A MOUNTAIN WOMAN

By Elia Wilkinson Peattie

 To

 My best Friend, and kindest Critic, My Husband. 

Transcriber's Note: I have omitted signature designations and haveclosed abbreviations, e. G. , "do n't" becoming "don't, " etc. In addition, I have made the following changes to the text:

 PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO 38 19 seem to seemed to 47 9 beafsteak beefsteak 56 4 divertisement divertissement 91 19 divertisement divertissement 155 17 scarfs. Scarves. 169 20 scarfs, scarves, FOREWORD. 

MOST of the tales in this little book have been printed before. "AMountain Woman" appeared in Harper's Weekly, as did "The Three Johns"and "A Resuscitation. " "Jim Lancy's Waterloo" was printed in theCosmopolitan, "A Michigan Man" in Lippincott's, and "Up the Gulch" inTwo Tales. The courtesy of these periodicals in permitting the storiesto be republished is cordially acknowledged. 

E. W. P. 

Contents

 A MOUNTAIN WOMAN

 JIM LANCY'S WATERLOO

 THE THREE JOHNS

 A RESUSCITATION

 TWO PIONEERS

 UP THE GULCH

 A MICHIGAN MAN

 A LADY OF YESTERDAY

A Mountain Woman

IF Leroy Brainard had not had such a respect for literature, he wouldhave written a book. 

As it was, he played at being an architect--and succeeded in being acharming fellow. My sister Jessica never lost an opportunity of laughingat his endeavors as an architect. 

"You can build an enchanting villa, but what would you do with acathedral?"

"I shall never have a chance at a cathedral, " he would reply. "And, besides, it always seems to me so material and so impertinent to build alittle structure of stone and wood in which to worship God!"

You see what he was like? He was frivolous, yet one could never tellwhen he would become eloquently earnest. 

Brainard went off suddenly Westward one day. I suspected that Jessicawas at the bottom of it, but I asked no questions; and I did not hearfrom him for months. Then I got a letter from Colorado. 

"I have married a mountain woman, " he wrote. "None of your puny breedof modern femininity, but a remnant left over from the heroic ages, --aprimitive woman, grand and vast of spirit, capable of true and steadfastwifehood. No sophistry about her; no knowledge even that there issophistry. Heavens! man, do you remember the rondeaux and triolets Iused to write to those pretty creatures back East? It would take a Sagaman of the old Norseland to write for my mountain woman. If I were anartist, I would paint her with the north star in her locks and her feeton purple cloud. I suppose you are at the Pier. I know you usually areat this season. At any rate, I shall direct this letter thither, andwill follow close after it. I want my wife to see something of life. AndI want her to meet your sister. "

"Dear me!" cried Jessica, when I read the letter to her; "I don't knowthat I care to meet anything quite so gigantic as that mountain woman. I'm one of the puny breed of modern femininity, you know. I don't thinkmy nerves can stand the encounter. "

"Why, Jessica!" I protested. She blushed a little. 

"Don't think bad of me, Victor. But, you see, I've a little scrap-bookof those triolets upstairs. " Then she burst into a peal of irresistiblelaughter. "I'm not laughing because I am piqued, " she said frankly. "Though any one will admit that it is rather irritating to have a manwho left you in a blasted condition recover with such extraordinarypromptness. As a philanthropist, one of course rejoices, but as a woman, Victor, it must be admitted that one has a right to feel annoyed. But, honestly, I am not ungenerous, and I am going to do him a favor. I shallwrite, and urge him not to bring his wife here. A primitive woman, withthe north star in her hair, would look well down there in the Casinoeating a pineapple ice, wouldn't she? It's all very well to have a soul, you know; but it won't keep you from looking like a guy among women whohave good dressmakers. I shudder at the thought of what the poor thingwill suffer if he brings her here. "

Jessica wrote, as she said she would; but, for all that, a fortnightlater she was walking down the wharf with the "mountain woman, " and Iwas sauntering beside Leroy. At dinner Jessica gave me no chance to talkwith our friend's wife, and I only caught the quiet contralto tones ofher voice now and then contrasting with Jessica's vivacious soprano. Adrizzling rain came up from the east with nightfall. Little groups ofshivering men and women sat about in the parlors at the card-tables, and one blond woman sang love songs. The Brainards were tired with theirjourney, and left us early. When they were gone, Jessica burst intoeulogy. 

"That is the first woman, " she declared, "I ever met who would make afit heroine for a book. "

"Then you will not feel under obligations to educate her, as youinsinuated the other day?"

"Educate her! I only hope she will help me to unlearn some of the thingsI know. I never saw such simplicity. It is antique!"

"You're sure it's not mere vacuity?" "Victor! How can you? But youhaven't talked with her. You must to-morrow. Good-night. " She gatheredup her trailing skirts and started down the corridor. Suddenly sheturned back. "For Heaven's sake!" she whispered, in an awed tone, "Inever even noticed what she had on!"

The next morning early we made up a riding party, and I rode withMrs. Brainard. She was as tall as I, and sat in her saddle as if quiteunconscious of her animal. The road stretched hard and inviting underour horses' feet. The wind smelled salt. The sky was ragged with graymasses of cloud scudding across the blue. I was beginning to glow withexhilaration, when suddenly my companion drew in her horse. 

"If you do not mind, we will go back, " she said. 

Her tone was dejected. I thought she was tired. 

"Oh, no!" she protested, when I apologized for my thoughtlessness inbringing her so far. "I'm not tired. I can ride all day. Where I comefrom, we have to ride if we want to go anywhere; but here there seems tobe no particular place to--to reach. "

"Are you so utilitarian?" I asked, laughingly. "Must you always havesome reason for everything you do? I do so many things just for the merepleasure of doing them, I'm afraid you will have a very poor opinion ofme. "

"That is not what I mean, " she said, flushing, and turning her largegray eyes on me. "You must not think I have a reason for everything Ido. " She was very earnest, and it was evident that she was unacquaintedwith the art of making conversation. "But what I mean, " she went on, "is that there is no place--no end--to reach. " She looked back over hershoulder toward the west, where the trees marked the sky line, and anexpression of loss and dissatisfaction came over her face. "Yousee, " she said, apologetically, "I'm used to different things--to themountains. I have never been where I could not see them before in mylife. "

"Ah, I see! I suppose it is odd to look up and find them not there. "

"It's like being lost, this not having anything around you. At least, I mean, " she continued slowly, as if her thought could not easily putitself in words, --"I mean it seems as if a part of the world had beentaken down. It makes you feel lonesome, as if you were living after theworld had begun to die. "

"You'll get used to it in a few days. It seems very beautiful to mehere. And then you will have so much life to divert you. "

"Life? But there is always that everywhere. "

"I mean men and women. "

"Oh! Still, I am not used to them. I think I might be not--not veryhappy with them. They might think me queer. I think I would like to showyour sister the mountains. "

"She has seen them often. "

"Oh, she told me. But I don't mean those pretty green hills such as wesaw coming here. They are not like my mountains. I like mountains thatgo beyond the clouds, with terrible shadows in the hollows, and beltsof snow lying in the gorges where the sun cannot reach, and the snow isblue in the sunshine, or shining till you think it is silver, and themist so wonderful all about it, changing each moment and drifting up anddown, that you cannot tell what name to give the colors. These mountainsof yours here in the East are so quiet; mine are shouting all the time, with the pines and the rivers. The echoes are so loud in the valley thatsometimes, when the wind is rising, we can hardly hear a man talk unlesshe raises his voice. There are four cataracts near where I live, andthey all have different voices, just as people do; and one of themis happy--a little white cataract--and it falls where the sun shinesearliest, and till night it is shining. But the others only get the sunnow and then, and they are more noisy and cruel. One of them is alwaysin the shadow, and the water looks black. That is partly because therocks all underneath it are black. It falls down twenty great ledges ina gorge with black sides, and a white mist dances all over it at everyleap. I tell father the mist is the ghost of the waters. No man evergoes there; it is too cold. The chill strikes through one, and makesyour heart feel as if you were dying. But all down the side of themountain, toward the south and the west, the sun shines on the graniteand draws long points of light out of it. Father tells me soldiersmarching look that way when the sun strikes on their bayonets. Those arethe kind of mountains I mean, Mr. Grant. "

She was looking at me with her face transfigured, as if it, like themountains she told me of, had been lying in shadow, and waiting for thedazzling dawn. 

"I had a terrible dream once, " she went on; "the most terrible dreamever I had. I dreamt that the mountains had all been taken down, andthat I stood on a plain to which there was no end. The sky was burningup, and the grass scorched brown from the heat, and it was twisting asif it were in pain. And animals, but no other person save myself, onlywild things, were crouching and looking up at that sky. They could notrun because there was no place to which to go. "

"You were having a vision of the last man, " I said. "I wonder myselfsometimes whether this old globe of ours is going to collapse suddenlyand take us with her, or whether we will disappear through slowdisastrous ages of fighting and crushing, with hunger and blight to helpus to the end. And then, at the last, perhaps, some luckless fellow, stronger than the rest, will stand amid the ribs of the rotting earthand go mad. "

The woman's eyes were fixed on me, large and luminous. "Yes, " she said;"he would go mad from the lonesomeness of it. He would be afraid to beleft alone like that with God. No one would want to be taken into God'ssecrets. "

"And our last man, " I went on, "would have to stand there on thatswaying wreck till even the sound of the crumbling earth ceased. Andhe would try to find a voice and would fail, because silence would havecome again. And then the light would go out--"

The shudder that crept over her made me stop, ashamed of myself. 

"You talk like father, " she said, with a long-drawn breath. Then shelooked up suddenly at the sun shining through a rift in those recklessgray clouds, and put out one hand as if to get it full of the headlongrollicking breeze. "But the earth is not dying, " she cried. "It iswell and strong, and it likes to go round and round among all the otherworlds. It likes the sun and moon; they are all good friends; and itlikes the people who live on it. Maybe it is they instead of the firewithin who keep it warm; or maybe it is warm just from always going, aswe are when we run. We are young, you and I, Mr. Grant, and Leroy, andyour beautiful sister, and the world is young too!" Then she laughed astrong splendid laugh, which had never had the joy taken out of itwith drawing-room restrictions; and I laughed too, and felt that we hadbecome very good companions indeed, and found myself warming to the joyof companionship as I had not since I was a boy at school. 

That afternoon the four of us sat at a table in the Casino together. TheCasino, as every one knows, is a place to amuse yourself. If you have aduty, a mission, or an aspiration, you do not take it there with you, it would be so obviously out of place; if poverty is ahead of you, youforget it; if you have brains, you hasten to conceal them; they would bea serious encumbrance. 

There was a bubbling of conversation, a rustle and flutter such as therealways is where there are many women. All the place was gay with flowersand with gowns as bright as the flowers. I remembered the apprehensionsof my sister, and studied Leroy's wife to see how she fitted into thishighly colored picture. She was the only woman in the room who seemedto wear draperies. The jaunty slash and cut of fashionable attire weremissing in the long brown folds of cloth that enveloped her figure. Ifelt certain that even from Jessica's standpoint she could not be calleda guy. Picturesque she might be, past the point of convention, but shewas not ridiculous. 

"Judith takes all this very seriously, " said Leroy, laughingly. "Isuppose she would take even Paris seriously. "

His wife smiled over at him. "Leroy says I am melancholy, " she said, softly; "but I am always telling him that I am happy. He thinks I ammelancholy because I do not laugh. I got out of the way of it by beingso much alone. You only laugh to let some one else know you are pleased. When you are alone there is no use in laughing. It would be likeexplaining something to yourself. "

"You are a philosopher, Judith. Mr. Max Mueller would like to knowyou. "

"Is he a friend of yours, dear?"

Leroy blushed, and I saw Jessica curl her lip as she noticed the blush. She laid her hand on Mrs. Brainard's arm. 

"Have you always been very much alone?" she inquired. 

"I was born on the ranch, you know; and father was not fond of leavingit. Indeed, now he says he will never again go out of sight of it. Butyou can go a long journey without doing that; for it lies on a plateauin the valley, and it can be seen from three different mountain passes. Mother died there, and for that reason and others--father has hada strange life--he never wanted to go away. He brought a lady fromPennsylvania to teach me. She had wonderful learning, but she didn'tmake very much use of it. I thought if I had learning I would not wasteit reading books. I would use it to--to live with. Father had a library, but I never cared for it. He was forever at books too. Of course, "she hastened to add, noticing the look of mortification deepen on herhusband's face, "I like books very well if there is nothing better athand. But I always said to Mrs. Windsor--it was she who taught me--whyread what other folk have been thinking when you can go out and thinkyourself? Of course one prefers one's own thoughts, just as one prefersone's own ranch, or one's own father. "

"Then you are sure to like New York when you go there to live, " criedJessica; "for there you will find something to make life entertainingall the time. No one need fall back on books there. "

"I'm not sure. I'm afraid there must be such dreadful crowds of people. Of course I should try to feel that they were all like me, with just thesame sort of fears, and that it was ridiculous for us to be afraid ofeach other, when at heart we all meant to be kind. "

Jessica fairly wrung her hands. "Heavens!" she cried. "I said you wouldlike New York. I am afraid, my dear, that it will break your heart!"

"Oh, " said Mrs. Brainard, with what was meant to be a gentle jest, "noone can break my heart except Leroy. I should not care enough about anyone else, you know. "

The compliment was an exquisite one. I felt the blood creep to my ownbrain in a sort of vicarious rapture, and I avoided looking at Leroylest he should dislike to have me see the happiness he must feel. Thesimplicity of the woman seemed to invigorate me as the cool air of hermountains might if it blew to me on some bright dawn, when I had come, fevered and sick of soul, from the city. 

When we were alone, Jessica said to me: "That man has too much vanity, and he thinks it is sensitiveness. He is going to imagine that his wifemakes him suffer. There's no one so brutally selfish as your sensitiveman. He wants every one to live according to his ideas, or heimmediately begins suffering. That friend of yours hasn't the courageof his convictions. He is going to be ashamed of the very qualities thatmade him love his wife. "

There was a hop that night at the hotel, quite an unusual affair as toelegance, given in honor of a woman from New York, who wrote a novel amonth. 

Mrs. Brainard looked so happy that night when she came in the parlor, after the music had begun, that I felt a moisture gather in my eyes justbecause of the beauty of her joy, and the forced vivacity of the womenabout me seemed suddenly coarse and insincere. Some wonderful redstones, brilliant as rubies, glittered in among the diaphanous blackdriftings of her dress. She asked me if the stones were not very pretty, and said she gathered them in one of her mountain river-beds. 

"But the gown?" I said. "Surely, you do not gather gowns like that inriver-beds, or pick them off mountain-pines?"

"But you can get them in Denver. Father always sent to Denver for myfinery. He was very particular about how I looked. You see, I was all hehad--" She broke off, her voice faltering. 

"Come over by the window, " I said, to change her thought. "I havesomething to repeat to you. It is a song of Sydney Lanier's. I think hewas the greatest poet that ever lived in America, though not many agreewith me. But he is my dear friend anyway, though he is dead, and I neversaw him; and I want you to hear some of his words. "

I led her across to an open window. The dancers were whirling by us. The waltz was one of those melancholy ones which speak the spirit of thedance more eloquently than any merry melody can. The sound of the seabooming beyond in the darkness came to us, and long paths of light, nowred, now green, stretched toward the distant light-house. These were thelines I repeated:--

 "What heartache--ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill The drear sand levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name; Always the same--the same. "

But I got no further. I felt myself moved with a sort of passion whichdid not seem to come from within, but to be communicated to me from her. A certain unfamiliar happiness pricked through with pain thrilled me, and I heard her whispering, --

"Do not go on, do not go on! I cannot stand it to-night!"

"Hush, " I whispered back; "come out for a moment!" We stole into thedusk without, and stood there trembling. I swayed with her emotion. There was a long silence. Then she said: "Father may be walking alonenow by the black cataract. That is where he goes when he is sad. I cansee how lonely he looks among those little twisted pines that grow fromthe rock. And he will be remembering all the evenings we walked theretogether, and all the things we said. " I did not answer. Her eyes werestill on the sea. 

"What was the name of the man who wrote that verse you just said to me?"

I told her. 

"And he is dead? Did they bury him in the mountains? No? I wish I couldhave put him where he could have heard those four voices calling downthe canyon. "

"Come back in the house, " I said; "you must come, indeed, " I said, asshe shrank from re-entering. 

Jessica was dancing like a fairy with Leroy. They both saw us and smiledas we came in, and a moment later they joined us. I made my excusesand left my friends to Jessica's care. She was a sort of socialtyrant wherever she was, and I knew one word from her would insure thepopularity of our friends--not that they needed the intervention of anyone. Leroy had been a sort of drawing-room pet since before he stoppedwearing knickerbockers. 

"He is at his best in a drawing-room, " said Jessica, "because therehe deals with theory and not with action. And he has such beautifultheories that the women, who are all idealists, adore him. "

The next morning I awoke with a conviction that I had been idling toolong. I went back to the city and brushed the dust from my desk. Theneach morning, I, as Jessica put it, "formed public opinion" to theextent of one column a day in the columns of a certain enterprisingmorning journal. 

Brainard said I had treated him shabbily to leave upon the heels of hiscoming. But a man who works for his bread and butter must put a limit tohis holiday. It is different when you only work to add to your generalpicturesqueness. That is what I wrote Leroy, and it was the unkindestthing I ever said to him; and why I did it I do not know to this day. Iwas glad, though, when he failed to answer the letter. It gave me a morereasonable excuse for feeling out of patience with him. 

The days that followed were very dull. It was hard to get back into theway of working. I was glad when Jessica came home to set up our littleestablishment and to join in the autumn gayeties. Brainard brought hiswife to the city soon after, and went to housekeeping in an odd sort ofa way. 

"I couldn't see anything in the place save curios, " Jessica reported, after her first call on them. "I suppose there is a cookingstovesomewhere, and maybe even a pantry with pots in it. But all I saw wasAlaska totems and Navajo blankets. They have as many skins around onthe floor and couches as would have satisfied an ancient Briton. Andeverybody was calling there. You know Mr. Brainard runs to curios inselecting his friends as well as his furniture. The parlors were fullthis afternoon of abnormal people, that is to say, with folks one readsabout. I was the only one there who hadn't done something. I guess it'sbecause I am too healthy. "

"How did Mrs. Brainard like such a motley crew?"

"She was wonderful--perfectly wonderful! Those insulting creatures wereall studying her, and she knew it. But her dignity was perfect, and shelooked as proud as a Sioux chief. She listened to every one, and theyall thought her so bright. "

"Brainard must have been tremendously proud of her. "

"Oh, he was--of her and his Chilcat portieres. "

Jessica was there often, but--well, I was busy. At length, however, Iwas forced to go. Jessica refused to make any further excuses for me. The rooms were filled with small celebrities. 

"We are the only nonentities, " whispered Jessica, as she looked around;"it will make us quite distinguished. "

We went to speak to our hostess. She stood beside her husband, lookingtaller than ever; and her face was white. Her long red gown of clingingsilk was so peculiar as to give one the impression that she was dressedin character. It was easy to tell that it was one of Leroy's fancies. Ihardly heard what she said, but I know she reproached me gently for nothaving been to see them. I had no further word with her till some oneled her to the piano, and she paused to say, --

"That poet you spoke of to me--the one you said was a friend ofyours--he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of hissongs. I am going to sing one now. " She seemed to have no timidity atall, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with aRussian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voicea wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams ofpassion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, andnow sad:

 "Look off, dear love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea, How long they kiss in sight of all the lands, Ah! longer, longer we. "

"She has a genius for feeling, hasn't she?" Leroy whispered to me. 

"A genius for feeling!" I repeated, angrily. "Man, she has a heart and asoul and a brain, if that is what you mean! I shouldn't think you wouldbe able to look at her from the standpoint of a critic. "

Leroy shrugged his shoulders and went off. For a moment I almost hatedhim for not feeling more resentful. I felt as if he owed it to his wifeto take offence at my foolish speech. 

It was evident that the "mountain woman" had become the fashion. Iread reports in the papers about her unique receptions. I saw her nameprinted conspicuously among the list of those who attended all sortsof dinners and musicales and evenings among the set that affectedintellectual pursuits. She joined a number of women's clubs of anexclusive kind. 

"She is doing whatever her husband tells her to, " said Jessica. "Why, the other day I heard her ruining her voice on 'Siegfried'!"

But from day to day I noticed a difference in her. She developed aterrible activity. She took personal charge of the affairs of her house;she united with Leroy in keeping the house filled with guests; she goton the board of a hospital for little children, and spent a part ofevery day among the cots where the sufferers lay. Now and then when wespent a quiet evening alone with her and Leroy, she sewed continually onlittle white night-gowns for these poor babies. She used her carriage totake the most extraordinary persons riding. 

"In the cause of health, " Leroy used to say, "I ought to have thecarriage fumigated after every ride Judith takes, for she is alwaysaccompanied by some one who looks as if he or she should go intoquarantine. "

One night, when he was chaffing her in this way, she flung her sewingsuddenly from her and sprang to her feet, as if she were going to giveway to a burst of girlish temper. Instead of that, a stream of tearspoured from her eyes, and she held out her trembling hands towardJessica. 

"He does not know, " she sobbed. "He cannot understand. "

One memorable day Leroy hastened over to us while we were still atbreakfast to say that Judith was ill, --strangely ill. All night longshe had been muttering to herself as if in a delirium. Yet she answeredlucidly all questions that were put to her. 

"She begs for Miss Grant. She says over and over that she 'knows, 'whatever that may mean. "

When Jessica came home she told me she did not know. She only felt thata tumult of impatience was stirring in her friend. 

"There is something majestic about her, -something epic. I feel as ifshe were making me live a part in some great drama, the end of which Icannot tell. She is suffering, but I cannot tell why she suffers. "

Weeks went on without an abatement in this strange illness. She did notkeep her bed. Indeed, she neglected few of her usual occupations. Buther hands were burning, and her eyes grew bright with that wild sort oflustre one sees in the eyes of those who give themselves up to strangedrugs or manias. She grew whimsical, and formed capricious friendships, only to drop them. 

And then one day she closed her house to all acquaintances, and satalone continually in her room, with her hands clasped in her lap, andher eyes swimming with the emotions that never found their way to hertongue. 

Brainard came to the office to talk with me about her one day. "I am avery miserable man, Grant, " he said. "I am afraid I have lost my wife'sregard. Oh, don't tell me it is partly my fault. I know it well enough. And I know you haven't had a very good opinion of me lately. But I amremorseful enough now, God knows. And I would give my life to see heras she was when I found her first among the mountains. Why, she used toclimb them like a strong man, and she was forever shouting and singing. And she had peopled every spot with strange modern mythologicalcreatures. Her father is an old dreamer, and she got the trick fromhim. They had a little telescope on a great knoll in the centre of thevalley, just where it commanded a long path of stars, and they used tospend nights out there when the frost literally fell in flakes. When Ithink how hardy and gay she was, how full of courage and life, and lookat her now, so feverish and broken, I feel as if I should go mad. Youknow I never meant to do her any harm. Tell me that much, Grant. "

"I think you were very egotistical for a while, Brainard, and that is afact. And you didn't appreciate how much her nature demanded. But Ido not think you are responsible for your wife's present condition. Ifthere is any comfort in that statement, you are welcome to it. "

"But you don't mean--" he got no further. 

"I mean that your wife may have her reservations, just as we all have, and I am paying her high praise when I say it. You are not so narrow, Leroy, as to suppose for a moment that the only sort of passion a womanis capable of is that which she entertains for a man. How do I knowwhat is going on in your wife's soul? But it is nothing which even anidealist of women, such as I am, old fellow, need regret. "

How glad I was afterward that I spoke those words. They exercised alittle restraint, perhaps, on Leroy when the day of his terrible trialcame. They made him wrestle with the demon of suspicion that strove topossess him. I was sitting in my office, lagging dispiritedly over mywork one day, when the door burst open and Brainard stood beside me. Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known, --not a hintin this pale creature, whose breath struggled through chattering teeth, and whose hands worked in uncontrollable spasms, of the nonchalantelegant I had known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those angry anddetermined eyes of the gayly selfish spirit of my holiday friend. 

"She's gone!" he gasped. "Since yesterday. And I'm here to ask you whatyou think now? And what you know. "

A panorama of all shameful possibilities for one black moment floatedbefore me. I remember this gave place to a wave, cold as death, thatswept from head to foot; then Brainard's hands fell heavily on myshoulders. 

"Thank God at least for this much, " he said, hoarsely; "I didn't know atfirst but I had lost both friend and wife. But I see you know nothing. And indeed in my heart I knew all the time that you did not. Yet I hadto come to you with my anger. And I remembered how you defended her. What explanation can you offer now?"

I got him to sit down after a while and tell me what little there wasto tell. He had been away for a day's shooting, and when he returned hefound only the perplexed servants at home. A note was left for him. Heshowed it to me. 

"There are times, " it ran, "when we must do as we must, not as we would. I am going to do something I have been driven to do since I left myhome. I do not leave any message of love for you, because you would notcare for it from a woman so weak as I. But it is so easy for you to behappy that I hope in a little while you will forget the wife who yieldedto an influence past resisting. It may be madness, but I am not greatenough to give it up. I tried to make the sacrifice, but I could not. I tried to be as gay as you, and to live your sort of life; but I couldnot do it. Do not make the effort to forgive me. You will be happier ifyou simply hold me in the contempt I deserve. "

I read the letter over and over. I do not know that I believe that thespirit of inanimate things can permeate to the intelligence of man. Iam sure I always laughed at such ideas. Yet holding that note with itsshameful seeming words, I felt a consciousness that it was written inpurity and love. And then before my eyes there came a scene sovivid that for a moment the office with its familiar furniture wasobliterated. What I saw was a long firm road, green with midsummerluxuriance. The leisurely thudding of my horse's feet sounded in myears. Beside me was a tall, black-robed figure. I saw her look back withthat expression of deprivation at the sky line. "It's like living afterthe world has begun to die, " said the pensive minor voice. "It seems asif part of the world had been taken down. "

"Brainard, " I yelled, "come here! I have it. Here's your explanation. Ican show you a new meaning for every line of this letter. Man, she hasgone to the mountains. She has gone to worship her own gods!"

Two weeks later I got a letter from Brainard, dated from Colorado. 

"Old man, " it said, "you're right. She is here. I found my mountainwoman here where the four voices of her cataracts had been calling toher. I saw her the moment our mules rounded the road that commands thevalley. We had been riding all night and were drenched with cold dew, hungry to desperation, and my spirits were of lead. Suddenly we got outfrom behind the granite wall, and there she was, standing, where I hadseen her so often, beside the little waterfall that she calls the happyone. She was looking straight up at the billowing mist that dipped downthe mountain, mammoth saffron rolls of it, plunging so madly from theimpetus of the wind that one marvelled how it could be noiseless. Ah, you do not know Judith! That strange, unsophisticated, sometimes awkwardwoman you saw bore no more resemblance to my mountain woman than I toHercules. How strong and beautiful she looked standing there wrapped inan ecstasy! It was my primitive woman back in her primeval world. Howthe blood leaped in me! All my old romance, so different from the commonlove-histories of most men, was there again within my reach! All themystery, the poignant happiness were mine again. Do not hold me incontempt because I show you my heart. You saw my misery. Why shouldI grudge you a glimpse of my happiness? She saw me when I touched herhand, not before, so wrapped was she. But she did not seem surprised. Only in her splendid eyes there came a large content. She pointed to thedancing little white fall. 'I thought something wonderful was going tohappen, ' she whispered, 'for it has been laughing so. '

"I shall not return to New York. I am going to stay here with mymountain woman, and I think perhaps I shall find out what life meanshere sooner than I would back there with you. I shall learn to see largethings large and small things small. Judith says to tell you and MissGrant that the four voices are calling for you every day in the valley. 

"Yours in fullest friendship, "LEROY BRAINARD. "

Jim Lancy's Waterloo

"WE must get married before time to put in crops, " he wrote. "We mustmake a success of the farm the first year, for luck. Could you manageto be ready to come out West by the last of February? After March opensthere will be no let-up, and I do not see how I could get away. Make itFebruary, Annie dear. A few weeks more or less can make no difference toyou, but they make a good deal of difference to me. "

The woman to whom this was written read it with something like anger. "Idon't believe he's so impatient for me!" she said to herself. "What hewants is to get the crops in on time. " But she changed the date of theirwedding, and made it February. 

Their wedding journey was only from the Illinois village where she livedto their Nebraska farm. They had never been much together, and they hadmuch to say to each other. 

"Farming won't come hard to you, " Jim assured her. "All one needs tofarm with is brains. "

"What a success you'll make of it!" she cried saucily. 

"I wish I had my farm clear, " Jim went on; "but that's more than any onehas around me. I'm no worse off than the rest. We've got to pay off themortgage, Annie. "

"Of course we must. We'll just do without till we get the mortgagelifted. Hard work will do anything, I guess. And I'm not afraid to work, Jim, though I've never had much experience. "

Jim looked out of the window a long time, at the gentle undulations ofthe brown Iowa prairie. His eyes seemed to pierce beneath the sod, to the swelling buds of the yet invisible grass. He noticed howdisdainfully the rains of the new year beat down the grasses of theyear that was gone. It opened to his mind a vision of the season'spossibilities. For a moment, even amid the smoke of the car, he seemedto scent clover, and hear the stiff swishing of the corn and the dullburring of the bees. 

"I wish sometimes, " he said, leaning forward to look at his bride, "thatI had been born something else than a farmer. But I can no more helpfarming, Annie, than a bird can help singing, or a bee making honey. Ididn't take to farming. I was simply born with a hoe in my hand. "

"I don't know a blessed thing about it, " Annie confessed. "But I made upmy mind that a farm with you was better than a town without you. That'sall there is to it, as far as I am concerned. "

Jim Lancy slid his arm softly about her waist, unseen by the otherpassengers. Annie looked up apprehensively, to see if any one wasnoticing. But they were eating their lunches. It was a common coach onwhich they were riding. There was a Pullman attached to the train, andAnnie had secretly thought that, as it was their wedding journey, itmight be more becoming to take it. But Jim had made no suggestion aboutit. What he said later explained the reason. 

"I would have liked to have brought you a fine present, " he said. "Itseemed shabby to come with nothing but that little ring. But I puteverything I had on our home, you know. And yet, I'm sure you'll thinkit poor enough after what you've been used to. You'll forgive me foronly bringing the ring, my dear?"

"But you brought me something better, " Annie whispered. She was afoolish little girl. "You brought me love, you know. " Then they rodein silence for a long time. Both of them were new to the phraseology oflove. Their simple compliments to each other were almost ludicrous. Butany one who might have chanced to overhear them would have been charmed, for they betrayed an innocence as beautiful as an unclouded dawn. 

Annie tried hard not to be depressed by the treeless stretches of theNebraska plains. 

"This is different from Illinois, " she ventured once, gently; "it iseven different from Iowa. "

"Yes, yes, " cried Jim, enthusiastically, "it is different! It is thefinest country in the world! You never feel shut in. You can always seeoff. I feel at home after I get in Nebraska. I'd choke back where youlive, with all those little gullies and the trees everywhere. It's amystery to me how farmers have patience to work there. "

Annie opened her eyes. There was evidently more than one way of lookingat a question. The farm-houses seemed very low and mean to her, as shelooked at them from the window. There were no fences, excepting nowand then the inhospitable barbed wire. The door-yards were bleak to hereyes, without the ornamental shrubbery which every farmer in her partof the country was used to tending. The cattle stood unshedded in theircorrals. The reapers and binders stood rusting in the dull drizzle. 

"How shiftless!" cried Annie, indignantly. "What do these men mean byletting their machinery lie out that way? I should think one winter oflying out would hurt it more than three summers of using. "

"It does. But sheds are not easily had. Lumber is dear. "

"But I should think it would be economy even then. "

"Yes, " he said, "perhaps. But we all do that way out here. It takessome money for a man to be economical with. Some of us haven't even thatmuch. "

There was a six-mile ride from the station. The horses were waiting, hitched up to a serviceable light wagon, and driven by the "help. " Hewas a thin young man, with red hair, and he blushed vicariously for Jimand Annie, who were really too entertained with each other, and at theidea of the new life opening up before them, to think anything aboutblushing. At the station, a number of men insisted on shaking handswith Jim, and being introduced to his wife. They were all bearded, asif shaving were an unnecessary labor, and their trousers were tucked industy top-boots, none of which had ever seen blacking. Annie had a senseof these men seeming unwashed, or as if they had slept in their clothes. But they had kind voices, and their eyes were very friendly. So sheshook hands with them all with heartiness, and asked them to drive outand bring their womenkind. 

"I am going to make up my mind not to be lonesome, " she declared; "but, all the same, I shall want to see some women. "

Annie had got safe on the high seat of the wagon, and was balancing herlittle feet on the inclined foot-rest, when a woman came running acrossthe street, calling aloud, --

"Mr. Lancy! Mr. Lancy! You're not going to drive away withoutintroducing me to your wife!"

She was a thin little woman, with movements as nervous and as gracelessas those of a grasshopper. Her dun-colored garments seemed to have allthe hue bleached out of them with wind and weather. Her face was brownand wrinkled, and her bright eyes flashed restlessly, deep in theirsockets. Two front teeth were conspicuously missing; and her faded hairwas blown in wisps about her face. Jim performed the introduction, andAnnie held out her hand. It was a pretty hand, delicately gloved in dovecolor. The woman took it in her own, and after she had shaken it, heldit for a silent moment, looking at it. Then she almost threw it fromher. The eyes which she lifted to scan the bright young face aboveher had something like agony in them. Annie blushed under this fiercescrutiny, and the woman, suddenly conscious of her demeanor, forced asmile to her lips. 

"I'll come out an' see yeh, " she said, in cordial tones. "May be, as anew housekeeper, you'll like a little advice. You've a nice place, an' Iwish yeh luck. "

"Thank you. I'm sure I'll need advice, " cried Annie, as they drove off. Then she said to Jim, "Who is that old woman?"

"Old woman? Why, she ain't a day over thirty, Mis' Dundy ain't. "

Annie looked at her husband blankly. But he was already talking ofsomething else, and she asked no more about the woman, though all theway along the road the face seemed to follow her. It might have beenthis that caused the tightening about her heart. For some way hervivacity had gone; and the rest of the ride she asked no questions, butsat looking straight before her at the northward stretching road, witheyes that felt rather than saw the brown, bare undulations, risingevery now and then clean to the sky; at the side, little famished-lookinghouses, unacquainted with paint, disorderly yards, and endless reachesof furrowed ground, where in summer the corn had waved. 

The horses needed no indication of the line to make them turn up asmooth bit of road that curved away neatly 'mid the ragged grasses. At the end of it, in a clump of puny scrub oaks, stood a square littlehouse, in uncorniced simplicity, with blank, uncurtained windows staringout at Annie, and for a moment her eyes, blurred with the cold, seemedto see in one of them the despairing face of the woman with the wisps offaded hair blowing about her face. 

"Well, what do you think of it?" Jim cried, heartily, swinging her downfrom her high seat, and kissing her as he did so. "This is your home, my girl, and you are as welcome to it as you would be to a palace, if Icould give it to you. "

Annie put up her hands to hide the trembling of her lips; and she letJim see there were tears in her eyes as an apology for not replying. Theyoung man with the red hair took away the horses, and Jim, with his armaround his wife's waist, ran toward the house and threw open the doorfor her to enter. The intense heat of two great stoves struck intheir faces; and Annie saw the big burner, erected in all its blackhideousness in the middle of the front room, like a sort of householdhoodoo, to be constantly propitiated, like the gods of Greece; and inthe kitchen, the new range, with a distracted tea-kettle leaping on it, as if it would like to loose its fetters and race away over the prairieafter its cousin, the locomotive. 

It was a house of four rooms, and a glance revealed the fact that it hadbeen provided with the necessaries. 

"I think we can be very comfortable here, " said Jim, rather doubtfully. 

Annie saw she must make some response. "I am sure we can be more thancomfortable, Jim, " she replied. "We can be happy. Show me, if youplease, where my room is. I must hang my cloak up in the right place sothat I shall feel as if I were getting settled. "

It was enough. Jim had no longer any doubts. He felt sure they weregoing to be happy ever afterward. 

It was Annie who got the first meal; she insisted on it, though both themen wanted her to rest. And Jim hadn't the heart to tell her that, asa general thing, it would not do to put two eggs in the corn-cake, andthat the beefsteak was a great luxury. When he saw her about to break anegg for the coffee, however, he interfered. 

"The shells of the ones you used for the cake will settle the coffeejust as well, " he said. "You see we have to be very careful of eggs outhere at this season. "

"Oh! Will the shells really settle it? This is what you must callprairie lore. I suppose out here we find out what the real relations ofinvention and necessity are--eh?"

Jim laughed disproportionately. He thought her wonderfully witty. Andhe and the help ate so much that Annie opened her eyes. She had thoughtthere would be enough left for supper. But there was nothing left. 

For the next two weeks Jim was able to be much with her; and they amusedthemselves by decorating the house with the bright curtainings thatAnnie had brought, and putting up shelves for a few pieces of china. Shehad two or three pictures, also, which had come from her room in her oldhome, and some of those useless dainty things with which some women liketo litter the room. 

"Most folks, " Jim explained, "have to be content with one fire, and sitin the kitchen; but I thought, as this was our honeymoon, we would puton some lugs. "

Annie said nothing then; but a day or two after she ventured, --

"Perhaps it would be as well now, dear, if we kept in the kitchen. I'llkeep it as bright and pleasant as I can. And, anyway, you can be moreabout with me when I'm working then. We'll lay a fire in the front-roomstove, so that we can light it if anybody comes. We can just as wellsave that much. "

Jim looked up brightly. "All right, " he said. "You're a sensible littlewoman. You see, every cent makes a difference. And I want to be able topay off five hundred dollars of that mortgage this year. "

So, after that, they sat in the kitchen; and the fire was laid in thefront room, against the coming of company. But no one came, and itremained unlighted. 

Then the season began to show signs of opening, --bleak signs, hardlyrecognizable to Annie; and after that Jim was not much in the house. The weeks wore on, and spring came at last, dancing over the hills. Theground-birds began building, and at four each morning awoke Annie withtheir sylvan opera. The creek that ran just at the north of the houseworked itself into a fury and blustered along with much noise towardthe great Platte which, miles away, wallowed in its vast sandy bed. Thehills flushed from brown to yellow, and from mottled green to intensestemerald, and in the superb air all the winds of heaven seemed to meetand frolic with laughter and song. 

Sometimes the mornings were so beautiful that, the men being afield andAnnie all alone, she gave herself up to an ecstasy and kneeled by thelittle wooden bench outside the door, to say, "Father, I thank Thee, "and then went about her work with all the poem of nature rhyming itselfover and over in her heart. 

It was on such a day as this that Mrs. Dundy kept her promise and cameover to see if the young housekeeper needed any of the advice shehad promised her. She had walked, because none of the horses could bespared. It had got so warm now that the fire in the kitchen heatedthe whole house sufficiently, and Annie had the rooms clean toexquisiteness. Mrs. Dundy looked about with envious eyes. 

"How lovely!" she said. 

"Do you think so?" cried Annie, in surprise. "I like it, of course, because it is home, but I don't see how you could call anything herelovely. "

"Oh, you don't understand, " her visitor went on. "It's lovely because itlooks so happy. Some of us have--well, kind o' lost our grip. "

"It's easy to do that if you don't feel well, " Annie remarkedsympathetically. "I haven't felt as well as usual myself, lately. AndI do get lonesome and wonder what good it does to fix up every day whenthere is no one to see. But that is all nonsense, and I put it out of myhead. "

She smoothed out the clean lawn apron with delicate touch. Mrs. Dundyfollowed the movement with her eyes. 

"Oh, my dear, " she cried, "you don't know nothin' about it yet! But youwill know! You will!" and those restless, hot eyes of hers seemed togrow more restless and more hot as they looked with infinite pity at theyoung woman before her. 

Annie thought of these words often as the summer came on, and the heatgrew. Jim was seldom to be seen now. He was up at four each morning, and the last chore was not completed till nine at night. Then he threwhimself in bed and lay there log-like till dawn. He was too weary totalk much, and Annie, with her heart aching for his fatigue, forbore tospeak to him. She cooked the most strengthening things she could, andtried always to look fresh and pleasant when he came in. But she oftenthought her pains were in vain, for he hardly rested his sunburnedeyes on her. His skin got so brown that his face was strangely changed, especially as he no longer had time to shave, and had let a rough beardstraggle over his cheeks and chin. On Sundays Annie would have liked togo to church, but the horses were too tired to be taken out, and she didnot feel well enough to walk far; besides, Jim got no particular goodout of walking over the hills unless he had a plough in his hand. 

Harvest came at length, and the crop was good. There were any way fromthree to twenty men at the house then, and Annie cooked for all of them. Jim had tried to get some one to help her, but he had not succeeded. Annie strove to be brave, remembering that farm-women all over thecountry were working in similar fashion. But in spite of all she coulddo, the days got to seem like nightmares, and sleep between was but abrief pause in which she was always dreaming of water, and thinking thatshe was stooping to put fevered lips to a running brook. Some of thesemen were very disgusting to Annie. Their manners were as bad as theycould well be, and a coarse word came naturally to their lips. 

"To be master of the soil, that is one thing, " said she to herself insickness of spirit; "but to be the slave of it is another. These menseem to have got their souls all covered with muck. " She noticed thatthey had no idea of amusement. They had never played anything. They didnot even care for base-ball. Their idea of happiness appeared to be todo nothing; and there was a good part of the year in which they werehappy, --for these were not for the most part men owning farms; theywere men who hired out to help the farmer. A good many of them had beenfarmers at one time and another, but they had failed. They all talkedpolitics a great deal, --politics and railroads. Annie had not muchpatience with it all. She had great confidence in the course of things. She believed that in this country all men have a fair chance. So when itcame about that the corn and the wheat, which had been raised with suchincessant toil, brought them no money, but only a loss, Annie stoodaghast. 

"I said the rates were ruinous, " Jim said to her one night, after it wasall over, and he had found out that the year's slavish work had broughthim a loss of three hundred dollars; "it's been a conspiracy from thefirst. The price of corn is all right. But by the time we set it down inChicago we are out eighteen cents a bushel. It means ruin. What are wegoing to do? Here we had the best crop we've had for years--but what'sthe use of talking! They have us in their grip. "

"I don't see how it is, " Annie protested. "I should think it would befor the interest of the roads to help the people to be as prosperous aspossible. "

"Oh, we can't get out! And we're bound to stay and raise grain. Andthey're bound to cart it. And that's all there is to it. They forceus to stand every loss, even to the shortage that is made intransportation. The railroad companies own the elevators, and they havethe cinch on us. Our grain is at their mercy. God knows how I'm going toraise that interest. As for the five hundred we were going to pay on themortgage this year, Annie, we're not in it. "

Autumn was well set in by this time, and the brilliant cold sky hungover the prairies as young and fresh as if the world were not old andtired. Annie no longer could look as trim as when she first came to thelittle house. Her pretty wedding garments were beginning to be worn andthere was no money for more. Jim would not play chess now of evenings. He was forever writing articles for the weekly paper in the adjoiningtown. They talked of running him for the state legislature, and he wasanxious for the nomination. 

"I think I might be able to stand it if I could fight 'em!" he declared;"but to sit here idle, knowing that I have been cheated out of my year'swork, just as much as if I had been knocked down on the road andthe money taken from me, is enough to send me to the asylum with astrait-jacket on!"

Life grew to take on tragic aspects. Annie used to find herselfwondering if anywhere in the world there were people with lighthearts. For her there was no longer anticipation of joy, or presentcompanionship, or any divertissement in the whole world. Jim read bookswhich she did not understand, and with a few of his friends, who droppedin now and then evenings or Sundays, talked about these books in anexcited manner. 

She would go to her room to rest, and lying there in the darkness on thebed, would hear them speaking together, sometimes all at once, in thosesternly vindictive tones men use when there is revolt in their souls. 

"It is the government which is helping to impoverish us, " she would hearJim saying. "Work is money. That is to say, it is the active form ofmoney. The wealth of a country is estimated by its power of production. And its power of production means work. It means there are so many menwith so much capacity. Now the government owes it to these men to havemoney enough to pay them for their work; and if there is not enoughmoney in circulation to pay to each man for his honest and necessarywork, then I say that government is in league with crime. It is tryingto make defaulters of us. It has a hundred ways of cheating us. When Ibought this farm and put the mortgage on it, a day's work would bringtwice the results it will now. That is to say, the total at the end ofthe year showed my profits to be twice what they would be now, even ifthe railway did not stand in the way to rob us of more than we earn. So that it will take just twice as many days' work now to pay off thismortgage as it would have done at the time it was contracted. It's aconspiracy, I tell you! Those Eastern capitalists make a science ofruining us. "

He got more eloquent as time went on, and Annie, who had known himfirst as rather a careless talker, was astonished at the boldness of hislanguage. But conversation was a lost art with him. He no longer talked. He harangued. 

In the early spring Annie's baby was born, --a little girl with a nervouscry, who never slept long at a time, and who seemed to wail merely fromdistaste at living. It was Mrs. Dundy who came over to look after thehouse till Annie got able to do so. Her eyes had that fever in them, as ever. She talked but little, but her touch on Annie's head was moreeloquent than words. One day Annie asked for the glass, and Mrs. Dundygave it to her. She looked in it a long time. The color was gone fromher cheeks, and about her mouth there was an ugly tightening. But hereyes flashed and shone with that same--no, no, it could not be that inher face also was coming the look of half-madness! She motioned Mrs. Dundy to come to her. 

"You knew it was coming, " she said, brokenly, pointing to the reflectionin the glass. "That first day, you knew how it would be. "

Mrs. Dundy took the glass away with a gentle hand. 

"How could I help knowing?" she said simply. She went into the nextroom, and when she returned Annie noticed that the handkerchief stuck inher belt was wet, as if it had been wept on. 

A woman cannot stay long away from her home on a farm at planting time, even if it is a case of life and death. Mrs. Dundy had to go home, andAnnie crept about her work with the wailing baby in her arms. The housewas often disorderly now; but it could not be helped. The baby had tobe cared for. It fretted so much that Jim slept apart in the mow ofthe barn, that his sleep might not be disturbed. It was a pleasant, dimplace, full of sweet scents, and he liked to be there alone. Though hehad always been an unusual worker, he worked now more like a man who wasfighting off fate, than a mere toiler for bread. 

The corn came up beautifully, and far as the eye could reach aroundtheir home it tossed its broad green leaves with an oceanlike swellingof sibilant sound. Jim loved it with a sort of passion. Annie lovedit, too. Sometimes, at night, when her fatigue was unbearable, and herirritation wearing out both body and soul, she took her little one inher arms and walked among the corn, letting its rustling soothe the babyto sleep. 

The heat of the summer was terrible. The sun came up in that blue skylike a curse, and hung there till night came to comfort the blisteringearth. And one morning a terrible thing happened. Annie was standingout of doors in the shade of those miserable little oaks, ironing, whensuddenly a blast of air struck her in the face, which made her look upstartled. For a moment she thought, perhaps, there was a fire near inthe grass. But there was none. Another blast came, hotter this time, andfifteen minutes later that wind was sweeping straight across the plain, burning and blasting. Annie went in the house to finish her ironing, andwas working there, when she heard Jim's footstep on the door-sill. Hecould not pale because of the tan, but there was a look of agony and ofanger-almost brutish anger--in his eyes. Then he looked, for a moment, at Annie standing there working patiently, and rocking the little cribwith one foot, and he sat down on the door-step and buried his face inhis brown arms. 

The wind blew for three days. At the end of that time every ear waswithered in the stalk. The corn crop was ruined. 

But there were the other crops which must be attended to, and Jimwatched those with the alertness of a despairing man; and so harvestcame again, and again the house was filled with men who talked theircareless talk, and who were not ashamed to gorge while this one womancooked for them. The baby lay on a quilt on the floor in the coolestpart of the kitchen. Annie fed it irregularly. Sometimes she almostforgot it. As for its wailing, she had grown so used to it that shehardly heard it, any more than she did the ticking of the clock. Andyet, tighter than anything else in life, was the hold that little thinghad on her heart-strings. At night, after the interminable work had beenfinished--though in slovenly fashion--she would take it up and caress itwith fierceness, and worn as she was, would bathe it and soothe it, andgive it warm milk from the big tin pail. 

"Lay the child down, " Jim would say impatiently, while the men wouldtell how their wives always put the babies on the bed and let them cryif they wanted to. Annie said nothing, but she hushed the little onewith tender songs. 

One day, as usual, it lay on its quilt while Annie worked. It was aterribly busy morning. She had risen at four to get the washing out ofthe way before the men got on hand, and there were a dozen loaves ofbread to bake, and the meals to get, and the milk to attend to, and thechickens and pigs to feed. So occupied was she that she never was ableto tell how long she was gone from the baby. She only knew that the heatof her own body was so great that the blood seemed to be pounding at herears, and she staggered as she crossed the yard. But when she went atlast with a cup of milk to feed the little one, it lay with clenchedfists and fixed eyes, and as she lifted it, a last convulsion laid itback breathless, and its heart had ceased to beat. 

Annie ran with it to her room, and tried such remedies as she had. But nothing could keep the chill from creeping over the wasted littleform, --not even the heat of the day, not even the mother's agonizedembrace. Then, suddenly, Annie looked at the clock. It was time to getthe dinner. She laid the piteous tiny shape straight on the bed, threw asheet over it, and went back to the weltering kitchen to cook for thosemen, who came at noon and who must be fed--who must be fed. 

When they were all seated at the table, Jim among them, and she hadserved them, she said, standing at the head of the table, with her handson her hips:--

"I don't suppose any of you have time to do anything about it; but Ithought you might like to know that the baby is dead. I wouldn't thinkof asking you to spare the horses, for I know they have to rest. But Ithought, if you could make out on a cold supper, that I would go to thetown for a coffin. "

There was satire in the voice that stung even through the dullperceptions of these men, and Jim arose with a cry and went to the roomwhere his dead baby lay. 

About two months after this Annie insisted that she must go home toIllinois. Jim protested in a way. 

"You know, I'd like to send you, " he said; "but I don't see where themoney is to come from. And since I've got this nomination, I want to runas well as I can. My friends expect me to do my best for them. It's aduty, you know, and nothing less, for a few men, like me, to get in thelegislature. We're going to get a railroad bill through this sessionthat will straighten out a good many things. Be patient a little longer, Annie. "

"I want to go home, " was the only reply he got. "You must get the money, some way, for me to go home with. "

"I haven't paid a cent of interest yet, " he cried angrily. "I don't seewhat you mean by being so unreasonable!"

"You must get the money, some way, " she reiterated. 

He did not speak to her for a week, except when he was obliged to. Butshe did not seem to mind; and he gave her the money. He took her to thetrain in the little wagon that had met her when she first came. At thestation, some women were gossiping excitedly, and Annie asked what theywere saying. 

"It's Mis' Dundy, " they said. "She's been sent to th' insane asylum atLincoln. She's gone stark mad. All she said on the way out was, 'Th' butter won't come! Th' butter won't come!'" Then they laughed alittle--a strange laugh; and Annie thought of a drinking-song she hadonce heard, "Here's to the next who dies. "

Ten days after this Jim got a letter from her. "I am never coming back, Jim, " it said. "It is hopeless. I don't think I would mind standingstill to be shot down if there was any good in it. But I'm not goingback there to work harder than any slave for those money-loaners and therailroads. I guess they can all get along without me. And I am sure Ican get along without them. I do not think this will make you feel verybad. You haven't seemed to notice me very much lately when I've beenaround, and I do not think you will notice very much when I am gone. Iknow what this means. I know I am breaking my word when I leave you. Butremember, it is not you I leave, but the soil, Jim! I will not be itsslave any longer. If you care to come for me here, and live anotherlife--but no, there would be no use. Our love, like our toil, has beeneaten up by those rapacious acres. Let us say goodby. "

Jim sat all night with this letter in his hand. Sometimes he dozedheavily in his chair. But he did not go to bed; and the next morning hehitched up his horses and rode to town. He went to the bank which heldhis notes. 

"I'll confess judgment as soon as you like, " he said. "It's all up withme. "

It was done as quickly as the law would allow. And the things in thehouse were sold by auction. All the farmers were there with their wives. It made quite an outing for them. Jim moved around impassively, andchatted, now and then, with some of the men about what the horses oughtto bring. 

The auctioneer was a clever fellow. Between the putting up of thearticles, he sang comic songs, and the funnier the song, the livelierthe bidding that followed. The horses brought a decent price, and themachinery a disappointing one; and then, after a delicious snatch aboutNell who rode the sway-backed mare at the county fair, he got down tothe furniture, --the furniture which Jim had bought when he was expectingAnnie. 

Jim was walking around with his hands in his pockets, lookingunconcerned, and, as the furniture began to go off, he came and sat downin the midst of it. Every one noticed his indifference. Some of themsaid that after all he couldn't have been very ambitious. He didn't seemto take his failure much to heart. Every one was concentrating attentionon the cookingstove, when Jim leaned forward, quickly, over a littlewicker work-stand. 

There was a bit of unfinished sewing there, and it fell out as he liftedthe cover. It was a baby's linen shirt. Jim let it lie, and then liftedfrom its receptacle a silver thimble. He put it in his vest-pocket. 

The campaign came on shortly after this, and Jim Lancy was defeated. "I'm going to Omaha, " said he to the station-master, "and I've got justenough to buy a ticket with. There's a kind of satisfaction in givingthe last cent I have to the railroads. "

Two months later, a "plain drunk" was registered at the station inNebraska's metropolis. When they searched him they found nothing inhis pockets but a silver thimble, and Joe Benson, the policeman who hadbrought in the "drunk, " gave it to the matron, with his compliments. Butshe, when no one noticed, went softly to where the man was sleeping, andslipped it back into his pocket, with a sigh. For she knew somehow--aswomen do know things--that he had not stolen that thimble. 

THE equinoctial line itself is not more imaginary than the line whichdivided the estates of the three Johns. The herds of the three Johnsroamed at will, and nibbled the short grass far and near without let orhindrance; and the three Johns themselves were utterly indifferent as toboundary lines. Each of them had filed his application at the officeof the government land-agent; each was engaged in the tedious task of"proving up;" and each owned one-third of the L-shaped cabin which stoodat the point where the three ranches touched. The hundred and sixtyacres which would have completed this quadrangle had not yet been "takenup. "

The three Johns were not anxious to have a neighbor. Indeed, they hadmade up their minds that if one appeared on that adjoining "hun'erd an'sixty, " it would go hard with him. For they did not deal in justice verymuch--the three Johns. They considered it effete. It belonged in theEast along with other outgrown superstitions. And they had given itout widely that it would be healthier for land applicants to give themelbow-room. It took a good many miles of sunburnt prairie to affordelbow-room for the three Johns. 

They met by accident in Hamilton at the land-office. John Henderson, fresh from Cincinnati, manifestly unused to the ways of the country, looked at John Gillispie with a lurking smile. Gillispie wore asombrero, fresh, white, and expansive. His boots had high heels, andwere of elegant leather and finely arched at the instep. His corduroysdisappeared in them half-way up the thigh. About his waist a sash ofblue held a laced shirt of the same color in place. Henderson puffed athis cigarette, and continued to look a trifle quizzical. 

Suddenly Gillispie walked up to him and said, in a voice of completesuavity, "Damn yeh, smoke a pipe!"

"Eh?" said Henderson, stupidly. 

"Smoke a pipe, " said the other. "That thing you have is bad for yourcomplexion. "

"I can take care of my complexion, " said Henderson, firmly. 

The two looked each other straight in the eye. 

"You don't go on smoking that thing till you have apologized for thatgrin you had on your phiz a moment ago. "

"I laugh when I please, and I smoke what I please, " said Henderson, hotly, his face flaming as he realized that he was in for his first"row. "

That was how it began. How it would have ended is not known--probablythere would have been only one John--if it had not been for the almostmiraculous appearance at this moment of the third John. For just thenthe two belligerents found themselves prostrate, their pistols onlyhalf-cocked, and between them stood a man all gnarled and squat, likeone of those wind-torn oaks which grow on the arid heights. He was noolder than the others, but the lines in his face were deep, and hislarge mouth twitched as he said:--

"Hold on here, yeh fools! There's too much blood in you to spill. You'llspile th' floor, and waste good stuff. We need blood out here!"

Gillispie bounced to his feet. Henderson arose suspiciously, keeping hiseyes on his assailants. 

"Oh, get up!" cried the intercessor. "We don't shoot men hereabouts tillthey git on their feet in fightin' trim. "

"What do you know about what we do here?" interrupted Gillispie. "Thisis the first time I ever saw you around. "

"That's so, " the other admitted. "I'm just down from Montana. Came totake up a quarter section. Where I come from we give men a show, an' Ithought perhaps yeh did th' same here. "

"Why, yes, " admitted Gillispie, "we do. But I don't want folks to laughtoo much--not when I'm around--unless they tell me what the joke is. Iwas just mentioning it to the gentleman, " he added, dryly. 

"So I saw, " said the other; "you're kind a emphatic in yer remarks. Yeh ought to give the gentleman a chance to git used to the ways ofth' country. He'll be as tough as th' rest of us if you'll give him achance. I kin see it in him. "

"Thank you, " said Henderson. "I'm glad you do me justice. I wish youwouldn't let daylight through me till I've had a chance to get myquarter section. I'm going to be one of you, either as a live man or acorpse. But I prefer a hundred and sixty acres of land to six feet ofit. "

"There, now!" triumphantly cried the squat man. "Didn't I tell yeh? Givehim a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. He'll getover that. "

Gillispie shook hands with first one and then the other of the men. "It's a square deal from this on, " he said. "Come and have a drink. "

That's how they met--John Henderson, John Gillispie, and John Waite. And a week later they were putting up a shanty together for common use, which overlapped each of their reservations, and satisfied the law withits sociable subterfuge. 

The life wasn't bad, Henderson decided; and he adopted all the ways ofthe country in an astonishingly short space of time. There was a freedomabout it all which was certainly complete. The three alternated in thenight watch. Once a week one of them went to town for provisions. Theywere not good at the making of bread, so they contented themselves withhot cakes. Then there was salt pork for a staple, and prunes. They sleptin straw-lined bunks, with warm blankets for a covering. They made apoint of bringing reading-matter back from town every week, and therewere always cards to fall back on, and Waite sang songs for them withnatural dramatic talent. 

Nevertheless, in spite of their contentment, none of them was sorry whenthe opportunity offered for going to town. There was always a bit ofstirring gossip to be picked up, and now and then there was a "show" atthe "opera-house, " in which, it is almost unnecessary to say, no operahad ever been sung. Then there was the hotel, at which one not onlygot good fare, but a chat with the three daughters of Jim O'Neal, theproprietor--girls with the accident of two Irish parents, who were, notwithstanding, as typically American as they well could be. Ahalf-hour's talk with these cheerful young women was all the more to bedesired for the reason that within riding distance of the three Johns'ranch there were only two other women. One was Minerva Fitch, who hadgone out from Michigan accompanied by an oil-stove and a knowledge ofthe English grammar, with the intention of teaching school, but who hadbeen unable to carry these good intentions into execution for the reasonthat there were no children to teach, --at least, none but Bow-leggedJoe. He was a sad little fellow, who looked like a prairie-dog, and whohad very much the same sort of an outlook on life. The other woman wasthe brisk and efficient wife of Mr. Bill Deems, of "Missourah. " Mr. Deems had never in his life done anything, not even so much as bring ina basket of buffalo chips to supply the scanty fire. That is to say, hehad done nothing strictly utilitarian. Yet he filled his place. Hewas the most accomplished story-teller in the whole valley, and thisaccomplishment of his was held in as high esteem as the improvisationsof a Welsh minstrel were among his reverencing people. His wife alonedeprecated his skill, and interrupted his spirited narratives withsarcastic allusions concerning the empty cupboard, and the "state of herback, " to which, as she confided to any who would listen, "there was nota rag fit to wear. "

These two ladies had not, as may be surmised, any particular attractionfor John Henderson. Truth to tell, Henderson had not come West with theintention of liking women, but rather with a determination to seeand think as little of them as possible. Yet even the most confirmedmisogynist must admit that it is a good thing to see a woman now andthen, and for this reason Henderson found it amusing to converse withthe amiable Misses O'Neal. At twenty-five one cannot be unyielding inone's avoidance of the sex. 

Henderson, with his pony at a fine lope, was on his way to town one day, in that comfortable frame of mind adduced by an absence of any ideaswhatever, when he suddenly became conscious of a shiver that seemedto run from his legs to the pony, and back again. The animal gave astartled leap, and lifted his ears. There was a stirring in the coarsegrasses; the sky, which a moment before had been like sapphire, dulledwith an indescribable grayness. 

Then came a little singing afar off, as if from a distant convocationof cicadae, and before Henderson could guess what it meant, a cloudof dust was upon him, blinding and bewildering, pricking with sharpparticles at eyes and nostrils. The pony was an ugly fellow, and whenHenderson felt him put his forefeet together, he knew what that meant, and braced himself for the struggle. But it was useless; he had not yetacquired the knack of staying on the back of a bucking bronco, and thenext moment he was on the ground, and around him whirled that saffronchaos of dust. The temperature lowered every moment. Hendersoninstinctively felt that this was but the beginning of the storm. Hepicked himself up without useless regrets for his pony, and made his wayon. 

The saffron hue turned to blackness, and then out of the murk shot aliving green ball of fire, and ploughed into the earth. Then sheets ofwater, that seemed to come simultaneously from earth and sky, swept theprairie, and in the midst of it struggled Henderson, weak as a littlechild, half bereft of sense by the strange numbness of head and dullnessof eye. Another of those green balls fell and burst, as it actuallyappeared to him, before his horrified eyes, and the bellow and blare ofthe explosion made him cry out in a madness of fright and physical pain. In the illumination he had seen a cabin only a few feet in front of him, and toward it he made frantically, with an animal's instinctive desirefor shelter. 

The door did not yield at once to his pressure, and in the panic ofhis fear he threw his weight against it. There was a cry from within, afall, and Henderson flung himself in the cabin and closed the door. 

In the dusk of the storm he saw a woman half prostrate. It was shewhom he had pushed from the door. He caught the hook in its staple, and turned to raise her. She was not trembling as much as he, but, likehimself, she was dizzy with the shock of the lightning. In the midst ofall the clamor Henderson heard a shrill crying, and looking toward theside of the room, he dimly perceived three tiny forms crouched in one ofthe bunks. The woman took the smallest of the children in her arms, andkissed and soothed it; and Henderson, after he had thrown a blanket atthe bottom of the door to keep out the drifting rain, sat with his backto it, bracing it against the wind, lest the frail staple should giveway. He managed some way to reach out and lay hold of the other littleones, and got them in his arms, --a boy, so tiny he seemed hardly human, and a girl somewhat sturdier. They cuddled in his arms, and clutched hisclothes with their frantic little hands, and the three sat so while theearth and the heavens seemed to be meeting in angry combat. 

And back and forth, back and forth, in the dimness swayed the body ofthe woman, hushing her babe. 

Almost as suddenly as the darkness had fallen, it lifted. The lightningceased to threaten, and almost frolicked, --little wayward flashes ofwhite and yellow dancing in mid-air. The wind wailed less frequently, like a child who sobs in its sleep. And at last Henderson could make hisvoice heard. 

"Is there anything to build a fire with?" he shouted. "The children areshivering so. "

The woman pointed to a basket of buffalo chips in the corner, and hewrapped his little companions up in a blanket while he made a fire inthe cooking-stove. The baby was sleeping by this time, and the womanbegan tidying the cabin, and when the fire was burning brightly, she putsome coffee on. 

"I wish I had some clothes to offer you, " she said, when the wind hadsubsided sufficiently to make talking possible. "I'm afraid you'll haveto let them get dry on you. "

"Oh, that's of no consequence at all! We're lucky to get off with ourlives. I never saw anything so terrible. Fancy! half an hour ago it wassummer; now it is winter!"

"It seems rather sudden when you're not used to it, " the woman admitted. "I've lived in the West six years now; you can't frighten me any more. We never die out here before our time comes. "

"You seem to know that I haven't been here long, " said Henderson, withsome chagrin. 

"Yes, " admitted the woman; "you have the ear-marks of a man from theEast. "

She was a tall woman, with large blue eyes, and a remarkable quantity ofyellow hair braided on top of her head. Her gown was of calico, of sucha pattern as a widow might wear. 

"I haven't been out of town a week yet, " she said. "We're not halfsettled. Not having any one to help makes it harder; and the baby israther fretful. "

"But you're not alone with all these little codgers?" cried Henderson, in dismay. 

The woman turned toward him with a sort of defiance. "Yes, I am, " shesaid; "and I'm as strong as a horse, and I mean to get through allright. Here were the three children in my arms, you may say, and no wayto get in a cent. I wasn't going to stand it just to please other folk. I said, let them talk if they want to, but I'm going to hold down aclaim, and be accumulating something while the children are getting up abit. Oh, I'm not afraid!"

In spite of this bold assertion of bravery, there was a sort of break inher voice. She was putting dishes on the table as she talked, and turnedsome ham in the skillet, and got the children up before the fire, and dropped some eggs in water, --all with a rapidity that bewilderedHenderson. 

"How long have you been alone?" he asked, softly. 

"Three months before baby was born, and he's five months old now. I--I--you think I can get on here, don't you? There was nothing else todo. "

She was folding another blanket over the sleeping baby now, and theaction brought to her guest the recollection of a thousand tendermoments of his dimly remembered youth. 

"You'll get on if we have anything to do with it, " he cried, suppressingan oath with difficulty, just from pure emotion. 

And he told her about the three Johns' ranch, and found it was onlythree miles distant, and that both were on the same road; only hercabin, having been put up during the past week, had of course beenunknown to him. So it ended in a sort of compact that they were to helpeach other in such ways as they could. Meanwhile the fire got genial, and the coffee filled the cabin with its comfortable scent, and all ofthem ate together quite merrily, Henderson cutting up the ham for theyoungsters; and he told how he chanced to come out; and she entertainedhim with stories of what she thought at first when she was brought abride to Hamilton, the adjacent village, and convulsed him with storiesof the people, whom she saw with humorous eyes. 

Henderson marvelled how she could in those few minutes have rescued thecabin from the desolation in which the storm had plunged it. Out of thewindow he could see the stricken grasses dripping cold moisture, and thesky still angrily plunging forward like a disturbed sea. Not a tree ora house broke the view. The desolation of it swept over him as it neverhad before. But within the little ones were chattering to themselves inodd baby dialect, and the mother was laughing with them. 

"Women aren't always useless, " she said, at parting; "and you tell yourchums that when they get hungry for a slice of homemade bread they canget it here. And the next time they go by, I want them to stop in andlook at the children. It'll do them good. They may think they won'tenjoy themselves, but they will. "

"Oh, I'll answer for that!" cried he, shaking hands with her. "I'll tellthem we have just the right sort of a neighbor. "

"Thank you, " said she, heartily. "And you may tell them that her name isCatherine Ford. "

Once at home, he told his story. 

"H'm!" said Gillispie, "I guess I'll have to go to town myselfto-morrow. "

Henderson looked at him blackly. "She's a woman alone, Gillispie, " saidhe, severely, "trying to make her way with handicaps--"

"Shet up, can't ye, ye darned fool?" roared Gillispie. "What do yeh takeme fur?"

Waite was putting on his rubber coat preparatory to going out for hisnight with the cattle. "Guess you're makin' a mistake, my boy, " he said, gently. "There ain't no danger of any woman bein' treated rude in theseparts. "

"I know it, by Jove!" cried Henderson, in quick contriteness. 

"All right, " grunted Gillispie, in tacit acceptance of this apology. "Iguess you thought you was in civilized parts. "

Two days after this Waite came in late to his supper. "Well, I seenher, " he announced. 

"Oh! did you?" cried Henderson, knowing perfectly well whom he meant. "What was she doing?"

"Killin' snakes, b'gosh! She says th' baby's crazy fur um, an' so shetakes aroun' a hoe on her shoulder wherever she goes, an' when she seesa snake, she has it out with 'im then an' there. I says to 'er, 'Yerdon't expec' t' git all th' snakes outen this here country, d' yeh?''Well, ' she says, 'I'm as good a man as St. Patrick any day. ' She is ajolly one, Henderson. She tuk me in an' showed me th' kids, and give mea loaf of gingerbread to bring home. Here it is; see?"

"Hu!" said Gillispie. "I'm not in it. " But for all of his scorn he wasnot above eating the gingerbread. 

It was gardening time, and the three Johns were putting in every sparemoment in the little paling made of willow twigs behind the house. Itwas little enough time they had, though, for the cattle were new to eachother and to the country, and they were hard to manage. It was generallyconceded that Waite had a genius for herding, and he could take the"mad" out of a fractious animal in a way that the others looked on aslittle less than superhuman. Thus it was that one day, when the clay hadbeen well turned, and the seeds arranged on the kitchen table, andall things prepared for an afternoon of busy planting, that Waiteand Henderson, who were needed out with the cattle, felt no littleirritation at the inexplicable absence of Gillispie, who was to lookafter the garden. It was quite nightfall when he at last returned. Supper was ready, although it had been Gillispie's turn to prepare it. 

Henderson was sore from his saddle, and cross at having to do more thanhis share of the work. "Damn yeh!" he cried, as Gillispie appeared. "Where yeh been?"

"Making garden, " responded Gillispie, slowly. 

"Making garden!" Henderson indulged in some more harmless oaths. 

Just then Gillispie drew from under his coat a large and friendlylooking apple-pie. "Yes, " he said, with emphasis; "I've bin a-makin'garden fur Mis' Ford. "

And so it came about that the three Johns knew her and served her, andthat she never had a need that they were not ready to supply if theycould. Not one of them would have thought of going to town withoutstopping to inquire what was needed at the village. As for CatherineFord, she was fighting her way with native pluck and maternalunselfishness. If she had feared solitude she did not suffer from it. The activity of her life stifled her fresh sorrow. She was pleasantlyexcited by the rumors that a railroad was soon to be built near theplace, which would raise the value of the claim she was "holding down"many thousand dollars. 

It is marvellous how sorrow shrinks when one is very healthy and verymuch occupied. Although poverty was her close companion, Catherine hadno thought of it in this primitive manner of living. She had come outthere, with the independence and determination of a Western woman, forthe purpose of living at the least possible expense, and making the mostshe could while the baby was "getting out of her arms. " That processhas its pleasures, which every mother feels in spite of burdens, andthe mind is happily dulled by nature's merciful provision. With a littlechild tugging at the breast, care and fret vanish, not because of thehappiness so much as because of a certain mammal complacency, whichis not at all intellectual, but serves its purpose better than theprofoundest method of reasoning. 

So without any very unbearable misery at her recent widowhood, thishealthy young woman worked in field and house, cared for her littleones, milked the two cows out in the corral, sewed, sang, rode, baked, and was happy for very wholesomeness. Sometimes she reproached herselfthat she was not more miserable, remembering that long grave back inthe unkempt little prairie cemetery, and she sat down to coax her sorrowinto proper prominence. But the baby cooing at her from its bunk, thelow of the cattle from the corral begging her to relieve their heavybags, the familiar call of one of her neighbors from without, eventhe burning sky of the summer dawns, broke the spell of this conjuredsorrow, and in spite of herself she was again a very hearty and happyyoung woman. Besides, if one has a liking for comedy, it isimpossible to be dull on a Nebraska prairie. The people are a merrierdivertissement than the theatre with its hackneyed stories. CatherineFord laughed a good deal, and she took the three Johns into herconfidence, and they laughed with her. There was Minerva Fitch, whoinsisted on coming over to tell Catherine how to raise her children, andwho was almost offended that the children wouldn't die of sunstrokewhen she predicted. And there was Bob Ackerman, who had inflammatoryrheumatism and a Past, and who confided the latter to Mrs. Ford whileshe doctored the former with homoeopathic medicines. And there were allthe strange visionaries who came out prospecting, and quite naturallydrifted to Mrs. Ford's cabin for a meal, and paid her in compliments ofa peculiarly Western type. And there were the three Johns themselves. Catherine considered it no treason to laugh at them a little. 

Yet at Waite she did not laugh much. There had come to be somethingpathetic in the constant service he rendered her. The beginning of hismore particular devotion had started in a particular way. Malaria wasvery bad in the country. It had carried off some of the most vigorouson the prairie, and twice that summer Catherine herself had laid out thecold forms of her neighbors on ironing-boards, and, with the assistanceof Bill Deems of Missourah, had read the burial service over them. Shehad averted several other fatal runs of fever by the contents of herlittle medicine-case. These remedies she dealt out with an intelligencethat astonished her patients, until it was learned that she was studyingmedicine at the time that she met her late husband, and was persuaded toassume the responsibilities of matrimony instead of those of the medicalprofession. 

One day in midsummer, when the sun was focussing itself on the raw pineboards of her shanty, and Catherine had the shades drawn for coolnessand the water-pitcher swathed in wet rags, East Indian fashion, sheheard the familiar halloo of Waite down the road. This greeting, whichwas usually sent to her from the point where the dipping road lifteditself into the first view of the house, did not contain its usual noteof cheerfulness. Catherine, wiping her hands on her checked apron, ranout to wave a welcome; and Waite, his squat body looking more distortedthan ever, his huge shoulders lurching as he walked, came fairlyplunging down the hill. 

"It's all up with Henderson!" he cried, as Catherine approached. "He'sgot the malery, an' he says he's dyin'. "

"That's no sign he's dying, because he says so, " retorted Catherine. 

"He wants to see yeh, " panted Waite, mopping his big ugly head. "I thinkhe's got somethin' particular to say. "

"How long has he been down?"

"Three days; an' yeh wouldn't know 'im. "

The children were playing on the floor at that side of the house whereit was least hot. Catherine poured out three bowls of milk, and cut somebread, meanwhile telling Kitty how to feed the baby. 

"She's a sensible thing, is the little daughter, " said Catherine, as shetied on her sunbonnet and packed a little basket with things from thecupboard. She kissed the babies tenderly, flung her hoe--her only weaponof defence--over her shoulder, and the two started off. 

They did not speak, for their throats were soon too parched. The prairiewas burned brown with the sun; the grasses curled as if they had been ona gridiron. A strong wind was blowing; but it brought no comfort, forit was heavy with a scorching heat. The skin smarted and blistered underit, and the eyes felt as if they were filled with sand. The sun seemedto swing but a little way above the earth, and though the sky wasintensest blue, around about this burning ball there was a halo ofcopper, as if the very ether were being consumed in yellow fire. 

Waite put some big burdock-leaves on Catherine's head under her bonnet, and now and then he took a bottle of water from his pocket and made herswallow a mouthful. She staggered often as she walked, and the road wasblack before her. Still, it was not very long before the oddly shapedshack of the three Johns came in sight; and as he caught a glimpse ofit, Waite quickened his footsteps. 

"What if he should be gone?" he said, under his breath. 

"Oh, come off!" said Catherine, angrily. "He's not gone. You make metired!"

But she was trembling when she stopped just before the door to composeherself for a moment. Indeed, she trembled so very much that Waiteput out his sprawling hand to steady her. She gently felt the pressuretightening, and Waite whispered in her ear:

"I guess I'd stand by him as well as anybody, excep' you, Mis' Ford. He's been my bes' friend. But I guess you like him better, eh?"

Catherine raised her finger. She could hear Henderson's voice within;it was pitiably querulous. He was half sitting up in his bunk, andGillispie had just handed him a plate on which two cakes were swimmingin black molasses and pork gravy. Henderson looked at it a moment; thenover his face came a look of utter despair. He dropped his head in hisarms and broke into uncontrolled crying. 

"Oh, my God, Gillispie, " he sobbed, "I shall die out here in thiswretched hole! I want my mother. Great God, Gillispie, am I going to diewithout ever seeing my mother?"

Gillispie, maddened at this anguish, which he could in no way alleviate, sought comfort by first lighting his pipe and then taking his revolverout of his hip-pocket and playing with it. Henderson continued to shakewith sobs, and Catherine, who had never before in her life heard a mancry, leaned against the door for a moment to gather courage. Then sheran into the house quickly, laughing as she came. She took Henderson'sarms away from his face and laid him back on the pillow, and she stoopedover him and kissed his forehead in the most matter-of-fact way. 

"That's what your mother would do if she were here, " she cried, merrily. "Where's the water?"

She washed his face and hands a long time, till they were cool and hisconvulsive sobs had ceased. Then she took a slice of thin bread from herbasket and a spoonful of amber jelly. She beat an egg into some milk anddropped a little liquor within it, and served them together on the firstclean napkin that had been in the cabin of the three Johns since it wasbuilt. 

At this the great fool on the bed cried again, only quietly, tearsof weak happiness running from his feverish eyes. And Catherinestraightened the disorderly cabin. She came every day for two weeks, andby that time Henderson, very uncertain as to the strength of his legs, but once more accoutred in his native pluck, sat up in a chair, forwhich she had made clean soft cushions, writing a letter to his mother. The floor was scrubbed; the cabin had taken to itself cupboards madeof packing-boxes; it had clothes-presses and shelves; curtains at thewindows; boxes for all sort of necessaries, from flour to tobacco; anda cook-book on the wall, with an inscription within which was moreappropriate than respectful. 

The day that she announced that she would have no further call to comeback, Waite, who was looking after the house while Gillispie was afield, made a little speech. 

"After this here, " he said, "we four stands er falls together. Nowlook here, there's lots of things can happen to a person on this cussedpraira, and no one be none th' wiser. So see here, Mis' Ford, everynight one of us is a-goin' to th' roof of this shack. From there we cansee your place. If anything is th' matter--it don't signify how littleer how big--you hang a lantern on th' stick that I'll put alongside th'house to-morrow. Yeh can h'ist th' light up with a string, and everymornin' before we go out we'll look too, and a white rag'll bring usquick as we can git there. We don't say nothin' about what we owe yeh, fur that ain't our way, but we sticks to each other from this on. "

Catherine's eyes were moist. She looked at Henderson. His face had noexpression in it at all. He did not even say good-by to her, and sheturned, with the tears suddenly dried under her lids, and walked downthe road in the twilight. 

Weeks went by, and though Gillispie and Waite were often at Catherine's, Henderson never came. Gillispie gave it out as his opinion thatHenderson was an ungrateful puppy; but Waite said nothing. This strangeman, who seemed like a mere untoward accident of nature, had changedduring the summer. His big ill-shaped body had grown more gaunt;his deep-set gray eyes had sunk deeper; the gentleness which haddistinguished him even on the wild ranges of Montana became more marked. Late in August he volunteered to take on himself the entire charge ofthe night watch. 

"It's nicer to be out at night, " he said to Catherine. "Then you don'tkeep looking off at things; you can look inside;" and he struck hisbreast with his splay hand. 

Cattle are timorous under the stars. The vastness of the plains, thesweep of the wind under the unbroken arch, frighten them; they aremade for the close comforts of the barn-yard; and the apprehension iscontagious, as every ranchman knows. Waite realized the need of becominggood friends with his animals. Night after night, riding up and downin the twilight of the stars, or dozing, rolled in his blanket, in theshelter of a knoll, he would hear a low roar; it was the cry of thealarmist. Then from every direction the cattle would rise with tremblingawkwardness on their knees, and answer, giving out sullen bellowings. Some of them would begin to move from place to place, spreading thebaseless alarm, and then came the time for action, else over the plainin mere fruitless frenzy would go the whole frantic band, lashed tomadness by their own fears, trampling each other, heedless of anyobstacle, in pitiable, deadly rout. Waite knew the premonitory signswell, and at the first warning bellow he was on his feet, alertand determined, his energy nerved for a struggle in which he alwaysconquered. 

Waite had a secret which he told to none, knowing, in his unanalyticalfashion, that it would not be believed in. But soon as ever the darkheads of the cattle began to lift themselves, he sent a resonant voiceout into the stillness. The songs he sang were hymns, and he made theminto a sort of imperative lullaby. Waite let his lungs and soul fillwith the breath of the night; he gave himself up to the exaltation ofmastering those trembling brutes. Mounting, melodious, with even andpowerful swing he let his full notes fall on the air in the confidenceof power, and one by one the reassured cattle would lie down again, lowing in soft contentment, and so fall asleep with noses stretched outin mute attention, till their presence could hardly be guessed exceptfor the sweet aroma of their cuds. 

One night in the early dusk, he saw Catherine Ford hastening across theprairie with Bill Deems. He sent a halloo out to them, which they bothanswered as they ran on. Waite knew on what errand of mercy Catherinewas bent, and he thought of the children over at the cabin alone. Thecattle were quiet, the night beautiful, and he concluded that it wassafe enough, since he was on his pony, to ride down there about midnightand see that the little ones were safe. 

The dark sky, pricked with points of intensest light, hung over himso beneficently that in his heart there leaped a joy which even hisever-present sorrow could not disturb. This sorrow Waite openly admittednot only to himself, but to others. He had said to Catherine: "You see, I'll always hev to love yeh. An' yeh'll not git cross with me; I'm notgoin' to be in th' way. " And Catherine had told him, with tears in hereyes, that his love could never be but a comfort to any woman. And thesewords, which the poor fellow had in no sense mistaken, comforted himalways, became part of his joy as he rode there, under those piercingstars, to look after her little ones. He found them sleeping in theirbunks, the baby tight in Kitty's arms, the little boy above them in theupper bunk, with his hand in the long hair of his brown spaniel. Waitesoftly kissed each of them, so Kitty, who was half waking, told hermother afterwards, and then, bethinking him that Catherine might not beable to return in time for their breakfast, found the milk and bread, and set it for them on the table. Catherine had been writing, and herunfinished letter lay open beside the ink. He took up the pen and wrote, "The childdren was all asleep at twelv. 

"J. W. "

He had not more than got on his pony again before he heard an ominoussound that made his heart leap. It was a frantic dull pounding ofhoofs. He knew in a second what it meant. There was a stampede amongthe cattle. If the animals had all been his, he would not have losthis sense of judgment. But the realization that he had voluntarilyundertaken the care of them, and that the larger part of them belongedto his friends, put him in a passion of apprehension that, as aranchman, was almost inexplicable. He did the very thing of all othersthat no cattle-man in his right senses would think of doing. Gillispieand Henderson, talking it over afterward, were never able to understandit. It is possible--just barely possible--that Waite, still drunk on hissolitary dreams, knew what he was doing, and chose to bring his littlechapter to an end while the lines were pleasant. At any rate, he rodestraight forward, shouting and waving his arms in an insane endeavor tohead off that frantic mob. The noise woke the children, and they peeredfrom the window as the pawing and bellowing herd plunged by, tramplingthe young steers under their feet. 

In the early morning, Catherine Ford, spent both in mind and body, camewalking slowly home. In her heart was a prayer of thanksgiving. MaryDeems lay sleeping back in her comfortless shack, with her little son byher side. 

"The wonder of God is in it, " said Catherine to herself as she walkedhome. "All the ministers of all the world could not have preached mesuch a sermon as I've had to-night. "

So dim had been the light and so perturbed her mind that she had notnoticed how torn and trampled was the road. But suddenly a bulk in herpathway startled her. It was the dead and mangled body of a steer. Shestooped over it to read the brand on its flank. "It's one of the threeJohns', " she cried out, looking anxiously about her. "How could thathave happened?"

The direction which the cattle had taken was toward her house, and shehastened homeward. And not a quarter of a mile from her door she foundthe body of Waite beside that of his pony, crushed out of its familiarform into something unspeakably shapeless. In her excitement she halfdragged, half carried that mutilated body home, and then ran up hersignal of alarm on the stick that Waite himself had erected for herconvenience. She thought it would be a long time before any one reachedher, but she had hardly had time to bathe the disfigured face andstraighten the disfigured body before Henderson was pounding at herdoor. Outside stood his pony panting from its terrific exertions. Henderson had not seen her before for six weeks. Now he stared at herwith frightened eyes. 

"What is it? What is it?" he cried. "What has happened to you, my--mylove?"

At least afterward, thinking it over as she worked by day or tossed inher narrow bunk at night, it seemed to Catherine that those were thewords he spoke. Yet she could never feel sure; nothing in his mannerafter that justified the impassioned anxiety of his manner in thosefirst few uncertain moments; for a second later he saw the body of hisfriend and learned the little that Catherine knew. They buried himthe next day in a little hollow where there was a spring and some wildaspens. 

"He never liked the prairie, " Catherine said, when she selected thespot. "And I want him to lie as sheltered as possible. "

After he had been laid at rest, and she was back, busy with tidying herneglected shack, she fell to crying so that the children were scared. 

"There's no one left to care what becomes of us, " she told them, bitterly. "We might starve out here for all that any one cares. "

And all through the night her tears fell, and she told herself that theywere all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; shetold herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. Afterthis the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, daysof biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The lastof the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar;and a few tons of coal--dear almost as diamonds--were brought out toprovide against the severest weather. Ordinarily buffalo chips werethe fuel. Catherine was alarmed at the way her wretched little store ofmoney began to vanish. The baby was fretful with its teething, and wasreally more care than when she nursed it. The days shortened, and itseemed to her that she was forever working by lamp-light The prairieswere brown and forbidding, the sky often a mere gray pall. The monotonyof the life began to seem terrible. Sometimes her ears ached for asound. For a time in the summer so many had seemed to need her thatshe had been happy in spite of her poverty and her loneliness. Now, suddenly, no one wanted her. She could find no source of inspiration. She wondered how she was going to live through the winter, and keep herpatience and her good-nature. 

"You'll love me, " she said, almost fiercely, one night to thechildren--"you'll love mamma, no matter how cross and homely she gets, won't you?"

The cold grew day by day. A strong winter was setting in. Catherine tookup her study of medicine again, and sat over her books till midnight. It occurred to her that she might fit herself for nursing by spring, andthat the children could be put with some one--she did not dare to thinkwith whom. But this was the only solution she could find to her problemof existence. 

November settled down drearily. Few passed the shack. Catherine, whohad no one to speak with excepting the children, continually devisedamusements for them. They got to living in a world of fantasy, andwere never themselves, but always wild Indians, or arctic explorers, or Robinson Crusoes. Kitty and Roderick, young as they were, found anever-ending source of amusement in these little grotesque dreams anddramas. The fund of money was getting so low that Catherine was obligedto economize even in the necessities. If it had not been for her twocows, she would hardly have known how to find food for her little ones. But she had a wonderful way of making things with eggs and milk, and shekept her little table always inviting. The day before Thanksgiving shedetermined that they should all have a frolic. 

"By Christmas, " she said to Kitty, "the snow may be so bad that I cannotget to town. We'll have our high old time now. "

There is no denying that Catherine used slang even in talking to thechildren. The little pony had been sold long ago, and going to townmeant a walk of twelve miles. But Catherine started out early in themorning, and was back by nightfall, not so very much the worse, andcarrying in her arms bundles which might have fatigued a bronco. 

The next morning she was up early, and was as happy and ridiculouslyexcited over the prospect of the day's merrymaking as if she had beenKitty. Busy as she was, she noticed a peculiar oppression in the air, which intensified as the day went on. The sky seemed to hang but alittle way above the rolling stretch of frost-bitten grass. But Kittylaughing over her new doll, Roderick startling the sullen silencewith his drum, the smell of the chicken, slaughtered to make a prairieholiday, browning in the oven, drove all apprehensions from Catherine'smind. She was a common creature. Such very little things could make herhappy. She sang as she worked; and what with the drumming of her boy, and the little exulting shrieks of her baby, the shack was filled with adeafening and exhilarating din. 

It was a little past noon, when she became conscious that there wassweeping down on her a gray sheet of snow and ice, and not till then didshe realize what those lowering clouds had signified. For one moment shestood half paralyzed. She thought of everything, --of the cattle, of thechance for being buried in this drift, of the stock of provisions, ofthe power of endurance of the children. While she was still thinking, the first ice-needles of the blizzard came peppering the windows. Thecattle ran bellowing to the lee side of the house and crouched there, and the chickens scurried for the coop. Catherine seized such blanketsand bits of carpet as she could find, and crammed them at windows anddoors. Then she piled coal on the fire, and clothed the children in allthey had that was warmest, their out-door garments included; and withthem close about her, she sat and waited. The wind seemed to pushsteadily at the walls of the house. The howling became horrible. Shecould see that the children were crying with fright, but she couldnot hear them. The air was dusky; the cold, in spite of the fire, intolerable. In every crevice of the wretched structure the ice and snowmade their way. It came through the roof, and began piling up in littlepointed strips under the crevices. Catherine put the children alltogether in one bunk, covered them with all the bedclothes she had, andthen stood before them defiantly, facing the west, from whence thewind was driving. Not suddenly, but by steady pressure, at length thewindow-sash yielded, and the next moment that whirlwind was in thehouse, --a maddening tumult of ice and wind, leaving no room forresistance; a killing cold, against which it was futile to fight. Catherine threw the bedclothes over the heads of the children, and thenthrew herself across the bunk, gasping and choking for breath. Herbody would not have yielded to the suffering yet, so strongly made andsustained was it; but her dismay stifled her. She saw in one horrifiedmoment the frozen forms of her babies, now so pink and pleasant to thesense; and oblivion came to save her from further misery. 

She was alive--just barely alive--when Gillispie and Henderson gotthere, three hours later, the very balls of their eyes almost frozeninto blindness. But for an instinct stronger than reason they wouldnever have been able to have found their way across that tracklessstretch. The children lying unconscious under their coverings wereneither dead nor actually frozen, although the men putting their handson their little hearts could not at first discover the beating. Stiffand suffering as these young fellows were, it was no easy matter to getthe window back into place and re-light the fire. They had tied flasksof liquor about their waists; and this beneficent fluid they used withthat sense of appreciation which only a pioneer can feel towardwhiskey. It was hours before Catherine rewarded them with a gleamof consciousness. Her body had been frozen in many places. Her arms, outstretched over her children and holding the clothes down aboutthem, were rigid. But consciousness came at length, dimly struggling upthrough her brain; and over her she saw her friends rubbing and rubbingthose strong firm arms of hers with snow. 

She half raised her head, with a horror of comprehension in her eyes, and listened. A cry answered her, --a cry of dull pain from the baby. Henderson dropped on his knees beside her. 

"They are all safe, " he said. "And we will never leave you again. I havebeen afraid to tell you how I love you. I thought I might offend you. Ithought I ought to wait--you know why. But I will never let you run therisks of this awful life alone again. You must rename the baby. Fromthis day his name is John. And we will have the three Johns againback at the old ranch. It doesn't matter whether you love me or not, Catherine, I am going to take care of you just the same. Gillispieagrees with me. "

"Damme, yes, " muttered Gillispie, feeling of his hip-pocket forconsolation in his old manner. 

Catherine struggled to find her voice, but it would not come. 

"Do not speak, " whispered John. "Tell me with your eyes whether you willcome as my wife or only as our sister. "

Catherine told him. 

"This is Thanksgiving day, " said he. "And we don't know much aboutpraying, but I guess we all have something in our hearts that does justas well. "

"Damme, yes, " said Gillispie, again, as he pensively cocked and uncockedhis revolver. 

A Resuscitation

AFTER being dead twenty years, he walked out into the sunshine. 

It was as if the bones of a bleached skeleton should join themselves onsome forgotten plain, and look about them for the vanished flesh. 

To be dead it is not necessary to be in the grave. There are placeswhere the worms creep about the heart instead of the body. 

The penitentiary is one of these. David Culross had been in thepenitentiary twenty years. Now, with that worm-eaten heart, he came outinto liberty and looked about him for the habiliments with which he hadformerly clothed himself, --for hope, self-respect, courage, pugnacity, and industry. 

But they had vanished and left no trace, like the flesh of the dead menon the plains, and so, morally unapparelled, in the hideous skeleton ofhis manhood, he walked on down the street under the mid-June sunshine. 

You can understand, can you not, how a skeleton might wish to get backinto its comfortable grave? David Culross had not walked two blocksbefore he was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to beg to beshielded once more in that safe and shameful retreat from which he hadjust been released. A horrible perception of the largeness of the worldswept over him. Space and eternity could seem no larger to the usual manthan earth--that snug and insignificant planet--looked to David Culross. 

"If I go back, " he cried, despairingly, looking up to the great buildingthat arose above the stony hills, "they will not take me in. " He wasabsolutely without a refuge, utterly without a destination; he did nothave a hope. There was nothing he desired except the surrounding ofthose four narrow walls between which he had lain at night and dreamedthose ever-recurring dreams, -dreams which were never prophecies orpromises, but always the hackneyed history of what he had sacrificed byhis crime, and relinquished by his pride. 

The men who passed him looked at him with mingled amusement and pity. They knew the "prison look, " and they knew the prison clothes. Forthough the State gives to its discharged convicts clothes which arelike those of other men, it makes a hundred suits from the same sort ofcloth. The police know the fabric, and even the citizens recognizeit. But, then, were each man dressed in different garb he could not bedisguised. Every one knows in what dull school that sidelong glance islearned, that aimless drooping of the shoulders, that rhythmic liftingof the heavy foot. 

David Culross wondered if his will were dead. He put it to the test. He lifted up his head to a position which it had not held for manymiserable years. He put his hands in his pockets in a pitiful attempt atnonchalance, and walked down the street with a step which was meant tobe brisk, but which was in fact only uncertain. In his pocket were tendollars. This much the State equips a man with when it sends him out ofits penal halls. It gives him also transportation to any point withinreasonable distance that he may desire to reach. Culross had requested aticket to Chicago. He naturally said Chicago. In the long colorless daysit had been in Chicago that all those endlessly repeated scenes had beenlaid. Walking up the street now with that wavering ineffectual gait, these scenes came back to surge in his brain like waters ceaselesslytossed in a wind-swept basin. 

There was the office, bare and clean, where the young stoop-shoulderedclerks sat writing. In their faces was a strange resemblance, just asthere was in the backs of the ledgers, and in the endless bills onthe spindles. If one of them laughed, it was not with gayety, but withgratification at the discomfiture of another. None of them ate well. None of them were rested after sleep. All of them rode on the stuffyone-horse cars to and from their work. Sundays they lay in bed verylate, and ate more dinner than they could digest. There was a certainfellowship among them, --such fellowship as a band of captives amongcannibals might feel, each of them waiting with vital curiosity tosee who was the next to be eaten. But of that fellowship that plansin unison, suffers in sympathy, enjoys vicariously, strengthens intofriendship and communion of soul they knew nothing. Indeed, suchcamaraderie would have been disapproved of by the Head Clerk. He wouldhave looked on an emotion with exactly the same displeasure that hewould on an error in the footing of the year's accounts. It was tacitlyunderstood that one reached the proud position of Head Clerk by havingno emotions whatever. 

Culross did not remember having been born with a pen in his hand, oreven with one behind his ear; but certainly from the day he had beenlet out of knickerbockers his constant companion had been that greatlyoverestimated article. His father dying at a time that cut short David'sschool-days, he went out armed with his new knowledge of double-entry, determined to make a fortune and a commercial name. Meantime, he livedin a suite of three rooms on West Madison Street with his mother, whowas a good woman, and lived where she did that she might be near herfavorite meeting-house. She prayed, and cooked bad dinners, principallycomposed of dispiriting pastry. Her idea of house-keeping was to keepthe shades down, whatever happened; and when David left home in theevening for any purpose of pleasure, she wept. David persuaded himselfthat he despised amusement, and went to bed each night at half-past ninein a folding bedstead in the front room, and, by becoming absolutelystolid from mere vegetation, imagined that he was almost fit to be aHead Clerk. 

Walking down the street now after the twenty years, thinking of thesedead but innocent days, this was the picture he saw; and as he reflectedupon it, even the despoiled and desolate years just passed seemed richerby contrast. 

He reached the station thus dreaming, and found, as he had been toldwhen the warden bade him good-by, that a train was to be at handdirectly bound to the city. A few moments later he was on that train. Well back in the shadow, and out of sight of the other passengers, hegave himself up to the enjoyment of the comfortable cushion. He wouldwillingly have looked from the window, --green fields were new andwonderful; drifting clouds a marvel; men, houses, horses, farms, all arevelation, --but those haunting visions were at him again, and would notleave brain or eye free for other things. 

But the next scene had warmer tints. It was the interior of a richroom, --crimson and amber fabrics, flowers, the gleam of a statue beyondthe drapings; the sound of a tender piano unflinging a familiar melody, and a woman. She was just a part of all the luxury. 

He himself, very timid and conscious of his awkwardness, sat near, trying barrenly to get some of his thoughts out of his brain on to histongue. 

"Strange, isn't it, " the woman broke in on her own music, "that wehave seen each other so very often and never spoken? I've often thoughtintroductions were ridiculous. Fancy seeing a person year in and yearout, and really knowing all about him, and being perfectly acquaintedwith his name--at least his or her name, you know--and then neverspeaking! Some one comes along, and says, 'Miss Le Baron, this is Mr. Culross, ' just as if one didn't know that all the time! And there youare! You cease to be dumb folks, and fall to talking, and say a lot ofthings neither of you care about, and after five or six weeks of timeand sundry meetings, get down to honestly saying what you mean. I'm soglad we've got through with that first stage, and can say what we thinkand tell what we really like. "

Then the playing began again, --a harplike intermingling of soft sounds. Zoe Le Baron's hands were very girlish. Everything about her wasunformed. Even her mind was so. But all promised a full completion. The voice, the shoulders, the smile, the words, the lips, the arms, thewhole mind and body, were rounding to maturity. 

"Why do you never come to church in the morning?" asks Miss Le Baron, wheeling around on her piano-stool suddenly. "You are only there atnight, with your mother. "

"I go only on her account, " replies David, truthfully. "In the morningI am so tired with the week's work that I rest at home. I ought to go, Iknow. "

"Yes, you ought, " returns the young woman, gravely. "It doesn't reallyrest one to lie in bed like that. I've tried it at boarding-school. Itwas no good whatever. "

"Should you advise me, " asks David, in a confiding tone, "to arise earlyon Sunday?"

The girl blushes a little. "By all means!" she cries, her eyestwinkling, "and--and come to church. Our morning sermons are really verymuch better than those in the evening. " And she plays a waltz, and whatwith the music and the warmth of the room and the perfume of the roses, a something nameless and mystical steals over the poor clerk, andswathes him about like the fumes of opium. They are alone. The silenceis made deeper by that rhythmic unswelling of sound. As the painterflushes the bare wall into splendor, these emotions illuminated hissoul, and gave to it that high courage that comes when men or womensuddenly realize that each life has its significance, -their own lives noless than the lives of others. 

The man sitting there in the shadow in that noisy train saw in hisvision how the lad arose and moved, like one under a spell, toward thepiano. He felt again the enchantment of the music-ridden quiet, of theperfume, and the presence of the woman. 

"Knowing you and speaking with you have not made much difference withme, " he whispers, drunk on the new wine of passion, "for I have lovedyou since I saw you first. And though it is so sweet to hear you speak, your voice is no more beautiful than I thought it would be. I have lovedyou a long time, and I want to know--"

The broken man in the shadow remembered how the lad stopped, astonishedat his boldness and his fluency, overcome suddenly at the thought ofwhat he was saying. The music stopped with a discord. The girl arose, trembling and scarlet. 

"I would not have believed it of you, " she cries, "to take advantage ofme like this, when I am alone--and--everything. You know very well thatnothing but trouble could come to either of us from your telling me athing like that. "

He puts his hands up to his face to keep off her anger. He is tremblingwith confusion. 

Then she broke in penitently, trying to pull his hands away from hishot face: "Never mind! I know you didn't mean anything. Be good, do, anddon't spoil the lovely times we have together. You know very wellfather and mother wouldn't let us see each other at all if they--if theythought you were saying anything such as you said just now. "

"Oh, but I can't help it!" cries the boy, despairingly. "I have neverloved anybody at all till now. I don't mean not another girl, you know. But you are the first being I ever cared for. I sometimes think mothercares for me because I pay the rent. And the office--you can't imaginewhat that is like. The men in it are moving corpses. They're proud to bethat way, and so was I till I knew you and learned what life was like. All the happy moments I have had have been here. Now, if you tell methat we are not to care for each other--"

There was some one coming down the hall. The curtain lifted. Amiddle-aged man stood there looking at him. 

"Culross, " said he, "I'm disappointed in you. I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't help hearing what you said just now. I don't blame youparticularly. Young men will be fools. And I do not in any way mean toinsult you when I tell you to stop your coming here. I don't want to seeyou inside this door again, and after a while you will thank me forit. You have taken a very unfair advantage of my invitation. I makeallowances for your youth. "

He held back the curtain for the lad to pass out. David threw amiserable glance at the girl. She was standing looking at her fatherwith an expression that David could not fathom. He went into the hall, picked up his hat, and walked out in silence. 

David wondered that night, walking the chilly streets after hequitted the house, and often, often afterward, if that comfortable andprosperous gentleman, safe beyond the perturbations of youth, hadany idea of what he had done. How COULD he know anything of the blackmonotony of the life of the man he turned from his door? The "desk'sdead wood" and all its hateful slavery, the dull darkened rooms wherehis mother prosed through endless evenings, the bookless, joyless, hopeless existence that had cramped him all his days rose up beforehim, as a stretch of unbroken plain may rise before a lost man till itmaddens him. 

The bowed man in the car-seat remembered with a flush of reminiscentmisery how the lad turned suddenly in his walk and entered the door ofa drinking-room that stood open. It was very comfortable within. Thescreens kept out the chill of the autumn night, the sawdust-sprinkledfloor was clean, the tables placed near together, the bar glittering, the attendants white-aproned and brisk. 

David liked the place, and he liked better still the laughter that camefrom a room within. It had a note in it a little different from anythinghe had ever heard before in his life, and one that echoed his mood. Heventured to ask if he might go into the farther room. 

It does not mean much when most young men go to a place like this. Theytake their bit of unwholesome dissipation quietly enough, and are alittle coarser and more careless each time they indulge in it, perhaps. But certainly their acts, whatever gradual deterioration they mayindicate, bespeak no sudden moral revolution. With this young clerk itwas different. He was a worse man from the moment he entered the door, for he did violence to his principles; he killed his self-respect. 

He had been paid at the office that night, and he had the money--aweek's miserable pittance--in his pocket. His every action revealed thefact that he was a novice in recklessness. His innocent face piqued themen within. They gave him a welcome that amazed him. Of course the restof the evening was a chaos to him. The throat down which he poured theliquor was as tender as a child's. The men turned his head withtheir ironical compliments. Their boisterous good-fellowship was asintoxicating to this poor young recluse as the liquor. 

It was the revulsion from this feeling, when he came to a consciousnessthat the men were laughing at him and not with him, that wrecked hislife. He had gone from beer to whiskey, and from whiskey to brandy, bythis time, at the suggestion of the men, and was making awkward lungeswith a billiard cue, spurred on by the mocking applause of the others. One young fellow was particularly hilarious at his expense. His jokesbecame insults, or so they seemed to David. 

A quarrel followed, half a jest on the part of the other, all seriousas far as David was concerned. And then--Well, who could tell how ithappened? The billiard cue was in David's hand, and the skull of thejester was split, a horrible gaping thing, revoltingly animal. 

David never saw his home again. His mother gave it out in church thather heart was broken, and she wrote a letter to David begging him toreform. She said she would never cease to pray for him, that he mightreturn to grace. He had an attorney, an impecunious and very agedgentleman, whose life was a venerable failure, and who talked so muchabout his personal inconveniences from indigestion that he forgot totake a very keen interest in the concerns of his client. David's trialmade no sensation. He did not even have the cheap sympathy of themorbid. The court-room was almost empty the dull spring day when theeast wind beat against the window, jangling the loose panes all throughthe reading of the verdict. 

Twenty years!

Twenty years in the penitentiary!

David looked up at the judge and smiled. Men have been known to smilethat way when the car-wheel crashes over their legs, or a bullet letsthe air through their lungs. 

All that followed would have seemed more terrible if it had not appearedto be so remote. David had to assure himself over and over that it wasreally he who was put in that disgraceful dress, and locked in thatshameful walk from corridor to workroom, from work-room to chapel. The work was not much more monotonous than that to which he had beenaccustomed in the office. Here, as there, one was reproved for not doingthe required amount, but never praised for extraordinary efforts. Here, as there, the workers regarded each other with dislike and suspicion. Here, as there, work was a penalty and not a pleasure. 

It is the nights that are to be dreaded in a penitentiary. Speech easesthe brain of free men; but the man condemned to eternal silence isbound to endure torments. Thought, which might be a diversion, becomesa curse; it is a painful disease which becomes chronic. It does not takelong to forget the days of the week and the months of the year whentime brings no variance. David drugged himself on dreams. He knew it wasweakness, but it was the wine of forgetfulness, and he indulged in it. He went over and over, in endless repetition, every scene in which ZoeLe Baron had figured. 

He learned by a paper that she had gone to Europe. He was glad of that. For there were hours in which he imagined that his fate might havecaused her distress--not much, of course, but perhaps an occasional hourof sympathetic regret. But it was pleasanter not to think of that. Hepreferred to remember the hours they had spent together while she wasteaching him the joy of life. 

How lovely her gray eyes were! Deep, yet bright, and full of silentlittle speeches. The rooms in which he imagined her as moving werealways splendid; the gowns she wore were of rustling silk. He never inany dream, waking or sleeping, associated her with poverty or sorrow orpain. Gay and beautiful, she moved from city to city, in these visionsof David's, looking always at wonderful things, and finding laughter inevery happening. 

It was six months after his entrance into his silent abode that a lettercame for him. 

"By rights, Culross, " said the warden, "I should not give this letterto you. It isn't the sort we approve of. But you're in for a good spell, and if there is anything that can make life seem more tolerable, I don'tknow but you're entitled to it. At least, I'm not the man to deny it toyou. "

This was the letter:--

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --I hope you do not think that all these months, whenyou have been suffering so terribly, I have been thinking of otherthings! But I am sure you know the truth. You know that I could not sendyou word or come to see you, or I would have done it. When I first heardof what you had done, I saw it all as it happened, --that dreadful scene, I mean, in the saloon. I am sure I have imagined everything just as itwas. I begged papa to help you, but he was very angry. You see, papa wasso peculiar. He thought more of the appearances of things, perhaps, thanof facts. It infuriated him to think of me as being concerned about youor with you. I did not know he could be so angry, and his anger did notdie, but for days it cast such a shadow over me that I used to wish Iwas dead. Only I would not disobey him, and now I am glad of that. Wewere in France three months, and then, coming home, papa died. It wason the voyage. I wish he had asked me to forgive him, for then I thinkI could have remembered him with more tenderness. But he did nothing ofthe kind. He did not seem to think he had done wrong in any way, thoughI feel that some way we might have saved you. I am back here in Chicagoin the old home. But I shall not stay in this house. It is so largeand lonesome, and I always see you and father facing each other angrilythere in the parlor when I enter it. So I am going to get me some coseyrooms in another part of the city, and take my aunt, who is a sweet oldlady, to live with me; and I am going to devote my time--all of it--andall of my brains to getting you out of that terrible place. What is theuse of telling me that you are a murderer? Do I not know you could notbe brought to hurt anything? I suppose you must have killed that poorman, but then it was not you, it was that dreadful drink--it was Me!That is what continually haunts me. If I had been a braver girl, andspoken the words that were in my heart, you would not have gone intothat place. You would be innocent to-day. It was I who was responsiblefor it all. I let father kill your heart right there before me, andnever said a word. Yet I knew how it was with you, and--this is whatI ought to have said then, and what I must say now--and all the time Ifelt just as you did. I thought I should die when I saw you go away, andknew you would never come back again. Only I was so selfish, I was sowicked, I would say nothing. 

"I have no right to be comfortable and hopeful, and to have friends, with you shut up from liberty and happiness. I will not have thosecomfortable rooms, after all. I will live as you do. I will live alonein a bare room. For it is I who am guilty! And then I will feel that Ialso am being punished. 

"Do you hate me? Perhaps my telling you now all these things, and that Ifelt toward you just as you did toward me, will not make you happy. Forit may be that you despise me. 

"Anyway, I have told you the truth now. I will go as soon as I hear fromyou to a lawyer, and try to find out how you may be liberated. I am sureit can be done when the facts are known. 

"Poor boy! How I do hope you have known in your heart that I was notforgetting you. Indeed, day or night, I have thought of nothing else. Now I am free to help you. And be sure, whatever happens, that I amworking for you. 

"ZOE LE BARON. "

That was all. Just a girlish, constrained letter, hardly hinting at thehot tears that had been shed for many weary nights, coyly telling of theimpatient young love and all the maidenly shame. 

David permitted himself to read it only once. Then a sudden resolutionwas born-a heroic one. Before he got the letter he was a crushedand unsophisticated boy; when he had read it, and absorbed its fullsignificance, he became suddenly a man, capable of a great sacrifice. 

"I return your letter, " he wrote, without superscription, "and thank youfor your anxiety about me. But the truth is, I had forgotten all aboutyou in my trouble. You were not in the least to blame for what happened. I might have known I would come to such an end. You thought I was good, of course; but it is not easy to find out the life of a young man. It israther mortifying to have a private letter sent here, because the wardenreads them all. I hope you will enjoy yourself this winter, and hastento forget one who had certainly forgotten you till reminded by yourletter, which I return. 

"Respectfully, "DAVID CULROSS. "

That night some deep lines came into his face which never left it, andwhich made him look like a man of middle age. 

He never doubted that his plan would succeed; that, piqued and indignantat his ingratitude, she would hate him, and in a little time forgethe ever lived, or remember him only to blush with shame at her pastassociation with him. He saw her happy, loved, living the usual life ofwomen, with all those things that make life rich. 

For there in the solitude an understanding of deep things came to him. He who thought never to have a wife grew to know what the joy of it mustbe. He perceived all the subtle rapture of wedded souls. He learned whatthe love of children was, the pride of home, the unselfish ambitionfor success that spurs men on. All the emotions passed in procession atnight before him, tricked out in palpable forms. 

A burst of girlish tears would dissipate whatever lingering pity Zoefelt for him. How often he said that! With her sensitiveness she wouldbe sure to hate a man who had mortified her. 

So he fell to dreaming of her again as moving among happy and luxuriousscenes, exquisitely clothed, with flowers on her bosom and jewels onher neck; and he saw men loving her, and was glad, and saw her at lastloving the best of them, and told himself in the silence of the nightthat it was as he wished. 

Yet always, always, from weary week to weary week, he rehearsed thescenes. They were his theatre, his opera, his library, his lecture hall. 

He rehearsed them again there on the cars. He never wearied of them. Tobe sure, other thoughts had come to him at night. Much that to most menseems complex and puzzling had grown to appear simple to him. In a wayhis brain had quickened and deepened through the years of solitude. Hehad thought out a great many things. He had read a few good books anddigested them, and the visions in his heart had kept him from beingbitter. 

Yet, suddenly confronted with liberty, turned loose like a pasturedcolt, without master or rein, he felt only confusion and dismay. Hemight be expected to feel exultation. He experienced only fright. It isprecisely the same with the liberated colt. 

The train pulled into a bustling station, in which the multitudinousnoises were thrown back again from the arched iron roof. The relentlesshaste of all the people was inexpressibly cruel to the man who lookedfrom the window wondering whither he would go, and if, among all thethousands that made up that vast and throbbing city, he would ever finda friend. 

For a moment David longed even for that unmaternal mother who hadforgotten him in the hour of his distress; but she had been dead formany years. 

The train stopped. Every one got out. David forced himself to his feetand followed. He had been driven back into the world. It would haveseemed less terrible to have been driven into a desert. He walkedtoward the great iron gates, seeing the people and hearing the noisesconfusedly. 

As he entered the space beyond the grating some one caught him by thearm. It was a little middle-aged woman in plain clothes, and with sadgray eyes. 

"Is this David?" said she. 

He did not speak, but his face answered her. 

"I knew you were coming to-day. I've waited all these years, David. Youdidn't think I believed what you said in that letter did you? This way, David, --this is the way home. "

Two Pioneers

IT was the year of the small-pox. The Pawnees had died in their coldtepees by the fifties, the soldiers lay dead in the trenches without thefort, and many a gay French voyageur, who had thought to go singing downthe Missouri on his fur-laden raft in the springtime, would never againsee the lights of St. Louis, or the coin of the mighty Choteau company. 

It had been a winter of tragedies. The rigors of the weather and thescourge of the disease had been fought with Indian charm and withCatholic prayer. Both were equally unavailing. If a man was taken sickat the fort they put him in a warm room, brought him a jug of wateronce a day, and left him to find out what his constitution was worth. Generally he recovered; for the surgeon's supplies had been exhaustedearly in the year. But the Indians, in their torment, rushed into theriver through the ice, and returned to roll themselves in their blanketsand die in ungroaning stoicism. 

Every one had grown bitter and hard. The knives of the trappers weresharp, and not one whit sharper than their tempers. Some one said thatthe friendly Pawnees were conspiring with the Sioux, who were alwaystreacherous, to sack the settlement. The trappers doubted this. They andthe Pawnees had been friends many years, and they had together killedthe Sioux in four famous battles on the Platte. Yet--who knows? Therewas pestilence in the air, and it had somehow got into men's souls aswell as their bodies. 

So, at least, Father de Smet said. He alone did not despair. Healone tried neither charm nor curse. He dressed him an altar in thewilderness, and he prayed at it--but not for impossible things. When ina day's journey you come across two lodges of Indians, sixty souls ineach, lying dead and distorted from the plague in their desolate tepees, you do not pray, if you are a man like Father de Smet. You go on to thenext lodge where the living yet are, and teach them how to avoid death. 

Besides, when you are young, it is much easier to act than to pray. Whenthe children cried for food, Father de Smet took down the rifle fromthe wall and went out with it, coming back only when he could feed thehungry. There were places where the prairie was black with buffalo, andthe shy deer showed their delicate heads among the leafless willowsof the Papillion. When they--the children--were cold, this young manbrought in baskets of buffalo chips from the prairie and built thema fire, or he hung more skins up at the entrance to the tepees. If hewanted to cross a river and had no boat at hand, he leaped the uncertainice, or, in clear current, swam, with his clothes on his head in abundle. 

A wonderful traveller for the time was Father de Smet. Twice he had goneas far as the land of the Flathead nation, and he could climb mountainpasses as well as any guide of the Rockies. He had built a dozenmissions, lying all the way from the Columbia to the Kaw. He had alwaysa jest at his tongue's end, and served it out with as much readiness asa prayer; and he had, withal, an arm trained to do execution. Everyman on the plains understood the art of self-preservation. Even inCainsville, over by the council ground of the western tribes, which wasquite the most civilized place for hundreds of miles, life was uncertainwhen the boats came from St. Louis with bad whiskey in their holds. Butno one dared take liberties with the holy father. The thrust from hisshoulder was straight and sure, and his fist was hard. 

Yet it was not the sinner that Father de Smet meant to crush. He alwayssupplemented his acts of physical prowess with that explanation. Itwas the sin that he struck at from the shoulder--and may not even ananointed one strike at sin?

Father de Smet could draw a fine line, too, between the things whichwere bad in themselves, and the things which were only extrinsicallybad. For example, there were the soups of Mademoiselle Ninon. Mam'selleherself was not above reproach, but her soups were. Mademoiselle Ninonwas the only Parisian thing in the settlement. And she was certainly tobe avoided--which was perhaps the reason that no one avoided her. Itwas four years since she had seen Paris. She was sixteen then, and shefollowed the fortunes of a certain adventurer who found it advisable tosail for Montreal. Ninon had been bored back in Paris, it being dullin the mantua-making shop of Madame Guittar. If she had been a man shewould have taken to navigation, and might have made herself famous bysailing to some unknown part of the New World. Being a woman, she tooka lover who was going to New France, and forgot to weep when he found anearly and violent death. And there were others at hand, and Ninon sailedaround the cold blue lakes, past Sault St. Marie, and made her wayacross the portages to the Mississippi, and so down to the sacred rockof St. Louis. That was a merry place. Ninon had fault to find neitherwith the wine nor the dances. They were all that one could have desired, and there was no limit to either of them. But still, after a time, eventhis grew tiresome to one of Ninon's spirit, and she took the firstopportunity to sail up the Missouri with a certain young trapperconnected with the great fur company, and so found herself atCainsville, with the blue bluffs rising to the east of her, and the lowwhite stretches of the river flats undulating down to where the sluggishstream wound its way southward capriciously. 

Ninon soon tired of her trapper. For one thing she found out that hewas a coward. She saw him run once in a buffalo fight. That was when thePawnee stood still with a blanket stretched wide in a gaudy square, and caught the head of the mad animal fairly in the tough fabric; hismustang's legs trembled under him, but he did not move, --for a mustangis the soul of an Indian, and obeys each thought; the Indian himselffelt his heart pounding at his ribs; but once with that garment fastover the baffled eyes of the struggling brute, the rest was only amatter of judicious knife-thrusts. Ninon saw this. She rode past herlover, and snatched the twisted bullion cord from his hat that she hadbraided and put there, and that night she tied it on the hat of thePawnee who had killed the buffalo. 

The Pawnees were rather proud of the episode, and as for the Frenchmen, they did not mind. The French have always been very adaptable inAmerica. Ninon was universally popular. 

And so were her soups. 

Every man has his price. Father de Smet's was the soups of MademoiselleNinon. Fancy! If you have an educated palate and are obliged to eatthe strong distillation of buffalo meat, cooked in a pot which has beenwiped out with the greasy petticoat of a squaw! When Ninon came downfrom St. Louis she brought with her a great box containing neitherclothes, furniture, nor trinkets, but something much more wonderful!It was a marvellous compounding of spices and seasonings. The aromaticliquids she set before the enchanted men of the settlement bore no morerelation to ordinary buffalo soup than Chateaubrand's Indian maidensdid to one of the Pawnee girls, who slouched about the settlement withnoxious tresses and sullen slavish coquetries. 

Father de Smet would not at any time have called Ninon a scarlet woman. But when he ate the dish of soup or tasted the hot corn-cakes that sheinvariably invited him to partake of as he passed her little house, herefrained with all the charity of a true Christian and an accomplishedepicure from even thinking her such. And he remembered the words of theSaviour, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone. "

To Father de Smet's healthy nature nothing seemed more superfluous thansin. And he was averse to thinking that any committed deeds of which heneed be ashamed. So it was his habit, especially if the day was pleasantand his own thoughts happy, to say to himself when he saw one of thewild young trappers leaving the cabin of Mademoiselle Ninon: "He hasbeen for some of the good woman's hot cakes, " till he grew quite tobelieve that the only attractions that the adroit Frenchwoman possessedwere of a gastronomic nature. 

To tell the truth, the attractions of Mademoiselle Ninon were varied. Tobegin with, she was the only thing in that wilderness to suggest home. Ninon had a genius for home-making. Her cabin, in which she cooked, slept, ate, lived, had become a boudoir. 

The walls were hung with rare and beautiful skins; the very floor maderich with huge bear robes, their permeating odors subdued by heavyperfumes brought, like the spices, from St. Louis. The bed, in daytime, was a couch of beaver-skins; the fireplace had branching antlersabove it, on which were hung some of the evidences of the fair Ninon'scoquetry, such as silken scarves, of the sort the voyageurs from the farnorth wore; and necklaces made by the Indians of the Pacific coast andbrought to Ninon by--but it is not polite to inquire into these matters. There were little moccasins also, much decorated with porcupine-quills, one pair of which Father de Smet had brought from the Flathead nation, and presented to Ninon that time when she nursed him through a frightfulrun of fever. She would take no money for her patient services. 

"Father, " said she, gravely, when he offered it to her, "I am notmyself virtuous. But I have the distinction of having preserved the onlyvirtuous creature in the settlement for further usefulness. Sometimes, perhaps, you will pray for Ninon. "

Father de Smet never forgot those prayers. 

These were wild times, mind you. No use to keep your skirts coldly cleanif you wished to be of help. These men were subduing a continent. Theirprimitive qualities came out. Courage, endurance, sacrifice, sufferingwithout complaint, friendship to the death, indomitable hatred, unfaltering hope, deep-seated greed, splendid gayety--it takes thesethings to subdue a continent. Vice is also an incidental, --that is tosay, what one calls vice. This is because it is the custom to measurethese men as if they were governed by the laws of civilization, wherethere is neither law nor civilization. 

This much is certain: gentlemen cannot conquer a country. Theytried gentlemen back in Virginia, and they died, partly from lack ofintellect, but mostly from lack of energy. After the yeomen have foughtthe conquering fight, it is well enough to bring in gentlemen, whoare sometimes clever lawmakers, and who look well on thrones or inpresidential chairs. 

But to return to the winter of the smallpox. It was then that the priestand Ninon grew to know each other well. They became acquainted firstin the cabin where four of the trappers lay tossing in delirium. Thehorrible smell of disease weighted the air. Outside wet snow fellcontinuously and the clouds seemed to rest only a few feet above thesullen bluffs. The room was bare of comforts, and very dirty. Ninonlooked about with disgust. 

"You pray, " said she to the priest, "and I will clean the room. "

"Not so, " returned the broad-shouldered father, smilingly, "we will bothclean the room. " Thus it came that they scrubbed the floor together, andmade the chimney so that it would not smoke, and washed the blankets onthe beds, and kept the woodpile high. They also devised ventilators, andlet in fresh air without exposing the patients. They had no medicine, but they continually rubbed the suffering men with bear's grease. 

"It's better than medicine, " said Ninon, after the tenth day, as, wanwith watching, she held the cool hand of one of the recovering men inher own. "If we had had medicines we should have killed these men. "

"You are a woman of remarkable sense, " said the holy father, who waseating a dish of corn-meal and milk that Ninon had just prepared, "and awoman also of Christian courage. "

"Christian courage?" echoed Ninon; "do you think that is what you callit? I am not afraid, no, not I; but it is not Christian courage. Youmistake in calling it that. " There were tears in her eyes. The priestsaw them. 

"God lead you at last into peaceful ways, " said he, softly, lifting onehand in blessing. "Your vigil is ended. Go to your home and sleep. Youknow the value of the temporal life that God has given to man. In thehours of the night, Ninon, think of the value of eternal life, which itis also His to give. "

Ninon stared at him a moment with a dawning horror in her eyes. 

Then she pointed to the table. 

"Whatever you do, " said she, "don't forget the bear's grease. " And shewent out laughing. The priest did not pause to recommend her soul tofurther blessing. He obeyed her directions. 

March was wearing away tediously. The river was not yet open, and thebelated boats with needed supplies were moored far down the river. Manyof the reduced settlers were dependent on the meat the Indians broughtthem for sustenance. The mud made the roads almost impassable; for thefrost lay in a solid bed six inches below the surface, and all abovethat was semiliquid muck. Snow and rain alternated, and the frightfuldisease did not cease its ravages. 

The priest got little sleep. Now he was at the bed of a littlehalf-breed child, smoothing the straight black locks from the narrowbrow; now at the cot of some hulking trapper, who wept at the pain, butdied finally with a grin of bravado on his lips; now in a foul tepee, where some grave Pawnee wrapped his mantle about him, and gazed withprophetic and unflinching eyes into the land of the hereafter. 

The little school that the priest started had been long since abandoned. It was only the preservation of life that one thought of in these days. And recklessness had made the men desperate. To the ravages of diseasewere added horrible murders. Moral health is always low when physicalhealth is so. 

Give a nation two winters of grippe, and it will have an epidemic ofsuicide. Give it starvation and small-pox, and it will have a contagionof murders. There are subtle laws underlying these things, --laws whichthe physicians think they can explain; but they are mistaken. The reasonis not so material as it seems. 

But spring was near in spite of falling snow and the dirty ice in theriver. There was not even a flushing of the willow twigs to tell it by, nor a clearing of the leaden sky, --only the almanac. Yet all menwere looking forward to it The trappers put in the feeble days ofconvalescence, making long rafts on which to pile the skins dried overwinter, --a fine variety, worth all but their weight in gold. Money waseasily got in those days; but there are circumstances under which moneyis valueless. 

Father de Smet thought of this the day before Easter, as he plungedthrough the mud of the winding street in his bearskin gaiters. Stoutwere his legs, firm his lungs, as he turned to breathe in the west wind;clear his sharp and humorous eyes. He was going to the little chapelwhere the mission school had previously been held. Here was a rudepulpit, and back of it a much-disfigured virgin, dressed in turkey-redcalico. Two cheap candles in their tin sticks guarded this figure, andbeneath, on the floor, was spread an otter-skin of perfect beauty. Theseats were of pine, without backs, and the wind whistled through thechinks between the logs. Moreover, the place was dirty. Lenten servicehad been out of the question. The living had neither time nor strengthto come to worship; and the dead were not given the honor of a burialfrom church in these times of terror. The priest looked about him indismay, the place was so utterly forsaken; yet to let Easter go bywithout recognition was not to his liking. He had been the nightbefore to every house in the settlement, bidding the people to come todevotions on Sunday morning. He knew that not one of them wouldrefuse his invitation. There was no hero larger in the eyes of theseunfortunates than the simple priest who walked among them with hisunpretentious piety. The promises were given with whispered blessings, and there were voices that broke in making them, and hands that shookwith honest gratitude. The priest, remembering these things, and all theawful suffering of the winter, determined to make the service symbolic, indeed, of the resurrection and the life, --the annual resurrection andlife that comes each year, a palpable miracle, to teach the dullest thatGod reigns. 

"How are you going to trim the altar?" cried a voice behind him. 

He turned, startled, and in the doorway stood Mademoiselle Ninon, her short skirt belted with a red silk scarf, --the token of sometrapper, --her ankles protected with fringed leggins, her head coveredwith a beribboned hat of felt, such as the voyageurs wore. 

"Our devotions will be the only decorations we can hang on it. Butgratitude is better than blossoms, and humanity more beautiful thangreen wreaths, " said the father, gently. 

It was a curious thing, and one that he had often noticed himself; hegave this woman--unworthy as she was--the best of his simple thoughts. 

Ninon tiptoed toward the priest with one finger coquettishly raised toinsure secrecy. 

"You will never believe it, " she whispered, "no one would believe it!But the fact is, father, I have two lilies. "

"Lilies, " cried the priest, incredulously, "two lilies?"

"That's what I say, father--two marvellously fair lilies with littlesceptres of gold in them, and leaves as white as snow. The bulbs werebrought me last autumn by--; that is to say, they were brought from St. Louis. Only now have they blossomed. Heavens, how I have watched thebuds! I have said to myself every morning for a fortnight: 'Will theyopen in time for the good father's Easter morning service?' Then I said:'They will open too soon. Buds, ' I have cried to them, 'do not dareto open yet, or you will be horribly passee by Easter. Have thekindness, will you, to save yourselves for a great event. ' And they didit; yes, father, you may not believe, but no later than this morningthese sensible flowers opened up their leaves boldly, quite consciousthat they were doing the right thing, and to-morrow, if you please, theywill be here. And they will perfume the whole place; yes. "

She stopped suddenly, and relaxed her vivacious expression for one ofpain. 

"You are certainly ill, " cried the priest. "Rest yourself. " He tried topush her on to one of the seats; but a sort of convulsive rigidity cameover her, very alarming to look at. 

"You are worn out, " her companion said gravely. "And you are chilled. "

"Yes, I'm cold, " confessed Ninon. "But I had to come to tell you aboutthe lilies. But, do you see, I never could bring myself to put them inthis room as it is now. It would be too absurd to place them among thisdirt. We must clean the place. "

"The place will be cleaned. I will see to it. But as for you, go homeand care for yourself. " Ninon started toward the door with an uncertainstep. Suddenly she came back. 

"It is too funny, " she said, "that red calico there on the Virgin. Father, I have some laces which were my mother's, who was a good woman, and which have never been worn by me. They are all I have to rememberFrance by and the days when I was--different. If I might be permitted--"she hesitated and looked timidly at the priest. 

"'She hath done what she could, '" murmured Father de Smet, softly. "Bring your laces, Ninon. " He would have added: "Thy sins be forgiventhee. " But unfortunately, at this moment, Pierre came lounging down thestreet, through the mud, fresh from Fort Laramie. His rifle was slungacross his back, and a full game-bag revealed the fact that he hadamused himself on his way. His curly and wind-bleached hair blew outin time-torn banners from the edge of his wide hat. His piercing, blackeyes were those of a man who drinks deep, fights hard, and livesalways in the open air. Wild animals have such eyes, only there is thisdifference: the viciousness of an animal is natural; at least one-halfof the viciousness of man is artificial and devised. 

When Ninon saw the frost-reddened face of this gallant of the plains, she gave a little cry of delight, and the color rushed back into herface. The trapper saw her, and gave a rude shout of welcome. The nextmoment, he had swung her clear of the chapel steps; and then the twowent down the street together, Pierre pausing only long enough to doffhis hat to the priest. 

"The Virgin will wear no fresh laces, " said the priest, with somebitterness; but he was mistaken. An hour later, Ninon was back, not onlywith a box of laces, but also with a collection of cosmetics, with whichshe proceeded to make startling the scratched and faded face of thewooden Virgin, who wore, after the completion of Ninon's labors, adecidedly piquant and saucy expression. The very manner in which thelaces were draped had a suggestion of Ninon's still unforgotten art asa maker of millinery, and was really a very good presentment of Parisfashions four years past. Pierre, meantime, amused himself by filling upthe chinks in the logs with fresh mud, --a commodity of which there wasno lack, --and others of the neighbors, incited by these extraordinaryefforts, washed the dirt from seats, floor, and windows, and broughtfurs with which to make presentable the floor about the pulpit. 

Father de Smet worked harder than any of them. In his happy enthusiasmhe chose to think this energy on the part of the others was prompted bypiety, though well he knew it was only a refuge from the insufferableennui that pervaded the place. Ninon suddenly came up to him with awhite face. 

"I am not well, " she said. Her teeth were chattering, and her eyes hada little blue glaze over them. "I am going home. In the morning I willsend the lilies. "

The priest caught her by the hand. 

"Ninon, " he whispered, "it is on my soul not to let you go to-night. Something tells me that the hour of your salvation is come. Women worsethan you, Ninon, have come to lead holy lives. Pray, Ninon, pray to theMother of Sorrows, who knows the sufferings and sins of the heart. "He pointed to the befrilled and highly fashionable Virgin with herrouge-stained cheeks. 

Ninon shrank from him, and the same convulsive rigidity he had noticedbefore, held her immovable. A moment later, she was on the street again, and the priest, watching her down the street, saw her enter her cabinwith Pierre. 

. .. .. .. 

It was past midnight when the priest was awakened from his sleep bya knock on the door. He wrapped his great buffalo-coat about him, andanswered the summons. Without in the damp darkness stood Pierre. 

"Father, " he cried, "Ninon has sent for you. Since she left you, she hasbeen very ill. I have done what I could; but now she hardly speaks, butI make out that she wants you. " Ten minutes later, they were in Ninon'scabin. When Father de Smet looked at her he knew she was dying. He hadseen the Indians like that many times during the winter. It was theplague, but driven in to prey upon the system by the exposure. TheParisienne's teeth were set, but she managed to smile upon her visitoras he threw off his coat and bent over her. He poured some whiskey forher; but she could not get the liquid over her throat. 

"Do not, " she said fiercely between those set white teeth, "do notforget the lilies. " She sank back and fixed her glazing eyes on theantlers, and kept them there watching those dangling silken scarves, while the priest, in haste, spoke the words for the departing soul. 

The next morning she lay dead among those half barbaric relics of hercoquetry, and two white lilies with hearts of gold shed perfume from analtar in a wilderness. 

Up the Gulch

"GO West?" sighed Kate. "Why, yes! I'd like to go West. "

She looked at the babies, who were playing on the floor with theirfather, and sighed again. 

"You've got to go somewhere, you know, Kate. It might as well be west asin any other direction. And this is such a chance! We can't have mammalying around on sofas without any roses in her cheeks, can we?" He putthis last to the children, who, being yet at the age when they talkedin "Early English, " as their father called it, made a clamorous butinarticulate reply. 

Major Shelly, the grandfather of these very young persons, stroked hismustache and looked indulgent. 

"Show almost human intelligence, don't they?" said their father, as helay flat on his back and permitted the babies to climb over him. 

"Ya-as, " drawled the major. "They do. Don't see how you account for it, Jack. "

Jack roared, and the lips of the babies trembled with fear. 

Their mother said nothing. She was on the sofa, her hands lyinginert, her eyes fixed on her rosy babies with an expression which herfather-in-law and her husband tried hard not to notice. 

It was not easy to tell why Kate was ailing. Of course, the babies wereyoung, but there were other reasons. 

"I believe you're too happy, " Jack sometimes said to her. "Try not tobe quite so happy, Kate. At least, try not to take your happiness soseriously. Please don't adore me so; I'm only a commonplace fellow. Andthe babies--they're not going to blow away. "

But Kate continued to look with intense eyes at her little world, andto draw into it with loving and generous hands all who were willing tocome. 

"Kate is just like a kite, " Jack explained to his father, the major;"she can't keep afloat without just so many bobs. "

Kate's "bobs" were the unfortunates she collected around her. Theseabsorbed her strength. She felt their misery with sympathies that wereabnormal. The very laborer in the streets felt his toil less keenly thanshe, as she watched the drops gather on his brow. 

"Is life worth keeping at the cost of a lot like that?" she would ask. She felt ashamed of her own ease. She apologized for her own serene andperfect happiness. She even felt sorry for those mothers who had notchildren as radiantly beautiful as her own. 

"Kate must have a change, " the major had given out. He was going West onbusiness and insisted on taking her with him. Jack looked doubtful. He wasn't sure how he would get along without Kate to look aftereverything. Secretly, he had an idea that servants were a kind of wildanimal that had to be fed by an experienced keeper. But when the timecame, he kissed her good-by in as jocular a manner as he could summon, and refused to see the tears that gathered in her eyes. 

Until Chicago was reached, there was nothing very different from thatwhich Kate had been in the habit of seeing. After that, she set herselfto watch for Western characteristics. She felt that she would know themas soon as she saw them. 

"I expected to be stirred up and shocked, " she explained to the major. But somehow, the Western type did not appear. Commonplace women withworn faces--browned and seamed, though not aged--were at the stations, waiting for something or some one. Men with a hurried, nervous air wereeverywhere. Kate looked in vain for the gayety and heartiness which shehad always associated with the West. 

After they got beyond the timber country and rode hour after hour on atract smooth as a becalmed ocean, she gave herself up to the feeling ofimmeasurable vastness which took possession of her. The sun rolledout of the sky into oblivion with a frantic, headlong haste. Nothingsoftened the aspect of its wrath. Near, red, familiar, it seemed tovisibly bowl along the heavens. In the morning it rose as baldly as ithad set. And back and forth over the awful plain blew the winds, --blewfrom east to west and back again, strong as if fresh from the chambersof their birth, full of elemental scents and of mighty murmurings. 

"This is the West!" Kate cried, again and again. 

The major listened to her unsmilingly. It always seemed to him a wasteof muscular energy to smile. He did not talk much. Conversation hadnever appealed to him in the light of an art. He spoke when there was adirection or a command to be given, or an inquiry to be made. The major, if the truth must be known, was material. Things that he could taste, touch, see, appealed to him. He had been a volunteer in the civilwar, --a volunteer with a good record, --which he never mentioned; and, having acquitted himself decently, let the matter go without askingreprisal or payment for what he had freely given. He went into businessand sold cereal foods. 

"I believe in useful things, " the major expressed himself. "Oatmeal, wheat, -men have to have them. God intended they should. There's Jack--myson-Jack Shelly--lawyer. What's the use of litigation? God didn't designlitigation. It doesn't do anybody any good. It isn't justice you get. It's something entirely different, --a verdict according to law. They sayJack's clever. But I'm mighty glad I sell wheat. "

He didn't sell it as a speculator, however. That wasn't his way. 

"I earn what I make, " he often said; and he had grown rich in theselling of his wholesome foods. 

. . . . . . . 

Helena lies among round, brown hills. Above it is a sky of deep andillimitable blue. In the streets are crumbs of gold, but it no longerpays to mine for these; because, as real estate, the property is morevaluable. It is a place of fictitious values. There is excitement in theair. Men have the faces of speculators. Every laborer is patient athis task because he cherishes a hope that some day he will be amillionnaire. There is hospitality, and cordiality and good fellowship, and an undeniable democracy. There is wealth and luxurious living. Thereis even culture, --but it is obtruded as a sort of novelty; it is notaccepted as a matter of course. 

Kate and the major were driven over two or three miles of dusty, hardroad to a distant hotel, which stands in the midst of greenness, --inan oasis. Immediately above the green sward that surrounds it the brownhills rise, the grass scorched by the sun. 

Kate yielded herself to the almost absurd luxury of the place with easeand complacency. She took kindly to the great verandas. She adaptedherself to the elaborate and ill-assorted meals. She bathed in themarvellous pool, warm with the heat of eternal fires in mid-earth. Thispool was covered with a picturesque Moorish structure, and at one enda cascade tumbled, over which the sun, coming through colored windows, made a mimic prism in the white spray. The life was not unendurable. Themajor was seldom with her, being obliged to go about his business;and Kate amused herself by driving over the hills, by watching theinhabitants, by wondering about the lives in the great, pretentious, unhomelike houses with their treeless yards and their closed shutters. The sunlight, white as the glare on Arabian sands, penetratedeverywhere. It seemed to fairly scorch the eye-balls. 

"Oh, we're West, now, " Kate said, exultantly. "I've seen a thousandtypes. But yet--not quite THE type--not the impersonation of simplicityand daring that I was looking for. "

The major didn't know quite what she was talking about. But heacquiesced. All he cared about was to see her grow stronger; and thatshe was doing every day. She was growing amazingly lovely, too, -at leastthe major thought so. Every one looked at her; but that was, perhaps, because she was such a sylph of a woman. Beside the stalwart major, shelooked like a fairy princess. 

One day she suddenly realized the fact that she had had a companion onthe veranda for several mornings. Of course, there were a great manypersons--invalids, largely--sitting about, but one of them had beenobtruding himself persistently into her consciousness. It was not thathe was rude; it was only that he was thinking about her. A person witha temperament like Kate's could not long be oblivious to a thing likethat; and she furtively observed the offender with that genius forpsychological perception which was at once her greatest danger and hercharm. 

The man was dressed with a childish attempt at display. His shirt-frontwas decorated with a diamond, and his cuff-buttons were of onyx withdiamond settings. His clothes were expensive and perceptibly new, andhe often changed his costumes, but with a noticeable disregard forpropriety. He was very conscious of his silk hat, and frequently wipedit with a handkerchief on which his monogram was worked in blue. 

When the 'busses brought up their loads, he was always on hand to watchthe newcomers. He took a long time at his dinners, and appeared toorder a great deal and eat very little. There were card-rooms and abilliard-hall, not to mention a bowling-alley and a tennis-court, wherethe other guests of the hotel spent much time. But this man nevervisited them. He sat often with one of the late reviews in his hand, looking as if he intended giving his attention to it at any moment. But after he had scrupulously cut the leaves with a little carved ivorypaper-cutter, he sat staring straight before him with the book open, butunread, in his hand. 

Kate took more interest in this melancholy, middle-aged man than shewould have done if she had not been on the outlook for her Westerntype, --the man who was to combine all the qualities of chivalry, daring, bombast, and generosity, seasoned with piquant grammar, which she firmlybelieved to be the real thing. But notwithstanding this kindly andsomewhat curious interest, she might never have made his acquaintance ifit had not been for a rather unpleasant adventure. 

The major was "closing up a deal" and had hurried away after breakfast, and Kate, in the luxury of convalescence, half-reclined in a great chairon the veranda and watched the dusky blue mist twining itself around thebrown hills. She was not thinking of the babies; she was not worryingabout home; she was not longing for anything, or even indulging ina dream. That vacuous content which engrosses the body after longindisposition, held her imperatively. Suddenly she was aroused from thishappy condition of nothingness by the spectacle of an enormous bull-dogapproaching her with threatening teeth. She had noticed the monsteroften in his kennel near the stables, and it was well understood that hewas never to be permitted his freedom. Now he walked toward her with asolid step and an alarming deliberateness. Kate sat still and tried toassure herself that he meant no mischief, but by the time the great bodyhad made itself felt on the skirt of her gown she could restrain herfear no longer, and gave a nervous cry of alarm. The brute answered witha growl. If he had lacked provocation before, he considered that he hadit now. He showed his teeth and flung his detestable body upon her;and Kate felt herself growing dizzy with fear. But just then an arm wasinterposed and the dog was flung back. There was a momentary struggle. Some gentlemen came hurrying out of the office; and as they beat thedog back to its retreat, Kate summoned words from her parched throat tothank her benefactor. 

It was the melancholy man with the new clothes. This morning hewas dressed in a suit of the lightest gray, with a white marseilleswaistcoat, over which his glittering chain shone ostentatiously. Whitetennis-shoes, a white rose in his buttonhole, and a white straw hatin his hand completed a toilet over which much time had evidently beenspent. Kate noted these details as she held out her hand. 

"I may have been alarmed without cause, " she said; "but I was horriblyfrightened. Thank you so much for coming to my rescue. And I think, ifyou would add to your kindness by getting me a glass of water--"

When he came back, his hand was trembling a little; and as Kate lookedup to learn the cause, she saw that his face was flushed. He wasembarrassed. She decided that he was not accustomed to the society ofladies. "Brutes like that dog ain't no place in th' world--that's myopinion. There are some bad things we can't help havin' aroun'; but abull-dog ain't one of 'em. "

"I quite agree with you, " Kate acquiesced, as she drank the water. "Butas this is the first unpleasant experience of any kind that I have hadsince I came here, I don't feel that I have any right to complain. "

"You're here fur yur health?"

"Yes. And I am getting it. You're not an invalid, I imagine?"

"No--no-op. I'm here be--well, I've thought fur a long time I'd like t'stay at this here hotel. "

"Indeed!"

"Yes. I've been up th' gulch these fifteen years. Bin livin' on a shelfof black rock. Th' sun got 'round 'bout ten. Couldn't make a thinggrow. " The man was looking off toward the hills, with an expression ofdeep sadness in his eyes. "Didn't never live in a place where nothin''d grow, did you? I took geraniums up thar time an' time agin. Redones. Made me think of mother; she's in Germany. Watered 'em mornin' an'night. Th' damned things died. "

The oath slipped out with an artless unconsciousness, and there wasa little moisture in his eyes. Kate felt she ought to bring theconversation to a close. She wondered what Jack would say if he saw hertalking with a perfect stranger who used oaths! She would have gone intothe house but for something that caught her eye. It was the hand of theman; that hand was a bludgeon. All grace and flexibility had gone outof it, and it had become a mere instrument of toil. It was seamed andmisshapen; yet it had been carefully manicured, and the pointed nailslooked fantastic and animal-like. A great seal-ring bore an elaboratemonogram, while the little finger displayed a collection of diamonds andemeralds truly dazzling to behold. An impulse of humanity and a sortof artistic curiosity, much stronger than her discretion, urged Kate tocontinue her conversation. 

"What were you doing up the gulch?" she said. 

The man leaned back in his chair and regarded her a moment beforeanswering. He realized the significance of her question. He took it asa sign that she was willing to be friendly. A look of gratitude, almost tender, sprang into his eyes, --dull gray eyes, they were, with akindliness for their only recommendation. 

"Makin' my pile, " he replied. "I've been in these parts twenty years. When I come here, I thought I was goin' to make a fortune right off. Ihad all th' money that mother could give me, and I lost everything I hadin three months. I went up th' gulch. " He paused, and wiped his foreheadwith his handkerchief. 

There was something in his remark and the intonation which made Kate saysoftly:

"I suppose you've had a hard time of it. "

"Thar you were!" he cried. "Thar was th' rock--risin', risin', black! Atth' bottom wus th' creek, howlin' day an' night! Lonesome! Gee! No onet' talk to. Of course, th' men. Had some with me always. They didn'ttalk. It's too-too quiet t' talk much. They played cards. Curious, but Inever played cards. Don't think I'd find it amusin'. No, I worked. Camedown here once in six months or three months. Had t' come--grub-stakedth' men, you know. Did you ever eat salt pork?" He turned to Katesuddenly with this question. 

"Why, yes; a few times. Did you have it?"

"Nothin' else, much. I used t' think of th' things mother cooked. Motherunderstood cookin', if ever a woman did. I'll never forget th' dinnershe gave me th' day I came away. A woman ought t' cook. I hear Americanwomen don't go in much for cookin'. "

"Oh, I think that's a mistake, " Kate hastened to interrupt. "All that Iknow understand how to serve excellent dinners. Of course, they may notcook them themselves, but I think they could if it were necessary. "

"Hum!" He picked up a long glove that had fallen from Kate's lap andfingered it before returning it. 

"I s'pose you cook?"

"I make a specialty of salads and sorbets, " smiled Kate. "I guessI could roast meat and make bread; but circumstances have not yetcompelled me to do it. But I've a theory that an American woman can doanything she puts her mind to. "

The man laughed out loud, --a laugh quite out of proportion to the mildgood humor of the remark; but it was evident that he could no longerconceal his delight at this companionship. 

"How about raisin' flowers?" he asked. "Are you strong on that?"

"I've only to look at a plant to make it grow, " Kate cried, withenthusiasm. "When my friends are in despair over a plant, they bring itto me, and I just pet it a little, and it brightens up. I've the mostwonderful fernery you ever saw. It's green, summer and winter. Hundredsof people stop and look up at it, it is so green and enticing, thereabove the city streets. "

"What city?"

"Philadelphia. "

"Mother's jest that way. She has a garden of roses. And themignonette--"

But he broke off suddenly, and sat once more staring before him. 

"But not a damned thing, " he added, with poetic pensiveness, "would growin that gulch. "

"Why did you stay there so long?" asked Kate, after a little pause inwhich she managed to regain her waning courage. 

"Bad luck. You never see a place with so many false leads. To-day you'dget a streak that looked big. To-morrow you'd find it a pocket. Onenight I'd go t' bed with my heart goin' like a race-horse. Next nightit would be ploddin' along like a winded burro. Don't know what mademe stick t' it. It was hot there, too! And cold! Always roastin' urfreezin'. It'd been different if I'd had any one t' help me stand it. But th' men were always findin' fault. They blamed me fur everythin'. I used t' lie awake at night an' hear 'em talkin' me over. It made melonesome, I tell you! Thar wasn't no one! Mother used t' write. ButI never told her th' truth. She ain't a suspicion of what I've beena-goin' through. "

Kate sat and looked at him in silence. His face was seamed, thoughfar from old. His body was awkward, but impressed her with a sense ofmagnificent strength. 

"I couldn't ask no woman t' share my hard times, " he resumed after atime. "I always said when I got a woman, it was goin' t' be t' make herhappy. It wer'n't t' be t' ask her t' drudge. "

There was another silence. This man out of the solitude seemed tobe elated past expression at his new companionship. He looked withappreciation at the little pointed toes of Kate's slippers, as theyglanced from below the skirt of her dainty organdie. He noted the bandof pearls on her finger. His eyes rested long on the daisies at herwaist. The wind tossed up little curls of her warm brown hair. Her eyessuffused with interest, her tender mouth seemed ready to lend itself toany emotion, and withal she was so small, so compact, so exquisite. Theman wiped his forehead again, in mere exuberance. 

"Here's my card, " he said, very solemnly, as he drew an engraved bit ofpasteboard from its leather case. Kate bowed and took it. 

"Mr. Peter Roeder, " she read. "I've no card, " she said. "My name isShelly. I'm here for my health, as I told you. " She rose at this point, and held out her hand. "I must thank you once more for your kindness, "she said. 

His eyes fastened on hers with an appeal for a less formal word. Therewas something almost terrible in their silent eloquence. 

"I hope we may meet again, " she said. 

Mr. Peter Roeder made a very low and awkward bow, and opened the doorinto the corridor for her. 

That evening the major announced that he was obliged to go to Seattle. The journey was not an inviting one; Kate was well placed where she was, and he decided to leave her. 

She was well enough now to take longer drives; and she found strange, lonely canyons, wild and beautiful, where yellow waters burst throughrocky barriers with roar and fury, --tortuous, terrible places, such asshe had never dreamed of. Coming back from one of these drives, twodays after her conversation on the piazza with Peter Roeder, she methim riding a massive roan. He sat the animal with that air of perfectunconsciousness which is the attribute of the Western man, and hisattire, even to his English stock, was faultless, --faultily faultless. 

"I hope you won't object to havin' me ride beside you, " he said, wheeling his horse. To tell the truth, Kate did not object. She was alittle dull, and had been conscious all the morning of that peculiarphysical depression which marks the beginning of a fit of homesickness. 

"The wind gits a fine sweep, " said Roeder, after having obtainedthe permission he desired. "Now in the gulch we either had a deadstagnation, or else the wind was tearin' up and down like a wild beast. "

Kate did not reply, and they went on together, facing the riotous wind. 

"You can't guess how queer it seems t' be here, " he said, confidentially. "It seems t' me as if I had come from some other planet. Thar don't rightly seem t' be no place fur me. I tell you what it'slike. It's as if I'd come down t' enlist in th' ranks, an' found 'emfull, --every man marchin' along in his place, an' no place left fur me. "

Kate could not find a reply. 

"I ain't a friend, --not a friend! I ain't complainin'. It ain't th'fault of any one--but myself. You don' know what a durned fool I'vebin. Someway, up thar in th' gulch I got t' seemin' so sort of importantt' myself, and my makin' my stake seemed such a big thing, that Ithought I had only t' come down here t' Helena t' have folks want t'know me. I didn't particular want th' money because it wus money. Butout here you work fur it, jest as you work fur other things in otherplaces, --jest because every one is workin' fur it, and it's the man whogets th' most that beats. It ain't that they are any more greedy thanmen anywhere else. My pile's a pretty good-sized one. An' it's likely tobe bigger; but no one else seems t' care. Th' paper printed some piecesabout it. Some of th' men came round t' see me; but I saw their game. Isaid I guessed I'd look further fur my acquaintances. I ain't spoken toa lady, --not a real lady, you know, --t' talk with, friendly like, butyou, fur--years. "

His face flushed in that sudden way again. They were passing some ofthose pretentious houses which rise in the midst of Helena's raggedstreets with such an extraneous air, and Kate leaned forward to look atthem. The driver, seeing her interest, drew up the horses for a moment. 

"Fine, fine!" ejaculated Roeder. "But they ain't got no garden. A housedon't seem anythin' t' me without a garden. Do you know what I thinkwould be th' most beautiful thing in th' world? A baby in a rose-garden!Do you know, I ain't had a baby in my hands, excep' Ned Ramsey's littlekid, once, for ten year!"

Kate's face shone with sympathy. 

"How dreadful!" she cried. "I couldn't live without a baby about. "

"Like babies, do you? Well, well. Boys? Like boys?"

"Not a bit better than girls, " said Kate, stoutly. 

"I like boys, " responded Roeder, with conviction. "My mother liked boys. She had three girls, but she liked me a damned sight the best. "

Kate laughed outright. 

"Why do you swear?" she said. "I never heard a man swear before, --atleast, not one with whom I was talking. That's one of your gulch habits. You must get over it. "

Roeder's blond face turned scarlet. 

"You must excuse me, " he pleaded. "I'll cure myself of it! Jest give mea chance. "

This was a little more personal than Kate approved of, and she raisedher parasol to conceal her annoyance. It was a brilliant little fluffof a thing which looked as if it were made of butterflies' wings. Roedertouched it with awe. 

"You have sech beautiful things, " he said. "I didn't know women woresech nice things. Now that dress--it's like--I don't know what it'slike. " It was a simple little taffeta, with warp and woof of azure andof cream, and gay knots of ribbon about it. 

"We have the advantage of men, " she said. "I often think one of thegreatest drawbacks to being a man would be the sombre clothes. I like towear the prettiest things that can be found. "

"Lace?" queried Roeder. "Do you like lace?"

"I should say so! Did you ever see a woman who didn't?"

"Hu--um! These women I've known don't know lace, --these wives of th' menout here. They're th' only kind I've seen this long time. "

"Oh, of course, but I mean--"

"I know what you mean. My mother has a chest full of linen an' lace. Sheshowed it t' me th' day I left. 'Peter, ' she said, 'some day you bring awife home with you, an' I'll give you that lace an' that linen. ' An' I'mgoin' t' do it, too, " he said quietly. 

"I hope so, " said Kate, with her eyes moist. "I hope you will, and thatyour mother will be very happy. "

. . . . . . . 

There was a hop at the hotel that night, and it was almost a matter ofcourtesy for Kate to go. Ladies were in demand, for there were not verymany of them at the hotel. Every one was expected to do his best to makeit a success; and Kate, not at all averse to a waltz or two, dressedherself for the occasion with her habitual striving after artisticeffect. She was one of those women who make a picture of themselves asnaturally as a bird sings. She had an opal necklace which Jack had givenher because, he said, she had as many moods as an opal had colors; andshe wore this with a crepe gown, the tint of the green lights inher necklace. A box of flowers came for her as she was dressing; theywere Puritan roses, and Peter Roeder's card was in the midst ofthem. She was used to having flowers given her. It would have seemedremarkable if some one had not sent her a bouquet when she was going toa ball. 

"I shall dance but twice, " she said to those who sought her for apartner. "Neither more nor less. "

"Ain't you goin' t' dance with me at all?" Roeder managed to say to herin the midst of her laughing altercation with the gentlemen. 

"Dance with you!" cried Kate. "How do men learn to dance when they areup a gulch?"

"I ken dance, " he said stubbornly. He was mortified at her chaffing. 

"Then you may have the second waltz, " she said, in quick contrition. "Now you other gentlemen have been dancing any number of times theselast fifteen years. But Mr. Roeder is just back from a hard campaign, --acampaign against fate. My second waltz is his. And I shall dance mybest. "

It happened to be just the right sort of speech. The women triedgood-naturedly to make Roeder's evening a pleasant one. They were filledwith compassion for a man who had not enjoyed the society of their sexfor fifteen years. They found much amusement in leading him through thesquare dances, the forms of which were utterly unknown to him. But hewaltzed with a sort of serious alertness that was not so bad as it mighthave been. 

Kate danced well. Her slight body seemed as full of the spirit of thewaltz as a thrush's body is of song. Peter Roeder moved along withher in a maze, only half-answering her questions, his gray eyes full ofmystery. 

Once they stopped for a moment, and he looked down at her, as withflushed face she stood smiling and waving her gossamer fan, each motionstirring the frail leaves of the roses he had sent her. 

"It's cur'ous, " he said softly, "but I keep thinkin' about that blackgulch. "

"Forget it, " she said. "Why do you think of a gulch when--" She stoppedwith a sudden recollection that he was not used to persiflage. But heanticipated what she was about to say. 

"Why think of the gulch when you are here?" he said. "Why, because itis only th' gulch that seems real. All this, --these pleasant, politepeople, this beautiful room, th' flowers everywhere, and you, and me asI am, seem as if I was dreamin'. Thar ain't anything in it all that islike what I thought it would be. "

"Not as you thought it would be?"

"No. Different. I thought it would be--well, I thought th' people wouldnot be quite so high-toned. I hope you don't mind that word. "

"Not in the least, " she said. "It's a musical term. It applies very wellto people. "

They took up the dance again and waltzed breathlessly till the close. Kate was tired; the exertion had been a little more than she hadbargained for. She sat very still on the veranda under the white glareof an electric ball, and let Roeder do the talking. Her thoughts, in spite of the entertainment she was deriving from her presentexperiences, would go back to the babies. She saw them tucked well inbed, each in a little iron crib, with the muslin curtains shieldingtheir rosy faces from the light. She wondered if Jack were reading alonein the library or was at the club, or perhaps at the summer concert, with the swell of the violins in his ears. Jack did so love music. As she thought how delicate his perceptions were, how he responded toeverything most subtle in nature and in art, of how life itself was afine art with him, and joy a thing to be cultivated, she turned with asense of deep compassion to the simple man by her side. His rough facelooked a little more unattractive than usual. His evening clothes werealmost grotesque. His face wore a look of solitude, of hunger. 

"What were you saying?" she said, dreamily. "I beg your pardon. "

"I was sayin' how I used t' dream of sittin' on the steps of a hotellike this, and not havin' a thing t' do. When I used t' come down hereout of the gulch, and see men who had had good dinners, an' good baths, sittin' around smokin', with money t' go over there t' th' bookstan' an'get anythin' they'd want, it used t' seem t' me about all a single mancould wish fur. "

"Well, you've got it all now. "

"But I didn't any of th' time suppose that would satisfy a man long. Only I was so darned tired I couldn't help wantin' t' rest. But I'm notso selfish ur s' narrow as to be satisfied with THAT. No, I'm not goin't' spend m' pile that way--quite!"

He laughed out loud, and then sat in silence watching Kate as she layback wearily in her chair. 

"I've got t' have that there garden, " he said, laughingly. "Got t' getthem roses. An' I'll have a big bath-house, --plenty of springs in thiscountry. You ken have a bath here that won't freeze summer NOR winter. An' a baby! I've got t' have a baby. He'll go with th' roses an' th'bath. " He laughed again heartily. 

"It's a queer joke, isn't it?" Roeder asked. "Talkin' about my baby, an'I haven't even a wife. " His face flushed and he turned his eyes away. 

"Have I shown you the pictures of my babies?" Kate inquired. "You'd likemy boy, I know. And my girl is just like me, --in miniature. "

There was a silence. She looked up after a moment. Roeder appeared to beexamining the monogram on his ring as if he had never seen it before. 

"I didn't understand that you were married, " he said gently. 

"Didn't you? I don't think you ever called me by any name at all, or Ishould have noticed your mistake and set you right. Yes, I'm married. Icame out here to get strong for the babies. "

"Got a boy an' a girl, eh?"

"Yes. "

"How old's th' boy?"

"Five. "

"An' th' girl?"

"She'll soon be four. "

"An' yer husband--he's livin'?"

"I should say so! I'm a very happy woman, Mr. Roeder. If only I werestronger!"

"Yer lookin' much better, " he said, gravely, "than when you come. You'llbe all right. "

The moon began to come up scarlet beyond the eastern hills. The twowatched it in silence. Kate had a feeling of guilt, as if she had beenhurting some helpless thing. 

"I was in hopes, " he said, suddenly, in a voice that seemed abrupt andshrill, "thet you'd see fit t' stay here. "

"Here in Helena? Oh, no!"

"I was thinkin' I'd offer you that two hundred thousand dollars, ifyou'd stay. "

"Mr. Roeder! You don't mean-surely--"

"Why, yes. Why not?" He spoke rather doggedly. "I'll never see no otherwoman like you. You're different from others. How good you've been t'me!"

"Good! I'm afraid I've been very bad--at least, very stupid. "

"I say, now--your husband's good t' you, ain't he?"

"He is the kindest man that ever lived. "

"Oh, well, I didn't know. "

A rather awkward pause followed which was broken by Roeder. 

"I don't see jest what I'm goin' t' do with that thar two hundredthousand dollars, " he said, mournfully. 

"Do with it? Why, live with it! Send some to your mother. "

"Oh, I've done that. Five thousand dollars. It don't seem much here; butit'll seem a lot t' her. I'd send her more, only it would've botheredher. "

"Then there is your house, --the house with the bath-room. But I supposeyou'll have other rooms?"

Peter laughed a little in spite of himself. 

"I guess I won't have a house, " he said. "An' I couldn't make a gardenalone. "

"Hire a man to help you. " Kate was trembling, but she kept talkinggayly. She was praying that nothing very serious would happen. There wasan undercurrent of sombreness in the man's manner that frightened her. 

"I guess I'll jest have t' keep on dreamin' of that boy playin' with th'roses. "

"No, no, " cried Kate; "he will come true some day! I know he'll cometrue. "

Peter got up and stood by her chair. 

"You don't know nothin' about it, " he said. "You don't know, an' youcan't know what it's bin t' me t' talk with you. Here I come out of aplace where there ain't no sound but the water and the pines. Years comean' go. Still no sound. Only thinkin', thinkin', thinkin'! Missin' allth' things men care fur! Dreamin' of a time when I sh'd strike th' pile. Then I seed home, wife, a boy, flowers, everythin'. You're so beautiful, an' you're so good. You've a way of pickin' a man's heart right out ofhim. First time I set my eyes on you I thought you were th' nicestthing I ever see! And how little you are! That hand of yours, --look atit, --it's like a leaf! An' how easy you smile. Up th' gulch we didn'tsmile; we laughed, but gen'ly because some one got in a fix. Then yourvoice! Ah, I've thought fur years that some day I might hear a voicelike that! Don't you go! Sit still! I'm not blamin' you fur anythin';but I may never, 's long's I live, find any one who will understandthings th' way you understand 'em. Here! I tell you about that gulchan' you see that gulch. You know how th' rain sounded thar, an' how th'shack looked, an' th' life I led, an' all th' thoughts I had, an' th'long nights, an' th' times when--but never mind. I know you know it all. I saw it in yer eyes. I tell you of mother, an' you see 'er. You know'er old German face, an' 'er proud ways, an' her pride in me, an' howshe would think I wuz awfully rich. An' you see how she would give outthem linens, all marked fur my wife, an' how I would sit an' watch herdoin' it, an'--you see everything. I know you do. I could feel you doin'it. Then I say to myself: 'Here is th' one woman in th' world made furme. Whatever I have, she shall have. I'll spend my life waitin' on her. She'll tell me all th' things I ought t' know, an' hev missed knowin';she'll read t' me; she'll be patient when she finds how dull I've grown. And thar'll be th' boy--'"

He seized her hand and wrung it, and was gone. Kate saw him no more thatnight. 

The next morning the major returned. Kate threw her arms around his neckand wept. 

"I want the babies, " she explained when the major showed hisconsternation. "Don't mind my crying. You ought to be used to seeing mecry by this time. I must get home, that's all. I must see Jack. "

So that night they started. 

At the door of the carriage stood Peter Roeder, waiting. 

"I'm going t' ride down with you, " he said. The major looked nonplussed. 

Kate got in and the major followed. 

"Come, " she said to Roeder. He sat opposite and looked at her as if hewould fasten her image on his mind. 

"You remember, " he said after a time, "that I told you I used t' dreamof sittin' on the veranda of th' hotel and havin' nothin' t' do?"

"Yes. "

"Well, I don't think I care fur it. I've had a month of it. I'm goin'back up th' gulch. "

"No!" cried Kate, instinctively reaching out her hands toward him. 

"Why not? I guess you don't know me. I knew that somewhere I'd find afriend. I found that friend; an' now I'm alone again. It's pretty quietup thar in the gulch; but I'll try it. "

"No, no. Go to Europe; go to see your mother. "

"I thought about that a good deal, a while ago. But I don't seem t' haveno heart fur it now. I feel as if I'd be safer in th' gulch. "

"Safer?"

"The world looks pretty big. It's safe and close in th' gulch. "

At the station the major went to look after the trunks, and Roeder putKate in her seat. 

"I wanted t' give you something, " he said, seating himself beside her, "but I didn't dare. "

"Oh, my dear friend, " she cried, laying her little gloved hand on hisred and knotted one, "don't go back into the shadow. Do not return tothat terrible silence. Wait. Have patience. Fate has brought you wealth. It will bring you love. "

"I've somethin' to ask, " he said, paying no attention to her appeal. "You must answer it. If we 'a' met long ago, an' you hadn't a husbandor--anythin'--do you think you'd've loved me then?"

She felt herself turning white. 

"No, " she said softly. "I could never have loved you, my dear friend. Weare not the same. Believe me, there is a woman somewhere who will loveyou; but I am not that woman--nor could I have ever been. "

The train was starting. The major came bustling in. 

"Well, good-by, " said Roeder, holding out his hand to Kate. 

"Good-by, " she cried. "Don't go back up the gulch. "

"Oh, " he said, reassuringly, "don't you worry about me, my--don't worry. The gulch is a nice, quiet place. An' you know what I told you about th'ranks all bein' full. Good-by. " The train was well under way. He sprangoff, and stood on the platform waving his handkerchief. 

"Well, Kate, " said the major, seating himself down comfortably andadjusting his travelling cap, "did you find the Western type?"

"I don't quite know, " said she, slowly. "But I have made the discoverythat a human soul is much the same wherever you meet it. "

"Dear me! You haven't been meeting a soul, have you?" the major said, facetiously, unbuckling his travelling-bag. "I'll tell Jack. "

"No, I'll tell Jack. And he'll feel quite as badly as I do to think thatI could do nothing for its proper adjustment. "

The major's face took on a look of comprehension. 

"Was that the soul, " he asked, "that just came down in the carriage withus?"

"That was it, " assented Kate. "It was born; it has had its mortal day;and it has gone back up the gulch. "

A Michigan Man

A PINE forest is nature's expression of solemnity and solitude. Sunlight, rivers, cascades, people, music, laughter, or dancing couldnot make it gay. With its unceasing reverberations and its eternalshadows, it is as awful and as holy as a cathedral. 

Thirty good fellows working together by day and drinking together bynight can keep up but a moody imitation of jollity. Spend twenty-fiveof your forty years, as Luther Dallas did, in this perennial gloom, andyour soul--that which enjoys, aspires, competes--will be drugged as deepas if you had quaffed the cup of oblivion. Luther Dallas was counted oneof the most experienced axe-men in the northern camps. He could fella tree with the swift surety of an executioner, and in revenge for hismany arboral murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, capturedand chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps ofProgress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach hisfastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, inventing. His senses responded only to the sonorous music of the woods;a steadfast wind ringing metallic melody from the pine-tops contentedhim as the sound of the sea does the sailor; and dear as the odors ofthe ocean to the mariner were the resinous scents of the forest to him. Like a sailor, too, he had his superstitions. He had a presentiment thathe was to die by one of these trees, -that some day, in chopping, thetree would fall upon and crush him as it did his father the day theybrought him back to the camp on a litter of pine boughs. 

One day the gang-boss noticed a tree that Dallas had left standing in amost unwoodmanlike manner in the section which was allotted to him. 

"What in thunder is that standing there for?" he asked. 

Dallas raised his eyes to the pine, towering in stern dignity a hundredfeet above them. 

"Well, " he said feebly, "I noticed it, but kind-a left it t' the last. "

"Cut it down to-morrow, " was the response. 

The wind was rising, and the tree muttered savagely. Luther thought itsounded like a menace, and turned pale. No trouble has yet been foundthat will keep a man awake in the keen air of the pineries after hehas been swinging his axe all day, but the sleep of the chopper was sobroken with disturbing dreams that night that the beads gathered onhis brow, and twice he cried aloud. He ate his coarse flap-jacks in themorning and escaped from the smoky shanty as soon as he could. 

"It'll bring bad luck, I'm afraid, " he muttered as he went to get hisaxe from the rack. He was as fond of his axe as a soldier of his musket, but to-day he shouldered it with reluctance. He felt like a man with hisdestiny before him. The tree stood like a sentinel. He raised his axe, once, twice, a dozen times, but could not bring himself to make a cutin the bark. He walked backwards a few steps and looked up. The funerealgreen seemed to grow darker and darker till it became black. It was theembodiment of sorrow. Was it not shaking giant arms at him? Did it notcry out in angry challenge? Luther did not try to laugh at his fears;he had never seen any humor in life. A gust of wind had someway creptthrough the dense barricade of foliage that flanked the clearing, and struck him with an icy chill. He looked at the sky; the day wasadvancing rapidly. He went at his work with an energy as determined asdespair. The axe in his practised hand made clean straight cuts in thetrunk, now on this side, now on that. His task was not an easy one, but he finished it with wonderful expedition. After the chopping wasfinished, the tree stood firm a moment; then, as the tensely-strainedfibres began a weird moaning, he sprang aside, and stood waiting. In thedistance he saw two men hewing a log. The axe-man sent them a shoutand threw up his arms for them to look. The tree stood out clear andbeautiful against the gray sky; the men ceased their work and watchedit. The vibrations became more violent, and the sounds they producedgrew louder and louder till they reached a shrill wild cry. There came apause, then a deep shuddering groan. The topmost branches began to moveslowly, the whole stately bulk swayed, and then shot towards the ground. The gigantic trunk bounded from the stump, recoiled like a cannon, crashed down, and lay conquered, with a roar as of an earthquake, in acloud of flying twigs and chips. 

When the dust had cleared away, the men at the log on the outside of theclearing could not see Luther. They ran to the spot, and found himlying on the ground with his chest crushed in. His fearful eyes had notrightly calculated the distance from the stump to the top of the pine, nor rightly weighed the power of the massed branches, and so, standingspell-bound, watching the descending trunk as one might watch hisNemesis, the rebound came and left him lying worse than dead. 

Three months later, when the logs, lopped of their branches, drifteddown the streams, the woodman, a human log lopped of his strength, drifted to a great city. A change, the doctor said, might prolonghis life. The lumbermen made up a purse, and he started out, not verydefinitely knowing his destination. He had a sister, much younger thanhimself, who at the age of sixteen had married and gone, he believed, toChicago. That was years ago, but he had an idea that he might find her. He was not troubled by his lack of resources; he did not believe thatany man would want for a meal unless he were "shiftless. " He had alwaysbeen able to turn his hand to something. 

He felt too ill from the jostling of the cars to notice much of anythingon the journey. The dizzy scenes whirling past made him faint, and hewas glad to lie with closed eyes. He imagined that his little sister inher pink calico frock and bare feet (as he remembered her) would beat the station to meet him. "Oh, Lu!" she would call from somehiding-place, and he would go and find her. 

The conductor stopped by Luther's seat and said that they were in thecity at last; but it seemed to the sick man as if they went miles afterthat, with a multitude of twinkling lights on one side and a blankdarkness, that they told him was the lake, on the other. The conductoragain stopped by his seat. 

"Well, my man, " said he, "how are you feeling?"

Luther, the possessor of the toughest muscles in the gang, felt a sickman's irritation at the tone of pity. 

"Oh, I'm all right!" he said, gruffly, and shook off the assistance theconductor tried to offer with his overcoat. "I'm going to my sister's, "he explained, in answer to the inquiry as to where he was going. Theman, somewhat piqued at the spirit in which his overtures were met, lefthim, and Luther stepped on to the platform. There was a long vista ofsemi-light, down which crowds of people walked and baggage-men rushed. The building, if it deserved the name, seemed a ruin, and through thearched doors Luther could see men--hackmen-dancing and howling likedervishes. Trains were coming and going, and the whistles and bellskept up a ceaseless clangor. Luther, with his small satchel and uncouthdress, slouched by the crowd unnoticed, and reached the street. Hewalked amid such an illumination as he had never dreamed of, and pausedhalf blinded in the glare of a broad sheet of electric light that filleda pillared entrance into which many people passed. He looked about him. Above on every side rose great, many-windowed buildings; on the streetthe cars and carriages thronged, and jostling crowds dashed headlongamong the vehicles. After a time he turned down a street that seemed tohim a pandemonium filled with madmen. It went to his head like wine, andhardly left him the presence of mind to sustain a quiet exterior. Thewind was laden with a penetrating moisture that chilled him as the dryicy breezes from Huron never had done, and the pain in his lungs madehim faint and dizzy. He wondered if his red-cheeked little sister couldlive in one of those vast, impregnable buildings. He thought of stoppingsome of those serious-looking men and asking them if they knew her;but he could not muster up the courage. The distressing experience thatcomes to almost every one some time in life, of losing all identity inthe universal humanity, was becoming his. The tears began to roll downhis wasted face from loneliness and exhaustion. He grew hungry withlonging for the dirty but familiar cabins of the camp, and staggeredalong with eyes half closed, conjuring visions of the warm interiors, the leaping fires, the groups of laughing men seen dimly through cloudsof tobacco-smoke. 

A delicious scent of coffee met his hungry sense and made him reallythink he was taking the savory black draught from his familiar tin cup;but the muddy streets, the blinding lights, the cruel, rushing people, were still there. The buildings, however, now became different. Theywere lower and meaner, with dirty windows. Women laughing loudly crowdedabout the doors, and the establishments seemed to be equally dividedbetween saloon-keepers, pawnbrokers, and dealers in second-hand clothes. Luther wondered where they all drew their support from. Upon onesignboard he read, "Lodgings 10 cents to 50 cents. A Square Meal for 15cents, " and, thankful for some haven, entered. Here he spent his firstnight and other nights, while his purse dwindled and his strength waned. At last he got a man in a drug-store to search the directory forhis sister's residence. They found a name he took to be hisbrother-in-law's. It was two days later when he found the address, --agreat, many-storied mansion on one of the southern boulevards, --and foundalso that his search had been in vain. Sore and faint, he staggered backto his miserable shelter, only to arise feverish and ill in the morning. He frequented the great shop doors, thronged with brilliantly-dressedladies, and watched to see if his little sister might not dash up inone of those satin-lined coaches and take him where he would be warm andsafe and would sleep undisturbed by drunken, ribald songs and loathsomesurroundings. There were days when he almost forgot his name, and, striving to remember, would lose his senses for a moment and drift backto the harmonious solitudes of the North and breathe the resin-scentedfrosty atmosphere. He grew terrified at the blood he coughed from hislacerated lungs, and wondered bitterly why the boys did not come to takehim home. 

One day, as he painfully dragged himself down a residence street, hetried to collect his thoughts and form some plan for the future. He hadno trade, understood no handiwork; he could fell trees. He looked atthe gaunt, scrawny, transplanted specimens that met his eye, and gavehimself up to the homesickness that filled his soul. He slept that nightin the shelter of a stable, and spent his last money in the morning fora biscuit. 

He travelled many miles that afternoon looking for something to which hemight turn his hand. Once he got permission to carry a hod for half anhour. At the end of that time he fainted. When he recovered, the foremanpaid him twenty-five cents. "For God's sake, man, go home, " he said. Luther stared at him with a white face and went on. 

There came days when he so forgot his native dignity as to beg. He seldom received anything; he was referred to various charitableinstitutions the existence of which he had never heard. 

One morning, when a pall of smoke enveloped the city and the odors ofcoal-gas refused to lift their nauseating poison through the heavy air, Luther, chilled with dew and famished, awoke to a happier life. Theloneliness at his heart was gone. The feeling of hopeless imprisonmentthat the miles and miles of streets had terrified him with gave placeto one of freedom and exaltation. Above him he heard the rasping ofpine boughs; his feet trod on a rebounding mat of decay; the sky was ascoldly blue as the bosom of Huron. He walked as if on ether, singing asenseless jargon the woodmen had aroused the echoes with, --

 "Hi yi halloo! The owl sees you! Look what you do! Hi yi halloo!"

Swung over his shoulder was a stick he had used to assist his limpinggait, but now transformed into the beloved axe. He would reach theclearing soon, he thought, and strode on like a giant, while peoplehurried from his path. Suddenly a smooth trunk, stripped of its bark andbleached by weather, arose before him. 

"Hi yi halloo!" High went the wasted arm--crash!--a broken staff, ajingle of wires, a maddened, shouting man the centre of a group ofamused spectators! A few moments later, four broad-shouldered men inblue had him in their grasp, pinioned and guarded, clattering over thenoisy streets behind two spirited horses. They drew after them a troopof noisy, jeering boys, who danced about the wagon like a swirl ofautumn leaves. Then came a halt, and Luther was dragged up the steps ofa square brick building with a belfry on the top. They entered a largebare room with benches ranged about the walls, and brought him before aman at a desk. 

"What is your name?" asked the man at the desk. 

"Hi yi halloo!" said Luther. 

"He's drunk, sergeant, " said one of the men in blue, and the axe-man wasled into the basement. He was conscious of an involuntary resistance, ashort struggle, and a final shock of pain, --then oblivion. 

The chopper awoke to the realization of three stone walls and an irongrating in front. Through this he looked out upon a stone flooringacross which was a row of similar apartments. He neither knew nor caredwhere he was. The feeling of imprisonment was no greater than he hadfelt on the endless, cheerless streets. He laid himself on the benchthat ran along a side wall, and, closing his eyes, listened to thebabble of the clear stream and the thunder of the "drive" on itsjourney. How the logs hurried and jostled! crushing, whirling, ducking, with the merry lads leaping about them with shouts and laughter. Suddenly he was recalled by a voice. Some one handed a narrow tin cupfull of coffee and a thick slice of bread through the grating. Acrossthe way he dimly saw a man eating a similar slice of bread. Men in othercompartments were swearing and singing. He knew these now for the voiceshe had heard in his dreams. He tried to force some of the bread down hisparched and swollen throat, but failed; the coffee strangled him, and hethrew himself upon the bench. 

The forest again, the night-wind, the whistle of the axe through theair. Once when he opened his eyes he found it dark. It would soon betime to go to work. He fancied there would be hoar-frost on the treesin the morning. How close the cabin seemed! Ha!--here came his littlesister. Her voice sounded like the wind on a spring morning. How loud itswelled now! "Lu! Lu!" she cried. 

The next morning the lock-up keeper opened the cell door. Luther laywith his head in a pool of blood. His soul had escaped from the thrallof the forest. 

"Well, well!" said the little fat police-justice, when he was told of it. "We ought to have a doctor around to look after such cases. "

A Lady of Yesterday

"A LIGHT wind blew from the gates of the sun, " the morning she firstwalked down the street of the little Iowa town. Not a cloud flecked theblue; there was a humming of happy insects; a smell of rich and moistloam perfumed the air, and in the dusk of beeches and of oaks stood thequiet homes. She paused now and then, looking in the gardens, or at agroup of children, then passed on, smiling in content. 

Her accent was so strange, that the agent for real estate, whom shevisited, asked her, twice and once again, what it was she said. 

"I want, " she had repeated smilingly, "an upland meadow, where cloverwill grow, and mignonette. "

At the tea-tables that night, there was a mighty chattering. The briskvillage made a mystery of this lady with the slow step, the foreigntrick of speech, the long black gown, and the gentle voice. The men, concealing their curiosity in presence of the women, gratified itsecretly, by sauntering to the tavern in the evening. There the keeperand his wife stood ready to convey any neighborly intelligence. 

"Elizabeth Astrado" was written in the register, --a name conveyinglittle, unaccompanied by title or by place of residence. 

"She eats alone, " the tavern-keeper's wife confided to their eagerears, "and asks for no service. Oh, she's a curiosity! She's got herstory, --you'll see!"

In a town where every man knew every other man, and whether or not hepaid his taxes on time, and what his standing was in church, and all theskeletons of his home, a stranger alien to their ways disturbed theirpeace of mind. 

"An upland meadow where clover and mignonette will grow, " she had said, and such an one she found, and planted thick with fine white cloverand with mignonette. Then, while the carpenters raised her cabin at theborder of the meadow, near the street, she passed among the villagers, mingling with them gently, winning their good-will, in spite ofthemselves. 

The cabin was of unbarked maple logs, with four rooms and a rusticportico. Then all the villagers stared in very truth. They, livingin their trim and ugly little homes, accounted houses of logs as themisfortune of their pioneer parents. A shed for wood, a barn for theJersey cow, a rustic fence, tall, with a high swinging gate, completedthe domain. In the front room of the cabin was a fireplace of rudebrick. In the bedrooms, cots as bare and hard as a nun's, and in thekitchen the domestic necessaries; that was all. The poorest house-holderin the town would not have confessed to such scant furnishing. Yet therichest man might well have hesitated before he sent to France for hivesand hives of bees, as she did, setting them up along the southern borderof her meadow. 

Later there came strong boxes, marked with many marks of foreigntransportation lines, and the neighbor-gossips, seeing them, imaginedwealth of curious furniture; but the man who carted them told his wife, who told her friend, who told her friend, that every box to the last onewas placed in the dry cemented cellar, and left there in the dark. 

"An' a mighty ridic'lous expense a cellar like that is, t' put under ahouse of that char'cter, " said the man to his wife--who repeated it toher friend. 

"But that ain't all, " the carpenter's wife had said when she heard aboutit all, "Hank says there is one little room, not fit for buttery noryet fur closit, with a window high up--well, you ken see yourself-an' astrong door. Jus' in passin' th' other day, when he was there, hangin'some shelves, he tried it, an' it was locked!"

"Well!" said the women who listened. 

However, they were not unfriendly, these brisk gossips. Two of them, plucking up tardy courage, did call one afternoon. Their hostess was outamong her bees, crooning to them, as it seemed, while they lighted allabout her, lit on the flower in her dark hair, buzzed vivaciously abouther snow-white linen gown, lighted on her long, dark hands. She camein brightly when she saw her guests, and placed chairs for them, courteously, steeped them a cup of pale and fragrant tea, and servedthem with little cakes. Though her manner was so quiet and so kind, thewomen were shy before her. She, turning to one and then the other, askedquestions in her quaint way. 

"You have children, have you not?"

Both of them had. 

"Ah, " she cried, clasping those slender hands, "but you are veryfortunate! Your little ones, --what are their ages?"

They told her, she listening smilingly. 

"And you nurse your little babes--you nurse them at the breast?"

The modest women blushed. They were not used to speaking with suchfreedom. But they confessed they did, not liking artificial means. 

"No, " said the lady, looking at them with a soft light in her eyes, "asyou say, there is nothing like the good mother Nature. The little onesGod sends should lie at the breast. 'Tis not the milk alone thatthey imbibe; it is the breath of life, -it is the human magnetism, thepower, -how shall I say? Happy the mother who has a little babe to hold!"

They wanted to ask a question, but they dared not--wanted to ask ahundred questions. But back of the gentleness was a hauteur, and theywere still. 

"Tell me, " she said, breaking her reverie, "of what your husbands do. Are they carpenters? Do they build houses for men, like the blessedJesus? Or are they tillers of the soil? Do they bring fruits out of thisbountiful valley?"

They answered, with a reservation of approval. "The blessed Jesus!" Itsounded like popery. 

She had gone from these brief personal matters to other things. 

"How very strong you people seem, " she had remarked. "Both your menand your women are large and strong. You should be, being appointed tosubdue a continent. Men think they choose their destinies, but indeed, good neighbors, I think not so. Men are driven by the winds of God'swill. They are as much bidden to build up this valley, this storehousefor the nations, as coral insects are bidden to make the reefs withtheir own little bodies, dying as they build. Is it not so?"

"We are the creatures of God's will, I suppose, " said one of hervisitors, piously. 

She had given them little confidences in return. 

"I make my bread, " she said, with childish pride, "pray see if youdo not think it excellent!" And she cut a flaky loaf to display itswhiteness. One guest summoned the bravado to inquire, --

"Then you are not used to doing housework?"

"I?" she said, with a slow smile, "I have never got used toanything, --not even living. " And so she baffled them all, yet won them. 

The weeks went by. Elizabeth Astrado attended to her bees, milked hercow, fed her fowls, baked, washed, and cleaned, like the simple womenabout her, saving that as she did it a look of ineffable content lightedup her face, and she sang for happiness. Sometimes, amid the balladsthat she hummed, a strain slipped in of some great melody, whichshe, singing unaware, as it were, corrected, shaking her finger inself-reproval, and returning again to the ballads and the hymns. Norwas she remiss in neighborly offices; but if any were ailing, or had afestivity, she was at hand to assist, condole, or congratulate, carryingalways some simple gift in her hand, appropriate to the occasion. 

She had her wider charities too, for all she kept close to her home. When, one day, a story came to her of a laborer struck down with heat inputting in a culvert on the railroad, and gossip said he could notspeak English, she hastened to him, caught dying words from his lips, whispered a reply, and then what seemed to be a prayer, while heheld fast her hand, and sank to coma with wistful eyes upon her face. Moreover 'twas she who buried him, raising a cross above his grave, andshe who planted rose-bushes about the mound. 

"He spoke like an Italian, " said the physician to her warily. 

"And so he was, " she had replied. 

"A fellow-countryman of yours, no doubt?"

"Are not all men our countrymen, my friend?" she said, gently. "What arelittle lines drawn in the imagination of men, dividing territory, thatthey should divide our sympathies? The world is my country--and yours, I hope. Is it not so?"

Then there had also been a hapless pair of lovers, shamed before theircommunity, who, desperate, impoverished, and bewildered at the warbetween nature and society, had been helped by her into a new part ofthe world. There had been a widow with many children, who had foundbaskets of cooked food and bundles of well-made clothing on her step. And as the days passed, with these pleasant offices, the face of thestrange woman glowed with an ever-increasing content, and her dark, delicate beauty grew. 

John Hartington spent his vacation at Des Moines, having a laudabledesire to see something of the world before returning to his nativetown, with his college honors fresh upon him. Swiftest of the collegerunners was John Hartington, famed for his leaping too, and measuringwidest at the chest and waist of all the hearty fellows at theuniversity. His blond curls clustered above a brow almost as innocentas a child's; his frank and brave blue eyes, his free step, his mellowlaugh, bespoke the perfect animal, unharmed by civilization, unperplexedby the closing century's fallacies and passions. The wholesome oak thatspreads its roots deep in the generous soil, could not be more a partof nature than he. Conscientious, unimaginative, direct, sincere, industrious, he was the ideal man of his kind, and his return to towncaused a flutter among the maidens which they did not even attempt toconceal. They told him all the chat, of course, and, among other things, mentioned the great sensation of the year, --the coming of the womanwith her mystery, the purchase of the sunny upland, the planting itwith clover and with mignonette, the building of the house of logs, the keeping of the bees, the barren rooms, the busy, silent life, thecharities, the never-ending wonder of it all. And then the woman--kind, yet different from the rest, with the foreign trick of tongue, the slow, proud walk, the delicate, slight hands, the beautiful, beautiful smile, the air as of a creature from another world. 

Hartington, strolling beyond the village streets, up where the sunsetdied in daffodil above the upland, saw the little cot of logs, and outbefore it, among blood-red poppies, the woman of whom he had heard. Hergown of white gleamed in that eerie radiance, glorified, her sad greateyes bent on him in magnetic scrutiny. A peace and plenitude of powercame radiating from her, and reached him where he stood, suddenly, andfor the first time in his careless life, struck dumb and awed. She, too, seemed suddenly abashed at this great bulk of youthful manhood, innocentand strong. She gazed on him, and he on her, both chained withsome mysterious enchantment. Yet neither spoke, and he, turning inbewilderment at last, went back to town, while she placed one hand onher lips to keep from calling him. And neither slept that night, and inthe morning when she went with milking pail and stool out to the grassyfield, there he stood at the bars, waiting. Again they gazed, likecreatures held in thrall by some magician, till she held out her handand said, --

"We must be friends, although we have not met. Perhaps we ARE oldfriends. They say there have been worlds before this one. I have notseen you in these habiliments of flesh and blood, and yet--we may befriends?"

John Hartington, used to the thin jests of the village girls, and alltheir simple talk, rose, nevertheless, enlightened as he was with somestrange sympathy with her, to understand and answer what she said. 

"I think perhaps it may be so. May I come in beside you in the field?Give me the pail. I'll milk the cow for you. "

She threw her head back and laughed like a girl from school, and helaughed too, and they shook hands. Then she sat near him while hemilked, both keeping silence, save for the p-rring noise he made withhis lips to the patient beast. Being through, she served him with acupful of the fragrant milk; but he bade her drink first, then drankhimself, and then they laughed again, as if they both had foundsomething new and good in life. 

Then she, --

"Come see how well my bees are doing. " And they went. She served himwith the lucent syrup of the bees, perfumed with the mignonette, --suchhoney as there never was before. He sat on the broad doorstep, nearthe scarlet poppies, she on the grass, and then they talked--was it onegolden hour--or two? Ah, well, 'twas long enough for her to learn all ofhis simple life, long enough for her to know that he was victor at theraces at the school, that he could play the pipe, like any shepherd ofthe ancient days, and when he went he asked her if he might return. 

"Well, " laughed she, "sometimes I am lonely. Come see me--in a week. "

Yet he was there that day at twilight, and he brought his silver pipe, and piped to her under the stars, and she sung ballads to him, --songsof Strephon and times when the hills were young, and flocks were fairerthan they ever be these days. 

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, " and still the intercourse, still her dark loveliness waxing, still the weaving of the mystic spell, still happiness as primitive and as sweet as ever Eden knew. 

Then came a twilight when the sweet rain fell, and on the heavy air theperfumes of the fields floated. The woman stood by the window of thecot, looking out. Tall, graceful, full of that subtle power which drewhis soul; clothed in white linen, fragrant from her fields, with breathfreighted with fresh milk, with eyes of flame, she was there to beadored. And he, being man of manliest type, forgot all that might havechecked the words, and poured his soul out at her feet. She drew herselfup like a queen, but only that she might look queenlier for his sake, and, bending, kissed his brow, and whispered back his vows. 

And they were married. 

The villagers pitied Hartington. 

"She's more than a match for him in years--an' in some other ways, aslike as not, " they said. "Besides, she ain't much inclined to mentionanything about her past. 'Twon't bear the tellin' probably. "

As for the lovers, they laughed as they went about their honest tasks, or sat together arms encircling each at evening, now under the stars, and now before their fire of wood. They talked together of their farm, added a field for winter wheat, bought other cattle, and some horses, which they rode out over the rolling prairies side by side. He neverstopped to chat about the town; she never ventured on the street withouthim by her side. Truth to tell, their neighbors envied them, marvellinghow one could extract a heaven out of earth, and what such perfect joycould mean. 

Yet, for all their prosperity, not one addition did they make to thatmost simple home. It stood there, with its bare necessities, madebeautiful only with their love. But when the winter was most gone, hemade a little cradle of hard wood, in which she placed pillows of down, and over which she hung linen curtains embroidered by her hand. 

In the long evenings, by the flicker of the fire, they sat together, cheek to cheek, and looked at this little bed, singing low songstogether. 

"This happiness is terrible, my John, " she said to him one night, --awondrous night, when the eastern wind had flung the tassels out on allthe budding trees of spring, and the air was throbbing with awakeninglife, and balmy puffs of breeze, and odors of the earth. "And we aregrowing young. Do you not think that we are very young and strong?"

He kissed her on the lips. "I know that you are beautiful, " he said. 

"Oh, we have lived at Nature's heart, you see, my love. The cattle andthe fowls, the honey and the wheat, the cot-the cradle, John, and youand me! These things make happiness. They are nature. But then, youcannot understand. You have never known the artificial--"

"And you, Elizabeth?"

"John, if you wish, you shall hear all I have to tell. 'Tis a long, long, weary tale. Will you hear it now? Believe me, it will make ussad. "

She grasped his arm till he shrank with pain. 

"Tell what you will and when you will, Elizabeth. Perhaps, someday--when--" he pointed to the little crib. 

"As you say. " And so it dropped. 

There came a day when Hartington, sitting upon the portico, whereperfumes of the budding clover came to him, hated the humming of thehappy bees, hated the rustling of the trees, hated the sight of earth. 

"The child is dead, " the nurse had said, "as for your wife, perhaps--"but that was all. Finally he heard the nurse's step upon the floor. 

"Come, " she said, motioning him. And he had gone, laid cheek againstthat dying cheek, whispered his love once more, saw it returned eventhen, in those deep eyes, and laid her back upon her pillow, dead. 

He buried her among the mignonette, levelled the earth, sowed thick theseed again. 

"'Tis as she wished, " he said. 

With his strong hands he wrenched the little crib, laid it piece bypiece upon their hearth, and scattered then the sacred ashes on thewind. Then, with hard-coming breath, broke open the locked door of thatroom which he had never entered, thinking to find there, perhaps, somesign of that unguessable life of hers, but found there only an altar, with votive lamps before the Blessed Virgin, and lilies faded and fallenfrom their stems. 

Then down into the cellar went he, to those boxes, with the foreignmarks. And then, indeed, he found a hint of that dead life. Gowns ofvelvet and of silk, such as princesses might wear, wonders of lace, yellowed with time, great cloaks of snowy fur, lustrous robes, jewelsof worth, --a vast array of brilliant trumpery. Then there were books inmany tongues, with rich old bindings and illuminated page, and in themwritten the dead woman's name, --a name of many parts, with titles ofimpress, and in the midst of all the name, "Elizabeth Astrado, " as shesaid. 

And that was all, or if there were more he might have learned, followingtrails that fell within his way, he never learned it, being content, andthankful that he had held her for a time within his arms, and lookedin her great soul, which, wearying of life's sad complexities, hadsimplified itself, and made his love its best adornment.