A PHYLLIS OF THE SIERRAS

By Bret Harte

CHAPTER I. 

Where the great highway of the Sierras nears the summit, and the pinesbegin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if theweary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turnedaside for rest and breath again. The tired eyes of many a dustypassenger on the old overland coach have gazed wistfully on those sylvanopenings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wildernessin their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, and followed oneof these diverging paths, he would have come upon some rude wagon track, or "logslide, " leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominoussaw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. Thewoodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing oversome unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throbof an invisible engine in the covert. 

Such, at least, was the experience of a young fellow of five-and-twenty, who, knapsack on back and stick in hand, had turned aside from thehighway and entered the woods one pleasant afternoon in July. But hewas evidently a deliberate pedestrian, and not a recent deposit ofthe proceeding stage-coach; and although his stout walking-shoes werecovered with dust, he had neither the habitual slouch and slovenlinessof the tramp, nor the hurried fatigue and growing negligence of aninvoluntary wayfarer. His clothes, which were strong and serviceable, were better fitted for their present usage than the ordinary garmentsof the Californian travellers, which were too apt to be either above orbelow their requirements. But perhaps the stranger's greatest claim tooriginality was the absence of any weapon in his equipment. He carriedneither rifle nor gun in his hand, and his narrow leathern belt wasempty of either knife or revolver. 

A half-mile from the main road, which seemed to him to have dropped outof sight the moment he had left it, he came upon a half-cleared area, where the hastily-cut stumps of pines, of irregular height, bore an oddresemblance to the broken columns of some vast and ruined temple. A fewfallen shafts, denuded of their bark and tessellated branches, sawn intosymmetrical cylinders, lay beside the stumps, and lent themselves to theillusion. But the freshly-cut chips, so damp that they still clung inlayers to each other as they had fallen from the axe, and the stumpsthemselves, still wet and viscous from their drained life-blood, wereredolent of an odor of youth and freshness. 

The young man seated himself on one of the logs and deeply inhaled thesharp balsamic fragrance--albeit with a slight cough and a later hurriedrespiration. This, and a certain drawn look about his upper lip, seemed to indicate, in spite of his strength and color, some pulmonaryweakness. He, however, rose after a moment's rest with undiminishedenergy and cheerfulness, readjusted his knapsack, and began to lightlypick his way across the fallen timber. A few paces on, the muffled whirof machinery became more audible, with the lazy, monotonous commandof "Gee thar, " from some unseen ox-driver. Presently, the slow, deliberately-swaying heads of a team of oxen emerged from the bushes, followed by the clanking chain of the "skids" of sawn planks, which theywere ponderously dragging with that ostentatious submissiveness peculiarto their species. They had nearly passed him when there was a suddenhitch in the procession. From where he stood he could see that aprojecting plank had struck a pile of chips and become partly imbeddedin it. To run to the obstruction and, with a few dexterous strokes andthe leverage of his stout stick, dislodge the plank was the work notonly of the moment but of an evidently energetic hand. The teamsterlooked back and merely nodded his appreciation, and with a "Gee up! Outof that, now!" the skids moved on. 

"Much obliged, there!" said a hearty voice, as if supplementing theteamster's imperfect acknowledgment. 

The stranger looked up. The voice came from the open, sashless, shutterless window of a rude building--a mere shell of boards and beamshalf hidden in the still leafy covert before him. He had completelyoverlooked it in his approach, even as he had ignored the nearerthrobbing of the machinery, which was so violent as to impart a decidedtremor to the slight edifice, and to shake the speaker so strongly thathe was obliged while speaking to steady himself by the sashless frameof the window at which he stood. He had a face of good-natured and alertintelligence, a master's independence and authority of manner, in spiteof his blue jean overalls and flannel shirt. 

"Don't mention it, " said the stranger, smiling with equal but moredeliberate good-humor. Then, seeing that his interlocutor stilllingered a hospitable moment in spite of his quick eyes and the jarringimpatience of the machinery, he added hesitatingly, "I fancy I'vewandered off the track a bit. Do you know a Mr. Bradley--somewherehere?"

The stranger's hesitation seemed to be more from some habitualconscientiousness of statement than awkwardness. The man in the windowreplied, "I'm Bradley. "

"Ah! Thank you: I've a letter for you--somewhere. Here it is. " Heproduced a note from his breast-pocket. Bradley stooped to a sittingposture in the window. "Pitch it up. " It was thrown and caught cleverly. Bradley opened it, read it hastily, smiled and nodded, glanced behindhim as if to implore further delay from the impatient machinery, leanedperilously from the window, and said, --

"Look here! Do you see that silver-fir straight ahead?"

"Yes. "

"A little to the left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along theedge of the canyon until you see my house. Ask for my wife--that's Mrs. Bradley--and give her your letter. Stop!" He drew a carpenter's pencilfrom his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheetand tossed it back to the stranger. "See you at tea! Excuse me--Mr. Mainwaring--we're short-handed--and--the engine--" But here hedisappeared suddenly. 

Without glancing at the note again, the stranger quietly replaced itin his pocket, and struck out across the fallen trunks towards thesilver-fir. He quickly found the trail indicated by Bradley, although itwas faint and apparently worn by a single pair of feet as a shorter andprivate cut from some more travelled path. It was well for the strangerthat he had a keen eye or he would have lost it; it was equallyfortunate that he had a mountaineering instinct, for a sudden profounddeepening of the blue mist seen dimly through the leaves before himcaused him to slacken his steps. The trail bent abruptly to the right;a gulf fully two thousand feet deep was at his feet! It was the GreatCanyon. 

At the first glance it seemed so narrow that a rifle-shot could havecrossed its tranquil depths; but a second look at the comparative sizeof the trees on the opposite mountain convinced him of his error. Anearer survey of the abyss also showed him that instead of its wallsbeing perpendicular they were made of successive ledges or terraces tothe valley below. Yet the air was so still, and the outlines so clearlycut, that they might have been only the reflections of the mountainsaround him cast upon the placid mirror of a lake. The spectacle arrestedhim, as it arrested all men, by some occult power beyond the mereattraction of beauty or magnitude; even the teamster never passedit without the tribute of a stone or broken twig tossed into itsimmeasurable profundity. 

Reluctantly leaving the spot, the stranger turned with the trail thatnow began to skirt its edge. This was no easy matter, as the undergrowthwas very thick, and the foliage dense to the perilous brink of theprecipice. He walked on, however, wondering why Bradley had chosen socircuitous and dangerous a route to his house, which naturally wouldbe some distance back from the canyon. At the end of ten minutes'struggling through the "brush, " the trail became vague, and, to allappearances, ended. Had he arrived? The thicket was as dense as before;through the interstices of leaf and spray he could see the blue void ofthe canyon at his side, and he even fancied that the foliage ahead ofhim was more symmetrical and less irregular, and was touched here andthere with faint bits of color. To complete his utter mystification, a woman's voice, very fresh, very youthful, and by no means unmusical, rose apparently from the circumambient air. He looked hurriedly to theright and left, and even hopelessly into the trees above him. 

"Yes, " said the voice, as if renewing a suspended conversation, "itwas too funny for anything. There were the two Missouri girls fromSkinner's, with their auburn hair ringleted, my dear, like the old'Books of Beauty'--in white frocks and sashes of an unripe greenishyellow, that puckered up your mouth like persimmons. One of them wasspeechless from good behavior, and the other--well! the other wasso energetic she called out the figures before the fiddler did, andshrieked to my vis-a-vis to dance up to the entire stranger--meaning ME, if you please. "

The voice appeared to come from the foliage that overhung the canyon, and the stranger even fancied he could detect through the shimmeringleafy veil something that moved monotonously to and fro. Mystified andimpatient, he made a hurried stride forward, his foot struck a woodenstep, and the next moment the mystery was made clear. He had almoststumbled upon the end of a long veranda that projected over the abyssbefore a low, modern dwelling, till then invisible, nestling on itsvery brink. The symmetrically-trimmed foliage he had noticed were theluxuriant Madeira vines that hid the rude pillars of the veranda; themoving object was a rocking-chair, with its back towards the intruder, that disclosed only the brown hair above, and the white skirts and smallslippered feet below, of a seated female figure. In the mean time, asecond voice from the interior of the house had replied to the figure inthe chair, who was evidently the first speaker:--

"It must have been very funny; but as long as Jim is always bringingsomebody over from the mill, I don't see how I can go to those places. You were lucky, my dear, to escape from the new Division Superintendentlast night; he was insufferable to Jim with his talk of his friend theSan Francisco millionaire, and to me with his cheap society airs. I dohate a provincial fine gentleman. "

The situation was becoming embarrassing to the intruder. At theapparition of the woman, the unaffected and simple directness he hadpreviously shown in his equally abrupt contact with Bradley had fledutterly; confused by the awkwardness of his arrival, and shocked at theidea of overhearing a private conversation, he stepped hurriedly on theveranda. 

"Well? go on!" said the second voice impatiently. "Well, who else wasthere? WHAT did you say? I don't hear you. What's the matter?"

The seated figure had risen from her chair, and turned a young andpretty face somewhat superciliously towards the stranger, as she said ina low tone to her unseen auditor, "Hush! there is somebody here. "

The young man came forward with an awkwardness that was more boyish thanrustic. His embarrassment was not lessened by the simultaneous entrancefrom the open door of a second woman, apparently as young as andprettier than the first. 

"I trust you'll excuse me for--for--being so wretchedly stupid, " hestammered, "but I really thought, you know, that--that--I was followingthe trail to--to--the front of the house, when I stumbled in--in here. "

Long before he had finished, both women, by some simple feminineintuition, were relieved and even prepossessed by his voice and manner. They smiled graciously. The later-comer pointed to the empty chair. Butwith his habit of pertinacious conscientiousness the stranger continued, "It was regularly stupid, wasn't it?--and I ought to have known better. I should have turned back and gone away when I found out what an ass Iwas likely to be, but I was--afraid--you know, of alarming you by thenoise. "

"Won't you sit down?" said the second lady, pleasantly. 

"Oh, thanks! I've a letter here--I"--he transferred his stick and hatto his left hand as he felt in his breast-pocket with his right. But theaction was so awkward that the stick dropped on the veranda. Both womenmade a movement to restore it to its embarrassed owner, who, however, quickly anticipated them. "Pray don't mind it, " he continued, withaccelerated breath and heightened color. "Ah, here's the letter!" Heproduced the note Bradley had returned to him. "It's mine, infact--that is, I brought it to Mr. Bradley. He said I was to give itto--to--to--Mrs. Bradley. " He paused, glancing embarrassedly from theone to the other. 

"I'm Mrs. Bradley, " said the prettiest one, with a laugh. He handed herthe letter. It ran as follows:--

"DEAR BRADLEY--Put Mr. Mainwaring through as far as he wants to go, orhang him up at The Lookout, just as he likes. The Bank's behind him, andhis hat's chalked all over the Road; but he don't care much about beingon velvet. That ain't his style--and you'll like him. He's somebody'sson in England. B. "

Mrs. Bradley glanced simply at the first sentence. "Pray sit down, Mr. Mainwaring, " she said gently; "or, rather, let me first introduce mycousin--Miss Macy. "

"Thanks, " said Mainwaring, with a bow to Miss Macy, "butI--I--I--think, " he added conscientiously, "you did not notice that yourhusband had written something across the paper. "

Mrs. Bradley smiled, and glanced at her husband's indorsement--"Allright. Wade in. " "It's nothing but Jim's slang, " she said, with a laughand a slightly heightened color. "He ought not to have sent you by thatshort cut; it's a bother, and even dangerous for a stranger. If you hadcome directly to US by the road, without making your first call atthe mill, " she added, with a touch of coquetry, "you would have had apleasanter walk, and seen US sooner. I suppose, however, you got off thestage at the mill?"

"I was not on the coach, " said Mainwaring, unfastening the strap of hisknapsack. "I walked over from Lone Pine Flat. "

"Walked!" echoed both women in simultaneous astonishment. 

"Yes, " returned Mainwaring simply, laying aside his burden and takingthe proffered seat. "It's a very fine bit of country. "

"Why, it's fifteen miles, " said Mrs. Bradley, glancing horror-strickenat her cousin. "How dreadful! And to think Jim could have sent you ahorse to Lone Pine. Why, you must be dead!"

"Thanks, I'm all right! I rather enjoyed it, you know. "

"But, " said Miss Macy, glancing wonderingly at his knapsack, "you mustwant something, a change--or some refreshment--after fifteen miles. "

"Pray don't disturb yourself, " said Mainwaring, rising hastily, but notquickly enough to prevent the young girl from slipping past him into thehouse, whence she rapidly returned with a decanter and glasses. 

"Perhaps Mr. Mainwaring would prefer to go into Jim's room and wash hishands and put on a pair of slippers?" said Mrs. Bradley, with gentleconcern. 

"Thanks, no. I really am not tired. I sent some luggage yesterday by thecoach to the Summit Hotel, " he said, observing the women's eyes stillfixed upon his knapsack. "I dare say I can get them if I want them. I've got a change here, " he continued, lifting the knapsack as if with asudden sense of its incongruity with its surroundings, and depositing iton the end of the veranda. 

"Do let it remain where it is, " said Mrs. Bradley, greatly amused, "andpray sit still and take some refreshment. You'll make yourself illafter your exertions, " she added, with a charming assumption of matronlysolicitude. 

"But I'm not at all deserving of your sympathy, " said Mainwaring, witha laugh. "I'm awfully fond of walking, and my usual constitutional isn'tmuch under this. "

"Perhaps you were stronger than you are now, " said Mrs. Bradley, gazingat him with a frank curiosity that, however, brought a faint deepeningof color to his cheek. 

"I dare say you're right, " he said suddenly, with an apologetic smile. "I quite forgot that I'm a sort of an invalid, you know, travellingfor my health. I'm not very strong here, " he added, lightly tappinghis chest, that now, relieved of the bands of his knapsack, appearedsomewhat thin and hollow in spite of his broad shoulders. His voice, too, had become less clear and distinct. 

Mrs. Bradley, who was still watching him, here rose potentially. "Youought to take more care of yourself, " she said. "You should begin byeating this biscuit, drinking that glass of whiskey, and making yourselfmore comfortable in Jim's room until we can get the spare room fixed alittle. "

"But I am not to be sent to bed--am I?" asked Mainwaring, in half-real, half-amused consternation. 

"I'm not so sure of that, " said Mrs. Bradley, with playful precision. "But for the present we'll let you off with a good wash and a napafterwards in that rocking-chair, while my cousin and I make somelittle domestic preparations. You see, " she added with a certain proudhumility, "we've got only one servant--a Chinaman, and there are manythings we can't leave to him. "

The color again rose in Mainwaring's cheek, but he had tact enough toreflect that any protest or hesitation on his part at that moment wouldonly increase the difficulties of his gentle entertainers. He allowedhimself to be ushered into the house by Mrs. Bradley, and shown to herhusband's room, without perceiving that Miss Macy had availed herself ofhis absence to run to the end of the veranda, mischievously try tolift the discarded knapsack to her own pretty shoulder, but, failing, heroically stagger with it into the passage and softly deposit it at hisdoor. This done, she pantingly rejoined her cousin in the kitchen. 

"Well, " said Mrs. Bradley, emphatically. "DID you ever? Walking fifteenmiles for pleasure--and with such lungs!"

"And that knapsack!" added Louise Macy, pointing to the mark in herlittle palm where the strap had imbedded itself in the soft flesh. 

"He's nice, though; isn't he?" said Mrs. Bradley, tentatively. 

"Yes, " said Miss Macy, "he isn't, certainly, one of those provincialfine gentlemen you object to. But DID you see his shoes? I suppose theymake the miles go quickly, or seem to measure less by comparison. "

"They're probably more serviceable than those high-heeled things thatCaptain Greyson hops about in. "

"But the Captain always rides--and rides very well--you know, " saidLouise, reflectively. There was a moment's pause. 

"I suppose Jim will tell us all about him, " said Mrs. Bradley, dismissing the subject, as she turned her sleeves back over her whitearms, preparatory to grappling certain culinary difficulties. 

"Jim, " observed Miss Macy, shortly, "in my opinion, knows nothing morethan his note says. That's like Jim. "

"There's nothing more to know, really, " said Mrs. Bradley, with asuperior air. "He's undoubtedly the son of some Englishman of fortune, sent out here for his health. "

"Hush!"

Miss Macy had heard a step in the passage. It halted at last, halfirresolutely, before the open door of the kitchen, and the strangerappeared with an embarrassed air. 

But in his brief absence he seemed to have completely groomed himself, and stood there, the impersonation of close-cropped, clean, andwholesome English young manhood. The two women appreciated it withcat-like fastidiousness. 

"I beg your pardon; but really you're going to let a fellow do somethingfor you, " he said, "just to keep him from looking like a fool. I reallycan do no end of things, you know, if you'll try me. I've done somecamping-out, and can cook as well as the next man. "

The two women made a movement of smiling remonstrance, half coquettish, and half superior, until Mrs. Bradley, becoming conscious of her barearms and the stranger's wandering eyes, colored faintly, and said withmore decision:--

"Certainly not. You'd only be in the way. Besides, you need rest morethan we do. Put yourself in the rocking-chair in the veranda, and go tosleep until Mr. Bradley comes. "

Mainwaring saw that she was serious, and withdrew, a little ashamed athis familiarity into which his boyishness had betrayed him. But he hadscarcely seated himself in the rocking-chair before Miss Macy appeared, carrying with both hands a large tin basin of unshelled peas. 

"There, " she said pantingly, placing her burden in his lap, "if youreally want to help, there's something to do that isn't very fatiguing. You may shell these peas. "

"SHELL them--I beg pardon, but how?" he asked, with smiling earnestness. 

"How? Why, I'll show you--look. "

She frankly stepped beside him, so close that her full-skirted dresshalf encompassed him and the basin in a delicious confusion, and, leaning over his lap, with her left hand picked up a pea-cod, which, with a single movement of her charming little right thumb, she broke atthe end, and stripped the green shallow of its tiny treasures. 

He watched her with smiling eyes; her own, looking down on him, werevery bright and luminous. "There; that's easy enough, " she said, andturned away. 

"But--one moment, Miss--Miss--?"

"Macy, " said louise. 

"Where am I to put the shells?"

"Oh! throw them down there--there's room enough. "

She was pointing to the canyon below. The veranda actually projectedover its brink, and seemed to hang in mid air above it. Mainwaringalmost mechanically threw his arm out to catch the incautious girl, whohad stepped heedlessly to its extreme edge. 

"How odd! Don't you find it rather dangerous here?" he could not helpsaying. "I mean--you might have had a railing that wouldn't interceptthe view and yet be safe?"

"It's a fancy of Mr. Bradley's, " returned the young girl carelessly. "It's all like this. The house was built on a ledge against the side ofthe precipice, and the road suddenly drops down to it. "

"It's tremendously pretty, all the same, you know, " said the young manthoughtfully, gazing, however, at the girl's rounded chin above him. 

"Yes, " she replied curtly. "But this isn't working. I must go back toJenny. You can shell the peas until Mr. Bradley comes home. He won't belong. "

She turned away, and re-entered the house. Without knowing why, hethought her withdrawal abrupt, and he was again feeling his ready colorrise with the suspicion of either having been betrayed by the younggirl's innocent fearlessness into some unpardonable familiarity, whichshe had quietly resented, or of feeling an ease and freedom in thecompany of these two women that were inconsistent with respect, andshould be restrained. 

He, however, began to apply himself to the task given to him with hisusual conscientiousness of duty, and presently acquired a certain manualdexterity in the operation. It was "good fun" to throw the cast-offhusks into the mighty unfathomable void before him, and watch themlinger with suspended gravity in mid air for a moment--apparentlymotionless--until they either lost themselves, a mere vanishing blackspot in the thin ether, or slid suddenly at a sharp angle into unknownshadow. How deuced odd for him to be sitting here in this fashion! Itwould be something to talk of hereafter, and yet, --he stopped--it wasnot at all in the line of that characteristic adventure, uncivilizednovelty, and barbarous freedom which for the last month he had soughtand experienced. It was not at all like his meeting with the grizzlylast week while wandering in a lonely canyon; not a bit in the line ofhis chance acquaintance with that notorious ruffian, Spanish Jack, orhis witnessing with his own eyes that actual lynching affair at Angels. No! Nor was it at all characteristic, according to his previous ideas offrontier rural seclusion--as for instance the Pike County cabin of thefamily where he stayed one night, and where the handsome daughter askedhim what his Christian name was. No! These two young women were veryunlike her; they seemed really quite the equals of his family andfriends in England, --perhaps more attractive, --and yet, yes, it wasthis very attractiveness that alarmed his inbred social conservatismregarding women. With a man it was very different; that alert, active, intelligent husband, instinct with the throbbing life of his saw-mill, creator and worker in one, challenged his unqualified trust andadmiration. 

He had become conscious for the last minute or two of thinking rapidlyand becoming feverishly excited; of breathing with greater difficulty, and a renewed tendency to cough. The tendency increased until heinstinctively put aside the pan from his lap and half rose. But eventhat slight exertion brought on an accession of coughing. He put hishandkerchief to his lips, partly to keep the sound from disturbing thewomen in the kitchen, partly because of a certain significant tastein his mouth which he unpleasantly remembered. When he removed thehandkerchief it was, as he expected, spotted with blood. He turnedquickly and re-entered the house softly, regaining the bedroom withoutattracting attention. An increasing faintness here obliged him to liedown on the bed until it should pass. 

Everything was quiet. He hoped they would not discover his absence fromthe veranda until he was better; it was deucedly awkward that he shouldhave had this attack just now--and after he had made so light of hisprevious exertions. They would think him an effeminate fraud, these twobright, active women and that alert, energetic man. A faint color cameinto his cheek at the idea, and an uneasy sense that he had been in someway foolishly imprudent about his health. Again, they might be alarmedat missing him from the veranda; perhaps he had better have remainedthere; perhaps he ought to tell them that he had concluded to take theiradvice and lie down. He tried to rise, but the deep blue chasm beforethe window seemed to be swelling up to meet him, the bed slowly sinkinginto its oblivious profundity. He knew no more. 

He came to with the smell and taste of some powerful volatile spirit, and the vague vision of Mr. Bradley still standing at the window ofthe mill and vibrating with the machinery; this changed presently to apleasant lassitude and lazy curiosity as he perceived Mr. Bradley smileand apparently slip from the window of the mill to his bedside. "You'reall right now, " said Bradley, cheerfully. 

He was feeling Mainwaring's pulse. Had he really been ill and wasBradley a doctor?

Bradley evidently saw what was passing in his mind. "Don't be alarmed, "he said gayly. "I'm not a doctor, but I practise a little medicine andsurgery on account of the men at the mill, and accidents, you know. You're all right now; you've lost a little blood: but in a couple ofweeks in this air we'll have that tubercle healed, and you'll be asright as a trivet. "

"In a couple of weeks!" echoed Mainwaring, in faint astonishment. "Why, I leave here to-morrow. "

"You'll do nothing of the kind" said Mrs. Bradley, with smilingperemptoriness, suddenly slipping out from behind her husband. "Everything is all perfectly arranged. Jim has sent off messengers toyour friends, so that if you can't come to them, they can come to you. You see you can't help yourself! If you WILL walk fifteen miles withsuch lungs, and then frighten people to death, you must abide by theconsequences. "

"You see the old lady has fixed you, " said Bradley, smiling; "and she'sthe master here. Come, Mainwaring, you can send any other message youlike, and have who and what you want here; but HERE you must stop for awhile. "

"But did I frighten you really?" stammered Mainwaring, faintly, to Mrs. Bradley. 

"Frighten us!" said Mrs. Bradley. "Well, look there!"

She pointed to the window, which commanded a view of the veranda. MissMacy had dropped into the vacant chair, with her little feet stretchedout before her, her cheeks burning with heat and fire, her eyes partlyclosed, her straw hat hanging by a ribbon round her neck, her brownhair clinging to her ears and forehead in damp tendrils, and an enormouspalm-leaf fan in each hand violently playing upon this charming pictureof exhaustion and abandonment. 

"She came tearing down to the mill, bare-backed on our half-brokenmustang, about half an hour ago, to call me 'to help you, '" explainedBradley. "Heaven knows how she managed to do it!"

CHAPER II. 

The medication of the woods was not overestimated by Bradley. There wassurely some occult healing property in that vast reservoir of balmy andresinous odors over which The Lookout beetled and clung, and from whichat times the pure exhalations of the terraced valley seemed to rise. Under its remedial influence and a conscientious adherence to the rulesof absolute rest and repose laid down for him, Mainwaring had no returnof the hemorrhage. The nearest professional medical authority, hastilysummoned, saw no reason for changing or for supplementing Bradley'sintelligent and simple treatment, although astounded that the patienthad been under no more radical or systematic cure than travel andexercise. The women especially were amazed that Mainwaring had taken"nothing for it, " in their habitual experience of an unfetteredpill-and-elixir-consuming democracy. In their knowledge of the thousand"panaceas" that filled the shelves of the general store, this singularabstention of their guest seemed to indicate a national peculiarity. 

His bed was moved beside the low window, from which he could not onlyview the veranda but converse at times with its occupants, and evenlisten to the book which Miss Macy, seated without, read aloud to him. In the evening Bradley would linger by his couch until late, beguilingthe tedium of his convalescence with characteristic stories andinformation which he thought might please the invalid. For Mainwaring, who had been early struck with Bradley's ready and cultivatedintelligence, ended by shyly avoiding the discussion of more serioustopics, partly because Bradley impressed him with a suspicion of hisown inferiority, and partly because Mainwaring questioned the taste ofBradley's apparent exhibition of his manifest superiority. He learnedaccidentally that this mill-owner and backwoodsman was a college-bredman; but the practical application of that education to the ordinaryaffairs of life was new to the young Englishman's traditions, and grateda little harshly on his feelings. He would have been quite content ifBradley had, like himself and fellows he knew, undervalued his training, and kept his gifts conservatively impractical. The knowledge also thathis host's education naturally came from some provincial institutionunlike Oxford and Cambridge may have unconsciously affected his generalestimate. I say unconsciously, for his strict conscientiousness wouldhave rejected any such formal proposition. 

Another trifle annoyed him. He could not help noticing also thatalthough Bradley's manner and sympathy were confidential and almostbrotherly, he never made any allusion to Mainwaring's own family orconnections, and, in fact, gave no indication of what he believed wasthe national curiosity in regard to strangers. Somewhat embarrassed bythis indifference, Mainwaring made the occasion of writing some lettershome an opportunity for laughingly alluding to the fact that he had madehis mother and his sisters fully aware of the great debt they owed thehousehold of The Lookout. 

"They'll probably all send you a round robin of thanks, except, perhaps, my next brother, Bob. "

Bradley contented himself with a gesture of general deprecation, and didnot ask WHY Mainwaring's young brother should contemplate his death withsatisfaction. Nevertheless, some time afterwards Miss Macy remarkedthat it seemed hard that the happiness of one member of a family shoulddepend upon a calamity to another. "As for instance?" asked Mainwaring, who had already forgotten the circumstance. "Why, if you had died andyour younger brother succeeded to the baronetcy, and become Sir RobertMainwaring, " responded Miss Macy, with precision. This was the first andonly allusion to his family and prospective rank. On the other hand, he had--through naive and boyish inquiries, which seemed to amuse hisentertainers--acquired, as he believed, a full knowledge of the historyand antecedents of the Bradley household. He knew how Bradley hadbrought his young wife and her cousin to California and abandoned alucrative law practice in San Francisco to take possession of thismountain mill and woodland, which he had acquired through someprofessional service. 

"Then you are a barrister really?" said Mainwaring, gravely. 

Bradley laughed. "I'm afraid I've had more practice--though not aslucrative a one--as surgeon or doctor. "

"But you're regularly on the rolls, you know; you're entered asCounsel, and all that sort of thing?" continued Mainwaring, with greatseriousness. 

"Well, yes, " replied Bradley, much amused. "I'm afraid I must pleadguilty to that. "

"It's not a bad sort of thing, " said Mainwaring, naively, ignoringBradley's amusement. "I've got a cousin who's gone in for the law. Gotout of the army to do it--too. He's a sharp fellow. "

"Then you DO allow a man to try many trades--over there, " said MissMacy, demurely. 

"Yes, sometimes, " said Mainwaring, graciously, but by no means certainthat the case was at all analogous. 

Nevertheless, as if relieved of certain doubts of the conventionalquality of his host's attainments, he now gave himself up to a veryhearty and honest admiration of Bradley. "You know it's awfully kind ofhim to talk to a fellow like me who just pulled through, and never gotany prizes at Oxford, and don't understand the half of these things, " heremarked confidentially to Mrs. Bradley. "He knows more about the thingswe used to go in for at Oxford than lots of our men, and he's never beenthere. He's uncommonly clever. "

"Jim was always very brilliant, " returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently, and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "Iwish he were more practical. "

"Practical! Oh, I say, Mrs. Bradley! Why, a fellow that can go in amonga lot of workmen and tell them just what to do--an all-round chapthat can be independent of his valet, his doctor, and his--banker! ByJove--THAT'S practical!"

"I mean, " said Mrs. Bradley, coldly, "that there are some things thata gentleman ought not to be practical about nor independent of. Mr. Bradley would have done better to have used his talents in some morelegitimate and established way. "

Mainwaring looked at her in genuine surprise. To his inexperiencedobservation Bradley's intelligent energy and, above all, hisoriginality, ought to have been priceless in the eyes of his wife--theAmerican female of his species. He felt that slight shock which mostloyal or logical men feel when first brought face to face with the easydisloyalty and incomprehensible logic of the feminine affections. Herewas a fellow, by Jove, that any woman ought to be proud of, and--and--hestopped blankly. He wondered if Miss Macy sympathized with her cousin. 

Howbeit, this did not affect the charm of their idyllic life at TheLookout. The precipice over which they hung was as charming as everin its poetic illusions of space and depth and color; the isolation oftheir comfortable existence in the tasteful yet audacious habitation, the pleasant routine of daily tasks and amusements, all tended to makethe enforced quiet and inaction of his convalescence a lazy recreation. He was really improving; more than that, he was conscious of a certainsatisfaction in this passive observation of novelty that was healthierand perhaps TRUER than his previous passion for adventure and thatfebrile desire for change and excitement which he now felt was a partof his disease. Nor were incident and variety entirely absent from thistranquil experience. He was one day astonished at being presented byBradley with copies of the latest English newspapers, procured fromSacramento, and he equally astonished his host, after profusely thankinghim, by only listlessly glancing at their columns. He estopped aproposed visit from one of his influential countrymen; in the absenceof his fair entertainers at their domestic duties, he extracted infinitesatisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularlydetached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at thewindow he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, thatal-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredlyconscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors wereinvariably dragged thither by Miss Macy, and goaded into characteristicexhibition within sight and hearing of her guest, with a too evidentview, under the ostentatious excuse of extending his knowledge ofnational character or mischievously shocking him. 

"When you are strong enough to stand Captain Gashweiler's opinions ofthe Established Church and Chinamen, " said Miss Macy, after one of theserevelations, "I'll get Jim to bring him here, for really he swearsso outrageously that even in the broadest interests of internationalunderstanding and good-will neither Mrs. Bradley nor myself could bepresent. "

On another occasion she provokingly lingered before his window for amoment with a rifle slung jauntily over her shoulder. "If you hear ashot or two don't excite yourself, and believe we're having a lynchingcase in the woods. It will be only me. There's some creature--confess, you expected me to say 'critter'--hanging round the barn. It may be abear. Good-by. " She missed the creature, --which happened to be really abear, --much to Mainwaring's illogical satisfaction. "I wonder why, " hereflected, with vague uneasiness, "she doesn't leave all that sort ofthing to girls like that tow-headed girl at the blacksmith's. "

It chanced, however, that this blacksmith's tow-headed daughter, who, itmay be incidentally remarked, had the additional eccentricities of largeblack eyes and large white teeth, came to the fore in quite anotherfashion. Shortly after this, Mainwaring being able to leave his room andjoin the family board, Mrs. Bradley found it necessary to enlargeher domestic service, and arranged with her nearest neighbor, theblacksmith, to allow his daughter to come to The Lookout for a fewdays to "do the chores" and assist in the housekeeping, as she had onprevious occasions. The day of her advent Bradley entered Mainwaring'sroom, and, closing the door mysteriously, fixed his blue eyes, kindlingwith mischief, on the young Englishman. 

"You are aware, my dear boy, " he began with affected gravity, "that youare now living in a land of liberty, where mere artificial distinctionsare not known, and where Freedom from her mountain heights generallylevels all social positions. I think you have graciously admitted thatfact. "

"I know I've been taking a tremendous lot of freedom with you and yours, old man, and it's a deuced shame, " interrupted Mainwaring, with a faintsmile. 

"And that nowhere, " continued Bradley, with immovable features, "doesequality exist as perfectly as above yonder unfathomable abyss, whereyou have also, doubtless, observed the American eagle proudly soars andscreams defiance. "

"Then that was the fellow that kept me awake this morning, and made mewonder if I was strong enough to hold a gun again. "

"That wouldn't have settled the matter, " continued Bradley, imperturbably. "The case is simply this: Miss Minty Sharpe, thatblacksmith's daughter, has once or twice consented, for a slightemolument, to assist in our domestic service for a day or two, and shecomes back again to-day. Now, under the aegis of that noble bird whomyour national instincts tempt you to destroy, she has on all previousoccasions taken her meals with us, at the same table, on terms ofperfect equality. She will naturally expect to do the same now. Mrs. Bradley thought it proper, therefore, to warn you, that, in case yourhealth was not quite equal to this democratic simplicity, you couldstill dine in your room. "

"It would be great fun--if Miss Sharpe won't object to my presence. "

"But it must not be 'great fun, '" returned Bradley, more seriously; "forMiss Minty's perception of humor is probably as keen as yours, and shewould be quick to notice it. And, so far from having any objectionto you, I am inclined to think that we owe her consent to come to herdesire of making your acquaintance. "

"She will find my conduct most exemplary, " said Mainwaring, earnestly. 

"Let us hope so, " concluded Bradley, with unabated gravity. "And, nowthat you have consented, let me add from my own experience that MissMinty's lemon-pies alone are worthy of any concession. "

The dinner-hour came. Mainwaring, a little pale and interesting, leaningon the arm of Bradley, crossed the hall, and for the first time enteredthe dining-room of the house where he had lodged for three weeks. Itwas a bright, cheerful apartment, giving upon the laurels of the rockyhillside, and permeated, like the rest of the house, with the wholesomespice of the valley--an odor that, in its pure desiccating property, seemed to obliterate all flavor of alien human habitation, and even todominate and etherealize the appetizing smell of the viands beforethem. The bare, shining, planed, boarded walls appeared to resent anydecoration that might have savored of dust, decay, or moisture. The fourlarge windows and long, open door, set in scanty strips of the plainestspotless muslin, framed in themselves pictures of woods and rock and skyof limitless depth, color, and distance, that made all other adornmentimpertinent. Nature, invading the room at every opening, had banishedArt from those neutral walls. 

"It's like a picnic, with comfort, " said Mainwaring, glancing round himwith boyish appreciation. Miss Minty was not yet there; the Chinamanwas alone in attendance. Mainwaring could not help whispering, halfmischievously, to Louise, "You draw the line at Chinamen, I suppose?"

"WE don't, but HE does, " answered the young girl. "He considers us hissocial inferiors. But--hush!"

Minty Sharpe had just entered the room, and was advancing with smilingconfidence towards the table. Mainwaring was a little startled; he hadseen Minty in a holland sun-bonnet and turned up skirt crossingthe veranda, only a moment before; in the brief instant between thedishing-up of dinner and its actual announcement she had managed tochange her dress, put on a clean collar, cuffs, and a large jet brooch, and apply some odorous unguent to her rebellious hair. Her face, guiltless of powder or cold cream, was still shining with the healthyperspiration of her last labors as she promptly took the vacant chairbeside Mainwaring. 

"Don't mind me, folks, " she said cheerfully, resting her plump elbow onthe table, and addressing the company generally, but gazing with frankcuriosity into the face of the young man at her side. "It was a keenjump, I tell yer, to get out of my old duds inter these, and lookdecent inside o' five minutes. But I reckon I ain't kept yer waitin'long--least of all this yer sick stranger. But you're looking pearterthan you did. You're wonderin' like ez not where I ever saw ye before?"she continued, laughing. "Well, I'll tell you. Last week! I'd kem overyer on a chance of seein' Jenny Bradley, and while I was meanderin' downthe veranda I saw you lyin' back in your chair by the window drownedin sleep, like a baby. Lordy! I mout hev won a pair o' gloves, but Ireckoned you were Loo's game, and not mine. "

The slightly constrained laugh which went round the table after MissMinty's speech was due quite as much to the faint flush that hadaccented Mainwaring's own smile as to the embarrassing remark itself. Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macy exchanged rapid glances. Bradley, who aloneretained his composure, with a slight flicker of amusement in the cornerof his eye and nostril, said quickly: "You see, Mainwaring, how naturestands ready to help your convalescence at every turn. If Miss Mintyhad only followed up her healing opportunity, your cure would have beencomplete. "

"Ye mout hev left some o' that pretty talk for HIM to say, " said Minty, taking up her knife and fork with a slight shrug, "and you needn't callme MISS Minty either, jest because there's kempeny present. "

"I hope you won't look upon me as company, Minty, or I shall be obligedto call you 'Miss' too, " said Mainwaring, unexpectedly regaining hisusual frankness. 

Bradley's face brightened; Miss Minty raised her black eyes from herplate with still broader appreciation. 

"There's nothin' mean about that, " she said, showing her white teeth. "Well, what's YOUR first name?"

"Not as pretty as yours, I'm afraid. It's Frank. "

"No it ain't, it's Francis! You reckon to be Sir Francis some day, " shesaid gravely. "You can't play any Frank off on me. You wouldn't do it onHER, " she added, indicating Louise with her elbow. 

A momentous silence followed. The particular form that Minty's vulgarityhad taken had not been anticipated by the two other women. They had, not unreasonably, expected some original audacity or gaucherie from theblacksmith's daughter, which might astonish yet amuse their guest, andcondone for the situation forced upon them. But they were not preparedfor a playfulness that involved themselves in a ridiculous indiscretion. Mrs. Bradley's eyes sought her husband's meaningly; Louise's prettymouth hardened. Luckily the cheerful cause of it suddenly jumped upfrom the table, and saying that the stranger was starving, insisted uponbringing a dish from the other side and helping him herself plentifully. Mainwaring rose gallantly to take the dish from her hand, a slightscuffle ensued which ended in the young man being forced down in hischair by the pressure of Minty's strong plump hand on his shoulder. "There, " she said, "ye kin mind your dinner now, and I reckon we'll givethe others a chance to chip into the conversation, " and at once appliedherself to the plate before her. 

The conversation presently became general, with the exception thatMinty, more or less engrossed by professional anxiety in the qualityof the dinner and occasional hurried visits to the kitchen, brieflyanswered the few polite remarks which Mainwaring felt called upon toaddress to her. Nevertheless, he was conscious, malgre her rallyingallusions to Miss Macy, that he felt none of the vague yet half pleasantanxiety with which Louise was beginning to inspire him. He felt atease in Minty's presence, and believed, rightly or wrongly, that sheunderstood him as well as he understood her. And there were certainlypoints in common between his two hostesses and their humbler thoughproud dependent. The social evolution of Mrs. Bradley and LouiseMacy from some previous Minty was neither remote nor complete; theself-sufficient independence, ease, and quiet self-assertion were alikein each. The superior position was still too recent and accidental foreither to resent or criticise qualities that were common to both. Atleast, this was what he thought when not abandoning himself to thegratification of a convalescent appetite; to the presence of two prettywomen, the sympathy of a genial friend, the healthy intoxication of thewhite sunlight that glanced upon the pine walls, the views that mirroredthemselves in the open windows, and the pure atmosphere in which TheLookout seemed to swim. Wandering breezes of balm and spice lightlystirred the flowers on the table, and seemed to fan his hair andforehead with softly healing breath. Looking up in an interval ofsilence, he caught Bradley's gray eyes fixed upon him with a subduedlight of amusement and affection, as of an elder brother regarding aschoolboy's boisterous appetite at some feast. Mainwaring laid downhis knife and fork with a laughing color, touched equally by Bradley'sfraternal kindliness and the consciousness of his gastronomical powers. 

"Hang it, Bradley; look here! I know my appetite's disgraceful, but whatcan a fellow do? In such air, with such viands and such company! It'slike the bees getting drunk on Hybla and Hymettus, you know. I'm notresponsible!"

"It's the first square meal I believe you've really eaten in sixmonths, " said Bradley, gravely. "I can't understand why your doctorallowed you to run down so dreadfully. "

"I reckon you ain't as keerful of yourself, you Britishers, ez us, " saidMinty. "Lordy! Why there's Pop invests in more patent medicines in oneday than you have in two weeks, and he'd make two of you. Mebbe yourfolks don't look after you enough. "

"I'm a splendid advertisement of what YOUR care and your medicines havedone, " said Mainwaring, gratefully, to Mrs. Bradley; "and if you everwant to set up a 'Cure' here, I'm ready with a ten-page testimonial. "

"Have a care, Mainwaring, " said Bradley, laughing, "that the ladiesdon't take you at your word. Louise and Jenny have been doing theirbest for the last year to get me to accept a flattering offer froma Sacramento firm to put up a hotel for tourists on the site of TheLookout. Why, I believe that they have already secretly in theirhearts concocted a flaming prospectus of 'Unrivalled Scenery' and'Health-giving Air, ' and are looking forward to Saturday night hops onthe piazza. "

"Have you really, though?" said Mainwaring, gazing from the one to theother. 

"We should certainly see more company than we do now, and feel a littleless out of the world, " said Louise, candidly. "There are no neighborshere--I mean the people at the Summit are not, " she added, with a slightglance towards Minty. 

"And Mr. Bradley would find it more profitable--not to say more suitableto a man of his position--than this wretched saw-mill and timberbusiness, " said Mrs. Bradley, decidedly. 

Mainwaring was astounded; was it possible they considered it moredignified for a lawyer to keep a hotel than a saw-mill? Bradley, as ifanswering what was passing in his mind, said mischievously, "I'mnot sure, exactly, what my position is, my dear, and I'm afraid I'vedeclined the hotel on business principles. But, by the way, Mainwaring, I found a letter at the mill this morning from Mr. Richardson. He isabout to pay us the distinguished honor of visiting The Lookout, solelyon your account, my dear fellow. "

"But I wrote him that I was much better, and it wasn't necessary for himto come, " said Mainwaring. 

"He makes an excuse of some law business with me. I suppose he considersthe mere fact of his taking the trouble to come here, all the way fromSan Francisco, a sufficient honor to justify any absence of formalinvitation, " said Bradley, smiling. 

"But he's only--I mean he's my father's banker, " said Mainwaring, correcting himself, "and--you don't keep a hotel. "

"Not yet, " returned Bradley, with a mischievous glance at the two women, "but The Lookout is elastic, and I dare say we can manage to put himup. "

A silence ensued. It seemed as if some shadow, or momentary darkeningof the brilliant atmosphere; some film across the mirror-like expanse ofthe open windows, or misty dimming of their wholesome light, had arisento their elevation. Mainwaring felt that he was looking forward withunreasoning indignation and uneasiness to this impending interruptionof their idyllic life; Mrs. Bradley and Louise, who had become alittle more constrained and formal under Minty's freedom, were lesssympathetic; even the irrepressible Minty appeared absorbed in theresponsibilities of the dinner. 

Bradley alone preserved his usual patient good-humor. "We'll takeour coffee on the veranda, and the ladies will join us by and by, Mainwaring; besides, I don't know that I can allow you, as an invalid, to go entirely through Minty's bountiful menu at present. You shall havethe sweets another time. "

When they were alone on the veranda, he said, between the puffs of hisblack brier-wood pipe, --a pet aversion of Mrs. Bradley, --"I wonder howRichardson will accept Minty!"

"If I can, I think he MUST, " returned Mainwaring, dryly. "By Jove, itwill be great fun to see him; but"--he stopped and hesitated--"I don'tknow about the ladies. I don't think, you know, that they'll stand Mintyagain before another stranger. "

Bradley glanced quickly at the young man; their eyes met, and they bothjoined in a superior and, I fear, disloyal smile. After a pause Bradley, as if in a spirit of further confidence, took his pipe from his mouthand pointed to the blue abyss before them. 

"Look at that profundity, Mainwaring, and think of it ever being bulliedand overawed by a long veranda-load of gaping, patronizing tourists, and the idiotic flirting females of their species. Think of a lot ofover-dressed creatures flouting those severe outlines and deep-toneddistances with frippery and garishness. You know how you have beenlulled to sleep by that delicious, indefinite, far-off murmur ofthe canyon at night--think of it being broken by a crazy waltz or amonotonous german--by the clatter of waiters and the pop of champagnecorks. And yet, by thunder, those women are capable of liking both andfinding no discord in them!"

"Dancing ain't half bad, you know, " said Mainwaring, conscientiously, "if a chap's got the wind to do it; and all Americans, especially thewomen, dance better than we do. But I say, Bradley, to hear you talk, a fellow wouldn't suspect you were as big a Vandal as anybody, with abeastly, howling saw-mill in the heart of the primeval forest. By Jove, you quite bowled me over that first day we met, when you popped yourhead out of that delirium tremens shaking mill, like the very genius ofdestructive improvement. "

"But that was FIGHTING Nature, not patronizing her; and it's a businessthat pays. That reminds me that I must go back to it, " said Bradley, rising and knocking the ashes from his pipe. 

"Not AFTER dinner, surely!" said Mainwaring, in surprise. "Come now, that's too much like the bolting Yankee of the travellers' books. "

"There's a heavy run to get through tonight. We're working againsttime, " returned Bradley. Even while speaking he had vanished within thehouse, returned quickly--having replaced his dark suit by jean trouserstucked in heavy boots, and a red flannel shirt over his starched whiteone--and, nodding gayly to Mainwaring, stepped from the lower end of theveranda. "The beggar actually looks pleased to go, " said Mainwaring tohimself in wonderment. 

"Oh! Jim, " said Mrs. Bradley, appearing at the door. 

"Yes, " said Bradley, faintly, from the bushes. 

"Minty's ready. You might take her home. "

"All right. I'll wait. "

"I hope I haven't frightened Miss Sharpe away, " said Mainwaring. "Sheisn't going, surely?"

"Only to get some better clothes, on account of company. I'm afraidyou are giving her a good deal of trouble, Mr. Mainwaring, " said Mrs. Bradley, laughing. 

"She wished me to say good-by to you for her, as she couldn't come onthe veranda in her old shawl and sun-bonnet, " added Louise, who hadjoined them. "What do you really think of her, Mr. Mainwaring? I callher quite pretty, at times. Don't you?"

Mainwaring knew not what to say. He could not understand why theycould have any special interest in the girl, or care to know what he, aperfect stranger, thought of her. He avoided a direct reply, however, byplayfully wondering how Mrs. Bradley could subject her husband to MissMinty's undivided fascinations. 

"Oh, Jim always takes her home--if it's in the evening. He gets alongwith these people better than we do, " returned Mrs. Bradley, dryly. "But, " she added, with a return of her piquant Quaker-likecoquettishness, "Jim says we are to devote ourselves to you to-night--inretaliation, I suppose. We are to amuse you, and not let you getexcited; and you are to be sent to bed early. "

It is to be feared that these latter wise precautions--invaluable forall defenceless and enfeebled humanity--were not carried out: and itwas late when Mainwaring eventually retired, with brightened eyes and asomewhat accelerated pulse. For the ladies, who had quite regained thatkindly equanimity which Minty had rudely interrupted, had also addeda delicate and confidential sympathy in their relations withMainwaring, --as of people who had suffered in common, --and heexperienced these tender attentions at their hands which any two womenare emboldened by each other's saving presence to show any single memberof our sex. Indeed, he hardly knew if his satisfaction was the morecomplete when Mrs. Bradley, withdrawing for a few moments, left himalone on the veranda with Louise and the vast, omnipotent night. 

For a while they sat silent, in the midst of the profound andmeasureless calm. Looking down upon the dim moonlit abyss at their feet, they themselves seemed a part of this night that arched above it; thehalf-risen moon appeared to linger long enough at their side to enwrapand suffuse them with its glory; a few bright stars quietly ringedthemselves around them, and looked wonderingly into the level of theirown shining eyes. For some vague yearning to humanity seemed to drawthis dark and passionless void towards them. The vast protectingmaternity of Nature leant hushed and breathless over the solitude. Warmcurrents of air rose occasionally from the valley, which one might havebelieved were sighs from its full and overflowing breast, or a gratefulcoolness swept their cheeks and hair when the tranquil heights aroundthem were moved to slowly respond. Odors from invisible bay andlaurel sometimes filled the air; the incense of some rare and remotercultivated meadow beyond their ken, or the strong germinating breathof leagues of wild oats, that had yellowed the upland by day. In thesilence and shadow, their voices took upon themselves, almost withouttheir volition, a far-off confidential murmur, with intervals of meaningsilence--rather as if their thoughts had spoken for themselves, and theyhad stopped wonderingly to listen. They talked at first vaguely to thisdiscreet audience of space and darkness, and then, growing bolder, spoketo each other and of themselves. Invested by the infinite gravity ofnature, they had no fear of human ridicule to restrain their youthfulconceit or the extravagance of their unimportant confessions. They talked of their tastes, of their habits, of their friendsand acquaintances. They settled some points of doctrine, duty, andetiquette, with the sweet seriousness of youth and its all-powerfulconvictions. The listening vines would have recognized no flirtation orlove-making in their animated but important confidences; yet when Mrs. Bradley reappeared to warn the invalid that it was time to seek hiscouch, they both coughed slightly in the nervous consciousness of someunaccustomed quality in their voices, and a sense of interruption farbeyond their own or the innocent intruder's ken. 

"Well?" said Mrs. Bradley, in the sitting-room as Mainwaring's stepsretreated down the passage to his room. 

"Well, " said Louise with a slight yawn, leaning her pretty shoulderslanguidly against the door-post, as she shaded her moonlight-accustomedeyes from the vulgar brilliancy of Mrs. Bradley's bedroom candle. "Well--oh, he talked a great deal about 'his people' as he called them, and I talked about us. He's very nice. You know in some things he'sreally like a boy. "

"He looks much better. "

"Yes; but he is far from strong yet. "

Meantime, Mainwaring had no other confidant of his impressions than hisown thoughts. Mingled with his exaltation, which was the more seductivethat it had no well-defined foundation for existing, and impliedno future responsibility, was a recurrence of his uneasiness at theimpending visit of Richardson the next day. Strangely enough, it hadincreased under the stimulus of the evening. Just as he was reallygetting on with the family, he felt sure that this visitor would importsome foreign element into their familiarity, as Minty had done. It waspossible they would not like him: now he remembered there wasreally something ostentatiously British and insular about thisRichardson--something they would likely resent. Why couldn't this fellowhave come later--or even before? Before what? But here he fell asleep, and almost instantly slipped from this veranda in the Sierras, sixthousand miles away, to an ancient terrace, overgrown with moss andtradition, that overlooked the sedate glory of an English park. Here hefound himself, restricted painfully by his inconsistent night-clothes, endeavoring to impress his mother and sisters with the singularvirtues and excellences of his American host and hostesses--virtues andexcellences that he himself was beginning to feel conscious had becomemore or less apocryphal in that atmosphere. He heard his mother's voicesaying severely, "When you learn, Francis, to respect the opinions andprejudices of your family enough to prevent your appearing before themin this uncivilized aboriginal costume, we will listen to what you haveto say of the friends whose habits you seem to have adopted;" and hewas frantically indignant that his efforts to convince them that hisnegligence was a personal oversight, and not a Californian custom, were utterly futile. But even then this vision was brushed away by thebewildering sweep of Louise's pretty skirt across the dreamy picture, and her delicate features and softly-fringed eyes remained the last toslip from his fading consciousness. 

The moon rose higher and higher above the sleeping house and softlybreathing canyon. There was nothing to mar the idyllic repose of thelandscape; only the growing light of the last two hours had brought outin the far eastern horizon a dim white peak, that gleamed faintly amongthe stars, like a bridal couch spread between the hills fringed withfading nuptial torches. No one would have believed that behind thatimpenetrable shadow to the west, in the heart of the forest, thethrobbing saw-mill of James Bradley was even at that moment eating itsdestructive way through the conserved growth of Nature and centuries, and that the refined proprietor of house and greenwood, with the glow ofhis furnace fires on his red shirt, and his alert, intelligent eyes, wasthe genie of that devastation, and the toiling leader of the shadowy, toiling figures around him. 

CHAPER III. 

Amid the beauty of the most uncultivated and untrodden wilderness thereare certain localities where the meaner and mere common processesof Nature take upon themselves a degrading likeness to the slovenly, wasteful, and improvident processes of man. The unrecorded land-slipdisintegrating a whole hillside will not only lay bare the delicateframework of strata and deposit to the vulgar eye, but hurl into thevalley a debris so monstrous and unlovely as to shame even the hideousruins left by dynamite, hydraulic, or pick and shovel; an overflown andforgotten woodland torrent will leave in some remote hollow a disturbedand ungraceful chaos of inextricable logs, branches, rock, and soil thatwill rival the unsavory details of some wrecked or abandoned settlement. Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain naturaldust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected thecast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field--the sweepingsof the sylvan household. It was remarkable that Nature, so kindlyconsiderate of mere human ruins, made no attempt to cover up or disguisethese monuments of her own mortality: no grass grew over the unsightlylandslides, no moss or ivy clothed the stripped and bleached skeletonsof overthrown branch and tree; the dead leaves and withered husks rottedin their open grave uncrossed by vine and creeper. Even the animals, except the lower organizations, shunned those haunts of decay and ruin. 

It was scarcely a hundred yards from one of those dreary receptaclesthat Mr. Bradley had taken leave of Miss Minty Sharpe. The cabinoccupied by her father, herself, and a younger brother stood, in fact, on the very edge of the little hollow, which was partly filled withdecayed wood, leaves, and displacements of the crumbling bank, withthe coal dust and ashes which Mr. Sharpe had added from his forge, thatstood a few paces distant at the corner of a cross-road. The occupantsof the cabin had also contributed to the hollow the refuse of theirhousehold in broken boxes, earthenware, tin cans, and cast-off clothing;and it is not improbable that the site of the cabin was chosen withreference to this convenient disposal of useless and encumberingimpedimenta. It was true that the locality offered little choice inthe way of beauty. An outcrop of brown granite--a portent of higheraltitudes--extended a quarter of a mile from the nearest fringe of dwarflaurel and "brush" in one direction; in the other an advanced file ofBradley's woods had suffered from some long-forgotten fire, and stillraised its blackened masts and broken stumps over the scorched and aridsoil, swept of older underbrush and verdure. On the other side of theroad a dark ravine, tangled with briers and haunted at night by owls andwild cats, struggled wearily on, until blundering at last upon the edgeof the Great Canyon, it slipped and lost itself forever in a singlefurrow of those mighty flanks. When Bradley had once asked Sharpe why hehad not built his house in the ravine, the blacksmith had replied: "Thatuntil the Lord had appointed his time, he reckoned to keep his headabove ground and the foundations thereof. " Howbeit, the ravine, or the"run, " as it was locally known, was Minty's only Saturday afternoonresort for recreation or berries. "It was, " she had explained, "pow'fulsoothin', and solitary. "

She entered the house--a rude, square building of unpaintedboards--containing a sitting-room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. A glanceat these rooms, which were plainly furnished, and whose canvas-coloredwalls were adorned with gorgeous agricultural implementcirculars, patent medicine calendars, with polytinted chromos andcheaply-illuminated Scriptural texts, showed her that a certain neatnessand order had been preserved during her absence; and, finding the houseempty, she crossed the barren and blackened intervening space betweenthe back door and her father's forge, and entered the open shed. Thelight was fading from the sky; but the glow of the forge lit up thedusty road before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledgebeyond. A small curly-headed boy, bearing a singular likeness to asmudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanicallyblowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while herfather--a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expressionof countenance--was with equal want of interest mechanically hammeringat a horseshoe. Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into aquerulous drawling chant of some vague religious character:

 "O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren. For the Lord bids you turn--ah! O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren. Why will you die?"

The musical accent adapted itself to the monotonous fall of thesledge-hammer; and at every repetition of the word "turn" he suited theaction to the word by turning the horseshoe with the iron in his lefthand. A slight grunt at the end of every stroke, and the simultaneousrepetition of "turn" seemed to offer him amusement and relief. Minty, without speaking, crossed the shop, and administered a sound box on herbrother's ear. "Take that, and let me ketch you agen layin' low when myback's turned, to put on your store pants. "

"The others had fetched away in the laig, " said the boy, opposing a kneeand elbow at acute angle to further attack. 

"You jest get and change 'em, " said Minty. 

The sudden collapse of the bellows broke in upon the soothing refrain ofMr. Sharpe, and caused him to turn also. 

"It's Minty, " he said, replacing the horseshoe on the coals, and settinghis powerful arms and the sledge on the anvil with an exaggeratedexpression of weariness. 

"Yes; it's me, " said Minty, "and Creation knows it's time I DID come, tokeep that boy from ruinin' us with his airs and conceits. "

"Did ye bring over any o' that fever mixter?"

"No. Bradley sez you're loading yerself up with so much o' that bitterbark--kuinine they call it over there--that you'll lift the ruff offyour head next. He allows ye ain't got no ague; it's jest wind anddyspepsy. He sez yer's strong ez a hoss. "

"Bradley, " said Sharpe, laying aside his sledge with an aggrieved mannerwhich was, however, as complacent as his fatigue and discontent, "ez oneof them nat'ral born finikin skunks ez I despise. I reckon he beganto give p'ints to his parents when he was about knee-high to Richelieuthere. He's on them confidential terms with hisself and the Almightythat he reckons he ken run a saw-mill and a man's insides at the sametime with one hand tied behind him. And this finikin is up to hisconceit: he wanted to tell me that that yer handy brush dump outside ourshanty was unhealthy. Give a man with frills like that his own way andhe'd be a sprinkling odor cologne and peppermint all over the country. "

"He set your shoulder as well as any doctor, " said Minty. 

"That's bone-settin', and a nat'ral gift, " returned Sharpe, astriumphantly as his habitual depression would admit; "it ain't conceitand finikin got out o' books! Well, " he added, after a pause, "wot'shappened?"

Minty's face slightly changed. "Nothin'; I kem back to get some things, "she said shortly, moving away. 

"And ye saw HIM?"

"Ye-e-s, " drawled Minty, carelessly, still retreating. 

"Bixby was along here about noon. He says the stranger was suthin' highand mighty in his own country, and them 'Frisco millionaires are quitesweet on him. Where are ye goin'?"

"In the house. "

"Well, look yer, Minty. Now that you're here, ye might get up a batcho' hot biscuit for supper. Dinner was that promiscous and experimentalto-day, along o' Richelieu's nat'ral foolin', that I think I could gitoutside of a little suthin' now, if only to prop up a kind of innardsinkin' that takes me. Ye ken tell me the news at supper. "

Later, however, when Mr. Sharpe had quitted his forge for the night and, seated at his domestic board, was, with a dismal presentiment of futureindigestion, voraciously absorbing his favorite meal of hot saleratusbiscuits swimming in butter, he had apparently forgotten his curiosityconcerning Mainwaring and settled himself to a complaining chronicle ofthe day's mishaps. "Nat'rally, havin' an extra lot o' work on hand andno time for foolin', what does that ornery Richelieu get up and do thismornin'? Ye know them ridiklus specimens that he's been chippin' outerthat ledge that the yearth slipped from down the run, and litterin' upthe whole shanty with 'em. Well, darn my skin! if he didn't run a heapof 'em, mixed up with coal, unbeknowned to me, in the forge, to makewhat he called a 'fire essay' of 'em. Nat'rally, I couldn't get ablessed iron hot, and didn't know what had gone of the fire, or the coaleither, for two hours, till I stopped work and raked out the coal. Thatcomes from his hangin' round that saw-mill in the woods, and listenin'to Bradley's high-falutin' talk about rocks and strata and sich. "

"But Bradley don't go a cent on minin', Pop, " said Minty. "He sez thewoods is good enough for him; and there's millions to be made when therailroad comes along, and timber's wanted. "

"But until then he's got to keep hisself, to pay wages, and keep themill runnin'. Onless it's, ez Bixby says, that he hopes to get thatEnglishman to rope in some o' them 'Frisco friends of his to take ahand. Ye didn't have any o' that kind o' talk, did ye?"

"No; not THAT kind o' talk, " said Minty. 

"Not THAT kind o' talk!" repeated her father with aggrieved curiosity, "Wot kind, then?"

"Well, " said Minty, lifting her black eyes to her father's; "I ain'tno account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no collegeeducation, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-tonedstyle; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet, ' as they call it, with a first-classview of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D takeadvantage of a lazy, gawky boy--for it ain't anything else, though he'sgood meanin' enough--that happened to fall sick in MY house, and coaxand cosset him, and wrap him in white cotton, and mother him, and sisterhim, and Aunt Sukey him, and almost dry-nuss him gin'rally, jist to gethim sweet on me and on mine, and take the inside track of others--I'D bean Injin! And if you'd allow it, Pop, you'd be wuss nor a nigger!"

"Sho!" said her father, kindling with that intense gratification withwhich the male receives any intimation of alien feminine weakness. "Itain't that, Minty, I wanter know!"

"It's jist that, Pop; and I ez good ez let 'em know I seed it. I ain't afool, if some folks do drop their eyes and pertend to wipe the laugh outof their noses with a handkerchief when I let out to speak. I mayn't begood enough kempany--"

"Look yer, Minty, " interrupted the blacksmith, sternly, half risingfrom his seat with every trace of his former weakness vanished from hishardset face; "do you mean to say that they put on airs to ye--to MYdarter?"

"No, " said Minty quickly; "the men didn't; and don't you, a man, mixyourself up with women's meannesses. I ken manage 'em, Pop, with onehand. "

Mr. Sharpe looked at his daughter's flashing black eyes. Perhaps anuneasy recollection of the late Mrs. Sharpe's remarkable capacity inthat respect checked his further rage. 

"No. Wot I was sayin', " resumed Minty, "ez that I mayn't be thought byothers good enough to keep kempany with baronetts ez is to be--thoughbaronetts mightn't object--but I ain't mean enough to try to steal awaysome ole woman's darling boy in England, or snatch some likely youngEnglish girl's big brother outer the family without sayin' by yourleave. How'd you like it if Richelieu was growed up, and went tosea, --and it would be like his peartness, --and he fell sick in someforeign land, and some princess or other skyulged HIM underhand awayfrom us?"

Probably owing to the affair of the specimens, the elder Sharpe did notseem to regard the possible mesalliance of Richelieu with extraordinarydisfavor. "That boy is conceited enough with hair ile and fine clothesfor anything, " he said plaintively. "But didn't that Louise Macy hev afeller already--that Captain Greyson? Wot's gone o' him?"

"That's it, " said Minty: "he kin go out in the woods and whistle now. But all the same, she could hitch him in again at any time if the otherstranger kicked over the traces. That's the style over there at TheLookout. There ain't ez much heart in them two women put together ezwould make a green gal flush up playin' forfeits. It's all in theirbreed, Pop. Love ain't going to spile their appetites and complexions, give 'em nose-bleed, nor put a drop o' water into their eyes in alltheir natural born days. That's wot makes me mad. Ef I thought that Loocared a bit for that child I wouldn't mind; I'd just advise her to makehim get up and get--pack his duds out o' camp, and go home and not comeback until he had a written permit from his mother, or the other baronetin office. "

"Looks sorter ef some one orter interfere, " said the blacksmith, reflectively. "'Tain't exackly a case for a vigilance committee, tho'it's agin public morals, this sorter kidnappin' o' strangers. Looks ezif it might bring the country into discredit in England. "

"Well, don't YOU go and interfere and havin' folks say ez my nosewas put out o' jint over there, " said Minty, curtly. "There's anotherEnglishman comin' up from 'Frisco to see him to-morrow. Ef he ain'tscooped up by Jenny Bradley he'll guess there's a nigger in the fencesomewhere. But there, Pop, let it drop. It's a bad aig, anyway, " sheconcluded, rising from the table, and passing her hands down her frockand her shapely hips, as if to wipe off further contamination of thesubject. "Where's Richelieu agin?"

"Said he didn't want supper, and like ez not he's gone over to see thatfammerly at the Summit. There's a little girl thar he's sparkin', abouthis own age. "

"His own age!" said Minty, indignantly. "Why, she's double that, ifshe's a day. Well--if he ain't the triflinest, conceitednest little limbthat ever grew! I'd like to know where he got it from--it wasn't mar'sstyle. "

Mr. Sharpe smiled darkly. Richelieu's precocious gallantry evidently wasnot considered as gratuitous as his experimental metallurgy. But as hiseyes followed his daughter's wholesome, Phyllis-like figure, a new ideatook possession of him: needless to say, however, it was in the lineof another personal aggrievement, albeit it took the form of religiousreflection. 

"It's curous, Minty, wot's foreordained, and wot ain't. Now, yer's oneof them high and mighty fellows, after the Lord, ez comes meanderin'around here, and drops off--ez fur ez I kin hear--in a kind o' faint atthe first house he kems to, and is taken in and lodged and sumptuouslyfed; and, nat'rally, they gets their reward for it. Now wot's to hevkept that young feller from coming HERE and droppin' down in my forge, or in this very room, and YOU a tendin' him, and jist layin' over themfolks at The Lookout?"

"Wot's got hold o' ye, Pop? Don't I tell ye he had a letter to JimBradley?" said Minty, quickly, with an angry flash of color in hercheek. 

"That ain't it, " said Sharpe confidently; "it's cos he WALKED. Nat'rally, you'd think he'd RIDE, being high and mighty, and that'swhere, ez the parson will tell ye, wot's merely fi-nite and human wisdomerrs! Ef that feller had ridden, he'd have had to come by this yerroad, and by this yer forge, and stop a spell like any other. But itwas foreordained that he should walk, jest cos it wasn't generallykalkilated and reckoned on. So, YOU had no show. "

For a moment, Minty seemed struck with her father's original theory. But with a vigorous shake of her shoulders she threw it off. Her eyesdarkened. 

"I reckon you ain't thinking, Pop--" she began. 

"I was only sayin' it was curous, " he rejoined quietly. Nevertheless, after a pause, he rose, coughed, and going up to the young girl, as sheleaned over the dresser, bent his powerful arm around her, and, drawingher and the plate she was holding against his breast, laid his beardedcheek for an instant softly upon her rebellious head. "It's all right, Minty, " he said; "ain't it, pet?" Minty's eyelids closed gently underthe familiar pressure. "Wot's that in your hair, Minty?" he saidtactfully, breaking an embarrassing pause. 

"Bar's grease, father, " murmured Minty, in a child's voice--the grown-upwoman, under that magic touch, having lapsed again into her father'smotherless charge of ten years before. 

"It's pow'ful soothin', and pretty, " said her father. 

"I made it myself--do you want some?" asked Minty. 

"Not now, girl!" For a moment they slightly rocked each other in thatattitude--the man dexterously, the woman with infinite tenderness--andthen they separated. 

Late that night, after Richelieu had returned, and her father wrestledin his fitful sleep with the remorse of his guilty indulgence at supper, Minty remained alone in her room, hard at work, surrounded by thecontents of one of her mother's trunks and the fragments of certainripped-up and newly-turned dresses. For Minty had conceived the boldidea of altering one of her mother's gowns to the fashion of a certainfascinating frock worn by Louise Macy. It was late when her self-imposedtask was completed. With a nervous trepidation that was novel toher, Minty began to disrobe herself preparatory to trying on her newcreation. The light of a tallow candle and a large swinging lantern, borrowed from her father's forge, fell shyly on her milky neck andshoulders, and shone in her sparkling eyes, as she stood before herlargest mirror--the long glazed door of a kitchen clock which she hadplaced upon her chest of drawers. Had poor Minty been content with thefull, free, and goddess-like outlines that it reflected, she would havebeen spared her impending disappointment. For, alas! the dress of hermodel had been framed upon a symmetrically attenuated French corset, andthe unfortunate Minty's fuller and ampler curves had under her simplecountry stays known no more restraining cincture than knew the Venusof Milo. The alteration was a hideous failure, it was neither Minty'sstatuesque outline nor Louise Macy's graceful contour. Minty was nofool, and the revelation of this slow education of the figure andtraining of outline--whether fair or false in art--struck her quickintelligence with all its full and hopeless significance. A bitter lightsprang to her eyes; she tore the wretched sham from her shoulders, andthen wrapping a shawl around her, threw herself heavily and sullenly onthe bed. But inaction was not a characteristic of Minty's emotion; shepresently rose again, and, taking an old work-box from her trunk, beganto rummage in its recesses. It was an old shell-incrusted affair, andthe apparent receptacle of such cheap odds and ends of jewelry as shepossessed; a hideous cameo ring, the property of the late Mrs. Sharpe, was missing. She again rapidly explored the contents of the box, andthen an inspiration seized her, and she darted into her brother'sbedroom. 

That precocious and gallant Lovelace of ten, despite all sentiment, hadbasely succumbed to the gross materialism of youthful slumber. On acot in the corner, half hidden under the wreck of his own careless andhurried disrobing, with one arm hanging out of the coverlid, Richelieulay supremely unconscious. On the forefinger of his small but dirty handthe missing cameo was still glittering guiltily. With a swift movementof indignation Minty rushed with uplifted palm towards the temptingexpanse of youthful cheek that lay invitingly exposed upon the pillow. Then she stopped suddenly. 

She had seen him lying thus a hundred times before. On the pillow nearhim an indistinguishable mass of golden fur--the helpless bulk of asquirrel chained to the leg of his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, whohad followed his tyrannous caprices with the long-suffering devotionof her sex; on the shelf above him a loathsome collection of fliesand tarantulas in dull green bottles: a slab of ginger-bread for lightnocturnal refection, and her own pot of bear's grease. Perhaps it wasthe piteous defencelessness of youthful sleep, perhaps it was somelingering memory of her father's caress; but as she gazed at him withtroubled eyes, the juvenile reprobate slipped back into the baby-boythat she had carried in her own childish arms such a short time ago, when the maternal responsibility had descended with the dead mother'sill-fitting dresses upon her lank girlish figure and scant virginbreast--and her hand fell listlessly at her side. 

The sleeper stirred slightly and awoke. At the same moment, by somemysterious sympathy, a pair of beady bright eyes appeared in the bulkof fur near his curls, the cat stretched herself, and even a vagueagitation was heard in the bottles on the shelf. Richelieu's blinkingeyes wandered from the candle to his sister, and then the guilty handwas suddenly withdrawn under the bedclothes. 

"No matter, dear, " said Minty; "it's mar's, and you kin wear it when youlike, if you'll only ask for it. "

Richelieu wondered if he was dreaming! This unexpected mildness--thisinexplicable tremor in his sister's voice: it must be some occultinfluence of the night season on the sisterly mind, possibly akin to afear of ghosts! He made a mental note of it in view of future favors, yet for the moment he felt embarrassedly gratified. "Ye ain't wantin'anything, Minty, " he said affectionately; "a pail o' cold water from thefar spring--no nothin'?" He made an ostentatious movement as if torise, yet sufficiently protracted to prevent any hasty acceptance of hisprodigal offer. 

"No, dear, " she said, still gazing at him with an absorbed look in herdark eyes. 

Richelieu felt a slight creepy sensation under that lonely far-off gaze. "Your eyes look awful big at night, Minty, " he said. He would have added"and pretty, " but she was his sister, and he had the lofty fraternalconviction of his duty in repressing the inordinate vanity of the sex. "Ye're sure ye ain't wantin' nothin'?"

"Not now, dear. " She paused a moment, and then said deliberately: "Butyou wouldn't mind turnin' out after sun-up and runnin' an errand for meover to The Lookout?"

Richelieu's eyes sparkled so suddenly that even in her absorptionMinty noticed the change. "But ye're not goin' to tarry over there, nergossip--you hear? Yer to take this yer message. Yer to say 'that it willbe onpossible for me to come back there, on account--on account of--'"

"Important business, " suggested Richelieu; "that's the perlite style. "

"Ef you like. " She leaned over the bed and put her lips to his forehead, still damp with the dews of sleep, and then to his long-lashed lids. "Mind Nip!"--the squirrel--he practically suggested. For an instanttheir blond curls mingled on the pillow. "Now go to sleep, " she saidcurtly. 

But Richelieu had taken her white neck in the short strangulatory hug ofthe small boy, and held her fast. "Ye'll let me put on my best pants?"

"Yes. "

"And wear that ring?"

"Yes"--a little sadly. 

"Then yer kin count me in, Minty; and see here"--his voice sank to aconfidential whisper--"mebbee some day ye'll be beholden to ME for a loto' real jewelry. "

She returned slowly to her room, and, opening the window, looked outupon the night. The same moon that had lent such supererogatory grace tothe natural beauty of The Lookout, here seemed to have failed; as Mintyhad, in disguising the relentless limitations of Nature or the cruelbonds of custom. The black plain of granite, under its rays, appearedonly to extend its poverty to some remoter barrier; the blackened stumpsof the burnt forest stood bleaker against the sky, like broken andtwisted pillars of iron. The cavity of the broken ledge where Richelieuhad prospected was a hideous chasm of bluish blackness, over which apurple vapor seemed to hover; the "brush dump" beside the house showeda cavern of writhing and distorted objects stiffened into dark rigidity. She had often looked upon the prospect: it had never seemed so hard andchangeless; yet she accepted it, as she had accepted it before. 

She turned away, undressed herself mechanically, and went to bed. Shehad an idea that she had been very foolish; that her escape frombeing still more foolish was something miraculous, and in some measureconnected with Providence, her father, her little brother, and her deadmother, whose dress she had recklessly spoiled. But that she had even soslightly touched the bitterness and glory of renunciation--as writtenof heroines and fine ladies by novelists and poets--never entered thefoolish head of Minty Sharpe, the blacksmith's daughter. 

CHAPER IV. 

It was a little after daybreak next morning that Mainwaring awoke fromthe first unrefreshing night he had passed at The Lookout. He was sofeverish and restless that he dressed himself at sunrise, and cautiouslystepped out upon the still silent veranda. The chairs which he andLouise Macy had occupied were still, it seemed to him, conspicuouslyconfidential with each other, and he separated them, but as he lookeddown into the Great Canyon at his feet he was conscious of someundefinable change in the prospect. A slight mist was rising from thevalley, as if it were the last of last night's illusions; the firstlevel sunbeams were obtrusively searching, and the keen morning air hada dryly practical insistence which irritated him, until a light footstepon the farther end of the veranda caused him to turn sharply. 

It was the singular apparition of a small boy, bearing a surprisingresemblance to Minty Sharpe, and dressed in an unique fashion. On atumbled sea of blond curls a "chip" sailor hat, with a broad red ribbon, rode jauntily. But here the nautical suggestion changed, as had thedesire of becoming a pirate which induced it. A red shirt, with a whitecollar, and a yellow plaid ribbon tie, that also recalled Minty Sharpe, lightly turned the suggestion of his costume to mining. Short blackvelvet trousers, coming to his knee, and ostentatiously new short-leggedboots, with visible straps like curling ears, completed the entirelyoriginal character of his lower limbs. 

Mainwaring, always easily gentle and familiar with children and hisinferiors, looked at him with an encouraging smile. Richelieu--for itwas he--advanced gravely and held out his hand, with the cameo ringapparent. Mainwaring, with equal gravity, shook it warmly, and removedhis hat. Richelieu, keenly observant, did the same. 

"Is Jim Bradley out yet?" asked Richelieu, carelessly. 

"No; I think not. But I'm Frank Mainwaring. Will I do?"

Richelieu smiled. The dimples, the white teeth, the dark, laughing eyes, were surely Minty's?

"I'm Richelieu, " he rejoined with equal candor. 

"Richelieu?"

"Yes. That Frenchman--the Lord Cardinal--you know. Mar saw Forrest dohim out in St. Louis. "

"Do him?"

"Yes, in the theayter. "

With a confused misconception of his meaning, Mainwaring tried torecall the historical dress of the great Cardinal and fit it to themasquerader--if such he were--before him. But Richelieu relieved him byadding, --

"Richelieu Sharpe. "

"Oh, that's your NAME!" said Mainwaring, cheerfully. "Then you're MissMinty's brother. I know her. How jolly lucky!"

They both shook hands again. Richelieu, eager to get rid of the burdenof his sister's message, which he felt was in the way of free-and-easyintercourse with this charming stranger, looked uneasily towards thehouse. 

"I say, " said Mainwaring, "if you're in a hurry, you'd better go inthere and knock. I hear some one stirring in the kitchen. "

Richelieu nodded, but first went back to the steps of the veranda, picked up a small blue knotted handkerchief, apparently containing someheavy objects, and repassed Mainwaring. 

"What! have you cut it, Richelieu, with your valuables? What have yougot there?"

"Specimins, " said Richelieu, shortly, and vanished. 

He returned presently. "Well, Cardinal, did you see anybody?" askedMainwaring. 

"Mrs. Bradley; but Jim's over to the mill. I'm goin' there. "

"Did you see Miss Macy?" continued Mainwaring, carelessly. 

"Loo?"

"Loo!--well; yes. "

"No. She's philanderin' with Captain Greyson. "

"Philandering with Greyson?" echoed Mainwaring, in wonder. 

"Yes; on horseback on the ridge. "

"You mean she's riding out with Mr. --with Captain Greyson?"

"Yes; ridin' AND philanderin', " persisted Richelieu. 

"And what do you call philandering?"

"Well; I reckon you and she oughter know, " returned Richelieu, with aprecocious air. 

"Certainly, " said Mainwaring, with a faint smile. Richelieu really waslike Minty. 

There was a long silence. This young Englishman was becoming exceedinglyuninteresting. Richelieu felt that he was gaining neither profit noramusement, and losing time. "I'm going, " he said. 

"Good morning, " said Mainwaring, without looking up. 

Richelieu picked up his specimens, thoroughly convinced of thestranger's glittering deceitfulness, and vanished. 

It was nearly eight o'clock when Mrs. Bradley came from the house. Sheapologized, with a slightly distrait smile, for the tardiness of thehousehold. "Mr. Bradley stayed at the mill all night, and will not behere until breakfast, when he brings your friend Mr. Richardson withhim"--Mainwaring scarcely repressed a movement of impatience--"whoarrives early. It's unfortunate that Miss Sharpe can't come to-day. "

In his abstraction Mainwaring did not notice that Mrs. Bradley slightlyaccented Minty's formal appellation, and said carelessly, --

"Oh, that's why her brother came over here so early!"

"Did YOU see him?" asked Mrs. Bradley, almost abruptly. 

"Yes. He is an amusing little beggar; but I think he shares his sister'spreference for Mr. Bradley. He deserted me here in the veranda for himat the mill. "

"Louise will keep you company as soon as she has changed her dress, "continued Mrs. Bradley. "She was out riding early this morning with afriend. She's very fond of early morning rides. "

"AND philandering, " repeated Mainwaring to himself. It was quite naturalfor Miss Macy to ride out in the morning, after the fashion ofthe country, with an escort; but why had the cub insisted on the"philandering"? He had said, "AND philandering, " distinctly. It was anasty thing for him to say. Any other fellow but he, Mainwaring, mightmisunderstand the whole thing. Perhaps he ought to warn her--but no! hecould not repeat the gossip of a child, and that child the brother ofone of her inferiors. But was Minty an inferior? Did she and Minty talktogether about this fellow Greyson? At all events, it would only revivethe awkwardness of the preceding day, and he resolved to say nothing. 

He was rewarded by a half-inquiring, half-confiding look in Louise'sbright eyes, when she presently greeted him on the veranda. "She hadquite forgotten, " she said, "to tell him last night of her morning'sengagement; indeed, she had half forgotten IT. It used to be a favoritepractice of hers, with Captain Greyson; but she had lately given it up. She believed she had not ridden since--since--"

"Since when?" asked Mainwaring. 

"Well, since you were ill, " she said frankly. 

A quick pleasure shone in Mainwaring's cheek and eye; but Louise'spretty lids did not drop, nor her faint, quiet bloom deepen. Breakfastwas already waiting when Mr. Richardson arrived alone. 

He explained that Mr. Bradley had some important and unexpected businesswhich had delayed him, but which, he added, "Mr. Bradley says mayprove interesting enough to you to excuse his absence this morning. "Mainwaring was not displeased that his critical and observant host wasnot present at their meeting. Louise Macy was, however, as demurelyconscious of the different bearing of the two compatriots. Richardson'ssomewhat self-important patronage of the two ladies, and thatCalifornian familiarity he had acquired, changed to a certain uneasydeference towards Mainwaring; while the younger Englishman's slightlystiff and deliberate cordiality was, nevertheless, mingled with amysterious understanding that appeared innate and unconscious. Louisewas quick to see that these two men, more widely divergent in qualitythan any two of her own countrymen, were yet more subtly connectedby some unknown sympathy than the most equal of Americans. Minty'sprophetic belief of the effect of the two women upon Richardson wascertainly true as regarded Mrs. Bradley. The banker--a large materialnature--was quickly fascinated by the demure, puritanic graces of thatlady, and was inclined to exhibit a somewhat broad and ostentatiousgallantry that annoyed Mainwaring. When they were seated alone onthe veranda, which the ladies had discreetly left to them, Richardsonsaid, --

"Odd I didn't hear of Bradley's wife before. She seems a spicy, pretty, comfortable creature. Regularly thrown away with him up here. "

Mainwaring replied coldly that she was "an admirable helpmeet of a veryadmirable man, " not, however, without an uneasy recollection of herprevious confidences respecting her husband. "They have been mostthoroughly good and kind to me; my own brother and sister could not havedone more. And certainly not with better taste or delicacy, " he added, markedly. 

"Certainly, certainly, " said Richardson, hurriedly. "I wrote to LadyMainwaring that you were taken capital care of by some very honestpeople; and that--"

"Lady Mainwaring already knows what I think of them, and what she owesto their kindness, " said Mainwaring, dryly. 

"True, true, " said Richardson, apologetically. "Of course you must haveseen a good deal of them. I only know Bradley in a business way. He'sbeen trying to get the Bank to help him to put up some new mills here;but we didn't see it. I dare say he is good company--rather amusing, eh?"

Mainwaring had the gift of his class of snubbing by the polite andforgiving oblivion of silence. Richardson shifted uneasily in his chair, but continued with assumed carelessness:--

"No; I only knew of this cousin, Miss Macy. I heard of her when shewas visiting some friends in Menlo Park last year. Rather an attractivegirl. They say Colonel Johnson, of Sacramento, took quite a fancyto her--it would have been a good match, I dare say, for he is veryrich--but the thing fell through in some way. Then, they say, SHE wantedto marry that Spaniard, young Pico, of the Amador Ranche; but his familywouldn't hear of it. Somehow, she's deuced unlucky. I suppose she'llmake a mess of it with Captain Greyson she was out riding with thismorning. "

"Didn't the Bank think Bradley's mills a good investment?" askedMainwaring quietly, when Richardson paused. 

"Not with him in it; he is not a business man, you know. "

"I thought he was. He seems to me an energetic man, who knows his work, and is not afraid to look after it himself. "

"That's just it. He has got absurd ideas of co-operating with hisworkmen, you know, and doing everything slowly and on a limited scale. The only thing to be done is to buy up all the land on this ridge, runoff the settlers, freeze out all the other mills, and put it into a bigSan Francisco company on shares. That's the only way we would look atit. "

"But you don't consider the investment bad, even from HIS point ofview?"

"Perhaps not. "

"And you only decline it because it isn't big enough for the Bank?"

"Exactly. "

"Richardson, " said Mainwaring, slowly rising, putting his hands in histrousers pockets, and suddenly looking down upon the banker from theeasy level of habitual superiority, "I wish you'd attend to this thingfor me. I desire to make some return to Mr. Bradley for his kindness. Iwish to give him what help he wants--in his own way--you understand. Iwish it, and I believe my father wishes it, too. If you'd like him towrite to you to that effect--"

"By no means, it's not at all necessary, " said Richardson, dropping withequal suddenness into his old-world obsequiousness. "I shall certainlydo as you wish. It is not a bad investment, Mr. Mainwaring, and as yousuggest, a very proper return for their kindness. And, being here, itwill come quite naturally for me to take up the affair again. "

"And--I say, Richardson. "

"Yes, sir?"

"As these ladies are rather short-handed in their domestic service, youknow, perhaps you'd better not stay to luncheon or dinner, but go on tothe Summit House--it's only a mile or two farther--and come back herethis evening. I shan't want you until then. "

"Certainly!" stammered Richardson. "I'll just take leave of the ladies!"

"It's not at all necessary, " said Mainwaring, quietly; "you would onlydisturb them in their household duties. I'll tell them what I've donewith you, if they ask. You'll find your stick and hat in the passage, and you can leave the veranda by these steps. By the way, you had bettermanage at the Summit to get some one to bring my traps from here to beforwarded to Sacramento to-morrow. I'll want a conveyance, or a horseof some kind, myself, for I've given up walking for a while; but we cansettle about that to-night. Come early. Good morning?"

He accompanied his thoroughly subjugated countryman--who, however, farfrom attempting to reassert himself, actually seemed easier and morecheerful in his submission--to the end of the veranda, and watchedhim depart. As he turned back, he saw the pretty figure of Louise Macyleaning against the doorway. How graceful and refined she looked in thatsimple morning dress! What wonder that she was admired by Greyson, byJohnson, and by that Spaniard!--no, by Jove, it was SHE that wanted tomarry him!

"What have you sent away Mr. Richardson for?" asked the young girl, witha half-reproachful, half-mischievous look in her bright eyes. 

"I packed him off because I thought it was a little too hard on you andMrs. Bradley to entertain him without help. "

"But as he was OUR guest, you might have left that to us, " said MissMacy. 

"By Jove! I never thought of that, " said Mainwaring, coloring inconsternation. "Pray forgive me, Miss Macy--but you see I knew the man, and could say it, and you couldn't. "

"Well, I forgive you, for you look really so cut up, " said Louise, laughing. "But I don't know what Jenny will say of your disposing of herconquest so summarily. " She stopped and regarded him more attentively. "Has he brought you any bad news? if so, it's a pity you didn't send himaway before. He's quite spoiling our cure. "

Mainwaring thought bitterly that he had. "But it's a cure for all that, Miss Macy, " he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "and being a cure, you see, there's no longer an excuse for my staying here. I have beenmaking arrangements for leaving here to-morrow. "

"So soon?"

"Do you think it soon, Miss Macy?" asked Mainwaring, turning pale inspite of himself. 

"I quite forgot--that you were here as an invalid only, and that we oweour pleasure to the accident of your pain. "

She spoke a little artificially, he thought, yet her cheeks had not losttheir pink bloom, nor her eyes their tranquillity. Had he heard Minty'scriticism he might have believed that the organic omission noticed byher was a fact. 

"And now that your good work as Sister of Charity is completed, you'llbe able to enter the world of gayety again with a clear conscience, "said Mainwaring, with a smile that he inwardly felt was a miserablefailure. "You'll be able to resume your morning rides, you know, whichthe wretched invalid interrupted. "

Louise raised her clear eyes to his, without reproach, indignation, oreven wonder. He felt as if he had attempted an insult and failed. 

"Does my cousin know you are going so soon?" she asked finally. 

"No, I did not know myself until to-day. You see, " he added hastily, while his honest blood blazoned the lie in his cheek, "I've heard ofsome miserable business affairs that will bring me back to Englandsooner that I expected. "

"I think you should consider your health more important than any merebusiness, " said Louise. "I don't mean that you should remain HERE, " sheadded with a hasty laugh, "but it would be a pity, now that you havereaped the benefit of rest and taking care of yourself, that you shouldnot make it your only business to seek it elsewhere. "

Mainwaring longed to say that within the last half hour, living or dyinghad become of little moment to him; but he doubted the truth or efficacyof this timeworn heroic of passion. He felt, too, that anything he saidwas a mere subterfuge for the real reason of his sudden departure. Andhow was he to question her as to that reason? In escaping from thesesubterfuges--he was compelled to lie again. With an assumption ofchanging the subject, he said calmly, "Richardson thought he had met youbefore--in Menlo Park, I think. "

Amazed at the evident irrelevance of the remark, Louise said coldly, that she did not remember having seen him before. 

"I think it was at a Mr. Johnson's--or WITH a Mr. Johnson--or perhaps atone of those Spanish ranches--I think he mentioned some name like Pico!"

Louise looked at him wonderingly for an instant, and then gave way toa frank, irrepressible laugh, which lent her delicate but rather setlittle face all the color he had missed. Partially relieved by herunconcern, and yet mortified that he had only provoked her sense of theludicrous, he tried to laugh also. 

"Then, to be quite plain, " said Louise, wiping her now humid eyes, "youwant me to understand that you really didn't pay sufficient attentionto hear correctly! Thank you; that's a pretty English compliment, Isuppose. "

"I dare say you wouldn't call it 'philandering'?"

"I certainly shouldn't, for I don't know what 'philandering' means. "

Mainwaring could not reply, with Richelieu, "You ought to know"; nor didhe dare explain what he thought it meant, and how he knew it. Louise, however, innocently solved the difficulty. 

"There's a country song I've heard Minty sing, " she said. "It runs--

 Come, Philander, let us be a-marchin', Every one for his true love a-sarchin' Choose your true love now or never. . . . 

Have you been listening to her also?"

"No, " said Mainwaring, with a sudden incomprehensible, but utterlyirrepressible, resolution; "but I'M 'a-marchin', ' you know, and perhapsI must 'choose my true love now or never. ' Will you help me, Miss Macy?"

He drew gently near her. He had become quite white, but also very manly, and it struck her, more deeply, thoroughly, and conscientiously sincerethan any man who had before addressed her. She moved slightly away, asif to rest herself by laying both hands upon the back of the chair. 

"Where do you expect to begin your 'sarchin''?" she said, leaning onthe chair and tilting it before her; "or are you as vague as usual as tolocality? Is it at some 'Mr. Johnson' or 'Mr. Pico, ' or--"

"Here, " he interrupted boldly. 

"I really think you ought to first tell my cousin that you are goingaway to-morrow, " she said, with a faint smile. "It's such short notice. She's just in there. " She nodded her pretty head, without raising hereyes, towards the hall. 

"But it may not be so soon, " said Mainwaring. 

"Oh, then the 'sarchin'' is not so important?" said Louise, raisingher head, and looking towards the hall with some uneasy but indefinablefeminine instinct. 

She was right; the sitting-room door opened, and Mrs. Bradley made hersmiling appearance. 

"Mr. Mainwaring was just looking for you, " said Louise, for the firsttime raising her eyes to him. "He's not only sent off Mr. Richardson, but he's going away himself to-morrow. "

Mrs. Bradley looked from the one to the other in mute wonder. Mainwaringcast an imploring glance at Louise, which had the desired effect. Muchmore seriously, and in a quaint, business-like way, the young girl tookit upon herself to explain to Mrs. Bradley that Richardson had broughtthe invalid some important news that would, unfortunately, not onlyshorten his stay in America, but even compel him to leave The Lookoutsooner than he expected, perhaps to-morrow. Mainwaring thanked her withhis eyes, and then turned to Mrs. Bradley. 

"Whether I go to-morrow or next day, " he said with simple and earnestdirectness, "I intend, you know, to see you soon again, either here orin my own home in England. I do not know, " he added with marked gravity, "that I have succeeded in convincing you that I have made your familyalready well known to my people, and that"--he fixed his eyes with ameaning look on Louise--"no matter when, or in what way, you come tothem, your place is made ready for you. You may not like them, you know:the governor is getting to be an old man--perhaps too old for youngAmericans--but THEY will like YOU, and you must put up with that. Mymother and sisters know Miss Macy as well as I do, and will make her oneof the family. "

The conscientious earnestness with which these apparentconventionalities were uttered, and some occult quality of quietconviction in the young man's manner, brought a pleasant sparkle to theeyes of Mrs. Bradley and Louise. 

"But, " said Mrs. Bradley, gayly, "our going to England is quite beyondour present wildest dreams; nothing but a windfall, an unexpectedrise in timber, or even the tabooed hotel speculation, could make itpossible. "

"But I shall take the liberty of trying to present it to Mr. Bradleytonight in some practical way that may convince even his criticaljudgment, " said Mainwaring, still seriously. "It will be, " he added morelightly, "the famous testimonial of my cure which I promised you. "

"And you will find Mr. Bradley so sceptical that you will be obliged todefer your going, " said Mrs. Bradley, triumphantly. "Come, Louise, wemust not forget that we have still Mr. Mainwaring's present comfort tolook after; that Minty has basely deserted us, and that we ourselvesmust see that the last days of our guest beneath our roof are notremembered for their privation. "

She led Louise away with a half-mischievous suggestion of maternalpropriety, and left Mainwaring once more alone on the veranda. 

He had done it! Certainly she must have understood his meaning, andthere was nothing left for him to do but to acquaint Bradley with hisintentions to-night, and press her for a final answer in the morning. There would be no indelicacy then in asking her for an interview morefree from interruption than this public veranda. Without conceit, hedid not doubt what the answer would be. His indecision, his suddenresolution to leave her, had been all based upon the uncertainty of HISown feelings, the propriety of HIS declaration, the possibility of someprevious experience of hers that might compromise HIM. Convinced byher unembarrassed manner of her innocence, or rather satisfied of herindifference to Richardson's gossip, he had been hurried by his feelingsinto an unexpected avowal. Brought up in the perfect security of hisown social position, and familiarly conscious--without vanity--ofits importance and power in such a situation, he believed, withoutundervaluing Louise's charms or independence, that he had no one elsethan himself to consult. Even the slight uneasiness that still pursuedhim was more due to his habitual conscientiousness of his own intentionthan to any fear that she would not fully respond to it. Indeed, withhis conservative ideas of proper feminine self-restraint, Louise's calmpassivity and undemonstrative attitude were a proof of her superiority;had she blushed overmuch, cried, or thrown herself into his arms, hewould have doubted the wisdom of so easy a selection. It was true he hadknown her scarcely three weeks; if he chose to be content with that, hisown accessible record of three centuries should be sufficient for her, and condone any irregularity. 

Nevertheless, as an hour slipped away and Louise did not make herappearance, either on the veranda or in the little sitting-room off thehall, Mainwaring became more uneasy as to the incompleteness of theirinterview. Perhaps a faint suspicion of the inadequacy of her responsebegan to trouble him; but he still fatuously regarded it rather asowing to his own hurried and unfinished declaration. It was true thathe hadn't said half what he intended to say; it was true that she mighthave misunderstood it as the conventional gallantry of the situation, as--terrible thought!--the light banter of the habitual love-makingAmerican, to which she had been accustomed; perhaps even now sherelegated him to the level of Greyson, and this accounted for hersingular impassiveness--an impassiveness that certainly was singularnow he reflected upon it--that might have been even contempt. The lastthought pricked his deep conscientiousness; he walked hurriedly up anddown the veranda, and then, suddenly re-entering his room, took up asheet of note-paper, and began to write to her:--

"Can you grant me a few moments' interview alone? I cannot bear youshould think that what I was trying to tell you when we were interruptedwas prompted by anything but the deepest sincerity and conviction, or that I am willing it should be passed over lightly by you or beforgotten. Pray give me a chance of proving it, by saying you will seeme. F. M. "

But how should he convey this to her? His delicacy revolted againsthanding it to her behind Mrs. Bradley's back, or the prestidigitation ofslipping it into her lap or under her plate before them at luncheon; hethought for an instant of the Chinaman, but gentlemen--except in that"mirror of nature" the stage--usually hesitate to suborn other people'sservants, or entrust a woman's secret to her inferiors. He rememberedthat Louise's room was at the farther end of the house, and its lowwindow gave upon the veranda, and was guarded at night by a film ofwhite and blue curtains that were parted during the day, to allowa triangular revelation of a pale blue and white draped interior. Mainwaring reflected that the low inside window ledge was easilyaccessible from the veranda, would afford a capital lodgment for thenote, and be quickly seen by the fair occupant of the room on entering. He sauntered slowly past the window; the room was empty, the momentpropitious. A slight breeze was stirring the blue ribbons of thecurtain; it would be necessary to secure the note with something; hereturned along the veranda to the steps, where he had noticed a smallirregular stone lying, which had evidently escaped from Richelieu's bagof treasure specimens, and had been overlooked by that ingenuous child. It was of a pretty peacock-blue color, and, besides securing a paper, would be sure to attract her attention. He placed his note on the insideledge, and the blue stone atop, and went away with a sense of relief. 

Another half hour passed without incident. He could hear the voicesof the two women in the kitchen and dining-room. After a while theyappeared to cease, and he heard the sound of an opening door. Itthen occurred to him that the veranda was still too exposed for aconfidential interview, and he resolved to descend the steps, passbefore the windows of the kitchen where Louise might see him, andpenetrate the shrubbery, where she might be induced to follow him. Theywould not be interrupted nor overheard there. 

But he had barely left the veranda before the figure of Richelieu, who had been patiently waiting for Mainwaring's disappearance, emergedstealthily from the shrubbery. He had discovered his loss on handing his"fire assays" to the good-humored Bradley for later examination, and hehad retraced his way, step by step, looking everywhere for his missingstone with the unbounded hopefulness, lazy persistency, and loftydisregard for time and occupation known only to the genuine boy. He remembered to have placed his knotted bag upon the veranda, and, slipping off his stiff boots slowly and softly, slid along against thewall of the house, looking carefully on the floor, and yet preservinga studied negligence of demeanor, with one hand in his pocket, and hissmall mouth contracted into a singularly soothing and almost voicelesswhistle--Richelieu's own peculiar accomplishment. But no stone appeared. Like most of his genus he was superstitious, and repeated to himself thecabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"--presumedto be of great efficacy in such cases--with religious fervor. He hadlaboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the openwindow of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in. And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded andaghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy and sickeningenormity of Man. 

There was HIS stone--HIS, RICHELIEU'S, OWN SPECIMEN, carefully gatheredby himself and none other--and now stolen, abstracted, "skyugled, ""smouged, " "hooked" by this "rotten, skunkified, long-legged, splay-footed, hoss-laughin', nigger-toothed, or'nary despot" And, worse than all, actually made to do infamous duty as a "love token"--a"candy-gift!"--a "philanderin' box" to HIS, Richelieu's, girl--forLouise belonged to that innocent and vague outside seraglio ofRichelieu's boyish dreams--and put atop of a letter to her! andProvidence permitted such an outrage! "Wot was he, Richelieu, sent toschool for, and organized wickedness in the shape of gorilla Injins likethis allowed to ride high horses rampant over Californey!" He lookedat the heavens in mute appeal. And then--Providence not immediatelyinterfering--he thrust his own small arm into the window, regained hispriceless treasure, and fled swiftly. 

A fateful silence ensued. The wind slightly moved the curtain outward, as if in a playful attempt to follow him, and then subsided. A momentlater, apparently re-enforced by other winds, or sympathizing withRichelieu, it lightly lifted the unlucky missive and cast it softly fromthe window. But here another wind, lying in wait, caught it cleverly, and tossed it, in a long curve, into the abyss. For an instant it seemedto float lazily, as on the mirrored surface of a lake, until, turningupon its side, it suddenly darted into utter oblivion. 

When Mainwaring returned from the shrubbery, he went softly to thewindow. The disappearance of the letter and stone satisfied him of thesuccess of his stratagem, and for the space of three hours relieved hisanxiety. But at the end of that time, finding no response from Louise, his former uneasiness returned. Was she offended, or--the first doubt ofher acceptance of him crossed his mind!

A sudden and inexplicable sense of shame came upon him. At the samemoment, he heard his name called from the steps, turned--and beheldMinty. 

Her dark eyes were shining with a pleasant light, and her lips parted onher white teeth with a frank, happy smile. She advanced and held out herhand. He took it with a mingling of disappointment and embarrassment. 

"You're wondering why I kem on here, arter I sent word this morning thatI kelkilated not to come. Well, 'twixt then and now suthin' 's happened. We've had fine doin's over at our house, you bet! Pop don't know whichend he's standin' on; and I reckon that for about ten minutes I didn'tknow my own name. But ez soon ez I got fairly hold o' the hull thing, and had it put straight in my mind, I sez to myself, Minty Sharpe, sezI, the first thing for you to do now, is to put on yer bonnet and shawl, and trapse over to Jim Bradley's and help them two womenfolks get dinnerfor themselves and that sick stranger. And, " continued Minty, throwingherself into a chair and fanning her glowing face with her apron, "yer Iam!"

"But you have not told me WHAT has happened, " said Mainwaring, with aconstrained smile, and an uneasy glance towards the house. 

"That's so, " said Minty, with a brilliant laugh. "I clean forgot thehull gist of the thing. Well, we're rich folks now--over thar' on BarrenLedge! That onery brother of mine, Richelieu, hez taken some of hisspecimens over to Jim Bradley to be tested. And Bradley, just to pleasethat child, takes 'em; and not an hour ago Bradley comes running, liketyswitch, over to Pop to tell him to put up his notices, for the hull ofthat ledge where the forge stands is a mine o' silver and copper. Aforeye knew it, Lordy! half the folks outer the Summit and the mill wasscattered down thar all over it. Richardson--that stranger ez knowsyou--kem thar too with Jim, and he allows, ef Bradley's essay is right, it's worth more than a hundred thousand dollars ez it stands!"

"I suppose I must congratulate you, Miss Sharpe, " said Mainwaring withan attempt at interest, but his attention still preoccupied with theopen doorway. 

"Oh, THEY know all about it!" said Minty, following the direction of hisabstracted eyes with a slight darkening of her own, "I jest kem out o'the kitchen the other way, and Jim sent 'em a note; but I allowed I'dtell YOU myself. Specially ez you are going away to-morrow. "

"Who said I was going away to-morrow?" asked Mainwaring, uneasily. 

"Loo Macy!"

"Ah--she did? But I may change my mind, you know!" he continued, with afaint smile. 

Minty shook her curls decisively. "I reckon SHE knows, " she said dryly, "she's got law and gospel for wot she says. But yer she comes. Ask her!Look yer, Loo, " she added, as the two women appeared at the doorway, with a certain exaggeration of congratulatory manner that struckMainwaring as being as artificial and disturbed as his own, "didn't SirFrancis yer say he was going to-morrow?"

"That's what I understood!" returned Louise, with cold astonishment, letting her clear indifferent eyes fall upon Mainwaring. "I do not knowthat he has changed his mind. "

"Unless, as Miss Sharpe is a great capitalist now, she is willing to useher powers of persuasion, " added Mrs. Bradley, with a slight acidulouspointing of her usual prim playfulness. 

"I reckon Minty Sharpe's the same ez she allus wos, unless more so, "returned Minty, with an honest egotism that carried so much convictionto the hearer as to condone its vanity. "But I kem yer to do a day'swork, gals, and I allow to pitch in and do it, and not sit yer swoppin'compliments and keeping HIM from packin' his duds. Onless, " she stopped, and looked around at the uneasy, unsympathetic circle with a fainttremulousness of lip that belied the brave black eyes above it, "onlessI'm in yer way. "

The two women sprang forward with a feminine bewildering excess ofprotestation; and Mainwaring, suddenly pierced through his outer selfishembarrassment to his more honest depths, stammered quickly--

"Look here, Miss Sharpe, if you think of running away again, afterhaving come all the way here to make us share the knowledge of your goodfortune and your better heart, by Jove! I'll go back with you. "

But here the two women effusively hurried her away from the dangerousproximity of such sympathetic honesty, and a moment later Mainwaringheard her laughing voice, as of old, ringing in the kitchen. And then, as if unconsciously responding to the significant common sense that layin her last allusion to him, he went to his room and grimly began hispacking. 

He did not again see Louise alone. At their informal luncheon theconversation turned upon the more absorbing topic of the Sharpes'discovery, its extent, and its probable effect upon the fortunes ofthe locality. He noticed, abstractedly, that both Mrs. Bradley and hercousin showed a real or assumed scepticism of its value. This didnot disturb him greatly, except for its intended check upon Minty'senthusiasm. He was more conscious, perhaps, --with a faint touch ofmortified vanity, --that his own contemplated departure was of lesserimportance than this local excitement. Yet in his growing convictionthat all was over--if, indeed, it had ever begun--between himself andLouise, he was grateful to this natural diversion of incident whichspared them both an interval of embarrassing commonplaces. And, withthe suspicion of some indefinable insincerity--either of his own orLouise's--haunting him, Minty's frank heartiness and outspoken loyaltygave him a strange relief. It seemed to him as if the clear cool breathof the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfasttruth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poeticfancy would have been consistent or even coexistent with any gleam oftenderness or self-forgetfulness in Louise's equally pretty orbs, Ileave the satirical feminine reader to determine. 

It was late when Bradley at last returned, bringing further and morecomplete corroboration of the truth of Sharpe's good fortune. Twoexperts had arrived, one from Pine Flat and another from the Summit, andupon this statement Richardson had offered to purchase an interest inthe discovery that would at once enable the blacksmith to develop hismine. "I shouldn't wonder, Mainwaring, " he added cheerfully, "if he'dput you into it, too, and make your eternal fortune. "

"With larks falling from the skies all round you, it's a pity YOUcouldn't get put into something, " said Mrs. Bradley, straightening herpretty brows. 

"I'm not a gold-miner, my dear, " said Bradley, pleasantly. 

"Nor a gold-finder, " returned his wife, with a cruel little depressionof her pink nostrils, "but you can work all night in that stupid milland then, " she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, "spendthe whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discoverythat his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understandand profit by. I suppose that next you will be hunting up a site on theOTHER SIDE of the Canyon, where somebody else can put up a hotel andruin your own prospects. "

A sensitive shadow of pain quickly dimmed Bradley's glance--not thefirst or last time evidently, for it was gradually bringing out abackground of sadness in his intelligent eyes. But the next moment heturned kindly to Mainwaring, and began to deplore the necessity of hisearly departure, which Richardson had already made known to him withpractical and satisfying reasons. 

"I hope you won't forget, my dear fellow, that your most really urgentbusiness is to look after your health; and if, hereafter, you'll onlyremember the old Lookout enough to impress that fact upon you, I shallfeel that any poor service I have rendered you has been amply repaid. "

Mainwaring, notwithstanding that he winced slightly at this fatefulecho of Louise's advice, returned the grasp of his friend's hand with anhonest pressure equal to his own. He longed now only for the coming ofRichardson, to complete his scheme of grateful benefaction to his host. 

The banker came fortunately as the conversation began to flag; and Mrs. Bradley's half-coquettish ill-humor of a pretty woman, and Louise'sabstracted indifference, were becoming so noticeable as to even impressMinty into a thoughtful taciturnity. The graciousness of his receptionby Mrs. Bradley somewhat restored his former ostentatious gallantry, andhis self-satisfied, domineering manner had enough masculine power in itto favorably affect the three women, who, it must be confessed, were alittle bored by the finer abstractions of Bradley and Mainwaring. After a few moments, Mainwaring rose and, with a significant glance atRichardson to remind him of his proposed conference with Bradley, turnedto leave the room. He was obliged to pass Louise, who was sitting by thetable. His attention was suddenly arrested by something in her hand withwhich she was listlessly playing. It was the stone which he had put onhis letter to her. 

As he had not been present when Bradley arrived, he did not know thatthis fateful object had been brought home by his host, who, afterreceiving it from Richelieu, had put it in his pocket to illustratehis story of the discovery. On the contrary, it seemed that Louise'scareless exposure of his foolish stratagem was gratuitously andpurposely cruel. Nevertheless, he stopped and looked at her. 

"That's a queer stone you have there, " he said, in a tone which sherecognized as coldly and ostentatiously civil. 

"Yes, " she replied, without looking up; "it's the outcrop of that mine. "She handed it to him as if to obviate any further remark. "I thought youhad seen it before. "

"The outcrop, " he repeated dryly. "That is--it--it--it is the indicationor sign of something important that's below it--isn't it?"

Louise shrugged her shoulders sceptically. "It don't follow. It's justas likely to cover rubbish, after you've taken the trouble to look. "

"Thanks, " he said, with measured gentleness, and passed quietly out ofthe room. 

The moon had already risen when Bradley, with his brierwood pipe, preceded Richardson upon the veranda. The latter threw his large frameinto Louise's rocking-chair near the edge of the abyss; Bradley, withhis own chair tilted against the side of the house after the nationalfashion, waited for him to speak. The absence of Mainwaring and thestimulus of Mrs. Bradley's graciousness had given the banker a certaincondescending familiarity, which Bradley received with amused andironical tolerance that his twinkling eyes made partly visible in thedarkness. 

"One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Bradley, was that oldaffair of the advance you asked for from the Bank. We did not quite seeour way to it then, and, speaking as a business man, it isn't really amatter of business now; but it has lately been put to me in a light thatwould make the doing of it possible--you understand? The fact of thematter is this: Sir Robert Mainwaring, the father of the youngfellow you've got in your house, is one of our directors andlargest shareholders, and I can tell you--if you don't suspect italready--you've been lucky, Bradley--deucedly lucky--to have had him inyour house and to have rendered him a service. He's the heir to oneof the largest landed estates in his country, one of the oldest countyfamilies, and will step into the title some day. But, ahem!" he coughedpatronizingly, "you knew all that! No? Well, that charming wife ofyours, at least, does; for she's been talking about it. Gad, Bradley, ittakes those women to find out anything of that kind, eh?"

The light in Bradley's eyes and his pipe went slowly out together. 

"Then we'll say that affair of the advance is as good as settled. It'sSir Robert's wish, you understand, and this young fellow's wish, --and ifyou'll come down to the Bank next week we'll arrange it for you; Ithink you'll admit they're doing the handsome to you and yours. Andtherefore, " he lowered his voice confidentially, "you'll see, Bradley, that it will only be the honorable thing in you, you know, to look uponthe affair as finished, and, in fact, to do all you can"--he drew hischair closer--"to--to--to drop this other foolishness. "

"I don't think I quite understand you!" said Bradley, slowly. 

"But your wife does, if you don't, " returned Richardson, bluntly; "Imean this foolish flirtation between Louise Macy and Mainwaring, whichis utterly preposterous. Why, man, it can't possibly come to anything, and it couldn't be allowed for a moment. Look at his position and hers. I should think, as a practical man, it would strike you--"

"Only one thing strikes me, Richardson, " interrupted Bradley, in asingularly distinct whisper, rising, and moving nearer the speaker; "itis that you're sitting perilously near the edge of this veranda. For, bythe living God, if you don't take yourself out of that chair and out ofthis house, I won't be answerable for the consequences!"

"Hold on there a minute, will you?" said Mainwaring's voice from thewindow. 

Both men turned towards it. A long leg was protruding from Mainwaring'swindow; it was quickly followed by the other leg and body of theoccupant, and the next moment Mainwaring come towards the two men, withhis hands in his pockets. 

"Not so loud, " he said, looking towards the house. 

"Let that man go, " said Bradley, in a repressed voice. "You and I, Mainwaring, can speak together afterwards. "

"That man must stay until he hears what I have got to say, " saidMainwaring, stepping between them. He was very white and grave inthe moonlight, but very quiet; and he did not take his hands from hispockets. "I've listened to what he said because he came here on MYbusiness, which was simply to offer to do you a service. That was all, Bradley, that I told him to do. This rot about what he expects of you inreturn is his own impertinence. If you'd punched his head when he beganit, it would have been all right. But since he has begun it, before hegoes I think he ought to hear me tell you that I have already OFFEREDmyself to Miss Macy, and she has REFUSED me! If she had given me theleast encouragement, I should have told you before. Further, I want tosay that, in spite of that man's insinuations, I firmly believe that noone is aware of the circumstance except Miss Macy and myself. "

"I had no idea of intimating that anything had happened that was nothighly honorable and creditable to you and the young lady, " beganRichardson hurriedly. 

"I don't know that it was necessary for you to have any ideas on thesubject at all, " said Mainwaring, sternly; "nor that, having been shownhow you have insulted this gentleman and myself, you need trouble us aninstant longer with your company. You need not come back. I will managemy other affairs myself. "

"Very well, Mr. Mainwaring--but--you may be sure that I shall certainlytake the first opportunity to explain myself to Sir Robert, " returnedRichardson as, with an attempt at dignity, he strode away. 

There was an interval of silence. 

"Don't be too hard upon a fellow, Bradley, " said Mainwaring as Bradleyremained dark and motionless in the shadow. "It is a poor return I'mmaking you for your kindness, but I swear I never thought of anythinglike--like--this. "

"Nor did I, " said Bradley, bitterly. 

"I know it, and that's what makes it so infernally bad for me. Forgiveme, won't you? Think of me, old fellow, as the wretchedest ass you evermet, but not such a cad as this would make me!" As Mainwaring steppedout from the moonlight towards him with extended hand, Bradley graspedit warmly. 

"Thanks--there--thanks, old fellow! And, Bradley--I say--don'tsay anything to your wife, for I don't think she knows it. And, Bradley--look here--I didn't like to be anything but plain before thatfellow; but I don't mind telling YOU, now that it's all over, that Ireally think Louise--Miss Macy--didn't altogether understand me either. "

With another shake of the hand they separated for the night. For a longtime after Mainwaring had gone, Bradley remained gazing thoughtfullyinto the Great Canyon. He thought of the time when he had first comethere, full of life and enthusiasm, making an ideal world of his pureand wholesome eyrie on the ledge. What else he thought will, probably, never be known until the misunderstanding of honorable and chivalrousmen by a charming and illogical sex shall incite the audacious pen ofsome more daring romancer. 

When he returned to the house, he said kindly to his wife, "I have beenthinking to-day about your hotel scheme, and I shall write to Sacramentoto-night to accept that capitalist's offer. "

CHAPER V. 

The sun was just rising. In two years of mutation and change it had seenthe little cottage clinging like a swallow's nest to the rocky caves ofa great Sierran canyon give way to a straggling, many-galleried hotel, and a dozen blackened chimneys rise above the barren tableland whereonce had stood the lonely forge. To that conservative orb of light andheat there must have been a peculiar satisfaction in looking down a fewhours earlier upon the battlements and gables of Oldenhurst, whose basewas deeply embedded in the matured foundations and settled traditionsof an English county. For the rising sun had for ten centuries foundOldenhurst in its place, from the heavy stone terrace that covered thedead-and-forgotten wall, where a Roman sentinel had once paced, tothe little grating in the cloistered quadrangle, where it had seen aCistercian brother place the morning dole. It had daily welcomed thegrowth of this vast and picturesque excrescence of the times; it hadsmiled every morning upon this formidable yet quaint incrustationof power and custom, ignoring, as Oldenhurst itself had ignored, thegenerations who possessed it, the men who built it, the men who carriedit with fire and sword, the men who had lied and cringed for it, theKing who had given it to a favorite, the few brave hearts who had diedfor it in exile, and the one or two who had bought and paid for it. ForOldenhurst had absorbed all these and more until it had become a storyof the past, incarnate in stone, greenwood, and flower; it had evendrained the life-blood from adjacent hamlets, repaying them with tumuligrowths like its own, in the shape of purposeless lodges, quaintlyincompetent hospitals and schools, and churches where the inestimableblessing and knowledge of its gospel were taught and fostered. Nor hadit dealt more kindly with the gentry within its walls, sending some tothe scaffold, pillorying others in infamous office, reducing a few topoverty, and halting its later guests with gout and paralysis. It hadgiven them in exchange the dubious immortality of a portrait gallery, from which they stared with stony and equal resignation; it hadpreserved their useless armor and accoutrements; it had set up theirmarble effigies in churches or laid them in cross-legged attitudes totrip up the unwary, until in death, as in life, they got between thecongregation and the Truth that was taught there. It had allowed anOldenhurst crusader, with a broken nose like a pugilist, on the strengthof his having been twice to the Holy Land, to hide the beautifullyilluminated Word from the lowlier worshipper on the humbler benches; ithad sent an iconoclastic Bishop of the Reformation to a nearer minsterto ostentatiously occupy the place of the consecrated image he hadoverthrown. Small wonder that crowding the Oldenhurst retainersgradually into smaller space, with occasional Sabbath glimpses of theliving rulers of Oldenhurst already in railed-off exaltation, it hadforced them to accept Oldenhurst as a synonym of eternity, and left theknowledge of a higher Power to what time they should be turned outto their longer sleep under the tender grass of the beautiful outerchurchyard. 

And even so, while every stone of the pile of Oldenhurst and every treein its leafy park might have been eloquent with the story of vanity, selfishness, and unequal justice, it had been left to the infinite mercyof Nature to seal their lips with a spell of beauty that left mankindequally dumb; earth, air, and moisture had entered into a gentleconspiracy to soften, mellow, and clothe its external blemishes ofbreach and accident, its irregular design, its additions, accretions, ruins, and lapses with a harmonious charm of outline and color; poets, romancers, and historians had equally conspired to illuminate thedark passages and uglier inconsistencies of its interior life with theglamour of their own fancy. The fragment of menacing keep, with itschoked oubliettes, became a bower of tender ivy; the grim story of itscrimes, properly edited by a contemporary bard of the family, passedinto a charming ballad. Even the superstitious darkness of its religioushouse had escaped through fallen roof and shattered wall, leaving onlythe foliated and sun-pierced screen of front, with its rose-window andpinnacle of cross behind. Pilgrims from all lands had come to seeit; fierce Republicans had crossed the seas to gaze at its mediaevaloutlines, and copy them in wood and stucco on their younger soil. Politicians had equally pointed to it as a convincing evidence of theirown principles and in refutation of each other; and it had survivedboth. For it was this belief in its own perpetuity that was its strengthand weakness. And that belief was never stronger than on this brightAugust morning, when it was on the verge of dissolution. A telegrambrought to Sir Robert Mainwaring had even then as completely shatteredand disintegrated Oldenhurst, in all it was and all it meant, as if thebrown-paper envelope had been itself charged with the electric fluid. 

Sir Robert Mainwaring, whose family had for three centuries possessedOldenhurst, had received the news of his financial ruin; and the vastpile which had survived the repeated invasion of superstition, force, intrigue, and even progress, had succumbed to a foe its founders andproprietors had loftily ignored and left to Jews and traders. Theacquisition of money, except by despoilment, gift, royal favor, orinheritance, had been unknown at Oldenhurst. The present degeneratecustodian of its fortunes, staggering under the weight of itssentimental mortmain already alluded to, had speculated in order tokeep up its material strength, that was gradually shrinking throughimpoverished land and the ruined trade it had despised. He had investedlargely in California mines, and was the chief shareholder in a SanFrancisco Bank. But the mines had proved worthless, the Bank had thatmorning suspended payment, owing to the failure of a large land andtimber company on the Sierras which it had imprudently "carried. "The spark which had demolished Oldenhurst had been fired from the newtelegraph-station in the hotel above the great Sierran canyon. 

There was a large house-party at Oldenhurst that morning. But it hadbeen a part of the history of the Mainwarings to accept defeat gallantlyand as became their blood. Sir Percival, --the second gentleman on theleft as you entered the library, --unhorsed, dying on a distant moor, with a handful of followers, abandoned by a charming Prince and amiserable cause, was scarcely a greater hero than this ruined butundaunted gentleman of eighty, entering the breakfast-room a fewhours later as jauntily as his gout would permit, and conscientiouslydispensing the hospitalities of his crumbling house. When he hadarranged a few pleasure parties for the day and himself thoughtfullyanticipated the different tastes of his guests, he turned to LadyMainwaring. 

"Don't forget that somebody ought to go to the station to meet theBradleys. Frank writes from St. Moritz that they are due here to-day. "

Lady Mainwaring glanced quickly at her husband, and said sotto voce, "Doyou think they'll care to come NOW? They probably have heard all aboutit. "

"Not how it affects me, " returned Sir Robert, in the same tone; "andas they might think that because Frank was with them on that Californiamountain we would believe it had something to do with Richardsoninvolving the Bank in that wretched company, we must really INSIST upontheir coming. "

"Bradley!" echoed the Hon. Captain FitzHarry, overhearing the nameduring a late forage on the sideboard, "Bradley!--there was an awfullypretty American at Biarritz, travelling with a cousin, I think--a MissMason or Macy. Those sort of people, you know, who have a companionas pretty as themselves; bring you down with the other barrel if onemisses--eh? Very clever, both of them, and hardly any accent. "

"Mr. Bradley was a very dear friend of Frank's, and most kind to him, "said Lady Mainwaring, gravely. 

"Didn't know there WAS a Mr. Bradley, really. He didn't come to thefore, then, " said the unabashed Captain. "Deuced hard to follow up thoseAmerican husbands!"

"And their wives wouldn't thank you, if you did, " said Lady GriseldaArmiger, with a sweet smile. 

"If it is the Mrs. Bradley I mean, " said Lady Canterbridge from thelower end of the table, looking up from her letter, "who looks a littlelike Mrs. Summertree, and has a pretty cousin with her who has very goodfrocks, I'm afraid you won't be able to get her down here. She's bookedwith engagements for the next six weeks. She and her cousin made all therunning at Grigsby Royal, and she has quite deposed that other Americanbeauty in Northforeland's good graces. She regularly affiche'd him, andit is piteous to see him follow her about. No, my dear; I don't believethey'll come to any one of less rank than a Marquis. If they did, I'msure Canterbridge would have had them at Buckenthorpe already. "

"I wonder if there was ever anything in Frank's admiration of this MissMacy?" said Lady Mainwaring a few moments later, lingering beside herhusband in his study. 

"I really don't know, " said Sir Robert, abstractedly: "his letters werefilled with her praises, and Richardson thought--"

"Pray don't mention that man's name again, " said Lady Mainwaring, withthe first indication of feeling she had shown. "I shouldn't trust him. "

"But why do you ask?" returned her husband. 

Lady Mainwaring was silent for a moment. "She is very rich, I believe, "she said slowly. "At least, Frank writes that some neighbors of theirswhom he met in the Engadine told him they had sold the site of thatabsurd cottage where he was ill for some extravagant sum. "

"My dear Geraldine, " said the old man, affectionately, taking his wife'shand in his own, that now for the first time trembled, "if you have anyhope based upon what you are thinking of now, let it be the last andleast. You forget that Paget told us that with the best care he couldscarcely ensure Frank's return to perfect health. Even if God in hismercy spared him long enough to take my place, what girl would bewilling to tie herself to a man doomed to sickness and poverty? Hardlythe one you speak of, my dear. "

Lady Canterbridge proved a true prophet. Mrs. Bradley and Miss Macydid not come, regretfully alleging a previous engagement made on thecontinent with the Duke of Northforeland and the Marquis of Dungeness;but the unexpected and apocryphal husband DID arrive. "I myself have notseen my wife and cousin since I returned from my visit to your sonin Switzerland. I am glad they were able to amuse themselves withoutwaiting for me at a London hotel, though I should have preferred tohave met them here. " Sir Robert and Lady Mainwaring were courteous butslightly embarrassed. Lady Canterbridge, who had come to the station inbored curiosity, raised her clear blue eyes to his. He did not look likea fool, a complaisant or fashionably-cynical husband--this well-dressed, well-mannered, but quietly and sympathetically observant man. Did hereally care for his selfish wife? was it perfect trust or some absurdTransatlantic custom? She did not understand him. It wearied her and sheturned her eyes indifferently away. Bradley, a little irritated, he knewnot why, at the scrutiny of this tall, handsome, gentlemanly-lookingwoman, who, however, in spite of her broad shoulders and narrow hipspossessed a refined muliebrity superior to mere womanliness of outline, turned slightly towards Sir Robert. "Lady Canterbridge, Frank's cousin, "explained Sir Robert, hesitatingly, as if conscious of some vagueawkwardness. Bradley and Lady Canterbridge both bowed, --possibly thelatter's salutation was the most masculine, --and Bradley, eventuallyforgetting her presence, plunged into an earnest, sympathetic, andintelligent account of the condition in which he found the invalid atSt. Moritz. The old man at first listened with an almost perfunctorycourtesy and a hesitating reserve; but as Bradley was lapsing intoequal reserve and they drove up to the gates of the quadrangle, heunexpectedly warmed with a word or two of serious welcome. Looking upwith a half-unconscious smile, Bradley met Lady Canterbridge's examiningeyes. 

The next morning, finding an opportunity to be alone with him, Bradley, with a tactful mingling of sympathy and directness informed his hostthat he was cognizant of the disaster that had overtaken the Bank, anddelicately begged him to accept any service he could render him. "Pardonme, " he said, "if I speak as plainly to you as I would to your son: myfriendship for him justifies an equal frankness to any one he loves; butI should not intrude upon your confidence if I did not believe that myknowledge and assistance might be of benefit to you. Although I did notsell my lands to Richardson or approve of his methods, " he continued, "Ifear it was some suggestion of mine that eventually induced him to formthe larger and more disastrous scheme that ruined the Bank. So you see, "he added lightly, "I claim a right to offer you my services. " Touchedby Bradley's sincerity and discreet intelligence, Sir Robert was equallyfrank. During the recital of his Californian investments--a chronicleof almost fatuous speculation and imbecile enterprise--Bradley wasprofoundly moved at the naive ignorance of business and hopelessingenuousness of this old habitue of a cynical world and an intriguingand insincere society, to whom no scheme had been too wild foracceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the gravevisions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticatedsimplicity: what he had considered as the "boyishness" of immaturity wasthe taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon thisblood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had for centuries waxed andfattened. 

Bradley was true to his promise of assistance, and with the aid of twoor three of his brother-millionaires, whose knowledge of the resourcesof the locality was no less powerful and convincing than the securityof their actual wealth, managed to stay the immediate action of thecatastrophe until the affairs of the Sierran Land and Timber Companycould be examined and some plan of reconstruction arranged. 

During this interval of five months, in which the credit of Sir RobertMainwaring was preserved with the secret of his disaster, Bradley was afrequent and welcome visitor to Oldenhurst. Apart from his strange andchivalrous friendship for the Mainwarings--which was as incomprehensibleto Sir Robert as Sir Robert's equally eccentric and Quixoticspeculations had been to Bradley--he began to feel a singular and weirdfascination for the place. A patient martyr in the vast London house hehad taken for his wife and cousin's amusement, he loved to escape theloneliness of its autumn solitude or the occasional greater lonelinessof his wife's social triumphs. The handsome, thoughtful man whosometimes appeared at the foot of his wife's table or melted away likea well-bred ghost in the hollow emptiness of her brilliant receptions, piqued the languid curiosity of a few. A distinguished personage, knownfor his tactful observance of convenances that others forgot, had made apoint of challenging this gentlemanly apparition, and had followed it upwith courteous civilities, which led to exchange of much respect but noincrease of acquaintance. He had even spent a week at Buckenthorpe, withCanterbridge in the coverts and Lady Canterbridge in the music-room andlibrary. He had returned more thoughtful, and for some time afterwas more frequent in his appearances at home, and more earnest in hisrenewed efforts to induce his wife to return to America with him. 

"You'll never be happy anywhere but in California, among those commonpeople, " she replied; "and while I was willing to share your povertyTHERE, " she added dryly, "I prefer to share your wealth among civilizedladies and gentlemen. Besides, " she continued, "we must consider Louise. She is as good as engaged to Lord Dunshunner, and I do not intend thatyou shall make a mess of her affairs here as you did in California. "

It was the first time he had heard of Lord Dunshunner's proposals; itwas the first allusion she had ever made to Louise and Mainwaring. 

Meantime, the autumn leaves had fallen silently over the broad terracesof Oldenhurst with little changes to the fortunes of the great houseitself. The Christmas house-party included Lady Canterbridge, whosehusband was still detained at Homburg in company with Dunshunner;and Bradley, whose wife and cousin lingered on the continent. He wasslightly embarrassed when Lady Canterbridge turned to him one afternoonas they were returning from the lake and congratulated him abruptly uponLouise's engagement. 

"Perhaps you don't care to be congratulated, " she said, as he did notimmediately respond, "and you had as little to do with it as with thatother? It is a woman's function. "

"What other?" echoed Bradley. 

Lady Canterbridge slightly turned her handsome head towards him as shewalked unbendingly at his side. "Tell me how you manage to keepyour absolute simplicity so fresh. Do you suppose it wasn't known atOldenhurst that Frank had quite compromised himself with Miss Macy overthere?"

"It certainly was not known 'over there, '" said Bradley, curtly. 

"Don't be angry with me. "

Such an appeal from the tall, indifferent woman at his side, soconfidently superior to criticism, and uttered in a low tone, made himsmile, albeit uneasily. 

"I only meant to congratulate you, " she continued carelessly. "Dunshunner is not a bad sort of fellow, and will come into a goodproperty some day. And then, society is so made up of caprice, justnow, that it is well for your wife's cousin to make the most of heropportunities while they last. She is very popular now; but nextseason--" Seeing that Bradley remained silent, she did not finishthe sentence, but said with her usual abruptness, "Do you know a MissAraminta Eulalie Sharpe?"

Bradley started. Could any one recognize honest Minty in the hopelessvulgarity which this fine lady had managed to carelessly import into hername? His eye kindled. 

"She is an old friend of mine, Lady Canterbridge. "

"How fortunate! Then I can please you by giving you good news of her. She is the coming sensation. They say she is very rich, but quite one ofthe people, you know: in fact, she makes no scruples of telling you herfather was a blacksmith, I think, and takes the dear old man with hereverywhere. FitzHarry raves about her, and says her naivete is somethingtoo delicious. She is regularly in with some of the best people already. Lady Dungeness has taken her up, and Northforeland is only waiting foryour cousin's engagement to be able to go over decently. Shall I askher to Buckenthorpe?--come, now, as an apology for my rudeness to yourcousin?" She was very womanly now in spite of her high collar, herstraight back, and her tightly-fitting jacket, as she stood theresmiling. Suddenly, her smile faded; she drew her breath in quickly. 

She had caught a glimpse of his usually thoughtful face and eyes, nowilluminated with some pleasant memory. 

"Thank you, " he said smilingly, yet with a certain hesitation, ashe thought of The Lookout and Araminta Eulalie Sharpe, and tried toreconcile them with the lady before him. "I should like it very much. "

"Then you have known Miss Sharpe a long time?" continued LadyCanterbridge as they walked on. 

"While we were at The Lookout she was our nearest neighbor. "

"And I suppose your wife will consider it quite proper for you tosee her again at my house?" said Lady Canterbridge, with a return ofconventional levity. 

"Oh! quite, " said Bradley. 

They had reached the low Norman-arched side-entrance to the quadrangle. As Bradley swung open the bolt-studded oaken door to let her pass, shesaid carelessly, --

"Then you are not coming in now?"

"No; I shall walk a little longer. "

"And I am quite forgiven?"

"I am thanking you very much, " he said, smiling directly into her blueeyes. She lowered them, and vanished into the darkness of the passage. 

The news of Minty's success was further corroborated by Sir Robert, who later that evening called Bradley into the study. "Frank has beenwriting from Nice that he has renewed his acquaintance with some oldCalifornian friends of yours--a Mr. And Miss Sharpe. Lady Canterbridgesays that they are well known in London to some of our friends, but Iwould like to ask you something about them. Lady Mainwaring was on thepoint of inviting them here when I received a letter from Mr. Sharpeasking for a BUSINESS interview. Pray who is this Sharpe?"

"You say he writes for a BUSINESS interview?" asked Bradley. 

"Yes. "

Bradley hesitated for a moment and then said quietly, "Perhaps, then, Iam justified in a breach of confidence to him, in order to answer yourquestion. He is the man who has assumed all the liabilities of theSierran Land and Timber Company to enable the Bank to resume payment. But he did it on the condition that you were never to know it. For therest, he was a blacksmith who made a fortune, as Lady Canterbridge willtell you. "

"How very odd--how kind, I mean. I should like to have been civil to himon Frank's account alone. "

"I should see him on business and be civil to him afterwards. " SirRobert received the American's levity with his usual seriousness. 

"No, they must come here for Christmas. His daughter is--?"

"Araminta Eulalie Sharpe, " said Bradley, in defiant memory of LadyCanterbridge. 

Sir Robert winced audibly. "I shall rely on you, my dear boy, to help memake it pleasant for them, " he said. 

Christmas came, but not Minty. It drew a large contingent fromOldenhurst to the quaint old church, who came to view the green-wreathedmonuments, and walls spotted with crimson berries, as if with the bloodof former Oldenhurst warriors, and to impress the wondering villagerswith the ineffable goodness and bounty of the Creator towards the Lordsof Oldenhurst and their friends. Sir Robert, a little gouty, kept thehouse, and Bradley, somewhat uneasy at the Sharpes' absence, but moredistrait with other thoughts, wandered listlessly in the long library. At the lower angle it was embayed into the octagon space of a formertower, which was furnished as a quaint recess for writing or study, pierced through its enormous walls with a lance-shaped window, hidden byheavy curtains. He was gazing abstractedly at the melancholy eyes of SirPercival, looking down from the dark panel opposite, when he heard thecrisp rustle of a skirt. Lady Canterbridge tightly and stiffly buttonedin black from her long narrow boots to her slim, white-collared neck, stood beside him with a prayer-book in her ungloved hand. Bradleycolored quickly; the penetrating incense of the Christmas boughsand branches that decked the walls and ceilings, mingled with someindefinable intoxicating aura from the woman at his side, confused hissenses. He seemed to be losing himself in some forgotten past coevalwith the long, quaintly-lighted room, the rich hangings, and the paintedancestor of this handsome woman. He recovered himself with an effort, and said, "You are going to church?"

"I may meet them coming home; it's all the same. You like HIM?" she saidabruptly, pointing to the portrait. "I thought you did not care for thatsort of man over there. "

"A man like that must have felt the impotence of his sacrifice before hedied, and that condoned everything, " said Bradley, thoughtfully. 

"Then you don't think him a fool? Bob says it was a fair bargain fora title and an office, and that by dying he escaped trial and theconfiscation of what he had. "

Bradley did not reply. 

"I am disturbing your illusions again. Yet I rather like them. I thinkyou are quite capable of a sacrifice--perhaps you know what it isalready. "

He felt that she was looking at him; he felt equally that he could notrespond with a commonplace. He was silent. 

"I have offended you again, Mr. Bradley, " she said. "Please beChristian, and pardon me. You know this is a season of peace andgoodwill. " She raised her blue eyes at the same moment to the Christmasdecorations on the ceiling. They were standing before the parted draperyof the lance window. Midway between the arched curtains hung a sprayof mistletoe--the conceit of a mischievous housemaid. Their eyes met itsimultaneously. 

Bradley had Lady Canterbridge's slim, white hand in his own. The nextmoment voices were heard in the passage, and the door nearly opposite tothem opened deliberately. The idea of their apparent seclusion and halfcompromising attitude flashed through the minds of both at the sametime. Lady Canterbridge stepped quickly backward, drawing Bradley withher, into the embrasure of the window; the folds of the curtain swungtogether and concealed them from view. 

The door had been opened by the footman, ushering in a broad-shoulderedman, who was carrying a travelling-bag and an umbrella in his hand. Dropping into an arm-chair before the curtain, he waved away thefootman, who, even now, mechanically repeated a previously vain attemptto relieve the stranger of his luggage. 

"You leave that 'ere grip sack where it is, young man, and tell SirRobert Mainwaring that Mr. Demander Sharpe, of Californy, wishes tosee him--on business--on BUSINESS, do ye' hear? You hang onter thatsentence--on BUSINESS! it's about ez much ez you kin carry, I reckon, and leave that grip sack alone. "

From behind the curtain Bradley made a sudden movement to go forward;but Lady Canterbridge--now quite pale but collected--restrained him witha warning movement of her hand. Sir Robert's stick and halting step werenext heard along the passage, and he entered the room. His simple andcourteous greeting of the stranger was instantly followed by a renewedattack upon the "grip sack, " and a renewed defence of it by thestranger. 

"No, Sir Robert, " said the voice argumentatively, "this yer's a BUSINESSinterview, and until it's over--if YOU please--we'll remain ez we air. I'm Demander Sharpe, of Californy, and I and my darter, Minty, oncet hadthe pleasure of knowing your boy over thar, and of meeting him agin theother day at Nice. "

"I think, " said Sir Robert's voice gently, "that these are not the onlyclaims you have upon me. I have only a day or two ago heard fromMr. Bradley that I owe to your generous hands and your disinterestedliberality the saving of my California fortune. "

There was the momentary sound of a pushed-back chair, a stamping offeet, and then Mr. Sharpe's voice rose high with the blacksmith's oldquerulous aggrieved utterance. 

"So it's that finikin', conceited Bradley agin--that's giv' me away!Ef that man's all-fired belief in his being the Angel Gabriel and Dan'lWebster rolled inter one don't beat anythin'! I suppose that high-flyin'jay-bird kalkilated to put you and me and my gal and yer boy interharness for his four hoss chariot and he sittin' kam on the box drivin'us! Why don't he tend to his own business, and look arter his ownconcerns--instead o' leaving Jinny Bradley and Loo Macy dependenton Kings and Queens and titled folks gen'rally, and he, Jim Bradley, philanderin' with another man's wife--while that thar man is hard atwork tryin' to make a honest livin' fer his wife, buckin' agin faro an'the tiger gen'rally at Monaco! Eh? And that man a-inter-meddlin' withme! Ef, " continued the voice, dropped to a tone of hopeless moralconviction, "ef there's a man I mor'aly despise--it's that finikin' JimBradley. "

"You quite misunderstand me, my dear sir, " said Sir Robert's hurriedvoice; "he told me you had pledged him to secrecy, and he only revealedit to explain why you wished to see me. "

There was a grunt of half-placated wrath from Sharpe, and then the voiceresumed, but more deliberately, "Well, to come back to business: you'vegot a boy, Francis, and I've got a darter, Araminty. They've sortertaken a shine to each other and they want to get married. Mind yer--waita moment!--it wasn't allus so. No, sir; when my gal Araminty first seedyour boy in Californy she was poor, and she didn't kalkilate to getinter anybody's family unbeknownst or on sufferance. Then she got richand you got poor; and then--hold on a minit!--she allows, does my girl, that there ain't any nearer chance o' their making a match than theywere afore, for she isn't goin' to hev it said that she married your sonfur the chance of some day becomin' Lady Mainwaring. "

"One moment, Mr. Sharpe, " said the voice of the Baronet, gravely: "I amboth flattered and pained by what I believe to be the kindly object ofyour visit. Indeed, I may say I have gathered a suspicion of what mightbe the sequel of this most unhappy acquaintance of my son and yourdaughter; but I cannot believe that he has kept you in ignorance of hisunfortunate prospects and his still more unfortunate state of health. "

"When I told ye to hold on a minit, " continued the blacksmith's voice, with a touch of querulousness in its accent, "that was jist wot I wascomin' to. I knowed part of it from my own pocket, she knowed the restof it from his lip and the doctors she interviewed. And then she says tome--sez my girl Minty--Pop, ' she sez, 'he's got nothing to live for nowbut his title, and that he never may live to get, so that I think ye kinjist go, Pop, and fairly and squarely, as a honest man, ask his fatherto let me hev him. ' Them's my darter's own words, Sir Robert, and whenI tell yer that she's got a million o' dollars to back them, ye'll knowshe means business, every time. "

"Did Francis know that you were coming here?"

"Bless ye, no! he don't know that she would have him. Ef it kem to that, he ain't even asked her! She wouldn't let him until she was sure ofYOU. "

"Then you mean to say there is no engagement?"

"In course not. I reckoned to do the square thing first with ye. "

The halting step of the Baronet crossing the room was heard distinctly. He had stopped beside Sharpe. "My dear Mr. Sharpe, " he said, in atroubled voice, "I cannot permit this sacrifice. It is too--too great!"

"Then, " said Sharpe' s voice querulously, "I'm afraid we must do withoutyour permission. I didn't reckon to find a sort o' British Jim Bradleyin you. If YOU can't permit my darter to sacrifice herself by marryin'your son, I can't permit her to sacrifice her love and him by NOTmarryin' him. So I reckon this yer interview is over. "

"I am afraid we are both old fools, Mr. Sharpe; but--we will talk thisover with Lady Mainwaring. Come--" There was evidently a slight strugglenear the chair over some inanimate object. But the next moment theBaronet's voice rose, persuasively, "Really, I must insist uponrelieving you of your bag and umbrella. "

"Well, if you'll let me telegraph 'yes' to Minty, I don't care if yerdo. "

When the room was quiet again, Lady Canterbridge and James Bradleysilently slipped from the curtain, and, without a word, separated at thedoor. 

There was a merry Christmas at Oldenhurst and at Nice. But whetherMinty's loving sacrifice was accepted or not, or whether she everreigned as Lady Mainwaring, or lived an untitled widow, I cannotsay. But as Oldenhurst still exists in all its pride and power, it ispresumed that the peril that threatened its fortunes was averted, and that if another heroine was not found worthy of a frame in itspicture-gallery, at least it had been sustained as of old by devotionand renunciation.