A FIRST FAMILY OF TASAJARA

By Bret Harte

CHAPTER I. 

"It blows, " said Joe Wingate. 

As if to accent the words of the speaker a heavy gust of wind at thatmoment shook the long light wooden structure which served as the generalstore of Sidon settlement, in Contra Costa. Even after it had passed aprolonged whistle came through the keyhole, sides, and openings of theclosed glass front doors, that served equally for windows, and filledthe canvas ceiling which hid the roof above like a bellying sail. A waveof enthusiastic emotion seemed to be communicated to a line of strawhats and sou-westers suspended from a cross-beam, and swung them withevery appearance of festive rejoicing, while a few dusters, overcoats, and "hickory" shirts hanging on the side walls exhibited such markedthough idiotic animation that it had the effect of a satirical commenton the lazy, purposeless figures of the four living inmates of thestore. 

Ned Billings momentarily raised his head and shoulders depressed in theback of his wooden armchair, glanced wearily around, said, "You bet, it's no slouch of a storm, " and then lapsed again with further extendedlegs and an added sense of comfort. 

Here the third figure, which had been leaning listlessly against theshelves, putting aside the arm of a swaying overcoat that seemed tobe emptily embracing him, walked slowly from behind the counter to thedoor, examined its fastenings, and gazed at the prospect. He was theowner of the store, and the view was a familiar one, --a long stretch oftreeless waste before him meeting an equal stretch of dreary sky above, and night hovering somewhere between the two. This was indicated bysplashes of darker shadow as if washed in with india ink, and a lighterlow-lying streak that might have been the horizon, but was not. Tothe right, on a line with the front door of the store, were severalscattered, widely dispersed objects, that, although vague in outline, were rigid enough in angles to suggest sheds or barns, but certainly nottrees. 

"There's a heap more wet to come afore the wind goes down, " he said, glancing at the sky. "Hark to that, now!"

They listened lazily. There was a faint murmur from the shingles above;then suddenly the whole window was filmed and blurred as if theentire prospect had been wiped out with a damp sponge. The man turnedlistlessly away. 

"That's the kind that soaks in; thar won't be much teamin' over Tasajarafor the next two weeks, I reckon, " said the fourth lounger, who, seated on a high barrel, was nibbling--albeit critically andfastidiously--biscuits and dried apples alternately from open boxes onthe counter. "It's lucky you've got in your winter stock, Harkutt. "

The shrewd eyes of Mr. Harkutt, proprietor, glanced at the occupation ofthe speaker as if even his foresight might have its possible drawbacks, but he said nothing. 

"There'll be no show for Sidon until you've got a wagon road from hereto the creek, " said Billings languidly, from the depths of his chair. "But what's the use o' talkin'? Thar ain't energy enough in all Tasajarato build it. A God-forsaken place, that two months of the year can onlybe reached by a mail-rider once a week, don't look ez if it was goin' tobreak its back haulin' in goods and settlers. I tell ye what, gentlemen, it makes me sick!" And apparently it had enfeebled him to the extent ofinterfering with his aim in that expectoration of disgust against thestove with which he concluded his sentence. 

"Why don't YOU build it?" asked Wingate, carelessly. 

"I wouldn't on principle, " said Billings. "It's gov'ment work. What didwe whoop up things here last spring to elect Kennedy to the legislationfor? What did I rig up my shed and a thousand feet of lumber for benchesat the barbecue for? Why, to get Kennedy elected and make him get abill passed for the road! That's MY share of building it, if it comes tothat. And I only wish some folks, that blow enough about what oughter bedone to bulge out that ceiling, would only do as much as I have done forSidon. "

As this remark seemed to have a personal as well as local application, the storekeeper diplomatically turned it. "There's a good many as DON'Tbelieve that a road from here to the creek is going to do any good toSidon. It's very well to say the creek is an embarcadero, but callin' itso don't put anough water into it to float a steamboat from the bay, norclear out the reeds and tules in it. Even if the State builds you roads, it ain't got no call to make Tasajara Creek navigable for ye; and asthat will cost as much as the road, I don't see where the money's comin'from for both. "

"There's water enough in front of 'Lige Curtis's shanty, and hislocation is only a mile along the bank, " returned Billings. 

"Water enough for him to laze away his time fishin' when he's sober, anddeep enough to drown him when he's drunk, " said Wingate. "If youcall that an embarcadero, you kin buy it any day from 'Lige, --title, possession, and shanty thrown in, --for a demijohn o' whiskey. "

The fourth man here distastefully threw back a half-nibbled biscuitinto the box, and languidly slipped from the barrel to the floor, fastidiously flicking the crumbs from his clothes as he did so. "Ireckon somebody'll get it for nothing, if 'Lige don't pull up mightysoon. He'll either go off his head with jim-jams or jump into the creek. He's about as near desp'rit as they make 'em, and havin' no partner tolook after him, and him alone in the tules, ther' 's no tellin' WHAT hemay do. "

Billings, stretched at full length in his chair, here gurgledderisively. "Desp'rit!--ketch him! Why, that's his little game! He'sjist playin' off his desp'rit condition to frighten Sidon. Whenever anyone asks him why he don't go to work, whenever he's hard up for a drink, whenever he's had too much or too little, he's workin' that desp'ritdodge, and even talkin' o' killin' himself! Why, look here, " hecontinued, momentarily raising himself to a sitting posture in hisdisgust, "it was only last week he was over at Rawlett's trying toraise provisions and whiskey outer his water rights on the creek! Fact, sir, --had it all written down lawyer-like on paper. Rawlett didn'texactly see it in that light, and told him so. Then he up with thedesp'rit dodge and began to work that. Said if he had to starve in aswamp like a dog he might as well kill himself at once, and would tooif he could afford the weppins. Johnson said it was not a bad idea, andoffered to lend him his revolver; Bilson handed up his shot-gun, andleft it alongside of him, and turned his head away considerate-like andthoughtful while Rawlett handed him a box of rat pizon over the counter, in case he preferred suthin' more quiet. Well, what did 'Lige do?Nothin'! Smiled kinder sickly, looked sorter wild, and shut up. Hedidn't suicide much. No, sir! He didn't kill himself, --not he. Why, oldBixby--and he's a deacon in good standin'--allowed, in 'Lige's hearin'and for 'Lige's benefit, that self-destruction was better nor badexample, and proved it by Scripture too. And yet 'Lige did nothin'!Desp'rit! He's only desp'rit to laze around and fish all day off a login the tules, and soak up with whiskey, until, betwixt fever an' agueand the jumps, he kinder shakes hisself free o' responsibility. "

A long silence followed; it was somehow felt that the subject wasincongruously exciting; Billings allowed himself to lapse again behindthe back of his chair. Meantime it had grown so dark that the dull glowof the stove was beginning to outline a faint halo on the ceiling evenwhile it plunged the further lines of shelves behind the counter intogreater obscurity. 

"Time to light up, Harkutt, ain't it?" said Wingate, tentatively. 

"Well, I was reckoning ez it's such a wild night there wouldn't be anyuse keepin' open, and when you fellows left I'd just shut up for goodand make things fast, " said Harkutt, dubiously. Before his guests hadtime to fully weigh this delicate hint, another gust of wind shook thetenement, and even forced the unbolted upper part of the door to yieldfar enough to admit an eager current of humid air that seemed to justifythe wisdom of Harkutt's suggestion. Billings slowly and with a sighassumed a sitting posture in the chair. The biscuit-nibbler selected afresh dainty from the counter, and Wingate abstractedly walked to thewindow and rubbed the glass. Sky and water had already disappearedbehind a curtain of darkness that was illuminated by a single point oflight--the lamp in the window of some invisible but nearer house--whichthrew its rays across the glistening shallows in the road. "Well, " saidWingate, buttoning up his coat in slow dejection, "I reckon I oughterbe travelin' to help the old woman do the chores before supper. " He hadjust recognized the light in his own dining-room, and knew by that signthat his long-waiting helpmeet had finally done the chores herself. 

"Some folks have it mighty easy, " said Billings, with long-drawndiscontent, as he struggled to his feet. "You've only a step to go, and yer's me and Peters there"--indicating the biscuit-nibbler, who wasbeginning to show alarming signs of returning to the barrel again--"hevgot to trapse five times that distance. "

"More'n half a mile, if it comes to that, " said Peters, gloomily. Hepaused in putting on his overcoat as if thinking better of it, whileeven the more fortunate and contiguous Wingate languidly lapsed againstthe counter again. 

The moment was a critical one. Billings was evidently also regretfullyeying the chair he had just quitted. Harkutt resolved on a heroiceffort. 

"Come, boys, " he said, with brisk conviviality, "take a parting drinkwith me before you go. " Producing a black bottle from some obscuritybeneath the counter that smelt strongly of india-rubber boots, he placedit with four glasses before his guests. Each made a feint of holding hisglass against the opaque window while filling it, although nothing couldbe seen. A sudden tumult of wind and rain again shook the building, buteven after it had passed the glass door still rattled violently. 

"Just see what's loose, Peters, " said Billings; "you're nearest it. "

Peters, still holding the undrained glass in his hand, walked slowlytowards it. 

"It's suthin'--or somebody outside, " he said, hesitatingly. 

The three others came eagerly to his side. Through the glass, cloudedfrom within by their breath, and filmed from without by the rain, somevague object was moving, and what seemed to be a mop of tangled hairwas apparently brushing against the pane. The door shook again, but lessstrongly. Billings pressed his face against the glass. "Hol' on, " hesaid in a quick whisper, --"it's 'Lige!" But it was too late. Harkutthad already drawn the lower bolt, and a man stumbled from the outerobscurity into the darker room. 

The inmates drew away as he leaned back for a moment against the doorthat closed behind him. Then dimly, but instinctively, discerning theglass of liquor which Wingate still mechanically held in his hand, he reached forward eagerly, took it from Wingate's surprised andunresisting fingers, and drained it at a gulp. The four men laughedvaguely, but not as cheerfully as they might. 

"I was just shutting up, " began Harkutt, dubiously. 

"I won't keep you a minit, " said the intruder, nervously fumbling inthe breast pocket of his hickory shirt. "It's a matter ofbusiness--Harkutt--I"--But he was obliged to stop here to wipe hisface and forehead with the ends of a loose handkerchief tied round histhroat. From the action, and what could be seen of his pale, exhausted face, it was evident that the moisture upon it was beads ofperspiration, and not the rain which some abnormal heat of his body wasconverting into vapor from his sodden garments as he stood there. 

"I've got a document here, " he began again, producing a roll of papertremblingly from his pocket, "that I'd like you to glance over, andperhaps you'd"--His voice, which had been feverishly exalted, here brokeand rattled with a cough. 

Billings, Wingate, and Peters fell apart and looked out of the window. "It's too dark to read anything now, 'Lige, " said Harkutt, with evasivegood humor, "and I ain't lightin' up to-night. "

"But I can tell you the substance of it, " said the man, with a faintnessthat however had all the distinctness of a whisper, "if you'll just stepinside a minute. It's a matter of importance and a bargain"--

"I reckon we must be goin', " said Billings to the others, with markedemphasis. "We're keepin' Harkutt from shuttin' up. " "Good-night!""Good-night!" added Peters and Wingate, ostentatiously followingBillings hurriedly through the door. "So long!"

The door closed behind them, leaving Harkutt alone with his importunateintruder. Possibly his resentment at his customers' selfish abandonmentof him at this moment developed a vague spirit of opposition to them andmitigated his feeling towards 'Lige. He groped his way to the counter, struck a match, and lit a candle. Its feeble rays faintly illuminatedthe pale, drawn face of the applicant, set in a tangle of wet, unkempt, party-colored hair. It was not the face of an ordinary drunkard;although tremulous and sensitive from some artificial excitement, therewas no ENGORGEMENT or congestion in the features or complexion, albeitthey were morbid and unhealthy. The expression was of a suffering thatwas as much mental as physical, and yet in some vague way appearedunmeaning--and unheroic. 

"I want to see you about selling my place on the creek. I want you totake it off my hands for a bargain. I want to get quit of it, at once, for just enough to take me out o' this. I don't want any profit; onlymoney enough to get away. " His utterance, which had a certain kind ofcultivation, here grew thick and harsh again, and he looked eagerly atthe bottle which stood on the counter. 

"Look here, 'Lige, " said Harkutt, not unkindly. "It's too late to doanythin' tonight. You come in to-morrow. " He would have added "whenyou're sober, " but for a trader's sense of politeness to a possiblecustomer, and probably some doubt of the man's actual condition. 

"God knows where or what I may be tomorrow! It would kill me to go backand spend another night as the last, if I don't kill myself on the wayto do it. "

Harkutt's face darkened grimly. It was indeed as Billings had said. The pitiable weakness of the man's manner not only made his desperationinadequate and ineffective, but even lent it all the cheapness ofacting. And, as if to accent his simulation of a part, his fingers, feebly groping in his shirt bosom, slipped aimlessly and helplesslyfrom the shining handle of a pistol in his pocket to wander hesitatinglytowards the bottle on the counter. 

Harkutt took the bottle, poured out a glass of the liquor, and pushedit before his companion, who drank it eagerly. Whether it gave him moreconfidence, or his attention was no longer diverted, he went onmore collectedly and cheerfully, and with no trace of his previousdesperation in his manner. "Come, Harkutt, buy my place. It's a bargain, I tell you. I'll sell it cheap. I only want enough to get away with. Give me twenty-five dollars and it's yours. See, there's the papers--thequitclaim--all drawn up and signed. " He drew the roll of paper from hispocket again, apparently forgetful of the adjacent weapon. 

"Look here, 'Lige, " said Harkutt, with a business-like straightening ofhis lips, "I ain't buyin' any land in Tasajara, --least of all yours onthe creek. I've got more invested here already than I'll ever get backagain. But I tell you what I'll do. You say you can't go back to yourshanty. Well, seein' how rough it is outside, and that the waters ofthe creek are probably all over the trail by this time, I reckon you'reabout right. Now, there's five dollars!" He laid down a coin sharply onthe counter. "Take that and go over to Rawlett's and get a bed andsome supper. In the mornin' you may be able to strike up a trade withsomebody else--or change your mind. How did you get here? On your hoss?"

"Yes. "

"He ain't starved yet?"

"No; he can eat grass. I can't. "

Either the liquor or Harkutt's practical unsentimental treatment ofthe situation seemed to give him confidence. He met Harkutt's eye moresteadily as the latter went on. "You kin turn your hoss for the nightinto my stock corral next to Rawlett's. It'll save you payin' for fodderand stablin'. "

The man took up the coin with a certain slow gravity which was almostlike dignity. "Thank you, " he said, laying the paper on the counter. "I'll leave that as security. "

"Don't want it, 'Lige, " said Harkutt, pushing it back. 

"I'd rather leave it. "

"But suppose you have a chance to sell it to somebody at Rawlett's?"continued Harkutt, with a precaution that seemed ironical. 

"I don't think there's much chance of that. "

He remained quiet, looking at Harkutt with an odd expression ashe rubbed the edge of the coin that he held between his fingersabstractedly on the counter. Something in his gaze--rather perhapsthe apparent absence of anything in it approximate to the presentoccasion--was beginning to affect Harkutt with a vague uneasiness. Providentially a resumed onslaught of wind and rain against the paneseffected a diversion. "Come, " he said, with brisk practicality, "you'dbetter hurry on to Rawlett's before it gets worse. Have your clothesdried by his fire, take suthin' to eat, and you'll be all right. " Herubbed his hands cheerfully, as if summarily disposing of the situation, and incidentally of all 'Lige's troubles, and walked with him to thedoor. Nevertheless, as the man's look remained unchanged, he hesitateda moment with his hand on the handle, in the hope that he would saysomething, even if only to repeat his appeal, but he did not. ThenHarkutt opened the door; the man moved mechanically out, and at thedistance of a few feet seemed to melt into the rain and darkness. Harkutt remained for a moment with his face pressed against the glass. After an interval he thought he heard the faint splash of hoofs in theshallows of the road; he opened the door softly and looked out. 

The light had disappeared from the nearest house; only an uncertain bulkof shapeless shadows remained. Other remoter and more vague outlinesnear the horizon seemed to have a funereal suggestion of tombs and gravemounds, and one--a low shed near the road--looked not unlike a haltedbier. He hurriedly put up the shutters in a momentary lulling of thewind, and re-entering the store began to fasten them from within. 

While thus engaged an inner door behind the counter opened softly andcautiously, projecting a brighter light into the deserted apartment fromsome sacred domestic interior with the warm and wholesome incense ofcooking. It served to introduce also the equally agreeable presence of ayoung girl, who, after assuring herself of the absence of every one butthe proprietor, idly slipped into the store, and placing her roundedelbows, from which her sleeves were uprolled, upon the counter, leanedlazily upon them, with both hands supporting her dimpled chin, and gazedindolently at him; so indolently that, with her pretty face oncefixed in this comfortable attitude, she was constrained to follow hismovements with her eyes alone, and often at an uncomfortable angle. Itwas evident that she offered the final but charming illustration of theenfeebling listlessness of Sidon. 

"So those loafers have gone at last, " she said, meditatively. "They'lltake root here some day, pop. The idea of three strong men like thatlazing round for two mortal hours doin' nothin'. Well!" As if toemphasize her disgust she threw her whole weight upon the counter byswinging her feet from the floor to touch the shelves behind her. 

Mr. Harkutt only replied by a slight grunt as he continued to screw onthe shutters. 

"Want me to help you, dad?" she said, without moving. 

Mr. Harkutt muttered something unintelligible, which, however, seemed toimply a negative, and her attention here feebly wandered to the roll ofpaper, and she began slowly and lazily to read it aloud. 

"'For value received, I hereby sell, assign, and transfer to Daniel D. Harkutt all my right, titles and interest in, and to the undividedhalf of, Quarter Section 4, Range 5, Tasajara Township'--hum--hum, " shemurmured, running her eyes to the bottom of the page. "Why, Lord! It'sthat 'Lige Curtis!" she laughed. "The idea of HIM having property! Why, dad, you ain't been THAT silly!"

"Put down that paper, miss, " he said, aggrievedly; "bring the candlehere, and help me to find one of these infernal screws that's dropped. "

The girl indolently disengaged herself from the counter and ElijahCurtis's transfer, and brought the candle to her father. The screw waspresently found and the last fastening secured. "Supper gettin' cold, dad, " she said, with a slight yawn. Her father sympathetically respondedby stretching himself from his stooping position, and the two passedthrough the private door into inner domesticity, leaving the alreadyforgotten paper lying with other articles of barter on the counter. 

CHAPER II. 

With the closing of the little door behind them they seemed to have shutout the turmoil and vibration of the storm. The reason became apparentwhen, after a few paces, they descended half a dozen steps to a lowerlanding. This disclosed the fact that the dwelling part of the SidonGeneral Store was quite below the level of the shop and the road, andon the slope of the solitary undulation of the Tasajara plain, --a littleravine that fell away to a brawling stream below. The only arboreousgrowth of Tasajara clothed its banks in the shape of willows and aldersthat set compactly around the quaint, irregular dwelling which straggleddown the ravine and looked upon a slope of bracken and foliage on eitherside. The transition from the black, treeless, storm-swept plain to thissheltered declivity was striking and suggestive. From the opposite bankone might fancy that the youthful and original dwelling had ambitiouslymounted the crest, but, appalled at the dreary prospect beyond, hadgone no further; while from the road it seemed as if the fastidiousproprietor had tried to draw a line between the vulgar trading-post, with which he was obliged to face the coarser civilization of the place, and the privacy of his domestic life. The real fact, however, was thatthe ravine furnished wood and water; and as Nature also provided onewall of the house, --as in the well-known example of aboriginal cavedwellings, --its peculiar construction commended itself to Sidon on theground of involving little labor. 

Howbeit, from the two open windows of the sitting-room which they hadentered only the faint pattering of dripping boughs and a slight murmurfrom the swollen brook indicated the storm that shook the upper plain, and the cool breath of laurel, syringa, and alder was wafted throughthe neat apartment. Passing through that pleasant rural atmospherethey entered the kitchen, a much larger room, which appeared to serveoccasionally as a dining-room, and where supper was already laid out. A stout, comfortable-looking woman--who had, however, a singularlypermanent expression of pained sympathy upon her face--welcomed them intones of gentle commiseration. 

"Ah, there you be, you two! Now sit ye right down, dears; DO. Youmust be tired out; and you, Phemie, love, draw up by your poor father. There--that's right. You'll be better soon. "

There was certainly no visible sign of suffering or exhaustion on thepart of either father or daughter, nor the slightest apparent earthlyreason why they should be expected to exhibit any. But, as alreadyintimated, it was part of Mrs. Harkutt's generous idiosyncrasy to lookupon all humanity as suffering and toiling; to be petted, humored, condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted asingularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit ofending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligiblemurmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but attimes inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship ofthe one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received withsuch heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evidentlabor involved as to reduce him to silence. 

Accustomed as Mr. Harkutt was to his wife's peculiarity, he was notabove assuming a certain slightly fatigued attitude befitting it. "Yes, "he said, with a vague sigh, "where's Clemmie?"

"Lyin' down since dinner; she reckoned she wouldn't get up to supper, "she returned soothingly. "Phemie's goin' to take her up some sass andtea. The poor dear child wants a change. "

"She wants to go to 'Frisco, and so do I, pop, " said Phemie, leaningher elbow half over her father's plate. "Come, pop, say do, --just for aweek. "

"Only for a week, " murmured the commiserating Mrs. Harkutt. 

"Perhaps, " responded Harkutt, with gloomy sarcasm, "ye wouldn't mindtellin' me how you're goin' to get there, and where the money's comin'from to take you? There's no teamin' over Tasajara till the rain stops, and no money comin' in till the ranchmen can move their stuff. Thereain't a hundred dollars in all Tasajara; at least there ain't been thefirst red cent of it paid across my counter for a fortnit! Perhaps ifyou do go you wouldn't mind takin' me and the store along with ye, andleavin' us there. "

"Yes, dear, " said Mrs. Harkutt, with sympathetic but shamelesstergiversation. "Don't bother your poor father, Phemie, love; don't yousee he's just tired out? And you're not eatin' anything, dad. "

As Mr. Harkutt was uneasily conscious that he had been eating heartilyin spite of his financial difficulties, he turned the subject abruptly. "Where's John Milton?"

Mrs. Harkutt shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed meditatively onthe floor before the fire and in the chimney corner for her only son, baptized under that historic title. "He was here a minit ago, " she saiddoubtfully. "I really can't think where he's gone. But, " assuringly, "itain't far. "

"He's skipped with one o' those story-books he's borrowed, " said Phemie. "He's always doin' it. Like as not he's reading with a candle in thewood-shed. We'll all be burnt up some night. "

"But he's got through his chores, " interposed Mrs. Harkuttdeprecatingly. 

"Yes, " continued Harkutt, aggrievedly, "but instead of goin' to bed, oraddin' up bills, or takin' count o' stock, or even doin' sums or suthin'useful, he's ruinin' his eyes and wastin' his time over trash. " He roseand walked slowly into the sitting-room, followed by his daughter and amurmur of commiseration from his wife. But Mrs. Harkutt's ministrationfor the present did not pass beyond her domain, the kitchen. 

"I reckon ye ain't expectin' anybody tonight, Phemie?" said Mr. Harkutt, sinking into a chair, and placing his slippered feet against the wall. 

"No, " said Phemie, "unless something possesses that sappy little Parmleeto make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the roadit blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to beblown in here, and not have strength of mind enough to get away again. "

Mr. Harkutt smiled. It was that arch yet approving, severe yetsatisfied smile with which the deceived male parent usually receives anydepreciation of the ordinary young man by his daughters. Euphemia wasno giddy thing to be carried away by young men's attentions, --notshe! Sitting back comfortably in his rocking-chair, he said, "Playsomething. "

The young girl went to the closet and took from the top shelf anexcessively ornamented accordion, --the opulent gift of a recklessadmirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze ofpapier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard, and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that itseemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. "Youought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie, " said her fatheradmiringly. 

"And have HIM think I worshiped it! Not me, indeed! He's conceitedenough already, " she returned, saucily. 

Mr. Harkutt again smiled his approbation, then deliberately closed hiseyes and threw his head back in comfortable anticipation of the comingstrains. 

It is to be regretted that in brilliancy, finish, and even cheerfulnessof quality they were not up to the suggestions of the keys and keyboard. The most discreet and cautious effort on the part of the young performerseemed only to produce startlingly unexpected, but instantly suppressedcomplaints from the instrument, accompanied by impatient interjectionsof "No, no, " from the girl herself. Nevertheless, with her prettyeyebrows knitted in some charming distress of memory, her little mouthhalf open between an apologetic smile and the exertion of working thebellows, with her white, rounded arms partly lifted up and wavingbefore her, she was pleasantly distracting to the eye. Gradually, as thescattered strains were marshaled into something like an air, she beganto sing also, glossing over the instrumental weaknesses, fillingin certain dropped notes and omissions, and otherwise assisting theineffectual accordion with a youthful but not unmusical voice. The songwas a lugubrious religious chant; under its influence the house seemedto sink into greater quiet, permitting in the intervals the murmur ofthe swollen creek to appear more distinct, and even the far moaning ofthe wind on the plain to become faintly audible. At last, having fairlymastered the instrument, Phemie got into the full swing of the chant. Unconstrained by any criticism, carried away by the sound of her ownvoice, and perhaps a youthful love for mere uproar, or possibly desirousto drown her father's voice, which had unexpectedly joined in with adiscomposing bass, the conjoined utterances seemed to threaten the frailstructure of their dwelling, even as the gale had distended the storebehind them. When they ceased at last it was in an accession of drippingfrom the apparently stirred leaves outside. And then a voice, evidentlyfrom the moist depths of the abyss below, called out, --

"Hullo, there!"

Phemie put down the accordion, said, "Who's that now?" went to thewindow, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into thedarkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlinedlandscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with whichNature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed toPhemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feelinghad passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against someobject in the stream, half stationary and half resisting. 

"Is any one down there? Is that you, Mr. Parmlee?" she called. 

There was a pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, "It's a younglady. " Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: "Arewe anywhere near Sidon?"

"This is Sidon, " answered Harkutt, who had risen, and was now quiteobliterating his daughter's outline at the window. 

"Thank you, " said the voice. "Can we land anywhere here, on this bank?"

"Run down, pop; they're strangers, " said the girl, with excited, almostchildish eagerness. 

"Hold on, " called out Harkutt, "I'll be thar in a moment!" He hastilythrust his feet into a pair of huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hatand waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lowerstaircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added senseof self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of lightfrom the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It washer father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clamberedcautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream, and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficultyagainst the bank by two men with long poles. In its centre was a rollof blankets, a valise and saddle-bags, and the shining brasses of someodd-looking instruments. 

As Mr. Harkutt, supporting himself by a willow branch that overhungthe current, held up the lantern, the two men rapidly transferred theirfreight from the raft to the bank, and leaped ashore. The action gavean impulse to the raft, which, no longer held in position by thepoles, swung broadside to the current and was instantly swept into thedarkness. 

Not a word had been spoken, but now the voices of the men rose freelytogether. Phemie listened with intense expectation. The explanationwas simple. They were surveyors who had been caught by the overflowon Tasajara plain, had abandoned their horses on the bank of TasajaraCreek, and with a hastily constructed raft had intrusted themselves andtheir instruments to the current. "But, " said Harkutt quickly, "there isno connection between Tasajara Creek and this stream. "

The two men laughed. "There is NOW, " said one of them. 

"But Tasajara Creek is a part of the bay, " said the astonished Harkutt, "and this stream rises inland and only runs into the bay four mileslower down. And I don't see how--

"You're almost twelve feet lower here than Tasajara Creek, " said thefirst man, with a certain professional authority, "and that's WHY. There's more water than Tasajara Creek can carry, and it's seeking thebay this way. Look, " he continued, taking the lantern from Harkutt'shand and casting its rays on the stream, "that's salt drift from theupper bay, and part of Tasajara Creek's running by your house now! Don'tbe alarmed, " he added reassuringly, glancing at the staring storekeeper. "You're all right here; this is only the overflow and will find itslevel soon. "

But Mr. Harkutt remained gazing abstractedly at the smiling speaker. From the window above the impatient Phemie was wondering why he keptthe strangers waiting in the rain while he talked about things that wereperfectly plain. It was so like a man!

"Then there's a waterway straight to Tasajara Creek?" he said slowly. 

"There is, as long as this flood lasts, " returned the first speakerpromptly; "and a cutting through the bank of two or three hundred yardswould make it permanent. Well, what's the matter with that?"

"Nothin', " said Harkutt hurriedly. "I am only considerin'! But come in, dry yourselves, and take suthin'. "

The light over the rushing water was withdrawn, and the whole prospectsank back into profound darkness. Mr. Harkutt had disappeared withhis guests. Then there was the familiar shuffle of his feet onthe staircase, followed by other more cautious footsteps that grewdelicately and even courteously deliberate as they approached. At whichthe young girl, in some new sense of decorum, drew in her pretty head, glanced around the room quickly, reset the tidy on her father's chair, placed the resplendent accordion like an ornament in the exact centre ofthe table, and then vanished into the hall as Mr. Harkutt entered withthe strangers. 

They were both of the same age and appearance, but the principal speakerwas evidently the superior of his companion, and although their attitudeto each other was equal and familiar, it could be easily seen thathe was the leader. He had a smooth, beardless face, with a criticalexpression of eye and mouth that might have been fastidious andsupercilious but for the kindly, humorous perception that temperedit. His quick eye swept the apartment and then fixed itself upon theaccordion, but a smile lit up his face as he said quietly, --

"I hope we haven't frightened the musician away. It was bad enough tohave interrupted the young lady. "

"No, no, " said Mr. Harkutt, who seemed to have lost his abstraction inthe nervousness of hospitality. "I reckon she's only lookin' after hersick sister. But come into the kitchen, both of you, straight off, andwhile you're dryin' your clothes, mother'll fix you suthin' hot. "

"We only need to change our boots and stockings; we've some dry ones inour pack downstairs, " said the first speaker hesitatingly. 

"I'll fetch 'em up and you can change in the kitchen. The old womanwon't mind, " said Harkutt reassuringly. "Come along. " He led the way tothe kitchen; the two strangers exchanged a glance of humorous perplexityand followed. 

The quiet of the little room was once more unbroken. A far-offcommiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving herguests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred thewhite dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there wasa still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laughappeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. Therewas another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly andostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter youngwoman, her elder sister, at her side. Perceiving that the room wasempty, they both said "Oh!" yet with a certain artificiality of mannerthat was evidently a lingering trace of some previous formal attitudethey had assumed. Then without further speech they each selected achair and a position, having first shaken out their dresses, and gazedsilently at each other. 

It may be said briefly that sitting thus--in spite of their unnaturalattitude, or perhaps rather because of its suggestion of a photographicpose--they made a striking picture, and strongly accented their separatepeculiarities. They were both pretty, but the taller girl, apparentlythe elder, had an ideal refinement and regularity of feature which wasnot only unlike Phemie, but gratuitously unlike the rest of her family, and as hopelessly and even wantonly inconsistent with her surroundingsas was the elaborately ornamented accordion on the centre-table. She wasone of those occasional creatures, episodical in the South and West, who might have been stamped with some vague ante-natal impression of amother given to over-sentimental contemplation of books of beauty andalbums rather than the family features; offspring of typical men andwomen, and yet themselves incongruous to any known local or even generaltype. The long swan-like neck, tendriled hair, swimming eyes, and smallpatrician head, had never lived or moved before in Tasajara or theWest, nor perhaps even existed except as a personified "Constancy, ""Meditation, " or the "Baron's Bride, " in mezzotint or copperplate. Eventhe girl's common pink print dress with its high sleeves and shoulderscould not conventionalize these original outlines; and the hand thatrested stiffly on the back of her chair, albeit neither over-white norwell kept, looked as if it had never held anything but a lyre, a rose, or a good book. Even the few sprays of wild jessamine which she hadplaced in the coils of her waving hair, although a local fashion, becameher as a special ornament. 

The two girls kept their constrained and artificially elaboratedattitude for a few moments, accompanied by the murmur of voices in thekitchen, the monotonous drip of the eaves before the window, and thefar-off sough of the wind. Then Phemie suddenly broke into a constrainedgiggle, which she however quickly smothered as she had the accordion, and with the same look of mischievous distress. 

"I'm astonished at you, Phemie, " said Clementina in a deep contraltovoice, which seemed even deeper from its restraint. "You don't seem tohave any sense. Anybody'd think you never had seen a stranger before. "

"Saw him before you did, " retorted Phemie pertly. But here a pushingof chairs and shuffling of feet in the kitchen checked her. Clementinafixed an abstracted gaze on the ceiling; Phemie regarded a leaf onthe window sill with photographic rigidity as the door opened to thestrangers and her father. 

The look of undisguised satisfaction which lit the young men's facesrelieved Mr. Harkutt's awkward introduction of any embarrassment, andalmost before Phemie was fully aware of it, she found herself talkingrapidly and in a high key with Mr. Lawrence Grant, the surveyor, whileher sister was equally, although more sedately, occupied with Mr. Stephen Rice, his assistant. But the enthusiasm of the strangers, andthe desire to please and be pleased was so genuine and contagious thatpresently the accordion was brought into requisition, and Mr. Grantexhibited a surprising faculty of accompaniment to Mr. Rice's tenor, inwhich both the girls joined. 

Then a game of cards with partners followed, into which the rivalparties introduced such delightful and shameless obviousness ofcheating, and displayed such fascinating and exaggerated partisanshipthat the game resolved itself into a hilarious melee, to which peace wasrestored only by an exhibition of tricks of legerdemain with thecards by the young surveyor. All of which Mr. Harkutt supervisedpatronizingly, with occasional fits of abstraction, from hisrocking-chair; and later Mrs. Harkutt from her kitchen threshold, wipingher arms on her apron and commiseratingly observing that she "declared, the young folks looked better already. "

But it was here a more dangerous element of mystery and suggestion wasadded by Mr. Lawrence Grant in the telling of Miss Euphemia's fortunefrom the cards before him, and that young lady, pink with excitement, fluttered her little hands not unlike timid birds over the cards to bedrawn, taking them from him with an audible twitter of anxiety andgreat doubts whether a certain "fair-haired gentleman" was in hearts ordiamonds. 

"Here are two strangers, " said Mr. Grant, with extraordinary gravitylaying down the cards, "and here is a 'journey;' this is 'unexpectednews, ' and this ten of diamonds means 'great wealth' to you, which yousee follows the advent of the two strangers and is some way connectedwith them. "

"Oh, indeed, " said the young lady with great pertness and a toss of herhead. "I suppose they've got the money with them. "

"No, though it reaches you through them, " he answered with unflinchingsolemnity. "Wait a bit, I have it! I see, I've made a mistake with thiscard. It signifies a journey or a road. Queer! isn't it, Steve? It's THEROAD. "

"It is queer, " said Rice with equal gravity; "but it's so. The road, sure!" Nevertheless he looked up into the large eyes of Clementina witha certain confidential air of truthfulness. 

"You see, ladies, " continued the surveyor, appealing to them withunabashed rigidity of feature, "the cards don't lie! Luckily we are ina position to corroborate them. The road in question is a secret knownonly to us and some capitalists in San Francisco. In fact even THEYdon't know that it is feasible until WE report to them. But I don't mindtelling you now, as a slight return for your charming hospitality, thatthe road is a RAILROAD from Oakland to Tasajara Creek of which we'vejust made the preliminary survey. So you see what the cards mean isthis: You're not far from Tasajara Creek; in fact with a very littleexpense your father could connect this stream with the creek, and have aWATERWAY STRAIGHT TO THE RAILROAD TERMINUS. That's the wealth the cardspromise; and if your father knows how to take a hint he can make hisfortune!"

It was impossible to say which was the most dominant in the face of thespeaker, the expression of assumed gravity or the twinkling of humor inhis eyes. The two girls with superior feminine perception divinedthat there was much truth in what he said, albeit they didn'tentirely understand it, and what they did understand--except the man'sgood-humored motive--was not particularly interesting. In fact theywere slightly disappointed. What had promised to be an audaciouslyflirtatious declaration, and even a mischievous suggestion of marriage, had resolved itself into something absurdly practical and business-like. 

Not so Mr. Harkutt. He quickly rose from his chair, and, leaning overthe table, with his eyes fixed on the card as if it really signified therailroad, repeated quickly: "Railroad, eh! What's that? A railroad toTasajara Creek? Ye don't mean it!--That is--it ain't a SURE thing?"

"Perfectly sure. The money is ready in San Francisco now, and by thistime next year--"

"A railroad to Tasajara Creek!" continued Harkutt hurriedly. "What partof it? Where?"

"At the embarcadero naturally, " responded Grant. "There isn't but theone place for the terminus. There's an old shanty there now belongs tosomebody. "

"Why, pop!" said Phemie with sudden recollection, "ain't it 'LigeCurtis's house? The land he offered"--

"Hush!" said her father. 

"You know, the one written in that bit of paper, " continued the innocentPhemie. 

"Hush! will you? God A'mighty! are you goin' to mind me? Are you goin'to keep up your jabber when I'm speakin' to the gentlemen? Is that yourmanners? What next, I wonder!"

The sudden and unexpected passion of the speaker, the incomprehensiblechange in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration ofhis attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence. The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the riversounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front partof the dwelling by the distant gale became perceptible. An angry flashsprang for an instant to the young assistant's eye, but it met thecautious glance of his friend, and together both discreetly sought thetable. The two girls alone remained white and collected. "Will you go onwith my fortune, Mr. Grant?" said Phemie quietly. 

A certain respect, perhaps not before observable, was suggested in thesurveyor's tone as he smilingly replied, "Certainly, I was only waitingfor you to show your confidence in me, " and took up the cards. 

Mr. Harkutt coughed. "It looks as if that blamed wind had blown suthin'loose in the store, " he said affectedly. "I reckon I'll go and see. " Hehesitated a moment and then disappeared in the passage. Yet even here hestood irresolute, looking at the closed door behind him, and passing hishand over his still flushed face. Presently he slowly and abstractedlyascended the flight of steps, entered the smaller passage that led tothe back door of the shop and opened it. 

He was at first a little startled at the halo of light from thestill glowing stove, which the greater obscurity of the long room hadheightened rather than diminished. Then he passed behind the counter, but here the box of biscuits which occupied the centre and cast a shadowover it compelled him to grope vaguely for what he sought. Then hestopped suddenly, the paper he had just found dropping from his fingers, and said sharply, --

"Who's there?"

"Me, pop. "

"John Milton?"

"Yes, sir. "

"What the devil are you doin' there, sir?"

"Readin'. "

It was true. The boy was half reclining in a most distorted posture ontwo chairs, his figure in deep shadow, but his book was raised above hishead so as to catch the red glow of the stove on the printed page. Even then his father's angry interruption scarcely diverted hispreoccupation; he raised himself in his chair mechanically, with hiseyes still fixed on his book. Seeing which his father quickly regainedthe paper, but continued his objurgation. 

"How dare you? Clear off to bed, will you! Do you hear me? Prettygoin's on, " he added as if to justify his indignation. "Sneakin' in hereand--and lyin' 'round at this time o' night! Why, if I hadn't come inhere to"--

"What?" asked the boy mechanically, catching vaguely at the unfinishedsentence and staring automatically at the paper in his father's hand. 

"Nothin', sir! Go to bed, I tell you! Will you? What are you standin'gawpin' at?" continued Harkutt furiously. 

The boy regained his feet slowly and passed his father, but not withoutnoticing with the same listless yet ineffaceable perception of childhoodthat he was hurriedly concealing the paper in his pocket. With the sameyouthful inconsequence, wondering at this more than at the interruption, which was no novel event, he went slowly out of the room. 

Harkutt listened to the retreating tread of his bare feet in the passageand then carefully locked the door. Taking the paper from his pocket, and borrowing the idea he had just objurgated in his son, he turned ittowards the dull glow of the stove and attempted to read it. But perhapslacking the patience as well as the keener sight of youth, he was forcedto relight the candle which he had left on the counter, and reperusedthe paper. Yes! there was certainly no mistake! Here was the actualdescription of the property which the surveyor had just indicated asthe future terminus of the new railroad, and here it was conveyed tohim--Daniel Harkutt! What was that? Somebody knocking? What did thiscontinual interruption mean? An odd superstitious fear now mingled withhis irritation. 

The sound appeared to come from the front shutters. It suddenlyoccurred to him that the light might be visible through the crevices. Hehurriedly extinguished it, and went to the door. 

"Who's there?"

"Me, --Peters. Want to speak to you. "

Mr. Harkutt with evident reluctance drew the bolts. The wind, stillboisterous and besieging, did the rest, and precipitately propelledPeters through the carefully guarded opening. But his surprise atfinding himself in the darkness seemed to forestall any explanation ofhis visit. 

"Well, " he said with an odd mingling of reproach and suspicion. "Ideclare I saw a light here just this minit! That's queer. "

"Yes, I put it out just now. I was goin' away, " replied Harkutt, withill-disguised impatience. 

"What! been here ever since?"

"No, " said Harkutt curtly. 

"Well, I want to speak to ye about 'Lige. Seein' the candle shinin'through the chinks I thought he might be still with ye. If he ain't, itlooks bad. Light up, can't ye! I want to show you something. "

There was a peremptoriness in his tone that struck Harkutt disagreeably, but observing that he was carrying something in his hand, he somewhatnervously re-lit the candle and faced him. Peters had a hat in his hand. It was 'Lige's!

"'Bout an hour after we fellers left here, " said Peters, "I heard therattlin' of hoofs on the road, and then it seemed to stop just by myhouse. I went out with a lantern, and, darn my skin! if there warn't'Lige's hoss, the saddle empty, and 'Lige nowhere! I looked round andcalled him--but nothing were to be seen. Thinkin' he might have slippedoff--tho' ez a general rule drunken men don't, and he is a good rider--Ifollowed down the road, lookin' for him. I kept on follerin' it down toyour run, half a mile below. "

"But, " began Harkutt, with a quick nervous laugh, "you don't reckon thatbecause of that he"--

"Hold on!" said Peters, grimly producing a revolver from his side-pocketwith the stock and barrel clogged and streaked with mud. "I found THATtoo, --and look! one barrel discharged! And, " he added hurriedly, asapproaching a climax, "look ye, --what I nat'rally took for wet from therain--inside that hat--was--blood!"

"Nonsense!" said Harkutt, putting the hat aside with a newfastidiousness. "You don't think"--

"I think, " said Peters, lowering his voice, "I think, by God! HE'S BINAND DONE IT!"

"No!"

"Sure! Oh, it's all very well for Billings and the rest of thatconceited crowd to sneer and sling their ideas of 'Lige gen'rally asthey did jess now here, --but I'd like 'em to see THAT. " It was difficultto tell if Mr. Peters' triumphant delight in confuting his latecompanions' theories had not even usurped in his mind the importance ofthe news he brought, as it had of any human sympathy with it. 

"Look here, " returned Harkutt earnestly, yet with a singularly clearedbrow and a more natural manner. "You ought to take them things over toSquire Kerby's, right off, and show 'em to him. You kin tell him how youleft 'Lige here, and say that I can prove by my daughter that he wentaway about ten minutes after, --at least, not more than fifteen. " Likeall unprofessional humanity, Mr. Harkutt had an exaggerated conceptionof the majesty of unimportant detail in the eye of the law. "I'd go withyou myself, " he added quickly, "but I've got company--strangers--here. "

"How did he look when he left, --kinder wild?" suggested Peters. 

Harkutt had begun to feel the prudence of present reticence. "Well, " hesaid, cautiously, "YOU saw how he looked. "

"You wasn't rough with him?--that might have sent him off, you know, "said Peters. 

"No, " said Harkutt, forgetting himself in a quick indignation, "no, I not only treated him to another drink, but gave him"--he stoppedsuddenly and awkwardly. 

"Eh?" said Peters. 

"Some good advice, --you know, " said Harkutt, hastily. "But come, you'dbetter hurry over to the squire's. You know YOU'VE made the discovery;YOUR evidence is important, and there's a law that obliges you to giveinformation at once. "

The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants beingspent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relishactivity as a duty. "You know, " he said dubiously, "he mightn't be dead, after all. "

Harkutt became a trifle distant. "You know your own opinion of thething, " he replied after a pause. "You've circumstantial evidenceenough to see the squire, and set others to work on it; and, " he addedsignificantly, "you've done your share then, and can wipe your hands ofit, eh?"

"That's so, " said Peters, eagerly. "I'll just run over to the squire. "

"And on account of the women folks, you know, and the strangers here, I'll say nothin' about it to-night, " added Harkutt. 

Peters nodded his head, and taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijahwith a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost itsdramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darknessagain. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoopdown on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away inthe direction of the justice's house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door, bolted it, and walked aimlessly back to the counter. 

From a slow, deliberate and cautious man, he seemed to have changedwithin an hour to an irresolute and capricious one. He took the paperfrom his pocket, and, unlocking the money drawer of his counter, foldedinto a small compass that which now seemed to be the last testament ofElijah Curtis, and placed it in a recess. Then he went to the back doorand paused, then returned, reopened the money drawer, took out thepaper and again buttoned it in his hip pocket, standing by the stove andstaring abstractedly at the dull glow of the fire. He even went throughthe mechanical process of raking down the ashes, --solely to gain timeand as an excuse for delaying some other necessary action. 

He was thinking what he should do. Had the question of his right toretain and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hourago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it. Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceivehimself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit ofnot presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it isremarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is neverthe direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillinglyled step by step into a difficult, not to say dishonest, situation, and against his own seeking. He had never asked Elijah to sell him theproperty; he had distinctly declined it; it had even been forced uponhim as security for the pittance he so freely gave him. This proved (tohimself) that he himself was honest; it was only the circumstances thatwere queer. Of course if Elijah had lived, he, Harkutt, might have triedto drive some bargain with him before the news of the railroad surveycame out--for THAT was only business. But now that Elijah was dead, whowould be a penny the worse or better but himself if he chose to considerthe whole thing as a lucky speculation, and his gift of five dollars asthe price he paid for it? Nobody could think that he had calculated upon'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable. In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killinghimself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan, it was a swindle on his--Harkutt's--good-nature. He worked himself intoa rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of coldprinciple over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to theLAW, he'd stand by law and not sentiment. He'd just let them--bywhich he vaguely meant the world, Tasajara, and possibly his ownconscience--see that he wasn't a sentimental fool, and he'd freeze on tothat paper and that property!

Only he ought to have spoken out before. He ought to have told thesurveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: "Why, that's my land. I bought it of that drunken 'Lige Curtis for a song andout of charity. " Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came fromhis own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right, --hisown cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn't know why hewas obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted tobuy the land. As soon as it was settled that 'Lige was dead he'd openlyclaim the property. But what if he wasn't dead? or they couldn't findhis body? or he had only disappeared? His plain, matter-of-fact facecontracted and darkened. Of course he couldn't ask the company towait for him to settle that point. He had the power to dispose of theproperty under that paper, and--he should do it. If 'Lige turned up, that was another matter, and he and 'Lige could arrange it between them. He was quite firm here, and oddly enough quite relieved in getting ridof what appeared only a simple question of detail. He never suspectedthat he was contemplating the one irretrievable step, and summarilydismissing the whole ethical question. 

He turned away from the stove, opened the back door, and walked with amore determined step through the passage to the sitting-room. But herehe halted again on the threshold with a quick return of his old habitsof caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak ofan hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he couldhear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. Theywere evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the propheticand divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were nowplainly audible. 

"I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that iscoming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you anymarriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You maybe certain, however, that you'll have your own choice in this, as youhave in all things. "

"Thank you for nothing, " said Clementina's voice. "But what are thosehorrid black cards beside them?--that's trouble, I'm sure. "

"Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don't care much forand don't understand will have a heap of trouble on your account, --yes, on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. Itmay be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps. "

"He means himself, Miss Clementina, " struck in Grant's voice laughingly. 

"You're not listening, Miss Harkutt, " said Rice with half-seriousreproach. "Perhaps you know who it is?"

But Miss Clementina's reply was simply a hurried recognition of herfather's pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the openingdoor. 

"Why, it's father!"

CHAPER III. 

In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt's feeblecandle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet itwas part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forwardas in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurredto him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal wasnot there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with thesupposition that he had not brought him at all, but that it was part ofhis delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horsehe could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor takeanother more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopelessvacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, andthat he need do nothing. Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!

The explanation, however, was much simpler. The horse had been taken bythe luxurious and indolent Billings unknown to his companions. Overcomeat the dreadful prospect of walking home in that weather, this perfectproduct of lethargic Sidon had artfully allowed Peters and Wingate toprecede him, and, cautiously unloosing the tethered animal, had safelypassed them in the darkness. When he gained his own inclosure he hadlazily dismounted, and, with a sharp cut on the mustang's haunches, sent him galloping back to rejoin his master, with what result has beenalready told by the unsuspecting Peters in the preceding chapter. 

Yet no conception of this possibility entered 'Lige Curtis's alcoholizedconsciousness, part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort orexaggerate all natural phenomena. He had a vague idea that he could notgo back to Harkutt's; already his visit seemed to have happened long, long ago, and could not be repeated. He would walk on, enwrapped inthis uncompromising darkness which concealed everything, suggestedeverything, and was responsible for everything. 

It was very dark, for the wind, having lulled, no longer thinned theveil of clouds above, nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared torise from the sodden plain. Yet he moved easily through the darkness, seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible, upon which he mightlean. At times he thought he heard voices, --not a particular voice hewas thinking of, but strange voices--of course unreal to his presentfancy. And then he heard one of these voices, unlike any voice inSidon, and very faint and far off, asking if it "was anywhere nearSidon?"--evidently some one lost like himself. He answered in a voicethat seemed quite as unreal and as faint, and turned in the directionfrom which it came. There was a light moving like a will-o'-the-wisp farbefore him, yet below him as if coming out of the depths of the earth. It must be fancy, but he would see--ah!

He had fallen violently forward, and at the same moment felt hisrevolver leap from his breast pocket like a living thing, and an instantafter explode upon the rock where it struck, blindingly illuminating thedeclivity down which he was plunging. The sulphurous sting of burningpowder was in his eyes and nose, yet in that swift revealing flash hehad time to clutch the stems of a trailing vine beside him, but notto save his head from sharp contact with the same rocky ledge that hadcaught his pistol. The pain and shock gave way to a sickening sense ofwarmth at the roots of his hair. Giddy and faint, his fingers relaxed, he felt himself sinking, with a languor that was half acquiescence, down, down, --until, with another shock, a wild gasping for air, and aswift reaction, he awoke in the cold, rushing water!

Clear and perfectly conscious now, though frantically fighting forexistence with the current, he could dimly see a floating black objectshooting by the shore, at times striking the projections of the bank, until in its recoil it swung half round and drifted broadside on towardshim. He was near enough to catch the frayed ends of a trailing rope thatfastened the structure, which seemed to be a few logs, together. Witha convulsive effort he at last gained a footing upon it, and then fellfainting along its length. It was the raft which the surveyors from theembarcadero had just abandoned. 

He did not know this, nor would he have thought it otherwise strangethat a raft might be a part of the drift of the overflow, even had hebeen entirely conscious; but his senses were failing, though he wasstill able to keep a secure position on the raft, and to vaguely believethat it would carry him to some relief and succor. How long he layunconscious he never knew; in his after-recollections of that night, itseemed to have been haunted by dreams of passing dim banks and strangeplaces; of a face and voice that had been pleasant to him; of a terrorcoming upon him as he appeared to be nearing a place like that home thathe had abandoned in the lonely tules. He was roused at last by a violentheadache, as if his soft felt hat had been changed into a tighteningcrown of iron. Lifting his hand to his head to tear off its covering, he was surprised to find that he was wearing no hat, but that his mattedhair, stiffened and dried with blood and ooze, was clinging like a capto his skull in the hot morning sunlight. His eyelids and lashes wereglued together and weighted down by the same sanguinary plaster. Hecrawled to the edge of his frail raft, not without difficulty, for itoscillated and rocked strangely, and dipped his hand in the current. When he had cleared his eyes he lifted them with a shock of amazement. Creeks, banks, and plain had disappeared; he was alone on a bend of thetossing bay of San Francisco!

His first and only sense--cleared by fasting and quickened byreaction--was one of infinite relief. He was not only free from thevague terrors of the preceding days and nights, but his whole pastseemed to be lost and sunk forever in this illimitable expanse. The lowplain of Tasajara, with its steadfast monotony of light and shadow, had sunk beneath another level, but one that glistened, sparkled, wasinstinct with varying life, and moved and even danced below him. The lowpalisades of regularly recurring tules that had fenced in, impeded, butnever relieved the blankness of his horizon, were forever swallowedup behind him. All trail of past degradation, all record of pain andsuffering, all footprints of his wandering and misguided feet weresmoothly wiped out in that obliterating sea. He was physically helpless, and he felt it; he was in danger, and he knew it, --but he was free!

Happily there was but little wind and the sea was slight. The raft wasstill intact so far as he could judge, but even in his ignorance heknew it would scarcely stand the surges of the lower bay. Like mostCalifornians who had passed the straits of Carquinez at night in asteamer, he did not recognize the locality, nor even the distant peakof Tamalpais. There were a few dotting sails that seemed as remote, as uncertain, and as unfriendly as sea birds. The raft was motionless, almost as motionless as he was in his cramped limbs and sun-dried, stiffened clothes. Too weak to keep an upright position, without mast, stick, or oar to lift a signal above that vast expanse, it seemedimpossible for him to attract attention. Even his pistol was gone. 

Suddenly, in an attempt to raise himself, he was struck by a flash soblinding that it seemed to pierce his aching eyes and brain and turnedhim sick. It appeared to come from a crevice between the logs at thefurther end of the raft. Creeping painfully towards it he saw that itwas a triangular slip of highly polished metal that he had hithertooverlooked. He did not know that it was a "flashing" mirror usedin topographical observation, which had slipped from the surveyors'instruments when they abandoned the raft, but his excited facultiesinstinctively detected its value to him. He lifted it, and, facing thesun, raised it at different angles with his feeble arms. But the effortwas too much for him; the raft presently seemed to be whirling with hismovement, and he again fell. 

*****

"Ahoy there!"

The voice was close upon--in his very ears. He opened his eyes. The seastill stretched emptily before him; the dotting sails still unchangedand distant. Yet a strange shadow lay upon the raft. He turned his headwith difficulty. On the opposite side--so close upon him as to be almostover his head--the great white sails of a schooner hovered above himlike the wings of some enormous sea bird. Then a heavy boom swung acrossthe raft, so low that it would have swept him away had he been in anupright position; the sides of the vessel grazed the raft and she fellslowly off. A terrible fear of abandonment took possession of him; hetried to speak, but could not. The vessel moved further away, but theraft followed! He could see now it was being held by a boat-hook, --couldsee the odd, eager curiosity on two faces that were raised abovethe taffrail, and with that sense of relief his eyes again closed inunconsciousness. 

A feeling of chilliness, followed by a grateful sensation of drawingcloser under some warm covering, a stinging taste in his mouth of fieryliquor and the aromatic steam of hot coffee, were his first returningsensations. His head and neck were swathed in coarse bandages, and hisskin stiffened and smarting with soap. He was lying in a rude berthunder a half-deck from which he could see the sky and the bellying sail, and presently a bearded face filled with rough and practical concernthat peered down upon him. 

"Hulloo! comin' round, eh? Hold on!" The next moment the stranger hadleaped down beside Elijah. He seemed to be an odd mingling of the sailorand ranchero with the shrewdness of a seaport trader. 

"Hulloo, boss! What was it? A free fight, or a wash-out?"

"A wash-out!"* Elijah grasped the idea as an inspiration. Yes, his cabinhad been inundated, he had taken to a raft, had been knocked off twiceor thrice, and had lost everything--even his revolver!

 * A mining term for the temporary inundation of a claim by flood; also used for the sterilizing effect of flood on fertile soil. 

The man looked relieved. "Then it ain't a free fight, nor havin' yourcrust busted and bein' robbed by beach combers, eh?"

"No, " said Elijah, with his first faint smile. 

"Glad o' that, " said the man bluntly. "Then thar ain't no policebusiness to tie up to in 'Frisco? We were stuck thar a week once, justbecause we chanced to pick up a feller who'd been found gagged and thenthrown overboard by wharf thieves. Had to dance attendance at courtthar and lost our trip. " He stopped and looked half-pathetically at theprostrate Elijah. "Look yer! ye ain't just dyin' to go ashore NOW andsee yer friends and send messages, are ye?"

Elijah shuddered inwardly, but outwardly smiled faintly as he replied, "No!"

"And the tide and wind jest servin' us now, ye wouldn't mind keepin'straight on with us this trip?"

"Where to?" asked Elijah. 

"Santy Barbara. "

"No, " said Elijah, after a moment's pause. "I'll go with you. "

The man leaped to his feet, lifted his head above the upper deck, shouted "Let her go free, Jerry!" and then turned gratefully to hispassenger. "Look yer! A wash-out is a wash-out, I reckon, put it anyway you like; it don't put anything back into the land, or anything backinto your pocket afterwards, eh? No! And yer well out of it, pardner!Now there's a right smart chance for locatin' jest back of SantyBarbara, where thar ain't no God-forsaken tules to overflow; and ez farez the land and licker lies ye 'needn't take any water in yours' ef yedon't want it. You kin start fresh thar, pardner, and brail up. What'sthe matter with you, old man, is only fever 'n' agur ketched in themtules! I kin see it in your eyes. Now you hold on whar you be till I goforrard and see everything taut, and then I'll come back and we'll havea talk. "

And they did. The result of which was that at the end of a week'stossing and seasickness, Elijah Curtis was landed at Santa Barbara, pale, thin, but self-contained and resolute. And having found favorin the eyes of the skipper of the Kitty Hawk, general trader, lumber-dealer, and ranch-man, a week later he was located on theskipper's land and installed in the skipper's service. And from thatday, for five years Sidon and Tasajara knew him no more. 

CHAPER IV. 

It was part of the functions of John Milton Harkutt to take down theearly morning shutters and sweep out the store for his father each daybefore going to school. It was a peculiarity of this performance that hewas apt to linger over it, partly from the fact that it put off theevil hour of lessons, partly that he imparted into the process a purelyimaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading. In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on theirway to school, who always envied him his superior menial occupation. Togo to school, it was felt, was a common calamity of boyhood that calledinto play only the simplest forms of evasion, whereas to take downactual shutters in a bona fide store, and wield a real broom that raiseda palpable cloud of dust, was something that really taxed the noblestexertions. And it was the morning after the arrival of the strangersthat John Milton stood on the veranda of the store ostentatiouslyexamining the horizon, with his hand shading his eyes, as one of hiscompanions appeared. 

"Hollo, Milt! wot yer doin'?"

John Milton started dramatically, and then violently dashed at one ofthe shutters and began to detach it. "Ha!" he said hoarsely. "Clear theship for action! Open the ports! On deck there! Steady, you lubbers!"In an instant his enthusiastic school-fellow was at his side attackinganother shutter. "A long, low schooner bearing down upon us! Lively, lads, lively!" continued John Milton, desisting a moment to take anotherdramatic look at the distant plain. "How does she head now?" he demandedfiercely. 

"Sou' by sou'east, sir, " responded the other boy, frantically dancingbefore the window. "But she'll weather it. "

They each then wrested another shutter away, violently depositing them, as they ran to and fro, in a rack at the corner of the veranda. Addedto an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet, theyaccompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound, supposed toindicate in one breath the fury of the elements, the bustle of the eagercrew, and the wild excitement of the coming conflict. When the lastshutter was cleared away, John Milton, with the cry "Man the starboardguns!" dashed into the store, whose floor was marked by the muddyfootprints of yesterday's buyers, seized a broom and began to sweepviolently. A cloud of dust arose, into which his companion at onceprecipitated himself with another broom and a loud BANG! to indicate thesomewhat belated sound of cannon. For a few seconds the two boys pliedtheir brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere, accompanying eachlong sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report ofexplosions and loud HA'S! of defiance, until not only the store, but theveranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainlyto pierce. In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion--happilyunheard and unsuspected in the secluded domestic interior of thebuilding--a shrill little voice arose from the road. 

"Think you're mighty smart, don't ye?"

The two naval heroes stopped in their imaginary fury, and, as the dustof conflict cleared away, recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at themwith mingled inquisitiveness and envy. 

"Guess ye don't know what happened down the run last night, " hecontinued impatiently. "'Lige Curtis got killed, or killed hisself!Blood all over the rock down thar. Seed it, myseff. Dad picked up hissix-shooter, --one barrel gone off. My dad was the first to find it out, and he's bin to Squire Kerby tellin' him. "

The two companions, albeit burning with curiosity, affected indifferenceand pre-knowledge. 

"Dad sez your father druv 'Lige outer the store lass night! Dad sez yourfather's 'sponsible. Dad sez your father ez good ez killed him. Dad sezthe squire'll set the constable on your father. Yah!" But here the smallinsulter incontinently fled, pursued by both the boys. Nevertheless, when he had made good his escape, John Milton showed neither adisposition to take up his former nautical role, nor to follow hiscompanion to visit the sanguinary scene of Elijah's disappearance. Hewalked slowly back to the store and continued his work of sweeping andputting in order with an abstracted regularity, and no trace of hisformer exuberant spirits. 

The first one of those instinctive fears which are common to imaginativechildren, and often assume the functions of premonition, had takenpossession of him. The oddity of his father's manner the evening before, which had only half consciously made its indelible impression on hissensitive fancy, had recurred to him with Johnny Peters's speech. He hadno idea of literally accepting the boy's charges; he scarcely understoodtheir gravity; but he had a miserable feeling that his father's angerand excitement last night was because he had been discovered hunting inthe dark for that paper of 'Lige Curtis's. It WAS 'Lige Curtis's paper, for he had seen it lying there. A sudden dreadful conviction came overhim that he must never, never let any one know that he had seen hisfather take up that paper; that he must never admit it, even to HIM. Itwas not the boy's first knowledge of that attitude of hypocrisy whichthe grownup world assumes towards childhood, and in which the innocentvictims eventually acquiesce with a Machiavellian subtlety that at lastavenges them, --but it was his first knowledge that that hypocrisy mightnot be so innocent. His father had concealed something from him, becauseit was not right. 

But if childhood does not forget, it seldom broods and is not abovebeing diverted. And the two surveyors--of whose heroic advent in a raftJohn Milton had only heard that morning with their traveled ways, theirstrange instruments and stranger talk, captured his fancy. Kept inthe background by his sisters when visitors came, as an unpresentablefeature in the household, he however managed to linger near thestrangers when, in company with Euphemia and Clementina, after breakfastthey strolled beneath the sparkling sunlight in the rude gardeninclosure along the sloping banks of the creek. It was with the averagebrother's supreme contempt that he listened to his sisters' "practicin'"upon the goodness of these superior beings; it was with an exceptionalpity that he regarded the evident admiration of the strangers in return. He felt that in the case of Euphemia, who sometimes evinced a laudablecuriosity in his pleasures, and a flattering ignorance of his reading, this might be pardonable; but what any one could find in the uselessstatuesque Clementina passed his comprehension. Could they not see atonce that she was "just that kind of person" who would lie abed inthe morning, pretending she was sick, in order to make Phemie do thehousework, and make him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch thingsfor her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickeningpoliteness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels, rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep herself, andperhaps some "buggy-riding" later? Alas, John Milton, it was not! Forstanding there with her tall, perfectly-proportioned figure outlinedagainst a willow, an elastic branch of which she had drawn down by onecurved arm above her head, and on which she leaned--as everybody leanedagainst something in Sidon--the two young men saw only a strayinggoddess in a glorified rosebud print. Whether the clearly-cut profilepresented to Rice, or the full face that captivated Grant, eachsuggested possibilities of position, pride, poetry, and passion thatastonished while it fascinated them. By one of those instincts knownonly to the freemasonry of the sex, Euphemia lent herself to thisadvertisement of her sister's charms by subtle comparison with her ownprettinesses, and thus combined against their common enemy, man. 

"Clementina certainly is perfect, to keep her supremacy over that prettylittle sister, " thought Rice. 

"What a fascinating little creature to hold her own against that tall, handsome girl, " thought Grant. 

"They're takin' stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em whentheir backs is turned, " said John Milton gloomily to himself, with adismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obligedto listen to later. 

"We were very fortunate to make a landing at all last night, " said Rice, looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyesto Clementina. "Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I supposeit must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank, --as, you know, the sirens used to lure people, --only with less disastrousconsequences. "

John Milton here detected three glaring errors; first, it was NOTClementina who had sung; secondly, he knew that neither of his sistershad ever read anything about sirens, but he had; thirdly, that theyoung surveyor was glaringly ignorant of local phenomena and should becorrected. 

"It's nothin' but the current, " he said, with that feverish youthfulhaste that betrays a fatal experience of impending interruption. "It'salways leavin' drift and rubbish from everywhere here. There ain'tanythin' that's chucked into the creek above that ain't bound to fetchup on this bank. Why, there was two sheep and a dead hoss here longafore YOU thought of coming!" He did not understand why this shouldprovoke the laughter that it did, and to prove that he had no ulteriormeaning, added with pointed politeness, "So IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT, youknow--YOU couldn't help it;" supplementing this with the distinctcourtesy, "otherwise you wouldn't have come. "

"But it would seem that your visitors are not all as accidental as yourbrother would imply, and one, at least, seems to have been expected lastevening. You remember you thought we were a Mr. Parmlee, " said Mr. Ricelooking at Clementina. 

It would be strange indeed, he thought, if the beautiful girl were notsurrounded by admirers. But without a trace of self-consciousness, orany change in her reposeful face, she indicated her sister with a slightgesture, and said: "One of Phemie's friends. He gave her the accordion. She's very popular. "

"And I suppose YOU are very hard to please?" he said with a tentativesmile. 

She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence ofcoquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might havestood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I amwaiting to see. "

But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion that Mr. Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least hedidn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did heusually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out ofNoah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door. All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with asimulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. LawrenceGrant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absentParmlee. 

"But where is the front door?" asked Grant laughingly. 

The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bankbeside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the levelof the road and store. 

"But I should think it would be easier to have a door and privatepassage through the store, " said Grant. 

"WE don't, " said the young lady pertly, "we have nothing to do with thestore. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there'snobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's badenough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near tous as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain'ttroubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek asfar as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell porkand flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it. "

The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness weresomething rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly didnot indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must havebeen some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt hisrespect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grantlooked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile. 

"But you must be very limited in your company, " he said; "or is Mr. Parmlee not a customer of your father's?"

"As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talktrade to me, we don't know, " responded Phemie saucily. 

"But have you no lady acquaintances--neighbors--who also avoid the storeand enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?" continuedGrant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glancesof Rice. 

But Phemie, triumphantly oblivious of any satire, answered promptly:"If you mean the Pike County Billingses who live on the turnpike road asmuch as they do off it, or the six daughters of that Georgia Cracker whowear men's boots and hats, we haven't. "

"And Mr. Parmlee, your admirer?" suggested Rice. "Hasn't he a mother orsisters here?"

"Yes, but they don't want to know us, and have never called here. "

The embarrassment of the questioner at this unexpected reply, which camefrom the faultless lips of Clementina, was somewhat mitigated by thefact that the young woman's voice and manner betrayed neither annoyancenor anger. 

Here, however, Harkutt appeared from the house with the information thathe had secured two horses for the surveyors and their instruments, andthat he would himself accompany them a part of the way on theirreturn to Tasajara Creek, to show them the road. His usual listlessdeliberation had given way to a certain nervous but uneasy energy. Ifthey started at once it would be better, before the loungers gathered atthe store and confused them with lazy counsel and languid curiosity. Hetook it for granted that Mr. Grant wished the railroad survey to bea secret, and he had said nothing, as they would be pestered withquestions. "Sidon was inquisitive--and old-fashioned. " The benefit itsinhabitants would get from the railroad would not prevent them fromthrowing obstacles in its way at first; he remembered the way theyhad acted with a proposed wagon road, --in fact, an idea of his own, something like the railroad; he knew them thoroughly, and if he mightadvise them, it would be to say nothing here until the thing wassettled. 

"He evidently does not intend to give us a chance, " said Grantgood-humoredly to his companion, as they turned to prepare for theirjourney; "we are to be conducted in silence to the outskirts of the townlike horse-thieves. "

"But you gave him the tip for himself, " said Rice reproachfully; "youcannot blame him for wanting to keep it. "

"I gave it to him in trust for his two incredible daughters, " said Grantwith a grimace. "But, hang it! if I don't believe the fellow has moreconcern in it than I imagined. "

"But isn't she perfect?" said Rice, with charming abstraction. 

"Who?"

"Clementina, and so unlike her father. "

"Discomposingly so, " said Grant quietly. "One feels in calling her 'MissHarkutt' as if one were touching upon a manifest indiscretion. But herecomes John Milton. Well, my lad, what can I do for you?"

The boy, who had been regarding them from a distance with wistful andcurious eyes as they replaced their instruments for the journey, hadgradually approached them. After a moment's timid hesitation he said, looking at Grant: "You don't know anybody in this kind o' business, "pointing to the instruments, "who'd like a boy, about my size?"

"I'm afraid not, J. M. , " said Grant, cheerfully, without suspending hisoperation. "The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work fora boy of your size. "

John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from oneleg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, "Theredon't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. Theredon't seem to be much use for 'em any way. " This not bitterly, butphilosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejectionof any incivility. 

"Really you quite pain me, John Milton, " said Grant, looking up as hetightened a buckle. "I never thought of it before, but you're right. "

"Now, " continued the boy slowly, "with girls it's just different. Girlsof my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy, --she's only twoyears older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lieabout all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie, --who'sjest the same age, size, and weight as me, --maw and paw lets her doeverything she wants to. And so does everybody. And so would you. "

"But you surely don't want to be like a girl?" said Grant, smiling. 

It here occurred to John Milton's youthful but not illogical mind thatthis was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his fatherwas to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, wasto-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involveany pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change buta simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected bythose customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return. Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for otherreasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presenceof the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove, and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which hemight have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dullgossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel andinstruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments. "Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't hereto see ye, John, " remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair afew moments after Harkutt had ridden away, "ye orter be bustlin' round, dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man efyou go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'theMill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy. "

"I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he wasgrowned up either, " responded John Milton, darkly. 

"P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' hisfather's customers, " said Peters, angrily. "I kin tell ye, young man, ifyou was my boy"--

"If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school, jest as your boy is doin' now, " interrupted John Milton, with a literalrecollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question thatmorning. 

An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usualsequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself tothe youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement. 

The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis'sdisappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone, which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but whicheither from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon, were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference. The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mistthat seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffledover from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place ofanother idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle aroundthe slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering cameoccasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protractedintervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicularrepair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite sideof the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be moreluxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but notequal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes anda regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks gotwell into a line for a laborious "march past" the store, but fell outat the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectablehen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her betterinstincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was metby language which no mother of a family could listen to, and retired instrong hysterics. A little later the sun became again obscured, thewind arose, rain fell, and the opportunity for going indoors and doingnothing was once more availed of by all Sidon. 

It was afternoon when Mr. Harkutt returned. He did not go into thestore, but entered the dwelling from the little picket-gate and steeppath. There he called a family council in the sitting-room as beingthe most reserved and secure. Mrs. Harkutt, sympathizing and cheerfullyready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, tookher seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one sideof her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on theother. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, itwas pointed out that he was wanted at the store, --was a mere boy anyhow, and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather, excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a littlemore rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiantself-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of theroom. 

He wanted them to listen to him carefully, to remember what he said, forit was important; it might be a matter of "lawing" hereafter, --and hecouldn't be always repeating it to them, --he would have enough to do. There was a heap of it that, as women-folks, they couldn't understand, and weren't expected to. But he'd got it all clear now, and what he wassaying was gospel. He'd always known to himself that the only good thatcould ever come to Sidon would come by railroad. When those fools talkedwagon road he had said nothing, but he had his own ideas; he had workedfor that idea without saying anything to anybody; that idea was to getpossession of all the land along the embarcadero, which nobodycared for, and 'Lige Curtis was ready to sell for a song. Well, now, considering what had happened, he didn't mind telling them that he hadbeen gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'LigeCurtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They hadheard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminusfor the railroad. Well, that land, and that water-front, and theterminus were HIS! And all from his own foresight and prudence. 

It is needless to say that this was not the truth. But it is necessaryto point out that this fabrication was the result of his last night'scogitations and his morning's experience. He had resolved upon a boldcourse. He had reflected that his neighbors would be more ready tobelieve in and to respect a hard, mercenary, and speculative foresightin his taking advantage of 'Lige's necessities than if he had--as wasthe case--merely benefited by them through an accident of circumstanceand good humor. In the latter case he would be envied and hated; inthe former he would be envied and feared. By logic of circumstancethe greater wrong seemed to be less obviously offensive than the minorfault. It was true that it involved the doing of something he had notcontemplated, and the certainty of exposure if 'Lige ever returned, but he was nevertheless resolved. The step from passive to activewrong-doing is not only easy, it is often a relief; it is that return tosincerity which we all require. Howbeit, it gave that ring of assertionto Daniel Harkutt's voice already noted, which most women like, andonly men are prone to suspect or challenge. The incompleteness of hisstatement was, for the same reason, overlooked by his feminine auditors. 

"And what is it worth, dad?" asked Phemie eagerly. 

"Grant says I oughter get at least ten thousand dollars for the site ofthe terminus from the company, but of course I shall hold on to the restof the land. The moment they get the terminus there, and the depot andwharf built, I can get my own price and buyers for the rest. Before theyear is out Grant thinks it ought to go up ten per cent on the value ofthe terminus, and that a hundred thousand. "

"Oh, dad!" gasped Phemie, frantically clasping her knees with both handsas if to perfectly assure herself of this good fortune. 

Mrs. Harkutt audibly murmured "Poor dear Dan'l, " and stood, as it were, sympathetically by, ready to commiserate the pains and anxieties ofwealth as she had those of poverty. Clementina alone remained silent, clear-eyed, and unchanged. 

"And to think it all came through THEM!" continued Phemie. "I always hadan idea that Mr. Grant was smart, dad. And it was real kind of him totell you. "

"I reckon father could have found it out without them. I don't know whywe should be beholden to them particularly. I hope he isn't expected tolet them think that he is bound to consider them our intimate friendsjust because they happened to drop in here at a time when his plans havesucceeded. "

The voice was Clementina's, unexpected but quiet, unemotional andconvincing. "It seemed, " as Mrs. Harkutt afterwards said, "as if thechild had already touched that hundred thousand. " Phemie reddened with asense of convicted youthful extravagance. 

"You needn't fear for me, " said Harkutt, responding to Clementina'svoice as if it were an echo of his own, and instinctively recognizingan unexpected ally. "I've got my own ideas of this thing, and what'sto come of it. I've got my own ideas of openin' up that property andshowin' its resources. I'm goin' to run it my own way. I'm goin' to havea town along the embarcadero that'll lay over any town in Contra Costa. I'm goin' to have the court-house and county seat there, and a coupleof hotels as good as any in the Bay. I'm goin' to build that wagon roadthrough here that those lazy louts slipped up on, and carry it clearover to Five Mile Corner, and open up the whole Tasajara Plain!"

They had never seen him look so strong, so resolute, so intelligent andhandsome. A dimly prophetic vision of him in a black broadcloth suit andgold watch-chain addressing a vague multitude, as she remembered tohave seen the Hon. Stanley Riggs of Alasco at the "Great Barbecue, "rose before Phemie's blue enraptured eyes. With the exception of Mrs. Harkutt, --equal to any possibilities on the part of her husband, --theyhad honestly never expected it of him. They were pleased with theirfather's attitude in prosperity, and felt that perhaps he was notunworthy of being proud of them hereafter. 

"But we're goin' to leave Sidon, " said Phemie, "ain't we, paw?"

"As soon as I can run up a new house at the embarcadero, " said Harkuttpeevishly, "and that's got to be done mighty quick if I want to make ashow to the company and be in possession. "

"And that's easier for you to do, dear, now that 'Lige's disappeared, "said Mrs. Harkutt consolingly. 

"What do ye mean by that? What the devil are ye talkin' about?" demandedHarkutt suddenly with unexpected exasperation. 

"I mean that that drunken 'Lige would be mighty poor company for thegirls if he was our only neighbor, " returned Mrs. Harkutt submissively. 

Harkutt, after a fixed survey of his wife, appeared mollified. The twogirls, who were mindful of his previous outburst the evening before, exchanged glances which implied that his manners needed correction forprosperity. 

"You'll want a heap o' money to build there, Dan'l, " said Mrs. Harkuttin plaintive diffidence. 

"Yes! Yes!" said Harkutt impatiently. "I've kalkilated all that, andI'm goin' to 'Frisco to-morrow to raise it and put this bill of sale onrecord. " He half drew Elijah Curtis's paper from his pocket, but pausedand put it back again. 

"Then THAT WAS the paper, dad, " said Phemie triumphantly. 

"Yes, " said her father, regarding her fixedly, "and you know now why Ididn't want anything said about it last night--nor even now. "

"And 'Lige had just given it to you! Wasn't it lucky?"

"He HADN'T just given it to me!" said her father with another unexpectedoutburst. "God Amighty! ain't I tellin' you all the time it was an oldmatter! But you jabber, jabber all the time and don't listen! Where'sJohn Milton?" It had occurred to him that the boy might have read thepaper--as his sister had--while it lay unheeded on the counter. 

"In the store, --you know. You said he wasn't to hear anything of this, but I'll call him, " said Mrs. Harkutt, rising eagerly. 

"Never mind, " returned her husband, stopping her reflectively, "bestleave it as it is; if it's necessary I'll tell him. But don't any of yousay anything, do you hear?"

Nevertheless a few hours later, when the store was momentarily free ofloungers, and Harkutt had relieved his son of his monotonous charge, hemade a pretense, while abstractedly listening to an account of the boy'sstewardship, to look through a drawer as if in search of some missingarticle. 

"You didn't see anything of a paper I left somewhere about hereyesterday?" he asked carelessly. 

"The one you picked up when you came in last night?" said the boy withdiscomposing directness. 

Harkutt flushed slightly and drew his breath between his set teeth. Notonly could he place no reliance upon ordinary youthful inattention, but he must be on his guard against his own son as from a spy! But herestrained himself. 

"I don't remember, " he said with affected deliberation, "what it was Ipicked up. Do you? Did you read it?"

The meaning of his father's attitude instinctively flashed upon the boy. He HAD read the paper, but he answered, as he had already determined, "No. "

An inspiration seized Mr. Harkutt. He drew 'Lige Curtis's bill of salefrom his pocket, and opening it before John Milton said, "Was it that?"

"I don't know, " said the boy. "I couldn't tell. " He walked away withaffected carelessness, already with a sense of playing some part likehis father, and pretended to whistle for the dog across the street. Harkutt coughed ostentatiously, put the paper back in his pocket, set one or two boxes straight on the counter, locked the drawer, anddisappeared into the back passage. John Milton remained standing inthe doorway looking vacantly out. But he did not see the dull familiarprospect beyond. He only saw the paper his father had opened andunfolded before him. It was the same paper he had read last night. Butthere were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE! Afterthe words "Value received" there had been a blank. He remembered thatdistinctly. This was filled in by the words, "Five hundred dollars. " Thehandwriting did not seem like his father's, nor yet entirely like 'LigeCurtis's. What it meant he did not know, --he would not try to think. Heshould forget it, as he had tried to forget what had happened before, and he should never tell it to any one!

There was a feverish gayety in his sisters' manner that afternoon thathe did not understand; short colloquies that were suspended with illconcealed impatience when he came near them, and resumed when hewas sent, on equally palpable excuses, out of the room. He had beenaccustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present, but itseemed odd to him now, when the conversation did not even turn upon thetwo superior visitors who had been there, and of whom he confidentlyexpected they would talk. Such fragments as he overheard were always inthe future tense, and referred to what they intended to do. Hismother, whose affection for him had always been shown in excessiveand depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments, thatafternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for somevague future of his that would require all her ministration. "You won'tneed them new boots, Milty dear, in the changes that may be comin' toye; so don't be bothering your poor father in his worriments over hisnew plans. "

"What new plans, mommer?" asked the boy abruptly. "Are we goin' awayfrom here?"

"Hush, dear, and don't ask questions that's enough for grown folks toworry over, let alone a boy like you. Now be good, "--a quality in Mrs. Harkutt's mind synonymous with ceasing from troubling, --"and aftersupper, while I'm in the parlor with your father and sisters, you kinsit up here by the fire with your book. "

"But, " persisted the boy in a flash of inspiration, "is popper goin' tojoin in business with those surveyors, --a surveyin'?"

"No, child, what an idea! Run away there, --and mind!--don't bother yourfather. "

Nevertheless John Milton's inspiration had taken a new andcharacteristic shape. All this, he reflected, had happened since thesurveyors came--since they had weakly displayed such a shameless andunmanly interest in his sisters! It could have but one meaning. He hungaround the sitting-room and passages until he eventually encounteredClementina, taller than ever, evidently wearing a guilty satisfactionin her face, engrafted upon that habitual bearing of hers which he hadalways recognized as belonging to a vague but objectionable race whosemembers were individually known to him as "a proudy. "

"Which of those two surveyor fellows is it, Clemmy?" he said with anengaging smile, yet halting at a strategic distance. 

"Is what?"

"Wot you're goin' to marry. "

"Idiot!"

"That ain't tellin' which, " responded the boy darkly. 

Clementina swept by him into the sitting-room, where he heard herdeclare that "really that boy was getting too low and vulgarfor anything. " Yet it struck him, that being pressed for furtherexplanation, she did NOT specify why. This was "girls' meanness!"

Howbeit he lingered late in the road that evening, hearing his fatherdiscuss with the search-party that had followed the banks of the creek, vainly looking for further traces of the missing 'Lige, the possibilityof his being living or dead, of the body having been carried away by thecurrent to the bay or turning up later in some distant marsh when thespring came with low water. One who had been to his cabin beside theembarcadero reported that it was, as had been long suspected, barelyhabitable, and contained neither books, papers, nor records which wouldindicate his family or friends. It was a God-forsaken, dreary, worthlessplace; he wondered how a white man could ever expect to make a livingthere. If Elijah never turned up again it certainly would be a long timebefore any squatter would think of taking possession of it. John Miltonknew instinctively, without looking up, that his father's eyes werefixed upon him, and he felt himself constrained to appear to beabstracted in gazing down the darkening road. Then he heard his fathersay, with what he felt was an equal assumption of carelessness: "Yes, Ireckon I've got somewhere a bill of sale of that land that I had to takefrom 'Lige for an old bill, but I kalkilate that's all I'll ever see ofit. "

Rain fell again as the darkness gathered, but he still loitered on theroad and the sloping path of the garden, filled with a half resentfulsense of wrong, and hugging with gloomy pride an increasing sense ofloneliness and of getting dangerously wet. The swollen creek stillwhispered, murmured and swirled beside the bank. At another time hemight have had wild ideas of emulating the surveyors on some extemporeraft and so escaping his present dreary home existence; but since thedisappearance of 'Lige, who had always excited an odd boyish antipathyin his heart, although he had never seen him, he shunned the streamcontaminated with the missing man's unheroic fate. Presently the lightfrom the open window of the sitting-room glittered on the wet leavesand sprays where he stood, and the voices of the family conclave camefitfully to his ear. They didn't want him there. They had never thoughtof asking him to come in. Well!--who cared? And he wasn't going to bebought off with a candle and a seat by the kitchen fire. No!

Nevertheless he was getting wet to no purpose. There was the tool-houseand carpenter's shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered withsawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skinwhich he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed. There, too, was his secret cache of a candle in a bottle, buried with otherpiratical treasures in the presence of the youthful Peters, whoconsented to be sacrificed on the spot in buccaneering fashion tocomplete the unhallowed rites. He unearthed the candle, lit it, andclearing away a part of the shavings stood it up on the floor. He thenbrought a prized, battered, and coverless volume from a hidden recess inthe rafters, and lying down with the buffalo robe over him, and his capin his hand ready to extinguish the light at the first footstep of atrespasser, gave himself up--as he had given himself up, I fear, manyother times--to the enchantment of the page before him. 

The current whispered, murmured, and sang, unheeded at his side. Thevoices of his mother and sisters, raised at times in eagerness orexpectation of the future, fell upon his unlistening ears. For with thespell that had come upon him, the mean walls of his hiding-placemelted away; the vulgar stream beside him might have been that dim, subterraneous river down which Sindbad and his bale of riches were sweptout of the Cave of Death to the sunlight of life and fortune, so surelyand so simply had it transported him beyond the cramped and darkenedlimits of his present life. He was in the better world of boyishromance, --of gallant deeds and high emprises; of miraculous atonementand devoted sacrifice; of brave men, and those rarer, impossiblewomen, --the immaculate conception of a boy's virgin heart. What matteredit that behind that glittering window his mother and sisters grewfeverish and excited over the vulgar details of their real but baserfortune? From the dark tool-shed by the muddy current, John Milton, with a battered dogs'-eared chronicle, soared on the wings of fancy farbeyond their wildest ken!

CHAPER V. 

Prosperity had settled upon the plains of Tasajara. Not only had theembarcadero emerged from the tules of Tasajara Creek as a thriving townof steamboat wharves, warehouses, and outlying mills and factories, butin five years the transforming railroad had penetrated the great plainitself and revealed its undeveloped fertility. The low-lying lands thathad been yearly overflowed by the creek, now drained and cultivated, yielded treasures of wheat and barley that were apparentlyinexhaustible. Even the helpless indolence of Sidon had been surprisedinto activity and change. There was nothing left of the stragglingsettlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt's old storeand dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary thatrose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for thememory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete andsmiling obliteration of the past. 

But Tasajara City, as the embarcadero was now called, had no previousrecord, and even the former existence of an actual settler like theforgotten Elijah Curtis was unknown to the present inhabitants. It wasDaniel Harkutt's idea carried out in Daniel Harkutt's land, with DanielHarkutt's capital and energy. But Daniel Harkutt had become DanielHarcourt, and Harcourt Avenue, Harcourt Square, and Harcourt House, ostentatiously proclaimed the new spelling of his patronymic. When thechange was made and for what reason, who suggested it and under whatauthority, were not easy to determine, as the sign on his former storehad borne nothing but the legend, Goods and Provisions, and his name didnot appear on written record until after the occupation of Tasajara;but it is presumed that it was at the instigation of his daughters, andthere was no one to oppose it. Harcourt was a pretty name for a street, a square, or a hotel; even the few in Sidon who had called it Harkuttadmitted that it was an improvement quite consistent with the changefrom the fever-haunted tules and sedges of the creek to the broad, level, and handsome squares of Tasajara City. 

This might have been the opinion of a visitor at the Harcourt House, whoarrived one summer afternoon from the Stockton boat, but whose shrewd, half-critical, half-professional eyes and quiet questionings betrayedsome previous knowledge of the locality. Seated on the broad verandaof the Harcourt House, and gazing out on the well-kept green and youngeucalyptus trees of the Harcourt Square or Plaza, he had elicited acounter question from a prosperous-looking citizen who had been loungingat his side. 

"I reckon you look ez if you might have been here before, stranger. "

"Yes, " said the stranger quietly, "I have been. But it was when thetules grew in the square opposite, and the tide of the creek washedthem. "

"Well, " said the Tasajaran, looking curiously at the stranger, "I callmyself a pioneer of Tasajara. My name's Peters, --of Peters and Co. , --andthose warehouses along the wharf, where you landed just now, are mine;but I was the first settler on Harcourt's land, and built the next cabinafter him. I helped to clear out them tules and dredged the channelsyonder. I took the contract with Harcourt to build the last fifteenmiles o' railroad, and put up that depot for the company. Perhaps youwere here before that?"

"I was, " returned the stranger quietly. 

"I say, " said Peters, hitching his chair a little nearer to hiscompanion, "you never knew a kind of broken-down feller, calledCurtis--'Lige Curtis--who once squatted here and sold his right toHarkutt? He disappeared; it was allowed he killed hisself, but theynever found his body, and, between you and me, I never took stock inthat story. You know Harcourt holds under him, and all Tasajara rests onthat title. "

"I've heard so, " assented the stranger carelessly, "but I never knew theoriginal settler. Then Harcourt has been lucky?"

"You bet. He's got three millions right about HERE, or within thisquarter section, to say nothing of his outside speculations. "

"And lives here?"

"Not for two years. That's his old house across the plaza, but hiswomen-folks live mostly in 'Frisco and New York, where he's got housestoo. They say they sorter got sick of Tasajara after his youngestdaughter ran off with a feller. "

"Hallo!" said the stranger with undisguised interest. "I never heard ofthat! You don't mean that she eloped"--he hesitated. 

"Oh, it was a square enough marriage. I reckon too square to suit somefolks; but the fellow hadn't nothin', and wasn't worth shucks, --a sortof land surveyor, doin' odd jobs, you know; and the old man and oldwoman were agin it, and the tother daughter worse of all. It was allowedhere--you know how women-folks talk!--that the surveyor had been sweeton Clementina, but had got tired of being played by her, and took upwith Phemie out o' spite. Anyhow they got married, and Harcourt gavethem to understand they couldn't expect anything from him. P'raps that'swhy it didn't last long, for only about two months ago she got a divorcefrom Rice and came back to her family again. "

"Rice?" queried the stranger. "Was that her husband's name, StephenRice?"

"I reckon! You knew him?"

"Yes, --when the tide came up to the tules, yonder, " answered thestranger musingly. "And the other daughter, --I suppose she has made agood match, being a beauty and the sole heiress?"

The Tasajaran made a grimace. "Not much! I reckon she's waitin' for theAngel Gabriel, --there ain't another good enough to suit her here. Theysay she's had most of the big men in California waitin' in a line withtheir offers, like that cue the fellows used to make at the 'Friscopost-office steamer days--and she with nary a letter or answer for anyof them. "

"Then Harcourt doesn't seem to have been as fortunate in his familyaffairs as in his speculations?"

Peters uttered a grim laugh. "Well, I reckon you know all about hisson's stampeding with that girl last spring?"

"His son?" interrupted the stranger. "Do you mean the boy they calledJohn Milton? Why, he was a mere child!"

"He was old enough to run away with a young woman that helped in hismother's house, and marry her afore a justice of the peace. The old manjust snorted with rage, and swore he'd have the marriage put aside, forthe boy was under age. He said it was a put-up job of the girl's; thatshe was older by two years, and only wanted to get what money might becomin' some day, but that they'd never see a red cent of it. Then, theysay, John Milton up and sassed the old man to his face, and allowed thathe wouldn't take his dirty money if he starved first, and that if theold man broke the marriage he'd marry her again next year; that truelove and honorable poverty were better nor riches, and a lot more o'that stuff he picked out o' them ten-cent novels he was allus reading. My women-folks say that he actually liked the girl, because she was theonly one in the house that was ever kind to him; they say the girls werejust ragin' mad at the idea o' havin' a hired gal who had waited on 'emas a sister-in-law, and they even got old Mammy Harcourt's back up bysayin' that John's wife would want to rule the house, and run her outof her own kitchen. Some say he shook THEM, talked back to 'em mightysharp, and held his head a heap higher nor them. Anyhow, he's livin'with his wife somewhere in 'Frisco, in a shanty on a sand lot, andworkin' odd jobs for the newspapers. No! takin' it by and large--itdon't look as if Harcourt had run his family to the same advantage thathe has his land. "

"Perhaps he doesn't understand them as well, " said the stranger smiling. 

"Mor'n likely the material ain't thar, or ain't as vallyble for a newcountry, " said Peters grimly. "I reckon the trouble is that he lets themtwo daughters run him, and the man who lets any woman or women do that, lets himself in for all their meannesses, and all he gets in return is awoman's result, --show!"

Here the stranger, who was slowly rising from his chair with the politesuggestion of reluctantly tearing himself from the speaker's spell, said: "And Harcourt spends most of his time in San Francisco, Isuppose?"

"Yes! but to-day he's here to attend a directors' meeting and theopening of the Free Library and Tasajara Hall. I saw the windows open, and the blinds up in his house across the plaza as I passed just now. "

The stranger had by this time quite effected his courteous withdrawal. "Good-afternoon, Mr. Peters, " he said, smilingly lifting his hat, andturned away. 

Peters, who was obliged to take his legs off the chair, and half riseto the stranger's politeness, here reflected that he did not know hisinterlocutor's name and business, and that he had really got nothingin return for his information. This must be remedied. As the strangerpassed through the hall into the street, followed by the unwontedcivilities of the spruce hotel clerk and the obsequious attentions ofthe negro porter, Peters stepped to the window of the office. "Who wasthat man who just passed out?" he asked. 

The clerk stared in undisguised astonishment. "You don't mean to say youdidn't know WHO he was--all the while you were talking to him?"

"No, " returned Peters, impatiently. 

"Why, that was Professor Lawrence Grant!--THE Lawrence Grant--don't youknow?--the biggest scientific man and recognized expert on the Pacificslope. Why, that's the man whose single word is enough to make or breakthe biggest mine or claim going! That man!--why, that's the man whoseopinion's worth thousands, for it carries millions with it--and can't bebought. That's him who knocked the bottom outer El Dorado last year, andnext day sent Eureka up booming! Ye remember that, sure?"

"Of course--but"--stammered Peters. 

"And to think you didn't know him!" repeated the hotel clerkwonderingly. "And here I was reckoning you were getting points from himall the time! Why, some men would have given a thousand dollars for yourchance of talking to him--yes!--of even being SEEN talking to him. Why, old Wingate once got a tip on his Prairie Flower lead worth fivethousand dollars while just changing seats with him in the cars andpassing the time of day, sociable like. Why, what DID you talk about?"

Peters, with a miserable conviction that he had thrown away a valuableopportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to lookmysterious as he replied, "Oh, business gin'rally. " Then in the fainthope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, "How long will he behere?"

"Don't know. I reckon he and Harcourt's got something on hand. He justasked if he was likely to be at home or at his office. I told him Ireckoned at the house, for some of the family--I didn't get to see whothey were--drove up in a carriage from the 3. 40 train while you weresitting there. "

Meanwhile the subject of this discussion, quite unconscious of thesensation he had created, or perhaps like most heroes philosophicallycareless of it, was sauntering indifferently towards Harcourt's house. But he had no business with his former host, his only object was to passan idle hour before his train left. He was, of course, not unaware thathe himself was largely responsible for Harcourt's success; that it wasHIS hint which had induced the petty trader of Sidon to venture his allin Tasajara; HIS knowledge of the topography and geology of theplain that had stimulated Harcourt's agricultural speculations; HIShydrographic survey of the creek that had made Harcourt's plan ofwidening the channel to commerce practicable and profitable. This hecould not help but know. But that it was chiefly owing to his own clear, cool, far-seeing, but never visionary, scientific observation, --hisown accurate analysis, unprejudiced by even a savant's enthusiasm, anduninfluenced by any personal desire or greed of gain, --that TasajaraCity had risen from the stagnant tules, was a speculation that had neveroccurred to him. There was a much more uneasy consciousness of what hehad done in Mr. Harcourt's face a few moments later, when his visitor'sname was announced, and it is to be feared that if that name had beenless widely honored and respected than it was, no merely gratefulrecollection of it would have procured Grant an audience. As it was, it was with a frown and a touch of his old impatient asperity that hestepped to the threshold of an adjoining room and called, "Clemmy!"

Clementina appeared at the door. 

"There's that man Grant in the parlor. What brings HIM here, I wonder?Who does he come to see?"

"Who did he ask for?"

"Me, --but that don't mean anything. "

"Perhaps he wants to see you on some business. "

"No. That isn't his high-toned style. He makes other people go to himfor that, " he said bitterly. "Anyhow--don't you think it's mighty queerhis coming here after his friend--for it was he who introduced Riceto us--had behaved so to your sister, and caused all this divorce andscandal?"

"Perhaps he may know nothing about it; he and Rice separated long ago, even before Grant became so famous. We never saw much of him, you know, after we came here. Suppose you leave him to ME. I'll see him. "

Mr. Harcourt reflected. "Didn't he used to be rather attentive toPhemie?"

Clementina shrugged her shoulders carelessly. "I dare say--but I don'tthink that NOW"--

"Who said anything about NOW?" retorted her father, with a return of hisold abruptness. After a pause he said: "I'll go down and see him first, and then send for you. You can keep him for the opening and dinner, ifyou like. "

Meantime Lawrence Grant, serenely unsuspicious of these domesticconfidences, had been shown into the parlor--a large room furnished inthe same style as the drawing-room of the hotel he had just quitted. He had ample time to note that it was that wonderful Second Empirefurniture which he remembered that the early San Francisco pioneers inthe first flush of their wealth had imported directly from France, andwhich for years after gave an unexpected foreign flavor to the westerndomesticity and a tawdry gilt equality to saloons and drawing-rooms, public and private. But he was observant of a corresponding change inHarcourt, when a moment later he entered the room. That individualitywhich had kept the former shopkeeper of Sidon distinct from, althoughperhaps not superior to, his customers--was strongly marked. He wasperhaps now more nervously alert than then; he was certainly moreimpatient than before, --but that was pardonable in a man oflarge affairs and action. Grant could not deny that he seemedimproved, --rather perhaps that the setting of fine clothes, cleanliness, and the absence of petty worries, made his characteristics respectable. That which is ill breeding in homespun, is apt to become mereeccentricity in purple and fine linen; Grant felt that Harcourtjarred on him less than he did before, and was grateful withoutsuperciliousness. Harcourt, relieved to find that Grant was neithercritical nor aggressively reminiscent, and above all not inclined toclaim the credit of creating him and Tasajara, became more confident, more at his ease, and, I fear, in proportion more unpleasant. It is therepose and not the struggle of the parvenu that confounds us. 

"And YOU, Grant, --you have made yourself famous, and, I hear, have gotpretty much your own prices for your opinions ever since it was knownthat you--you--er--were connected with the growth of Tasajara. "

Grant smiled; he was not quite prepared for this; but it was amusingand would pass the time. He murmured a sentence of half ironicaldeprecation, and Mr. Harcourt continued:--

"I haven't got my San Francisco house here to receive you in, but I hopesome day, sir, to see you there. We are only here for the day and night, but if you care to attend the opening ceremonies at the new hall, wecan manage to give you dinner afterwards. You can escort my daughterClementina, --she's here with me. "

The smile of apologetic declination which had begun to form on Grant'slips was suddenly arrested. "Then your daughter is here?" he asked, withunaffected interest. 

"Yes, --she is in fact a patroness of the library and sewing-circle, andtakes the greatest interest in it. The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury reliesupon her for everything. She runs the society, even to the training ofthe young ladies, sir. You shall see their exercises. "

This was certainly a new phase of Clementina's character. Yet why shouldshe not assume the role of Lady Bountiful with the other functions ofher new condition. "I should have thought Miss Harcourt would have foundthis rather difficult with her other social duties, " he said, "and wouldhave left it to her married sister. " He thought it better not to appearas if avoiding reference to Euphemia, although quietly ignoring her lateexperiences. Mr. Harcourt was less easy in his response. 

"Now that Euphemia is again with her own family, " he said ponderously, with an affectation of social discrimination that was in weak contrastto his usual direct business astuteness, "I suppose she may take herpart in these things, but just now she requires rest. You may have heardsome rumor that she is going abroad for a time? The fact is she hasn'tthe least intention of doing so, nor do we consider there is theslightest reason for her going. " He paused as if to give great emphasisto a statement that seemed otherwise unimportant. "But here's Clementinacoming, and I must get you to excuse ME. I've to meet the trustees ofthe church in ten minutes, but I hope she'll persuade you to stay, andI'll see you later at the hall. "

As Clementina entered the room her father vanished and, I fear, as completely dropped out of Mr. Grant's mind. For the daughter'simprovement was greater than her father's, yet so much more refined asto be at first only delicately perceptible. Grant had been prepared forthe vulgar enhancement of fine clothes and personal adornment, for thespecious setting of luxurious circumstances and surroundings, for theaplomb that came from flattery and conscious power. But he found none ofthese; her calm individuality was intensified rather than subdued; shewas dressed simply, with an economy of ornament, rich material, andjewelry, but an accuracy of taste that was always dominant. Her plaingray merino dress, beautifully fitting her figure, suggested, withits pale blue facings, some uniform, as of the charitable society shepatronized. She came towards him with a graceful movement of greeting, yet her face showed no consciousness of the interval that had elapsedsince they met; he almost fancied himself transported back to thesitting-room at Sidon with the monotonous patter of the leaves outside, and the cool moist breath of the bay and alder coming in at the window. 

"Father says that you are only passing through Tasajara to-day, as youdid through Sidon five years ago, " she said with a smiling earnestnessthat he fancied however was the one new phase of her character. "ButI won't believe it! At least we will not accept another visit quite asaccidental as that, even though you brought us twice the good fortuneyou did then. You see, we have not forgotten it if you have, Mr. Grant. And unless you want us to believe that your fairy gifts will turn someday to leaves and ashes, you will promise to stay with us tonight, andlet me show you some of the good we have done with them. Perhapsyou don't know, or don't want to know, that it was I who got up this'Library and Home Circle of the Sisters of Tasajara' which we areto open to-day. And can you imagine why? You remember--or have youforgotten--that you once affected to be concerned at the socialcondition of the young ladies on the plains of Sidon? Well, Mr. Grant, this is gotten up in order that the future Mr. Grants who wander mayfind future Miss Billingses who are worthy to converse with them andentertain them, and who no longer wear men's hats and live on the publicroad. "

It was such a long speech for one so taciturn as he rememberedClementina to have been; so unexpected in tone considering her father'sattitude towards him, and so unlooked for in its reference to a slightincident of the past, that Grant's critical contemplation of her gaveway to a quiet and grateful glance of admiration. How could he havebeen so mistaken in her character? He had always preferred the outspokenEuphemia, and yet why should he not have been equally mistaken inher? Without having any personal knowledge of Rice's matrimonialtroubles--for their intimate companionship had not continued after thesurvey--he had been inclined to blame him; now he seemed to find excusesfor him. He wondered if she really had liked him as Peters had hinted;he wondered if she knew that he, Grant, was no longer intimate with himand knew nothing of her affairs. All this while he was accepting herproffered hospitality and sending to the hotel for his luggage. Thenhe drifted into a conversation, which he had expected would be brief, pointless, and confined to a stupid resume of their mutual and socialprogress since they had left Sidon. But here he was again mistaken; shewas talking familiarly of present social topics, of things that she knewclearly and well, without effort or attitude. She had been to NewYork and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer atNewport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy, and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm. She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of goingto winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready togo with her. Mr. Grant of course knew that Euphemia was separated fromMr. Rice--no--not until her father told him? Well--the marriage had beena wild and foolish thing for both. But Euphemia was back again with themin the San Francisco house; she had talked of coming to Tasajara to-day, perhaps she might be there tonight. And, good heavens! it was actuallythree o'clock already, and they must start at once for the Hall. Shewould go and get her hat and return instantly. 

It was true; he had been talking with her an hour--pleasantly, intelligently, and yet with a consciousness of an indefinitesatisfaction beyond all this. It must have been surprise at hertransformation, or his previous misconception of her character. He hadbeen watching her features and wondering why he had ever thought themexpressionless. There was also the pleasant suggestion--common tohumanity in such instances--that he himself was in some way responsiblefor the change; that it was some awakened sympathy to his own naturethat had breathed into this cold and faultless statue the warmth oflife. In an odd flash of recollection he remembered how, five years ago, when Rice had suggested to her that she was "hard to please, " she hadreplied that she "didn't know, but that she was waiting to see. " It didnot occur to him to wonder why she had not awakened then, or if thisawakening had anything to do with her own volition. It was not probablethat they would meet again after to-day, or if they did, that she wouldnot relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now. But--here she was--a paragon of feminine promptitude--already standingin the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure grayhat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure. 

They crossed the plaza side by side, in the still garish sunlight thatseemed to mock the scant shade of the youthful eucalyptus trees, andpresently fell in with the stream of people going in their direction. The former daughters of Sidon, the Billingses, the Peterses, andWingates, were there bourgeoning and expanding in the glare of their newprosperity, with silk and gold; there were newer faces still, and prettyones, --for Tasajara as a "Cow County" had attracted settlers with largefamilies, --and there were already the contrasting types of East andWest. Many turned to look after the tall figure of the daughter of theFounder of Tasajara, --a spectacle lately rare to the town; a few glancedat her companion, equally noticeable as a stranger. Thanks, however, tosome judicious preliminary advertising from the hotel clerk, Peters, andDaniel Harcourt himself, by the time Grant and Miss Harcourt had reachedthe Hall his name and fame were already known, and speculation hadalready begun whether this new stroke of Harcourt's shrewdness might notunite Clementina to a renowned and profitable partner. 

The Hall was in one of the further and newly opened suburbs, and itsside and rear windows gave immediately upon the outlying and illimitableplain of Tasajara. It was a tasteful and fair-seeming structure of wood, surprisingly and surpassingly new. In fact that was its one dominantfeature; nowhere else had youth and freshness ever shown itselfas unconquerable and all-conquering. The spice of virgin woods andtrackless forests still rose from its pine floors, and breathed from itsouter shell of cedar that still oozed its sap, and redwood that stilldropped its life-blood. Nowhere else were the plastered walls andceilings as white and dazzling in their unstained purity, or as redolentof the outlying quarry in their clear cool breath of lime and stone. Even the turpentine of fresh and spotless paint added to this senseof wholesome germination, and as the clear and brilliant Californiansunshine swept through the open windows west and east, suffusing thewhole palpitating structure with its searching and resistless radiance, the very air seemed filled with the aroma of creation. 

The fresh colors of the young Republic, the bright blazonry of thenewest State, the coat-of-arms of the infant County of Tasajara--(avignette of sunset-tules cloven by the steam of an advancingtrain)--hanging from the walls, were all a part of this invinciblejuvenescence. Even the newest silks, ribbons and prints of the latestholiday fashions made their first virgin appearance in the new buildingas if to consecrate it, until it was stirred by the rustle of youth, aswith the sound and movement of budding spring. 

A strain from the new organ--whose heart, however, had prematurelylearned its own bitterness--and a thin, clear, but somewhat shrillchanting from a choir of young ladies were followed by a prayer from theReverend Mr. Pilsbury. Then there was a pause of expectancy, and Grant'sfair companion, who up to that moment had been quietly acting as guideand cicerone to her father's guest, excused herself with a littlegrimace of mock concern and was led away by one of the committee. Grant's usually keen eyes were wandering somewhat abstractedly over theagitated and rustling field of ribbons, flowers and feathers before him, past the blazonry of banner on the walls, and through the open windowsto the long sunlit levels beyond, when he noticed a stir upon the raiseddais or platform at the end of the room, where the notables of Tasajarawere formally assembled. The mass of black coats suddenly parted anddrew back against the wall to allow the coming forward of a singlegraceful figure. A thrill of nervousness as unexpected as unaccountablepassed over him as he recognized Clementina. In the midst of a suddensilence she read the report of the committee from a paper in her hand, in a clear, untroubled voice--the old voice of Sidon--and formallydeclared the building opened. The sunlight, nearly level, streamedthrough the western window across the front of the platform where shestood and transfigured her slight but noble figure. The hush that hadfallen upon the Hall was as much the effect of that tranquil, idealpresence as of the message with which it was charged. And yet thatapparition was as inconsistent with the clear, searching lightwhich helped to set it off, as it was with the broad new blazonry ofdecoration, the yet unsullied record of the white walls, or even thefrank, animated and pretty faces that looked upon it. Perhaps it wassome such instinct that caused the applause which hesitatingly andtardily followed her from the platform to appear polite and halfrestrained rather than spontaneous. 

Nevertheless Grant was honestly and sincerely profuse in hiscongratulations. "You were far cooler and far more self-contained than Ishould have been in your place, " he said, "than in fact I actually WAS, only as your auditor. But I suppose you have done it before?"

She turned her beautiful eyes on his wonderingly. "No, --this is thefirst time I ever appeared in public, --not even at school, for eventhere I was always a private pupil. "

"You astonish me, " said Grant; "you seemed like an old hand at it. "

"Perhaps I did, or rather as if I didn't think anything of itmyself, --and that no doubt is why the audience didn't think anything ofit either. "

So she HAD noticed her cold reception, and yet there was not theslightest trace of disappointment, regret, or wounded vanity in hertone or manner. "You must take me to the refreshment room now, " shesaid pleasantly, "and help me to look after the young ladies who are myguests. I'm afraid there are still more speeches to come, and father andMr. Pilsbury are looking as if they confidently expected something morewould be 'expected' of them. "

Grant at once threw himself into the task assigned to him, with hisnatural gallantry and a certain captivating playfulness which he stillretained. Perhaps he was the more anxious to please in order that hiscompanion might share some of his popularity, for it was undeniable thatMiss Harcourt still seemed to excite only a constrained politenessamong those with whom she courteously mingled. And this was still moredistinctly marked by the contrast of a later incident. 

For some moments the sound of laughter and greeting had risen near thedoor of the refreshment room that opened upon the central hall, andthere was a perceptible movement of the crowd--particularly of youthfulmale Tasajara--in that direction. It was evident that it announced theunexpected arrival of some popular resident. Attracted like the others, Grant turned and saw the company making way for the smiling, easy, half-saucy, half-complacent entry of a handsomely dressed young girl. Asshe turned from time to time to recognize with rallying familiarity orcharming impertinence some of her admirers, there was that in hertone and gesture which instantly recalled to him the past. It wasunmistakably Euphemia! His eyes instinctively sought Clementina's. Shewas gazing at him with such a grave, penetrating look, --half doubting, half wistful, --a look so unlike her usual unruffled calm that he feltstrangely stirred. But the next moment, when she rejoined him, the lookhad entirely gone. "You have not seen my sister since you were at Sidon, I believe?" she said quietly. "She would be sorry to miss you. " ButEuphemia and her train were already passing them on the opposite side ofthe long table. She had evidently recognized Grant, yet the two sisterswere looking intently into each other's eyes when he raised his own. Then Euphemia met his bow with a momentary accession of color, acoquettish wave of her hand across the table, a slight exaggeration ofher usual fascinating recklessness, and smilingly moved away. He turnedto Clementina, but here an ominous tapping at the farther end of thelong table revealed the fact that Mr. Harcourt was standing on a chairwith oratorical possibilities in his face and attitude. There wasanother forward movement in the crowd and--silence. In that solid, black-broadclothed, respectable figure, that massive watchchain, thatwhite waistcoat, that diamond pin glistening in the satin cravat, Euphemia might have seen the realization of her prophetic vision atSidon five years before. 

He spoke for ten minutes with a fluency and comprehensive business-likedirectness that surprised Grant. He was not there, he said, to glorifywhat had been done by himself, his family, or his friends in Tasajara. Others who were to follow him might do that, or at least might be betterable to explain and expatiate upon the advantages of the institutionthey had just opened, and its social, moral, and religious effect uponthe community. He was there as a business man to demonstrate tothem--as he had always done and always hoped to do--the money valueof improvement; the profit--if they might choose to call it--ofwell-regulated and properly calculated speculation. The plot of landupon which they stood, of which the building occupied only one eighth, was bought two years before for ten thousand dollars. When the plansof the building were completed a month afterwards, the value of theremaining seven eighths had risen enough to defray the cost of theentire construction. He was in a position to tell them that only thatmorning the adjacent property, subdivided and laid out in streets andbuilding-plots, had been admitted into the corporate limits of the city;and that on the next anniversary of the building they would approachit through an avenue of finished dwellings! An outburst of applausefollowed the speaker's practical climax; the fresh young faces of hisauditors glowed with invincible enthusiasm; the afternoon trade-winds, freshening over the limitless plain beyond, tossed the bright bannersat the windows as with sympathetic rejoicing, and a few odorous pineshavings, overlooked in a corner in the hurry of preparation, touchedby an eddying zephyr, crept out and rolled in yellow ringlets across thefloor. 

The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury arose in a more decorous silence. He hadlistened approvingly, admiringly, he might say even reverently, to thepreceding speaker. But although his distinguished friend had, with hisusual modesty, made light of his own services and those of his charmingfamily, he, the speaker, had not risen to sing his praises. No; itwas not in this Hall, projected by his foresight and raised by hisliberality; in this town, called into existence by his energy andstamped by his attributes; in this county, developed by his genius andsustained by his capital; ay, in this very State whose grandeur was madepossible by such giants as he, --it was not in any of these places thatit was necessary to praise Daniel Harcourt, or that a panegyric of himwould be more than idle repetition. Nor would he, as that distinguishedman had suggested, enlarge upon the social, moral, and religiousbenefits of the improvement they were now celebrating. It was writtenon the happy, innocent faces, in the festive garb, in the decorousdemeanor, in the intelligent eyes that sparkled around him, in thepresence of those of his parishioners whom he could meet as freely hereto-day as in his own church on Sunday. What then could he say? What thenwas there to say? Perhaps he should say nothing if it were not forthe presence of the young before him. --He stopped and fixed his eyespaternally on the youthful Johnny Billings, who with a half dozenother Sunday-school scholars had been marshaled before the reverendspeaker. --And what was to be the lesson THEY were to learn from it? Theyhad heard what had been achieved by labor, enterprise, and diligence. Perhaps they would believe, and naturally too, that what labor, enterprise, and diligence had done could be done again. But was thatall? Was there nothing behind these qualities--which, after all, werewithin the reach of every one here? Had they ever thought that backof every pioneer, every explorer, every pathfinder, every founder andcreator, there was still another? There was no terra incognita so rareas to be unknown to one; no wilderness so remote as to be beyond agreater ken than theirs; no waste so trackless but that one had alreadypassed that way! Did they ever reflect that when the dull sea ebbed andflowed in the tules over the very spot where they were now standing, whoit was that also foresaw, conceived, and ordained the mighty change thatwould take place; who even guided and directed the feeble means employedto work it; whose spirit moved, as in still older days of which they hadread, over the face of the stagnant waters? Perhaps they had. Who thenwas the real pioneer of Tasajara, --back of the Harcourts, the Peterses, the Billingses, and Wingates? The reverend gentleman gently paused fora reply. It was given in the clear but startled accents of the halffrightened, half-fascinated Johnny Billings, in three words:--

"'Lige Curtis, sir!"

CHAPER VI

The trade wind, that, blowing directly from the Golden Gate, seemed toconcentrate its full force upon the western slope of Russian Hill, might have dismayed any climber less hopeful and sanguine than that mostimaginative of newspaper reporters and most youthful of husbands, JohnMilton Harcourt. But for all that it was an honest wind, and its dry, practical energy and salt-pervading breath only seemed to sting him togreater and more enthusiastic exertions, until, quite at the summit ofthe hill and last of a straggling line of little cottages half submergedin drifting sand, he stood upon his own humble porch. 

"I was thinking, coming up the hill, Loo, " he said, bursting into thesitting-room, pantingly, "of writing something about the future of thehill! How it will look fifty years from now, all terraced with housesand gardens!--and right up here a kind of Acropolis, don't you know. Ihad quite a picture of it in my mind just now. "

A plainly-dressed young woman with a pretty face, that, however, lookedas if it had been prematurely sapped of color and vitality, here laidaside some white sewing she had in her lap, and said:--

"But you did that once before, Milty, and you know the 'Herald' wouldn'ttake it because they said it was a free notice of Mr. Boorem's buildinglots, and he didn't advertise in the 'Herald. ' I always told you thatyou ought to have seen Boorem first. "

The young fellow blinked his eyes with a momentary arrest of thatbuoyant hopefulness which was their peculiar characteristic, butnevertheless replied with undaunted cheerfulness, "I forgot. Anyhow, it's all the same, for I worked it into that 'Sunday Walk. ' And it'sjust as easy to write it the other way, you see, --looking back, DOWN THEHILL, you know. Something about the old Padres toiling through the sandjust before the Angelus; or as far back as Sir Francis Drake's time, and have a runaway boat's crew, coming ashore to look for gold that theMexicans had talked of. Lord! that's easy enough! I tell you what, Loo, it's worth living up here just for the inspiration. " Even while boyishlyexhaling this enthusiasm he was also divesting himself of certainbundles whose contents seemed to imply that he had brought hisdinner with him, --the youthful Mrs. Harcourt setting the table in aperfunctory, listless way that contrasted oddly with her husband'scheerful energy. 

"You haven't heard of any regular situation yet?" she askedabstractedly. 

"No, --not exactly, " he replied. "But [buoyantly] it's a great dealbetter for me not to take anything in a hurry and tie myself to anyparticular line. Now, I'm quite free. "

"And I suppose you haven't seen that Mr. Fletcher again?" she continued. 

"No. He only wanted to know something about me. That's the way with themall, Loo. Whenever I apply for work anywhere it's always: 'So you'reDan'l Harcourt's son, eh? Quarreled with the old man? Bad job; bettermake it up! You'll make more stickin' to him. He's worth millions!'Everybody seems to think everything of HIM, as if I had no individualitybeyond that, I've a good mind to change my name. "

"And pray what would mine be then?"

There was so much irritation in her voice that he drew nearer her andgently put his arm around her waist. "Why, whatever mine was, darling, "he said with a tender smile. "You didn't fall in love with anyparticular name, did you, Loo?"

"No, but I married a particular one, " she said quickly. 

His eyelids quivered again, as if he was avoiding some unpleasantlystaring suggestion, and she stopped. 

"You know what I mean, dear, " she said, with a quick little laugh. "Justbecause your father's an old crosspatch, YOU haven't lost your rights tohis name and property. And those people who say you ought to make it upperhaps know what's for the best. "

"But you remember what he said of you, Loo?" said the young man with aflashing eye. "Do you think I can ever forget that?"

"But you DO forget it, dear; you forget it when you go in town amongfresh faces and people; when you are looking for work. You forget itwhen you're at work writing your copy, --for I've seen you smile asyou wrote. You forget it climbing up the dreadful sand, for you werethinking just now of what happened years ago, or is to happen years tocome. And I want to forget it too, Milty. I don't want to sit here allday, thinking of it, with the wind driving the sand against the window, and nothing to look at but those white tombs in Lone Mountain Cemetery, and those white caps that might be gravestones too, and not a soul totalk to or even see pass by until I feel as if I were dead and buriedalso. If you were me--you--you--you--couldn't help crying too!"

Indeed he was very near it now. For as he caught her in his arms, suddenly seeing with a lover's sympathy and the poet's swifterimagination all that she had seen and even more, he was aghast at thevision conjured. In her delicate health and loneliness how dreadful musthave been these monotonous days, and this glittering, cruel sea! Whata selfish brute he was! Yet as he stood there holding her, silently andrhythmically marking his tenderness and remorseful feelings by rockingher from side to side like a languid metronome, she quietly disengagedher wet lashes from his shoulder and said in quite another tone:--

"So they were all at Tasajara last week?"

"Who, dear?"

"Your father and sisters. "

"Yes, " said John Milton, hesitatingly. 

"And they've taken back your sister after her divorce?"

The staring obtrusiveness of this fact apparently made her husband'sbright sympathetic eye blink as before. 

"And if you were to divorce me, YOU would be taken back too, " sheadded quickly, suddenly withdrawing herself with a pettish movement andwalking to the window. 

But he followed. "Don't talk in that way, Loo! Don't look in that way, dear!" he said, taking her hand gently, yet not without a sense of someinconsistency in her conduct that jarred upon his own simple directness. "You know that nothing can part us now. I was wrong to let my littlegirl worry herself all alone here, but I--I--thought it was all so--sobright and free out on this hill, --looking far away beyond the GoldenGate, --as far as Cathay, you know, and such a change from those dismalflats of Tasajara and that awful stretch of tules. But it's all rightnow. And now that I know how you feel, we'll go elsewhere. "

She did not reply. Perhaps she found it difficult to keep up her injuredattitude in the face of her husband's gentleness. Perhaps her attentionhad been attracted by the unusual spectacle of a stranger, who had justmounted the hill and was now slowly passing along the line ofcottages with a hesitating air of inquiry. "He may be looking for thishouse, --for you, " she said in an entirely new tone of interest. "Run outand see. It may be some one who wants"--

"An article, " said Milton cheerfully. "By Jove! he IS coming here. "

The stranger was indeed approaching the little cottage, and withapparently some confidence. He was a well-dressed, well-made man, whoseage looked uncertain from the contrast between his heavy brown moustacheand his hair, that, curling under the brim of his hat, was almost whitein color. The young man started, and said, hurriedly: "I really believeit is Fletcher, --they say his hair turned white from the Panama fever. "

It was indeed Mr. Fletcher who entered and introduced himself, --a gentlereserved man, with something of that colorlessness of premature agein his speech which was observable in his hair. He had heard of Mr. Harcourt from a friend who had recommended him highly. As Mr. Harcourthad probably been told, he, the speaker, was about to embark somecapital in a first-class newspaper in San Francisco, and should selectthe staff himself. He wanted to secure only first-rate talent, --butabove all, youthfulness, directness, and originality. The "Clarion, " forthat was to be its name, was to have nothing "old fogy" about it. No. Itwas distinctly to be the organ of Young California! This and much morefrom the grave lips of the elderly young man, whose speech seemed to bedivided between the pretty, but equally faded, young wife, and the onepersonification of invincible youth present, --her husband. 

"But I fear I have interrupted your household duties, " he saidpleasantly. "You were preparing dinner. Pray go on. And let me helpyou, --I'm not a bad cook, --and you can give me my reward by letting meshare it with you, for the climb up here has sharpened my appetite. Wecan talk as we go on. "

It was in vain to protest; there was something paternal as well aspractical in the camaraderie of this actual capitalist and possibleMaecenas and patron as he quietly hung up his hat and overcoat, andhelped to set the table with a practiced hand. Nor, as he suggested, didthe conversation falter, and before they had taken their seats at thefrugal board he had already engaged John Milton Harcourt as assistanteditor of the "Clarion" at a salary that seemed princely to this sonof a millionaire! The young wife meantime had taken active part in thediscussion; whether it was vaguely understood that the possession ofpoetical and imaginative faculties precluded any capacity for business, or whether it was owing to the apparent superior maturity of Mrs. Harcourt and the stranger, it was certain that THEY arranged thepractical details of the engagement, and that the youthful husband satsilent, merely offering his always hopeful and sanguine consent. 

"You'll take a house nearer to town, I suppose?" continued Mr. Fletcherto the lady, "though you've a charming view here. I suppose it was quitea change from Tasajara and your father-in-law's house? I daresay he hadas fine a place there--on his own homestead--as he has here?"

Young Harcourt dropped his sensitive eyelids again. It seemed hard thathe could never get away from these allusions to his father! Perhaps itwas only to that relationship that he was indebted for his visitor'skindness. In his simple honesty he could not bear the thought of sucha misapprehension. "Perhaps, Mr. Fletcher, you do not know, " he said, "that my father is not on terms with me, and that we neither expectanything nor could we ever take anything from him. Could we, Loo?" Headded the useless question partly because he saw that his wife's facebetrayed little sympathy with him, and partly that Fletcher was lookingat her curiously, as if for confirmation. But this was another of JohnMilton's trials as an imaginative reporter; nobody ever seemed to carefor his practical opinions or facts!

"Mr. Fletcher is not interested in our little family differences, Milty, " she said, looking at Mr. Fletcher, however, instead of him. "You're Daniel Harcourt's SON whatever happens. "

The cloud that had passed over the young man's face and eyes did not, however, escape Mr. Fletcher's attention, for he smiled, and addedgayly, "And I hope my valued lieutenant in any case. " Nevertheless JohnMilton was quite ready to avail himself of an inspiration to fetch somecigars for his guest from the bar of the Sea-View House on the slope ofthe hill beyond, and thereby avoid a fateful subject. Once in the freshair again he promptly recovered his boyish spirits. The light flyingscud had already effaced the first rising stars; the lower creepingsea-fog had already blotted out the western shore and sea; but below himto the east the glittering lights of the city seemed to start up with anew, mysterious, and dazzling brilliancy. It was the valley of diamondsthat Sindbad saw lying almost at his feet! Perhaps somewhere there thelight of his own fame and fortune was already beginning to twinkle!

He returned to his humble roof joyous and inspired. As he entered thehall he heard his wife's voice and his own name mentioned, followedby that awkward, meaningless silence on his entrance which so plainlyindicated either that he had been the subject of conversation or that itwas not for his ears. It was a dismal reminder of his boyhood at Sidonand Tasajara. But he was too full of hope and ambition to heed itto-night, and later, when Mr. Fletcher had taken his departure, hispent-up enthusiasm burst out before his youthful partner. Had sherealized that their struggles were over now, that their future wassecure? They need no longer fear ever being forced to take bounty fromthe family; they were independent of them all! He would make a name forhimself that should be distinct from his father's as he should make afortune that would be theirs alone. The young wife smiled. "But allthat need not prevent you, dear, from claiming your RIGHTS when the timecomes. "

"But if I scorn to make the claim or take a penny of his, Loo?"

"You say you scorn to take the money you think your father got by a meretrick, --at the best, --and didn't earn. And now you will be able to showyou can live without it, and earn your own fortune. Well, dear, for thatvery reason why should you let your father and others enjoy and wastewhat is fairly your share? For it is YOUR share whether it came to yourfather fairly or not; and if not, it is still your duty, believing asyou do, to claim it from him, that at least YOU may do with it what youchoose. You might want to restore it--to--to--somebody. "

The young man laughed. "But, my dear Loo! suppose that I were weakenough to claim it, do you think my father would give it up? He has theright, and no law could force him to yield to me more than he chooses. "

"Not the law, but YOU could. "

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

"You could force him by simply telling him what you once told me. "

John Milton drew back, and his hand dropped loosely from his wife's. The color left his fresh young face; the light quivered for a momentand then became fixed and set in his eyes. For that moment he looked tenyears her senior. "I was wrong ever to tell even you that, Loo, " he saidin a low voice. "You are wrong to ever remind me of it. Forget itfrom this moment, as you value our love and want it to live and beremembered. And forget, Loo, as I do, --and ever shall, --that you eversuggested to me to use my secret in the way you did just now. "

But here Mrs. Harcourt burst into tears, more touched by the alterationin her husband's manner, I fear, than by any contrition for wrongdoing. Of course if he wished to withdraw his confidences from her, just as hehad almost confessed he wished to withdraw his NAME, she couldn't helpit, but it was hard that when she sat there all day long trying to thinkwhat was best for them, she should be blamed! At which the quiet andforgiving John Milton smiled remorsefully and tried to comfort her. Nevertheless an occasional odd, indefinable chill seemed to creepacross the feverish enthusiasm with which he was celebrating this day offortune. And yet he neither knew nor suspected until long after that hisfoolish wife had that night half betrayed his secret to the stranger!

The next day he presented a note of introduction from Mr. Fletcher tothe business manager of the "Clarion, " and the following morning wasduly installed in office. He did not see his benefactor again; thatsingle visit was left in the mystery and isolation of an angelicepisode. It later appeared that other and larger interests in the SanJose valley claimed his patron's residence and attendance; only thecapital and general purpose of the paper--to develop into a partyorgan in the interest of his possible senatorial aspirations in dueseason--was furnished by him. Grateful as John Milton felt towards him, he was relieved; it seemed probable that Mr. Fletcher HAD selected himon his individual merits, and not as the son of a millionaire. 

He threw himself into his work with his old hopeful enthusiasm, and perhaps an originality of method that was part of his singularindependence. Without the student's training or restraint, --for his twoyears' schooling at Tasajara during his parents' prosperity came toolate to act as a discipline, --he was unfettered by any rules, and guidedonly by an unerring instinctive taste that became near being genius. He was a brilliant and original, if not always a profound and accurate, reporter. By degrees he became an accustomed interest to the readersof the "Clarion;" then an influence. Actors themselves in many a fiercedrama, living lives of devotion, emotion, and picturesque incident, theyhad satisfied themselves with only the briefest and most practical dailyrecord of their adventure, and even at first were dazed and startledto find that many of them had been heroes and some poets. The stealthyboyish reader of romantic chronicle at Sidon had learned by heart thechivalrous story of the emigration. The second column of the "Clarion"became famous even while the figure of its youthful writer, unknown andunrecognized, was still nightly climbing the sands of Russian Hill, andeven looking down as before on the lights of the growing city, without athought that he had added to that glittering constellation. 

Cheerful and contented with the exercise of work, he would have beenhappy but for the gradual haunting of another dread which presentlybegan to drag him at earlier hours up the steep path to his little home;to halt him before the door with the quickened breath of an anxiety hewould scarcely confess to himself, and sometimes hold him aimlessly awhole day beneath his roof. For the pretty but delicate Mrs. Harcourt, like others of her class, had added a weak and ineffective maternityto their other conjugal trials, and one early dawn a baby was born thatlingered with them scarcely longer than the morning mist and exhaledwith the rising sun. The young wife regained her strength slowly, --soslowly that the youthful husband brought his work at times to the houseto keep her company. And a singular change had come over her. She nolonger talked of the past, nor of his family. As if the little lifethat had passed with that morning mist had represented some ascendingexpiatory sacrifice, it seemed to have brought them into closercommunion. 

Yet her weak condition made him conceal another trouble that had comeupon him. It was in the third month of his employment on the "Clarion"that one afternoon, while correcting some proofs on his chief's desk, hecame upon the following editorial paragraph:--

"The played-out cant of 'pioneer genius' and 'pioneer discovery' appearsto have reached its climax in the attempt of some of our contemporariesto apply it to Dan Harcourt's new Tasajara Job before the legislature. It is perfectly well known in Harcourt's own district that, far frombeing a pioneer and settler HIMSELF he simply succeeded after afashion to the genuine work of one Elijah Curtis, an actual pioneerand discoverer, years before, while Harcourt, we believe, was keeping afrontier doggery in Sidon, and dispensing 'tanglefoot' and salt junkto the hayfooted Pike Countians of his precinct. This would make him asmuch of the 'pioneer discoverer' as the rattlesnake who first takes upboard and lodgings and then possession in a prairie dog's burrow. And ifthe traveler's tale is true that the rattlesnake sometimes makes a mealof his landlord, the story told at Sidon may be equally credible thatthe original pioneer mysteriously disappeared about the time that DanHarcourt came into the property. From which it would seem that Harcourtis not in a position for his friends to invite very deep scrutiny intohis 'pioneer' achievements. "

Stupefaction, a vague terror, and rising anger, rapidly succeeded eachother in the young man's mind as he stood mechanically holding thepaper in his hand. It was the writing of his chief editor, whose easybrutality he had sometimes even boyishly admired. Without stopping toconsider their relative positions he sought him indignantly and laid theproof before him. The editor laughed. "But what's that to YOU? YOU'REnot on terms with the old man. "

"But he is my father!" said John Milton hotly. 

"Look here, " said the editor good-naturedly, "I'd like to obligeyou, but it isn't BUSINESS, you know, --and this IS, youunderstand, --PROPRIETOR'S BUSINESS too! Of course I see it might standin the way of your making up to the old man afterwards and coming in fora million. Well! you can tell him it's ME. Say I WOULD put it in. SayI'm nasty--and I AM!"

"Then it must go in?" said John Milton with a white face. 

"You bet. "

"Then I must go out!" And writing out his resignation, he laid it beforehis chief and left. 

But he could not bear to tell this to his wife when he climbed the hillthat night, and he invented some excuse for bringing his work home. Theinvalid never noticed any change in his usual buoyancy, and indeed Ifear, when he was fairly installed with his writing materials at thefoot of her bed, he had quite forgotten the episode. He was recalled toit by a faint sigh. 

"What is it, dear?" he said looking up. 

"I like to see you writing, Milty. You always look so happy. "

"Always so happy, dear?"

"Yes. You are happy, are you not?"

"Always. " He got up and kissed her. Nevertheless, when he sat down tohis work again, his face was turned a little more to the window. 

Another serious incident--to be also kept from the invalid--shortlyfollowed. The article in the "Clarion" had borne its fruit. The thirdday after his resignation a rival paper sharply retorted. "The cowardlyinsinuations against the record of a justly honored capitalist, " saidthe "Pioneer, " "although quite in keeping with the brazen 'Clarion, 'might attract the attentions of the slandered party, if it were notknown to his friends as well as himself that it may be traced almostdirectly to a cast-off member of his own family, who, it seems, isreduced to haunting the back doors of certain blatant journals todispose of his cheap wares. The slanderer is secure from public exposurein the superior decency of his relations, who refrain from airing theirfamily linen upon editorial lines. "

This was the journal to which John Milton had hopefully turned for work. When he read it there seemed but one thing for him to do--and he didit. Gentle and optimistic as was his nature, he had been brought up ina community where sincere directness of personal offense was followed byequally sincere directness of personal redress, and--he challenged theeditor. The bearer of his cartel was one Jack Hamlin, I grieve to say agambler by profession, but between whom and John Milton had sprung up anodd friendship of which the best that can be said is that it was to eachequally and unselfishly unprofitable. The challenge was accepted, thepreliminaries arranged. "I suppose, " said Jack carelessly, "as the oldman ought to do something for your wife in case of accident, you've madesome sort of a will?"

"I've thought of that, " said John Milton, dubiously, "but I'm afraidit's no use. You see"--he hesitated--"I'm not of age. "

"May I ask how old you are, sonny?" said Jack with great gravity. 

"I'm almost twenty, " said John Milton, coloring. 

"It isn't exactly vingt-et-un, but I'd stand on it; if I were you Iwouldn't draw to such a hand, " said Jack, coolly. 

The young husband had arranged to be absent from his home that night, and early morning found him, with Jack, grave, but courageous, in alittle hollow behind the Mission Hills. To them presently approached hisantagonist, jauntily accompanied by Colonel Starbottle, his second. Theyhalted, but after the formal salutation were instantly joined by JackHamlin. For a few moments John Milton remained awkwardly alone--pendinga conversation which even at that supreme moment he felt as beinglike the general attitude of his friends towards him, in its completeignoring of himself. The next moment the three men stepped towards him. "We have come, sir, " said Colonel Starbottle in his precisest speech buthis jauntiest manner, "to offer you a full and ample apology--a personalapology--which only supplements that full public apology that myprincipal, sir, this gentleman, " indicating the editor of the "Pioneer, ""has this morning made in the columns of his paper, as you willobserve, " producing a newspaper. "We have, sir, " continued thecolonel loftily, "only within the last twelve hours become aware ofthe--er--REAL circumstances of the case. We would regret that the affairhad gone so far already, if it had not given us, sir, the opportunityof testifying to your gallantry. We do so gladly; and if--er--er--a FEWYEARS LATER, Mr. Harcourt, you should ever need--a friend in any matterof this kind, I am, sir, at your service. " John Milton gazed halfinquiringly, half uneasily at Jack. 

"It's all right, Milt, " he said sotto voce. "Shake hands all round andlet's go to breakfast. And I rather think that editor wants to employyou HIMSELF. "

It was true, for when that night he climbed eagerly the steep homewardhill he carried with him the written offer of an engagement on the"Pioneer. " As he entered the door his wife's nurse and companion met himwith a serious face. There had been a strange and unexpected change inthe patient's condition, and the doctor had already been there twice. As he put aside his coat and hat and entered her room, it seemed tohim that he had forever put aside all else of essay and ambition beyondthose four walls. And with the thought a great peace came upon him. Itseemed good to him to live for her alone. 

It was not for long. As each monotonous day brought the morning mist andevening fog regularly to the little hilltop where his whole being wasnow centred, she seemed to grow daily weaker, and the little circle ofher life narrowed day by day. One morning when the usual mist appearedto have been withheld and the sun had risen with a strange and cruelbrightness; when the waves danced and sparkled on the bay below andlight glanced from dazzling sails, and even the white tombs on LoneMountain glittered keenly; when cheery voices hailing each other on thehillside came to him clearly but without sense or meaning; when earth, sky, and sea seemed quivering with life and motion, --he opened the doorof that one little house on which the only shadow seemed to have fallen, and went forth again into the world alone. 

CHAPER VII. 

Mr. Daniel Harcourt's town mansion was also on an eminence, but itwas that gentler acclivity of fashion known as Rincon Hill, andsunned itself on a southern slope of luxury. It had been describedas "princely" and "fairy-like, " by a grateful reporter; tourists andtravelers had sung its praises in letters to their friends and inprivate reminiscences, for it had dispensed hospitality to most of thecelebrities who had visited the coast. Nevertheless its charm was mainlydue to the ruling taste of Miss Clementina Harcourt, who had astonishedher father by her marvelous intuition of the nice requirements andelegant responsibilities of their position; and had thrown her motherinto the pained perplexity of a matronly hen, who, among the ducks' eggsintrusted to her fostering care, had unwittingly hatched a graceful butdiscomposing cygnet. 

Indeed, after holding out feebly against the siege of wealth at Tasajaraand San Francisco, Mrs. Harcourt had abandoned herself hopelessly tothe horrors of its invasion; had allowed herself to be dragged from herkitchen by her exultant daughters and set up in black silk in a certainconventional respectability in the drawing-room. Strange to say, hercommiserating hospitality, or hospital-like ministration, not only gaveher popularity, but a certain kind of distinction. An exaltationso sorrowfully deprecated by its possessor was felt to be a sign ofsuperiority. She was spoken of as "motherly, " even by those who vaguelyknew that there was somewhere a discarded son struggling in povertywith a helpless wife, and that she had sided with her husband indisinheriting a daughter who had married unwisely. She was sentimentallyspoken of as a "true wife, " while never opposing a single meanness ofher husband, suggesting a single active virtue, nor questioning herright to sacrifice herself and her family for his sake. With nothingshe cared to affect, she was quite free from affectation, and even thecritical Lawrence Grant was struck with the dignity which her narrowsimplicity, that had seemed small even in Sidon, attained in herpalatial hall in San Francisco. It appeared to be a perfectly logicalconclusion that when such unaffectedness and simplicity were forced toassume a hostile attitude to anybody, the latter must be to blame. 

Since the festival of Tasajara Mr. Grant had been a frequent visitorat Harcourt's, and was a guest on the eve of his departure from SanFrancisco. The distinguished position of each made their relationsappear quite natural without inciting gossip as to any attraction inHarcourt's daughters. It was late one afternoon as he was passing thedoor of Harcourt's study that his host called him in. He found himsitting at his desk with some papers before him and a folded copy of the"Clarion. " With his back to the fading light of the window his face waspartly in shadow. 

"By the way, Grant, " he began, with an assumption of carelessnesssomewhat inconsistent with the fact that he had just called him in, "itmay be necessary for me to pull up those fellows who are blackguardingme in the 'Clarion. '"

"Why, they haven't been saying anything new?" asked Grant, laughingly, as he glanced towards the paper. 

"No--that is--only a rehash of what they said before, " returned Harcourtwithout opening the paper. 

"Well, " said Grant playfully, "you don't mind their saying that you'reNOT the original pioneer of Tasajara, for it's true; nor that thatfellow 'Lige Curtis disappeared suddenly, for he did, if I rememberrightly. But there's nothing in that to invalidate your rights toTasajara, to say nothing of your five years' undisputed possession. "

"Of course there's no LEGAL question, " said Harcourt almost sharply. "But as a matter of absurd report, I may want to contradict theirinsinuations. And YOU remember all the circumstances, don't you?"

"I should think so! Why, my dear fellow, I've told it everywhere!--here, in New York, Newport, and in London; by Jove, it's one of my beststories! How a company sent me out with a surveyor to look up a railroadand agricultural possibilities in the wilderness; how just as I foundthem--and a rather big thing they made, too--I was set afloat by aflood and a raft, and drifted ashore on your bank, and practicallydemonstrated to you what you didn't know and didn't dare to hopefor--that there could be a waterway straight to Sidon from theembarcadero. I've told what a charming evening we had with you andyour daughters in the old house, and how I returned your hospitality bygiving you a tip about the railroad; and how you slipped out while wewere playing cards, to clinch the bargain for the land with that drunkenfellow, 'Lige Curtis"--

"What's that?" interrupted Harcourt, quickly. 

It was well that the shadow hid from Grant the expression of Harcourt'sface, or his reply might have been sharper. As it was, he answered alittle stiffly:--

"I beg your pardon"--

Harcourt recovered himself. "You're all wrong!" he said, "that bargainwas made long BEFORE; I never saw 'Lige Curtis after you came to thehouse. It was before that, in the afternoon, " he went on hurriedly, "that he was last in my store. I can prove it. " Nevertheless he was soshocked and indignant at being confronted in his own suppressions andfalsehoods by an even greater and more astounding misconception offact, that for a moment he felt helpless. What, he reflected, if it werealleged that 'Lige had returned again after the loafers had gone, or hadnever left the store as had been said? Nonsense! There was John Milton, who had been there reading all the time, and who could disprove it. Yes, but John Milton was his discarded son, --his enemy, --perhaps even hisvery slanderer!

"But, " said Grant quietly, "don't you remember that your daughterEuphemia said something that evening about the land Lige had OFFEREDyou, and you snapped up the young lady rather sharply for letting outsecrets, and THEN you went out? At least that's my impression. "

It was, however, more than an impression; with Grant's scientific memoryfor characteristic details he had noticed that particular circumstanceas part of the social phenomena. 

"I don't know what Phemie SAID, " returned Harcourt, impatiently. "I KNOWthere was no offer pending; the land had been sold to me before I eversaw you. Why--you must have thought me up to pretty sharp practice withCurtis--eh?" he added, with a forced laugh. 

Grant smiled; he had been accustomed to hear of such sharp practiceamong his business acquaintance, although he himself by nature andprofession was incapable of it, but he had not deemed Harcourt morescrupulous than others. "Perhaps so, " he said lightly, "but for Heaven'ssake don't ask me to spoil my reputation as a raconteur for the sake ofa mere fact or two. I assure you it's a mighty taking story as I tellit--and it don't hurt you in a business way. You're the hero of it--hangit all!"

"Yes, " said Harcourt, without noticing Grant's half cynical superiority, "but you'll oblige me if you won't tell it again IN THAT WAY. There aremen here mean enough to make the worst of it. It's nothing to me, ofcourse, but my family--the girls, you know--are rather sensitive. "

"I had no idea they even knew it, --much less cared for it, " said Grant, with sudden seriousness. "I dare say if those fellows in the 'Clarion'knew that they were annoying the ladies they'd drop it. Who's theeditor? Look here--leave it to me; I'll look into it. Better that youshouldn't appear in the matter at all. "

"You understand that if it was a really serious matter, Grant, " saidHarcourt with a slight attitude, "I shouldn't allow any one to take myplace. "

"My dear fellow, there'll be nobody 'called out' and no 'shooting atsight, ' whatever is the result of my interference, " returned Grant, lightly. "It'll be all right. " He was quite aware of the power of hisown independent position and the fact that he had been often appealed tobefore in delicate arbitration. 

Harcourt was equally conscious of this, but by a strange inconsistencynow felt relieved at the coolness with which Grant had accepted themisconception which had at first seemed so dangerous. If he were readyto condone what he thought was SHARP PRACTICE, he could not be lesslenient with the real facts that might come out, --of course alwaysexcepting that interpolated consideration in the bill of sale, which, however, no one but the missing Curtis could ever discover. The factthat a man of Grant's secure position had interested himself in thismatter would secure him from the working of that personal vulgarjealousy which his humbler antecedents had provoked. And if, as hefancied, Grant really cared for Clementina--

"As you like, " he said, with half-affected lightness, "and now let ustalk of something else. Clementina has been thinking of getting upa riding party to San Mateo for Mrs. Ashwood. We must show them somecivility, and that Boston brother of hers, Mr. Shipley, will have tobe invited also. I can't get away, and my wife, of course, will onlybe able to join them at San Mateo in the carriage. I reckon it would beeasier for Clementina if you took my place, and helped her look afterthe riding party. It will need a man, and I think she'd prefer you--asyou know she's rather particular--unless, of course, you'd be wanted forMrs. Ashwood or Phemie, or somebody else. "

From his shadowed corner he could see that a pleasant light had sprunginto Grant's eyes, although his reply was in his ordinary easy banter. "I shall be only too glad to act as Miss Clementina's vaquero, and lassoher runaways, or keep stragglers in the road. "

There seemed to be small necessity, however, for this activeco-operation, for when the cheerful cavalcade started from the housea few mornings later, Mr. Lawrence Grant's onerous duties seemed to besimply confined to those of an ordinary cavalier at the side of MissClementina, a few paces in the rear of the party. But this safe distancegave them the opportunity of conversing without being overheard, --anapparently discreet precaution. 

"Your father was so exceedingly affable to me the other day that if Ihadn't given you my promise to say nothing, I think I would have fallenon my knees to him then and there, revealed my feelings, asked for yourhand and his blessing--or whatever one does at such a time. But how longdo you intend to keep me in this suspense?"

Clementina turned her clear eyes half abstractedly upon him, as ifimperfectly recalling some forgotten situation. "You forget, " she said, "that part of your promise was that you wouldn't even speak of it to meagain without my permission. "

"But my time is so short now. Give me some definite hope before I go. Let me believe that when we meet in New York"--

"You will find me just the same as now! Yes, I think I can promise THAT. Let that suffice. You said the other day you liked me because I had notchanged for five years. You can surely trust that I will not alter in asmany months. "

"If I only knew"--

"Ah, if I only knew, --if WE ALL only knew. But we don't. Come, Mr. Grant, let it rest as it is. Unless you want to go still further backand have it as it WAS, at Sidon. There I think you fancied Euphemiamost. "

"Clementina!"

"That is my name, and those people ahead of us know it already. "

"You are called CLEMENTINA, --but you are not merciful!"

"You are very wrong, for you might see that Mr. Shipley has twicechecked his horse that he might hear what you are saying, and Phemie isalways showing Mrs. Ashwood something in the landscape behind us. "

All this was the more hopeless and exasperating to Grant since in theyoung girl's speech and manner there was not the slightest trace ofcoquetry or playfulness. He could not help saying a little bitterly: "Idon't think that any one would imagine from your manner that you werereceiving a declaration. "

"But they might imagine from yours that you had the right to quarrelwith me, --which would be worse. "

"We cannot part like this! It is too cruel to me. "

"We cannot part otherwise without the risk of greater cruelty. "

"But say at least, Clementina, that I have no rival. There is no othermore favored suitor?"

"That is so like a man--and yet so unlike the proud one I believed youto be. Why should a man like you even consider such a possibility? If Iwere a man I know I couldn't. " She turned upon him a glance so clear anduntroubled by either conscious vanity or evasion that he was hopelesslyconvinced of the truth of her statement, and she went on in a slightlylowered tone, "You have no right to ask me such a question, --but perhapsfor that reason I am willing to answer you. There is none. Hush! For agood rider you are setting a poor example to the others, by crowdingme towards the bank. Go forward and talk to Phemie, and tell her not toworry Mrs. Ashwood's horse nor race with her; I don't think he's quitesafe, and Mrs. Ashwood isn't accustomed to using the Spanish bit. I suppose I must say something to Mr. Shipley, who doesn't seem tounderstand that I'M acting as chaperon, and YOU as captain of theparty. "

She cantered forward as she spoke, and Grant was obliged to join hersister, who, mounted on a powerful roan, was mischievously excitinga beautiful quaker-colored mustang ridden by Mrs. Ashwood, alreadyirritated by the unfamiliar pressure of the Eastern woman's hand uponhis bit. The thick dust which had forced the party of twenty to close upin two solid files across the road compelled them at the first openingin the roadside fence to take the field in a straggling gallop. Grant, eager to escape from his own discontented self by doing something forothers, reined in beside Euphemia and the fair stranger. 

"Let me take your place until Mrs. Ashwood's horse is quieted, " he halfwhispered to Euphemia. 

"Thank you, --and I suppose it does not make any matter to Clem whoquiets mine, " she said, with provoking eyes and a toss of her headworthy of the spirited animal she was riding. 

"She thinks you quite capable of managing yourself and even others, "he replied with a playful glance at Shipley, who was riding somewhatstiffly on the other side. 

"Don't be too sure, " retorted Phemie with another dangerous look; "I maygive you trouble yet. "

They were approaching the first undulation of the russet plain they hademerged upon, --an umbrageous slope that seemed suddenly to divergein two defiles among the shaded hills. Grant had given a few words ofpractical advice to Mrs. Ashwood, and shown her how to guide her mustangby the merest caressing touch of the rein upon its sensitive neck. Hehad not been sympathetically inclined towards the fair stranger, a richand still youthful widow, although he could not deny her unquestionedgood breeding, mental refinement, and a certain languorousthoughtfulness that was almost melancholy, which accented her blondedelicacy. But he had noticed that her manner was politely reserved andslightly constrained towards the Harcourts, and he had already resentedit with a lover's instinctive loyalty. He had at first attributed itto a want of sympathy between Mrs. Ashwood's more intellectualsentimentalities and the Harcourts' undeniable lack of any sentimentwhatever. But there was evidently some other innate antagonism. Hewas very polite to Mrs. Ashwood; she responded with a gentlewoman'scourtesy, and, he was forced to admit, even a broader comprehensionof his own merits than the Harcourt girls had ever shown, but he couldstill detect that she was not in accord with the party. 

"I am afraid you do not like California, Mrs. Ashwood?" he saidpleasantly. "You perhaps find the life here too unrestrained andunconventional?"

She looked at him in quick astonishment. "Are you quite sincere? Why, it strikes me that this is just what it is NOT. And I have so longedfor something quite different. From what I have been told about theoriginality and adventure of everything here, and your independence ofold social forms and customs, I am afraid I expected the oppositeof what I've seen. Why, this very party--except that the ladies areprettier and more expensively gotten up--is like any party that mighthave ridden out at Saratoga or New York. "

"And as stupid, you would say. "

"As CONVENTIONAL, Mr. Grant; always excepting this lovely creaturebeneath me, whom I can't make out and who doesn't seem to care that Ishould. There! look! I told you so!"

Her mustang had suddenly bounded forward; but as Grant followed hecould see that the cause was the example of Phemie, who had, in somemad freak, dashed out in a frantic gallop. A half-dozen of theyounger people hilariously accepted the challenge; the excitement wascommunicated to the others, until the whole cavalcade was sweepingdown the slope. Grant was still at Mrs. Ashwood's side, restrainingher mustang and his own impatient horse when Clementina joined them. "Phemie's mare has really bolted, I fear, " she said in a quick whisper, "ride on, and never mind us. " Grant looked quickly ahead; Phemie's roan, excited by the shouts behind her and to all appearance ungovernable, wasfast disappearing with her rider. Without a word, trusting to his owngood horsemanship and better knowledge of the ground, he darted out ofthe cavalcade to overtake her. 

But the unfortunate result of this was to give further impulse to thenow racing horses as they approached a point where the slope terminatedin two diverging canyons. Mrs. Ashwood gave a sharp pull upon herbit. To her consternation the mustang stopped short almostinstantly, --planting his two fore feet rigidly in the dust and evensliding forward with the impetus. Had her seat been less firm she mighthave been thrown, but she recovered herself, although in doing soshe still bore upon the bit, when to her astonishment the mustangdeliberately stiffened himself as if for a shock, and then began to backslowly, quivering with excitement. She did not know that her native-bredanimal fondly believed that he was participating in a rodeo, and that tohis equine intelligence his fair mistress had just lassoed something!In vain she urged him forward; he still waited for the shock! When thecloud of dust in which she had been enwrapped drifted away, she saw toher amazement that she was alone. The entire party had disappeared intoone of the canyons, --but which one she could not tell!

When she succeeded at last in urging her mustang forward again shedetermined to take the right-hand canyon and trust to being either metor overtaken. A more practical and less adventurous nature would havewaited at the point of divergence for the return of some of the party, but Mrs. Ashwood was, in truth, not sorry to be left to herself and thenovel scenery for a while, and she had no doubt but she would eventuallyfind her way to the hotel at San Mateo, which could not be far away, intime for luncheon. 

The road was still well defined, although it presently began to windbetween ascending ranks of pines and larches that marked the terracesof hills, so high that she wondered she had not noticed them from theplains. An unmistakable suggestion of some haunting primeval solitude, a sense of the hushed and mysterious proximity of a nature she had neverknown before, the strange half-intoxicating breath of unsunned foliageand untrodden grasses and herbs, all combined to exalt her as shecantered forward. Even her horse seemed to have acquired an intelligentliberty, or rather to have established a sympathy with her in his needsand her own longings; instinctively she no longer pulled him with thecurb; the reins hung loosely on his self-arched and unfettered neck;secure in this loneliness she found herself even talking to him withbarbaric freedom. As she went on, the vague hush of all things animateand inanimate around her seemed to thicken, until she unconsciouslyhalted before a dim and pillared wood, and a vast and heathless openingon whose mute brown lips Nature seemed to have laid the finger ofsilence. She forgot the party she had left, she forgot the luncheon shewas going to; more important still she forgot that she had already leftthe traveled track far behind her, and, tremulous with anticipation, rode timidly into that arch of shadow. 

As her horse's hoofs fell noiselessly on the elastic moss-carpeted aisleshe forgot even more than that. She forgot the artificial stimulus andexcitement of the life she had been leading so long; she forgot thesmall meannesses and smaller worries of her well-to-do experiences; sheforgot herself, --rather she regained a self she had long forgotten. For in the sweet seclusion of this half darkened sanctuary the clingingfripperies of her past slipped from her as a tawdry garment. Thepetted, spoiled, and vapidly precocious girlhood which had merged intoa womanhood of aimless triumphs and meaner ambitions; the worldly butmiserable triumph of a marriage that had left her delicacy abused andher heart sick and unsatisfied; the wifehood without home, seclusion, or maternity; the widowhood that at last brought relief, but with it theconsciousness of hopelessly wasted youth, --all this seemed to drop fromher here as lightly as the winged needles or noiseless withered sprayfrom the dim gray vault above her head. In the sovereign balm of thatwoodland breath her better spirit was restored; somewhere in thesewholesome shades seemed to still lurk what should have been her innocentand nymph-like youth, and to come out once more and greet her. Old songsshe had forgotten, or whose music had failed in the discords of herfrivolous life, sang themselves to her again in that sweet, gravesilence; girlish dreams that she had foolishly been ashamed of, or hadput away with her childish toys, stole back to her once more and becamereal in this tender twilight; old fancies, old fragments of verse andchildish lore, grew palpable and moved faintly before her. The boyishprince who should have come was there; the babe that should have beenhers was there!--she stopped suddenly with flaming eyes and indignantcolor. For it appeared that a MAN was there too, and had just risen fromthe fallen tree where he had been sitting. 

CHAPER VIII. 

She had so far forgotten herself in yielding to the spell of the place, and in the revelation of her naked soul and inner nature, that it waswith something of the instinct of outraged modesty that she seemed toshrink before this apparition of the outer world and outer worldliness. In an instant the nearer past returned; she remembered where she was, how she had come there, from whom she had come, and to whom she wasreturning. She could see that she had not only aimlessly wandered fromthe world but from the road; and for that instant she hated this man whohad reminded her of it, even while she knew she must ask his assistance. It relieved her slightly to observe that he seemed as disturbed andimpatient as herself, and as he took a pencil from between his lips andreturned it to his pocket he scarcely looked at her. 

But with her return to the world of convenances came its repression, and with a gentlewoman's ease and modulated voice she leaned over hermustang's neck and said: "I have strayed from my party and am afraid Ihave lost my way. We were going to the hotel at San Mateo. Would you bekind enough to direct me there, or show me how I can regain the road bywhich I came?"

Her voice and manner were quite enough to arrest him where he stood witha pleased surprise in his fresh and ingenuous face. She looked at himmore closely. He was, in spite of his long silken mustache, so absurdlyyoung; he might, in spite of that youth, be so absurdly man-like! Whatwas he doing there? Was he a farmer's son, an artist, a surveyor, or acity clerk out for a holiday? Was there perhaps a youthful female of hisspecies somewhere for whom he was waiting and upon whose tryst she wasnow breaking? Was he--terrible thought!--the outlying picket of somefamily picnic? His dress, neat, simple, free from ostentatious ornament, betrayed nothing. She waited for his voice. 

"Oh, you have left San Mateo miles away to the right, " he said withquick youthful sympathy, "at least five miles! Where did you leave yourparty?"

His voice was winning, and even refined, she thought. She answered itquite spontaneously: "At a fork of two roads. I see now I took the wrongturning. "

"Yes, you took the road to Crystal Spring. It's just down there in thevalley, not more than a mile. You'd have been there now if you hadn'tturned off at the woods. "

"I couldn't help it, it was so beautiful. "

"Isn't it?"

"Perfect. "

"And such shadows, and such intensity of color. "

"Wonderful!--and all along the ridge, looking down that defile!"

"Yes, and that point where it seems as if you had only to stretch outyour hand to pick a manzanita berry from the other side of the canyon, half a mile across!"

"Yes, and that first glimpse of the valley through the Gothic gateway ofrocks!"

"And the color of those rocks, --cinnamon and bronze with the light greenof the Yerba buena vine splashing over them. "

"Yes, but for color DID you notice that hillside of yellow poppiespouring down into the valley like a golden Niagara?"

"Certainly, --and the perfect clearness of everything. "

"And yet such complete silence and repose!"

"Oh, yes!"

"Ah, yes!"

They were both gravely nodding and shaking their heads with sparklingeyes and brightened color, looking not at each other but at the farlandscape vignetted through a lozenge-shaped wind opening in the trees. Suddenly Mrs. Ashwood straightened herself in the saddle, looked grave, lifted the reins and apparently the ten years with them that had droppedfrom her. But she said in her easiest well-bred tones, and a half sigh, "Then I must take the road back again to where it forks?"

"Oh, no! you can go by Crystal Spring. It's no further, and I'll showyou the way. But you'd better stop and rest yourself and your horse fora little while at the Springs Hotel. It's a very nice place. Many peopleride there from San Francisco to luncheon and return. I wonder that yourparty didn't prefer it; and if they are looking for you, --as they surelymust be, " he said, as if with a sudden conception of her importance, "they'll come there when they find you're not at San Mateo. "

This seemed reasonable, although the process of being "fetched" andtaking the five miles ride, which she had enjoyed so much alone, in company was not attractive. "Couldn't I go on at once?" she saidimpulsively. 

"You would meet them sooner, " he said thoughtfully. 

This was quite enough for Mrs. Ashwood. "I think I'll rest this poorhorse, who is really tired, " she, said with charming hypocrisy, "andstop at the hotel. "

She saw his face brighten. Perhaps he was the son of the hotelproprietor, or a youthful partner himself. "I suppose you live here?"she suggested gently. "You seem to know the place so well. "

"No, " he returned quickly; "I only run down here from San Francisco whenI can get a day off. "

A day off! He was in some regular employment. But he continued: "And Iused to go to boarding-school near here, and know all these woods well. "

He must be a native! How odd! She had not conceived that there mightbe any other population here than the immigrants; perhaps that was whatmade him so interesting and different from the others. "Then your fatherand mother live here?" she said. 

His frank face, incapable of disguise, changed suddenly. "No, " he saidsimply, but without any trace of awkwardness. Then after a slightpause he laid his hand--she noticed it was white and well kept--on hermustang's neck, and said, "If--if you care to trust yourself to me, Icould lead you and your horse down a trail into the valley that is atleast a third of the distance shorter. It would save you going back tothe regular road, and there are one or two lovely views that I couldshow you. I should be so pleased, if it would not trouble you. There's asteep place or two--but I think there's no danger. "

"I shall not be afraid. "

She smiled so graciously, and, as she fully believed, maternally, thathe looked at her the second time. To his first hurried impression ofher as an elegant and delicately nurtured woman--one of the class ofdistinguished tourists that fashion was beginning to send thither--hehad now to add that she had a quantity of fine silken-spun light hairgathered in a heavy braid beneath her gray hat; that her mouth wasvery delicately lipped and beautifully sensitive; that her soft skin, although just then touched with excitement, was a pale faded velvet, andseemed to be worn with ennui rather than experience; that her eyeswere hidden behind a strip of gray veil whence only a faint glow wasdiscernible. To this must still be added a poetic fancy all his ownthat, as she sat there, with the skirt of her gray habit falling fromher long bodiced waist over the mustang's fawn-colored flanks, and withher slim gauntleted hands lightly swaying the reins, she looked likeQueen Guinevere in the forest. Not that he particularly fancied QueenGuinevere, or that he at all imagined himself Launcelot, but it wasquite in keeping with the suggestion-haunted brain of John MiltonHarcourt, whom the astute reader has of course long since recognized. 

Preceding her through the soft carpeted vault with a woodman'sinstinct, --for there was apparently no trail to be seen, --the soft innertwilight began to give way to the outer stronger day, and presently shewas startled to see the clear blue of the sky before her on apparentlythe same level as the brown pine-tessellated floor she was treading. Notonly did this show her that she was crossing a ridge of the upland, buta few moments later she had passed beyond the woods to a golden hillsidethat sloped towards a leafy, sheltered, and exquisitely-proportionedvalley. A tiny but picturesque tower, and a few straggling roofs andgables, the flashing of a crystal stream through the leaves, and anarrow white ribbon of road winding behind it indicated the hostelrythey were seeking. So peaceful and unfrequented it looked, nestlingbetween the hills, that it seemed as if they had discovered it. 

With his hand at times upon the bridle, at others merely caressing hermustang's neck, he led the way; there were a few breathless places wherethe crown of his straw hat appeared between her horse's reins, and againwhen she seemed almost slipping over on his shoulder, but they werepassed with such frank fearlessness and invincible youthful confidenceon the part of her escort that she felt no timidity. There were momentswhen a bit of the charmed landscape unfolding before them overpoweredthem both, and they halted to gaze, --sometimes without a word, or only asignificant gesture of sympathy and attention. At one of those artisticmanifestations Mrs. Ashwood laid her slim gloved fingers lightly butunwittingly on John Milton's arm, and withdrew them, however, with aquick girlish apology and a foolish color which annoyed her more thanthe appearance of familiarity. But they were now getting well down intothe valley; the court of the little hotel was already opening beforethem; their unconventional relations in the idyllic world above hadchanged; the new one required some delicacy of handling, and she had anidea that even the simplicity of the young stranger might be confusing. 

"I must ask you to continue to act as my escort, " she said, laughingly. "I am Mrs. Ashwood of Philadelphia, visiting San Francisco with mysister and brother, who are, I am afraid, even now hopelessly waitingluncheon for me at San Mateo. But as there seems to be no prospect of myjoining them in time, I hope you will be able to give me the pleasureof your company, with whatever they may give us here in the way ofrefreshment. "

"I shall be very happy, " returned John Milton with unmistakable candor;"but perhaps some of your friends will be arriving in quest of you, ifthey are not already here. "

"Then they will join us or wait, " said Mrs. Ashwood incisively, withher first exhibition of the imperiousness of a rich and pretty woman. Perhaps she was a little annoyed that her elaborate introduction ofherself had produced no reciprocal disclosure by her companion. "Willyou please send the landlord to me?" she added. 

John Milton disappeared in the hotel as she cantered to the porch. Inanother moment she was giving the landlord her orders with the easyconfidence of one who knew herself only as an always welcome and highlyprivileged guest, which was not without its effect. "And, " she addedcarelessly, "when everything is ready you will please tell--Mr. "--

"Harcourt, " suggested the landlord promptly. 

Mrs. Ashwood's perfectly trained face gave not the slightest sign of thesurprise that had overtaken her. "Of course, --Mr. Harcourt. "

"You know he's the son of the millionaire, " continued the landlord, notat all unwilling to display the importance of the habitues of CrystalSpring, "though they've quarreled and don't get on together. "

"I know, " said the lady languidly, "and, if any one comes here for ME, ask them to wait in the parlor until I come. "

Then, submitting herself and her dusty habit to the awkward ministrationof the Irish chambermaid, she was quite thrilled with a delightfulcuriosity. She vaguely remembered that she had heard something of theHarcourt family discord, --but that was the divorced daughter surely!And this young man was Harcourt's son, and they had quarreled! A quarrelwith a frank, open, ingenuous fellow like that--a mere boy--could onlybe the father's fault. Luckily she had never mentioned the name ofHarcourt! She would not now; he need not know that it was his father whohad originated the party; why should she make him uncomfortable for thefew moments they were together?

There was nothing of this in her face as she descended and joined him. He thought that face handsome, well-bred, and refined. But thisbreeding and refinement seemed to him--in his ignorance of the world, possibly--as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knewnothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, nowno longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips. He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naiveenthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for hisinterrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who hadavoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure, --a world thatthis woman represented, --the world that had stood apart from him in theone dream of his life--and had let Loo die! His quickly responsive facedarkened. 

"I am afraid I really interrupted you up there, " she said gently, looking in his face with an expression of unfeigned concern; "you wereat work of some kind, I know, and I have very selfishly thought only ofmyself. But the whole scene was so new to me, and I so rarely meet anyone who sees things as I do, that I know you will forgive me. " She benther eyes upon him with a certain soft timidity. "You are an artist?"

"I am afraid not, " he said, coloring and smiling faintly; "I don't thinkI could draw a straight line. "

"Don't try to; they're not pretty, and the mere ability to draw themstraight or curved doesn't make an artist. But you are a LOVER ofnature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can dowhat lovers cannot do, --make others feel as they do, --and that is what Icall being an artist. You write? You are a poet?"

"Oh dear, no, " he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naivesuperiority, "I'm a prose writer--on a daily newspaper. "

To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation litup her face as she said brightly, "Oh, then, you can of course satisfymy curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco tothe Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one getsthere it's stupid; my brother says it's like all the San Franciscoexcursions, --a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one daywe were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning towind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, Isaid I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of thosetombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate andpassed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilieseverything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for, like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished;everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, andthe last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place fora cemetery, --this end of the crumbling earth, --this beginning of theeternal sea. There! don't think that idea my own, or that I thought ofit then. No, --I read it all afterwards, and that's why I'm telling youthis. "

She could not help smiling at his now attentive face, and went on: "Somedays afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old, andthere was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt, --onlyfar more beautiful and touching, as you shall see, for I cut it outof the paper and have kept it. It seemed to me that it must be somepersonal experience, --as if the writer had followed some dear friendthere, --although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness oftrue and delicate feeling. It impressed me so much that I went backthere twice or thrice, and always seemed to move to the rhythm of thatbeautiful funeral march--and I am afraid, being a woman, that I wanderedaround among the graves as though I could find out who it was that hadbeen sung so sweetly, and if it were man or woman. I've got it here, "she said, taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket andpicking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper; "andI thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer, andperhaps know something of his history. For I believe he has one. There!that is only a part of the article, of course, but it is the part thatinterested me. Just read from there, " she pointed, leaning partly overhis shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair, "to the end; itisn't long. "

In the film that seemed to come across his eyes, suddenly the printappeared blurred and indistinct. But he knew that she had put into hishand something he had written after the death of his wife; somethingspontaneous and impulsive, when her loss still filled his days andnights and almost unconsciously swayed his pen. He remembered that hiseyes had been as dim when he wrote it--and now--handed to him by thissmiling, well-to-do woman, he was as shocked at first as if he hadsuddenly found her reading his private letters. This was followed by asudden sense of shame that he had ever thus publicly bared his feelings, and then by the illogical but irresistible conviction that it was falseand stupid. The few phrases she had pointed out appeared as cheap andhollow rhetoric amid the surroundings of their social tete-a-tete overthe luncheon-table. There was small danger that this heady wine ofwoman's praise would make him betray himself; there was no sign ofgratified authorship in his voice as he quietly laid down the paper andsaid dryly: "I am afraid I can't help you. You know it may be purelyfanciful. "

"I don't think so, " said Mrs. Ashwood thoughtfully. "At the same time itdoesn't strike me as a very abiding grief for that very reason. It's TOOsympathetic. It strikes me that it might be the first grief of some onetoo young to be inured to sorrow or experienced enough to accept it asthe common lot. But like all youthful impressions it is very sincere andtrue while it lasts. I don't know whether one gets anything more realwhen one gets older. "

With an insincerity he could not account for, he now felt inclined todefend his previous sentiment, although all the while conscious of acertain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism. He had in histruthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from thatfeeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak andimmature, and his present predilection may have been due more to hercharming personality. She was not at all like his sisters; she hadnone of Clementina's cold abstraction, and none of Euphemia's sharpand demonstrative effusiveness. And in his secret consciousness of herflattering foreknowledge of him, with her assurance that before they hadever met he had unwittingly influenced her, he began to feel more at hisease. His fair companion also, in the equally secret knowledge she hadacquired of his history, felt as secure as if she had been formallyintroduced. Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility tothe ostensible son of her host; it was not necessary that she shouldbe aware of their family differences. There was a charm too in theirenforced isolation, in what was the exceptional solitude of the littlehotel that day, and the seclusion of their table by the window of thedining-room, which gave a charming domesticity to their repast. Fromtime to time they glanced down the lonely canyon, losing itself in theafternoon shadow. Nevertheless Mrs. Ashwood's preoccupation with Naturedid not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of JohnMilton's quarrel with his father. There was certainly nothing of theprodigal son about him; there was no precocious evil knowledge in hisfrank eyes; no record of excesses in his healthy, fresh complexion;no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his ruralpreferences and understanding of natural beauty. To have attempted anydirect questioning that would have revealed his name and identity wouldhave obliged her to speak of herself as his father's guest. She beganindirectly; he had said he had been a reporter, and he was still achronicler of this strange life. He had of course heard of many casesof family feuds and estrangements? Her brother had told her of somedreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest, and how whole familieshad been divided. Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases ofbrothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations;of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted; of fathersencountering discarded sons!

John Milton's face betrayed no uneasy consciousness. If anything it wasbeginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligenceof the fair speaker, that was perhaps heightened by an assumption ofhalf coquettish discomfiture. 

"You are laughing at me!" she said finally. "But inhuman and selfish asthese stories may seem, and sometimes are, I believe that these curiousestrangements and separations often come from some fatal weakness oftemperament that might be strengthened, or some trivial misunderstandingthat could be explained. It is separation that makes them seemirrevocable only because they are inexplicable, and a vague memoryalways seems more terrible than a definite one. Facts may be forgivenand forgotten, but mysteries haunt one always. I believe there are weak, sensitive people who dread to put their wrongs into shape; those are thekind who sulk, and when you add separation to sulking, reconciliationbecomes impossible. I knew a very singular case of that kind once. Ifyou like, I'll tell it to you. May be you will be able, some day, toweave it into one of your writings. And it's quite true. "

It is hardly necessary to say that John Milton had not been touched byany personal significance in his companion's speech, whatever she mayhave intended; and it is equally true that whether she had presentlyforgotten her purpose, or had become suddenly interested in her ownconversation, her face grew more animated, her manner more confidential, and something of the youthful enthusiasm she had shown in the mountainseemed to come back to her. 

"I might say it happened anywhere and call the people M. Or N. , but itreally did occur in my own family, and although I was much youngerat the time it impressed me very strongly. My cousin, who had beenmy playmate, was an orphan, and had been intrusted to the care of myfather, who was his guardian. He was always a clever boy, but singularlysensitive and quick to take offense. Perhaps it was because the littleproperty his father had left made him partly dependent on my father, andthat I was rich, but he seemed to feel the disparity in our positions. I was too young to understand it; I think it existed only in hisimagination, for I believe we were treated alike. But I remember that hewas full of vague threats of running away and going to sea, and thatit was part of his weak temperament to terrify me with his extravagantconfidences. I was always frightened when, after one of those scenes, he would pack his valise or perhaps only tie up a few things in ahandkerchief, as in the advertisement pictures of the runaway slaves, and declare that we would never lay eyes upon him again. At first Inever saw the ridiculousness of all this, --for I ought to have told youthat he was a rather delicate and timid boy, and quite unfitted for arough life or any exposure, --but others did, and one day I laughed athim and told him he was afraid. I shall never forget the expression ofhis face and never forgive myself for it. He went away, --but he returnedthe next day! He threatened once to commit suicide, left his clothes onthe bank of the river, and came home in another suit of clothes he hadtaken with him. When I was sent abroad to school I lost sight of him;when I returned he was at college, apparently unchanged. When hecame home for vacation, far from having been subdued by contact withstrangers, it seemed that his unhappy sensitiveness had been onlyintensified by the ridicule of his fellows. He had even acquired amost ridiculous theory about the degrading effects of civilization, andwanted to go back to a state of barbarism. He said the wilderness wasthe only true home of man. My father, instead of bearing with whatI believe was his infirmity, dryly offered him the means to try hisexperiment. He started for some place in Texas, saying we would neverhear from him again. A month after he wrote for more money. My fatherreplied rather impatiently, I suppose, --I never knew exactly what hewrote. That was some years ago. He had told the truth at last, for wenever heard from him again. "

It is to be feared that John Milton was following the animated lips andeyes of the fair speaker rather than her story. Perhaps that was thereason why he said, "May he not have been a disappointed man?"

"I don't understand, " she said simply. 

"Perhaps, " said John Milton with a boyish blush, "you may haveunconsciously raised hopes in his heart--and"--

"I should hardly attempt to interest a chronicler of adventure like youin such a very commonplace, every-day style of romance, " she said, with a little impatience, "even if my vanity compelled me to make suchconfidences to a stranger. No, --it was nothing quite as vulgar as that. And, " she added quickly, with a playfully amused smile as she saw theyoung fellow's evident distress, "I should have probably heard from himagain. Those stories always end in that way. "

"And you think?"--said John Milton. 

"I think, " said Mrs. Ashwood slowly, "that he actually did commitsuicide--or effaced himself in some way, just as firmly as I believe hemight have been saved by judicious treatment. Otherwise we should haveheard from him. You'll say that's only a woman's reasoning--but I thinkour perceptions are often instinctive, and I knew his character. "

Still following the play of her delicate features into a romance of hisown weaving, the imaginative young reporter who had seen so much fromthe heights of Russian Hill said earnestly, "Then I have your permissionto use this material at any future time?"

"Yes, " said the lady smilingly. 

"And you will not mind if I should take some liberties with the text?"

"I must of course leave something to your artistic taste. But you willlet me see it?"

There were voices outside now, breaking the silence of the veranda. They had been so preoccupied as not to notice the arrival of a horseman. Steps came along the passage; the landlord returned. Mrs. Ashwood turnedquickly towards him. 

"Mr. Grant, of your party, ma'am, to fetch you. "

She saw an unmistakable change in her young friend's mobile face. "Iwill be ready in a moment, " she said to the landlord. Then, turningto John Milton, the arch-hypocrite said sweetly: "My brother must haveknown instinctively that I was in good hands, as he didn't come. But Iam sorry, for I should have so liked to introduce him to you--althoughby the way, " with a bright smile, "I don't think you have yet told meyour name. I know I couldn't have FORGOTTEN it. "

"Harcourt, " said John Milton, with a half-embarrassed laugh. 

"But you must come and see me, Mr. --Mr. Harcourt, " she said, producinga card from a case already in her fingers, "at my hotel, and let mybrother thank you there for your kindness and gallantry to a stranger. Ishall be here a few weeks longer before we go south to look for a placewhere my brother can winter. DO come and see me, although I cannotintroduce you to anything as real and beautiful as what YOU have shownme to-day. Good-by, Mr. Harcourt; I won't trouble you to come down andbore yourself with my escort's questions and congratulations. "

She bent her head and allowed her soft eyes to rest upon his with agraciousness that was beyond her speech, pulled her veil over her eyesagain, with a pretty suggestion that she had no further use for them, and taking her riding-skirt lightly in her hand seemed to glide from theroom. 

On her way to San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party hadprolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a localmagnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstractedGrant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety!Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she hadnever doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the main road. Shewas glad that Miss Euphemia's runaway horse had been stopped withoutaccident; it would have been dreadful if anything had happened to HER;Mr. Harcourt seemed so wrapped up in his girls. It was a pity they neverhad a son--Ah? Indeed! Then there was a son? So--and father and son hadquarreled? That was so sad. And for some trifling cause, no doubt?

"I believe he married the housemaid, " said Grant grimly. "Becareful!--Allow me. "

"It's no use!" said Mrs. Ashwood, flushing with pink impatience, as sherecovered her seat, which a sudden bolt of her mustang had imperiled, "Ireally can't make out the tricks of this beast! Thank you, " she added, with a sweet smile, "but I think I can manage him now. I can't seewhy he stopped. I'll be more careful. You were saying the son wasmarried--surely not that boy!"

"Boy!" echoed Grant. "Then you know?"--

"I mean of course he must be a boy--they all grew up here--and it wasonly five or six years ago that their parents emigrated, " she retorted alittle impatiently. "And what about this creature?"

"Your horse?"

"You know I mean the woman he married. Of course she was older thanhe--and caught him?"

"I think there was a year or two difference, " said Grant quietly. 

"Yes, but your gallantry keeps you from telling the truth; which is thatthe women, in cases of this kind, are much older and more experienced. "

"Are they? Well, perhaps she is, NOW. She is dead. "

Mrs. Ashwood walked her horse. "Poor thing, " she said. Then a suddenidea took possession of her and brought a film to her eyes. "How longago?" she asked in a low voice. 

"About six or seven months, I think. I believe there was a baby who diedtoo. "

She continued to walk her horse slowly, stroking its curved neck. "Ithink it's perfectly shameful!" she said suddenly. 

"Not so bad as that, Mrs. Ashwood, surely. The girl may have lovedhim--and he"--

"You know perfectly what I mean, Mr. Grant. I speak of the conduct ofthe mother and father and those two sisters!"

Grant slightly elevated his eyebrows. "But you forget, Mrs. Ashwood. Itwas young Harcourt and his wife's own act. They preferred to take theirown path and keep it. "

"I think, " said Mrs. Ashwood authoritatively, "that the idea of leavingthose two unfortunate children to suffer and struggle on alone--outthere--on the sand hills of San Francisco--was simply disgraceful!"

Later that evening she was unreasonably annoyed to find that herbrother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grantto pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon thatimperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight strollupon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed torecover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful sceneryshe had discovered in her late perilous abandonment in the wilds of theCoast Range; to aver her intention to visit it again; to speak of it ina severely practical way as offering a far better site for the cottagesof the young married couples just beginning life than the outskirts oftowns or the bleak sand hills of San Francisco; and thence by gracefuldegrees into a dissertation upon popular fallacies in regard to hastymarriages, and the mistaken idea of some parents in not accepting theinevitable and making the best of it. She still found time to enterinto an appreciative and exhaustive criticism upon the literature andjournalistic enterprise of the Pacific Coast with the proprietor of the"Pioneer, " and to cause that gentleman to declare that whatever peoplemight say about rich and fashionable Eastern women, that Mrs. Ashwood'shead was about as level as it was pretty. 

The next morning found her more thoughtful and subdued, and when herbrother came upon her sitting on the veranda, while the party werepreparing to return, she was reading a newspaper slip that she had takenfrom her porte-monnaie, with a face that was partly shadowed. 

"What have you struck there, Conny?" said her brother gayly. "It lookstoo serious for a recipe. "

"Something I should like you to read some time, Jack, " she said, liftingher lashes with a slight timidity, "if you would take the trouble. Ireally wonder how it would impress you. "

"Pass it over, " said Jack Shipley good-humoredly, with his cigar betweenhis lips. "I'll take it now. "

She handed him the slip and turned partly away; he took it, glanced atit sideways, turned it over, and suddenly his look grew concentrated, and he took the cigar from his lips. 

"Well, " she said playfully, turning to him again. "What do you think ofit?"

"Think of it?" he said with a rising color. "I think it's infamous! Whodid it?"

She stared at him, then glanced quickly at the slip. "What are youreading?" she said. 

"This, of course, " he said impatiently. "What you gave me. " But he waspointing to THE OTHER SIDE of the newspaper slip. 

She took it from him impatiently and read for the first time theprinting on the reverse side of the article she had treasured so long. It was the concluding paragraph of an apparently larger editorial. "Onething is certain, that a man in Daniel Harcourt's position cannot affordto pass over in silence accusations like the above, that affect not onlyhis private character, but the integrity of his title to the land thatwas the foundation of his fortune. When trickery, sharp practice, andeven criminality in the past are more than hinted at, they cannot bemet by mere pompous silence or allusions to private position, socialprestige, or distinguished friends in the present. "

Mrs. Ashwood turned the slip over with scornful impatience, a prettyuplifting of her eyebrows and a slight curl of her lip. "I suppose noneof those people's beginnings can bear looking into--and they certainlyshould be the last ones to find fault with anybody. But, good gracious, Jack! what has this to do with you?"

"With me?" said Shipley angrily. "Why, I proposed to Clementina lastnight!"

CHAPER IX. 

The wayfarers on the Tasajara turnpike, whom Mr. Daniel Harcourtpassed with his fast trotting mare and sulky, saw that their greatfellow-townsman was more than usually preoccupied and curt in hisacknowledgment of their salutations. Nevertheless as he drew nearthe creek, he partly checked his horse, and when he reached a slightacclivity of the interminable plain--which had really been the bank ofthe creek in bygone days--he pulled up, alighted, tied his horse to arail fence, and clambering over the inclosure made his way along theridge. It was covered with nettles, thistles, and a few wiry dwarflarches of native growth; dust from the adjacent highway had invadedit, with a few scattered and torn handbills, waste paper, rags, emptyprovision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site of 'LigeCurtis's cabin, long since erased and forgotten. The bed of the oldcreek had receded; the last tules had been cleared away; the channel andembarcadero were half a mile from the bank and log whereon the pioneerof Tasajara had idly sunned himself. 

Mr. Harcourt walked on, occasionally turning over the scattered objectswith his foot, and stopping at times to examine the ground more closely. It had not apparently been disturbed since he himself, six years ago, had razed the wretched shanty and carried off its timbers to aid in theerection of a larger cabin further inland. He raised his eyes to theprospect before him, --to the town with its steamboats lying at thewharves, to the grain elevator, the warehouses, the railroad stationwith its puffing engines, the flagstaff of Harcourt House and theclustering roofs of the town, and beyond, the painted dome of his lastcreation, the Free Library. This was all HIS work, HIS planning, HISforesight, whatever they might say of the wandering drunkard from whosetremulous fingers he had snatched the opportunity. They could not takeTHAT from him, however they might follow him with envy and reviling, any more than they could wrest from him the five years of peacefulpossession. It was with something of the prosperous consciousness withwhich he had mounted the platform on the opening of the Free Library, that he now climbed into his buggy and drove away. 

Nevertheless he stopped at his Land Office as he drove into town, and gave a few orders. "I want a strong picket fence put around thefifty-vara lot in block fifty-seven, and the ground cleared up at once. Let me know when the men get to work, and I'll overlook them. "

Re-entering his own house in the square, where Mrs. Harcourt andClementina--who often accompanied him in those business visits--werewaiting for him with luncheon, he smiled somewhat superciliously as theservant informed him that "Professor Grant had just arrived. " Reallythat man was trying to make the most of his time with Clementina!Perhaps the rival attractions of that Boston swell Shipley had somethingto do with it! He must positively talk to Clementina about this. Inpoint of fact he himself was a little disappointed in Grant, who, sincehis offer to take the task of hunting down his calumniators, had reallydone nothing. He turned into his study, but was slightly astonished tofind that Grant, instead of paying court to Clementina in the adjoiningdrawing-room, was sitting rather thoughtfully in his own armchair. 

He rose as Harcourt entered. "I didn't let them announce me to theladies, " he said, "as I have some important business with you first, andwe may find it necessary that I should take the next train back to town. You remember that a few weeks ago I offered to look into the matter ofthose slanders against you. I apprehended it would be a trifling matterof envy or jealousy on the part of your old associates or neighborswhich could be put straight with a little good feeling; but I must befrank with you, Harcourt, and say at the beginning that it turns outto be an infernally ugly business. Call it conspiracy if you like, ororganized hostility, I'm afraid it will require a lawyer rather thanan arbitrator to manage it, and the sooner the better. For the mostunpleasant thing about it is, that I can't find out exactly HOW BAD itis!"

Unfortunately the weaker instinct of Harcourt's nature was first roused;the vulgar rage which confounds the bearer of ill news with thenews itself filled his breast. "And this is all that your confoundedintermeddling came to?" he said brutally. 

"No, " said Grant quietly, with a preoccupied ignoring of the insult thatwas more hopeless for Harcourt. "I found out that it is claimed thatthis 'Lige Curtis was not drowned nor lost that night; but that heescaped, and for three years has convinced another man that you arewrongfully in possession of this land; that these two naturally hold youin their power, and that they are only waiting for you to be forced intolegal proceedings for slander to prove all their charges. Untilthen, for some reason best known to themselves, Curtis remains in thebackground. "

"Does he deny the deed under which I hold the property?" said Harcourtsavagely. 

"He says it was only a security for a trifling loan, and not an actualtransfer. "

"And don't those fools know that his security could be forfeited?"

"Yes, but not in the way it is recorded in the county clerk's office. They say that the record shows that there was an interpolation in thepaper he left with you--which was a forgery. Briefly, Harcourt, you areaccused of that. More, --it is intimated that when he fell into the creekthat night, and escaped on a raft that was floating past, that he hadbeen first stunned by a blow from some one interested in getting rid ofhim. "

He paused and glanced out of the window. 

"Is that all?" asked Harcourt in a perfectly quiet, steady, voice. 

"All!" replied Grant, struck with the change in his companion's manner, and turning his eyes upon him quickly. 

The change indeed was marked and significant. Whether from relief atknowing the worst, or whether he was experiencing the same reaction fromthe utter falsity of this last accusation that he had felt when Granthad unintentionally wronged him in his previous recollection, certain itis that some unknown reserve of strength in his own nature, of whichhe knew nothing before, suddenly came to his aid in this extremity. Itinvested him with an uncouth dignity that for the first time excitedGrant's respect. 

"I beg your pardon, Grant, for the hasty way I spoke to you a momentago, for I thank you, and appreciate thoroughly and sincerely what youhave done. You are right; it is a matter for fighting and not fussingover. But I must have a head to hit. Whose is it?"

"The man who holds himself legally responsible is Fletcher, --theproprietor of the 'Clarion, ' and a man of property. "

"The 'Clarion'? That is the paper which began the attack?" saidHarcourt. 

"Yes, and it is only fair to tell you here that your son threw up hisplace on it in consequence of its attack upon you. "

There was perhaps the slightest possible shrinking in Harcourt'seyelids--the one congenital likeness to his discarded son--but hisotherwise calm demeanor did not change. Grant went on more cheerfully:"I've told you all I know. When I spoke of an unknown WORST, I did notrefer to any further accusation, but to whatever evidence they mighthave fabricated or suborned to prove any one of them. It is only thestrength and fairness of the hands they hold that is uncertain. Against that you have your certain uncontested possession, the peculiarcharacter and antecedents of this 'Lige Curtis, which would make hisevidence untrustworthy and even make it difficult for them to establishhis identity. I am told that his failure to contest your appropriationof his property is explained by the fact of his being absent from thecountry most of the time; but again, this would not account for theirsilence until within the last six months, unless they have been waitingfor further evidence to establish it. But even then they must have knownthat the time of recovery had passed. You are a practical man, Harcourt;I needn't tell you therefore what your lawyer will probably tell you, that practically, so far as your rights are concerned, you remainas before these calumnies; that a cause of action unprosecuted orin abeyance is practically no cause, and that it is not for you toanticipate one. BUT"--

He paused and looked steadily at Harcourt. Harcourt met his look with adull, ox-like stolidity. "I shall begin the suit at once, " he said. 

"And I, " said Grant, holding out his hand, "will stand by you. But tellme now what you knew of this man Curtis, --his character and disposition;it may be some clue as to what are his methods and his intentions. "

Harcourt briefly sketched 'Lige Curtis as he knew him and understoodhim. It was another indication of his reserved power that thedescription was so singularly clear, practical, unprejudiced, andimpartial that it impressed Grant with its truthfulness. 

"I can't make him out, " he said; "you have drawn a weak, but neither adishonest nor malignant man. There must have been somebody behind him. Can you think of any personal enemy?"

"I have been subjected to the usual jealousy and envy of my oldneighbors, I suppose, but nothing more. I have harmed no one knowingly. "

Grant was silent; it had flashed across him that Rice might haveharbored revenge for his father-in-law's interference in his briefmatrimonial experience. He had also suddenly recalled his conversationwith Billings on the day that he first arrived at Tasajara. It would notbe strange if this man had some intimation of the secret. He would tryto find him that evening. He rose. 

"You will stay to dinner? My wife and Clementina will expect you. "

"Not to-night; I am dining at the hotel, " said Grant, smilingly; "but Iwill come in later in the evening if I may. " He paused hesitatingly fora moment. "Have your wife and daughter ever expressed any opinion onthis matter?"

"No, " said Harcourt. "Mrs. Harcourt knows nothing of anything that doesnot happen IN the house; Euphemia knows only the things that happen outof it where she is visiting--and I suppose that young men prefer totalk to her about other things than the slanders of her father. AndClementina--well, you know how calm and superior to these things SHEis. "

"For that very reason I thought that perhaps she might be able to seethem more clearly, --but no matter! I dare say you are quite right innot discussing them at home. " This was the fact, although Grant had notforgotten that Harcourt had put forward his daughters as a reason forstopping the scandal some weeks before, --a reason which, however, seemednever to have been borne out by any apparent sensitiveness of the girlsthemselves. 

When Grant had left, Harcourt remained for some moments steadfastlygazing from the window over the Tasajara plain. He had not lost hislook of concentrated power, nor his determination to fight. A strugglebetween himself and the phantoms of the past had become now a necessarystimulus for its own sake, --for the sake of his mental and physicalequipoise. He saw before him the pale, agitated, irresolute features of'Lige Curtis, --not the man HE had injured, but the man who had injuredHIM, whose spirit was aimlessly and wantonly--for he had neverattempted to get back his possessions in his lifetime, nor ever triedto communicate with the possessor--striking at him in the shadow. Andit was THAT man, that pale, writhing, frightened wretch whom he had oncemercifully helped! Yes, whose LIFE he had even saved that night fromexposure and delirium tremens when he had given him the whiskey. Andthis life he had saved, only to have it set in motion a conspiracy toruin him! Who knows that 'Lige had not purposely conceived what they hadbelieved to be an attempt at suicide, only to cast suspicion of murderon HIM! From which it will be perceived that Harcourt's powers of moralreasoning had not improved in five years, and that even the impartialityhe had just shown in his description of 'Lige to Grant had beenswallowed up in this new sense of injury. The founder of Tasajara, whosecool business logic, unfailing foresight, and practical deductions werenever at fault, was once more childishly adrift in his moral ethics. 

And there was Clementina, of whose judgment Grant had spoken sopersistently, --could she assist him? It was true, as he had said, hehad never talked to her of his affairs. In his sometimes uneasyconsciousness of her superiority he had shrunk from even revealing hisanxieties, much less his actual secret, and from anything that mightprejudice the lofty paternal attitude he had taken towards his daughtersfrom the beginning of his good fortune. He was never quite sure if heracceptance of it was real; he was never entirely free from a certainjealousy that always mingled with his pride in her superior rectitude;and yet his feeling was distinct from the good-natured contempt hehad for his wife's loyalty, the anger and suspicion that his son'sopposition had provoked, and the half-affectionate toleration he hadfelt for Euphemia's waywardness. However he would sound Clementinawithout betraying himself. 

He was anticipated by a slight step in the passage and the pushing openof his study door. The tall, graceful figure of the girl herself stoodin the opening. 

"They tell me Mr. Grant has been here. Does he stay to dinner?"

"No, he has an engagement at the hotel, but he will probably drop inlater. Come in, Clemmy, I want to talk to you. Shut the door and sitdown. "

She slipped in quietly, shut the door, took a seat on the sofa, softlysmoothed down her gown, and turned her graceful head and serenelycomposed face towards him. Sitting thus she looked like some finelyfinished painting that decorated rather than belonged to the room, --notonly distinctly alien to the flesh and blood relative before her, butto the house, and even the local, monotonous landscape beyond the windowwith the shining new shingles and chimneys that cut the new blue sky. These singular perfections seemed to increase in Harcourt's mind theexasperating sense of injury inflicted upon him by 'Lige's exposures. With a daughter so incomparably gifted, --a matchless creation that wasenough in herself to ennoble that fortune which his own skill and geniushad lifted from the muddy tules of Tasajara where this 'Lige had leftit, --that SHE should be subjected to this annoyance seemed an infamythat Providence could not allow! What was his mere venial transgressionto this exaggerated retribution?

"Clemmy, girl, I'm going to ask you a question. Listen, pet. " He hadbegun with a reminiscent tenderness of the epoch of her childhood, butmeeting the unresponding maturity of her clear eyes he abandoned it. "You know, Clementina, I have never interfered in your affairs, nortried to influence your friendships for anybody. Whatever people mayhave to say of me they can't say that! I've always trusted you, as Iwould myself, to choose your own associates; I have never regretted it, and I don't regret it now. But I'd like to know--I have reasons to-dayfor asking--how matters stand between you and Grant. "

The Parian head of Minerva on the bookcase above her did not offer thespectator a face less free from maidenly confusion than Clementina'sat that moment. Her father had certainly expected none, but he was notprepared for the perfect coolness of her reply. 

"Do you mean, have I ACCEPTED him?"

"No, --well--yes. "

"No, then! Is that what he wished to see you about? It was understoodthat he was not to allude again to the subject to any one. "

"He has not to ME. It was only my own idea. He had something verydifferent to tell me. You may not know, Clementina, " he beguncautiously, "that I have been lately the subject of some anonymousslanders, and Grant has taken the trouble to track them down for me. Itis a calumny that goes back as far as Sidon, and I may want your levelhead and good memory to help me to refute it. " He then repeated calmlyand clearly, with no trace of the fury that had raged within him amoment before, the substance of Grant's revelation. 

The young girl listened without apparent emotion. When he had finishedshe said quickly: "And what do you want me to recollect?"

The hardest part of Harcourt's task was coming. "Well, don't youremember that I told you the day the surveyors went away--that--I hadbought this land of 'Lige Curtis some time before?"

"Yes, I remember your saying so, but"--

"But what?"

"I thought you only meant that to satisfy mother. "

Daniel Harcourt felt the blood settling round his heart, but he wasconstrained by an irresistible impulse to know the worst. "Well, whatdid YOU think it really was?"

"I only thought that 'Lige Curtis had simply let you have it, that'sall. "

Harcourt breathed again. "But what for? Why should he?"

"Well--ON MY ACCOUNT. "

"On YOUR account! What in Heaven's name had YOU to do with it?"

"He loved me. " There was not the slightest trace of vanity, self-consciousness or coquetry in her quiet, fateful face, and for thisvery reason Harcourt knew that she was speaking the truth. 

"Loved YOU!--you, Clementina!--my daughter! Did he ever TELL you so?"

"Not in words. He used to walk up and down on the road when I was at theback window or in the garden, and often hung about the bank of the creekfor hours, like some animal. I don't think the others saw him, and whenthey did they thought it was Parmlee for Euphemia. Even Euphemia thoughtso too, and that was why she was so conceited and hard to Parmleetowards the end. She thought it was Parmlee that night when Grant andRice came; but it was 'Lige Curtis who had been watching the windowlights in the rain, and who must have gone off at last to speak toyou in the store. I always let Phemie believe that it was Parmlee, --itseemed to please her. "

There was not the least tone of mischief or superiority, or even ofpatronage in her manner. It was as quiet and cruel as the fate thatmight have led 'Lige to his destruction. Even her father felt a slightthrill of awe as she paused. "Then he never really spoke to you?" heasked hurriedly. 

"Only once. I was gathering swamp lilies all alone, a mile below thebend of the creek, and he came upon me suddenly. Perhaps it was that Ididn't jump or start--I didn't see anything to jump or start at--that hesaid, 'You're not frightened at me, Miss Harcourt, like the other girls?You don't think I'm drunk or half mad--as they do?' I don't rememberexactly what I said, but it meant that whether he was drunk or half mador sober I didn't see any reason to be afraid of him. And then he toldme that if I was fond of swamp lilies I might have all I wanted at hisplace, and for the matter of that the place too, as he was going away, for he couldn't stand the loneliness any longer. He said that he hadnothing in common with the place and the people--no more than I had--andthat was what he had always fancied in me. I told him that if he feltin that way about his place he ought to leave it, or sell it to some onewho cared for it, and go away. That must have been in his mind when heoffered it to you, --at least that's what I thought when you told us youhad bought it. I didn't know but what he might have told you, but youdidn't care to say it before mother. "

Mr. Harcourt sat gazing at her with breathless amazement. "Andyou--think that--'Lige Curtis--lov--liked you?"

"Yes, I think he did--and that he does now!"

"NOW! What do you mean? The man is dead!" said Harcourt starting. 

"That's just what I don't believe. "

"Impossible! Think of what you are saying. "

"I never could quite understand or feel that he was dead when everybodysaid so, and now that I've heard this story I KNOW that he is living. "

"But why did he not make himself known in time to claim the property?"

"Because he did not care for it. "

"What did he care for, then?"

"Me, I suppose. "

"But this calumny is not like a man who loves you. "

"It is like a JEALOUS one. "

With an effort Harcourt threw off his bewildered incredulity and graspedthe situation. He would have to contend with his enemy in the flesh andblood, but that flesh and blood would be very weak in the hands of theimpassive girl beside him. His face lightened. 

The same idea might have been in Clementina's mind when she spoke again, although her face had remained unchanged. "I do not see why YOU shouldbother yourself further about it, " she said. "It is only a matterbetween myself and him; you can leave it to me. "

"But if you are mistaken and he should not be living?"

"I am not mistaken. I am even certain now that I have seen him. "

"Seen him!"

"Yes, " said the girl with the first trace of animation in her face. "It was four or five months ago when we were visiting the Briones atMonterey. We had ridden out to the old Mission by moonlight. There weresome Mexicans lounging around the posada, and one of them attracted myattention by the way he seemed to watch me, without revealing any moreof his face than I could see between his serape and the black silkhandkerchief that was tied around his head under his sombrero. But Iknew he was an American--and his eyes were familiar. I believe it washe. "

"Why did you not speak of it before?"

The look of animation died out of the girl's face. "Why should I?" shesaid listlessly. "I did not know of these reports then. He was nothingmore to us. You wouldn't have cared to see him again. " She rose, smoothed out her skirt and stood looking at her father. "There is onething, of course, that you'll do at once. "

Her voice had changed so oddly that he said quickly: "What's that?"

"Call Grant off the scent. He'll only frighten or exasperate your game, and that's what you don't want. "

Her voice was as imperious as it had been previously listless. And itwas the first time he had ever known her to use slang. 

It seemed as startling as if it had fallen from the marble lips abovehim. 

"But I've promised him that we should go together to my lawyerto-morrow, and begin a suit against the proprietors of the 'Clarion. '"

"Do nothing of the kind. Get rid of Grant's assistance in this matter;and see the 'Clarion' proprietor yourself. What sort of a man is he? Canyou invite him to your house?"

"I have never seen him; I believe he lives at San Jose. He is a wealthyman and a large land owner there. You understand that after the firstarticle appeared in his paper, and I knew that he had employed yourbrother--although Grant says that he had nothing to do with it and leftFletcher on account of it--I could have no intercourse with him. Even ifI invited him he would not come. "

"He MUST come. Leave it to ME. " She stopped and resumed her formerimpassive manner. "I had something to say to you too, father. Mr. Shipley proposed to me the day we went to San Mateo. "

Her father's eyes lit with an eager sparkle. "Well, " he said quickly. 

"I reminded him that I had known him only a few weeks, and that I wantedtime to consider. "

"Consider! Why, Clemmy, he's one of the oldest Boston families, richfrom his father and grandfather--rich when I was a shopkeeper and yourmother"--

"I thought you liked Grant?" she said quietly. 

"Yes, but if YOU have no choice nor feeling in the matter, why Shipleyis far the better man. And if any of the scandal should come to hisears"--

"So much the better that the hesitation should come from me. But if youthink it better, I can sit down here and write to him at once decliningthe offer. " She moved towards the desk. 

"No! No! I did not mean that, " said Harcourt quickly. "I only thoughtthat if he did hear anything it might be said that he had backed out. "

"His sister knows of his offer, and though she don't like it nor me, shewill not deny the fact. By the way, you remember when she was lost thatday on the road to San Mateo?"

"Yes. "

"Well, she was with your son, John Milton, all the time, and theylunched together at Crystal Spring. It came out quite accidentallythrough the hotel-keeper. "

Harcourt's brow darkened. "Did she know him before?"

"I can't say; but she does now. "

Harcourt's face was heavy with distrust. "Taking Shipley's offer andthese scandals into consideration, I don't like the look of this, Clementina. "

"I do, " said the girl simply. 

Harcourt gazed at her keenly and with the shadow of distrust still uponhim. It seemed to be quite impossible, even with what he knew of hercalmly cold nature, that she should be equally uninfluenced by Grant orShipley. Had she some steadfast, lofty ideal, or perhaps some alreadyabsorbing passion of which he knew nothing? She was not a girl to betrayit--they would only know it when it was too late. Could it be possiblethat there was still something between her and 'Lige that he knewnothing of? The thought struck a chill to his breast. She was walkingtowards the door, when he recalled himself with an effort. 

"If you think it advisable to see Fletcher, you might run down to SanJose for a day or two with your mother, and call on the Ramirez. They may know him or somebody who does. Of course if YOU meet him andcasually invite him it would be different. "

"It's a good idea, " she said quickly. "I'll do it, and speak to mothernow. "

He was struck by the change in her face and voice; they had bothnervously lightened, as oddly and distinctly as they had before seemedto grow suddenly harsh and aggressive. She passed out of the room withgirlish brusqueness, leaving him alone with a new and vague fear in hisconsciousness. 

A few hours later Clementina was standing before the window of thedrawing-room that overlooked the outskirts of the town. The moonlightwas flooding the vast bluish Tasajara levels with a faint lustre, as ifthe waters of the creek had once more returned to them. In the shadow ofthe curtain beside her Grant was facing her with anxious eyes. 

"Then I must take this as your final answer, Clementina?"

"You must. And had I known of these calumnies before, had you been frankwith me even the day we went to San Mateo, my answer would have been asfinal then, and you might have been spared any further suspense. I amnot blaming you, Mr. Grant; I am willing to believe that you thoughtit best to conceal this from me, --even at that time when you had justpledged yourself to find out its truth or falsehood, --yet my answerwould have been the same. So long as this stain rests on my father'sname I shall never allow that name to be coupled with yours in marriageor engagement; nor will my pride or yours allow us to carry on a simplefriendship after this. I thank you for your offer of assistance, butI cannot even accept that which might to others seem to allow somecontingent claim. I would rather believe that when you proposed thisinquiry and my father permitted it, you both knew that it put an end toany other relations between us. "

"But, Clementina, you are wrong, believe me! Say that I have beenfoolish, indiscreet, mad, --still the few who knew that I made theseinquiries on your father's behalf know nothing of my hopes of YOU!"

"But I do, and that is enough for me. "

Even in the hopeless preoccupation of his passion he suddenly lookedat her with something of his old critical scrutiny. But she stood therecalm, concentrated, self-possessed and upright. Yes! it was possiblethat the pride of this Southwestern shopkeepers daughter was greaterthan his own. 

"Then you banish me, Clementina?"

"It is we whom YOU have banished. "

"Good-night. "

"Good-by. "

He bent for an instant over her cold hand, and then passed out into thehall. She remained listening until the front door closed behind him. Then she ran swiftly through the hall and up the staircase, with analacrity that seemed impossible to the stately goddess of a momentbefore. When she had reached her bedroom and closed the door, soexuberant still and so uncontrollable was her levity and action, thatwithout going round the bed which stood before her in the centre ofthe room, she placed her two hands upon it and lightly vaulted sidewaysacross it to reach the window. There she watched the figure of Grantcrossing the moonlit square. Then turning back into the half-lit room, she ran to the small dressing-glass placed at an angle on a toilet tableagainst the wall. With her palms grasping her knees she stoopeddown suddenly and contemplated the mirror. It showed what no one butClementina had ever seen, --and she herself only at rare intervals, --thelaughing eyes and soul of a self-satisfied, material-minded, ordinarycountry-girl!

CHAPER X. 

But Mr. Lawrence Grant's character in certain circumstances would seemto have as startling and inexplicable contradictions as ClementinaHarcourt's, and three days later he halted his horse at the entrance ofLos Gatos Rancho. The Home of the Cats--so called from the catamountswhich infested the locality--which had for over a century lazily baskedbefore one of the hottest canyons in the Coast Range, had lately beenstirred into some activity by the American, Don Diego Fletcher, who hadbought it, put up a saw-mill, and deforested the canyon. Still thereremained enough suggestion of a feline haunt about it to make Grantfeel as if he had tracked hither some stealthy enemy, in spite of thepeaceful intimation conveyed by the sign on a rough boarded shed at thewayside, that the "Los Gatos Land and Lumber Company" held their officethere. 

A cigarette-smoking peon lounged before the door. Yes; Don Diego wasthere, but as he had arrived from Santa Clara only last night and wasgoing to Colonel Ramirez that afternoon, he was engaged. Unless thebusiness was important--but the cool, determined manner of Grant, evenmore than his words, signified that it WAS important, and the servantled the way to Don Diego's presence. 

There certainly was nothing in the appearance of this sylvan proprietorand newspaper capitalist to justify Grant's suspicion of a surreptitiousfoe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavymass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brownmustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of thesecontradictions, that he not only looked unlike anybody else, but evenhis nationality seemed to be a matter of doubt. Only his eyes, lightblue and intelligent, which had a singular expression of gentleness andworry, appeared individual to the man. His manner was cultivated andeasy. He motioned his visitor courteously to a chair. 

"I was referred to you, " said Grant, almost abruptly, "as the personresponsible for a series of slanderous attacks against Mr. DanielHarcourt in the 'Clarion, ' of which paper I believe you are theproprietor. I was told that you declined to give the authority for youraction, unless you were forced to by legal proceedings. "

Fletcher's sensitive blue eyes rested upon Grant's with an expressionof constrained pain and pity. "I heard of your inquiries, Mr. Grant; youwere making them on behalf of this Mr. Harcourt or Harkutt"--he made thedistinction with intentional deliberation--"with a view, I believe, tosome arbitration. The case was stated to you fairly, I think; I believeI have nothing to add to it. "

"That was your answer to the ambassador of Mr. Harcourt, " said Grant, coldly, "and as such I delivered it to him; but I am here to-day tospeak on my own account. "

What could be seen of Mr. Fletcher's lips appeared to curl in an oddsmile. "Indeed, I thought it was--or would be--all in the family. "

Grant's face grew more stern, and his gray eyes glittered. "You'll findmy status in this matter so far independent that I don't propose, like Mr. Harcourt, either to begin a suit or to rest quietly under thecalumny. Briefly, Mr. Fletcher, as you or your informant knows, I wasthe surveyor who revealed to Mr. Harcourt the value of the land to whichhe claimed a title from your man, this Elijah or 'Lige Curtis as youcall him, "--he could not resist this imitation of his adversary'ssupercilious affectation of precise nomenclature, --"and it was uponmy representation of its value as an investment that he began theimprovements which have made him wealthy. If this title was fraudulentlyobtained, all the facts pertaining to it are sufficiently related toconnect me with the conspiracy. "

"Are you not a little hasty in your presumption, Mr. Grant?" saidFletcher, with unfeigned surprise. 

"That is for ME to judge, Mr. Fletcher, " returned Grant, haughtily. 

"But the name of Professor Grant is known to all California as beyondthe breath of calumny or suspicion. "

"It is because of that fact that I propose to keep it so. "

"And may I ask in what way you wish me to assist you in so doing?"

"By promptly and publicly retracting in the 'Clarion' every word of thisslander against Harcourt. "

Fletcher looked steadfastly at the speaker. "And if I decline?"

"I think you have been long enough in California, Mr. Fletcher, to knowthe alternative expected of a gentleman, " said Grant, coldly. 

Mr. Fletcher kept his gentle blue eyes--in which surprise stilloverbalanced their expression of pained concern--on Grant's face. 

"But is not this more in the style of Colonel Starbottle than ProfessorGrant?" he asked, with a faint smile. 

Grant rose instantly with a white face. "You will have a betteropportunity of judging, " he said, "when Colonel Starbottle has the honorof waiting upon you from me. Meantime, I thank you for reminding me ofthe indiscretion into which my folly, in still believing that this thingcould be settled amicably, has led me. "

He bowed coldly and withdrew. Nevertheless, as he mounted his horseand rode away, he felt his cheeks burning. Yet he had acted upon calmconsideration; he knew that to the ordinary Californian experience therewas nothing quixotic nor exaggerated in the attitude he had taken. Menhad quarreled and fought on less grounds; he had even half convincedhimself that he HAD been insulted, and that his own professionalreputation demanded the withdrawal of the attack on Harcourt onpurely business grounds; but he was not satisfied of the personalresponsibility of Fletcher nor of his gratuitous malignity. Nor did theman look like a tool in the hands of some unscrupulous and hidden enemy. However, he had played his card. If he succeeded only in provoking aduel with Fletcher, he at least would divert the public attention fromHarcourt to himself. He knew that his superior position would throw thelesser victim in the background. He would make the sacrifice; that washis duty as a gentleman, even if SHE would not care to accept it as anearnest of his unselfish love!

He had reached the point where the mountain track entered the SantaClara turnpike when his attention was attracted by a handsome butold-fashioned carriage drawn by four white mules, which passed down theroad before him and turned suddenly off into a private road. But it wasnot this picturesque gala equipage of some local Spanish grandee thatbrought a thrill to his nerves and a flash to his eye; it was theunmistakable, tall, elegant figure and handsome profile of Clementina, reclining in light gauzy wraps against the back seat! It was no fancifulresemblance, the outcome of his reverie, --there never was any one likeher!--it WAS she herself! But what was she doing here?

A vaquero cantered from the cross road where the dust of the vehiclestill hung. Grant hailed him. Ah! it was a fine carroza de cuatro mulasthat he had just passed! Si, Senor, truly; it was of Don Jose Ramirez, who lived just under the hill. It was bringing company to the casa. 

Ramirez! That was where Fletcher was going! Had Clementina known thathe was one of Fletcher's friends? Might she not be exposed tounpleasantness, marked coolness, or even insult in that unexpectedmeeting? Ought she not to be warned or prepared for it? She had banishedGrant from her presence until this stain was removed from her father'sname, but could she blame him for trying to save her from contact withher father's slanderer? No! He turned his horse abruptly into the crossroad and spurred forward in the direction of the casa. 

It was quite visible now--a low-walled, quadrangular mass of whitewashedadobe lying like a drift on the green hillside. The carriage and fourhad far preceded him, and was already half up the winding road towardsthe house. Later he saw them reach the courtyard and disappear within. He would be quite in time to speak with her before she retired to changeher dress. He would simply say that while making a professional visitto Los Gatos Land Company office he had become aware of Fletcher'sconnection with it, and accidentally of his intended visit to Ramirez. His chance meeting with the carriage on the highway had determined hiscourse. 

As he rode into the courtyard he observed that it was also approachedby another road, evidently nearer Los Gatos, and probably the olderand shorter communication between the two ranchos. The fact wassignificantly demonstrated a moment later. He had given his horse to aservant, sent in his card to Clementina, and had dropped listlessly onone of the benches of the gallery surrounding the patio, when a horsemanrode briskly into the opposite gateway, and dismounted with a familiarair. A waiting peon who recognized him informed him that the Dona wasengaged with a visitor, but that they were both returning to the galleryfor chocolate in a moment. The stranger was the man he had left only anhour before--Don Diego Fletcher!

In an instant the idiotic fatuity of his position struck him fully. Hisonly excuse for following Clementina had been to warn her of the comingof this man who had just entered, and who would now meet her as quicklyas himself. For a brief moment the idea of quietly slipping out to thecorral, mounting his horse again, and flying from the rancho, crossedhis mind; but the thought that he would be running away from the man hehad just challenged, and perhaps some new hostility that had sprung upin his heart against him, compelled him to remain. The eyes of both menmet; Fletcher's in half-wondering annoyance, Grant's in ill-concealedantagonism. What they would have said is not known, for at that momentthe voices of Clementina and Mrs. Ramirez were heard in the passage, andthey both entered the gallery. The two men were standing together; itwas impossible to see one without the other. 

And yet Grant, whose eyes were instantly directed to Clementina, thoughtthat she had noted neither. She remained for an instant standing in thedoorway in the same self-possessed, coldly graceful pose he rememberedshe had taken on the platform at Tasajara. Her eyelids were slightlydowncast, as if she had been arrested by some sudden thought or some shymaiden sensitiveness; in her hesitation Mrs. Ramirez passed impatientlybefore her. 

"Mother of God!" said that lively lady, regarding the two speechlessmen, "is it an indiscretion we are making here--or are you dumb? You, Don Diego, are loud enough when you and Don Jose are together; at leastintroduce your friend. "

Grant quickly recovered himself. "I am afraid, " he said, coming forward, "unless Miss Harcourt does, that I am a mere trespasser in your house, Senora. I saw her pass in your carriage a few moments ago, and having amessage for her I ventured to follow her here. "

"It is Mr. Grant, a friend of my father's, " said Clementina, smilingwith equanimity, as if just awakening from a momentary abstraction, yet apparently unconscious of Grant's imploring eyes; "but the othergentleman I have not the pleasure of knowing. "

"Ah! Don Diego Fletcher, a countryman of yours; and yet I think he knowsyou not. "

Clementina's face betrayed no indication of the presence of her father'sfoe, and yet Grant knew that she must have recognized his name, as shelooked towards Fletcher with perfect self-possession. He was too muchengaged in watching her to take note of Fletcher's manifest disturbance, or the evident effort with which he at last bowed to her. That thisunexpected double meeting with the daughter of the man he had wronged, and the man who had espoused the quarrel, should be confounding to himappeared only natural. But he was unprepared to understand the feverishalacrity with which he accepted Dona Maria's invitation to chocolate, or the equally animated way in which Clementina threw herself into herhostess's Spanish levity. He knew it was an awkward situation, that mustbe surmounted without a scene; he was quite prepared in the presence ofClementina to be civil to Fletcher; but it was odd that in this feverishexchange of courtesies and compliments HE, Grant, should feel thegreater awkwardness and be the most ill at ease. He sat down and tookhis part in the conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina'sbenefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there wasno opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the addedembarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed toattach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserableindecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flownhospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an earlydinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the volubleDona Maria--electing him as the distinguished stranger above theresident Fletcher--monopolized him and attached him to her side. Shewould do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of theold Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join thempresently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidlysmiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to theevident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and turnedaway with Mrs. Ramirez. 

A silence fell upon the gallery so deep that the receding voices andfootsteps of Grant and his hostess in the long passage were distinctlyheard until they reached the end. Then Fletcher arose with aninarticulate exclamation. Clementina instantly put her finger to herlips, glanced around the gallery, extended her hand to him, and saying"Come, " half-led, half-dragged him into the passage. To the rightshe turned and pushed open the door of a small room that seemed acombination of boudoir and oratory, lit by a French window opening tothe garden, and flanked by a large black and white crucifix with a prieDieu beneath it. Closing the door behind them she turned and facedher companion. But it was no longer the face of the woman who had beensitting in the gallery; it was the face that had looked back at herfrom the mirror at Tasajara the night that Grant had left her--eager, flushed, material with commonplace excitement!

"'Lige Curtis, " she said. 

"Yes, " he answered passionately, "Lige Curtis, whom you thought dead!'Lige Curtis, whom you once pitied, condoled with and despised! 'LigeCurtis, whose lands and property have enriched you! 'Lige Curtis, whowould have shared it with you freely at the time, but whom your fatherjuggled and defrauded of it! 'Lige Curtis, branded by him as a drunkenoutcast and suicide! 'Lige Curtis"--

"Hush!" She clapped her little hand over his mouth with a quick butawkward schoolgirl gesture, inconceivable to any who had known her usuallanguid elegance of motion, and held it there. He struggled angrily, impatiently, reproachfully, and then, with a sudden characteristicweakness that seemed as much of a revelation as her once hoydenishmanner, kissed it, when she let it drop. Then placing both her handsstill girlishly on her slim waist and curtseying grotesquely beforehim, she said: "'Lige Curtis! Oh, yes! 'Lige Curtis, who swore to doeverything for me! 'Lige Curtis, who promised to give up liquor forme, --who was to leave Tasajara for me! 'Lige Curtis, who was to reform, and keep his land as a nest-egg for us both in the future, and thenwho sold it--and himself--and me--to dad for a glass of whiskey! 'LigeCurtis, who disappeared, and then let us think he was dead, only that hemight attack us out of the ambush of his grave!"

"Yes, but think what I have suffered all these years; not for thecursed land--you know I never cared for that--but for YOU, --you, Clementina, --YOU rich, admired by every one; idolized, held far aboveme, --ME, the forgotten outcast, the wretched suicide--and yet the manto whom you had once plighted your troth. Which of those greedyfortune-hunters whom my money--my life-blood as you might have thoughtit was--attracted to you, did you care to tell that you had ever slippedout of the little garden gate at Sidon to meet that outcast! Do youwonder that as the years passed and YOU were happy, I did not choose tobe so forgotten? Do you wonder that when YOU shut the door on the pastI managed to open it again--if only a little way--that its light mightstartle you?"

Yet she did not seem startled or disturbed, and remained only looking athim critically. 

"You say that you have suffered, " she replied with a smile. "You don'tlook it! Your hair is white, but it is becoming to you, and you are ahandsomer man, 'Lige Curtis, than you were when I first met you; you arefiner, " she went on, still regarding him, "stronger and healthierthan you were five years ago; you are rich and prosperous, you haveeverything to make you happy, but"--here she laughed a little, heldout both her hands, taking his and holding his arms apart in a rustic, homely fashion--"but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It waslike you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was likeyou to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it waslike you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad, that didn't hurt him--in your regular looney style; for rich or poor, drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome, --you're always thesame 'Lige Curtis!"

In proportion as that material, practical, rustic self--which nobodybut 'Lige Curtis had ever seen--came back to her, so in proportion theirresolute, wavering, weak and emotional vagabond of Sidon came out tomeet it. He looked at her with a vague smile; his five years of childishresentment, albeit carried on the shoulders of a man mentally andmorally her superior, melted away. He drew her towards him, yet at thesame moment a quick suspicion returned. 

"Well, and what are you doing here? Has this man who has followed youany right, any claim upon you?"

"None but what you in your folly have forced upon him! You have made himfather's ally. I don't know why he came here. I only know why I did--tofind YOU!"

"You suspected then?"

"I KNEW! Hush!"

The returning voices of Grant and of Mrs. Ramirez were heard in thecourtyard. Clementina made a warning yet girlishly mirthful gesture, again caught his hand, drew him quickly to the French window, andslipped through it with him into the garden, where they were quicklylost in the shadows of a ceanothus hedge. 

"They have probably met Don Jose in the orchard, and as he and Don Diegohave business together, Dona Clementina has without doubt gone to herroom and left them. For you are not very entertaining to the ladiesto-day, --you two caballeros! You have much politics together, eh?--oryou have discussed and disagreed, eh? I will look for the Senorita, andlet you go, Don Distraido!"

It is to be feared that Grant's apologies and attempts to detain herwere equally feeble, --as it seemed to him that this was the only chancehe might have of seeing Clementina except in company with Fletcher. AsMrs. Ramirez left he lit a cigarette and listlessly walked up anddown the gallery. But Clementina did not come, neither did his hostessreturn. A subdued step in the passage raised his hopes, --it was onlythe grizzled major domo, to show him his room that he might prepare fordinner. 

He followed mechanically down the long passage to a second corridor. There was a chance that he might meet Clementina, but he reached hisroom without encountering any one. It was a large vaulted apartment witha single window, a deep embrasure in the thick wall that seemed to focuslike a telescope some forgotten, sequestered part of the leafy garden. While washing his hands, gazing absently at the green vignette framed bythe dark opening, his attention was drawn to a movement of the foliage, stirred apparently by the rapid passage of two half-hidden figures. Thequick flash of a feminine skirt seemed to indicate the coy flight ofsome romping maid of the casa, and the pursuit and struggle of hervaquero swain. To a despairing lover even the spectacle of innocent, pastoral happiness in others is not apt to be soothing, and Grant wasturning impatiently away when he suddenly stopped with a rigid face andquickly approached the window. In her struggles with the unseen Corydon, the clustering leaves seemed to have yielded at the same moment with thecoy Chloris, and parting--disclosed a stolen kiss! Grant's hand lay likeice against the wall. For, disengaging Fletcher's arm from her waistand freeing her skirt from the foliage, it was the calm, passionlessClementina herself who stepped out, and moved pensively towards thecasa. 

CHAPER XI. 

"Readers of the 'Clarion' will have noticed that allusion has beenfrequently made in these columns to certain rumors concerning the earlyhistory of Tasajara which were supposed to affect the pioneer record ofDaniel Harcourt. It was deemed by the conductors of this journal to beonly consistent with the fearless and independent duty undertaken by the'Clarion' that these rumors should be fully chronicled as part of theinformation required by the readers of a first-class newspaper, unbiasedby any consideration of the social position of the parties, but simplyas a matter of news. For this the 'Clarion' does not deem it necessaryto utter a word of apology. But for that editorial comment or attitudewhich the proprietors felt was justified by the reliable sources oftheir information they now consider it only due in honor to themselves, their readers, and Mr. Harcourt to fully and freely apologize. A patientand laborious investigation enables them to state that the alleged factspublished by the 'Clarion' and copied by other journals are utterlyunsupported by testimony, and the charges--although more or lessvague--which were based upon them are equally untenable. We are nowsatisfied that one 'Elijah Curtis, ' a former pioneer of Tasajara whodisappeared five years ago, and was supposed to be drowned, has not onlymade no claim to the Tasajara property, as alleged, but has given nosign of his equally alleged resuscitation and present existence, andthat on the minutest investigation there appears nothing either in hisdisappearance, or the transfer of his property to Daniel Harcourt, that could in any way disturb the uncontested title to Tasajara or theunimpeachable character of its present owner. The whole story now seemsto have been the outcome of one of those stupid rural hoaxes too commonin California. "

"Well, " said Mrs. Ashwood, laying aside the 'Clarion' with a skepticalshrug of her pretty shoulders, as she glanced up at her brother; "Isuppose this means that you are going to propose again to the younglady?"

"I have, " said Jack Shipley, "that's the worst of it--and got my answerbefore this came out. "

"Jack!" said Mrs. Ashwood, thoroughly surprised. 

"Yes! You see, Conny, as I told you three weeks ago, she said she wantedtime to consider, --that she scarcely knew me, and all that! Well, Ithought it wasn't exactly a gentleman's business to seem to stand offafter that last attack on her father, and so, last week, I went downto San Jose, where she was staying, and begged her not to keep me insuspense. And, by Jove! she froze me with a look, and said that withthese aspersions on her father's character, she preferred not to beunder obligations to any one. "

"And you believed her?"

"Oh, hang it all! Look here, Conny, --I wish you'd just try for once tofind out some good in that family, besides what that sentimentalyoung widower John Milton may have. You seem to think because they'vequarreled with HIM there isn't a virtue left among them. "

Far from seeming to offer any suggestion of feminine retaliation, Mrs. Ashwood smiled sweetly. "My dear Jack, I have no desire to keep you fromtrying your luck again with Miss Clementina, if that's what you mean, and indeed I shouldn't be surprised if a family who felt a mesallianceas sensitively as the Harcourts felt that affair of their son's, wouldbe as keenly alive to the advantages of a good match for their daughter. As to young Mr. Harcourt, he never talked to me of the vices of hisfamily, nor has he lately troubled me much with the presence of his ownvirtues. I haven't heard from him since we came here. "

"I suppose he is satisfied with the government berth you got for him, "returned her brother dryly. 

"He was very grateful to Senator Flynn, who appreciates his talents, but who offered it to him as a mere question of fitness, " replied Mrs. Ashwood with great precision of statement. "But you don't seem to knowhe declined it on account of his other work. "

"Preferred his old Bohemian ways, eh? You can't change those fellows, Conny. They can't get over the fascinations of vagabondage. Sorry yourlady-patroness scheme didn't work. Pity you couldn't have promoted himin the line of his profession, as the Grand Duchess of Girolstein didFritz. "

"For Heaven's sake, Jack, go to Clementina! You may not be successful, but there at least the perfect gentlemanliness and good taste of yourillustrations will not be thrown away. "

"I think of going to San Francisco tomorrow, anyway, " returned Jack withaffected carelessness. "I'm getting rather bored with this wild seasidewatering place and its glitter of ocean and hopeless background ofmountain. It's nothing to me that 'there's no land nearer than Japan'out there. It may be very healthful to the tissues, but it's wearinessto the spirit, and I don't see why we can't wait at San Francisco tillthe rains send us further south, as well as here. "

He had walked to the balcony of their sitting-room in the little seasidehotel where this conversation took place, and gazed discontentedly overthe curving bay and sandy shore before him. After a slight pause Mrs. Ashwood stepped out beside him. 

"Very likely I may go with you, " she said, with a perceptible tone ofweariness. "We will see after the post arrives. "

"By the way, there is a little package for you in my room, that camethis morning. I brought it up, but forgot to give it to you. You'll findit on my table. "

Mrs. Ashwood abstractedly turned away and entered her brother's roomfrom the same balcony. The forgotten parcel, which looked like a rollof manuscript, was lying on his dressing-table. She gazed attentively atthe handwriting on the wrapper and then gave a quick glance around her. A sudden and subtle change came over her. She neither flushed nor paled, nor did the delicate lines of expression in her face quiver or change. But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergosome exquisite suffusion. As the medicines which the Arabian physicianhad concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languidroyal blood of Persia, so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flowin upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform herweary spirit. 

"Jack!" she called, in a high clear voice. But Jack had already gonefrom the balcony when she reached it with an elastic step and a quickyouthful swirl and rustling of her skirt. He was lighting his cigar inthe garden. 

"Jack, " she said, leaning half over the railing, "come back here in anhour and we'll talk over that matter of yours again. "

Jack looked up eagerly and as if he might even come up then, but sheadded quickly, "In about an hour--I must think it over, " and withdrew. 

She re-entered the sitting-room, shut the door carefully and locked it, half pulled down the blind, walking once or twice around the table onwhich the parcel lay, with one eye on it like a graceful cat. Then shesuddenly sat down, took it up with a grave practical face, examined thepostmark curiously, and opened it with severe deliberation. It containeda manuscript and a letter of four closely written pages. She glanced atthe manuscript with bright approving eyes, ran her fingers through itsleaves and then laid it carefully and somewhat ostentatiously on thetable beside her. Then, still holding the letter in her hand, she roseand glanced out of the window at her bored brother lounging towards thebeach and at the heaving billows beyond, and returned to her seat. Thisapparently important preliminary concluded, she began to read. 

There were, as already stated, four blessed pages of it! All vital, earnest, palpitating with youthful energy, preposterous in premises, precipitate in conclusions, --yet irresistible and convincing to everywoman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it, yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithetor expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objectedto, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not aline of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it waspoetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to bewritten less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconsciousflattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. And yet sopotent was its individuality that it required no signature. No one butJohn Milton Harcourt could have written it. His personality stood out ofit so strongly that once or twice Mrs. Ashwood almost unconsciouslyput up her little hand before her face with a half mischievous, half-deprecating smile, as if the big honest eyes of its writer wereupon her. 

It began by an elaborate apology for declining the appointment offeredhim by one of her friends, which he was bold enough to think had beenprompted by her kind heart. That was like her, but yet what she mightdo to any one; and he preferred to think of her as the sweet and gentlelady who had recognized his merit without knowing him, rather than thepowerful and gracious benefactress who wanted to reward him when she didknow him. The crown that she had all unconsciously placed upon his headthat afternoon at the little hotel at Crystal Spring was more to himthan the Senator's appointment; perhaps he was selfish, but he could notbear that she who had given so much should believe that he could accepta lesser gift. All this and much more! Some of it he had wanted to sayto her in San Francisco at times when they had met, but he could notfind the words. But she had given him the courage to go on and do theonly thing he was fit for, and he had resolved to stick to that, andperhaps do something once more that might make him hear again her voiceas he had heard it that day, and again see the light that had shone inher eyes as she sat there and read. And this was why he was sending hera manuscript. She might have forgotten that she had told him a strangestory of her cousin who had disappeared--which she thought he mightat some time work up. Here it was. Perhaps she might not recognize itagain, in the way he had written it here; perhaps she did not reallymean it when she had given him permission to use it, but he rememberedher truthful eyes and believed her--and in any event it was hers to dowith what she liked. It had been a great pleasure for him to write itand think that she would see it; it was like seeing her himself--thatwas in HIS BETTER SELF--more worthy the companionship of a beautiful andnoble woman than the poor young man she would have helped. This was whyhe had not called the week before she went away. But for all that, shehad made his life less lonely, and he should be ever grateful to her. Hecould never forget how she unconsciously sympathized with him that dayover the loss that had blighted his life forever, --yet even then he didnot know that she, herself, had passed through the same suffering. Butjust here the stricken widow of thirty, after a vain attempt to keep upthe knitted gravity of her eyebrows, bowed her dimpling face overthe letter of the blighted widower of twenty, and laughed so long andsilently that the tears stood out like dew on her light-brown eyelashes. 

But she became presently severe again, and finished her reading of theletter gravely. Then she folded it carefully, deposited it in a box onher table, which she locked. After a few minutes, however, she unlockedthe box again and transferred the letter to her pocket. The serenityof her features did not relax again, although her previous prettyprepossession of youthful spirit was still indicated in her movements. Going into her bedroom, she reappeared in a few minutes with a lightcloak thrown over her shoulders and a white-trimmed broad-brimmed hat. Then she rolled up the manuscript in a paper, and called her Frenchmaid. As she stood there awaiting her with the roll in her hand, shemight have been some young girl on her way to her music lesson. 

"If my brother returns before I do, tell him to wait. "

"Madame is going"--

"Out, " said Mrs. Ashwood blithely, and tripped downstairs. 

She made her way directly to the shore where she remembered there wasa group of rocks affording a shelter from the northwest trade winds. It was reached at low water by a narrow ridge of sand, and here she hadoften basked in the sun with her book. It was here that she now unrolledJohn Milton's manuscript and read. 

It was the story she had told him, but interpreted by his poetry andadorned by his fancy until the facts as she remembered them seemed tobe no longer hers, or indeed truths at all. She had always believedher cousin's unhappy temperament to have been the result of a moral andphysical idiosyncrasy, --she found it here to be the effect of a lifelongand hopeless passion for herself! The ingenious John Milton had given apoet's precocity to the youth whom she had only known as a suspicious, moody boy, had idealized him as a sensitive but songless Byron, hadgiven him the added infirmity of pulmonary weakness, and a handkerchiefthat in moments of great excitement, after having been hurriedly pressedto his pale lips, was withdrawn "with a crimson stain. " Opposed to thisinteresting figure--the more striking to her as she had been hithertohaunted by the impression that her cousin during his boyhood had beensubject to facial eruption and boils--was her own equally idealizedself. Cruelly kind to her cousin and gentle with his weaknesses whilecalmly ignoring their cause, leading him unconsciously step by step inhis fatal passion, he only became aware by accident that she nourishedan ideal hero in the person of a hard, proud, middle-aged practicalman of the world, --her future husband! At this picture of the late Mr. Ashwood, who had really been an indistinctive social bon vivant, hisamiable relict grew somewhat hysterical. The discovery of her realfeelings drove the consumptive cousin into a secret, self-imposed exileon the shores of the Pacific, where he hoped to find a grave. But thecomplete and sudden change of life and scene, the balm of the wild woodsand the wholesome barbarism of nature, wrought a magical change in hisphysical health and a philosophical rest in his mind. He married thedaughter of an Indian chief. Years passed, the heroine--a rich andstill young and beautiful widow--unwittingly sought the same medicinalsolitude. Here in the depth of the forest she encountered her formerplaymate; the passion which he had fondly supposed was dead revived inher presence, and for the first time she learned from his bearded lipsthe secret of his passion. Alas! not SHE alone! The contiguous forestcould not be bolted out, and the Indian wife heard all. Recognizing thesituation with aboriginal directness of purpose, she committed suicidein the fond belief that it would reunite the survivors. But in vain; thecousins parted on the spot to meet no more. 

Even Mrs. Ashwood's predilection for the youthful writer could notoverlook the fact that the denouement was by no means novel nor thesituation human, but yet it was here that she was most interested andfascinated. The description of the forest was a description of the woodwhere she had first met Harcourt; the charm of it returned, until shealmost seemed to again inhale its balsamic freshness in the pages beforeher. Now, as then, her youth came back with the same longing and regret. But more bewildering than all, it was herself that moved there, paintedwith the loving hand of the narrator. For the first time she experiencedthe delicious flattery of seeing herself as only a lover could see her. The smallest detail of her costume was suggested with an accuracy thatpleasantly thrilled her feminine sense. The grace of her figure slowlymoving through the shadow, the curves of her arm and the delicacy of herhand that held the bridle rein, the gentle glow of her softly roundedcheek, the sweet mystery of her veiled eyes and forehead, and theescaping gold of her lovely hair beneath her hat were all in turnmasterfully touched or tenderly suggested. And when to this was addedthe faint perfume of her nearer presence--the scent she always used--thedelicate revelations of her withdrawn gauntlet, the bracelet claspingher white wrist, and at last the thrilling contact of her soft hand onhis arm, --she put down the manuscript and blushed like a very girl. Thenshe started. 

A shout!--HIS voice surely!--and the sound of oars in their rowlocks. 

An instant revulsion of feeling overtook her. With a quick movement sheinstantly hid the manuscript beneath her cloak and stood up erect andindignant. Not twenty yards away, apparently advancing from the oppositeshore of the bay, was a boat. It contained only John Milton, resting onhis oars and scanning the group of rocks anxiously. His face, which wasquite strained with anxiety, suddenly flushed when he saw her, and thenrecognizing the unmistakable significance of her look and attitude, paled once more. He bent over his oars again; a few strokes brought himclose to the rock. 

"I beg your pardon, " he said hesitatingly, as he turned towards her andlaid aside his oars, "but--I thought--you were--in danger. "

She glanced quickly round her. She had forgotten the tide! The ledgebetween her and the shore was already a foot under brown sea-water. Yetif she had not thought that it would look ridiculous, she would haveleaped down even then and waded ashore. 

"It's nothing, " she said coldly, with the air of one to whom thesituation was an everyday occurrence; "it's only a few steps and aslight wetting--and my brother would have been here in a moment more. "

John Milton's frank eyes made no secret of his mortification. "I oughtnot to have disturbed you, I know, " he said quickly, "I had no right. But I was on the other shore opposite and I saw you come down here--thatis"--he blushed prodigiously--"I thought it MIGHT BE you--and Iventured--I mean--won't you let me row you ashore?"

There seemed to be no reasonable excuse for refusing. She slippedquickly into the boat without waiting for his helping hand, avoidingthat contact which only a moment ago she was trying to recall. 

A few strokes brought them ashore. He continued his explanation with thehopeless frankness and persistency of youth and inexperience. "I onlycame here the day before yesterday. I would not have come, but Mr. Fletcher, who has a cottage on the other shore, sent for me to offerme my old place on the 'Clarion. ' I had no idea of intruding upon yourprivacy by calling here without permission. "

Mrs. Ashwood had resumed her conventional courtesy without howeverlosing her feminine desire to make her companion pay for the agitationhe had caused her. "We would have been always pleased to see you, " shesaid vaguely, "and I hope, as you are here now, you will come with me tothe hotel. My brother"--

But he still retained his hold of the boat-rope without moving, andcontinued, "I saw you yesterday, through the telescope, sitting in yourbalcony; and later at night I think it was your shadow I saw near theblue shaded lamp in the sitting-room by the window, --I don't mean theRED LAMP that you have in your own room. I watched you until you put outthe blue lamp and lit the red one. I tell you this--because--because--Ithought you might be reading a manuscript I sent you. At least, " hesmiled faintly, "I LIKED to think it so. "

In her present mood this struck her only as persistent and somewhategotistical. But she felt herself now on ground where she could dealfirmly with him. 

"Oh, yes, " she said gravely. "I got it and thank you very much for it. Iintended to write to you. "

"Don't, " he said, looking at her fixedly. "I can see you don't like it. "

"On the contrary, " she said promptly, "I think it beautifully written, and very ingenious in plot and situation. Of course it isn't the story Itold you--I didn't expect that, for I'm not a genius. The man is not atall like my cousin, you know, and the woman--well really, to tell thetruth, SHE is simply inconceivable!"

"You think so?" he said gravely. He had been gazing abstractedly at someshining brown seaweed in the water, and when he raised his eyes to hersthey seemed to have caught its color. 

"Think so? I'm positive! There's no such a woman; she isn't HUMAN. Butlet us walk to the hotel. "

"Thank you, but I must go back now. "

"But at least let my brother thank you for taking his place--in rescuingme. It was so thoughtful in you to put off at once when you saw I wassurrounded. I might have been in great danger. "

"Please don't make fun of me, Mrs. Ashwood, " he said with a faintreturn of his boyish smile. "You know there was no danger. I haveonly interrupted you in a nap or a reverie--and I can see now that youevidently came here to be alone. "

Holding the manuscript more closely hidden under the folds of her cloak, she smiled enigmatically. "I think I DID, and it seems that the tidethought so too, and acted upon it. But you will come up to the hotelwith me, surely?"

"No, I am going back now. " There was a sudden firmness about the youngfellow which she had never before noticed. This was evidently thecreature who had married in spite of his family. 

"Won't you come back long enough to take your manuscript? I will pointout the part I refer to, and--we will talk it over. "

"There is no necessity. I wrote to you that you might keep it; it isyours; it was written for you and none other. It is quite enough for meto know that you were good enough to read it. But will you do one thingmore for me? Read it again! If you find anything in it the second timeto change your views--if you find"--

"I will let you know, " she said quickly. "I will write to you as Iintended. "

"No, I didn't mean that. I meant that if you found the woman lessinconceivable and more human, don't write to me, but put your red lampin your window instead of the blue one. I will watch for it and see it. "

"I think I will be able to explain myself much better with simple penand ink, " she said dryly, "and it will be much more useful to you. "

He lifted his hat gravely, shoved off the boat, leaped into it, andbefore she could hold out her hand was twenty feet away. She turned andran quickly up the rocks. When she reached the hotel, she could see theboat already half across the bay. 

Entering her sitting-room she found that her brother, tired of waitingfor her, had driven out. Taking the hidden manuscript from her cloakshe tossed it with a slight gesture of impatience on the table. Then shesummoned the landlord. 

"Is there a town across the bay?"

"No! the whole mountain-side belongs to Don Diego Fletcher. He livesaway back in the coast range at Los Gatos, but he has a cottage and millon the beach. "

"Don Diego Fletcher--Fletcher! Is he a Spaniard then?"

"Half and half, I reckon; he's from the lower country, I believe. "

"Is he here often?"

"Not much; he has mills at Los Gatos, wheat ranches at Santa Clara, andowns a newspaper in 'Frisco! But he's here now. There were lights in hishouse last night, and his cutter lies off the point. "

"Could you get a small package and note to him?"

"Certainly; it is only a row across the bay. "

"Thank you. "

Without removing her hat and cloak she sat down at the table and began aletter to Don Diego Fletcher. She begged to inclose to him a manuscriptwhich she was satisfied, for the interests of its author, was better inhis hands than hers. It had been given to her by the author, Mr. J. M. Harcourt, whom she understood was engaged on Mr. Fletcher's paper, the"Clarion. " In fact, it had been written at HER suggestion, and from anincident in real life of which she was cognizant. She was sorry to saythat on account of some very foolish criticism of her own as to theFACTS, the talented young author had become so dissatisfied with it asto make it possible that, if left to himself, this very charming andbeautifully written story would remain unpublished. As an admirer ofMr. Harcourt's genius, and a friend of his family, she felt that such anevent would be deplorable, and she therefore begged to leave it toMr. Fletcher's delicacy and tact to arrange with the author for itspublication. She knew that Mr. Fletcher had only to read it to beconvinced of its remarkable literary merit, and she again would impressupon him the fact that her playful and thoughtless criticism--which waspersonal and confidential--was only based upon the circumstances thatthe author had really made a more beautiful and touching story than thepoor facts which she had furnished seemed to warrant. She had onlyjust learned the fortunate circumstance that Mr. Fletcher was in theneighborhood of the hotel where she was staying with her brother. 

With the same practical, business-like directness, but perhaps a certainunbusiness-like haste superadded, she rolled up the manuscript anddispatched it with the letter. 

This done, however, a slight reaction set in, and having taken off herhat and shawl, she dropped listlessly on a chair by the window, but assuddenly rose and took a seat in the darker part of the room. She feltthat she had done right, that highest but most depressing of humanconvictions! It was entirely for his good. There was no reason why hisbest interests should suffer for his folly. If anybody was to sufferit was she. But what nonsense was she thinking! She would write to himlater when she was a little cooler, --as she had said. But then he haddistinctly told her, and very rudely too, that he didn't want her towrite. Wanted her to make SIGNALS to him, --the idiot! and probably waseven now watching her with a telescope. It was really too preposterous!

The result was that her brother found her on his return in a somewhatuncertain mood, and, as a counselor, variable and conflicting injudgment. If this Clementina, who seemed to have the family qualities ofobstinacy and audacity, really cared for him, she certainly wouldn't letdelicacy stand in the way of letting him know it--and he was thereforesafe to wait a little. A few moments later, she languidly declared thatshe was afraid that she was no counselor in such matters; really shewas getting too old to take any interest in that sort of thing, and shenever had been a matchmaker! By the way now, wasn't it odd thatthis neighbor, that rich capitalist across the bay, should be calledFletcher, and "James Fletcher" too, for Diego meant "James" in Spanish. Exactly the same name as poor "Cousin Jim" who disappeared. Did heremember her old playmate Jim? But her brother thought something elsewas a deuced sight more odd, namely, that this same Don Diego Fletcherwas said to be very sweet on Clementina now, and was always in hercompany at the Ramirez. And that, with this "Clarion" apology on the topof it, looked infernally queer. 

Mrs. Ashwood felt a sudden consternation. Here had she--Jack'ssister--just been taking Jack's probable rival into confidentialcorrespondence! She turned upon Jack sharply:--

"Why didn't you say that before?"

"I did tell you, " he said gloomily, "but you didn't listen. But whatdifference does it make to you now?"

"None whatever, " said Mrs. Ashwood calmly as she walked out of the room. 

Nevertheless the afternoon passed wearily, and her usual ride into theupland canyon did not reanimate her. For reasons known best to herselfshe did not take her after-dinner stroll along the shore to watch theoutlying fog. At a comparatively early hour, while there was still aroseate glow in the western sky, she appeared with grim deliberation, and the blue lamp-shade in her hand, and placed it over the lamp whichshe lit and stood on her table beside the window. This done she sat downand began to write with bright-eyed but vicious complacency. 

"But you don't want that light AND the window, Constance, " said Jackwonderingly. 

Mrs. Ashwood could not stand the dreadful twilight. 

"But take away your lamp and you'll have light enough from the sunset, "responded Jack. 

That was just what she didn't want! The light from the window was thathorrid vulgar red glow which she hated. It might be very romantic andsuit lovers like Jack, but as SHE had some work to do, she wanted theblue shade of the lamp to correct that dreadful glare. 

CHAPER XII. 

John Milton had rowed back without lifting his eyes to Mrs. Ashwood'sreceding figure. He believed that he was right in declining herinvitation, although he had a miserable feeling that it entailed seeingher for the last time. With all that he believed was his previousexperience of the affections, he was still so untutored as to beconfused as to his reasons for declining, or his right to have beenshocked and disappointed at her manner. It seemed to him sufficientlyplain that he had offended the most perfect woman he had ever knownwithout knowing more. The feeling he had for her was none theless powerful because, in his great simplicity, it was vague andunformulated. And it was a part of this strange simplicity that in hismiserable loneliness his thoughts turned unconsciously to his dead wifefor sympathy and consolation. Loo would have understood him!

Mr. Fletcher, who had received him on his arrival with singulareffusiveness and cordiality, had put off their final arrangements untilafter dinner, on account of pressing business. It was therefore withsome surprise that an hour before the time he was summoned to Fletcher'sroom. He was still more surprised to find him sitting at his desk, fromwhich a number of business papers and letters had been hurriedly thrustaside to make way for a manuscript. A single glance at it was enoughto show the unhappy John Milton that it was the one he had sent to Mrs. Ashwood. The color flashed to his cheek and he felt a mist before hiseyes. His employer's face, on the contrary, was quite pale, and hiseyes were fixed on Harcourt with a singular intensity. His voice too, although under great control, was hard and strange. 

"Read that, " he said, handing the young man a letter. 

The color again streamed into John Milton's face as he recognized thehand of Mrs. Ashwood, and remained there while he read it. When he putit down, however, he raised his frank eyes to Fletcher's, and said witha certain dignity and manliness: "What she says is the truth, sir. Butit is I alone who am at fault. This manuscript is merely MY stupid ideaof a very simple story she was once kind enough to tell me when we weretalking of strange occurrences in real life, which she thought I mightsome time make use of in my work. I tried to embellish it, and failed. That's all. I will take it back, --it was written only for her. "

There was such an irresistible truthfulness and sincerity in his voiceand manner, that any idea of complicity with the sender was dismissedfrom Fletcher's mind. As Harcourt, however, extended his hand for themanuscript Fletcher interfered. 

"You forget that you gave it to her, and she has sent it to me. If Idon't keep it, it can be returned to her only. Now may I ask who is thislady who takes such an interest in your literary career? Have you knownher long? Is she a friend of your family?"

The slight sneer that accompanied his question restored the naturalcolor to the young man's face, but kindled his eye ominously. 

"No, " he said briefly. "I met her accidentally about two months ago andas accidentally found out that she had taken an interest in one of thefirst things I ever wrote for your paper. She neither knew you nor me. It was then that she told me this story; she did not even then know whoI was, though she had met some of my family. She was very good and hasgenerously tried to help me. "

Fletcher's eyes remained fixed upon him. 

"But this tells me only WHAT she is, not WHO she is. "

"I am afraid you must inquire of her brother, Mr. Shipley, " saidHarcourt curtly. 

"Shipley?"

"Yes; he is traveling with her for his health, and they are goingsouth when the rains come. They are wealthy Philadelphians, I believe, and--and she is a widow. "

Fletcher picked up her note and glanced again at the signature, "Constance Ashwood. " There was a moment of silence, when he resumed inquite a different voice: "It's odd I never met them nor they me. "

As he seemed to be waiting for a response, John Milton said simply:"I suppose it's because they have not been here long, and are somewhatreserved. "

Mr. Fletcher laid aside the manuscript and letter, and took up hisapparently suspended work. 

"When you see this Mrs. --Mrs. Ashwood again, you might say"--

"I shall not see her again, " interrupted John Milton hastily. 

Mr. Fletcher shrugged his shoulders. "Very well, " he said with apeculiar smile, "I will write to her. Now, Mr. Harcourt, " he continuedwith a sudden business brevity, "if you please, we'll drop this affairand attend to the matter for which I just summoned you. Since yesterdayan important contract for which I have been waiting is concluded, andits performance will take me East at once. I have made arrangements thatyou will be left in the literary charge of the 'Clarion. ' It is only afitting recompense that the paper owes to you and your father, --to whomI hope to see you presently reconciled. But we won't discuss that now!As my affairs take me back to Los Gatos within half an hour, I am sorryI cannot dispense my hospitality in person, --but you will dine andsleep here to-night. Good-by. As you go out will you please send up Mr. Jackson to me. " He nodded briefly, seemed to plunge instantly into hispapers again, and John Milton was glad to withdraw. 

The shock he had felt at Mrs. Ashwood's frigid disposition of his wishesand his manuscript had benumbed him to any enjoyment or appreciation ofthe change in his fortune. He wandered out of the house and descendedto the beach in a dazed, bewildered way, seeing only the words of herletter to Fletcher before him, and striving to grasp some other meaningfrom them than their coldly practical purport. Perhaps this was hercruel revenge for his telling her not to write to him. Could she nothave divined it was only his fear of what she might say! And now itwas all over! She had washed her hands of him with the sending of thatmanuscript and letter, and he would pass out of her memory as a foolish, conceited ingrate, --perhaps a figure as wearily irritating and stupid toher as the cousin she had known. He mechanically lifted his eyes to thedistant hotel; the glow was still in the western sky, but the blue lampwas already shining in the window. His cheek flushed quickly, and heturned away as if she could have seen his face. Yes--she despised him, and THAT was his answer!

When he returned, Mr. Fletcher had gone. He dragged through a dinnerwith Mr. Jackson, Fletcher's secretary, and tried to realize his goodfortune in listening to the subordinate's congratulations. "But Ithought, " said Jackson, "you had slipped up on your luck to-day, whenthe old man sent for you. He was quite white, and ready to rip out aboutsomething that had just come in. I suppose it was one of those anonymousthings against your father, --the old man's dead set against 'em now. "But John Milton heard him vaguely, and presently excused himself for arow on the moonlit bay. 

The active exertion, with intervals of placid drifting along theland-locked shore, somewhat soothed him. The heaving Pacific beyondwas partly hidden in a low creeping fog, but the curving bay was softlyradiant. The rocks whereon she sat that morning, the hotel where shewas now quietly reading, were outlined in black and silver. In thisdangerous contiguity it seemed to him that her presence returned, --notthe woman who had met him so coldly; who had penned those lines; thewoman from whom he was now parting forever, but the blameless ideal hehad worshiped from the first, and which he now felt could never pass outof his life again! He recalled their long talks, their rarer rides andwalks in the city; her quick appreciation and ready sympathy; her prettycuriosity and half-maternal consideration of his foolish youthful past;even the playful way that she sometimes seemed to make herself youngeras if to better understand him. Lingering at times in the shadow of theheadland, he fancied he saw the delicate nervous outlines of her facenear his own again; the faint shading of her brown lashes, the softintelligence of her gray eyes. Drifting idly in the placid moonlight, pulling feverishly across the swell of the channel, or lying on his oarsin the shallows of the rocks, but always following the curves of thebay, like a bird circling around a lighthouse, it was far in the nightbefore he at last dragged his boat upon the sand. Then he turned to lookonce more at her distant window. He would be away in the morning and heshould never see it again! It was very late, but the blue light seemedto be still burning unalterably and inflexibly. 

But even as he gazed, a change came over it. A shadow seemed to passbefore the blind; the blue shade was lifted; for an instant he could seethe colorless star-like point of the light itself show clearly. It wasover now; she was putting out the lamp. Suddenly he held his breath!A roseate glow gradually suffused the window like a burning blush; thecurtain was drawn aside, and the red lamp-shade gleamed out surely andsteadily into the darkness. 

Transfigured and breathless in the moonlight, John Milton gazed on it. It seemed to him the dawn of Love!

CHAPER XIII. 

The winter rains had come. But so plenteously and persistently, andwith such fateful preparation of circumstance, that the long looked forblessing presently became a wonder, an anxiety, and at last a slowlywidening terror. Before a month had passed every mountain, stream, andwatercourse, surcharged with the melted snows of the Sierras, had becomea great tributary; every tributary a great river, until, pouring theirgreat volume into the engorged channels of the American and Sacramentorivers, they overleaped their banks and became as one vast inland sea. Even to a country already familiar with broad and striking catastrophe, the flood was a phenomenal one. For days the sullen overflow lay in thevalley of the Sacramento, enormous, silent, currentless--except wherethe surplus waters rolled through Carquinez Straits, San Francisco Bay, and the Golden Gate, and reappeared as the vanished Sacramento River, inan outflowing stream of fresh and turbid water fifty miles at sea. 

Across the vast inland expanse, brooded over by a leaden sky, leadenrain fell, dimpling like shot the sluggish pools of the flood; acloudy chaos of fallen trees, drifting barns and outhouses, wagons andagricultural implements moved over the surface of the waters, or circledslowly around the outskirts of forests that stood ankle deep in ooze andthe current, which in serried phalanx they resisted still. As night fellthese forms became still more vague and chaotic, and were interspersedwith the scattered lanterns and flaming torches of relief-boats, oroccasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats, feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of afurnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream andinto the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at timesthe looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks thatilluminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black anddripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulkon either side brought a quick response from the relief-boats, and thedetaching of a canoe with a blazing pine-knot in its bow into the outerdarkness. 

It was late in the afternoon when Lawrence Grant, from the deck of oneof the larger tugs, sighted what had been once the estuary of SidonCreek. The leader of a party of scientific observation and relief, hehad kept a tireless watch of eighteen hours, keenly noticing the work ofdevastation, the changes in the channel, the prospects of abatement, andthe danger that still threatened. He had passed down the length of thesubmerged Sacramento valley, through the Straits of Carquinez, and wasnow steaming along the shores of the upper reaches of San Francisco Bay. Everywhere the same scene of desolation, --vast stretches of tule land, once broken up by cultivation and dotted with dwellings, now clearlyerased on that watery chart; long lines of symmetrical perspective, breaking the monotonous level, showing orchards buried in the flood;Indian mounds and natural eminences covered with cattle or hastilyerected camps; half submerged houses, whose solitary chimneys, however, still gave signs of an undaunted life within; isolated groups of trees, with their lower branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of theflood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or patheticallysheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywherethe same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction, --ahorrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality ofsurface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried andforgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion, --a devastation voiceless, passionless, and supine. 

The boat had slowed up before what seemed to be a collection ofdisarranged houses with the current flowing between lines that indicatedthe existence of thoroughfares and streets. Many of the lighter woodenbuildings were huddled together on the street corners with their gablesto the flow; some appeared as if they had fallen on their knees, andothers lay complacently on their sides, like the houses of a child'stoy village. An elevator still lifted itself above the other warehouses;from the centre of an enormous square pond, once the plaza, still arosea "Liberty pole, " or flagstaff, which now supported a swinging lantern, and in the distance appeared the glittering dome of some publicbuilding. Grant recognized the scene at once. It was all that was leftof the invincible youth of Tasajara!

As this was an objective point of the scheme of survey and relief forthe district, the boat was made fast to the second story of one of thewarehouses. It was now used as a general store and depot, and bore asingular resemblance in its interior to Harcourt's grocery at Sidon. This suggestion was the more fatefully indicated by the fact that halfa dozen men were seated around a stove in the centre, more or lessgiven up to a kind of philosophical and lazy enjoyment of their enforcedidleness. And when to this was added the more surprising coincidencethat the party consisted of Billings, Peters, and Wingate, --formerresidents of Sidon and first citizens of Tasajara, --the resemblance wascomplete. 

They were ruined, --but they accepted their common fate with a certainIndian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time liftedthem above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was adeep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy. At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated byBillings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there wasnobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by a Vigilance Committeethere was no use resolootin' over. " When the Reverend Doctor Pilsburyhad suggested an appeal to a Higher Power, Peters had replied, goodhumoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that stylewas above being interfered with by prayer. " At first the calamity hadbeen a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, thesting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumedignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in theirattempts to understand its peculiar humor. 

"How about that Europ-e-an trip o' yours, Peters?" said Billings, meditatively, from the depths of his chair. "Looks as if thoseCrowned Heads over there would have to wait till the water goes downconsiderable afore you kin trot out your wife and darters before 'em!"

"Yes, " said Peters, "it rather pints that way; and ez far ez I kin see, Mame Billings ain't goin' to no Saratoga, neither, this year. "

"Reckon the boys won't hang about old Harcourt's Free Library to seethe girls home from lectures and singing-class much this year, " saidWingate. "Wonder if Harcourt ever thought o' this the day he opened it, and made that rattlin' speech o' his about the new property? Clarksays everything built on that made ground has got to go after the waterfalls. Rough on Harcourt after all his other losses, eh? He oughterhave closed up with that scientific chap, Grant, and married him toClementina while the big boom was on"--

"Hush!" said Peters, indicating Grant, who had just entered quietly. 

"Don't mind me, gentlemen, " said Grant, stepping towards the groupwith a grave but perfectly collected face; "on the contrary, I am veryanxious to hear all the news of Harcourt's family. I left for New Yorkbefore the rainy season, and have only just got back. "

His speech and manner appeared to be so much in keeping with theprevailing grim philosophy that Billings, after a glance at the others, went on. "Ef you left afore the first rains, " said he, "you must haveleft only the steamer ahead of Fletcher, when he run off with ClementinaHarcourt, and you might have come across them on their wedding trip inNew York. "

Not a muscle of Grant's face changed under their eager and cruelscrutiny. "No, I didn't, " he returned quietly. "But why did she runaway? Did the father object to Fletcher? If I remember rightly he wasrich and a good match. "

"Yes, but I reckon the old man hadn't quite got over the 'Clarion'abuse, for all its eating humble-pie and taking back its yarns of him. And may be he might have thought the engagement rather sudden. They saythat she'd only met Fletcher the day afore the engagement. "

"That be d----d, " said Peters, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, andstartling the lazy resignation of his neighbors by taking his feet fromthe stove and sitting upright. "I tell ye, gentlemen, I'm sick o' thissort o' hog-wash that's been ladled round to us. That gal ClementinaHarcourt and that feller Fletcher had met not only once, but MANY timesafore--yes! they were old friends if it comes to that, a matter of sixyears ago. "

Grant's eyes were fixed eagerly on the speaker, although the othersscarcely turned their heads. 

"You know, gentlemen, " said Peters, "I never took stock in this yerstory of the drownin' of 'Lige Curtis. Why? Well, if you wanter know--inmy opinion--there never was any 'Lige Curtis!"

Billings lifted his head with difficulty; Wingate turned his face to thespeaker. 

"There never was a scrap o' paper ever found in his cabin with thename o' 'Lige Curtis on it; there never was any inquiry made for 'LigeCurtis; there never was any sorrowin' friends comin' after 'Lige Curtis. For why?--There never was any 'Lige Curtis. The man who passed himselfoff in Sidon under that name--was that man Fletcher. That's how he knewall about Harcourt's title; that's how he got his best holt on Harcourt. And he did it all to get Clementina Harcourt, whom the old man hadrefused to him in Sidon. "

A grunt of incredulity passed around the circle. Such is the fate ofhistorical innovation! Only Grant listened attentively. 

"Ye ought to tell that yarn to John Milton, " said Wingate ironically;"it's about in the style o' them stories he slings in the 'Clarion. '"

"He's made a good thing outer that job. Wonder what he gets for them?"said Peters. 

It was Billings's time to rise, and, under the influence of some strongcynical emotion, to even rise to his feet. "Gets for 'em!--GETS for 'em!I'll tell you WHAT he gets for 'em! It beats this story o' Peters's, --itbeats the flood. It beats me! Ye know that boy, gentlemen; ye know howhe uster lie round his father's store, reading flapdoodle stories andsich! Ye remember how I uster try to give him good examples and knocksome sense into him? Ye remember how, after his father's good luck, he spiled all his own chances, and ran off with his father's waitergal--all on account o' them flapdoodle books he read? Ye remember howhe sashayed round newspaper offices in 'Frisco until he could write aflapdoodle story himself? Ye wanter know what he gets for 'em. I'll tellyou. He got an interduction to one of them high-toned, highfalutin', 'don't-touch-me' rich widders from Philadelfy, --that's what he gets for'em! He got her dead set on him and his stories, that's what he gets for'em! He got her to put him up with Fletcher in the 'Clarion, '--that'swhat he gets for 'em. And darn my skin!--ef what they say is true, whilewe hard-working men are sittin' here like drowned rats--that air JohnMilton, ez never did a stitch o' live work like me yere; ez neverdid anythin' but spin yarns about US ez did WORK, is now 'gittin' for'em'--what? Guess! Why, he's gittin' THE RICH WIDDER HERSELF and HALF AMILLION DOLLARS WITH HER! Gentlemen! lib'ty is a good thing--but thar'ssome things ye gets too much lib'ty of in this country--and that's thisyer LIB'TY OF THE PRESS!"