Rest for the Weary 
 and Storage for Trunks." In a majority of 
 cases he never returned to claim his stored 
 property. Enforced absence, protracted 
 equally by good or evil fortune, accumulated 
 the high storage charges until they usually 
 far exceeded the actual value of the goods ; 
 sickness, further emigration, or death also 
 reduced the number of possible claimants, 
 and that more wonderful human frailty- — 
 absolute forgetfulness of deposited posses- 
 sions — combined together to leave the bulk 
 of the property in the custodian's hands. 
 Under an understood agreement they were 
 always sold at public auction after a given 
 time. Although the contents of some of 
 the trunks were exposed, it was found more 
 in keeping with the public sentiment to sell 
 the trunks locked and unopened. The ele- 
 ment of curiosity was kept up from time to 
 time by the incautious disclosures of the 
 lucky or unlucky purchaser, and general 
 bidding thus encouraged — except when the 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 257 
 
 speculator, with the true gambling instinct, 
 gave no indication in his face of what was 
 drawn in this lottery. Generally, however* 
 some suggestion in the exterior of the trunk, 
 a label or initials; some conjectural know* 
 ledge of its former owner, or the idea that 
 he might be secretly present in the Lope of 
 getting his property back for less than the 
 accumulated dues, kept up the bidding and 
 interest. 
 
 A modest-looking, well-worn portmanteau 
 had been just put up at a small opening bid, 
 when Harry Flint joined the crowd. The 
 young man had arrived a week before at San 
 Francisco friendless and penniless, and had 
 been forced to part with his own effects to 
 procure necessary food and lodging while 
 looking for an employment. In the irony of 
 fate that morning the proprietors of a dry- 
 goods store, struck with his good looks and 
 manners, had offered him a situation, if he 
 could make himself more presentable to their 
 fair clients. Harry Flint was gazing half 
 abstractedly, half hopelessly, at the portman- 
 teau without noticing the auctioneer's per- 
 suasive challenge. In his abstraction he 
 was not aware that the auctioneer's assistant 
 was also looking at him curiously, and that 
 
258 OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 
 
 possibly his dejected and half -clad appear* 
 ance had excited the attention of one of the 
 cynical bystanders, who was exchanging a 
 few words with the assistant. He was, how- 
 ever, recalled to himself a moment later 
 when the portmanteau was knocked down 
 at fifteen dollars, and considerably startled 
 when the assistant placed it at his feet with 
 a grim smile. " That 's your property, Fow- 
 ler, and I reckon you look as if you wanted 
 it back bad." 
 
 " But — there 's some mistake," stammered 
 Flint. "I did n't bid." 
 
 " No, but Tom Flynn did for you, You 
 see, I spotted you from the first, and told 
 Flynn I reckoned you were one of those 
 chaps who came back from the mines dead 
 broke. And he up and bought your things 
 for you — like a square man. That 's 
 Flynn's style, if he is a gambler." 
 
 " But," persisted Flint, " this never was 
 my property. My name is n't Fowler, and 
 I never left anything here." 
 
 The assistant looked at him with a grim, 
 half-credulous, half -scornful smile. " Have 
 it your own way," he said, " but I oughter 
 tell ye, old man, that I 'm the warehouse 
 elerk, and I remember you. I 'm here for 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 259 
 
 that purpose. But as that thar valise is 
 bought and paid for by somebody else and 
 given to you, it 's nothing more to me. Take 
 it or leave it." 
 
 The ridiculousness of quarreling over the 
 mere form of his good fortune here struck 
 Flint, and, as his abrupt benefactor had as 
 abruptly disappeared, he hurried off with his 
 prize. Reaching his cheap lodging-house, he 
 examined its contents. As he had surmised, 
 it contained a full suit of clothing of the 
 better sort, and suitable to his urban needs. 
 There were a few articles of jewelry, which 
 he put religiously aside. There were some 
 letters, which seemed to be of a purely busi- 
 ness character. There were a few daguer- 
 reotypes of pretty faces, one of which was 
 singularly fascinating to him. But there 
 was another, of a young man, which star- 
 tled him with its marvelous resemblance 
 to himself! In a flash of intelligence he 
 understood it all now. It was the likeness 
 of the former owner of the trunk, for whom 
 the assistant had actually mistaken him! 
 He glanced hurriedly at the envelopes of 
 the letters. They were addressed to Shelby 
 Fowler, the name by which the assistant 
 had just called him. The mystery was 
 
260 OUT OF A PIONEERS TRUNK. 
 
 plain now. And for the present lie conld 
 fairly accept his good luck, and trust to later 
 fortune to justify himself. 
 
 Transformed in his new garb, he left his 
 lodgings to present himself once more to his 
 possible employer. His way led past one of 
 the large gambling saloons. It was yet too 
 early to find the dry-goods trader disengaged ; 
 perhaps the consciousness of more decent, 
 civilized garb emboldened him to mingle 
 more freely with strangers, and he entered 
 the saloon. He was scarcely abreast of one 
 of the faro tables when a man suddenly leaped 
 up with an oath and discharged a revolver 
 full in his face. The shot missed. Before 
 his unknown assailant could fire again the 
 astonished Flint had closed with him, and 
 instinctively clutched the weapon. A brief 
 but violent struggle ensued. Flint felt his 
 strength failing him, when suddenly a look 
 of astonishment came into the furious eyes 
 of his adversary, and the man's grasp me- 
 chanically relaxed. The half-freed pistol, 
 thrown upwards by this movement, was ac- 
 cidentally discharged point blank into his 
 temples, and he fell dead. No one in the 
 crowd had stirred or interfered. 
 
 " You've done for Australian Pete this 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 261 
 
 time, Mr. Fowler," said a voice at his elbow. 
 He turned gaspingly and recognized his 
 strange benefactor, Flynn. " I call yon all 
 to witness, gentlemen," continued the gam- 
 bler, turning dictatorially to the crowd, 
 " that this man was first attacked and was 
 unarmed" He lifted Flint's limp and 
 empty hands and then pointed to the dead 
 man, who was still grasping the weapon. 
 " Come ! " He caught the half -paralyzed 
 arm of Flint and dragged him into the 
 street. 
 
 " But," stammered the horrified Flint, as 
 he was borne along, "what does it all mean? 
 What made that man attack me ? " 
 
 " I reckon it was a case of shooting on 
 sight, Mr. Fowler ; but he missed it by not 
 waiting to see if you were armed. It was n't 
 the square thing, and you 're all right with 
 the crowd now, whatever he might have had 
 agin' you." 
 
 " But," protested the unhappy Flint, " 1 
 never laid eyes on the man before, and my 
 name is n't Fowler." 
 
 Flynn halted, and dragged him in a door 
 way. " Who the devil are you ? " he asked 
 roughly. 
 
 Briefly, passionately, almost hysterically* 
 
262 OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 
 
 Flint told him his scant story. An odd ex 
 pression came over the gambler's face. 
 
 " Look here," he said abruptly, " I have 
 passed my word to the crowd yonder that 
 you are a dead-broke miner called Fowler. 
 I allowed that you might have had some row 
 with that Sydney duck, Australian Pete, in 
 the mines. That satisfied them. If I go 
 back now, and say it 's a lie, that your name 
 ain't Fowler, and you never knew who Pete 
 was, they '11 jest pass you over to the police 
 to deal with you, and wash their hands of 
 it altogether. You may prove to the police 
 who you are, and how that d clerk mis- 
 took you, but it will give you trouble. And 
 who is there here who knows who you really 
 are?" 
 
 " No one," said Flint, with sudden hope- 
 lessness. 
 
 " And you say you 're an orphan, and ain't 
 got any relations livin' that you 're beholden 
 to?" 
 
 " No one." 
 
 " Then, take my advice, and he Fowler, 
 and stick to it ! Be Fowler until Fowler 
 turns up, and thanks you for it ; for you 've 
 saved Fowler's life, as Pete would never 
 have funked and lost his grit over Fowler as 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 263 
 
 he did with you ; and you 've a right to his 
 name." 
 
 He stopped, and the same odd, supersti- 
 tious look came into his dark eyes. 
 
 "Don't you see what all that means? 
 Well, I '11 tell you. You 're in the biggest 
 streak of luck a man ever had. You 've got 
 the cards in your own hand ! They spell 
 " Fowler " ! Play Fowler first, last, and all 
 the time. Good-night, and good luck, Mr. 
 Fowler." 
 
 The next morning's journal contained an 
 account of the justifiable killing of the noto- 
 rious desperado and ex-convict, Australian 
 Pete, by a courageous young miner by the 
 name of Fowler. " An act of firmness and 
 daring," said the " Pioneer," " which will go 
 far to counteract the terrorism produced by 
 those lawless ruffians." 
 
 In his new suit of clothes, and with this 
 paper in his hand, Flint sought the dry- 
 goods proprietor — the latter was satisfied 
 and convinced. That morning Harry Flint 
 began his career as salesman and as " Shelby 
 Fowler." 
 
 From that day Shelby Fowler's career was 
 ©ne of uninterrupted prosperity. Within 
 
264 OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 
 
 the year lie became a partner. The same 
 miraculous fortune followed other ventures 
 later. He was mill owner, mine owner, bank 
 director — a millionaire ! He was popular, 
 the reputation of his brief achievement over 
 the desperado kept him secure from the at- 
 tack of envy and rivalryo He never was 
 confronted by the real Fowler. There was 
 no danger of exposure by others — the one 
 custodian of his secret, Tom Flynn, died in 
 Nevada the year following. He had quite 
 forgotten his youthful past, and even the 
 more recent lucky portmanteau ; remem- 
 bered nothing, perhaps, but the pretty face 
 of the daguerreotype that had fascinated 
 him. There seemed to be no reason why he 
 should not live and die as Shelby Fowler. 
 
 His business a year later took him to Eu- 
 rope. He was entering a train at one of the 
 great railway stations of London, when the 
 porter, who had just deposited his portman- 
 teau in a compartment, reappeared at the 
 window followed by a young lady in mourn- 
 ing. 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir, but I handed you the 
 wrong portmanteau. That belongs to this 
 young lady. This is yours." 
 
 Flint glanced at the portmanteau on the 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 265 
 
 seat before Mm. It certainly was not his, 
 although it bore the initials " S. F." He 
 was mechanically handing it back to the 
 porter, when his eyes fell on the young lady's 
 face. For an instant he stood petrified. It 
 was the face of the daguerreotype. " I beg 
 pardon," he stammered, " but are these your 
 initials ? " She hesitated, perhaps it was 
 the abruptness of the question, but he saw 
 she looked confused. 
 " No. A friend's." 
 
 She disappeared into another carriage, but 
 from that moment Harry Flint knew that he 
 had no other aim in life but to follow this 
 clue and the beautiful girl who had dropped 
 it. He bribed the guard at the next station, 
 and discovered that she was going to York. 
 On their arrival, he was ready on the plat- 
 form to respectfully assist her. A few 
 words disclosed the fact that she was a fel- 
 low-countrywoman, although residing in 
 England, and at present on her way to join 
 some friends at Harrogate. Her name was 
 West. At the mention of his, he again fan* 
 cied she looked disturbed. 
 
 They met again and again ; the informal- 
 ity of his introduction was overlooked by 
 her friends, as his assumed name was already 
 
266 OUT OF A PIONEERS TRUNK. 
 
 respectably and responsibly known beyond 
 California. He thought no more of his fu- 
 ture. He was in love. He even dared to 
 think it might be returned ; but he felt he 
 had no right to seek that knowledge until 
 he had told her his real name and how he 
 came to assume another's. He did so alone 
 — scarcely a month after their first meeting. 
 To his alarm, she burst into a flood of tears, 
 and showed an agitation that seemed far be- 
 yond any apparent cause. When she had 
 partly recovered, she said, in a low, fright- 
 ened voice : — 
 
 "You are bearing my brother's name. 
 But it was a name that the unhappy boy 
 had so shamefully disgraced in Australia 
 that he abandoned it, and, as he lay upon 
 his death-bed, the last act of his wasted life 
 was to write an imploring letter begging me 
 to change mine too. For the infamous 
 companion of his crime who had first 
 tempted, then betrayed him, had possession 
 of all his papers and letters, many of them 
 from me, and was threatening to bring them 
 to our Virginia home and expose him to our 
 neighbors. Maddened by desperation, the 
 miserable boy twice attempted the life of 
 the scoundrel, and might have added that 
 
OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK. 267 
 
 Wood guiltiness to his other sins had he 
 lived. I did change my name to my mo- 
 ther's maiden one, left the country, and 
 have lived here to escape the revelations of 
 that desperado, should he fulfill his threat." 
 
 Jjq a flash of recollection Flint remem- 
 bered the startled look that had come into 
 his assailant's eye after they had clinched. 
 It was the same man who had too late real- 
 ized that his antagonist was not Fowler. 
 " Thank God ! you are forever safe from 
 any exposure from that man," he said, 
 gravely, " and the name of Fowler has never 
 been known in San Francisco save in all 
 respect and honor. It is for you to take 
 back — fearlessly and alone! " 
 
 She did — but not alone, for she shared 
 it with her husband. 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEl 
 CASTLE. 
 
 There should have been snow on the 
 ground to make the picture seasonable and 
 complete, but the Western Barbarian had 
 lived long enough in England to know that, 
 except in the pages of a holiday supplement, 
 this was rarely the accompaniment of a 
 Christmas landscape, and he cheerfully ac- 
 cepted, on the 24th of December, the back- 
 ground of a low, brooding sky, on which the 
 delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker 
 chevaux defrise of pine was faintly etched, 
 as a consistent setting to the turrets and 
 peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Cas- 
 tle. Yet, even in this disastrous eclipse of 
 color and distance, the harmonious outlines 
 of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to 
 him as wonderful as ever. It still domi- 
 nated the whole landscape, and, as he had 
 often fancied, carried this subjection even 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 269 
 
 to the human beings who had created it, 
 lived in it, but which it seemed to have in 
 some dull, senile way dozed over and forgot- 
 ten. He vividly recalled the previous sun- 
 shine of an autumnal house party within its 
 walls, where some descendants of its old cas- 
 tellans, encountered in long galleries or at 
 the very door of their bedrooms, looked as 
 alien to the house as the Barbarian himself. 
 
 For the rest it may be found described in 
 the local guide-books, with a view of its 
 " South Front," " West Front," and " Great 
 Quadrangle." It was alleged to be based 
 on an encampment of the Romans — that 
 highly apocryphal race who seemed to have 
 spent their time in getting up picnics on 
 tessellated pavements, where, after hilari- 
 ously emptying their pockets of their loose 
 coin and throwing round their dishes, they 
 instantly built a road to escape by, leaving 
 no other record of their existence. Stow 
 and Dugdale had recorded the date when a 
 Norman favorite obtained the royal license 
 to " embattle it ; " it had done duty on 
 Christmas cards with the questionable snow 
 already referred to laid on thickly in crys- 
 tal ; it had been lovingly portrayed by a 
 fair countrywoman — the vivacious corre- 
 
270 THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 
 
 spondent of the " East Machias Sentinel " ~ 
 in a combination of the most delightful fem- 
 inine disregard of facts with the highest 
 feminine respect for titles. It was rich in a 
 real and spiritual estate of tapestries, paint- 
 ings, armor, legends, and ghosts. Every- 
 thing the poet could wish for, and indeed 
 some things that decent prose might have 
 possibly wished out of it, were there. 
 
 Yet, from the day that it had been forci- 
 bly seized by a Parliamentary General, until 
 more recently, when it had passed hy the no 
 less desperate conveyance of marriage into 
 the hands of a Friendly Nobleman known to 
 the Western Barbarian, it had been supposed 
 to suggest something or other more remark- 
 able than itself. " Few spectators," said the 
 guide-book, " even the most unimpassioned, 
 can stand in the courtyard and gaze upon 
 those historic walls without feeling a thrill 
 of awe," etc. The Western Barbarian had 
 stood there, gazed, and felt no thrill. " The 
 privileged guest," said the grave historian, 
 " passing in review the lineaments of the il- 
 lustrious owners of Stukeley, as he slowly 
 paces the sombre gallery, must be conscious 
 of emotions of no ordinary character," etc., 
 etc. The Barbarian had been conscious of 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 271 
 
 no such emotions. And it was for this rea- 
 son, and believing he might experience them 
 if left there in solitude, with no distracting or 
 extraneous humanity around him, it had been 
 agreed between him and the Friendly Noble- 
 man, who had fine Barbarian instincts, that 
 as he — the Friendly Nobleman — and his 
 family were to spend their holidays abroad, 
 the Barbarian should be allowed, on the eve 
 and day of Christmas, to stay at Stukeley 
 alone. "But," added his host, " you'll find 
 it beastly lonely, and although I Ve told the 
 housekeeper to look after you — you 'd bet- 
 ter go over to dine at Audley Friars, where 
 there's a big party, and they know you, 
 and it will be a deuced deal more amusing. 
 And — er — I say — you know — you 're 
 really not looking out for ghosts, and that 
 sort of thing, are you ? You know you fel- 
 lows don't believe in them — over there." 
 And the Barbarian, assuring him that this 
 was a part of his deficient emotions, it was 
 settled then and there that he should come. 
 And that was why, on the 24th of December, 
 the Barbarian found himself gazing hope- 
 fully on the landscape with his portmanteau 
 at his feet, as he drove up the avenue. 
 The ravens did not croak ominously from 
 
272 THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 
 
 the battlements as he entered. And the 
 housekeeper, although neither " stately " nor 
 " tall," nor full of reminiscences of " his 
 late lordship, the present Earl's father," was 
 very sensible and practical. The Barbarian 
 could, of course, have his choice of rooms — 
 but — she had thought — remembering his 
 tastes the last time, that the long blue room ? 
 Exactly ! The long, low-arched room, with 
 the faded blue tapestry, looking upon the 
 gallery — capital ! He had always liked 
 that room. From purely negative evidence 
 he had every reason to believe that it was 
 the one formidable-looking room in England 
 that Queen Elizabeth had not slept in! 
 
 When the footman had laid out his clothes, 
 and his step grew fainter along the passage, 
 until it was suddenly swallowed up with the 
 closing of a red baize door in the turret stair- 
 case, like a trap in an oubliette^ the whole 
 building seemed to sink back into repose. 
 Quiet it certainly was, but not more so, he 
 remembered, than when the chambers on 
 either side were filled with guests, and float- 
 ing voices in the corridor were lost in those 
 all-absorbing walls. So far, certainly, this 
 was no new experience. It was past four. 
 He waited for the shadows to gather. Light 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 273 
 
 thickened beyond his windows ; gradually 
 the outflanking wall and part of a projecting 
 terrace crumbled away in the darkness, as 
 if Night were slowly reducing the castle. 
 The figures on the tapestry in his room 
 stood out faintly. The gallery, seen through 
 his open door, barred with black spaces be- 
 tween the mullioned windows, presently be- 
 came obliterated, as if invaded by a dull 
 smoke from without. But nothing moved, 
 nothing glimmered. Really this might be- 
 come in time very stupid. 
 
 He was startled, however, while dressing, 
 to see from his windows that the great ban- 
 queting hall was illuminated, but on coming 
 down was amused to find his dinner served 
 on a small table in its oaken solitude lit by 
 the large electric chandelier — for Stukeley 
 Castle under its present lord had all the 
 modern improvements — shining on the tat- 
 tered banners and glancing mail above him. 
 It was evidently the housekeeper's reading 
 of some written suggestion of her noble mas- 
 ter. The Barbarian, in a flash of instinct, 
 imagined the passage : — - 
 
 " Humor him as a harmless lunatic ; the 
 plate is quite safe." 
 
 Declining the further offer of an illumina- 
 
274 TEE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 
 
 tion of the picture gallery, grand drawing* 
 room, ball-room, and chapel, a few hours 
 later he found himself wandering in the 
 corridor with a single candle and a growing 
 conviction of the hopelessness of his experi- 
 ment. The castle had as yet yielded to him 
 nothing that he had not seen before in the 
 distraction of company and the garishness of 
 day. It was becoming a trifle monotonous. 
 Yet fine — exceedingly ; and now that a 
 change of wind had lifted the fog, and the 
 full moon shone on the lower half of the 
 pictures of the gallery, starting into the most 
 artificial simulation of life a number of Van 
 Dyke legs, farthingales, and fingers that 
 would have deceived nobody, it seemed gra- 
 cious, gentle, and innocent beyond expres- 
 sion. Yv^andering down the gallery, con- 
 scious of being more like a ghost than any of 
 the painted figures, and that they might rea- 
 sonably object to him, he wished he could 
 meet the original of one of those pictured gal- 
 lants and secretly compare his fingers with 
 the copy. He remembered an embroidered 
 pair of gloves in a cabinet and a suit of armor 
 on the wall that, in measurement, did not 
 seem to bear out the delicacy of the one nor 
 the majesty of the other. It occurred to him 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 275 
 
 also to satisfy a yearning lie had once felt to 
 try on a certain breastplate and steel cap 
 that hung over an oaken settle. It will be 
 perceived that he was getting a good deal 
 bored. For thus caparisoned he listlessly, 
 and, as will be seen, imprudently, allowed 
 himself to sink back into a very modern chair 5 
 and give way to a dreamy cogitation. 
 
 What possible interest could the dead have 
 in anything that was here ? Admitting that 
 they had any, and that it was not the living, 
 whom the Barbarian had always found most 
 inclined to haunt the past, would not a 
 ghost of any decided convictions object to 
 such a collection as his descendant had 
 gathered in this gallery? Yonder idiot in 
 silk and steel had blunderingly and cruelly 
 persecuted his kinsman in leather and steel 
 only a few panels distant. Would they care 
 to meet here ? And if their human weak- 
 nesses had died with them, what would bring 
 them here at all ? And if not t hem ■ — who 
 then ? He stopped short. The door at the 
 lower end of the gallery had opened ! Not 
 stealthily, not noiselessly, but in an ordi- 
 nary fashion, and a number of figures, 
 dressed in the habiliments of a bygone age, 
 came trooping in. They did not glide in nor 
 
276 TEE GHOSTS OF STUKELET CASTLE. 
 
 float in, but trampled in awkwardly, clum* 
 sily, and unfamiliarly, gaping about them as 
 they walked. At the head was apparently a 
 steward in a kind of livery, who stopped once 
 or twice and seemed to be pointing out and 
 explaining certain objects in the room. A 
 flash of indignant intelligence filled the brain 
 of the Barbarian ! It seemed absurd ! — 
 impossible ! — but it was true ! It was a 
 holiday excursion party of ghosts, being 
 shown over Stukeley Castle by a ghostly 
 Cicerone! And as his measured, monoto- 
 nous voice rose on the Christmas morning 
 air, it could be heard that he was actually 
 showing off, not the antiquities of the Castle, 
 but the modern improvements I 
 
 " This 'ere, gossips," — the Barbarian in- 
 stantly detected the fallacy of all the so- 
 called mediaeval jargon he had read, — " is 
 the Helectric Bell, which does away with 
 our hold, hordinary 'orn bio win', and the 
 hattendant waitin' in the 'all for the usual 
 4 Without there, who waits ? ' which all of 
 us was accustomed to in mortal flesh. You 
 hobserve this button. I press it so, and it 
 instantly rings a bell in the kitchen 'all, and 
 shows in fair letters the name of this 'ere 
 gallery — as we will see later. Will hany 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. -277 
 
 good dame or gaffer press the button ? 
 Will you, mistress ? " said the Cicerone to a 
 giggling, kerchief -coif ed lass. 
 
 " Oi soy, Maudlin ! — look out — will yer ! 
 — It 's the soime old gag as them bloomin' 
 knobs you ketched hold of when yer was 
 'ere las' Whitsuntide," called out the medi- 
 aeval 'Arry of the party. 
 
 " It is not the Galvanic-Magnetic machine 
 in 'is lordship's library," said the Cicerone, 
 severely, " which is a mere toy for infants, 
 and hold-fashioned. And we have 'ere a 
 much later invention. I open this little 
 door, I turn this 'andle — called a switch — 
 and, has you perceive, the gallery is bin- 
 stantly hilluminated." 
 
 There was a hoarse cry of astonishment 
 from the assemblage. The Barbarian felt 
 an awful thrill as this searching, insufferable 
 light of the nineteenth century streamed sud- 
 denly upon the up-turned, vacant-eyed, and 
 dull faces of those sightseers of the past. 
 But there was no responsive gleam in their 
 eyes. 
 
 " It be the sun," gasped an old woman in 
 a gray cloak. 
 
 " Toime to rouse out, Myryan, and make 
 the foire," said the mediaeval 'Arry. The 
 custodian smiled with superior toleration. 
 
278 THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 
 
 " But what do 'ee want o' my old lan« 
 thorne," asked a yellow-jerkined stable boy, 
 pointing to an old-fashioned horned lan* 
 tern, tempus Edward III., " with this brave 
 loight?" 
 
 "You know," said the custodian, with 
 condescending familiarity, " these mortals 
 worship what they call ' curios ' and the 
 ' antique,' and 'is lordship gave a matter of 
 fifty pounds for that same lanthern. That 's 
 what the modern folk come 'ere to see — 
 like as ye." 
 
 " Oi 've an old three-legged stool in White- 
 chapel oi '11 let his lordship 'ave cheap — 
 for five quid," suggested the humorist. 
 
 " The 'prentice wight knows not that he 
 speaks truly. For 'ere is a braver jest than 
 'is. Good folks, wilt please ye to examine 
 yon coffer ? " pointing to an oaken chest. 
 
 " 'T is but poor stuff, marry," said Maud- 
 lin. 
 
 " 'T is a coffer — the same being made in 
 Wardour Street last year — 'is lordship 
 gave one hundred pounds for it. Look at 
 these would-be worm-holes, — but they were 
 made with an auger. Marry, we know what 
 worm-holes are ! " 
 
 A ghastly grin spread over the faces of 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 279 
 
 the spectral assembly as they gathered 
 around the chest with silent laughter. 
 
 " Wilt walk 'ere and see the phonograph 
 in the libry, made by Hedison, an Hameri- 
 can, which bottles up the voice and pre- 
 serves it fresh for a hundred years ? 'T is 
 a rare new fancy." 
 
 " Kot," said ' Arry. Then turning to the 
 giggling Maudlin, he whispered : " Saw it 
 las' toime. 'Is lordship got a piece o' moy 
 moind that oi reeled off into it about this 
 'ere swindle. Fawncy that old bloke there 
 charging a tanner apiece to us for chaffin' 
 a bit of a barrel." 
 
 " Have you no last new braveries to show 
 us of the gallants and their mistresses, as 
 you were wont ? " said Maudlin to the Cice- 
 rone. " 'T was a rare show last time — the 
 modish silk gowns and farthingales in the 
 closets." 
 
 "But there be no company this Christ- 
 mas," said the custodian, " and 'is lordship 
 does not entertain, unless it be the new fool 
 'is lordship sent down 'ere to-day, who has 
 been mopin' and moonin' in the corridors, 
 as is ever the way of these wittol creatures 
 when they are not heeded. He was 'ere in a 
 rare motley of his own choosing, with which 
 
280 THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 
 
 he thinks to raise a laugh, a moment ago. 
 Ye see him not — not 'avin' the gift that 
 belongs by right to my dread office. 'T is 
 a weird privilege I have — and may not be 
 imparted to others — save " — 
 
 " Save what, good man steward ? Prithee, 
 speak? " said Marian earnestly. 
 
 " 'T is ever a shillin' extra." 
 
 There was no response. A few of the 
 more bashful ghosts thrust their hands in 
 their pockets and looked awkwardly another 
 way. The Barbarian felt a momentary re- 
 lief followed by a slight pang of mortified 
 vanity. He was a little afraid of them. 
 The price was an extortion, certainly, but 
 surely he was worth the extra shilling ! 
 
 "He has brought but little braveries of 
 attire into the Castle," continued the Cice- 
 rone, " but I 'ave something 'ere which was 
 found on the top of his portmanteau. I wot 
 ye know not the use of this." To the Bar- 
 barian's intense indignation, the Cicerone 
 produced, from under his, his (the Barba- 
 rian's) own opera hat. " Marry, what should 
 be this? Bead me this riddle! To it — 
 and unyoke ! " 
 
 A dozen vacant guesses were made as the 
 showman held it aloft. Then with a co*v 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 281 
 
 juror's gesture he suddenly placed his thumbs 
 within the rim, released the spring and ex- 
 tended the hat. The assembly laughed again 
 silently as before. 
 
 " 'T is a hat," said the Cicerone, with a 
 superior air. 
 
 " Nay," said Maudlin, " give it here." 
 She took it curiously, examined it, and then 
 with a sudden coquettish movement lifted it 
 towards her own coifed head, as if to try it 
 on. The Cicerone suddenly sprang forward 
 with a despairing gesture to prevent her. 
 And here the Barbarian was conscious of a 
 more startling revelation. How and why he 
 could not tell, but he knew that the putting 
 on of that article of his own dress would 
 affect the young girl as the assumption of 
 the steel cap and corselet had evidently 
 affected him, and that he would instantly 
 become as visible to her as she and her com- 
 panions had been to him. He attempted to 
 rise, but was too late ; she had evaded the 
 Cicerone by ducking, and, facing in the di- 
 rection of the Barbarian, clapped the hat on 
 her head. He saw the swift light of con- 
 sciousness, of astonishment, of sudden fear 
 spring into her eyes ! She shrieked, he 
 started, struggled, and awoke ! 
 
282 TEE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. ' 
 
 But what was this ! He was alone in the 
 moonlit gallery, certainly ; the ghastly fig- 
 ures in their outlandish garb were gone ; he 
 was awake and in his senses, but, in this 
 first flash of real consciousness, he could 
 have sworn that something remained ! 
 Something terror-stricken, and retreating 
 even then before him, — something of the 
 world, modern, — and, even as he gazed, 
 vanishing through the gallery door with the 
 material flash and rustle of silk. 
 
 He walked quietly to the door. It was 
 open. Ah ! No doubt he had forgotten to 
 shut it fast ; a current of air or a sudden 
 draught had opened it. That noise had 
 awakened him. More than that, remember- 
 ing the lightning flash of dream conscious- 
 ness, it had been the cause of his dream. 
 Yet, for a few moments he listened atten- 
 tively. 
 
 What might have been the dull reverber- 
 ation of a closing door in the direction of 
 the housekeeper's room, on the lower story, 
 was all he heard. He smiled, for even that, 
 natural as it might be, was less distinct and 
 real than his absurd vision. 
 
 Nevertheless the next afternoon he con- 
 cluded to walk over to Audley Friars for 
 
THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE. 283 
 
 his Christmas dinner. Its hospitable mas- 
 ter greeted him cordially. 
 
 " But do you know, my dear fellow," he 
 said, when they were alone for a moment, 
 " if you had n'fc come by yourself I 'd have 
 sent over there for you. The fact is that 
 
 A wrote to us that you were down at 
 
 Stukeley alone, ghost-hunting or something 
 of that sort, and I 'm afraid it leaked out 
 among the young people of our party. Two 
 of our girls — I shan't tell you which — 
 stole over there last night to give you a 
 start of some kind. They did n't see you 
 at all, but, by Jove, it seems they got the 
 biggest kind of a fright themselves, for they 
 declare that something dreadful in armor, 
 you know, was sitting in the gallery. Aw- 
 fully good joke, was n't it ? Of course you 
 did n't see anything, — did you ? " 
 
 " No," said the Barbarian, discreetly.