A Touch of Sun and Other Stories

by

Mary Hallock Foote

CONTENTS

A TOUCH OF SUN

THE MAID'S PROGRESS

PILGRIMS TO MECCA

THE HARSHAW BRIDE

A TOUCH OF SUN

I

The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequentialchest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of theAsgard group, a famous mining property of northern California. 

The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric titles on thewestern slope of the foot-hills, --land enough for the preservation of anatural park within its own boundaries where fire-lines were cleared, forest-trees respected, and roads kept up. Wherever the company erected aboard fence, gate, or building, the same was methodically painted a colorknown as "monopoly brown. " The most conspicuous of these objects croppedout on the sunset dip of the property where the woods for twenty yearshad been cut, and the Sacramento valley surges up in heat and glare, withyearly visitations of malaria. 

Higher than the buildings in brown, a gray-shingled bungalow ranged itselfon the lap of its broad lawns against a slope of orchard tops climbing tothe dark environment of the forest. Not the original forest: of that onlythree stark pines were left, which rose one hundred feet out of a gulchbelow the house and lent their ancient majesty to the modern uses ofelectric wires and telephone lines. Their dreaming tops were in the sky;their feet were in the sluicings of the stamp-mill that reared its longbrown back in a semi-recumbent posture, resting one elbow on the hill; andbeneath the valley smouldered, a pale mirage by day, by night a vision ofcolor transcendent and rich as the gates of the Eternal City. 

At half past five the night watchman, on his way from town, stopped atthe superintendent's gate, ran up the blazing path, and thrust a newspaperbetween the dark blue canvas curtains that shaded the entrance of theporch. For hours the house had slept behind its heat defenses, everyshutter closed, yards of piazza blind and canvas awning fastened down. Thesun, a ball of fire, went slowly down the west. Rose-vines drooped againstthe hanging lattices, printing their watery lines of split bamboo witha shadow-pattern of leaf and flower. The whole house-front was deckedwith dead roses, or roses blasted in full bloom, as if to celebrate withappropriate insignia the passing of the hottest day of the year. 

Half-way down the steps the watchman stopped, surprised by a voice frombehind the curtains. He came back in answer to his name. 

A thin white hand parted the curtain an inch or two. There was the flickerof a fan held against the light. 

"Oh, Hughson, will you tell Mr. Thorne that I am here? He doesn't know Ihave come. "

"Tell him that Mrs. Thorne is home?" the man translated slowly. 

"Yes. He does not expect me. You will tell him at once, please?"

"Yes, ma'am. "

The curtain was fastened again from inside. A woman's step went restlesslyup and down, up and down the long piazza floors, now muffled on a rug, nowlight on a matting, or distinct on the bare boards. 

Later a soft Oriental voice inquired, "Wha' time Missa Tho'ne wanta dinna?"

"The usual time, Ito, " came the answer; "make no difference for me. "

"Lika tea--coffee--after dinna?"

"Tea--iced. Have you some now? Oh, bring it, please!"

After an interval: "Has Mr. Thorne been pretty well?"

"I think. "

"It is very hot. How is your kitchen--any better than it was?"

"Missa Tho'ne fixa more screen; all open now, thank you. "

"Take these things into my dressing-room. No; there will be no trunk. Ishall go back in a few days. "

The gate clashed to. A stout man in a blaze of white duck came up thepath, lifting his cork helmet slightly to air the top of his head. As heapproached it could be seen that his duck was of a modified whiteness, andthat his beard, even in that forcing weather, could not be less than a twodays' growth. He threw his entire weight on the steps one by one, as hemounted them slowly. The curtains were parted for him from within. 

"Well, Margaret?"

"Well, dear old man! How hot you look! _Why_ do you not carry an umbrella?"

"Because I haven't got you here to make me. What brought you back in suchweather? Where is your telegram?"

"I did not telegraph. There was no need. I simply had to speak to you atonce--about something that could not be written. "

"Well, it's good to have a look at you again. But you are going straightback, you know. Can't take any chances on such weather as this. "

Mr. Thorne sank copiously into a piazza chair, and pulled forward anotherfor his wife. 

She sat on the edge of it, smiling at him with wistful satisfaction. Herprofile had a delicate, bird-like slant. Pale, crisped auburn hair powderedwith gray, hair that looked like burnt-out ashes, she wore swept back froma small, tense face, full of fine lines and fleeting expressions. She hadtaken off her high, close neckwear, and the wanness of her throat showedabove a collarless shirt-waist. 

"Don't look at me; I am a wreck!" she implored, with a little exhaustedlaugh. "I wonder where my keys are? I must get on something cool beforedinner. "

"Ito has all the keys somewhere. Ito's a gentleman. He takes beautiful careof me, only he won't let me drink as much _shasta_ as I want. What is that?Iced tea? Bad, bad before dinner! I'm going to watch _you_ now. You are notlooking a bit well. Is there any of that decoction left? Well, it is bad;gets on the nerves, too much of it. The problem of existence here is, Whatshall we drink, and how much of it _can_ we drink?"

Mrs. Thorne laughed out a little sigh. "I have brought you a problem. Butwe will talk when it is cooler. Don't you--don't you shave but twice a weekwhen I am away, Henry?"

"I shave every day, when I think of it. I never go anywhere, and I don'thave anybody here if I can possibly avoid it. It is all a man can do tolive and be up to his work. "

"I know; it's frightful to work in such weather. How the mill roars! Itstarts the blood to hear it. Last spring it sounded like a cataract; now itroars like heat behind furnace doors. Which is your room now?"

"O Lord! I sleep anywhere; begin in my bed generally and end of the piazzafloor. It will be the grass if this keeps on. "

"Mrs. Thorne continued to laugh spasmodically at her husband's carelessspeeches, not at what he said so much as through content in his familiarway of saying things. Under their light household talk, graver, questioninglooks were exchanged, the unappeased glances of friends long separated, whorealize on meeting again that letters have told them nothing. 

"Why didn't you write me about this terrible heat?"

"Why didn't you write _me_ that you were not well?"

"I am well. "

"You don't look it--anything but. "

"I am always ghastly after a journey. It isn't a question of health thatbrought me. But--never mind. Ring for Ito, will you? I want my keys. "

At dinner she looked ten years younger, sitting opposite him in her summerylawns and laces. She tasted the cold wine soup, but ate nothing, watchingher husband's appetite with the mixed wonder and concern that thirtyyears' knowledge of its capacities had not diminished. He studied her facemeanwhile; he was accustomed to reading faces, and hers he knew by line andprecept. He listened to her choked little laughs and hurried speeches. Allher talk was mere postponement; she was fighting for time. Hence he arguedthat the trouble which had sent her flying home to him from the mountainswas not fancy-bred. Of her imaginary troubles she was ready enough tospeak. 

The moon had risen, a red, dry-weather moon, when they walked out intothe garden and climbed the slope under low orchard boughs. The trees wereyoung, too quickly grown; like child mothers, they had lost their naturalsymmetry, overburdened with hasty fruition. Each slender parent trunk wasthe centre of a host of artificial props, which saved the sinking boughsfrom breaking. Under one of these low green tents they stopped and handledthe great fruit that fell at a touch. 

"How everything rushes to maturity here! The roses blossom and witherthe same hour. The peaches burst before they ripen. Don't you think itoppresses one, all this waste fertility, such an excess of life and goodliving, one season crowding upon another? How shall we get rid of all thesekindly fruits of the earth?"

She did not wait for an answer to her morbid questions. They moved on upa path between hedges of sweet peas going to seed, and blackberry-vinescovered with knots of fruit dried in their own juices. A wall of giganticSouthern cane hid the boundary fence, and above it the night-black pines ofthe forest towered, their breezy monotone answering the roar of the hundredstamps below the hill. 

A few young pines stood apart on a knoll, a later extension of the garden, ungraded and covered with pine-needles. In the hollow places native shrubs, surprised by irrigation, had made an unwonted summer's growth. 

Here, in the blanching moon, stood a tent with both flaps thrown back. Awind of coolness drew across the hill; it lifted one of the tent-curtainsmysteriously; its touch was sad and searching. 

Mrs. Thorne put back the canvas and stepped inside. She saw a foldingcamp-cot stripped of bedding, a dresser with half-open drawers thatdisclosed emptiness, a dusty book-rack standing on the floor. The littlemirror on the tent-pole, hung too high for her own reflection, held adarkling picture of a pine-bough against a patch of stars. She sat on theedge of the cot and picked up a discarded necktie, sawing it across herknee mechanically to free it from the dust. Her husband placed himselfbeside her. His weight brought down the mattress and rocked her against hisshoulder; he put his arm around her, and she gave way to a little sob. 

"When has he written to you?" she asked. "Since he went down?"

"I think so. Let me see! When did you hear last?"

"I have brought his last letter with me. I wondered if he had told you. "

"I have heard nothing--nothing in particular. What is it?"

"The inevitable woman. "

"She has come at last, has she? Come to stay?"

"He is engaged to her. "

Mr. Thorne breathed his astonishment in a low whistle. "You don't like it?"he surmised at once. 

"Like it! If it were merely a question of liking! She is impossible. Sheknows it, her people know it, and they have not told him. It remains"--

"What is the girl's name?"

"Henry, she is not a girl! That is, she is a girl forced into prematurewomanhood, like all the fruits of this hotbed climate. She is that MissBenedet whom you helped, whom you saved--how many years ago? When Willy wasa schoolboy. "

"Well, she _was_ saved, presumably. "

"Saved from what, and by a total stranger!"

"She made no mistake in selecting the stranger. I can testify to that; andshe was as young as he, my dear. "

"A girl is never as young as a boy of the same age. She is a woman now, andshe has taken his all--everything a man can give to his first--and told himnothing!"

"Are you sure it's the same girl? There are other Benedets. "

"She is the one. His letter fixes it beyond a question--so innocently hefastens her past upon her! And he says, 'She is "a woman like a dewdrop. "'I wonder if he knows what he is quoting, and what had happened to _that_woman!"

"Dewdrops don't linger long in the sun of California. But she wasundeniably the most beautiful creature this or any other sun ever shoneon. "

"And he is the sweetest, sanest, cleanest-hearted boy, and the mostinnocent of what a woman may go through and still be fair outside!"

"Why, that is why she likes him. It speaks well for her, I think, that shehankers after that kind of a boy. "

"It speaks volumes for what she lacks herself! Don't misunderstand me. I hope I am not without charity for what is done and never can beundone, --though charity is hardly the virtue one would hope to need inwelcoming a son's wife. It is her ghastly silence now that condemns her. "

Mr. Thorne heaved a sigh, and changed his feet on the gritty tent floor. He stooped and picked up some small object on which he had stepped, acollar-stud trodden flat. He rolled it in his fingers musingly. 

"She may be getting up her courage to tell him in her own time and way. "

"The time has gone by when she could have told him honorably. She shouldhave stopped the very first word on his lips. "

"She couldn't do that, you know, and be human. She couldn't be expected tospare him at such a cost as that. Mighty few men would be worth it. "

"If he wasn't worth it she could have let him go. And the family! Think oftheir accepting his proposal in silence. Why, can they even be married, Henry, without some process of law?"

"Heaven knows! I don't know how far the other thing had gone--far enough tomake questions awkward. "

Husband and wife remained seated side by side on the son's deserted bed. The shape of each was disconsolately outlined to the other against thetent's illumined walls. Now a wind-swayed branch of manzanita rasped thecanvas, and cast upon it shadows of its moving leaves. 

"It's pretty rough on quiet old folks like us, with no money to get us intotrouble, " said Mr. Thorne. "The boy is not a beauty, he's not a swell. Heis just a plain, honest boy with a good working education. If you judge awoman, as some say you can, by her choice of men, she shouldn't be very farout of the way. "

"It is very certain you cannot judge a man by his choice of women. "

"You cannot judge a boy by the women that get hold of him. But Willy isnot such a babe as you think. He's a deuced quiet sort, but he's notbeen knocking around by himself these ten years, at school and collegeand vacations, without picking up an idea or two--possibly about women. Experience, I grant, be probably lacks; but he has the true-bred instinct. We always have trusted him so far; I'm willing to trust him now. If thereare things he ought to know about this woman, leave him to find them outfor himself. "

"After he has married her! And you don't even know whether a marriage ispossible without some sort of shuffling or concealment; do you?"

"I don't, but they probably do. Her family aren't going to get themselvesinto that kind of a scrape. "

"I have no opinion whatever of the family. I think they would accept anykind of a compromise that money can buy. "

"Very likely, and so would we if we had a daughter"--

"Why, we _have_ a daughter! It is our daughter, all the daughter we shallever call ours, that you are talking about. And to think of the girls andgirls he might have had! Lovely girls, without a flaw--a flaw! She willfall to pieces in his hand. She is like a broken vase put together and seton the shelf to look at. "

"Now we are losing our sense of proportion. We must sleep on this, or itwill blot out the whole universe for us. "

"It has already for me. I haven't a shadow of faith in anything left. "

"And I haven't read the paper. Suppose the boy were in Cuba now!"

"I wish he were! It is a judgment on me for wanting to save him up, forinsisting that the call was not for him. "

"That's just it, you see. You have to trust a man to know his own call. Whether it's love or war, he is the one who has got to answer. "

"But you will write to him to-morrow, Henry? He must be saved, if the truthcan save him. Think of the awakening!"

"My dear, if he loves her there will be no awakening. If there is, he willhave to take his dose like other men. There is nothing in the truth thatcan save him, though I agree with you that he ought to know it--from her. "

"If you had only told her your name, Henry! Then she would have had afingerpost to warn her off our ground. To think what you did for her, andhow you are repaid!"

"It was a very foolish thing I did for her; I wasn't proud of it. That wasone reason why I did not tell her my name. "

Mr. Thorne removed his weight from the cot. The warped wires twanged backinto place. 

"Come, Maggie, we are too old not to trust in the Lord--or something. Anyhow, it's cooler. I believe we shall sleep to-night. "

"And haven't I murdered sleep for you, you poor old man? What a thing itis to have nerve and no nerves! I know you feel just as wrecked as I do. Iwish you would say so. I want it said to the uttermost. If I could but--ouronly boy--our boy of 'highest hopes'! You remember the dear old Latin wordsin his first 'testimonials'?"

"They must have been badly disappointed in their girl, and I suppose theyhad their 'hopes, ' too. "

"They should not drag another into the pit, one too innocent to haveimagined such treachery. "

"I wouldn't make too much of his innocence. He is all right so far as weknow; he's got precious little excuse for not being: but there is no suchgulf between any two young humans; there can't be, especially when one is aman. Take my hand. There's a step there. "

Two shapes in white, with shadows preposterously lengthening, went down thehill. The long, dark house was open now to the night. 

 * * * * *

There is no night in the "stilly" sense at a mine. 

The mill glared through all its windows from the gulch. Sentinel lightskept watch on top. The hundred stamps pounded on. If they ceased a moment, there followed the sob of the pump, or the clang of a truck-load of drillsdumped on the floor of the hoisting-works, or the thunder of rock in theiron-bound ore-bins. All was silence on the hill; but a wakeful figurewrapped in white went up and down the empty porches, light as a dead leafon the wind. It was the mother, wasting her night in grievous thinking, sighing with weariness, pining for sleep, dreading the day. How should theypresume to tell that woman's story, knowing her only through one morbidchapter of her earliest youth, which they had stumbled upon without the keyto it, or any knowledge of its sequel? She longed to feel that they mightbe merciful and not tell it. She coveted happiness for her son, and in herheart was prepared for almost any surrender that would purchase it for him. If the lure were not so great! If the woman were not so blinding fair, why, then one might find a virtue in excusing her, in condoning her silence, even. But, clothed in that power, to have pretended innocence as well!

The roar of the stamp-heads deadened her hearing of the night's subtlernoises. Her thoughts went grinding on, crushing the hard rock ofcircumstance, but incapable of picking out the grains of gold therein. Later siftings might discover them, but she was reasoning now under toogreat human pressure for delicate analysis. 

She saw the planets set and the night-mist cloak the valley. By fouro'clock daybreak had put out the stars. She went to her room then andfell asleep, awakening after the heat had begun, when the house was againdarkened for the day's siege. 

She was still postponing, wandering through the darkened rooms, peeringinto closets and bureau drawers to see, from force of habit, how Itodischarged his trust. 

At luncheon she asked her husband if he had written. He made a gestureexpressing his sense of the hopelessness of the situation in general. 

"You know how I came by my knowledge, and how little it amounts to as aquestion of facts. "

"Henry, how can you trifle so! You believe, just as I do, that such factswould wreck any marriage. And you are not the only one who knows them. Ithink your knowledge was providentially given you for the saving of yourson. "

"My son is a man. _I_ can't save him. And take my word for it, he will goall lengths now before he will be saved. "

"Let him go, then, with his eyes open, not blindfold, in jeopardy of othermen's tongues. "

Mr. Thorne rose uneasily. 

"Do as you think you must; but it rather seems to me that I am bound torespect that woman's secret. "

"You wish that you had not told me. "

"Well, I have, and I suppose that was part of the providence. It is in yourhands now; be as easy on her as you can. "

With a view to being "easy, " Mrs. Thorne resolved not to expatiate, but togive the story on plain lines. The result was hardly as merciful as mighthave been expected. 

 * * * * *

"DEAR WILLY, " she wrote: "Prepare yourself for a most unhappy letter [whatwoman can forego her preface?]--unhappy mother that I am, to have such amessage laid upon me. But you will understand when you have read why thecup may not pass from us. If ever again a father or a mother can help you, my son, you have us always here, poor in comfort though we are. It seemsthat the comforters of our childhood have little power over those hurtsthat come with strength of years. 

"Seven years ago this summer your father went to the city on one of hisusual trips. Everything was usual, except that at Colfax he noticed a pairof beautiful thoroughbred horses being worked over by the stablemen, and ayoung fellow standing by giving directions. The horses had been overriddenin the heat. It was such weather as we are having now. The young man, whoappeared to have everything to say about them, was of the country sportingtype, distinctly not the gentleman. In a cattle country he would have beena cowboy simply. Your father thought he might have been employed on someof the horse-breeding ranches below Auburn as a trainer of young stock. Heeven wondered if he could have stolen the animals. 

"But as the train moved out it appeared he had appropriated something ofgreater value--a young girl, also a thoroughbred. 

"It did not need the gossip of the train-hands to suggest that this was anelopement of a highly sensational kind. Father was indignant at the jokes. You know it is a saying with the common sort of people that in Californiaelopements become epidemic at certain seasons of the year--like earthquakeshocks or malaria. The man was handsome in a primitive way--worlds beneaththe girl, who was simply and tragically a lady. Father sat in the same carwith them, opposite their section. It grew upon him by degrees that she wasslowly awakening, as one who has been drugged, to a stupefied consciousnessof her situation. He thought there might still be room for help at thecrisis of her return to reason (I mean all this in a spiritual sense), andso he kept near them. They talked but little together. The girl seemedstunned, as I say, by physical exhaustion or that dawning comprehensionin which your father fancied he recognized the tragic element of thesituation. 

"The young man was outwardly self-possessed, as horsemen are, but he seemedconstrained with the girl. They had no conversation, no topics in common. He kept his place beside her, often watching her in silence, but he did notobtrude himself. She appeared to have a certain power over him, even in herhelplessness, but it was slipping from her. In her eyes, as they restedupon him in the hot daylight, your father believed that he saw a wild andgathering repulsion. So he kept near them. 

"The train was late, having waited at Colfax two hours for the EasternOverland, else they would have been left, those two, and your father--butsuch is fate!

"It was ten o'clock when they reached Oakland. He lost the pair for amoment in the crowd going aboard the boat, but saw the girl again farforward, standing alone by the rail. He strolled across the deck, notappearing to have seen her. She moved a trifle nearer; with her eyes on thewater, speaking low as if to herself, she said:--

"'I am in great danger. Will you help me? If you will, listen, but donot speak or come any nearer. Be first, if you can, to go ashore; havea carriage ready, and wait until you see me. There will be a moment, perhaps--only a moment. Do not lose it. You understand? _He_, too, willhave to get a carriage. When he comes for me I shall be gone. Tell thedriver to take me to--' she gave the number of a well-known residence onVan Ness Avenue. 

"He looked at her then, and said quietly, 'The Benedet house is closed forthe summer. '

"She hung her head at the name. 'Promise me your silence!' she implored inthe same low, careful voice. 

"'I will protect you in every way consistent with common sense, ' yourfather answered, 'but I make no promises. '

"'I am at your mercy, ' she said, and added, 'but not more than at his. '

"'Is this a case of conspiracy or violence?' your father asked. 

"She shook her head. 'I cannot accuse him. I came of my own free will. Thatis why I am helpless now. '

"'I do not see how I can help you, ' said father. 

"'You can help me to gain time. One hour is all I ask. Will you or not?'she said. 'Be quick! He is coming. '

"'I must go with you, then, ' your father answered, 'I will take you to thisaddress, but I need not tell you the house is empty. '

"'There are people in the coachman's lodge, ' she answered. Then hercompanion approached, and no more was said. 

"But the counter-elopement was accomplished as only your father couldmanage such a matter on the spur of the moment--consequences accepted withhis usual philosophy and bonhomie. If he could have foreseen _all_ theconsequences, he would not, I think, have refused to give her his name. 

"He left her at the side entrance, where she rang and was admitted by anoldish, respectable looking man, who recognized her evidently with thegreatest surprise. Then your father carried out her final order to wireNorwood Benedet, Jr. , at Burlingame, to come home that night to the houseaddress and save--she did not say whom or what; there she broke off, demanding that your father compose a message that should bring him as sureas life and death, but tell no tales. I do not know how she may have putit--these are my own words. 

"There was a paragraph in one newspaper, next morning, which gave thegirl's full name, and a fancy sketch of her elopement with the famousrange-rider Dick Malaby. This was just after the close of the cattlemen'swar in Wyoming. Malaby had fought for one of the ruined English companies. (The big owners lost everything, as you know. The country was up in armsagainst them; they could not protect their own men. ) Malaby's employerswere friends of the Benedets, and had asked a place with them for theirliegeman. He was a desperado with a dozen lives upon his head, but men likeNorwood Benedet and his set would have been sure to make a pet of him. Onecould see how it all had come about, and what a terrible publicity such aname associated with hers would give a girl for the rest of her life. 

"But money can do a great deal. Society was out of town; the newspapersthat society reads were silent. 

"It was announced a few days later that Mrs. Benedet and her daughter Helenhad gone East on their way to Europe. As Mr. Benedet's health was verybad, --this was only six months before he died, --society wondered; but ithas been accustomed to wondering about the Benedets. 

"Mrs. Benedet came home at the time of her husband's death and remained fora few months, but Helen was kept away. You know they have continually beenabroad for the last seven years, and Helen has never been seen in societyhere. When you spoke of 'Miss Benedet' I no more thought of her than ifshe had not been living. Aunt Frances met them last winter at Cannes, andMrs. Benedet said positively that they had no intention of coming back toCalifornia ever to live. Aunt Frances wondered why, with their beautifulhomes empty and going to destruction. I have told you the probable reason. Whether it still exists, God knows--or what they have done with that manand his dreadful knowledge. 

"Helen Benedet may have changed her spiritual identity since she made thatfatal journey, but she can hardly have forgotten what she did. She mustknow there is a man who, if he lives, holds her reputation at the mercy ofhis silence. Money can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything. 

"I am tempted to wish that we--your father and I--could share yourignorance, could trust as you do. Better a common awakening for us all, than that I should be the one necessity has chosen to apply the torture tomy son. 

"The misery of this will make you hate my handwriting forever. But why do Ibabble? You do not hear me. God help you, my dear!"

 * * * * *

These words, descriptive of her own emotions, Mrs. Thorne on re-readingscored out, and copied the last page. 

She did not weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbledaway from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself outat full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow. But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an attitudebefitting her years. 

The letter was absently sealed and addressed; there was no reason why theshaft should not go home. Yet she hesitated. It were better that she shouldread it to her husband first. 

The sun dropped below the piazza roof and pierced the bamboo lattices withlines and slits of fervid light. 

 "From heat to heat the day declined. "

The gardener came with wet sacking and swathed the black-glazedjardinières, in which the earth was steaming. The mine whistle blared, anda rattle of miners' carts followed, as the day-shift dispersed to town. Themine did not board its proletariate. At his usual hour the watchman bravedthe blinding path, and left the evening paper on the piazza floor. There itlay unopened. Mrs. Thorne fanned herself and looked at it. There must befighting in Cuba; she did not move to see. Other mothers' sons were dying;what was death to such squalor as hers? Sorrow is a queen, as the poetsays, and sits enthroned; but Trouble is a slave. Mothers with griefs likehers must suffer in the fetters of silence. 

When dinner was over, Ito made his nightly pilgrimage through the house, opening bedroom shutters, fastening curtains back. He drew up thepiazza-blinds, and like a stage-scene, framed in post and balustrade, andbordered with a tracery of rose-vines, the valley burst upon the view. Its cool twilight colors, its river-bed of mist, added to the depth ofdistance. Against it the white roses looked whiter, and the pink onescaught fire from the intense, great afterglow. 

The silent couple, drinking their coffee outside, drew a long mutual sigh. 

"Every day, " said Mrs. Thorne, "we wonder why we stay in such a place, andevery evening we are cajoled into thinking there never can be suchanother day. And the beauty is just as fresh every night as the heat ispreposterous by day. "

"It's a great strain on the men, " said Mr. Thorne. "We lost two of our besthands this week--threw down their tools and quit, for some tomfoolery theywouldn't have noticed a month ago. The bosses irritate the men, and themen get fighting mad in a minute. Not one of them will bear the weight ofa word, and I don't blame them. The work is hard enough in decent weather;they are dropping off sick every day. The night-shift boys can't sleep intheir hot little houses---they look as if they'd all been on a two weeks'tear. The next improvement we make I shall build a rest-house where thenight-shift can turn in and sleep inside of stone walls, without cryingbabies and scolding wives clattering around. This heat every summercosts us thousands of dollars in delays, from wear and tear and extrastrain--tempers and nerves giving out, men getting frantic and jerkingthings. I believe it breeds a form of acute mania when it keeps on likethis. "

"Yes, the point of view changes the instant the sun goes down, " said Mrs. Thorne. "I am glad I did not send my letter. Will you let me read it toyou, Henry?"

"Not now; let us enjoy the peace of God while it lasts. " He stretchedhimself on his back on the rattan lounge, and folded his hands on thatpart of his person which illustrated, geographically speaking, the greatContinental Divide. The locked hands rose softly up and down. His wifefanned him in silence. 

He turned his head and looked at her; her tired eyes, the dragged linesabout her mouth, disturbed his sense of rest. He took the fan from her andreturned her attention vigorously. "Please don't!" she said with a littleteased laugh. She rearranged the lock he had blown across her forehead. Hislarger help she needed, but he had seldom known how to pet her in littleways. 

"I think you ought to let me read it to you, " she said. "There is nothingso difficult as telling the truth, even about one's self, and when it'sanother person"--

"That's what I claim; she is the only one who can tell it. "

"This is a case of first aid to the injured, " she sighed. "I may not be asurgeon, but I must do what I can for my son. "

Then there was silence; the valley grew dimmer, the sky nearer and moreintense. 

"Yes, the night forgives the day, " after a while she said; "it evenforgets. And we forget what we were, and what we did, when we were young. What is the use of growing old if we can't learn to forgive?" she vaguelypleaded; and suddenly she began to weep. 

The rattle of a miner's cart broke in upon them; it stopped at the gate. Mr. Thorne half rose and looked out; a man was hurrying up the walk. Hewaved with his cane for him to stop where he was. Messengers at this hourwere usually bearers of bad news, and he did not choose that his wifeshould know all the troubles of the mines. 

The two men conversed together at the gate; then Mr. Thorne returned toexplain. 

"I must go over to the office a moment, and I may have to go to thepower-house. "

"Is anybody hurt?"

"Only a pump. Don't think of things, dear. Just keep cool while you can. "

"For pity's sake, there is a carriage!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed. "We aregoing to have a visitor. Fancy making calls after such a day as this!"

Mr. Thorne hurried away with manlike promptitude in the face of a socialobligation. The mistress stepped inside and gave an order to Ito. 

As she returned, a lady was coming up the walk. She was young and tall, andhad a distant effect of great elegance. She held herself very erect, andmoved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed tothe eyes of critical assemblages. Her thin black dress was too elaboratefor a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permittedthe wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings thatstarted up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thornechiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers. She retreated a little from what she felt to be a crisis of some sort, andher heart beat hard with acute agitation. 

"Mrs. Thorne?" said the visitor. "Do I need to tell you who I am? Has anyone forewarned you of such a person as Helen Benedet?"

The two women clasped hands hurriedly. The worn eyes of the elder, strainedby night-watchings, drooped under the young, dark ones, reinforced by theirsplendor of brows and lashes. 

"It was very sweet of you to come, " she said in a lifeless voice. 

"Without an invitation! You did not expect me to be quite so sweet asthat?"

Mrs. Thorne did not reply to this challenge. "You are not alone?" she askedgently. 

"I am alone, dear Mrs. Thorne. I am everything I ought not to be. But youwill not mind for an hour or two? It's a great deal to ask of you, this hotnight, I know. "

"You must not think of going back to-night. " Mrs. Thorne glanced at thehired carriage from town. "Did you come on purpose, this dreadful weather, my dear? I am very stupid, but I've only just come myself. "

"Oh, you are angelic! I heard at Colfax, as we were coming up, thatyou were at the mine. I came--by main strength. But I should have comesomehow. Have you people staying with you? You look so very gay with yourlights--you look like a whole community. "

"We have no lights here, you see; we are anything but gay. We were talkingof you only just now, " Mrs. Thorne added infelicitously. 

The other did not seem to hear her. She let her eyes rove down the lengthsof empty piazza. The close-reefed awnings revealed the stars above thetrees, dark and breezeless on the lawn. The matted rose-vines clung to thepillars motionless. 

"What a strange, dear place!" she murmured. "And there is no one here?"

"No one at all. We are quite alone. We really must have you. "

"I will stay, then. It's perfectly fearful, all I have to say to you. Ishall tire you to death. "

Ito, appearing, was ordered to send away the lady's carriage. 

"May he bring me a glass of water? Just water, please. " The tall girl, inher long black dress, moved to and fro, making a pretense of the view toescape observation. 

"What is that sloping house that roars so? It sounds like a house ofbeasts. Oh, the stamps, of course! There goes one on the bare metal. Didanything break then?"

"Oh, no, " said Mrs. Thorne; "things do not break so easily as that in astamp-mill. Only the rock gets broken. "

Ito returned with a tray of iced soda, and was spoken to aside by hismistress. 

"It's quite a farce, " she said, "preparing beds for our friends in thisweather. No one sleeps until after two, and then it is morning; and thoughwe shut out the heat, it beats on the walls and burns up the air inside, and we wake more tired than ever. "

"Let us not think of sleep! I need all the night to talk in. I have to tellyou impossible things. "

"Is Willy's father to be included in this talk?" Mrs. Thorne inquired;"because he is coming--he is there, at the gate. "

She rose uneasily. Her visitor rose, too, and together they watched theman's unconscious figure approaching. An electric lamp above the gate threwlong shadows, like spokes of a wheel, across the grass. Mr. Thorne's facewas invisible till he had reached the steps. 

"Henry, " said his wife, "you do not see we have a visitor. "

He took off his hat, and perceiving a young lady, waved her a gallant andplayful greeting, assuming her to be a neighbor. Miss Benedet stepped backwithout speaking. 

"God bless me!" said Thorne simply, when his wife had named their guest, and so left the matter, for Miss Benedet to acknowledge or deny theirearlier meeting. 

Mrs. Thorne gave her little coughing laugh. 

"Well, you two!" she said with ghastly gayety. "Must I repeat, Henry, thatthis is"--

"He is trying to think where he has seen me before, " said Helen Benedet. There was a ring in her voice like that of the stamp-heads on the baresteel. 

"I am wondering if you remember where you saw me before, " Thorneretorted. He did not like the young lady's presence there. He thought itextraordinary and rather brazen. And he liked still less to be drawn into awoman's parlance. 

Mrs. Thorne sat still, trembling. "Henry, tell her! Speak to her!"

Miss Benedet turned from husband to wife. Her face was very pale. "Ah, " shesaid, "you knew about me all the time! He has told you everything--and youcalled me 'my dear'! Is it easy for you to say such things?"

"Never mind, never mind! What did you wish to say to me? What was it?"

"Give me a moment, please! This alters everything. I must get accustomed tothis before we go any further. "

She reached out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, andhelped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise anddistinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness, as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she couldnever be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard, whether of grief or shame, her own or of any belonging to her. 

"You are the very man, " she said, "the one who would not promise. And youkept your word and told your wife. And how long have you known of--of thisengagement?"

Mr. Thorne looked at his wife. 

"Only a few days, " she said. 

"Still, there has been time, " the girl reflected. She let her voice fallfrom its high society pitch. "I did not dream there was so much mercy inthe world--among parents! You both knew, and you have not told him. Youdeserve to have Willy for your son!"

Mrs. Thorne leaned forward to speak. Her husband, guessing what trouble herconscience would be making her, forestalled the effort with a warning look. "There was no mercy in the case, " he bluntly said; "we do not know yourstory. "

Miss Benedet continued, as if thinking aloud: "Yet you gave me that supremetrust, that I would tell him myself! I have not, and now it is too late. Now I can never know how he would have taken it had he known in time. Ido not want his forgiveness, you may be sure, or his toleration. I mustbe what I was to him or nothing. You will tell him, and then he willunderstand the letter I wrote him last night, breaking the engagement. We may be honest with each other now; there is no peace of the family toprovide for. This night's talk, and I leave myself, my whole self, withyou, to do with as you think best for him. If you think better to have itover at one blow, tell him the worst. The facts are enough if you leaveout the excuses. But if you want to soften it for the sake of his faithin general, --isn't there some such idea, that men lose their faith in allwomen through the fault of one?--why, soften it all you like. Make me thevictim of circumstances. I can show you how. I had forgiven myself, youknow. I thought I was as good as new. I had forgotten I had a flaw. And Iwas so tired of being on the defensive. Now at last, I said, I shall have afriend! You know--_do_ you know what a restful, impersonal manner your sonhas? What quiet eyes! We rode and talked together like two young men. Itseems a pleasure common enough with some girls, but I never had it; lads ofmy own age were debarred when I was a girl. I had neither girls nor boys toplay with. Girl friends were dealt out to me to fit my supposed needs, buttaken that way as medicine I didn't find them very interesting. If I clungto one more than another, that one was not asked soon again for fear ofinordinate affections and unbalanced enthusiasms. I was to be an all-aroundyoung woman; so they built a wall all around me. It fitted tight at last, and then I broke through one night and emptied my heart on the ground. Myplea, you see, is always ready. Could I have lived and kept on scorningmyself as I did that night? Do you remember?" She bent her imperative, clears gaze upon Thorne. "I told you the truth when you gave me a chanceto lie. Heaven knows what it cost to say, 'I came with him of my own freewill!'"

Mrs. Thorne put her hand in her husband's. He pressed it absently, with hiseyes on the ground. 

"It is such a mercy that I need not begin at the beginning. You know theworst already, and your divine hesitation before judgment almost demandsthat I should try to justify it. I _may_ excuse myself to you. I will notbe too proud to meet you half-way; but remember, when you tell the story tohim, everything is to be sacrificed to his cure. "

"When we really love them, " Mrs. Thorne unexpectedly argued, "do we wantthem to be cured?"

The defendant looked at her in astonishment, "Do I understand you?" sheasked. "You must be careful. I have not told you my story. Of course I wantto influence you, but nothing can alter the facts. "

There was no reply, and she took up her theme again with visible andpainful effort. A sickening familiarity, a weariness of it all before shehad begun, showed in her voice and in her pale, reluctant smile. 

"Seven years is a long time, " she said, looking at Thorne. "Are you sureyou have forgotten nothing? You saw what the man was?" she demanded. "Hewas precisely what he looked to be--one of the men about the stables. I wasnot supposed to know one from another. 

"It is a mistake to talk of a girl having fallen. She has crawled down inher thoughts, a step at a time--unless she fell in the dark; and I declarethat before this happened it was almost dark with me!

"My mother is a very clever woman; she has had the means to carry out hertheories, and I am her only child (Norwood Benedet is my half-brother). Iwas not allowed to play with ordinary children; they might have spoiled myaccent or told me stories that would have made me afraid of the dark; andwhile the perfect child was waited for, I had only my nurses. I was notallowed to go to school, of course. Schools are for ordinary children. WhenI was past the governess age I had tutors, exceptional beings, importedlike my frocks. They were too clever for the work of teaching one ignorant, spoiled child. They wore me out with their dissertations, their excess ofpersonality, their overflow of acquirements, all bearing upon poor, stupidme, who could absorb so little. And mama would not allow me to be pushed, so I never actually worked or played. These persons were in the house, holidays and all, and there was a perpetual little dribble of instructiongoing on. Oh, how I wearied of the deadly deliberation of it all!

"As a family we have always been in a way notorious; I am aware of that:but my mother's ideals are far different from those that held in father'syoung days, when he made his money and a highly ineligible circle ofacquaintances. Nordy inherited all the fun and the friends, and he spentthe money like a prince. Once or twice a year he would come down to theranch, and the place would be filled with his company, and their horses andjockeys and servants. Then mama would fly with me till the reign of sportwas over. It was a terrible grief to have to go at the only time when theranch was not a prison. I grew up nursing a crop of smothered rebellionsand longings which I was ashamed to confess. At sixteen mama was to take meabroad for two years; I was to be presented and brought home in triumph, unless Europe refused to part with a pearl of such price. All pearls havetheir price. I was not left in absolute ignorance of my own. Of all whosuffered through that night's madness of mine, poor mama is most to bepitied. There was no limit to her pride in me, and she has never made theleast pretense that religion or philosophy could comfort her. 

"Now, before I really begin, shall we not speak of something else for awhile? I do not want to be quite without mercy. "

"I think you had better go on, " said Mrs. Thorne gently; "but take off yourbonnet, my dear. "

"Still 'my dear'?" sighed the girl. "Is so much kindness quite consistentwith your duty? Will you leave _all_ the plain speaking to me?"

"Forgive me, " said the mother humbly; "but I cannot call you 'MissBenedet. ' We seem to have got beyond that. "

"Oh, we have got beyond everything! There is no precedent for us in thepast"--she felt for her hat pins--"and no hope in the future. " She put offthe winged circlet that crowned her hair, and Mrs. Thorne took it from her. Almost shyly the middle-aged woman, who had never herself been even pretty, looked at the sad young beauty, sitting uncovered in the moonlight. 

"You should never wear anything on your head. It is desecration. "

"Is it? I always conform, you know. I wear anything, do anything, that isdemanded. "

"Ah, but the head--such hair! I wonder that I do not hate you when I thinkof my poor Willy. "

"You will hate me when I am gone, " said the beautiful one wearily; "youmay count on the same revulsion in him. I know it. I have been through it. There is nothing so loathsome in the bitter end as mere good looks. "

"Ah, but why"--the mother checked herself. Was she groveling already forWilly's sake? She had stifled the truth, and accepted thanks not her due, and listened to praise of her own magnanimity. Where were the night'ssurprises to leave her?

II

Mr. Thorne had changed his seat, and the sound of a fresh chair creakingunder his comfortable weight was a touch of commonplace welcomed by hiswife with her usual laugh, half amused and half apologetic. 

"Why do you go off there, Henry? Do you expect us to follow you?"

"There's a breeze around the corner of the house!" he ejaculated fervently. 

"Go and find it, then; we do not need you. Do we?"

"_I_ need him, " said the girl in her sweetest tones. "He helped me once, without a word. It helps me now to have him sitting there"--

"Without a word!" Mrs. Thorne irrepressibly supplied. 

"Why can't we let her finish?" Thorne demanded, hitching his chair into anattitude of attention. 

It was impossible for Miss Benedet to take up her story in the key in whichshe had left off. She began again rather flatly, allowing for the chill ofinterruptions:--

"To go back to that summer; I was in my sixteenth year, and the policyof expansion was to have begun. But father's health broke, and mama wastraveling with him and a cortège of nurses, trying one change afteranother. It was duller than ever at the ranch. We sat down three at tablein a dining-room forty feet long, Aunt Isabel Dwight, Fräulein Henschel, and myself. Fräulein was the resident governess. She was a great, soft-hearted, injudicious creature, a mass of German interjections, butshe had the grand style on the piano. There had been weeks of such weatheras we are having now. Exercise was impossible till after sundown. I haddreamed of a breath of freedom, but instead of the open door I was instraiter bonds than ever. 

"I revolted first against keeping hours. I would not get up to breakfast, I refused to study, it was too hot to practice. I took my own head aboutbooks, and had my first great orgy of the Russians. I used to lie besidea chink of light in the darkened library and read while Fräulein in themusic-room held orgies of her own. She had just missed being a greatsinger; but she was a master of her instrument, and her accompaniments weredivine. What voice she had was managed with feeling and a pure method, andwhere voice failed her the piano thrilled and sobbed, and broke in chordslike the sea. 

"I can give you no idea of the effect that Tolstoi, combined withFräulein's music, had upon me. My heart hung upon the pauses in hersong; it beat, as I read, as if I had been running. I would forget tobreathe between the pages. One day Fräulein came in and found me in theback chapters of 'Anna Karénina. ' She had been playing one of Lizst'srhapsodies--the twelfth. Waves of storm and passion had been thunderingthrough the house, with keen little rifts of melody between, too sweetalmost to be endured. She was very negligée, as the weather obliged us tobe. Her great white arms were bare above the elbow, and as wet as if shehad been over the wash-tub. 

"'That is not a book for a _jeune fille_, ' she said. 

"I was in a rapture of excitement; the interruption made me wild. 'All thebooks are for me, ' I told her. 'I will read what I please. '

"'You will go mad!'

"I went on reading. 

"'You have no way to work it off. You will not study, you cannot sing, youwrite no letters, the mother does not believe'--

"'Do go away!' I cried. 

"'--in the duty to the neighbor. Ach! what will you do with the whole ofTolstoi and Turgenieff shut up within you?'

"'I can ride, ' I said. 'If you don't want me to go mad, leave me in theevenings to myself. Take my place in the carriage with Aunt Isabel, and letme ride alone. '

"Fräulein had lived in bonds herself, and she had the soul of an artist. She knew what it is, for days together, to have barely an hour to one's ownthoughts; never to step out alone of a summer night, after a long, hot, feverish day. She let me go with old Manuel, the head groom, as my escort. He was no more hindrance to solitude than a pine-tree or a post. 

"The reading and the music and the heat went on. I was in a fever ofemotion such as I had never known. Fräulein perceived it. She recommended'My Religion' as an antidote to the romances. I did not want his religion. I wanted his men and women, his reading of the human soul, the largeness ofincident, the sense of time and space, the intricacy of family life, theproblems of race, the march of nations across the great world-canvas. 

"I rode--not alone, but with the high-strung beings that lived between thepages of my books: men and women who knew no curb, who stopped at nothing, and who paid the price of their passionate mistakes. Old Manuel, standingby the horses, looked strange to me. I spoke to him dramatically, as thewomen I read of would have spoken. Nothing could have added to or detractedfrom his own manner. He was of the old Spanish stock, but for the firsttime I saw his picturesqueness. I liked him to call me 'the Niña, ' andaddress me in the third person with his eyes upon the ground. 

"All this was preparatory. It is part of my defense; but do not forget theheat, the imprisonment, the sense of relief when the sun went down, thewild, bounding rapture of those night rides. 

"One evening it was not Manuel who stood by the horses in the white trackbetween the laurels. It was a figure as statuesque as his, but younger, andthe pose was not that of a servant. It was the stand-at-ease of a soldier, or of an Indian wrapped in his blanket in the city square. This man wasconscious of being looked at, but his training, of whatever sort, would notpermit him to show it. Plainly the training had not been that of a groom. I was obliged to send him to the stables for his coat, and remind him thathis place was behind. He took the hint good-humoredly, with the nonchalanceof a big boy condescending to be taught the rules of some childish game. Aswe were riding through the woods later, I caught the scent of tobacco. Itwas my groom smoking. I told him he could not smoke and ride with me. Hethrew away his cigarette and straightened himself in the saddle with sucha smile as he might have bestowed on the whims of a child. He obeyed meexactly in everything, with an exaggerated ironical precision, and seemedto find amusement in it. I questioned him about Manuel. He had gone to oneof the lower ranches, would not be back for weeks. By whose orders was heattending me? By Manuel's, he said. He must then have had qualifications. 

"'What is one to call you?' I asked him. 

"He hesitated an instant. 'Jim is what I answer to around here, ' said he. 

"'What is your _name_?' I repeated. 

"'The lady can call me anything she likes, '--he spoke in a low, lazyvoice, --'but Dick Malaby is my name. '

"We have better heroes now than the Cheyenne cowboys, but I felt as a girlto-day would feel if she discovered she had been telling one of the men ofthe Merrimac to ride behind!"

"They would not need to be told, " Mrs. Thorne interjected. 

"No, that is the difference; but discipline did not appeal to me then;recklessness did. Every man on the place had taken sides on the Wyomingquestion; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives amongthe victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with, not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, andall in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set, ' ashe would have called us. 

"I signed to him one evening to ride up. 'I want you to talk to me, ' Isaid. 'Tell me about the cattle war. '

"'Miss Benedet forgets--my place is behind. ' He touched his hat and fellback again. Lesson for lesson--we were quits. I made no further attempt tocorrupt my own pupil. 

"We rode in silence after that, but I was never without the sense of hisironical presence. I was conscious of showing off before him. I wished himto see that I could ride. Fences and ditches, rough or smooth, he neverinterfered with my wildest pace. I could not extract from him a look ofsurprise, far less the admiration that I wanted. What was a girl's ridingto him? He knew a pace--all the paces--that I could never follow. I feltthe absurdity of our mutual position, its utter artificiality, and how itmust strike him. 

"In the absence of words between us, externals spoke with greater force. He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with adare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physicalmastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my sillyfreaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! Thatwas the beginning. It lasted through a week of starlight and a week ofmoonlight--lyric nights with the hot, close days between; and each nightan increasing interest attached to the moment when he was to put me on myhorse. I make no apology for myself after that. 

"One evening we approached a gate at the farther end of our longest course, and the gate stood open. He rode on to close it. I stopped him. 'I am goingout, ' I said. It was a resolution taken that moment. He held up his watchto the light, which made me angry. 

"'Go back to the stables, ' I said, 'if you are due there. _I_ don't want toknow the time. '

"He brought his horse alongside. 'Where is Miss Benedet going, please?'

"'Anywhere, ' I said, 'where it will be cool in the morning. '

"'Miss Benedet will have a long ride. Does she wish for company?'

"I did not answer. Something drove me forward, though I was afraid. 

"'Outside that gate, ' he went on quietly, '_I_ shall set the pace, and I donot ride behind. ' Still I did not answer. 'Is that the understanding?'

"'Ride where you please, ' I said. 

"After that he took command, not roughly or familiarly, but he no longerused the third person, as I had instructed him, in speaking to me. Thefirst time he said 'you' it sent the blood to my face. We were far up themountain then, and morning was upon us. 

"I wish to be definite here. From the moment I saw him plainly face to facethe illusion was gone. Before, I had seen him by every light but daylight, and generally in profile. The profile is not the man. It is the plan inoutline, but the eyes, the mouth, tell what he has made of himself. Soattitude is not speech. As a shape in the moonlight he had been eloquent, but once at my side, talking with me naturally--I need not go on! From thatmoment our journey was to me a dream of horror, a series of frantic plansfor escape. 

"All fugitives on the coast must put to sea. The Oakland ferry wouldhave answered my purpose. I would never have been seen with him in thecity--alive. 

"But at Colfax we met your husband. He knows--you know--the rest. "

 * * * * *

In thinking of the one who had first pitied her, pity for herself overcameher, and the proud penitent broke down. 

Mr. And Mrs. Thorne sat in the shy silence of older persons who are pastthe age of demonstrative sympathy. The girl rose, and as she passed herhostess she put out her hand. Mrs. Thorne took it quickly and followed her. They found a seat by themselves in a dark corner of the porch. 

"Your poor, good husband--how tired he is! How patiently you have listened, and what does it all come to?"

"Think of yourself, not of us, " said Mrs. Thorne. 

"Oh, it's all over for me. I have had my fight. But you have _him_ togrieve for. "

"Shall you not grieve for him yourself a little?"

The girl sat up quickly. 

"If you mean do I give him up without a struggle--I do not. But you neednot say that to him. I told him that it was all a mistake; I did not--donot love him. "

"How could you say that"--

"It was necessary. Without that I should have been leaving it to hisgenerosity. Now it remains only to show him how little he has lost. "

"But could you not have done that without belying yourself? You do--surelyyou still care for him a little?"

"Insatiate mother! Is there any other proof I can give?"

"Your hand is icy cold. "

"And my face is burning hot. Good-night. May I say, 'Now let thy servantdepart in peace'?"

"I shall not know how to let you go to-morrow, and I do not see, myself, why you should go. "

"You will--after I am gone. "

"My dear, are you crying? I cannot see you. How cruel we have been, to sitand let you turn your life out for our inspection!"

"It was a free exhibition! No one asked me, and I did not even comeprepared, more than seven years' study of my own case has prepared me. 

"I was a child; but the fault was mine. I should have been allowed tosuffer for it in the natural way. No good ever comes of skulking. But theyhurried me off to Europe, and began a cowardly system of concealment. Theymade me almost forget my own misconduct in shame for the things they did byway of covering it up. My mother never took me in her arms and cried overmy disgrace. She would not speak of it, or allow me to speak. Not a wordnor an admission; the thing must be as though it had never been!

"They ruined Dick Malaby with their hush-money. They might better haveshot him, but that would have made talk. My father died with only servantsaround him. Mama could not go to him. She was too busy covering my retreat. Oh, she kept a gallant front! I admired her, I pitied her, but I loathedher policy. Does not every girl know when she has been dedicated to thegreat god Success, and what the end of success must be?

"I told mama at last that if she would bring men to propose to me I shouldtell them the truth. Does Lord So-and-so wish to marry a girl who ran awaywith her father's groom? That was the breach between us. She has thrownherself into it. She is going to marry a title herself, not to let it goout of the family. Have you not heard of the engagement? She is to be acountess, and the property is controlled by her, so now I have an excusefor doing something. "

"My dear!" Mrs. Thorne took the girl's cold hands in hers. "Do you meanthat you are not your father's heiress?"

"Only by mama's last will and testament. We know what that would be if shemade it now!"

"It was _then_ you came home?"

"It was then, when I learned that one of my rejected suitors was to becomemy father. He might be my grandfather. But let us not be vulgar!"

"Aren't you girls going to bed to-night?" Mr. Thorne inquired, with hisusual leaning toward peace and quietness. "You can't settle everything atone sitting. "

"Everything is settled, Mr. Thorne, and I am going to bed, " said MissBenedet. 

Mrs. Thorne did not release her hands. "I want to ask you one morequestion. "

"I know exactly what it is, and I will tell you to-morrow. "

"Tell me now; it is perfectly useless going to your room; the temperatureover your bed is ninety-nine. "

"The question, then! Why did I allow your son to commit himself inignorance?"

"No, _no_!" Mrs. Thorne protested. 

"Yes, yes! You have asked that question, you must have. You are an angel, but you are a mother, too. "

"I have asked no questions since you began to tell your story; but I havewondered how Willy could have found courage, in one week, to offer himselfto such gifts and possessions as yours. "

"A mother, and a worldly mother!" Miss Benedet apostrophized. "I did notlook for such considerations from you. And you are troubled for the modestyof your son?"

"My dear, he has nothing, and he is--of course we think him everything heshould be--but he is not a handsome boy. "

"Thank Heaven he is not. "

"And he does not talk"--

"About himself. No. "

"Ah, you do care for him! You understand him. You would"--

Miss Benedet rose to her feet with decision. 

"You have not answered my question, " the unconscionable mother pursued. "Does he know--is it known that you are not the great heiress your namewould imply?"

"Everything is known, " said the girl. "You do not read your society column, I see. Six weeks ago you might have learned the fate of my father'smillions. "

She stood by the balustrade and leaned out under the stars, taking a deepbreath of the night's growing coolness. A rose-spray touched her face. Sheput it back, and a shower of dry, scented petals fell upon her breast andsleeve. 

"There is always one point in every true story, " she said in a tired voice, "where explanations cease to explain. The mysteries claim their share inus, deny them as we will. I don't know why it was, but from the time Ithrew off all that bondage to society and struck out for myself, I feltmade over. Life began again with life's realities. I came home to earn mybread, and on that footing I felt sane and clean and honest. The questionbecame not what I am or was, but what could I do? I discussed the questionwith your son. "

"You discussed!"

"We did, indeed. We went over the whole field. East and west we testedmy accomplishments by the standards of those who want teachers for theirchildren. I have gone rather further in music than anything else. EvenFräulein would hardly say now I lacked an outlet. I was working things offone evening on the piano--many things beyond the power of speech--the helpof prayer, I might say. There were whispers about me already in the house. "

"What _do_ you mean?"

"People talking--my mother's old friends. It was rather serious, as I hadbeen thinking of their daughters for pupils. I thought I was alone, butyour son--the 'boy' as you call him--was listening. He came and stoodbeside me. For a person who does not talk, he can make himself quite wellunderstood. I tried to go on playing. My blinded eyes, the wrong notes, told him all. I lay and thought all night, and asked myself, why might Inot be happy and give happiness, like other women of my age. I denied tomy conscience that I was bound to tell him, since I was not, never hadbeen, what that story in words would report me. Why should I affect a liein order literally, vainly to be honest? So a day passed, and anothersleepless night. And now I had his image of me to battle with. Then itbecame impossible, and yet more necessary, and each day's silence buriedme deeper beyond the hope of speech. So I gave it up. Why should he havein his wife less than I would ask for in my husband? I want none of yourexperienced men. Such a record as his, such a look in the eyes, theexpression unawares of a life of sustained effort--always in onedirection"--

A white arm in a black sleeve pointed upward in silence. 

"And you would rob him of his reward?" said the mother, in a choked voice. 

"Mrs. Thorne! Do you not understand me? I am not talking for effect. Butthis is what happens if one begins to explain. I did not come here to talkto you for the rest of my life! It was your sweetness that undid me. I willnever again say what I think of parents in general. "

 * * * * *

"Maggie, do you know what time it is?" a suppressed voice issued an hourlater from that part of the house supposed to be dedicated to sleep. "Areyou going to sit up till morning?"

"I am looking for my letter, " came the answer, in a tragic whisper. 

"What letter?"

"My letter to Willy, that you wouldn't let me read to you last night. "

"You don't want to read it to me now, do you?"

There was no reply. A careful step kept moving about the inner rooms, newspapers rustled, and small objects were lifted and set down. 

"Maggie, do come to bed! You can't mail your letter to-night. "

"I don't want to mail it. I want to burn it. I will not have it on myconscience a moment longer"--

"I wish you'd have me on your conscience! It's after one o'clock. " Thevoices were close together now, only an open door between the speakers. 

"Won't you put something on and come out here, Henry? There is a light inIto's house. I suppose you wouldn't let me go out and ask him?"

"I suppose not!"

"Then won't you go and ask if he saw a letter on my desk, sealed andaddressed?"

Mr. Thorne sat up in bed disgustedly. "What is Ito doing with a light thistime of night?"

"Hush, dear; don't speak so loud. He's studying. He's preparing himself togo into the Japanese navy. "

"He is, is he! And that's why he can't get us our breakfast beforehalf-past eight. I'll see about that light!"

"The letter, the letter!" Mrs. Thorne prompted in a ghostly--whisper. "Askhim if he saw it on my desk--a square blue envelope, thin paper. "

The studious little cook was seated by a hot kerosene-lamp, at a tablecovered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. Hewas in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appearedto have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stoodall ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked under Mr. Thorne'sbrusque examination. 

"I care fo' everything, " he repeated, eliminating the consonants as he slidalong. "Missa Tho'ne letta--all a-ready fo' mail--I putta pos'age-stamp, gifa to shif'-boss. I think Sa' F'a'cisco in a mo'ning. I care fo'everything!"

"Ito cares for everything, " Mr. Thorne quoted, in answer to his wife'shaggard inquiries. "He stamped your letter and sent it to town yesterday byone of the day-shift men. "

"Now what shall be done!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed tragically. 

"I know what _I_ shall do!" Mr. Thorne wrapped his toga around him withan air of duty done. But a husband cannot escape so easily as that. Hisministering angel sat beside his bed for half an hour longer, broodingaloud over the day's disaster, with a rigid eye upon the question ofpersonal accountability. 

"If you had not stopped me, Henry, when I tried to confess about my letter!There's no time for the truth like the present. "

"My dear, when a person is telling a story you don't want to interrupt withquibbles of conscience; if it made it any easier for her to think us alittle better than we are, why rob her of the delusion?"

"I shall have to rob her of it to-morrow. To think of my sitting there, awhited sepulchre, and being called generous and forbearing and merciful, with that letter lying on my desk all the time!"

"It would be lying there still except for an accident. She will see how youfeel about it. Give her something to forgive in you. Depend upon it, she'llrise to the occasion. "

 * * * * *

As the mother passed her guest's room next morning she paused and lookedremorsefully at the closed door. 

"I ought to have told her that we never shut our doors. She must besmothered. I wonder if she can be asleep. "

Mr. Thorne went on into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisperas it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draftof air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. Thesleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed, and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all theroom there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted memory of the night'sdespairing heat. Mrs. Thorne stepped across the matting, and noiselesslybowed the shutters. A dash of spray from the lawn-sprinkler was spatteringthe sill, threatening to dampen a pile of dainty clothing laid upon achair. She moved the chair, looked once more at the lovely dark-lashedsleeper, and left her again in peace. 

Beside her plate at the breakfast-table there was a great heap of roses, gathered that morning, her husband's usual greeting. She praised them asshe always did, and then began to finger them over, choosing the finest tosave for her guest. Rare as they were in kind, and opened that morning, there was not a perfect rose among them. Each one showed the touch ofblight in bloom. Every petal, just unclosed and dewy at the core, wascurled along the edges, scorched in the bud. It was not mildew or canker ordisease, only "a touch of sun. "

"I won't give them to her, " said the mother; "they are too like herself. "

She saw her husband go forth into the heat again, and blamed herself, according to her wont of a morning after the night's mistakes, for robbinghim of his rest and heaping her self-imposed burdens upon him. He laughedat the remorse tenderly, and brushed away the burdens, and faced the day'sactualities with the not too fine remark, "I must go and see what's looseoutside. "

Everything was "loose" apparently. Something about a "hoist" had brokenin the night, and the men were still at work without breakfast, aneighteen-hour shift. The order came for Ito to send out coffee and breadand fruit to the famished gang. Ito was in the lowest of spirits; had justgiven his mistress warning that he could not stay. The affair of the letterhad wounded his susceptibilities; he must go where he would be betterunderstood. All this in a soft, respectful undertone, his mistress tryingto comfort him, and incidentally hasten his response to the requisitionfrom outside. At eleven o'clock Mr. Thorne sent in a pencil message on acard: "I shall not be home to lunch. Does she want to get the 12:30 train?"Mrs. Thorne replied in the same manner, by bearer: "She did, but she isasleep. I don't like to wake her. "

The darkened house preserved its silence, a restless endurance of thegrowing heat. Mrs. Thorne, in the thinnest of morning gowns, her damp hairbrushed back from her powdered temples, sat alone at luncheon. Ito had puta melancholy perfection into his last salad. It was his valedictory. 

She was about to rise when Miss Benedet came silently into the room withher long, even step. Her dark eyes were full of sleep. Mrs. Thorne rang, and began to fuss a little over her guest to cover the shyness each feltat the beginning of a new day. They had parted at too high a pitch ofexpression to meet again in the same emotional key. 

Miss Benedet looked at the clock, lifting her eyebrows wearily. "I havelost my train, " she remarked, but added no reproaches. "Is there an eveningtrain to the city?"

"Not from here, " Mrs. Thorne replied; "but we could send you over to Colfaxto catch the night train from there. I hoped we could have you anotherday. "

"That would be impossible, " said Miss Benedet; "but I shall be giving you agreat deal of trouble. "

"Oh, no; it is only ten miles. Mr. Thorne will take you; we will both takeyou. It is a beautiful drive by moonlight through the woods. Was I wrongnot to call you?"

"If you were, you will be punished by having me on your hands this long, hot afternoon. I ought to have gone last night. When one has parted withthe very last bit of one's self, one should make haste to remove theshell. "

"Then you would have left me with something remaining on my mind, somethingI must get rid of at once. Come, let us go where we cannot see each other'sfaces. I am deeply in the wrong concerning you. "

Mrs. Thorne went on incriminating herself so darkly in her preface thatwhen she came to the actual offense her confessor smiled. "I am sorelieved!" she exclaimed. "This is much more like real life. I felt youmust be keeping something back, or, if not, I could never live up to such apitch of generosity. I am glad you did not reach it all at once. "

"But what becomes of the truth--the story as it should have been told toWilly? Oh, I have sinned, for want of patience, of faith--not against you, dear, but my son!"

After a silence Miss Benedet said, "Now for the heart of my own weakness. Suppose that I did have a hope. Suppose that I had laid the responsibilityupon you, the parents, hoping that you would decide for happiness, merehappiness, without question of desert or blame. And suppose you haddefended me to him. Would that have been best? Where then would be hiscure? Now let us put away all cowardice, for him as well as for ourselves. Happiness for him could have but one foundation. You have told him thefacts; if he cannot bear them as all the world knows them, that is hiscure. I thank you. You knew where to put the knife. "

"Oh, but this is cruel!" said the mother. "I don't want to be your judge. You have had your punishment, and you took it like a queen. Now let usthink of Willy!"

"Please!" said the girl. "I cannot talk of this any more. We must stopsometime. "

The time of twilight came; the gasping house flung open doors and windowsto the night. Mr. Thorne pursued his evening walk alone among the fruitsand vegetables, counting his egg-plants, and marking the track of gophersin his rows of artichokes. The women were strolling toward the hill. MissBenedet had put on a cloth skirt and stiff shirt-waist for her journey, and suffered from the change, but did not show it. Her beauty was not ofthe florid or melting order. Mrs. Thorne regarded her inconsolably, notingwith distinct and separate pangs each item of her loveliness, as shemoved serene and pale against the dark, resonant green of the pines. Theyfollowed a foot-path back among the trees to a small gate or door in thehigh boundary fence. Mrs. Thorne tried it to see if it were locked. 

"Willy used to live, almost, on this hill when he came out for hisvacations. " She spoke dreamily, as if thinking aloud. "He slept in thattent. It looks like a little ghost to me these nights in the moonlight, thecurtains flap in such a lonely way. That gate was his back door through thewoods to town. His wheel used to lean against this tree. I miss his fairhead in the sun, and his white trousers springing up the hill. But onecannot keep one's boy forever. You have made him a man, my dear. "

The mother put out her hand timidly. She had ventured on forbidden groundonce more. But she was not rebuffed. The girl's hand clasped hers anddrew it around a slender waist, and they walked like two school friendstogether. 

"I cannot support the idea that you will never come again, " mourned theelder. "It is years since I have known a girl like you--a girl who can saythings. I can make no headway with girls in general. They are so big andsilent and athletic. They wear pins and badges, and belong to more _things_than I have ever heard of!"

Miss Benedet laughed. "I am silent, too, sometimes, " she said. 

"But you are not dense!"

"I'm afraid you go very much to extremes in your likes and dislikes, dearlady, and you are much younger than I, you know. "

"I am quite aware of that, " said Mrs. Thorne. "You have had seven years ofEurope to my twenty of Cathay. "

"Dear Cathay!" the girl murmured, with moist eyes; "I could live in thisplace forever. "

"Where have you lived? Tell me in how many cities of the world. "

"Oh, we never lived. We stayed in places for one reason or another. We weretwo years in Vienna. I worked there. I was a pupil of Leschetizky. "

"What!"

"Did I not tell you? I can play a little. "

"A little! What does that exactly mean?"

"It means too much for drawing-room music, and not enough for the stage. "

"You are not thinking of that, are you?"

"Why that voice of scorn? Have I hit upon one of your prejudices?"

"I am dreadfully old-fashioned about some things--publicity, for instance. "

"It depends upon the kind, doesn't it? But you will never hear of me onthe concert stage. Leschetizky says I have not the poise I might have had. He is very clever. There was a shock, he says, to the nerve centres. Theywill never again be quite under control. It is true. At this moment I amshivering within me because I must say good-by to one I might have had allmy life for a friend. Is it so?"

"My dear, if you mean me, I love you!"

"Call me Helen, then. You said 'my dear' before you knew me. "

"Before I meant it. "

 * * * * *

"I wonder who can be arriving. That is the carriage I came out in lastnight. "

A light surrey with two seats passed below the hill, and was visible aninstant against a belt of sky. 

"It is going to stop, " said Mrs. Thorne. "Suppose we step back a little. Ishall not see visitors to-night. Very likely it is only some one for Mr. Thorne. "

A tall young man in traveling clothes stepped out upon the horse-block, left his luggage there, and made ten strides up the walk. They heard hisstep exploring the empty piazzas. 

"It is Willy!" said Mrs. Thorne in a staccato whisper. 

"Then good-by!" said Miss Benedet. "I will find Mr. Thorne in the garden. Dearest Mrs. Thorne, you must let me go!"

"You will not see him? Not see Willy!"

"Not for worlds. He must not know that I am here. I trust you. " She toreherself away. 

Mrs. Thorne stood paralyzed between the two--her advancing son, and herfleeing guest. 

"Willy!" she cried. 

Her tall boy was bending over her--once more the high, fair head, thesmooth arch of the neck, which she could barely reach to put her arms aboutit. 

"Mother!" The word in his grave man's voice thrilled her as once had thetouch of his baby hands. 

"I am afraid to look at you, my son. How is it with you?"

"I am all right, mother. How are things here?"

"Oh, don't speak of us! Did you get my letter?"

"This morning. "

"And you read it, Willy?"

"Of course. "

There was a silence. Mrs. Thorne clasped her son's arm and leaned her headagainst it. 

"I am sorry you worried so, mother. "

"What does it matter about me?"

"I am sorry you took it so hard--because--I knew it all the time. "

"You knew it! What do you mean?"

"A nice old lady told me. She was staying in the house. She cornered me andtold me a long story--the day after I met Miss Benedet. "

"What an infamous old woman!"

"She called herself a friend of yours--warned me for your sake, she said, and because she has sons of her own. "

"Oh! Has she daughters?"

"Two--staying in the house. "

"I see. She told it brutally, I suppose?"

"Quite so. "

"Worse than I did, Willy?"

William the Silent held his peace. 

"You did not believe it? How much of it did you believe?"

"Mother, " he said, "do you think a man can't see what a girl is?"

"But what do you know about girls?"

"Where is she?"

"What!"

"Where is Helen? The man from Lord's said he brought her out here lastnight. "

"Did you not get her letter?" Mrs. Thorne evaded. 

"Where shall I find her?"

"Willy, I am a perjured woman! I have been making mischief steadily for twodays. "

"You might as well go on, mater. " Willy beamed gravely upon his mother'scareer of dissimulation. 

"Don't, for pity's sake, be hopeful! She said she would not see you forworlds. "

"Then she hasn't gone. "

Willy took a quick survey of the premises. He had long gray eyes and a setmouth. He saw most things that he looked at, and when he aimed for a thinghe usually got somewhere near the mark. 

"She is not in the house, " he decided; "she is not on the hill--remains thegarden. "

 * * * * *

Mrs. Thorne stood alone, meditating on Miss Benedet's trust in her. She sawher husband, her stool of repentance and her mercy-seat in one, ploddingtoward her contentedly across the soft garden ground, stepping between thelettuces and avoiding the parsley bed. He knocked off a huge fat kitchenweed with his cane. 

"Where is that girl?" he said. "It's time you got your things on. We oughtto be starting in ten minutes. "

"If you can find Willy you'll probably find 'that girl'!" Mrs. Thorneexplained, and then proceeded to explain further, as she walked with herhusband back to the house. 

"Well, " he summed up, "what is your opinion of the universe up to date? Gotany faith in anything left?"

THE MAID'S PROGRESS

From the great plateau of the Snake River, at a point that is far from anymain station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might havescooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot. Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheeltracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaringand troubling above. 

One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, withcamp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into thishollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand. The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place. 

"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man besidehim. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on theback seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and aveiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision oftheir fellow travelers. 

"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it, " the teamster urged on thepoint in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would havemade a clean-up of them. "

"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is PilgrimStation?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front, who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile faceand the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes, --eyes that saweverything and told nothing. 

"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney aboutit, " he said. 

Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with theroad, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country;but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowancethe testimony of any one man of merely local information. 

"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself, since the stage was pulled off. What was here then wouldn't be herenow--not if it could be eat up or burnt up. "

"So you think this is the place?" the old gentleman repeated. His face wasquite pale; he looked about him shrinkingly, with a latent, apprehensiveexcitement strangely out of keeping with the void stillness of thehollow, --a spot which seemed to claim as little on the score of humaninterest or association as any they had passed on their long road hither. 

"Well, it's just this way, Mr. Withers: here's the holler, and here's thestomped place where the sheep have camped, and the cattle trails getherin'from everywheres to the water, and the young rabbit brush that's sprung upsince the plains was burnt over. If this ain't Pilgrim Station, we're lostpilgrims ourselves, I guess. We hain't passed it; it's time we come to it, and there ain't no road but this. As I put it up, this here has got to bethe place. "

"I believe you, Mr. Kinney, " the old man solemnly confirmed him. "Somethingtells me that this is the spot. I might almost say, " he added in a lowertone to his companion, while a slight shiver passed over him in the hotsunlight, "that a voice cries to us from the ground!"

Those in front had not heard him. After a pause Mr. Thane looked roundagain, smiled tentatively, and said, "Well?"

"Well, Daphne, my dear, hadn't we better get out?" Mr. Withers conjoined. 

She who answered to this pretty pagan name did so mutely by rising inher place. The wind had moulded her light-colored veil close to herhalf-defined features, to the outline of her cheeks and low-knotted hair;her form, which was youthful and slender, was swathed in a clingingraw-silk dust-cloak. As she stood, hesitating before summoning her crampedlimbs to her service, she might have suggested some half-evolved conceptionof doubting young womanhood emerging from the sculptor's clay. Personality, as yet, she had none; but all that could be seen of her was pure feminine. 

Thane reached the side of the wagon before the veiled young woman couldattempt to jump. She freed her skirts, stepped on the brake bar, andstooping, with his support made a successful spring to the ground. Mr. Withers climbed out more cautiously, keeping his hand on Thane's arm fora few steps through the heavy sand. Thane left his fellow pilgrims tothemselves apart, and returned to help the teamster take out the horses. 

"It looks queer to me, " Mr. Kinney remarked, "that folks should want tocome so far on purpose to harrer up their feelin's all over again. It ain'tas if the young man was buried here, nor as if they was goin' to mark thespot with one of them Catholic crosses like you see down in Mexico, whereblood's been spilt by the roadside. But just to set here and think aboutit, and chaw on a mis'able thing that happened two years and more ago!Lord! I wouldn't want to, and I ain't his father nor yet his girl. Wouldyou?"

"Hardly, " said Thane. "Still, if you felt about it as Mr. Withers does, you'd put yourself in the place of the dead, not the living; and he has areason for coming, besides. I haven't spoken of it, because I doubt if thething is feasible. He wants to see whether the water, of the spring can bebrought into the hollow here--piped, to feed a permanent drinking troughand fountain. Good for evil, you see--the soft answer. "

"Well, that's business! That gits down where a man lives. His cattle kincome in on that, too. There's more in that, to my mind, than in a barewooden cross. Pity there won't be more teamin' on this road. Now the stagehas hauled off, I don't expect as many as three outfits a year will waterat that fountain, excusin' the sheep, and they'll walk over it and into it, and gorm up the whole place. "

"Well, the idea has been a great comfort to Mr. Withers, but it's notlikely anything more will ever come of it. From all we hear, the springwould have to run up hill to reach this hollow; but you won't speak of it, will you, till we know?"

"Gosh, no! But water might be struck higher up the gulch--might sink atrench and cut off the spring. "

"That would depend on the source, " said Thane, "and on how much the oldgentleman is willing to stand; the fountain alone, by the time you haul thestone here, will foot up pretty well into the thousands. But we'll see. "

"Hadn't you better stay round here with them till I git back?" Kinneysuggested; for Thane had taken the empty canteens from the wagon, andwas preparing to go with him to the spring. "You kin do your prospectin'later. "

"They would rather be by themselves, I think, " said Thane. But seeing Mr. Withers coming towards him, as if to speak, he turned back to meet him. 

"You are going now to look for the spring, are you not?" the old gentlemanasked, in his courteous, dependent manner. 

"Yes, Mr. Withers. Is there anything I can do for you first?"

"Nothing, I thank you. " The old gentleman looked at him half expectantly, but Thane was not equal, in words, to the occasion. "This is the place, Mr. Thane, " he cadenced, in his measured, clerical tones. "This is the spotthat last saw my dear boy alive, --that witnessed his agony and death. "He extended a white, thin, and now shaking hand, which Thane grasped, uncovering his head. Mr. Withers raised his left hand; his pale eyesblinked in the sunlight; they were dim with tears. 

"In memory of John Withers, " he pronounced, "foully robbed of life in thislonely spot, we three are gathered here, --his friend, his father, and hisbride that should have been. " Thane's eyes were on the ground, but hesilently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guideas we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgiveas we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thouknowest it is hard. "

"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, eachleading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by itsstrap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers thefirst rising ground to riverward of the hollow. "Thought he seemed to bemakin' a prayer or askin' a blessin' or somethin', when he had holt of youthere by the flipper; kind of embarrassin', wa'n't it?"

"That's as one looks at it, " said Thane. "Mr. Withers is a clergyman; hismanner may be partly professional, but he strikes one as always sincere. And he hasn't a particle of self-consciousness where his grief for hisson is concerned. I don't know that he has about anything. He calls onhis Maker just as naturally as you and I, perhaps, might take his name invain. "

"No, sir! I've quit that, " Mr. Kinney objected. "I drawed the line theresome years ago, on account of my wife, the way she felt about it, and thechildren growin' up. I quit when I was workin' round home, and now I don'tseem to miss it none. I git along jest as well. Course I have to cussa little sometimes. But I liked the way you listened to the old man'swarblin'. Because talkin' is a man's trade, it ain't to say he hasn't gothis feelin's. "

As the hill cut off sounds of retreating voices and horseshoes clinkingon the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon thehollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil, and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteadyhands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiledsuggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as hehad hopes; afterwards--but even then it was a matter of temperament. Therewere those who remembered it all the more keenly for its daring deviationsand provoking shortcomings. 

It could not have been said of Daphne that her grief was withoutself-consciousness. Still, much of her constraint and unevenness of mannermight have been set down to the circumstances of her present position. Whyshe should have placed herself, or have allowed her friends to place her, in an attitude of such unhappy publicity Thane had asked himself manytimes, and the question angered him as often as it came up. He could onlyrefer it to the singularly unprogressive ideas of the Far West peculiar toFar Eastern people. Apparently they had thought that, barring a friend ortwo of Jack's, they would be as much alone with their tragic memories inthe capital city of Idaho as at this abandoned stage-station in the desertwhere their pilgrimage had ended. They had not found it quite the same. Daphne could, and probably did, read of herself in the "Silver Standard, "Sunday edition, which treats of social events, heralded among the prominentarrivals as "Jack Withers's maiden widow. " This was a poetical flight ofthe city reporter. Thane had smiled at the phrase, but that was before hehad seen Daphne; since then, whenever he thought of it, he pined for asuitable occasion for punching the reporter's head. There had been more ofhis language; the paper had given liberally of its space to celebrate thisinteresting advent of the maiden widow with her uncle, "the Rev. Withers, "as the reporter styled him, "father of the lamented young man whoseshocking murder, two years ago, at Pilgrim Station, on the eve of hisreturn to home and happiness, cast such a gloom over our community, inwhich the victim of the barbarous deed had none but devoted friends andadmirers. It is to be hoped that the reverend gentleman and the bereavedyoung lady, his companion on this sad journey, will meet with every mark ofattention and respect which it is in the power of our citizens to bestow, during their stay among us. "

Now, in the dead, hot stillness, they two alone at last, Daphne sat besideher uncle in the place of their solemn tryst; and more than ever herexcitement and unrest were manifest, in contrast to his mild and chastenedmelancholy. She started violently as his voice broke the silence in ameasured, musing monotone:

 "'Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray For the poor soul of Sibyl Grey, Who built this cross and well. '

"These lines, " he continued in his ordinary prose accent, "gave me my firstsuggestion of a cross and well at Pilgrim Station, aided, perhaps, by thename itself, so singularly appropriate; not at all consistent, Mr. Thanetells me, with the usual haphazard nomenclature of this region. However, this is the old Oregon emigrant trail, and in the early forties men ofeducation and Christian sentiment were pioneers on this road. But now thatI see the place and the country round it, I find the Middle Ages are notold enough to borrow from. We must go back, away back of chivalry andmonkish superstition, to the life-giving pools of that country where thestory of man began; where water, in the language of its people, was justlymade the symbol of their highest spiritual as well as physical needs andcravings. 'And David longed, and said, Oh, that one would give me drinkof the water of the well of Beth-lehem, that is at the gate!' It is a farcry here to any gate but the gate of sunset, which we have been travelingagainst from morning to evening since our journey began, yet neverapproaching any nearer. But this, nevertheless, is the country of David'swell, --a dry, elevated plain, surrounded by mountains strangely gashedand riven and written all over in Nature's characters, but except for thespeech of a wandering, unlettered people, dumb as to the deeds of man. Mr. Thane tells me that if the wells on this road were as many as the deathsby violence have been, we might be pasturing our horses in green fields atnight, instead of increasing their load with the weight of their food aswell as our own. Yes, it is a 'desolate land and lone;' and if we build ourfountain, according to my first intention, in the form of a cross, blessingand shadowing the water, it must be a rude and massive one, such as humbleshepherds or herdsmen might accidentally have fashioned in the dark daysbefore its power and significance were known. It will be all the moreenduring, and the text shall be"--

"Uncle, " cried Daphne in a smothered voice, "never mind the text! _I_ amyour text! Listen to me! If your cross stood there now, here is the onewho should be in the dust before it!" She pressed her open hand upon herbreast. 

The gesture, her emphasis, the extreme figure of speech she had used, wererepellent to Mr. Withers over and above his amazement at her words. As hehad not been observing her, he was totally unprepared for such an outburst. 

"Daphne, my dear! Do I understand you? I cannot conceive"--

But Daphne could not wait for her meaning to sink in. "Uncle John, " sheinterrupted, taking a quick breath of resolution, "I have read somewherethat if a woman is dishonest, deep down, deliberately a hypocrite, sheought to be gently and mercifully killed; a woman not honest had better notbe alive. Uncle, I have something to say to you about myself. Gently andmercifully listen to me, for it ought to kill me to say it!"

Mr. Withers turned apprehensively, and was startled by the expression ofDaphne's face. She was undoubtedly in earnest. He grew quite pale. "Nothere, my dear, " he entreated; "not now. Let our thoughts be single forthis one hour that we shall be alone together. Let it wait for a little, this woeful confession. I think you probably exaggerate your need ofit, as young souls are apt to who have not learned to bear the painof self-knowledge, or self-reproach without knowledge. Let us forgetourselves, and think of our beloved dead. "

"Uncle, it must be here and now. I cannot go away from this place a liar, as I came. Let me leave it here, --my cowardly, contemptible falsehood, --inthis place of your cross. I am longing, like David, for that water theyhave gone to find, but I will not drink at Pilgrim Station, except withclean lips that have confessed and told you all. "

Mr. Withers shrank from these unrestrained and to him indecorous statementsof feeling; they shocked him almost as much as would the spectacle ofDaphne mutilating her beautiful hair, casting dust upon her head, andrending her garments before him. He believed that her trouble of soul wasgenuine, but his Puritan reserve in matters of conscience, his scholarlytaste, his jealousy for the occasion which had brought them to that spot, all combined to make this unrestrained expression of it offensive to him. However, he no longer tried to repress her. 

"Uncle, you don't believe me, " she said; "but you must. I am quite myself. "

"Except for the prolonged nervous strain you have been suffering; and Iam afraid I have not known how to spare you as I might the fatigue, thealtitude perhaps, the long journey face to face with these cruel memories. But I will not press it, I will not press it, " he concluded hastily, seeingthat his words distressed her. 

"Press it all you can, " she said. "I wish you could press it hard enoughfor me to feel it; but I feel nothing--I am a stone. At this moment, " shereiterated, "I have no feeling of any kind but shame for myself that Ishould be here at all. Oh, if you only knew what I am!"

"It is not what you are, it is who you are, that brings you here, Daphne. "

"Yes, who I am! Who am I? What right had I to come here? I never loved him. I never was engaged to him, but I let you think so. When you wrote me thatsweet letter and called me your daughter, why didn't I tell you the truth?Because in that same letter you offered me his money--and--and I wanted themoney. I lied to you then, when you were in the first of your grief, toget his money! I have been trying to live up to that He ever since. It hasalmost killed me; it has killed every bit of truth and decent womanly pridein me. I want you to save me from it before I grow any worse. You must takeback the money. It did one good thing: it paid those selfish debts of mine, and it made mother well. What has been spent I will work for and pay backas I can. But I love _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there. "

"This is the language of sheer insanity, Daphne, of mental excitement thatpasses reason. " Mr. Withers spoke in a carefully controlled but quiveringvoice--as a man who has been struck an unexpected and staggering blow, but considering the quarter it came from, is prepared to treat it as anaccident. "The facts, John's own words in his last letter to me, cannot begainsaid. 'I am coming home to you, dad, and to whom else I need not say. You know that I have never changed, but she has changed, God bless her!How well He made them, to be our thorn, our spur, our punishment, ourprevention, and sometimes our cure! I am coming home to be cured, ' he said. You have not forgotten the words of that letter, dear? I sent it to you, but first--I thought you would not mind--I copied those, his last words. They were words of such happiness; and they implied a thought, at least, ofhis Creator, if not that grounded faith"--

"They were hopes, only hopes!" the girl remorsefully disclaimed. "I allowedhim to have them because I wanted time to make up my wretched, selfishmind. I had never made him a single promise, never said one word that couldgive me the right to pose as I did afterwards, to let myself be grievedover as if I had lost my last hope on earth. I had his money all safeenough. "

"Daphne, I forbid you to speak in that tone! There are bounds even toconfession. If you think well to degrade yourself by such allusions, do notdegrade me by forcing me to listen to you. This is a subject too sacred tobe discussed in its mercenary bearings; settle that question with yourselfas you will, but let me hear no more of it. "

Daphne was silenced; for the first time in her remembrance of him she hadseen her uncle driven to positive severity, to anger even, in opposition tothe truth which his heart refused to accept. When he was calmer he began toreason with her, to uphold her in the true faith, against her seeming self, in these profane and ruthless disclosures. 

"You are morbid, " he declared, "oversensitive, from dwelling too long onthis painful chapter of your life. No one knows better than myself whatdisorders of the imagination may result from a mood of the soul, a passingmood, --the pains of growth, perhaps. You are a woman now; but let thewoman not be too hard upon the girl that she was. After what you have beenthrough quite lately, and for two years past, I pronounce you mentallyunfit to cope with your own condition. Say that you did not promise him inwords; the promise was given no less in spirit. How else could he have beenso exaltedly sure? He never was before. You had never before, I think, given him any grounds for hope?"

"No; I was always honest before, " said Daphne humbly. "When I first refusedhim, when we were both such children, and he went away, I promised toanswer his letters if he would let _that_ subject rest. And so I did. Butevery now and then he would try me again, to see if I had changed, and thatletter I would not answer; and presently he would write again, in his usualway. As often as he brought up the old question, just so often I stoppedwriting; silence was always my answer, till that last winter, when I mademy final attempt to do something with my painting and failed so miserably. You don't know, uncle, how hard I have worked, or what it cost me tofail, --to have to own that all had been wasted: my three expensive wintersin Boston, my cutting loose from all the little home duties, in the hope ofdoing something great that would pay for all. And that last winter I didnot make my expenses, even. After borrowing every cent that mother couldspare (more than she ought to have spared; it was doing without a girlthat broke her down) and denying myself, or denying her, my home visit atChristmas; and setting up in a studio of my own, and taking pains to haveall the surroundings that are said to bring success, --and then, after all, to fail, and fail, and fail! And spring came, and mother looked so ill, andthe doctor said she must have rest, total rest and change; and he looked atme as if he would like to say, 'You did it!' Well, the 'rest' I brought herwas my debts and my failure and remorse; and I wasn't even in good health, I was so used up with my winter's struggle. It was then, in the midst ofall that trouble and shame and horror at myself, his sweet letter came. No, not sweet, but manly and generous, --utterly generous, as he always was. Iought to have loved him, uncle dear; I always knew it, and I did try veryhard! He did not feel his way this time, but just poured out his wholeheart once for all; I knew he would never ask me again. And then the fatalword; he said he had grown rich. He could give me the opportunities mynature demanded. You know how he would talk. He believed in me, if nobodyelse ever did; I could not have convinced him that I was a failure. 

"It was very soothing to my wounds. I was absolutely shaken by thetemptation. It meant so much; such a refuge from self-contempt and povertyand blame, and such rest and comfort it would bring to mother! I hope thathad something to do with it. You see I am looking for a loophole to crawlout of; I haven't strength of mind to face it without some excuse. Well, Ianswered that letter; and I think the evil one himself must have helped me, for I wrote it, my first careful, deliberate piece of double-dealing, justas easily as if I had been practicing for it all my life. It was such aletter as any man would have thought meant everything; yet if I had wanted, I could have proved by the words themselves that it meant nothing thatcouldn't be taken back. 

"I said to myself, If I can stand it, if I can hold out as I feel now, Iwill marry him; then let come what may. I knew that some things would come, some things that I wanted very much. 

"Then came the strange delay, the silence, the wretched telegrams andletters back and forth. Ah, dear, do I make you cry? Don't cry for him; youhave not lost him. Cry for me, the girl you thought was good and pure andtrue! You know what I did then, when your dear letter came, giving me allhe had, calling me your daughter, all that was left you of John! I deceivedyou in your grief, hating myself and loving you all the time. And here Iam, in this place! Do you wonder I had to speak?"

"Your words are literally as blows to me, Daphne, " Mr. Withers groaned, covering his face. After a while he said, "All I have in the world wouldhave been yours and your mother's had you come to me, or had I suspectedthe trouble you were in. I ought to have been more observant. Myprepossessions must be very strong; doubtless some of the readier facultieshave been left out in my mental constitution. I hear you say these words, but even now they are losing their meaning for me. I can see that yourdistress is genuine, and I must suppose that you have referred it to itsproper cause; but I cannot master the fact itself. You must give me time torealize it. This takes much out of life for me. "

"Not my love for _you_, uncle John; there has been no falsehood there. "

"You could not have spared yourself and me this confession?" the old manqueried. "But no, God forgive me! You must have suffered grievous things inyour young conscience, my dear; this was an ugly spot to hide. But now youhave fought your fight and won it, at the foot of the cross. To say thatI forgive you, that we both, the living and the dead, forgive you, is thevery least that can be said. Come here! Come and be my daughter as before!My daughter!" he repeated. And Daphne, on her knees, put her arms about hisneck and hid her face against him. 

"Thank Heaven!" he murmured brokenly, "it cannot hurt him now. He has foundhis 'cure. ' As a candle-flame in this broad sunlight, so all those earthlylongings"--The old gentleman could not finish his sentence, though asentence was dear to him almost as the truth from which, even in his loveof verbiage, his speech never deviated. "So we leave it here, " he said atlast. "It is between us and our blessed dead. No one else need know whatyou have had the courage to tell me. Your confession concerns no otherliving soul, unless it be your mother, and I see no reason why her heartshould be perturbed. As for the money, what need have I for more thanmy present sufficiency, which is far beyond the measure of my effortsor deserts? I beg you never to recur to the subject, unless you wouldpurposely wish to wound me. This is a question of conscience purely, andyou have made yours clean. Are you satisfied?"

"Yes, " said Daphne faintly. 

"What is the residue? Or is it only the troubled waters still heaving?"

"Yes, perhaps so. "

"Well, the peace will come. Promise me, dear, that you will let it come. Donot give yourself the pain and humiliation of repeating to any other personthis miserable story of your fault. "

"It was more than a fault; you know that, uncle. Your conscience could nothave borne it for an hour. "

"Your sin, then. A habit of confession is debilitating and dangerous. Godhas heard you, and I, who alone in this world could have the right toreproach you, have said to you, Go in peace. Peace let it be, and silence, which is the safest seal of a true confession. "

"Do you mean that I am never to let myself be known as I am?" asked Daphne. Her face had changed; it wore a look of fright and resistance. "Why, that would mean that I am never to unmask; to go about all my life in mytrappings of false widowhood. You read what that paper called me! I cannotplay the part any longer. "

"Are you speaking with reference to these strangers? But this will soon beover, dear. We shall soon be at home, where no one thinks of us except asthey have known us all their lives. It will be painful for a little while, this conspicuousness; but these good people will soon pass out of ourlives, and we out of theirs. Idle speculation will have little to do withus, after this. "

"There will be always speculation, " implored the girl. "It will follow mewherever I go, and all my life I shall be in bondage to this wretchedlie. Take back the money, uncle, and give me the price I paid for it, --myfreedom, myself as I was before I was tempted!"

"Ah, if that could be!" said the old gentleman. "Is it my poor boy's memorythat burdens you so? Is it that which you would be freed from?"

"From doing false homage to his memory, " Daphne pleaded. "I could havegrieved for him, if I could have been honest; as it is, I am in dangeralmost of hating him. Forgive me, uncle, but I am! How do you suppose Ifeel when voices are lowered and eyes cast down, not to intrude upon my'peculiar, privileged grief? 'Here I and Sorrow sit!' Isn't it awful, uncle? Isn't it ghastly, indecent? I am afraid some day I shall break outand do some dreadful thing, --laugh or say something shocking, when they tryto spare my feelings. Feelings! when my heart is as hard, this moment, toeverything but myself, myself! I am so sick of myself! But how can I helpthinking about myself when I can never for one moment _be_ myself?"

"This is something that goes deeper, " said Mr. Withers. "I confess it isdifficult for me to follow you here; to understand how a love as meek asthat of the dead, who ask nothing, could lay such deadly weights upon ayoung girl's life. "

"Not his love--mine, mine! Is it truly in his grave? If it is not, why do Idare to profess daily that it is, to go on lying every day? I want backmy word, that I never gave to any man. Can't one repent and confess afalsehood? And do you call it confessing, when all but one person in theworld are still deceived?"

"It is not easy for me to advise you, Daphne, " said Mr. Withers wearily. "Your struggle has discovered to me a weakness of my own: verily, an oldman's fond jealousy for the memory of his son. Almost I could stoop toentreat you. I do entreat you! So long as we defraud no one else, so longas there is no living person who might justly claim to know your heart, whyrob my poor boy's grave of the grace your love bestows, even the semblancethat it was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute, we will say, " the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rudehand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessaryharshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresistingdead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Flingaway even his memory, that casts so thin a shade upon your life, a faintmorning shadow that will shrink as your sun climbs higher. By degrees youwill be free. And, speaking less selfishly, would there not be a certainindelicacy in reopening now the question of your past relations to onewhose name is very seldom spoken? Others may not be thinking so muchof your loss--your supposed loss, " the old gentleman conscientiouslysupplied--"as your sensitiveness leads you to imagine. But you will giveoccasion for thinking and for talking if you tear open now your girlhood'ssecrets. Whom does it concern, my dear, to know where or how your heart isbestowed?"

Daphne's cheeks and brow were burning hot; even her little ears werescarlet. Her eyes filled and drooped. "It is only right, " she owned. "It ismy natural punishment. "

"No, no; I would not punish nor judge you. I love you too well. But I knowbetter than you can what a safeguard this will be, --this disguise which isno longer a deception, since the one it was meant to deceive knows all andforgives it. It will rebuke the bold and hasty pretenders to a treasure youcannot safely part with, even by your own gift, as yet. You are still veryyoung in some ways, my dear. "

"I am old enough, " said Daphne, "to have learned one fearful lesson. "

"Do I oppress you with my view? Do I insist too much?"

Perhaps nothing could have lowered the girl in her own eyes more thanthis humility of the gentle old man in the face of his own self-exposedweakness, his pathetic jealousy for that self above self, ---the childone can do no more than grieve for this side the grave. She had come toherself only to face the consciousness of a secret motive which robbedher confession of all moral value. Repentance, that would annul her basebargain now that the costs began to outweigh the advantages, was giltedged, was a luxury; she was ashamed to buy back her freedom on such terms. 

"Let it be as you say, " she assented; "but only because you ask it. It willnot be wrong, will it, if I do it for you?"

"I hope not, " returned Mr. Withers. "The motive, in a silence of this kindthat can harm no one, must make a difference, I should say. "

So it was settled; and Daphne felt the weight of her promise, which theirony of justice had fastened upon her, as a millstone round her neckfor life; she was still young enough to think that whatever is mustlast forever. They sat in silence, but neither felt that the other wassatisfied. Mr. Withers knew that Daphne was not lightened of her trouble, nor was he in his heart content with the point he had gained. The unwontedtouch of self-assertion it had called for rested uneasily on him; and hecould not but own that he had made himself Daphne's apologist, which noconfessor ought to be, in this disguise by which he named the deception hewas now helping her to maintain. 

After a time, when Daphne had called his attention to the fact, he agreedthat it was indeed strange their companions did not return; they had beengone an hour or more to find a spring said to be not half a mile away. 

Daphne proposed to climb the grade and see if they were yet in sight, Mr. Withers consenting. Indeed, under the stress of his thoughts, her absencewas a sensible relief. 

From the hilltop looking down she could see the way they had gone; thecrooked gulch, a garment's crease in the great lap of the table-land, sinking to the river. She saw no one, heard no sound but the senselesshurry and bluster of the winds, --coming from no one knew where, going nonecared whither. It blew a gale in the bright sunlight, mocking her effortsto listen. She waved her hand to her uncle's lone figure in the hollow, tosignify that she was going down on the other side. He assented, supposingshe had seen their fellow travelers returning. 

She had been out of sight some moments, long enough for Mr. Withers to havelapsed into his habit of absent musing, when Thane came rattling down theslope of the opposite hill, surprised to see the old gentleman alone. Hislong, black eyes went searching everywhere while he reported a fruitlessquest for the spring. Kinney and he had followed the gulch, which showednowhere a vestige of water, save in the path of the spring freshets, untilthey had come in sight of the river; and Kinney had taken the horses ondown to drink, riding one and leading the other. It would be nearly threemiles to the river from where Thane had left him, but that was where allthe deceptive cattle trails were tending. Thane, returning, had made a loopof his track around the hollow, but had failed to round up any spring. Hence, as he informed Mr. Withers, this could not be Pilgrim Station. Hemade no attempt to express his chagrin at this cruel and unseemly blunder. The old gentleman accepted it with his usual uncomplaining deference tocircumstances; still, it was jarring to nerves overstrained and bruisedby the home thrust of Daphne's defection. He fell silent and drew withinhimself, not reproachfully, but sensitively. Thane rightly surmised thatno second invocation would be offered when they should come to the truePilgrim Station; the old gentleman would keep his threnodies to himselfafter this. 

It would have been noticeable to any less celestial-minded observer thanMr. Withers the diffidence with which Thane, in asking after Miss DaphneLewis, pronounced that young person's name. He did not wait for the oldgentleman to finish his explanation of her absence, but having learned theway she had gone, dropped himself at a great pace down the gulch and cameupon her unawares, where she had been sitting, overcome by nameless fearsand a creeping horror of the place. She started to her feet, for Thane'swas no furtive tread that crashed through the thorny greasewood and planteditself, a yard at a bound, amongst the stones. The horror vanished and aflush of life, a light of joy, returned to her speaking face. He had neverseen her so completely off her guard. He checked himself suddenly andcaught his hat from his head; and without thinking, before he replaced it, he drew the back of his soft leather glove across his dripping forehead. The unconventional action touched her keenly. She was sensitively subjectto outward impressions, and "the plastic" had long been her delight, herambition, and her despair. 

"Oh, if I could only have done something simple like that!" the defeated, unsatisfied artist soul within her cried. "That free, arrested stride, howsplendid! and the hat crumpled in his hand, and his bare head and strongbrows in the sunlight, and the damp points of hair clinging to his temples!No, he is _not_ bald, --that was only a tonsure of white light on the topof his head; still, he must be hard on forty. It is the end of summer withhim, too; and here he comes for water, thirsting, to satisfy himself wherewater was plentiful in spring, and he finds a dry bed of stones. Call itThe End of Summer; it is enough. Ah, if I could ever have thought out anaction as simple and direct as that--and drawn it! But how can one drawwhat one has never seen!"

Not all this, but something else, something more that Daphne could not haveput into words, spoke in the look which Thane surprised. It was but a flashbetween long lashes that fell instantly and put it out; but no woman whoseheart was in the grave ever looked at a living man in that way, and theliving man could not help but know it. It took away his self-possession fora moment; he stood speechless, gazing into her face with a question in hiseyes which five minutes before he would have declared an insult to her. 

Daphne struggled to regain her mask, but the secret had escaped: shamelessNature had seized her opportunity. 

"How did I miss you?" she asked with forced coolness, as they turned up thegulch together. For the moment she had forgotten about the spring. 

Thane briefly explained the mistake that had been made, adding, "You willhave to put up with another day of us, now, --perhaps two. "

"And where do you leave us, then?" asked Daphne stupidly. 

"At the same place, --Decker's Ferry, you know. " He smiled, indulgent to hercrass ignorance of roads and localities. "Only we shall be a day longergetting there. We are still on the south side of the river, you remember?"

"Oh, of course!" said Daphne, who remembered nothing of the kind. 

"It was a brutal fake, our springing this place on you for PilgrimStation, " he murmured. 

"It has all been a mistake, --our coming, I mean; at least I think so. "

It was some comfort to Thane to hear her say it, --he had been so forciblyof that opinion himself all along; but he allowed the admission to pass. 

"It must have been a hard journey for you, " he exerted himself to say, speaking in a surface voice, while his thoughts were sinking test-pitsthrough layers of crusted consciousness into depths of fiery natureunderneath. 

She answered in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; unclehas depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything tohim. "

He took her up with needless probity: "Whatever you do, don't thank me!It's bad enough to have Mr. Withers heaping coals of fire on my head. Hegives me the place always, in regard to his son, of an intimate friend;which I never was, and God knows I never claimed to be! He took it forgranted, somehow, --perhaps because of my letters at first, though any brutewould have done as much at a time like that! Afterwards I would have sethim right, but I was afraid of thrusting back the friendly imputation inhis face. He credits me with having been this and that of a godsend tohis son, when as a fact we parted, that last time, not even good friends. Perhaps you can forgive me for saying it? You see how I am placed!"

This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed tocommand Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, thenshe said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable tofeel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel. " But her homeapplication of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which hefirmly corrected. 

"I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other knowhow we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that Iknew a lot about him, --his thoughts and feelings; that we were immenselysympathetic. Perhaps we were, but we didn't know it. We knew nothing ofeach other intimately. He never spoke to me of his private affairs butonce, the night before he started. It was at Wood River. Some of us gavehim a little supper. Afterwards we had some business to settle and I wasalone with him in his room. It was then I made my break; and--well, itended as I say: we quarreled. It has hurt me since, especially as I waswrong. "

"What can men quarrel about when they don't know each other well? Politics, perhaps?" Daphne endeavored to give her words a general application. 

"It was not politics with us, " Thane replied curtly. Changing the subject, he said, "I wish you could see the valley from that hogback over to thewest. " He pointed towards the spine of the main divide, which they wouldcross on their next day's journey. "Will you come up there this evening andtake a look at the country? The wind will die down at sunset, I think. "

There was a studied commonplaceness in his manner; his eyes avoided hers. 

"Thanks; I should like to, " she answered in the same defensive tone. 

 * * * * *

"To go back to what we were saying, " Daphne began, when they were seated, that evening, on the hilltop. All around them the view of the world roseto meet the sky, glowing in the west, purple in the east, while the paleplanets shone, and below them the river glassed and gleamed in its crookedbed. "I ask you seriously, " she said. "What was the trouble between you?"Doubtless she had a reason for asking, but it was not the one that sheproceeded to give. "Had you--have you, perhaps--any claims in a businessway against him? Because, if you had, it would be most unfair to hisfather"--The words gave her difficulty; but her meaning, as forced meaningsare apt to be, was more than plain. 

Thane was not deceived: a woman who yields to curiosity, under howeverpious an excuse, is, to say the least, normal. Her thoughts are neither inthe heavens above nor in the grave beneath. His black eyes flashed with theprovocation of the moment. It was instinct that bade him not to spare her. 

"We quarreled, " he said, "in the orthodox way, --about a woman. "

"Indeed!" said Daphne. "Then you must pardon me. "

"And her name, " he continued calmly. 

"I did not ask you her name. "

"Still, since we have gone so far"--

"There is no need of our going any farther. "

"We may as well, --a little farther. We quarreled, strangely enough, aboutyou, --the first time he ever spoke of you. He would not have spoken then, Ithink, but he was a little excited, as well he might have been. Excuse me?"He waited. 

"Nothing!" said Daphne. She had made an involuntary protesting sound. 

"He said he hoped to bring you back with him. I asked how long since he hadseen you; and when he told me five years, I remarked that he had better notbe too sure. 'But you don't know her, ' he said; 'she is truth itself, andcourage. By as many times as she has refused to listen to me, I am sure ofher now. ' I did not gather somehow that you were--engaged to him, else Ihope I should not have gone so far. As it was, I kept on persisting--likea cynic who has no one of his own to be sure of--that he had betternot be too sure! He might have seen, I thought then, that it was halfchaff and half envy with me; but it was a nervous time, and I was lessthan sympathetic, less than a friend to him. And now I am loaded withfriendship's honors, and you have come yourself to prove me in the wrong. You punish me by converting me to the truth. "

"What truth?" asked Daphne, so low that Thane had to guess her question. 

"Have you not proved to me that some women do have memories?"

Daphne could not meet his eyes; but she suspected him of somethinglike sarcasm. She could not be sure, for his tone was agitating in itstenderness. 

"All things considered, " she said slowly, "does it not strike you as rathera costly conversion?"

"I don't say I was worth it, nor do I see just how it benefits mepersonally to have learned my lesson. "

He rose, and stood where he could look at her, --an unfair advantage, for his dark face, strong in its immobility, was in silhouette againstthe flush of twilight which illumined hers, so transparent in itssensitiveness. 

"Is it not a good thing to believe, on any terms?" she tried to answerlightly. 

"For some persons, perhaps. But my hopes, if I had any, would lie in thedirection of disbelief. "

"Disbelief?" she repeated confusedly. His keen eyes beat hers down. 

"In woman's memory, constancy, --her constancy in youth, say? I am nottalking of seasoned timber. I don't deserve to be happy, you see, and Ilook for no more than my deserts. "

If he were mocking her now, only to test her! And if she should answerwith a humble, blissful disclaimer? But she answered nothing, disclaimednothing; suffered his suspicion, --his contempt, perhaps, for she felt thathe read her through and through. 

A widow is well, and a maid is well; but a maiden widow who trembles andlooks down--in God's creation, what is she?

 * * * * *

On the north side of the Snake, after climbing out of the cañon at Decker'sFerry, the cross-roads branch as per sign-post: "Thirty miles to ShoshoneFalls, one mile to Decker's Ferry. Good road. " This last assertion mustbe true, as we have it on no less authority than that of Decker himself. Nothing is said of the road to Bliss, --not even that there is such a Blissonly sixteen miles away. Being a station on the Oregon Short Line, Blisscan take care of itself. 

At these cross-roads, on a bright, windy September morning, our travelershad halted for reasons, the chief of which was to say good-by. They hadslept over night at the ferry, parted their baggage in the morning, and nowin separate wagons by divergent roads were setting forth on the last stageof their journey. 

Daphne had left some necessary of her toilet at the ferry, and the driverof Mr. Withers's team had gone back to ask the people at the ferry-houseto find it. This was the cause of their waiting at the cross-roads. Mr. Withers and Daphne were on their devoted way like conscientious tourists, though both were deadly weary, to prostrate themselves before thestupendous beauty of the great lone falls at Shoshone. Thane, with Kinney'steam, was prosaically bound down the river to examine and report on aplacer-mine. But before his business would be finished Mr. Withers and hisniece would have returned by railroad via Bliss to Boise, and have leftthat city for the East; so this was likely to be a long good-by. 

If anything could have come of Mr. Withers's project of a memorial fountainat Pilgrim Station, there might have been a future to the acquaintance, forThane was to have had charge of the execution of the design; but nature hadlightly frustrated that fond, beneficent dream. 

Mr. Kinney had offered the practical suggestion that the road should go tothe fountain, since the fountain could not come to the road. Its coursewas a mere accident of the way the first wagon-wheels had gone. The wheelswere few now, and with such an inducement might well afford to cross thegulch in a new place lower down. But Mr. Withers would have none of thisdislocation of the unities. There was but one place--the dismal hollowitself, the scene of his heart's tragedy--where his acknowledgment to Godshould stand; his mute "Thy will be done!"

Perhaps the whole conception had lost something of its hold on his mindby contact with such harsh realities as Daphne's disavowals and his ownconsequent struggle with a father's weakness. He had not in his inmostconscience quite done with that question yet. 

Thane was touched by the meekness with which the old gentleman resignedhis dream. The journey, he suspected, had been a disappointment in otherways, --had failed in impressiveness, in personal significance; had fallenat times below the level of the occasion, at others had overpowered it andswept it out of sight. Thane could have told him that it must be so. Therewas room for too many mourners in that primeval waste. Whose small specialgrief could make itself heard in that vast arid silence, the voice of whichwas God? God in nature, awful, inscrutable, alone, had gained a new meaningfor Mr. Withers. Miles of desert, days of desert, like waves of bruteoblivion had swept over him. Never before had he felt the oppression ofpurely natural causes, the force of the physical in conflict with thespiritual law. And now he was to submit to a final illustration of it, perhaps the simplest and most natural one of all. 

Daphne was seated at a little distance on her camp-stool, making a drawingof the desert cross-roads with the twin sign-posts pointing separateways, as an appropriate finish to her Snake River sketch-book. The sunwas tremendous, the usual Snake River zephyr was blowing forty miles anhour, and the flinty ground refused to take the brass-shod point of herumbrella-staff. Mr. Kinney, therefore, sat beside her, gallantly steadyingher heavy sketching-umbrella against the wind. 

Mr. Withers, while awaiting the return of his own team from the ferry, hadaccepted a seat in Thane's wagon. (It was a bag containing a curling-iron, lamp, and other implements appertaining to "wimples and crisping-pins, "that Daphne had forgotten, but she had not described its contents. One bagis as innocent as another, on the outside; it might have held her PrayerBook. )

Thane was metaphorically "kicking himself" because time was passing andhe could not find words delicate enough in which to clothe an indelicaterequest, --one outrageous in its present connection, yet from some points ofview, definitively his own, a most urgent and natural one. 

 "For one shall grasp, and one resign, And God shall make the balance good. "

To grasp is a simple act enough; but to do so delicately, reverently, without forcing one's preferences on those of another, may not always be sosimple. Thane was not a Goth nor a Vandal; by choice he would have soughtto preserve the amenities of life; but a meek man he was not, and the thinghe now desired was, he considered, well worth the sacrifice of such smallpretensions as his in the direction of unselfishness. 

The founding of a family in its earliest stages is essentially an egoisticand ungenerous proceeding. Even Mr. Withers must have been self-seekingonce or twice in his life, else had he never had a son to mourn. So, sincelife in this world is for the living, and his own life was likely to goon many years after Mr. Withers had been gathered to the reward of therighteous, Thane worked himself up to the grasping-point at last. 

He was never able to reflect with any pride on the way in which he did it, and perhaps it is hardly fair to report him in a conversation that wouldhave had its difficulties for almost any man; but his way of putting hiscase was something like the following, --Mr. Withers guilelessly opening theway by asking, "You will be coming East, I hope, before long, Mr. Thane?"

"Possibly, " said Thane, "I may run on to New York next winter. "

"If you should, I trust you will find time to come a little further Eastand visit me? I could add my niece's invitation to my own, but she and hermother will probably have gone South for her mother's health. However, Iwill welcome you for us both, --I and my books, which are all my householdnow. "

"Thanks, sir, I should be very glad to come; though your books, I'm afraid, are the sort that would not have much to say to me. "

"Come and see, come and see, " Mr. Withers pressed him warmly. "A ripefarewell should always hold the seeds of a future meeting. "

"That is very kindly said, " Thane responded quickly; "and if you don'tmind, I will plant one of those seeds right now. "

"So do, so do, " the old gentleman urged unsuspiciously. 

"Your niece"--Thane began, but could see his way no further in thatdirection without too much precipitancy. Then he backed down on a line ofargument, --"I need not point out the fact, " etc. , --and abandoned that asbeset with too many pitfalls of logic, for one of his limited powers ofanalysis. Fewest words and simplest would serve him best. "It is hardlylikely, " then he said, "that your niece's present state of feeling will berespected as long as it lasts; there will be others with feelings of theirown. Her loss will hardly protect her all her life from--she will havesuitors, of course! Nature is a brute, and most men, young men, are naturalin that respect, --in regard to women, I mean. I don't want to be the firstfool who rushes in, but there will be a first. When he arrives, sir, willyou let me know? If any man is to be heard, I claim the right to speak toher myself; the right, you understand, of one who loves her, who will makeany sacrifice on earth to win her. "

Mr. Withers remained silent. He had a sense of suffocation, as of waves ofheat and darkness going over him. The wind sang in his ears, shouted andhooted at him. He was stunned. Presently he gasped, "Mr. Thane! you havenot surely profaned this solemn journey with such thoughts as these?"

"A man cannot always help his thoughts, Mr. Withers. I have not profaned mythoughts by putting them into words, till now. I cannot do them justice, but I have made them plain. This is not a question of taste or proprietywith me, or even decency. It is my life, --all of it I shall ever place atthe disposal of any woman. I am not a boy; I know what I want and how muchI want it. The secret of success is to be in the right place at the righttime: here is where I ask your help. "

"I do not question that you know what you want, " said Mr. Withersmildly, --"it is quite a characteristic of the men of this region, Iinfer, --nor do I deny that you may know the way of success in getting it;but that I should open the door to you--be your--I might say accomplice, in this design upon the affections of my niece--why, I don't know how itstrikes you, but"--

"It strikes me precisely as it does you, --my part of it, " said Thaneimpatiently. "But her part is different, as I see it. If she were sick, youwould not put off the day of her recovery because neither you nor yourscould cure her? Whoever can make her forget this shipwreck of her youth, heal her unhappiness, let him do so. Isn't that right? Give him the chanceto try. A man's power in these things does not lie in his deserts. All Iask is, when other men come forward I want the same privilege. But I shallnot be on the ground. When that time comes, sir, will you remember me?"

For once Mr. Withers seized the occasion for a retort; he advanced upon theenemy's exposed position. "Yes, Mr. Thane, I will remember you, --betterthan you remember your friends when they are gone. "

Thane accepted the reproach as meekly as if his friendship for John Withershad been of the indubitable stuff originally that Mr. Withers had creditedhim with. He rather welcomed than otherwise an unmerited rebuke from thatlong-suffering quarter. 

But though Thane was silenced as well as answered, there was conscience yetto deal with. Mr. Withers sat and meditated sorely, while the wind buffetedhis gray hairs. Conscience demanded that he give up the secret of Daphne'sfalse mourning, which he would have defended with his life. "A silence thatcan harm no one. " "So long as we defraud no living person who might claima right to know your heart. " The condition was plain; it provided for justsuch cases as the present. Then how could he hesitate? But he was human, and he did. 

"I have gone too far, I see. Well, say no more about it, " said Thane. "Yourgenerosity tempted me. From those who give easily much shall be asked. Forget it, sir, please. I will look out for myself, or lose her. "

"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Mr. Withers. He turned to Thane, placing his handabove his faded eyes to shade them from the glare, and looked his companionearnestly in the face. Thane sought for an umbrella, and raised it over theold gentleman's head; it was not an easy thing to hold it steady in thatwind. 

"Thanks, thanks! Now I can look at you. Yes, I can look you in the eye, inmore senses than one. Listen to me, Mr. Thane, and don't mind if I am notvery lucid. In speaking of the affairs of another, and a young woman, I canonly deal in outlines. You will be able to surmise and hope the rest. Ifeel in duty bound to tell you that at the time of my son's death there wasa misunderstanding on my part which forced Miss Lewis into a false positionin respect to her relations to my son. Too much was assumed by me oninsufficient evidence, --a case where the wish, perhaps, was father to thethought. She hesitated at that sore time to rob me of an illusion which shesaw was precious to me; she allowed me to retain my erroneous belief thatmy son, had he lived, would have enjoyed the blessing of her affection. Asa fact, she had not given it to him, --could not have given it, --though sheowns that her mind, not her heart, was wavering. Had she married him, othermotives than love would have influenced her choice. So death has saved mydear boy from a cruel disappointment or a worse mistake, and her from agreat danger. Had he lived, he must have had many hours of wretchedness, either with or without that dearest wish of his heart fulfilled. 

"This she confessed to me not many days ago, after a long period ofremorseful questioning; and I deem it my duty now, in view of what you havejust told me, to acquaint you with the truth. I am the only one who knowsthat she was not engaged to my son, and never really loved him. The factcut me so deeply, when I learned it first, that I persuaded her, mostselfishly, to continue in the disguise she had permitted, sustained solong, --to rest in it, that my boy's memory might be honored through thissacrifice of the truth. Weak, fond old man that I was, and worse! Butnow you have my confession. As soon as I can speak with her alone I willrelease her from that promise. She was fain to be free before all theworld, --our little part of it, --but I fastened it on her. I see now that Icould not have invented a crueler punishment; but it was never my purposeto punish her. I will also tell her that I have opened the true state ofthe case to you. "

"Would you not stop just short of that, Mr. Withers? To know she is free tolisten to him, --that is all any man could ask. "

"Perhaps you are right; yes, she need not know that I have possessed youwith her secret, --all of it that has any bearing on your hopes. I onlythought it might save you, in her mind, from any possible imputation of--ofwant of respect for her supposed condition, akin to widowhood; but no doubtyou will wait a suitable time. "

"I will wait till we meet in Boise. "

"In Boise!" the old gentleman cried, aghast. 

"That will be three days from now, " answered Thane innocently. Did Mr. Withers imagine that he would wait three years!

"But what becomes of the--the placer-mine?"

"The placer-mine be--the placer-mine will keep! She is shutting up herbook; the sketch is finished. Will you hold the umbrella, sir, or shall Iput it down?"

Mr. Withers took hold of the umbrella handle; the wind shook it and nearlytugged it out of his grasp. "Put it down, if you please, " he murmuredresignedly. But by this time Thane was half across the road to whereDaphne, with penknife and finger-tips, was trying to strip the top layerof blackened sandpaper from her pencil-scrubber; turning her face aside, because, woman-like, she would insist on casting her pencil-dust towindward. 

Thane smiled, and took the scrubber out of her hands, threw away the soiledsheet, sealed up the pad in a clean stamped envelope, which bore acrossthe end the legend, "If not delivered within ten days, return to"--"RobertHenry Thane, " he wrote, with his address, and gave her back her property. It was all very childish, yet his hand trembled as he wrote; and Daphnelooked on with the solemnity of a child learning a new game. 

"May I see the sketch?" he asked. 

They bent together over her book, while Daphne endeavored to find theplace; the wind fluttered the leaves, and she was so long in finding itthat Mr. Kinney had time to pack up her stool and umbrella, and cross theroad to say good-by to Mr. Withers. 

"Here it is, " said Thane, catching sight of the drawing. He touched thebook-holder lightly on the arm, to turn her away from the sun. Her shadowfell across the open page; their backs were to the wagon. So they stooda full half-minute, --Thane seeing nothing, hearing his heart beatpreposterously in the silence. 

"Why don't you praise my sign-posts?" asked Daphne nervously. "See mybeautiful distance, --one straight line!"

"I have changed my plans a little, " said Thane. Daphne closed the book. "Ishall see you again in Boise. This is good-by--for three days. Take care ofyourself. " He held out his hand. "I shall meet your train at Bliss. "

"Bliss! Where is Bliss?"

"You never could remember, could you?" he smiled. The tone of his voice wasa flagrant caress. The color flew to Daphne's face. "Bliss, " said he, "iswhere I shall meet you again: remember that, will you?"

Daphne drew down her veil. The man returning from the ferry was in sightat the top of the hill. Mr. Withers was alighting from Thane's wagon. Sheturned her gray mask towards him, through which he could discern the softoutline of her face, the color of her lips and cheeks, the darkness of hereyes; their expression he could not see. 

"I shall meet you at Bliss, " he repeated, his fingers closing upon hers. 

Daphne did not reply; she did not speak to him nor look at him again, though it was some moments before the wagon started. 

Kinney and Thane remained at the cross-roads, discussing with some heat thelatter's unexpected change of plan. Mr. Kinney had a small interest in theplacer-mine, himself, but it looked large to him just then. He put littlefaith in Thane's urgent business (that no one had heard of till thatmoment) calling him to Boise in three days. Of what use was it going downto the placers only to turn round and come back again? So Thane thought, and proposed they drive forward to Bliss. 

"Bliss be hanged!" said Mr. Kinney; which shows how many ways there are oflooking at the same thing. 

Thane's way prevailed; they drove straight on to Bliss. And if theplacer-mine was ever reported on by Thane, it must have been at a latertime. 

PILGRIMS TO MECCA

"Notice the girl on your right, Elsie. That is the thing! You have to seeit to understand. Do you understand, dear? Do you see the difference?"

A middle-aged little mother, with a sensitive, care-worn face, leanedacross the Pullman section and laid a hand upon her daughter's by way ofemphasis--needless, for her voice and manner conveyed all, and much morethan the words could possibly carry. Volumes of argument, demonstration, expostulation were implied. 

"Can you see her? Do you see what I mean? What, dear?"

The questions followed one another like beads running down a string. Elsie's silence was the knot at the end. She opened her eyes and turnedthem languidly as directed, but without raising her head from the back ofthe car-seat. 

"I will look presently, mother. I can't see much of anything now. "

"Oh, never mind. Forgive me, dear. How is your head? Lie still; don't tryto talk. "

Elsie smiled, patted her mother's hand, and closed her narrow, sweet, sleepy blue eyes. Mrs. Valentin never looked at them, when her mind was atrest, without wishing they were a trifle larger--wider open, rather. Theeyes were large enough, but the lazy lids shut them in. They saw a gooddeal, however. She also wished, in moments of contemplation, that she couldhave laid on a little heavier the brush that traced Elsie's eyebrows, andcontinued them a little longer at the temples. Then, her upper lip was, ifanything, the least bit too short. Yet what a sweet, concentrated littlemouth it was, --reticent and pure, and not over-ready with smiles, thoughthe hidden teeth were small, flawless, and of baby whiteness! Yes, themother sighed, just a touch or two, --and she knew just where to put thosetouches, --and the girl had been a beauty. If nature would only consult themothers at the proper time, instead of going on in her blindfold fashion!

But, after all, did they want a beauty in the family? On theory, no: thefew beauties Mrs. Valentin had known in her life had not been the happiestof women. What they did want was an Elsie--their own Elsie--perfectlytrained without losing her naturalness, perfectly educated without losingher health, perfectly dressed without thinking of clothes, perfectlyaccomplished without wasting her time, and, finally, an Elsie perfectlyhappy. All that parents, situated on the wrong side of the continent forart and culture, and not over-burdened with money, could do to that end, Mrs. Valentin was resolved should be done. Needless to say, very little wasto be left to God. 

Mrs. Valentin was born in the East, some forty-odd years before thiseducational pilgrimage began, of good Unitarian stock, --born with a greatsense of personal accountability. She could not have thrown it off and beenjoyful in the words, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. "

Elsie had got a headache from the early start and the suppressed agitationof parting from her home and her father. Suppression was as natural to heras expression was to her mother. The father and daughter had held eachother silently a moment; both had smiled, and both were ill for hoursafterward. 

But Mrs. Valentin thought that in Elsie's case it was because she had notsent the girl to bed earlier the night before, and insisted on her eatingsomething at breakfast. 

Herself--she had lain sleepless for the greater part of that night and manynights previous. She had anticipated in its difficulties every stage ofthe getting off, the subsequent journey, the arrival, their reception byEastern relatives not seen for years, the introduction of her grown-updaughter, the impression she would make, the beginning of life all overagain in a strange city. (She had known her Boston once, but that wastwenty years ago. ) She foresaw the mistakes she would inevitably make inher choice of means to the desired ends--dressmakers, doctors, specialistsof all sorts; the horrible way in which school expenses mount up; thetrivial yet poignant comparisons of school life, from which, if Elsiesuffered, she would be sure to suffer in silence. 

After this fatiguing mental rehearsal she had risen at six, while theelectric lights were still burning and the city was cloaked in fog. It wasSan Francisco of a midsummer morning; fog whistles groaning, sidewalksslippery with wet, and the gray-green trees and tinted flower-beds of thecity gardens emerging like the first broad washes of a water-color laid inwith a full brush. 

She had taken a last survey of her dismantled home, given the lastdirections to the old Chinese servant left in charge, presided haggardly atthe last home breakfast----what a ghastly little ceremony it was! Then Mr. Valentin had gone across the Oakland ferry with them and put them aboardthe train, muffled up as for winter. They had looked into each other'spale faces and parted for two years, all for Elsie's sake. But what Elsiethought about it--whether she understood or cared for what this sacrificeof home and treasure was to purchase--it was impossible to learn. Stillmore what her father thought. What he had always said was, "You had bettergo. "

"But do you truly think it _is_ the best thing for the child?"

"I think that, whatever we do, there will be times when we'll wish we haddone something different; and there will be other times when we shall beglad we did not. All we can do is the best we know up to date. "

"But do you think it is the best?"

"I think, Emmy, that you will never be satisfied until you have tried it, and it's worth the money to me to have you feel that you have done yourbest. "

Mrs. Valentin sighed. "Sometimes I wonder why we do cling to that oldfetich of the East. Why can't we accept the fact that we are Westernpeople? The question is, Shall we be the self-satisfied kind or theunsatisfied kind? Shall we be contented and limited, or discontented andgrow?"

"I guess we shall be limited enough, either way, " Mr. Valentin retortedeasily. He had no hankering for the East and no grudge against fate formaking him a Western man _malgré lui_. "I've known kickers who didn'tappear to grow much, except to grow cranky, " he said. 

Up to the moment of actual departure, Mrs. Valentin had continued to reviewher decision and to agonize over its possibilities of disaster; but nowthat the journey had begun, she was experiencing the rest of change andmovement. She was as responsive as a child to fresh outward impressions, and the hyperbolical imagination that caused her such torture when itwrought in the dark hours on the teased fabric of her own life, couldgive her compensating pleasures by daylight, on the open roads of theworld. There was as yet nothing outside the car windows which they hadnot known of old, --the marsh-meadows of the Lower Sacramento, tide-riversreflecting the sky, cattle and wild fowl, with an occasional windmillor a duck-hunter's lodge breaking the long sweeps of low-toned color. The morning sun was drinking up the fog, the temperature in the Pullmansteadily rising. Jackets were coming off and shirt-waists blooming out insummer colors, giving the car a homelike appearance. 

It was a saying that summer, "By their belts ye shall know them. "Shirt-waists no longer counted, since the ready-made ones for two dollarsand a half were almost as chic as the tailor-made for ten. But the belts, the real belts, were inimitable. Sir Lancelot might have used them for hisbridle--

 "Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden galaxy. "

Mrs. Valentin had looked with distinct approval on a mother and daughterwho occupied the section opposite. Their impedimenta and belongings were"all right, " arguing persons with cultivated tastes, abroad for a summerspent in divers climates, who knew what they should have and where toget it. A similarity of judgment on questions of clothes and shops is nodoubt a bond between strange women everywhere; but it was the daughter'sbelt-buckle before which Mrs. Valentin bowed down and humbled herself insilence. The like of that comes only by inheritance or travel. Antique, pale gold--Cellini might have designed it. There was probably not anotherbuckle like that one in existence. An imitation? No more than its wearer, agirl as white as a white camellia, with gray eyes and thin black eyebrows, and thick black lashes that darkened the eyes all round. There was nothingnoticeable in her dress except its freshness and a certain finish in lesserdetails, understood by the sophisticated. "Swell" was too common a wordfor her supreme and dainty elegance. Her resemblance to the ordinaryfull-fleshed type of Pacific coast belle was that of a portrait byRomney--possibly engraved by Cole--to a photograph of some _reina de lafiesta_. This was Mrs. Valentin's exaggerated way of putting it to herself. Such a passionate conservative as she was sure to be prejudiced. 

The mother had a more pronounced individuality, as mothers are apt tohave, and looked quite fit for the ordinary uses of life. She was ofthe benignant Roman-nosed Eastern type, daughter of generations ofphilanthropists and workers in the public eye for the public good; a deep, rich voice, an air of command, plain features, abundant gray hair, importedclothes, wonderful, keen, dark eyes overlapped by a fold of the crumpledeyelid, --a personage, a character, a life, full of complex energies anddomineering good sense. With gold eye-glasses astride her high-bridgednose, knees crossed, one large, well-shod foot extended, this mother inIsrael sat absorbed like a man in the daily paper, and wroth like a man atits contents. Occasionally she would emit an impatient protest in the deep, maternal tones, and the graceful daughter would turn her head and read overher shoulder in silent assent. 

"How trivial, how self-centred we are!" Mrs. Valentin murmured, leaningacross to claim a look from Elsie. "I realize it the moment we get outsideour own little treadmill. We do nothing but take thought for what we shalleat and drink and wherewithal we shall be clothed. I haven't thought ofthe country once this morning. I've been wondering if all the good summerthings are gone at Hollander's. It may be very hot in Boston the first fewweeks. You will be wilted in your cloth suit. "

"Oh, mammy, mammy! what a mammy!" purred Elsie, her pretty upper lipcurling in the smile her mother loved--with a reservation. Elsie had herfather's sense of humor, and had caught his half-caressing way of indulgingit at the "intense" little mother's expense. 

"Elsie, " she observed, "you know _I_ don't mind your way of speaking tome, --as if I were the girl of sixteen and you the woman of forty, --but Ihope you won't use it before the aunts and cousins. I shall be sure tolay myself open, but, dear, be careful. It isn't very good form to be tooamused with one's mother. Of course there's as much difference in mothersas in girls, " Mrs. Valentin acknowledged. "A certain sort of temperamentinterferes with the profit one ought to get out of one's experience. Ifyou had my temperament I shouldn't waste this two years' experiment onyou; I should know that nothing could change your--spots. But _you_ willlearn--everything. How is your head, dear--what?"

Elsie had said nothing; she had not had the opportunity. 

At a flag station where the train was halted (this overland train was a"local" as far as Sacramento) Mrs. Valentin looked out and saw a coloredman in livery climb down from the back seat of a mail-cart and hastenacross the platform with a huge paper box. It proved to be filled withmagnificent roses, of which he was the bearer to the ladies opposite. Aglance at a card was followed by gracious acknowledgments, and the footmanretired beaming. He watched the train off, hat in hand, bowing to theladies at their window as only a well-raised colored servant can bow. 

"The Coudert place lies over there, " said Mrs. Valentin, pointing to a massof dark trees toward which the trap was speeding. "They have been stayingthere, " she whispered, "doing the west coast, I suppose, with invitationsto all the swell houses. "

"Is your daughter not well?" the deep voice spoke across the car. 

As Elsie could not ride backward, her mother, to give her room, and forthe pleasure of watching her, was seated with her own back to the engine, facing most of the ladies in the car. 

"She is a little train-sick; she could not eat this morning, and thatalways gives her a headache. "

Elsie raised her eyelashes in faint dissent. 

"She should eat something, surely. Have you tried malted milk? I have someof the lozenges; she can take one without raising her head. "

Search was made in a distinguished-looking bag, Mrs. Valentin protestingagainst the trouble, and beseeching Elsie with her eyes to accept one fromthe little silver box of pastils that was passed across the aisle. 

Elsie said she really could not--thanks very much. 

The keen, dark eyes surveyed her with the look of a general inspecting rawtroops, and Mrs. Valentin felt as depressed as the company officer who hasbeen "working up" the troops. "Won't you try one, Elsie?" she pleaded. 

"I'd rather not, mother, " said Elsie. 

She did not repeat her thanks to the great authority, but left her motherto cover her retreat. 

"The young girls nowadays do pretty much as they please about eating or noteating, " observed the Eastern matron, in her large, impersonal way. "Theycan match our theories with quite as good ones of their own. " She smiledagain at Elsie, and the overtures on that side ceased. 

"_I_ would have eaten any imaginable thing she offered me, " sighed Mrs. Valentin, "but Elsie is so hard to impress. I cannot understand how a girl, a baby, who has never been anywhere or seen anything, can be so fearfully_posée_. It's the Valentin blood. It's the drop of Indian blood away, 'wayback. It's their impassiveness, but it's awfully good form--when she growsup to it. "

After this, Mrs. Valentin sat silent for such an unnatural length of timethat Elsie roused herself to say something encouraging. 

"I shall be all right, mother, after Sacramento. We will take a walk. Thefresh air is all I need. "

She was as good as her word. The cup of tea and the twenty minutes' strollmade such a happy difference that Mrs. Valentin sent a telegram to herhusband to say that Elsie's head was better and that she had forgotten hertrunk keys, and would he express them to her at once. 

So much refreshed was Elsie that her mother handed her the letters whichhad come to her share of that morning's mail. There were four or five ofthem, addressed in large, girlish hands, and exhibiting the latest andmost expensive fads in stationery. Over one of them Elsie gave a shriek ofdelight, an outburst so unexpected and out of character with her formerself that their distinguished fellow travelers involuntarily lookedup, --and Mrs. Valentin blushed for her child. 

"Oh, mammy, how rich! How just like Gladys! She kept it for a lastsurprise! Mother, Gladys is going to Mrs. Barrington's herself. "

The mother's face fell. 

"Indeed!" she said, forcing a tone of pleasure. "Well, it's acompliment--on both sides. Mrs. Barrington is very particular whom shetakes, and the Castants are sparing nothing that money can do for Gladys. "

"Oh, what fun!" cried Elsie, her face transformed. "Poor Gladys! she'llhave a perfectly awful time too, and we can sympathize. "

"Are you expecting to have an 'awful time, ' Elsie, "--the mother lookedaghast, --"and are you going to throw yourself into the arms of Gladysfor sympathy? Then let me say, my daughter, that neither Mrs. Barringtonnor any one else can do much for your improvement, and all the money weare spending will be thrown away. If you are going East to ally yourselfexclusively with Californian girls, to talk California and think Californiaand set yourself against everything that is not Californian, we might justas well take the first train west at Colfax. "

"But am I to be different to Gladys when we meet away from home?" Elsie'ssensitive eyes clouded. Her brows went up. 

"Of course not. Gladys is a dear, delightful girl. I'm as fond of her asyou are. But you can have Gladys all the rest of your life, I hope. I'mnot a snob, dear, but I do think we should recognize the fact that someacquaintances are more improving than others. "

"And cultivate them for the sake of what they can do for us?"

In Elsie's voice there was an edge of resistance, hearing which her mother, when she was wise, would let speech die and silence do its work. Herinfluence with the girl was strongest when least insisted upon. She was notwiser than usual that morning, but the noise of the train made niceties ofstatement impossible. She abandoned the argument perforce, and Elsie, leftwith her retort unanswered, acknowledged its cheapness in her own quick, strong, wordless way. 

The dining-car would not be attached to the train until they reachedOgden. At twilight they stopped "twenty minutes for refreshment, " and theValentins took the refreshment they needed most by pacing the platform upand down, --the tall daughter, in her severely cut clothes, shortening herboyish stride to match her mother's step; the mother, looking older thanshe need, in a light-gray traveling-cap, with Elsie's golf cape thrown overher silk waist. 

The Eastern travelers were walking too. They had their tea out of anEnglish tea-basket, and bread and butter from the buffet, and wereindependent of supper stations. With the Valentins it was sheerimprovidence and want of appetite. 

"Please notice that girl's step, " said Mrs. Valentin, pressing Elsie's arm. "'Art is to conceal art. ' It has taken years of the best of everything, andeternal vigilance besides, to create such a walk as that; but _c'est fait_. You don't see the entire sole of her foot every time she takes a step. "

"Having a certain other person's soles in view, mammy?"

"I'm afraid I should have them in full view if you came to meet me. Not theheel quite so pronounced, dearest. "

"Oh, mother, please leave that to Mrs. Barrington! Let us be comrades forthese few days. "

"Dearest, it would be the happiness of my life to be never anything buta comrade. But who is to nag a girl if not her mother? I very much doubtif Mrs. Barrington will condescend to speak of your boot-soles. She willexpect all that to have been attended to long ago. "

"It has been--a thousand years ago. Sometimes I feel that I'm allboot-soles. "

"The moment I see some result, dear, I shall be satisfied. One doesn'tspeak of such things for their own sake. "

"Can't we get a paper?" asked Elsie. "What is that they are shouting?"

"I don't think it can be anything new. We brought these papers with us onthe train. But we can see. No; it's just what we had this morning. They arepreparing for a general assault. There will be heavy fighting to-morrow. Why, that is to-day!" Mrs. Valentin held the newspaper at arm's length. 

"Is there anything more? I can read only the head-lines. "

The girl took the paper and looked at it with a certain reluctance, narrowing her eyelids. 

"Mother, there was something else in Gladys's letter. Billy Castant hasenlisted with the Rough Riders. He was in that fight at Las Guasimas, whilewe were packing our trunks. He did badly again in his exams, and he--hedidn't go home; he just enlisted. "

"The foolish fellow!" Mrs. Valentin exclaimed. A sharp intuition toldher there was trouble in the wind, and defensively she turned upon thepresumptive cause. "The foolish boy! What he needs is an education. But hewon't work for it. It's easier to go off mad and be a Rough Rider. "

"I don't think it was easy at Las Guasimas, " Elsie said, with a strainedlittle laugh. "You remember the last war, mother; did you belittle yourvolunteers?"

Mrs. Valentin listened with a catch in her breath. What did this portend?So slight a sign as that in Elsie meant tears and confessions from anothergirl. 

"And did you hear of this only just now, from Gladys's letter?"

"Yes, mother. "

"You extraordinary child--your father all over again! I might have known bythe way you laughed over that letter that you had bad news to tell--or keepto yourself. "

"I don't call that bad news, do you, mother? He does need an education, buthe will never get it out of books. "

"Well, it's a pretty severe sort of education for his parents--nineteen, anonly son, and to go without seeing them again. He might at least have comehome and enlisted from his own State. "

They were at the far end of the platform, facing the dark of the pine-cladravines. Deep, odorous breaths of night wind came sighing up the slopes. 

"Mother, there was something happened last winter that I never told you, "Elsie began again, with pauses. "It was so silly, and there seemed no needto speak of it. But I can't bear not to speak now. I don't know if it hasmade any difference--with Billy's plans. It seems disloyal to tell you. Butyou must forget it: he's forgotten, I am sure. He said--those silly things, you know! I couldn't have told you then; it was too silly. And I said thatI didn't think it was for him or for me to talk about such things. It wasfor men and women, not boys who couldn't even get their lessons. "

"Elsie!" Mrs. Valentin gave a little choked laugh. "Did you say that? Thepoor boy! Why, I thought you were such good friends!"

"He wasn't talking friendship, mother, and I was furious with him forflunking his exams. He passed in only five out of seven. He ought to havedone better than that. He's not stupid; it's that fatal popularity. He'scaptain of this and manager of that, and they give him such a lot of money. And they pet him, too; they make excuses for him all the time. I told himhe must _do_ something before he began to have feelings. The only feelinghe had any right to have was shame for his miserable record. "

"And that was all the encouragement you gave him?"

"If you call that 'encouragement, '" said Elsie. 

"You did very well, my dear; but I suppose you know it was the mostintimate thing you could have said to him, the greatest compliment youcould pay him. If he ever does make any sort of a record, you have givenhim the right to come back to you with it. "

"He will never come back to me without it, " said the girl. "But it wasnothing--nothing! All idleness and nonsense, and the music after supperthat went to his head. "

"I hope it was nothing more than"--Mrs. Valentin checked herself. Therewere things she said to her husband which sometimes threatened to slip outinadvertently when his youthful copy was near. "Well, I see nothing to beashamed of, on your side. But such things are always a pity. They age agirl in spite of herself. And the boys--they simply forget. The rebuke doesthem good, but they forget to whom they owe it. It's just one of thosethings that make my girlie older. But oh, how fast life comes!"

Elsie slipped her hand under her mother's cloak, and Mrs. Valentin pressedher own down hard upon it. 

"We must get aboard, dear. But I'm so glad you told me! And I didn't meanquite what I said about Billy's 'going off mad. ' He has given all he had togive, poor boy; why he gave it is his own affair. "

"I hope--what I told you--has made no difference about his coming home. It's stupid of me to think it. But hard words come back, don't they, mother? Hard words--to an old friend!"

"Billy is all right, dear; and it was so natural you should be tried withhim! 'For to be wroth with one we'"--Mrs. Valentin had another of hernarrow escapes. "Come, there is the porter waiting for us. "

"Mother, " said Elsie sternly, "please don't misunderstand. I should neverhave spoken of this if I had been 'wroth' with him--in that way. "

"Of course not, dear; I understand. And it would never do, anyway, forfather doesn't like the blood. "

"Father doesn't like the--what, mother?"

Elsie asked the question half an hour later, as they sat in an adjoiningsection, waiting for their berths to be made up. 

"What, dear?"

"What did you say father doesn't like--in the Castants?"

"Oh, the blood, the family. This generation is all right--apparently. Butblood will tell. You are too young to know all the old histories thatfathers and mothers read young people by. "

"I think we are what we are, " said Elsie; "we are not ourgreat-grandfathers. "

"In a measure we are, and it should teach us charity. Not as much can beexpected of Billy Castant, coming of the stock he does, as you might expectof that ancestry, " and Mrs. Valentin nodded toward the formidable Easterncontingent. (Elsie was consciously hating them already. ) "The fountain canrise no higher than its source. "

"I thought there was supposed to be a source a little higher than theground--unless we are no more than earth-born fountains. "

"'Out of the mouth of babes, '" said Mrs. Valentin, laughing gently. "I ownit, dear. Middle age is suspicious and mean and unspiritual and troubledabout many things. A middle-aged mother is like an old hen when hawks aresailing around; she can't see the sky. "

"Yes, " said Elsie, settling cosily against her mother's shoulder. "I alwaysknow when mammy speaks as my official mother, and when she is talking'straight talk. ' I shall be so happy when she believes I am old enough tohear only straight talk. "

 * * * * *

"I've got a surprise for you, Elsie, " said Mrs. Valentin, a day and a nighteastward of the Sierras. They were on the Great Plains, at that stage ofan overland journey which suggests, in the words of a clever woman, theadvisability of "taking a tuck in the continent. "

Elsie's eyebrows seemed to portend that surprises are not always pleasant. 

"I've been talking with our Eastern lady, and imagine! her daughter is oneof Mrs. Barrington's girls too. This will be her second year. So thereis"--

"An offset to Gladys, " Elsie interrupted. 

"So there is a chance for you to know one girl, at least, of the type I'vealways been holding up to you, always believed in, though the individualsare so rare. "

Elsie's sentiments, unexpressed, were that she wished they might be rarer. Not that the flower of Eastern culture was not all her mother protestedshe was; but there are crises of discouragement on the upward climb oftrying to realize a mother's ambitions for one's self, when one is only agirl--the only girl, on whom the family experiments are all to be wreaked. Elsie suffered in silence many a pang that her mother never dreamedof--pangs of effort unavailing and unappreciated. She wished to conform toher mother's exigent standard, but she could not, all at once, and be agirl too--a girl of sixteen, a little off the key physically, not havingcome to a woman's repose of movement; a little stridulous mentally, butpulsing with life's dumb music of aspiration; as intense as her mother infeeling, without her mother's power to throw off the strain in words. 

"Well, mother?" she questioned. 

"She is older than you, and she will be at home. The advances, of course, must come from her, but I hope, dear, you will not be--you will try to beresponsive?"

"I never know, mother, when I am not responsive. It's like wrinkling myforehead; it does itself. "

Mrs. Valentin made a gesture expressive of the futility of argument undercertain not unfamiliar conditions. 

"'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. ' I amleading my Pegasus to the fountain of--what was the fountain?"

Elsie laughed. "Your Pegasus is pretty heavy on the wing, mammy. But I willdrink. I will gorge myself, truly I will. The money shall not be spent invain. "

"Oh, the money! Who cares about the money?--if only there were more of it. "

They stopped over night in Chicago, and Mrs. Valentin bought someshirt-waists; for the heat had "doubled up on them, " as a Kansas farmer onthe train remarked. 

Elsie trailed about the shops with her mother, not greatly interested inshirt-waists or bargains in French underclothing. 

The war pressure seemed to close in upon them as they left the mid-West anddrew toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbingover the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering, was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in theirrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems, freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them tocommercial account, --advertising, in symbols of death and pricelessdevotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so tospeak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you coulddeface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to you byyour bootmaker. 

Elsie cast hunted eyes on the bulletin boards. She knew by heart that firstlist after Las Guasimas. One glance had burned it in forever. It had becomeone of the indelible scars of a lifetime. Yet those were the names ofstrangers. If a whiff from an avalanche can fell trees a mile away, how ifthe avalanche strike you?

They returned to their hotel, exhausted, yet excited, by the heat; and Mrs. Valentin admonished herself of what our boys must be suffering in that"unimaginable climate, " and she entered into details, forgetting to spareElsie, till the girl turned a sickly white. 

It was then the bishop's card was sent up--their own late bishop, muchmourned and deplored because he had been transferred to an Eastern diocese. There could be no one so invariably welcome, who knew so well, withouteffort, how to touch the right chord, whether in earnest or in jest thatsometimes hid a deeper earnest. His manner at first usually hovered betweenthe two, your own mood determining where the emphasis should rest. He hadbrought with him the evening paper, but he kept it folded in his hand. 

"So you are pilgrims to Mecca, " he said, looking from mother to daughterwith his gentle, musing smile. "But are you not a little early for theEastern schools?"

"There are the home visits first, and the clothes, " said Mrs. Valentin. 

"And where do you stop, and for how long?"

"Boston, for one year, Bishop, and then we go abroad for a year, perhaps. "

"Bless me! what has Elsie done that she should be banished from home fortwo years?"

"She takes her mother with her. "

"Yes; that is half of the home. Perhaps that's as much as one girl ought toexpect. "

"The fathers are so busy, Bishop. "

"Yes; the fathers do seem to be busy. So Elsie is going East to befinished? And how old is she now? How does she presume to account for thefact that she is taller than her mother and nearly as tall as her bishop?"

Elsie promptly placed herself at the bishop's side and "measured, " glancingover her shoulder at him in the glass. He turned and gravely placed hishand upon her head. 

"I thought of writing to you at one time, " said Mrs. Valentin, "but ofcourse you cannot keep us all on your mind. We are a 'back number. '"

"She thought I would have forgotten who these Valentins were, " said thebishop, smiling. 

"No; but you cannot keep the thread of all our troubles--the sheep of theold flock and the lambs of the new. I have had a thousand minds latelyabout Elsie, but this was the original plan, made years ago, when we wereyoung and sure about things. Don't you think young lives need room, Bishop?Oughtn't we to seek to widen their mental horizons?"

"The horizons widen, they widen of themselves, Mrs. Valentin--very suddenlysometimes, and beyond our ken. " The bishop's voice had struck a deepernote; he paused and looked at Elsie with eyes so kind and tender that thegirl choked and turned away. "This war is rather a widening business, andCalifornia is getting her share. Our boys of the First, for instance, --yousee I still call them _our_ boys, --what were they doing a year ago, andwhat are they doing now? I'll be bound half of them a year ago didn't knowhow 'Philippines' was spelled. "

Mrs. Valentin became restless. 

"Is that the evening paper?" she asked. 

The bishop glanced at the paper. "And who, " said he, "is to open the gatesof sunrise for our Elsie? With whom do you intend to place her in Boston?"

"Oh, with Mrs. Barrington. "

Mrs. Valentin was watching the bishop, whose eyes still rested upon Elsie. 

"She is to be one of the chosen five, is she? The five wise virgins--of theEast? But they are all Western virgins this year, I believe. "

"If you mean that they are all from the Western States, I think you aremistaken, Bishop. "

"Am I? Let us see. There is Elsie, and Gladys Castant, perhaps, and thedaughters of my friend Mr. Laws of West Dakota"--

"Bishop!"

"Of West Dakota; that makes four. And then the young lady who was on thetrain with you, Miss Bigelow, from Los Angeles. "

"Bishop! I am certain you are mistaken there. If those people are notEastern, then I'm from West Dakota myself!"

"We are all from West Dakota virtually, so far as Mecca is concerned. But Mrs. Barrington offers her young ladies those exceptional socialopportunities which Western girls are supposed to need. If you want Elsieto be with Eastern girls of the East, let her go to a good Boston Latinschool. Did you not go to one yourself, Mrs. Valentin?"

Mrs. Valentin laughed. "That was ages ago, and I was at home. I had theenvironment--an education in itself. Won't you dine with us, Bishop? Weshall have dinner in half an hour. "

"In half an hour I must be on the limited express. You seem to have madedifferent connections. "

"'The error was, we started wrong, '" said Mrs. Valentin lightly. "We tookthe morning instead of the evening train. But I was convinced we should beleft, and I preferred to get left by the wrong train and have the right oneto fall back on. " She ceased her babble, as vain words die when there is asense of no one listening. 

Elsie stood at the window looking back into the room. She thought, "Motherdoesn't know what she is saying. What is she worried about?"

The bishop was writing with a gold pencil on the margin of the newspaper. He folded it with the writing on top. 

"If you had consulted me about that child, "--he looked at Elsie, --"I shouldhave said, 'Do not hurry her--do not hurry her. Her education will come asGod sends it. ' With experience, as with death, it is the prematureness thathurts. "

His beautiful voice and perfect accent filled the silence with heart-warmedcadences. 

"Well, good-by, Mrs. Valentin. Remember me to that busy husband. "

Mrs. Valentin rose; the bishop took her hand. "Elsie will see me to theelevator. This is the evening paper. "

He offered it with the writing toward her. Mrs. Valentin read what he hadwritten: "Billy Castant was killed in the charge at San Juan. Every man inthat fight deserves the thanks of the nation. "

"Come, Elsie, see me to my carriage, " the bishop was saying. He placed thegirl's hand on his arm and led her out of the room. At the elevator gratingthey waited a moment; the cold draft up the shaft fanned the hair back fromElsie's forehead as she stood looking down, watching the ascent of thecage. 

"It would be a happy thing, " said the bishop, "if parents could always gowith their children on these long roads of experience; but there are someroads the boys and the girls will have to take alone. We shall all meet atthe other end, though--we shall all meet at the end. "

Elsie walked up and down the hall awhile, dreading to go back to the room. A band in the street below was playing an old war-song of the sixties, revived this battle summer of '98, --a song that was sung when the cost ofthat war was beginning to tell, "We shall meet, but we shall miss him. "Elsie knew the music; she had not yet learned the words. 

Next morning Mr. Valentin received one of his wife's vague but thriftytelegrams, dated at Chicago, on Sunday night, July 3:

"We cannot go through with it. Expect us home Wednesday. "

Mrs. Valentin had spent hours, years, in explaining to Elsie's fatherthe many cogent and crying reasons for taking her East to be finished. Itneeded not quite five minutes to explain why she had brought her back. 

Strangely, none of the friends of the family asked for an explanation ofthis sudden change of plan. But Elsie envies Gladys her black clothes, andthe privilege of crying in public when the bands play and the troops go by. 

"Such children--such mere children!" Mrs. Valentin sighs. 

But she no longer speaks to Elsie about wrinkling her forehead or showingher boot-soles. It is eye to eye and heart to heart, and only straight talkbetween them now, as between women who know. 

THE HARSHAW BRIDE

[Mrs. Tom Daly, of Bisuka in the Northwest, writes to her invalid sisterspending the summer on the coast of Southern California. ]

I

You know I am always ready to sacrifice truth to politeness, if the truthis of that poor, stingy upstart variety everybody is familiar with and ifthe occasion warrants the expense. We all know politeness is not cheap, anymore than honesty is politic. But surely I mistook my occasion, one daylast winter--and now behold the price!

We are to have a bride on our hands, or a bride-elect, for she isn'tmarried yet. The happy man to be is rustling for a home out here in thewilds of Idaho while she is waiting in the old country for success to crownhis efforts. How much success in her case is demanded one does not know. She is a little English girl, upper middle class, which Mrs. Perciferassures us is _the_ class to belong to in England at the present day, --fromwhich we infer that it's her class; and the interesting reunion is totake place at our house--the young woman never having seen us in her lifebefore. 

She sailed, poor thing, this day week and will be forwarded to us by herconfiding friends in New York as soon as she arrives. Meantime she willhave heard from us from the Percifers: that is something. 

Really they were very nice to us in New York, last winter, thePercifers--though one must not plume one's self too much. It began asa business flirtation down town between the husbands, and then Tomconfidingly mentioned that he had a wife at his hotel. We unfortunate womenwere dragged into it forthwith, and more or less forced to live up to it. I cannot say there was anything riotous in the way she sustained her part. She was so very impersonal in fact, when we said good-by, that my naturaltendency to invite people to come and stay with us, on the spur of anymoment, was strangled in my throat. 

But one must say something by way of retaliation for hospitality one cannotreject. So I put it off on any friends of theirs who might have occasion tocommand us in the West. We should be so happy, and so forth. And, my dear, she has taken me up on it! She's not impersonal now. She is so glad--fordear Kitty's sake--that we are here, and she is sure we will be verygood to her--such a sweet girl, no one could help being--which rathercuts down the margin for our goodness. The poor child--I am quoting Mrs. Percifer--knows absolutely no one in the West but the man she is comingto marry (?)and can have no conception of the journey she has before her. She will be _so_ comforted to find us at the end of it. And if anythingunforeseen should occur to delay Mr. Harshaw, the fiancé, and prevent hismeeting her train, it will be a vast relief to Kitty's friends to know thatthe dear brave little girl is in good hands--ours, if you can conceive it!

Please observe the coolness with which she treats his _not_ meeting thattrain, after the girl has traversed half the globe to compass her share oftheir meeting. 

Well, it's not the American way; but perhaps it will be when bad times havehumbled us a little more, and the question is whether we can marry ourdaughters at all unless we can give them dowries, or professions to supporttheir husbands on, and "feelings" are a luxury only the rich can afford. 

I hope "Kitty" won't have any; but still more I hope that her young manwill arrive on schedule time, and that they can trot round the corner andbe married, with Tom and me for witnesses, as speedily as possible. 

 * * * * *

I've had such a blow! Tom, with an effort, has succeeded in rememberingthis Mr. Harshaw who is poor Kitty's fate. He must have been years in thiscountry, --long enough to have citizenized himself and become a member ofour first Idaho legislature (I don't believe you even know that we are aState!). Tom was on the supper committee of the ball the city gave them. They were a deplorable set of men; it was easy enough to remember the niceones. Tom says he is a "chump, " if you know what that means. I tell himthat every man, married or single, is constitutionally horrid to any otherman who has had the luck to be chosen of a charming girl. But I'm afraidHarshaw wasn't one of the nice ones, or I should have remembered himmyself; we had them to dinner--all who were at all worth while. 

Poor Kitty! There is so little here to come for _but_ the man. 

Well, my dear, here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kitty has arrived, and _one_Mr. Harshaw. Where _the_ Mr. Harshaw is, _quien sabe_! It's awfully late. Poor Kitty has gone to bed, and has cried herself to sleep, I dare say, ifsleep she can. I never have heard of a girl being treated so. 

Tom and the other Mr. Harshaw are smoking in the dining-room, and Tom istalking endlessly--what about I can't imagine, unless he is giving thisyoung record-breaker his opinion of his extraordinary conduct. But I mustbegin at the beginning. 

Mrs. Percifer wired us from New York the day the bride-elect started, and_she_ was to wire us from Ogden, which she did. I went to the train to meether, and I told Tom to be on the watch for the bridegroom, who would comein from his ranch on the Snake River, by wagon or on horseback, acrosscountry from Ten Mile. To come by rail he'd have had to go round a hundredmiles or so, by Mountain Home. An American would have done it, of course, and have come in with her on the train; but the Percifers plainly expectedno such wild burst of enthusiasm from him. 

The train was late. I walked and walked the platform; some of the peoplewho were waiting went away, but I dared not leave my post. I fell towatching a spurt of dust away off across the river toward the mesa. Itrolled up fast, and presently I saw a man on horseback; then I didn't seehim; then he had crossed the bridge and was pounding down the track-sidetoward the depot. He pulled up and spoke to a trainman, and after that hewalked his horse as if he was satisfied. 

This is Harshaw, I thought, and a very pretty fellow, but not in theleast like an Idaho legislator. I can't say that I care for the sortof Englishman who is so prompt to swear allegiance to our flag; theynever do unless they want to go in for government land, or politics, orsomething that has nothing to do with any flag. But this youngster lookedridiculously young. I simply knew he was coming for that girl, and thathe had no ulterior motives whatever. He was ashy-white with dust--hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and his fair little mustache all powdered with it;his corduroys, leggings, and hat all of a color. I saw no baggage, and Iwondered what he expected to be married in. He leaned on his horse dizzilya moment when he first got out of the saddle, and the poor beast stretchedhis fore legs, and rocked with the gusts of his panting, his sides goingin and out like a pair of bellows. The young fellow handed him over to aman to take to the stables, and I saw him give him a regular bridegroom'stip. He's all right, I said to myself, and Tom _was_ horrid to call hima "chump. " He beat himself off a bit, and went in and talked to theticket-agent. They looked at their watches. 

"I don't think you'll have time to go uptown, " said the ticket-man. 

Harshaw came out then, and _he_ began to walk the platform, and to staredown the track toward Nampa; so I sat down. Presently he stopped, andraised his hat, and asked if I was Mrs. Daly, a friend of Mrs. Percifer ofLondon and New York. 

Not to be boastful, I said that I knew Mrs. Percifer. 

"Then, " said he, "we are here on the same errand, I think. "

_I_ was there to meet Miss Kitty Comyn, I told him, and he said so was he, and might he have a little talk with me? He seemed excited and serious, very. 

"Are you _the_ Mr. Harshaw?" I asked, though I hadn't an idea, of course, that he could be anybody else. 

"Not exactly, " he said. "I'm his cousin, Cecil Harshaw. "

"Is Mr. Harshaw ill?"

He looked foolish, and dropped his eyes. "No, " said he. "He was well lastnight when I left him at the ranch. " Last night! He had come a hundredmiles between dark of one day and noon of the next!

"Your cousin takes a royal way of bringing home his bride--by proxy, " Isaid. 

"Ah, but it's partly my fault, you know"--he could not quell a suddenshamefaced laugh, --"if you'd kindly allow me to explain. I shall have tobe quite brutally frank; but Mrs. Percifer said"--Here he lugged in apropitiatory compliment, which sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than itfitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, hebabbled on. I wish I could do justice to his "charmin'" accent and hisperfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of British and Americancolloquialisms, not to say slang. 

"It's like this, Mrs. Daly. A man oughtn't to be a dog-in-the-manger abouta girl, even if he has got her promise, you know. If he can't get a move onand marry her before her hair is gray, he ought to step out and give theother fellows a chance. I'm not speaking for myself, though I would havespoken three years ago if she hadn't been engaged to Micky--she's alwaysbeen engaged to him, one may say. And I accepted the fact; and when I cameover here and took a share in Micky's ranch I meant right by him, and Godknows I meant more than right by her. Wasn't it right to suppose she mustbe tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way hehas? They've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was madwith Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, notlooking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girlwaiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an assI've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have tooffer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over hisnatural difficulty--laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, onlyhe's slow, and it's hard to get him to look things square in the face. It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, thatI undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a----. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say toher"--His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level ofordinary conversation, with the remark, "It's a facer, by Jove!"

I managed not to smile. If he'd undertaken, I said, to "boom" his cousin'smarriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit fordisinterestedness; but so few good acts were ever rewarded in this world! Iseemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might beheroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark. 

"Ah, " he said feelingly, "it's fierce! I never was so rattled in my life. But before you give me too much credit for disinterestedness, you know, Imust tell you that I'm thinking of--that--in short, I've a mind to speakfor myself now, if Micky doesn't come up to time. "

I simply looked at him, and he blushed, but went on more explicitly. "Hecould have married her, Mrs. Daly, any time these three years if he'd hadthe pluck to think so. He'd say, 'If we have a good season with the horses, I'll send for her in the fall. ' We'd have our usual season, and then he'dsay, 'It won't do, Cecy. ' And in the spring we are always as poor asjack-rabbits, and so he'd wait till the next fall. I got so mad with hisinfernal coolness, and the contrast of how things were and how she mustthink they were! Still, I knew he'd be good to her if he had her here, andhe'd save twice as much with her to provide for as he ever could alone. Iused to hear all her little news, poor girl. She had lost her father, andthere were tight times at home. The next word was that she was going for agoverness. Then I said, 'You ought to go over and get her, or else send forher sharp. You are as ready to marry her now as ever you will be. '

"'I'm too confounded strapped, ' said he. I told him I would fix all that ifhe would go, or write her to come. But the weeks went by, and he never madea move. And there were reasons, Mrs. Daly, why it was best that any one whocared for him should be on the ground. Then I made my kick. I don't believein kicking, as a rule; but if you do kick, kick hard, I say. 'If you don'tsend for her, Micky, I'll send for her myself, ' I said. 

"'What for?' said he. 

"'For you, ' said I, 'if you'll have the manliness to step up and claim her, and treat her as you ought. If not, she can see how things are, and maybeshe'll want a change. You may not think you are wronging her and deceivingher, ' I said, 'but that's what you are; and if you won't make an end ofthis situation' (I haven't told you, and I can't tell you, the whole of it, Mrs. Daly), 'I will end it myself--for your sake and for her sake and formy own. ' And I warned him that I should have a word to say to her if hedidn't occupy the field of vision quite promptly after she arrived. 'One ofus will meet her at the train, ' said I, 'and the one who loves her will getthere first. '

"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him atthe ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it, he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I wasnot bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. ThenI cabled her just the question, Would she come? and she answered directlythat she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and Itold Micky what I'd done. 

"And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from thatmoment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I haven't ablessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, Ishould say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength ofthe situation, seeing it's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rumjustice in it; but think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake ofpunishing me!

"Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast ofit, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including thefact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and tryto smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance?There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet. "

The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of histale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for "Micky. "

"If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler, wouldn't it?"

I agreed that it would. Then I made the only suggestion it occurred to meto offer in the case--that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheonor breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet MissComyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. Myhusband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and afterdinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactorymessage, he could cast himself into the breach. 

"And I'm sorry for you, " I said; "for I don't think you will have an easytime of it. "

"She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that's better than sendingme friendly little messages in her letters to Micky. "

I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of hisextraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous goodfaith--as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was asconvincing as a scene in comic opera. 

"By the way, " said he, "I didn't encumber myself with much luggage thistrip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in. "

I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he asrecklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thoughthe did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the wholeof him from head to foot as pale as a plaster cast with dust, except hisbright blue eyes, which had hard, dark circles around them. 

"The train is coming, " I warned him. 

"_She_ is coming! _À la bonne heure!_" he cried, and was off on a run, andwhistled a car that was going up Main Street to the natatorium; and I knewthat in ten minutes he would be reveling in the plunge, while I should bemaking the best of this beautiful crisis of his inventing to Miss Comyn. 

 * * * * *

My dear, they are the prettiest pair! Providence, no doubt, designedthem for each other, if he had not made this unpardonable break. She hasa spirit of her own, has Miss Kitty, and if she cried up-stairs alonewith me, --tears of anger and mortification, it struck me, rather than ofheart-grief, --I will venture she shed no tears before him. 

As Mr. Michael Harshaw did not arrive, we gave Mr. Cecil his opportunity, as promised, of speech with his victim and judge. He talked to her in thelittle sitting-room after dinner--as long as she would listen to him, apparently. We heard her come flying out with a sort of passionatesuddenness, as if she had literally run away from his words. But he hadfollowed her, and for an instant I saw them together in the hall. Hispoor young face was literally burning; perhaps it was only sunburn, but Ifancied she had been giving him a metaphorical drubbing--"ragging, " as Tomwould call it--worse than Lady Anne gave Richard. 

She was still in a fine Shakespearean temper when I carried her offup-stairs. Reserves were impossible between us; her right to any privacyin her own affairs had been given away from the start; that was one of thepleasing features of the situation. 

"_Marry_ him! marry _him_!" she cried. "That impertinent, meddlesome boy!That false, dishonorable"--

"Go slow, dear, " I said. "I don't think he's quite so bad as that. "

"And what do I want with _him_! And what do you think he tells me, Mrs. Daly? And whether there's any truth in him, how do I know? He declaresit was not Michael Harshaw who sent for me at all! The message, all themessages, were from him. In that case I have been decoyed over here tomarry a man who not only never asked me to come, but who stood by and letme be hoaxed in this shameful way, and now leaves me to be persecuted bythis one's ridiculous offers of marriage, --as if I belonged to all or anyof the Harshaws, whichever one came first! Michael may not even know thatI am here, " she added in a lower key. "If Cecil Harshaw was capable ofdoing what he has done, by his own confession, it would be little more tointercept my answers to his forgeries. "

That was true, I said. It was quite possible the young man lied. She would, of course, give Mr. Michael Harshaw a chance to tell _his_ story. 

"I cannot believe, " said the distracted girl, "that Michael would lendhimself, even passively, to such an abominable trick. Could any one believeit--of his worst enemy!"

Impossible, I agreed. She must believe nothing till she had heard from herlover. 

"But if Michael did not know it, " she mused, with a piteous blush, "thenCecil Harshaw must have sent me that money himself--the insolence! Andafter that to ask me to marry him!"

Men were fearfully primitive still, after all that we had done for them, Ireminded her, especially in their notions of love-making. Their intentionswere generally better than their methods. No great harm had been done, for that matter. A letter, if written that night, would reach Mr. MichaelHarshaw at his ranch not later than the next night. All these troublescould wait till the real Mr. Harshaw had been heard from. My husband wouldsee that her letter reached him promptly, and in the mean time Mr. Cecilneed not be told that we were proving his little story. 

I was forced to humor her own theory of her case; but I have no idea, myself, that Cecil Harshaw has not told the truth. He does not look likea liar, to begin with, and how silly to palm off an invention for to-daywhich to-morrow would expose!

Tom is still talking and talking. I really must interfere and give Mr. Cecil a chance to go. It is quite too late to look for the other one. If hecomes at this hour, there is nothing he can do but go to bed. 

. . . Well, the young man has gone, and Tom is shutting up the house, and Ihope the bride is asleep, though I doubt it. Have I told you how charmingshe is? Not so discouragingly tall or so classic as the Du Maurier goddess, but "comfy, " much more "comfy, " to my mind. Her nose is rudimentary, rather, which doesn't prevent her having a mind of her own, though nosesare said to have it all to say as to force of character. Her upper lip hasthe most fascinating little pout; her chin is full and emotional--but theseare emotional times; and there is a beautiful finish about her throat andhands and wrists. She looks more dressed in a shirt-waist, in which shecame down to dinner, her trunk not having come, than some of us do in thebest we have. Her clothes are very fresh and recent, to a woman of Idaho;but she does not wear her pretty ears "cachées, " I am glad to say. They arevery pretty, and one--the left one--is burned pure crimson from sittingnext the window of her section all the way from Omaha. 

But why do I write all this nonsense at twelve o'clock at night, when allI need say by way of description is that we want her to stay with us, indefinitely if necessary, and let her countrymen and lovers go to--theirranch on the Snake River!

 * * * * *

What do you suppose those wretches were arguing about in the dining-roomlast night, over their whisky and soda? Sentiment was "not in it, " as theywould say. They were talking up a scheme--a scheme that Tom has had in mindever since he first saw the Thousand Springs six years ago, when he had theSnake River placer-mining fever. It was of no use then, because electricaltransmission was in its infancy, its long-distance capacities undreamed of. But Harshaw was down there fishing last summer, and he was able to satisfythe only doubt Tom has had as to some natural feature of the scheme--Idon't know what; but Harshaw has settled it, and is as wild as Tom himselfabout the thing. Also he wants to put into it all the money he canrecover out of his cousin's ranch. (I shouldn't think the future of thatpartnership would be exactly happy!) And now they propose to take hold ofit together, and at once. 

Harshaw, who, it seems, is enough of an engineer to run a level, will godown with Tom and make the preliminary surveys. Tom will work up the plansand estimates, and prepare a report, which Harshaw will take to London, where his father has influence in the City, and the sanguine child seeshimself placing it in the twinkling of an eye. 

Tom made no secret with me of their scheme, and I fell upon him at once. 

"You are not taking advantage of that innocent in your own house!" I said. 

"Do you take him for an innocent? He has about as shrewd a businesshead--but he has no money, anyhow. I shall have to put up for the wholetrip. "

To be honest, that was just what I had feared; but it didn't sound wellto say so. Tom is always putting up for things that never come toanything--for us. 

He tried to propitiate me with the news that I was to go with them. 

"And what do you propose to do with our guest?"

"Take her along. Why not? It's as hard a trip as any I know of, for thedistance. Her troubles won't keep her awake, nor spoil her appetite, afterthe first day's ride. "

"I don't know but you are right, " I said; "but wild horses couldn't dragher if _he_ goes. And how about the other Harshaw--the one she has promisedto marry?"

"She isn't going to marry him, is she? I should think she had gone aboutfar enough, to meet that fellow halfway. "

Even if she wasn't going to marry him, I said, it might be civil to tellhim so. She had listened to his accuser; she could hardly refuse to listento him. 

"I think, myself, the dear boy has skipped the country, " said Tom, who isunblushingly on Cecil's side. "If he hasn't, the letter will fetch him. Shewill have time to settle his hash before we start. "

"Before we start! And when do you propose to start?"--I shouldn't have beensurprised if he had said "to-morrow, " but he considerately gives me untilThursday. 

The truth is, Lou, it is years and years since I have been on one of thesewild-goose chases with Tom. I have no more faith in this goose than in anyof the other ones, but who wants to be forever playing the part of Wisdom"that cries in the streets and no man regards her"? One might as well bemerry over one's folly, to say nothing of the folly of other people. Iconfess I am dying to go; but of course nothing can be decided till therecreant bridegroom has been heard from. 

This morning, when I went to Kitty's door for her letter, I found shehadn't written it. She made me come in while she "confessed, " as she said. 

"I couldn't submit to the facts last night, " she faltered. "I had topretend that I thought he didn't know; but of course he does--he must. Iwrote him from home before I started, and again from New York. I can'tsuppose that Cecil would intercept my letters. He is not a stage villain. No; I must face the truth. But how can I ever tell it to mamma!"

"We will arrange all that by and by, " I assured her (but I don't see myselfhow she can tell the truth about this transaction to anybody, her motherleast of all, who would be simply wild if she knew how the girl has beenbetrayed and insulted, among utter strangers); meantime I begged her topromise me that she would not waste--

She interrupted me quickly. "I have wasted enough, I think. No; don't beafraid for me, Mrs. Daly, and for Heaven's sake don't pity me!"

I had just written the above when Tom came in and informed me that the"regular candidate had arrived, " and requested to know if we were to havethem both to dinner, or if the "dark horse" was to be told he needn't come. 

"Of course he can't come!" I screamed; "let him keep himself as dark aspossible. "

"Then you needn't expect me, " said Tom. "Cecy and I will dine at theLouvre. " And I would give a good deal if I could dine there too, or anywhere but with this extraordinary pair of lovers. 

I went out to meet the real Harshaw, embarrassed with the guiltyconsciousness of having allowed my sympathies to go astray; for though intheory I totally disapprove of Cecil Harshaw, personally I defy anybody notto like him. I will except prejudiced persons, like his cousin and the ladyhe is so bent on making, by hook or by crook, _a_ Mrs. Harshaw. 

Mr. Harshaw the first (and last to arrive) has shaved his mustache quiterecently, I should say, and the nakedness of his upper lip is not becoming. I wonder if she ever saw him with his mouth bare? I wonder if she wouldhave accepted him if she had? He was so funny about his cousin, thepromoter; so absolutely unconscious of his own asinine position. He arguedvery sensibly that if, after waiting four years for him, she couldn't waitone day longer, she must have changed in her feelings very decidedly, andthat was a fact it behooved him to find out. Better now than later. I thinkhe has found out. 

Possibly he was nicer four years ago. Men get terribly down at heel, mentally, morally, and mannerly, poking off by themselves in theseout-of-the-way places. But she has been seeing people and steadily makinggrowth since she gave him her promise at eighteen. The promise itself hashelped to develop her. It must have been a knot of perpetual doubt andself-questioning. No one need tell me that she really loves him; if shedid, if she had, she could not take his treatment of her like this. Perhapsthe family circumstances constrained her. They may have thought Harshawhad a fortune in the future of his ranch, with its river boundary ofplacer-mines. English girls are obedient, and English mammas are practical, we read. 

She is practical, and she is beginning to look her situation in the face. 

"I shall want you to help me find some way to return that money, " she saidto me later, with an angry blush--"that money which Cecil Harshaw kindlyadvanced me for my journey. I shall hate every moment of my life till thatdebt is paid. But for the insult I never can repay him, never!

"We are a large family at home--four girls besides me, and three boys;and boys are so expensive. I cannot ask mamma to help me; indeed, I washoping to help her. I should have gone for a governess if I had not beenduped into coming over here. Would there be any one in this town, doyou think, who might want a governess for her children? I have a few'accomplishments, ' and though I've not been trained for a teacher, I amused to children, and they like me, when I want them to. "

I thought this a good idea for the future; it would take time to work itup. But for the present an inspiration came to me, --on the strength ofsomething Tom had said, --that he wished I could draw or paint, because hecould make an artist useful on this trip, he condescended to say, if hecould lay his hand on one. All the photographs of the Springs, it seems, have the disastrous effect of dwarfing their height and magnitude. Thereis a lagoon and a weedy island directly beneath them, and in the camerapictures taken from in front, the reeds and willows look gigantic in theforeground, and the Springs--out of all proportion--insignificant. Thiswould be fatal to our schemers' claims as to the volume of water they aresupposed to furnish for an electrical power plant to supply the Silver Citymines, one hundred miles away. Hence the demand of Science for Art, withher point of view. 

"Just the thing for her, " I thought. "She can draw and water-color, ofcourse; all English girls do. " And I flew and proposed it to Tom. "Pay herwell for her pictures, and she'll make your Thousand Springs look like TenThousand. " (That was only my little joke, dear; I am always afraid of yourconscience. ) But the main thing is settled; we have found a way of inducingKitty to go. Tom was charmed with my intelligence, and Kitty, poor child, would go anywhere, in any conceivable company, to get even with CecilHarshaw on that hateful money transaction. When I told her she would haveto submit to his presence on the trip, she shrugged her shoulders. 

"It's one of 'life's little ironies, '" she said. 

"And, " I added, "we shall have to pass the ranch that was to have been"--

"Oh, well, that is another. I must get used to the humorous side of mysituation. One suffers most, perhaps, through thinking how other peoplewill think one suffers. If they would only give one credit for a littlecommon sense, to say nothing of pride!"

You see, she will wear no willows for him. We shall get on beautifully, I've no doubt, even with the "irony" of the situation rubbed in, as itinevitably will be, in the course of this journey. 

Tom solemnly assures me that the other Harshaw's name is not Micky, but"Denis;" and he explains his having got into the legislature (quiteunnecessarily, so far as I am concerned) on the theory that he is too lazyeven to make enemies. 

I shall get the governess project started, so it can be working while weare away. If you know of anybody who would be likely to want her, and couldpay her decently, and would know how to treat a nursery governess who isevery bit a lady, but who is not above her business (I take for granted sheis not, though of course I don't know), do, pray, speak a word for her. I'll answer for it she is bright enough; better not mention that she ispretty. There must be a hundred chances for her there to one in Idaho. Weare hardly up to the resident-governess idea as yet. It is thought to bewanting in public spirit for parents not to patronize the local schools. If they are not good enough for the rich families, the poor families feelinjured, and want to know the reason why. 

To return to these Harshaws. Does it not strike you that the English aremore original, not to say queer, than we are; more indifferent to theopinions of others--certain others? They don't hesitate to do a thingbecause on the face of it it's perfectly insane. Witness the lengths theygo, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen toset their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have thelove of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding, high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons, " who haveinherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without havinginherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to beresponsible for them. 

I note what you say about my tendency to slang, and how it "seems to growupon me. " It "seems" to, alas! for the simple reason, I fear, that itdoes. I can remember when I used carefully to corral all my slang words inapologetic quote-marks, as if they were range-cattle to be fenced out fromthe home herd--our mother-tongue which we brought with us from the East, and which you have preserved in all its conscientious purity. But I giveit up. I hardly know any longer, in regard to my own speech, which are mynative expressions and which are the wild and woolly ones adopted off therange. It will serve all human purposes of a woman irretrievably marriedinto the West. If the worst come to the worst, I can make a virtue ofnecessity and become a member of the "American Dialect Society"--a memberin good standing. 

 * * * * *

This is the morning of our glorious start. I am snatching a few words withyou while the men are packing the wagon, which stands before the door. What a sensation it would make drawn up in front of--Mrs. Percifer's, forinstance, in Park Avenue! Here no one turns the head to look at it. 

I told Tom he need make no concessions to the fact that he is to havetwo fairly well-dressed women along. We will go as they go, without anyfuss, or they may leave us at home. I despise those condescending, make-believe-rough-it trips, with which men flatter women into thinkingthemselves genuine campaigners. Consequently our outfit is a big, bonyranch-team and a Shuttler wagon with the double-sides in; spring seats, ofcourse, and the bottom well bedded down with tents and rolls of blankets. We don't go out of our way to be uncomfortable; that is the tenderfoot'spet weakness. The "kitchen-box" and the "grub-box" sit shoulder to shoulderin the back of the wagon. The stovepipe, tied with rope in sections, keepsup a lively clatter in concert with the jiggling of the tinware and thethumps and bumps of the camp-stove, which has swallowed its own feet, and, by the internal sounds, doesn't seem to have digested them. 

I spent last evening covering the canteens with canvas. The maiden wasquite cheerful, sorting her drawing-materials and packing her colors andsketch-blocks. She laughs at everything Tom says, whether she sees thepoint or not, and most when there is none to see. Tom will be cook, becausehe prefers his own messing to any of ours, and we can't spare room in thewagon for a regular camp chef. Mr. Harshaw is the "swamper, " because hemakes himself useful doing things my lord doesn't like to do. And Kitty isnot Miss Co-myn, as we called it, but Miss "Cummin, " as they call it, --"theComin' woman, " Tom calls her. Mr. Billings, the teamster, completes ourparty. 

 * * * * *

Sept. --Never mind the date. This is to-morrow morning, and we are atWalter's Ferry. It seems a week since we left Bisuka. We started yesterdayon the flank of a dust-storm, and soon were with the main column, the windpursuing us and hurling the sweepings of the road into the backs of ournecks. The double-sides raised us out of the worst of the dust, else Ithink we should have been smothered. It was a test of our young lady'straveling manners. She kept her head down and her mouth shut; but when Ishrieked at her to ask how she was standing it, she plucked her dusty veilfrom between her lips and smiled for answer. 

We two have the back seat, Tom sits in front with Billings, and the"swamper" sits anywhere on the lumps and bumps which our baggagemakes, covered by the canvas wagon-sheet. He might have ridden hishorse--everybody supposed he would; but that would have separated him fromthe object of his existence; the object sternly ignoring him, and ridingfor miles with her face turned away, her hand to her hat, which the windpersistently snatched at. It was her wide-brimmed sketching-hat--rather adaring creation but monstrously becoming, and I had persuaded her to wearit, the morning being delusively clear, thinking we were to have one ofour midsummer scorchers that would have burned her fair English face to ablister. 

Mr. Harshaw thought she would be tired, wearing her hand continually in theair, and suggested various mechanical substitutes, --a string attached tothe hat-trimming, a scarf tied over her head; but a snubbing was all thereward he got for his sympathy. 

"When this hand is tired I take the other one, " she said airily. 

We lunched at Ten Mile, by the railroad track. Do you remember thatdesolate place? The Oregon Short Line used to leave us there at a littlestation called Kuna. There is no Kuna now; the station-house is gone; thestation-keeper's little children are buried between four stakes on the barehill--diphtheria, I think it was. Miss Kitty asked what the stakes werethere for. Tom didn't like to tell her, so he said some traveler had made a"cache" there of something he couldn't carry with him, and the stakes wereto mark the spot till his return. 

"And will nobody disturb the cache?" asked Miss Kitty. I couldn't bearto hear them. "They are graves, " I whispered. "Two little children--thestation-keeper's--all they had. " And she asked no more questions. 

Mr. Harshaw had got possession of the canteen, and so was able to serve themaiden, both when she drank and when she held out her rosy fingers to besprinkled, he tilting a little water on them slowly--with such provokingslowness that she chid him; then he let it come in gulps, and she chidhim more, for spattering her shoes. She could play my Lady Disdain veryprettily, only she is something too much in earnest at present for the gameto be a pretty one to watch. I feel like calling her down from her pedestalof virgin wrath, if only for the sake of us peaceful old folk, who don'tcare to be made the stamping-ground for their little differences. 

The horses were longer at their lunch than we, and Miss Kitty requestedher traveling-bag. "And now, " she said, "I will get rid of this fiend of ahat, " whereas she had steadily protested for miles that she didn't mind itin the least. She took out of her bag a steamer-cap, and when she had putit on I could see that poor Harshaw dared not trust himself to look at her, her fair face exposed, and so very fair, in its tender, soft coloring, against that grim, wind-beaten waste of dust and sage. 

I shall skip the scenery on the road to Walter's Ferry, partly because wecouldn't see it for the dust; and if we had seen it, I would not waste itupon you, an army woman. But Walter's Ferry was a hard-looking place whenwe crawled in last night out of the howling, dirt-throwing wind. 

The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering andtugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loadedwith dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hootedand we howled, --the men did, --and the ferry-keeper came out and stared atus in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if wecould have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river, which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely tosleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp. 

The one guest-room at the Ferry that could be called private was given toKitty and me; but we used it as a sitting-room till bedtime, there beingnowhere else to go but into the common room where the teamsters congregate. 

We stood and looked at each other, in our common disguise of dust, andtried to find our feet and other members that came awake gradually afterthe long stupor of the ride. There was a heap of sage-brush on the hearthlaid ready for lighting. I touched a match to it, and Kitty dropped on herknees in front of its riotous warmth and glow. Suddenly she sprang up andstared about her, sniffing and catching her breath. I had noticed it too;it fairly took one by the throat, the gruesome odor. 

"What is this beastly smell?" She spoke right out, as our beloved Englishdo. Tom came in at that moment, and she turned upon him as though he werethe author of our misery. 

"What _has_ happened in this horrid room? We can't stay here, you know!"The proposition admitted of no argument. She refused to draw another breathexcept through her pocket-handkerchief. 

By this time I had recognized the smell. "It's nothing but sage-brush, " Icried; "the cleanest, sterilest thing that grows!"

"It may be clean, " said Kitty, "but it smells like the bottomless pit. I must have a breath of fresh air. " The only window in the room was afour-pane sash fixed solid in the top of the outside door. Tom said weshould have the sweepings of the Snake River valley in there in one secondif we opened that door. But we did, and the wind played havoc with ourfire, and half the country blew in, as he had said, and with it came Cecil, his head bent low, his arms full of rugs and dust-cloaks. 

"You angel!" I cried, "have you been shaking those things?"

"He's given himself the hay-fever, " said Tom, heartlessly watching himwhile he sneezed and sneezed, and wept dust into his handkerchief. 

"Doesn't the man do those things?" Miss Kitty whispered. 

"What, our next Populist governor? Not much!" Tom replied. Kitty of coursedid not understand; it was hopeless to begin upon that theme--of our laboraristocracy; so we sent the men away, and made ourselves as presentable aswe could for supper. 

I need not dwell upon it; it was the usual Walter's Ferry supper. Thelittle woman who cooked it--the third she had cooked that evening--servedit as well, plodding back and forth from the kitchen stove to thedining-room table, a little white-headed toddler clinging to her skirts, and whining to be put to bed. Out of regard for her look of generaldiscouragement we ate what we could of the food without yielding to thetemptation to joke about it, which was a cross to Tom at least. 

"Do you know how the farmers sow their seed in the Snake River valley?" heasked Miss Kitty. She raised eyes of confiding inquiry to his face. 

"They prepare the land in the usual way; then they go about five miles towindward of the ploughed field and let fly their seed; the wind does therest. It would be of no use, you see, to sow it on the spot where it'smeant to lie; they would have to go into the next county to look for theircrop, top-soil and all. "

Now whenever Tom makes a statement Miss Kitty looks first at me to see howI am taking it. 

 * * * * *

It is a fair, pale morning, as still as a picture, after last night'sorgy of wind and dust. The maiden is making her first sketch on Americansoil--of the rope-ferry, with the boat on this side. She is seated inperfect unconsciousness on an inverted pine box--empty, I trust--whichbears the startling announcement, in legible lettering on its side, that itholds "500 smokeless nitro-powder cartridges. " Now she looks up disgusted, to see the boat swing off and slowly warp over to the other side. Thepicturesque blocks and cables in the foreground have hopelessly changedposition, and continue changing; but she consoles herself by makingmarginal notes of the passengers returning by the boat, --a six-horsefreight-team from Silver City, and a band of horses driven by two realisticcow-boys from anywhere. The driver of the freight-team has a young wildcataboard, half starved, haggard, and crazed with captivity. He stops, andpulls out his wretched pet. The cow-boys stop; everybody stops; they makea ring, while the dogs of the ferry-house are invited to step up andexamine for themselves. The little cat spits and rages at the end of itsblood-stained rope. It is not a pretty show, and I am provoked with our menfor not turning their backs upon it. 

 * * * * *

Sunday, at Broadlands. From Walter's Ferry, day before yesterday, weclimbed back upon the main road, which crosses the plateau of the Snake, cutting off a great bend of the river, to see it again far below in thebottom of the Grand Cañon. 

The alkali growth is monotonous here; but there was a world of beautyand caprice in the forms of the seed-pods dried upon their stalks. Mostof these pretty little purses were empty. Their treasure went, like thesavings of a maiden aunt, when the idle wind got hold of it. There is analmost humorous ingenuity in the pains Nature has taken to secure thepropagation of some of the meanest of her plant-children. The mostworthless little vagabond seeds have wings or fans to fly with, orself-acting bomb-receptacles that burst and empty their contents (whichnobody wants) upon the liberal air, or claws or prickers to catch on withto anything that goes. And once they have caught on, they are harder to getrid of than a Canadian "quarter. "

"And do you call this a desert?" cries Miss Kitty. "Why, millions ofcreatures live here! Look at the footprints of all the little beasties. They must eat and drink. "

"That is the cheek of us humans, " said Tom. "We call our forests solitudesbecause _we_ have never shown up there before. Precious little we weremissed. This desert subsisted its own population, and asked no favorsof irrigation, till man came and overstocked it, and upset its domesticeconomies. When the sheep-men and the cattle-men came with their foreignmouths to fill, the wild natives had to scatter and forage for food, andtrot back and forth to the river for drink. They have to travel miles nowto one they went before. Hence all these desert thoroughfares. "

And he showed us in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and ahorned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopherskipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their ownbroad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break inthe cañon wall, where the thirsty tracks went down. 

We plodded along, and having with much deliberation taken the wrong road, we found ourselves about nightfall at the bottom of the cañon, in a perfectcul-de-sac. The bluffs ahead of us crowded close to the river, stretchingtheir rocky knees straight down into deep water, and making no lap at allfor our wagon to go over. And now, with this sweet prospect before us, itcame on steadily to rain. The men made camp in the slippery darkness, whilewe sat in the wagon, warm and dry, and thanked our stars there were still afew things left that men could do without our aid or competition. Presentlya lantern flashed out, and spots of light shifted over them as theyslaved--pounding tent-pegs, and scraping stones away from places where ourblankets were to be spread, hacking and hewing among the wet willows, andgrappling with stovepipes and tent-poles; and the harder they worked thebetter their spirits seemed to be. 

"I wish some of the people who used to know Cecil Harshaw in England couldsee him now, " said Kitty. 

"What did he do in England?" I asked. 

"He didn't hammer stovepipes and carry kitchen-boxes and cut fire-wood, youknow. "

"Don't you like to see men use their muscle?" I asked her. "Very few ofthem are reflective to any purpose at his age. "

"Why, how old, or how young, do you take him to be?"

"I think you spoke of him as a boy, if I remember. "

"If I called him a boy, it was out of charity for his behavior. He's withinsix months of my own age. "

"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed. 

"It's always 'girls' and 'men, '" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a mannow, he never will be. "

I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. _I_ thoughtCecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly, so very far amiss with his behavior. 

"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Daly, to defend him, I am sure. I suppose hecould do no less than propose to me, after he had brought me out to marry aman who didn't appear to be quite ready; and if it had to be done, it wasbest to do it quickly. "

So _that_ was what she had been threshing out between whiles? I might havetried to answer her, but now the little tent among the willows began toglow with fire and candlelight, and a dark shape loomed against it. It wasCecil Harshaw, bareheaded, with an umbrella, coming to escort us in tosupper. 

I never saw such a pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night, nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance acrossthe table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either thebeginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction. 

I shall have to hurry over our little incidents: how the wagon couldn't goon by way of the shore, and had to flounder back over the rocks, and crawlout of the cañon to the upper road; how Kitty and I set out vain-gloriouslyto walk to Broadlands by the river-trail, and Harshaw set out to walk withus; and how Kitty made it difficult for him to walk with both of us bystaving on ahead, with the step of a young Atalanta. I was so provoked withher that I let her take her pace and I took mine. Fancy a woman of my ageracing a girl of her build and constitution seven miles to Broadlands! PoorHarshaw was cruelly torn between us, but he manfully stuck to his duty. Hewould not abandon the old lady even for the pleasure of running after theyoung one, though I absolved him many times, and implored him to leave meto my fate. I take pride in recording his faithfulness, and I see now whyI have always liked him. He wears well, particularly when things are mostharassing. 

It certainly was hard upon him when I gave out completely, toiling throughthe sand, and sat down to rest on the door-stone of a placer-miner'scabin (cabin closed and miner gone), and nowhere through the hot, morningstillness could we catch a sound or a sight of the runaway. I could almosthear his heart beat, and his eyes and ears and all his keen young senseswere on a stretch after that ridiculous girl. But he kept up a show ofinterest in my remarks, and paid every patient attention to my feeblewants, without an idea of how long it might be my pleasure to sit there. It was not long, however it may have seemed to him, before we heardwagon-wheels booming down a little side-cañon between the hills. The teamhad managed to drag the wagon up through a scrubby gulch that lookedlike no thoroughfare, but which opened into a very fair way out of ourdifficulties. 

When we had come within sight of Broadlands Ferry, all aboard except Kitty, and still not a sign nor a sound of her, our hearts began to soften towardthat willful girl. 

Tom requested Harshaw to jump out and see if he couldn't round up hiscountrywoman. But Harshaw rather haughtily resigned--in favor of a betterman, he said. Then Tom stood up in the wagon and gave the camp call, "Yee-ee-ip! yee-ip, ye-ip!" a brazen, barbarous hoot. Kitty clapped bothhands to her ears when she was first introduced to it, but it did not fetchher now. Tom "yee-iped" again, and as we listened there she was, strollingtoward us through the greasewood, with the face of a May morning! Shewouldn't give us the satisfaction of seeing her run, but her flushedcheeks, damp temples, and quick, sighing breath betrayed her. She _had_been running fast enough. 

"Kitty, " I said severely, "there are rattlesnakes among those rocks. "

"Are there?" she answered serenely. "But I wasn't looking for rattlesnakes, you know. See what lovely things I did find! I've got the 'prospecting'fever already. "

She had filled her pockets with specimens of obsidian, jaspers, andchalcedonies, of colors most beautiful, with a deep-dyed opaqueness, ashell-fracture, and a satiny polish like jade. And she consulted us aboutthem very prettily--the little fraud! Of course she was instantly forgiven. 

But I notice that since our arrival at Broadlands, Harshaw has not troubledher with his attentions. They might be the most indifferent strangers, forall that his manner implies. And if she is not pleased with the change, sheought to be, for she has made her wishes plain. 

II

Camp at the Thousand Springs. A little grass peninsula running out betweenthe river and a narrow lagoon, a part of Decker's ranch, two miles by waterbelow the Springs and half a mile from Decker's Ferry, set all about witha hedge of rose, willow, and wild-currant bushes, sword-grass, and tallreeds, --the grasses enormous, like Japanese decorations, --crossing thedarks of the opposite shore and the lights of the river and sky. Our tentsare pitched, our blankets spread in the sun, our wagon is soaking its tiredfeet in the river. Tom and Harshaw are up-stream somewhere, fishing forsupper. Billings is bargaining with Old Man Decker for the "keep" of histeam. Kitty and I are enjoying ourselves. There is a rip in one of the backseams of my jacket, Kitty tells me, but even that cannot move me. 

I say we are enjoying ourselves; but my young guest has developed a newmood of late which gives poignancy to my growing tenderness for the girl. She has kept up wonderfully, with the aid of her bit of a temper, for whichI like her none the less. How she will stand this idleness, monotony, andintimacy, with the accent of beauty pressing home, I cannot say. I ratherfear for her. 

The screws have been tightened on her lately by something that befell atthe Harshaw ranch. Our road lay past the place, and Harshaw had to stop forhis surveying instruments, also to pack a bag, he said, --with apologies forkeeping us waiting. 

I think we were all a little nervous as we neared the house. Very few womencould have spelled the word "home" out of those rough masculine premises. Iwondered if Kitty was not offering up a prayer of thanksgiving for the lifeshe had been delivered from. 

Harshaw jumped down, and, stooping under the wire fence, ran across thealfalfa stubble to the house as fast as he could for the welcome of abeautiful young setter dog--Maisie he called her--that came wildly out tomeet him. A woman--not a nice-looking woman--stood at the door and watchedhim, and even at our distance from them there was something strange intheir recognition. 

Kitty began to talk and laugh with forced coolness. Tom turned the horsessharply, so that the wagon's shadow lay on the roadside, away from thehouse. "Get out, hadn't you better?" he suggested, in the tone of acommand. We got out, and Kitty asked for her sketching-bag. 

"Kitty, " I whispered, pointing to the house, "draw _that_, and send it toyour mother. She will never ask again why you didn't care to live there. "

"That has nothing to do with it, " she retorted coldly. "I would have livedthere, or anywhere, with the right person. "

There was no such person. I couldn't help saying it. 

She is very handsome when she looks down, proud and a trifle sullen whenyou "touch her on the raw, " as the men say. 

"But there _is_ such a person, Kitty, " I ventured. I had ventured, itseemed, too far. 

"You are my hostess. Your house is my only home. Don't be his accomplice!"I thought it rather well said. 

Now that woman's clothes were hanging on the line (and very common-lookingclothes they were), so she could not have been a casual guest. Moreover, she was pacing the hard ground in front of the house, and staring at uswith a truculent yet uneasy air. Curiosity was strong, and a sort of angerpossessed me against the place and everybody connected with it. 

When Cecil came out, looking very hot and confused for him, who is alwaysso fresh and gay, I inquired, rather shortly perhaps, "Who is yourvisitor?"

"I have no visitor, " he answered me, as cool as you please. But there wasa protest in his eye. I was determined not to spare him or any of theHarshaws. 

"Your housekeeper, then?"

"I have no housekeeper. "

"Who is the lady stopping at your house?"

"I have no house. "

"Your cousin's house, then?"

"If you refer to the person I was talking to--she is my cousin'shousekeeper, I suppose. "

Tom gave me a look, and I thought it time to let the subject drop. This wasin Kitty's presence, though apparently she neither saw nor heard. I walkedon ahead of the wagon, so angry that I was almost sick. Instantly Harshawjoined me, with a much nicer, brighter look upon his face. 

"Mrs. Daly, " he said, "I want to beg your pardon. I could not answer yourquestion before Miss Comyn. The lady, as you were pleased to call her, isMrs. Harshaw, _my cousin_--Micky's wife, you understand. "

"Since when?"

"Day before yesterday, she tells me. They were married at Bliss. "

"Well, I should say it was 'Bliss' for Kitty Comyn that _she_ is not Mrs. Harshaw--too, " I was about to add, but that would be going rather far. "Andwhat did you want to bring that girl over here for?"

"Mrs. Daly, I have told you, --I thought she loved him. "

"And what of his love for her?"

"Good heavens! you don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he hasmarried! _That_ was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to bethe deuce of a lot worse than he is to deserve that. "

Had it occurred to him, I put it to Cecil Harshaw, to ask himself what thesaving of his precious cousin might have cost the girl who was to have beenoffered up to that end?

"You leave out one small feature of the case, " said Harshaw, with a sickand burning look that made me drop my eyes, old woman as I am. "I love hermyself so well that, by Heaven! if she had wanted Micky or any other man, she should have had him, if that was what her heart was set upon. But Ididn't believe it was. I wanted her to know the truth, and, hang it! Icouldn't write it to her. I couldn't peach on Micky; but I wanted to smashthings. I wanted something to happen. Maybe I didn't do the right thing, but I had to do something. "

I couldn't tell him just what I thought of him at that moment, but I didsay to him that he had some very simple ideas for an end-of-the-centuryyoung Englishman. At which he smiled sweetly, and said it was one of hissimple ideas that Kitty need not be informed who or what her successor was, or how promptly she had been succeeded. 

"But just now you said you wanted her to know the truth. "

"Not the whole truth. Great Scott! she knows enough. No need to rub it in. "

"She knows just enough about this to misunderstand, perhaps. In justiceto yourself--she heard you beating about the bush--do you want her tomisunderstand you?"

"Oh, hang me! I don't expect her to understand me, or even tolerate me, yet. Mine is a waiting race, Mrs. Daly. "

"Very well; you can wait, " I said. "But news like this will not wait. Shewill be obliged to hear it; you don't know how or where she may hear it. Better let her hear it first in as decent a way as possible. "

"But there is no decent way. How can I explain to you, or you to her, such a measly affair as this? It began with a question of money he owedthat woman on the ranch. He bought it of her, --and a cruel bad bargain itwas, --and he never could make his last payment. She has threatened him, and played the fool with him when he'd let her, and bored him no end. Hisgovernor would have helped him out; but, you see, Micky has been a ratherexpensive boy, and he has given the old gentleman to understand that theplace is paid for, --to account for money sent him at various times for thatostensible purpose, --and on that basis the bargain was struck, betweenour governors, for my interest in the ranch. My father bought me in, on aclear title, as Uncle George represented it, in perfect good faith. I'venever said a word, on the old gentleman's account; and Micky has neverdared undeceive his father, who is the soul of honor in business, as ineverything else. I am sorry to bore you with family affairs; but it'srather rum the way Micky's fate has caught up with him, through his oneweakness of laziness, and perhaps lying a little, when he was obliged to. How this affair came about so suddenly I can't say. Didn't like to ask hertoo many questions; and Micky, poor devil, faded from view directly he sawus coming. But at a venture: she had heard he was going to be married, andcame down here to make trouble when he should arrive with his bride; but hecame back alone, disgusted with life, and found her here. It was easier tomarry her than--pay her, we'll say. She has been something over-generous, perhaps. She would rather have had him, any time, than her money, and nowwas the time. She took advantage of a weak moment. "

"A weak and a spiteful moment, " I kindly added. "Now if he hastens the newsto England, and the Percifers hear of it in New York, how pleasant forKitty to have all her friends hear that _he_ is married and _she_ is not!"

"Great Heavens!" said the young fellow, "if she would let me hasten thenews--that she is married to me!"

"Why don't you appeal to her pride and her spirit now while they are in thedust? Why do you bother with sentiment now?"

I liked him so much at that moment that I would have had him have Kitty, nomatter what way he got her. 

"Yes, " he said; "why not take advantage of her, as everybody else hasdone?"

"Some people's scrupulousness comes rather late, " I said. 

"To those who don't understand, " he had the brazenness to say. "What isdone is done. It's a rough beginning--awfully rough on her. The end mustatone somehow. If I don't win her I shall be punished enough; but if I do, it will be because she loves me. And pray God"--He stopped, with that look. It is a number of years since a young man has looked at me in that way, buta woman does not forget. 

It was rather difficult telling to Kitty the story of her old lover'smarriage, as I took it on myself to do. Not that she winced perceptibly;but I fear she has taken the thing home, and is dwelling on it--certainfeatures of it--in a way that can do no good. From a word she lets slip nowand then, I gather that she is brooding over that fancy of hers that CecilHarshaw offered himself by way of reparation, as she was falling betweentwo stools, --her own home and her lover's, --to save her from the ground. As since that rainy night in the wagon she has never distinctly referredto this theory of his conduct, I have no excuse for bringing it up, evento attack it. In fact, I dare not; she is in too complicated a mood. And, after all, why should I want her to marry either of them? Why should the"hungry generations" tread her down? She is nice enough to stay as she is. 

Another thing happened on our way here which may perversely have helped toconfirm her in this pretty notion of Harshaw's disinterestedness. 

At a place by the river where the current is bad (there are many suchplaces, and, in fact, the whole of the Snake River is a perfect hoodoo)Harshaw stopped one day to drink. The wagon had struck a streak of heavysand, and we were all walking. We stood and watched him, because he drankwith such deep enjoyment, stooping bareheaded on his hands and knees, andputting his hot face to the water. Suddenly he made a clutch at his breastpocket: his Norfolk jacket was unbuttoned. He had lost something, and theriver had got it. He ran along the bank, trying to recover it with a stick, and, not succeeding, he plopped in just as he was, with his boots on. Wesaw him drop into deep water and swim for it, a little black object, whichhe caught, and held in his teeth. Then he turned his face to the shore; andprecious near he came to never reaching it! We women had been looking on, smiling, like idiot dolls, till we saw Tom racing down the bank, throwingoff his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried tofollow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still lessrealized it--his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch;the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spotwhere the beast of a current that had him swooped inshore. 

I am sorry to say that my husband's first words to the man he may be saidto have saved from death were, "You young fool, what did you do that for?"

"For this, " Harshaw panted, slapping his wet breast. 

"For a pocket-book! Great Sign! What had you in it? I wouldn't have donethat for the whole of the Snake River valley. "

"Nor I, " laughed Harshaw. 

"Nor the Bruneau to boot. "

"Nor I. "

"What did you do it for, then?"

"For this, " Harshaw repeated. 

"For a piece of pasteboard with a girl's face on it, or some such toy, I'llbe sworn!"

Harshaw did not deny the soft impeachment. 

"I didn't know you had a girl, Harshaw, " Tom began seductively. 

"Well, I haven't, you know, " said Harshaw. "There was one I wanted badlyenough, a few years ago, " he added with engaging frankness. 

"When was it you first began to pine for her? About the period of seconddentition?"

"Oh, betimes; and betimes I was disappointed. "

"Well, unless it was for the girl herself, I'd keep out of that SnakeRiver, " my husband advised. 

Kitty's face wore a slightly strained expression of perfect vacancy. 

"Do _you_ know who Harshaw's 'girl' was?" I asked her the other night, aswe were undressing, --without an idea that she wouldn't see where the jokecame in. She was standing, with her hair down, between the canvas curtainsof our tent. It looks straight out toward the Sand Springs Fall, and Kittyworships there awhile every night before she goes to bed. 

"No, " she said. "I was never much with Cecil Harshaw. It is the familiesthat have always known each other. " The simple child! She hadn't understoodhim, or would she not understand? Which was it? I can't make out whethershe is really simple or not. She is too clever to be so very simple; yetthe cleverness of a young girl's mind, centred on a few ideas, is mainlyin spots. But now I think she has brought this incident to bear upon thatprecious theory of hers, that Harshaw offered himself from a sense of duty. Great good may it do her!

The Sand Springs Fall, a perfect gem, is directly opposite our camp, facingwest across the lagoon. We can feast our eyes upon it at all hours of theday and night. Tom has told Kitty, in the way of business, that he has nouse for that fall. She may draw it or not, as she likes. She does drawit; she draws it, and water-colors it, and chalks it in colored crayons, and India-inks it, loading on the Chinese white; and she charcoals it, inmoonlight effects, on a gray-blue paper. But do it whatever way she will, she never can do it. 

"Oh, you exquisite, hopeless thing! Why can't I let you alone!" she cries;"and why can't you let _me_ alone!"

"It is rather hard, the way the thing doubles up on you, " says Tom. "The real fall, right side up, is bad enough; but when it comes to thereflection of it, standing on its head in the lagoon, I should lie rightdown myself. I wouldn't pull another pound. "

("_Lay_ down, " he said; but I thought you wouldn't stand it. Tom wouldnever spoil a cherished bit of dialect because of shocking anybody with hisgrammar. )

Kitty throws herself back in the dry salt-grass with which the whole ofour little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains, through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sunrises long before we see him, above the dark-blue mountains beyond theshore. 

"Won't somebody repeat

 'There is sweet music here that softlier lies?'"

Kitty asks, letting her eyelashes fall on her sun-flushed cheeks. Her face, as I saw it, sitting behind her in the grass, was so pretty--upside downlike the reflection of the waterfall, its colors all the more wonderfullyblended. 

We did not all speak at once. Then Harshaw said, to break the silence, "Iwill read it to you, if you don't mind. "

"Oh, have you the book?" Kitty asked in surprise. 

He went to his tent and returned with _a_ book, and sitting on the grasswhere she could hear but could not see him, he began. I trembled for him;but before he had got to the second stanza I was relieved: he could readaloud. 

"Now _there_ is a man one could live on a Snake River ranch with, " I feltlike saying to Kitty. Not that I am sure that I want her to. 

When he had finished, "O rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more!"

Tom remarked, after a suitable silence, that it was all well enough forHarshaw, who would be in London in six weeks, to say, "We will not wandermore!" But how about the rest of us?

Kitty sat straight up at that. 

"Will Mr. Harshaw be in London six weeks from now?" The question was almosta cry. 

"Will you?" she demanded, turning upon him as if this was the last injuryhe could do her. 

"I suppose so, " he said. 

"And you will see my mother, and all of them?"

"I think so--if you wish. "

She rose up, as if she could bear no more. Harshaw waited an instant, andthen followed her; but she motioned him back, and went away to have it outwith herself alone. 

I took up the book Harshaw had left on the grass. It was "Copp'sManual"--"For the use of Prospectors, " etc. 

 * * * * *

After all, it is not so sure that Harshaw will go to London. There has beenan engineer on the ground since last summer, when all this water was free. He has located a vast deal of it, perhaps the whole. Tom says he can holdonly just as much as he can use; I hope there will be no difference ofopinion on that point. There generally is a difference of opinion on pointsof location when the thing located is proved to have any value. The priorlocator has gone East, they tell us at the ranch, on a business visit, presumably to raise capital for his scheme; which, as I understand it, is to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, forirrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumpingarrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, areclinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing, creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I waspitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the plan is perfectlyfeasible. 

The wall of the river cañon is built up in stories of basalt rock, eachstory defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious watersgush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the richunder-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if thatsheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as thebluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and mightthe next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the prettyisland between itself and the river. Winter and summer the volume of waternever varies, and the rate of discharge is always the same, and the wateris never cold, though I have just said it is. It looks cold until the rockswarm it with their gemlike tints, like a bride's jewels gleaming throughher veil. Back of the bluffs, where it might be supposed to come from, there is nothing for a hundred miles but drought and desert plains. I don'tcare for any of their theories concerning its source. It is better as itis--the miracle of the smitten rock. 

You can fancy what wild presumption it must seem that a mere man shouldthink to reverse those torrents and make them climb the bluff or cram theminto an iron pipe and send them like paid laborers to hoist and pump andgrind, and light the streets at Silver City, a hundred miles away. And howthe cataracts will shout while these two pigmies compare their rival claimsto ownership--in a force that with one stroke could lay them as flat aslast year's leaves in the bottom of a mill-race!

The particular fall my schemer has located for his own--other claims to bediscussed hereafter--is called the "Snow Bank. " He says he doesn't want theearth: this one cataract is enough for him. To look at the whole frontageof the springs and listen to their roar, one would think there might bewater enough for them both, poor children! Hardly what you'd call two bitesof a cherry!

If the springs were the half of a broken diamond bracelet, the Snow Bankwould be its brightest gem, lying separate in the case--perhaps the onethat was the clasp. It is half hidden by the shoulder of a great barrenbluff which, at a certain angle of the sun, throws a blue shadow over it. At other times the fall is almost too bright in its foaming whiteness forthe eye to endure. 

Kitty is painting it with this shadow half across it; but the light shinesupon it at its source. Tom is doubtful if she is showing the fall to thebest advantage for his purpose, but he is obliging enough to let the artisttry it in her own way first. 

"Go up there, " she says, "and stand at the head of the spring, if you wantto show by comparison how big it is, or how small you are. "

He goes, and gets in position, and Kitty makes some pencil-marks on themargin of her sketch. Then she waves her hands to tell him, across theshouting current, that she is done with him. She has been so quick thathe thinks he must have mistaken her gesture. Then Harshaw makes thetrain-conductor's signal for the train to move on. 

"You see, " she says to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder, "_that_ would be the size of him in my sketch. " She points to the marginalpencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't makea little black dot like that look like a man. "

"In this particular sketch, for his purpose, he'd rather look like a dotthan a man, I dare say, " said Harshaw. 

"Well, shall I put him in? I can make a note of it on the margin: 'Thisblack dot is Mr. Daly, standing at the spring-head. He is six feet'"--

"But he isn't, you know, " Harshaw says. "He's five feet ten--if he's that. "

"Ten and a half, " I hasten to amend. 

Our lunch that day had been left in the boat. We went down and ate itunder the mountain birches at a spot where the Snow Bank empties into thelagoon--not _our_ lagoon, as we called it, between our camp and the lovelySand Springs Fall, but the upper one, made by the springs themselves, before their waters reach the river. In front of us, half embraced by thelagoon and half by the river, lay a little island-ranch of about ten acres, not cut up in crops, but all over green in pasture. A small cabin, proppingup a large hop-vine, showed against a mass of birch and cottonwood on theriver side of the island. 

"What a place for a honeymoon!" said I. 

"There is material there for half of a honeymoon, " said Tom--"not badmaterial, either. "

"Oh, yes, " I said; "we have seen her--that is, we have seen her sunbonnet. "

"Kitty, you've got a rival, " I exclaimed: for there in the sunny centre ofthe island, planted with obvious design right in front of the Snow Bank, _our_ Snow Bank, was an artist's big white umbrella. 

"Why should I not have, in a place like this?" she said. "If the schemersarrive by twos, why not two of my modest craft? _We_ shall leave it as wefind it; we don't intend to carry it away in our pockets. " She stopped, andblushed disdainfully. "I forgot, " she murmured, "my own mercenary designs. "

"I have not heard of these mercenary designs of yours. What are they, mayI ask?" Harshaw had turned on his side on the grass, and half rose on oneelbow as he looked at her. 

"That is strange, " mocked Kitty, with supreme coldness. "You have alwaysbeen so interested in my affairs!"

"I always shall be, " he replied seriously, with supreme gentleness. 

"I ought to be so grateful. "

"But unfortunately you are not. "

"I should be grateful--if you would move a little farther to the right, ifyou please. That young person in the pink sunbonnet is coming down to waterher horses again. "

Harshaw calmly took himself out of her way altogether, lighted his pipe, and went down close to the water, and sat there on a stone, and presently, as we could hear, entered into easy conversation with the pink sunbonnet, the face of which leaned toward him over the pony's neck as he stooped todrink. The splashed waters became still, and softly the whole picture--pinksunbonnet, clay-bank pony, pale and shivery willows, and deep bluesky--developed on the negative of the clear lagoon. 

There was no use in saying how pretty it was, so we resorted to the othernote, of disparagement. I remarked that I should not think a pink sunbonnetwould be ravishingly becoming to the average Snake River complexion, as Ihad seen it. 

"_That_ sunbonnet is becoming, you bet!" Tom remarked. "Wait till you seethe face inside it. "

"Have you seen it?"

"Quite frequently. Do you think Harshaw would sit there talking with her, as he does by the hour, if that sunbonnet was not becoming?"

"As he does by the hour! And why have we not heard of her before?" Irequested to be told. 

"Business, my dear. She is a feature of the scheme--quite an important one. She represents the hitch which is sure to develop early in the history ofevery live enterprise. "

"Indeed?" I said. And if Harshaw talked with her on business, I didn't seewhat his talking had to do with the face inside her bonnet. 

"I don't say that it's always on business, " Tom threw in significantly. 

"Who is the lady in the pink sunbonnet, and what is your business withher?" I demanded. 

"I question the propriety of speaking of her in just that tone, " said Tom, "inasmuch as she happens to be a lady--somewhat off the conventional lines. She waters her own stock and milks her own cow, because the old Indian girlwho lives with her is laid up at present with a fever. Her father was anartist--one of the great unappreciated"--

"So that was her father painting the Snow Bank?" I interrupted. 

"Her father is dead, my dear, as you would have learned if you had listenedto my story. But he lived here a good many years before he died. He hadmade a queer marriage, old man Decker tells me, and quarreled with theworld on account of it. He came here with his disputed bride. She wassomebody else's wife first, I believe, and there was a trifling informalityabout the matrimonial exchange; but it came out all right. They bothdied, and a sweeter, fresher little thing than the daughter! Adamant, though--bed-rock, so far as we are concerned. "

"What do you want that belongs to her?" I asked. "Her island, perhaps?"

"Only right of way across it. But 'that's a detail. ' She is the owner ofsomething else we do want--this piece of ground, "--he looked about him andwaved his hand, --"and all this above us, where our power-plant must stand. And our business is to persuade her to sign the lease, or, if she won'tlease, to sell it when we are ready to buy. We have to make sure of thatpiece of ground. This place is so confoundedly cut up with scenery andnonsense, there's not a spot available for our plant but this. We'll bridgethe lagoon and make a landing on that point of birches over there. "

"You will! And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipeher off the face of the earth--abolish her and her pretty island at onefell swoop?"

"She knows nothing yet about our designs upon her toy island. We haven'tapproached her on that. We could manage without it at a pinch. "

"So good of you!" I murmured. 

"But we can't manage without a place to put our power-house. "

"She'll have to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footingfor your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of suchgrasping profanation. "

"Well, if Cecy could see his way to fall in love with her, --I wouldn't askhim to woo her in cold blood, --it would be a monstrous convenient way tosettle it. "

"Why do you say such things before her?" I asked Tom when we were alone. "They are not pretty things to say, in the first place. "

"Have you noticed how she is always snubbing him? I thought it timesomebody should try the counter-snub. He's not solely dependent for thejoys of life on the crumbs of her society. "

"Do you suppose she cares whom he talks to, or whom he spends his timewith?"

"Perhaps she doesn't care. I should like to give her a chance to see if shecares, that's all. "

Tom's location notice being plain for all eyes to read, the mistress ofthe island naturally inquired what he wanted with the Snow Bank; and he, thinking she would see at once the value to her ranch of such a neighboringenterprise, frankly told her of his scheme. Nothing of its scientificinterest, its difficulties, its commercial value, even its benefit toherself, appealed to the little islander. To her it was simply an attemptto alter and ruin the spot she loved best on earth; to steal her beautifulwaterfall and carry it away in an ugly iron pipe. Whether the thing couldbe done, she did not ask herself; the design was enough. Never would shelend herself, or anything that was hers, to such an impious desecration!This was her position, which any child might have taken in defense of abeloved toy; but she was holding it with all a woman's force and constancy. 

I was glad of it, I said to Tom, and I hoped she would stand them offfor all she was worth. But I am not really glad. What woman could lovea waterfall better than her husband's success? There are hundreds ofwaterfalls in the world, but only this one scheme for Tom. 

But anent this hitch, it teases me a little, I confess, on Kitty's account, when Cecil meanders over to the island at all hours of the day. To be sure, it relieves Kitty of his company; but is she so glad, after all, to berelieved?

It was last Friday, after one of Harshaw's entirely frank but perfectlyunexplained absences, that he came into camp and inquired if there was anyclam-broth left in the kitchen. I referred him to the cook. Finding therewas, he returned to me and asked if he might take a tin of it to MissMalcolm for her patient. 

"Who is Miss Malcolm?" I asked. But of course who could she be but the ladyof the island, where he spends the greater part of his time? He was welcometo the clam-broth, or anything else he thought would be acceptable in thatquarter, I said. And how was the patient?

"Oh, she's quite bad all the time. She doesn't get about. I wonder ifyou'd mind, Mrs. Daly, if I asked you to look in on her some day? The oldcreature's in a sad way, it seems to me. "

Of course I didn't mind, if Miss Malcolm did not. Harshaw seemed to feelauthorized to assure me of that fact. So I went first with Tom, and then Iwent again alone, leaving Harshaw in the boat with Kitty. 

Miss Malcolm's maid or man servant, or both--for she does the work of both, and looks in her bed (dressed in a flannel bed-sack, her head tied up inan old blue knitted "fascinator") less like a woman than anything I everbeheld--appears to have had a mild form of grippe fever, and having neverbeen sick in her life before, she thought she was nearing her end. Mysimple treatment, the basis of which was quinine and whiskey, seemed tostrike old Tamar favorably; and after the second visit there was no need tocome again to see her. But by this time I was deep in the good books of hermistress, who knows too little of illness herself to appreciate how littlehas been done, by me at least, or how very little needed to be done afterrestoring the old woman's confidence in her power to live. (The last time Isaw her she still wore the blue fascinator, but with a man's hat on top ofit; she was waddling toward the cow-corral with half a haystack, it lookedlike, poised on a hay-fork above her head. She was certainly a credit toher doctor, if not to her _corsétière_, she and the haystack being much ofa figure. )

Miss Malcolm's innocent gratitude is most embarrassing, really painful, under the circumstances, and the poor child cannot let the circumstancesalone. She imagines I am always thinking about Tom's scheme. It is evidentthat _she_ is; and not being exactly a woman of the world, out of thefullness of her heart her mouth speaketh. That would be all right if shewould speak to somebody else. _I_ don't want to take advantage of hergratitude, as she seems determined I shall do. 

"You must think me a very strained, sentimental creature, " she said to methe last time, "to care so much for a few old rocks and a little piece offoamy water. "

I didn't think so at all, I told her. If I had lived there all my life, Ishould feel about the place just as she did. 

Here she began to blush and distress herself. "But think how kind you haveall been to me! Mr. Harshaw was here every day, after he found how ill poorTamar was. He did so many things: he lifted her, for one thing, and thatI couldn't have done to save her life. And your two visits have simplycured her! And here I am making myself a stumbling-block and ruining yourhusband's plans!"

I said he was quite capable of taking care of himself. 

"Does your husband want _all_ the water?" she persisted. "Do I understandthat he must have it all?"

I supposed she was talking of the Snow Bank, and since she was determinedwe should discuss the affair in this social way, I said he would haveto have a great deal; and I told her about the distance the power wouldhave to be sent, and about the mines and the smelters, and all the restof it, for it was no use to belittle the scheme. I had got startedunintentionally, and I saw by her face that I had made an impression. Itis a small-featured, rather set, colorless face, not so pretty as Tompretended, but very delicate and pure; but now it became suddenly the faceof a fierce little bigot, and enthusiast to boot. 

"It shall never go through, --not _that_ scheme--not if"--Then sheremembered to whom she was talking, and set her lips together, and twogreat shiny drops stood in her eyes. 

"Don't, don't, you child!" I said. "Don't worry about their old scheme! Ifit must come it will come; but as a rule, a scheme, my dear, is the lastthing that ever does go through. There's plenty of time. "

"But I can't give in, " she said. "No; I _must_ try to hinder it all Ican. I will be honest with you. I like you all; of all the strangers whohave come here I never liked any people better. But your husband--must_not_--set his heart on _all_ that water! It doesn't belong to him. "

"Does it belong to you, dear?"

"The _sight_ of it belongs to me, " she said. "I will not have the placeall littered up with their pipes and power-plants. Look out there! Look atthat! Has any one the right to come here and spoil such a lovely thing asthat?"--This is what it is to be the daughter of an artist. 

"And how about the other despoiler, " I asked--"the young man with thepneumatic pipe?"

"The 'pneumatic pipe'!" she repeated. 

"'Pump, ' I mean. Is he to be allowed all over the place to do as _he_pleases? His scaling-ladders are littering up the bluffs--not that theyincommode the bluffs any; but if I lived here, I should want to brush themaway as I would sweep the cobwebs from my walls. "

"I do not own the bluffs, " she said in a distant, tremulous voice. 

But the true answer to my question, as I surmise, was the sudden, helplessflush which rose, wave upon wave, covering her poor little face, blottingout all expression but that of painful girlish shame. Here, if I'm notmistaken, will be found the heart of the difficulty. Miss Malcolm'ssympathies are evidently with compressed air rather than with electricaltransmission. I shall tell Tom he need waste no more arguments on her. Lethim first compound with his rival of the pump. 

 * * * * *

I suppose there is just such a low, big moon as this looking in upon youwhere you sit, you little dot of a woman, lost in the piazza perspectivesof the Coronado; and you might think small things of our presenthabitation--a little tent among the bushes, with wind-blown weeds againstthe moon, shifting their shadow-patterns over our canvas walls. But you'dnot think small things of our Sand Springs Fall by night, that glimmers onthe dark cliff opposite--cliff, and mist-like cataract, and the low moonthrowing the shadow of the bluff across it, all repeated in the stiller, darker picture of the lagoon. I shall not inflict much of this sort ofthing upon you; but the senseless beauty of it all gives one a heartache. Why should it be here, where you and I shall never see it together--whereI shall leave it soon, never to see it again? Tom says we are comingback--when the great scheme is under way. Ah, the scheme, the scheme! Itlooks very far away to-night, and so do some other schemes that I had setmy heart on unaware, foolish old woman that I am. As if there was only oneway in this--world for young men and women to be happy!

Harshaw brought me your sweet letter yesterday. It was stage-day, and hewent up over the bluffs to the ferry mail-box at the cross-roads, where theroad to Shoshone Falls branches from the road to Bliss. 

I read to Kitty what you wrote me about the Garretts and their children, and the going to New York and then to Paris. (Thank you so much, dear, foryour prompt interest in my little bride that isn't to be!) She had twoletters of her own which she had read by herself, and afterward I thoughtshe had been crying; but with her it is best not to press the note ofsympathy. Neither does she like me to handle her affairs with gloves on, so to speak. So I plunged into the business in a matter-of-fact tone, andshe replied in the same. Her objection is to going east to New York, andthen to the other side. "I had rather stay in California, " she said, "oranywhere in the West. " Naturally; westward lies the way of escape fromsocial complications. 

She is afraid of the Percifers, and of meeting people she knows in Paris. But an offer like this was exceptional in this part of the world, Ireminded her. A nurse for the boy, a maid, and only two little girls ofeight and ten on her hands; and such nice people as the Garretts, who havebeen all over the world!

"Well, " she said, "I should certainly like to get away from here as soon aspossible. From _here_, not from _you_!" she added, looking me in the face. Her eyes were full of tears. We clasped hands on that. 

"What is it? Has anything else happened?" I asked; for I knew by her looksthat something had. 

"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I should so like to take myself and my troublesseriously once in a while. No sooner do I try, but something perfectlyfarcical is sure to happen. If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh. It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear!I'm so fond of him!"

The "old dear, " it seems, is Micky's father--a very superior sort of fatherfor such a son to have, but accidents will happen in the best-regulatedfamilies. He is a gallant widower of fair estate, one of those splendid oldclub-men of London; a very expensive article of old gentleman, with fineold-fashioned manners and morals, and a few stray impulses left, it wouldseem by what follows. According to the father's code, the son has notconducted himself in his engagement to Kitty Comyn as a gentleman should. Thereupon the head of the house goes to Miss Kitty's mother and makes the_amende honorable_ by offering his hand and heart and fortune to his son'sinsulted bride! The mother is touched and pleased not a little by thisprompt espousal of her daughter's cause; and having wiped away all tearsfrom _her_ eyes, this gallant old gentleman is coming over to America, forthe first time in his life, to make his proposal to the bride herself! Heis not so old, to get down to particulars; sixty-three doesn't look soold to some of us as it does to Miss Kitty. He is in fine health, I doubtnot, and magnificently preserved. Kitty's mother is not at all averse, asI gather, to this way of settling her child's difficulties. She ratherpleadingly assures Kitty that Mr. Harshaw senior has solemnly sworn thatthis is no unpleasant duty he feels called on to perform; not only hishonor, but his affections are profoundly enlisted in this proposal. Kittyhas had for years a sacred place in his regard; and from thinking of her asa daughter absolutely after his own heart, it is but a step to think of herin a still nearer--the nearest--relation. He begs her mother to prepare herfor no perfunctory offer of marriage, but one that warms with every day'sdelay till he can take the dear child under his lifelong protection. Not topunish or to redress does he come, but to secure for himself and posteritya treasure which his son had trampled under foot. Somehow we did not feellike laughing, after all. Kitty, I think, is a little frightened. Shecannot reach her mother, even with a cable dispatch, before this secondchampion will arrive. 

"He's an awfully grand old fellow, you know. I could never talk to him as Ido to the boys. If he thinks it his duty to marry me, I don't know if I canhelp myself. Poor Uncle George! I've always called him 'uncle' like his ownnieces, who are all my friends. I never thought that I should be 'poor-ing'Uncle George! But he can't have heard yet of Micky's marriage. Fancy hisgoing down to the ranch to stay with Micky and that woman! And then for agirl like me to toss him aside, after such a journey and such kindness! Idon't know how I shall ever have courage to do it. There are fine women inLondon who would jump at the chance of being Mrs. Harshaw--not Mrs. Micky, nor Mrs. Stephen, nor Mrs. Sidney, but _Mrs. Harshaw_, you understand?" Iunderstood. 

"And now, " she said, producing the second letter, "you _will_ laugh! Andyou may!"

The envelope contained a notification, in due form, of the arrival from NewYork, charges not paid, of some five hundred pounds of second-class freightconsigned to Mrs. Harshaw, Harshaw's ranch, Glenn's Ferry (via Bisuka). 

"These things belong to me, " said Kitty. "They cost me the last bit ofmoney I had that was my own. Mrs. Percifer, who is so clever at managing, persuaded me I should need them directly on the ranch--curtains and rugsand china, and heaven knows what! She nearly killed me, dragging me aboutthose enormous New York shops. She said it would be far and away cheaperand better to buy them there. I didn't mind about anything, I was so scaredand homesick; I did whatever she said. She saw to getting them off, Isuppose. That must have been her idea, directing them to Mrs. Harshaw. Shethought there would be no Kitty Comyn, no _me_, when these got here. Andthere isn't; _this_ is not the Kitty Comyn who left England--six weeks, isit?--or six years ago!"

"How did the letter reach you?" I asked. We examined the envelope. It borethe postmark, not of Bisuka, but of Glenn's Ferry, which is the nearestpost-office to the Harshaw ranch. Micky's wife had doubtless opened theletter, and Micky, perceiving where the error lay, had reinclosed, but someone else had directed it--the postmaster, probably, at his request--toKitty, at our camp. That was rather a nice little touch in Micky, that lastabout the direction. 

"Come, he is honest, at the least, " I said, "whether Mrs. Micky would havescrupled or not. She could claim the things if she chose. "

"She is quite welcome, " said Kitty. "I don't know what in the world I shalldo with them. There'll be boxes and bales and barrels--enough to bury meand all my troubles. I might build me a funeral pyre!"

We fell into each other's arms and screamed with laughter. 

"Kitty, we'll have an auction, " I cried. "There's nothing succeeds likean auction out here. We'll sell the things at boom prices--we'll selleverything. "

"But the bride, " said Kitty; "you will have to keep the bride. " And withouta moment's warning, from laughing till she wept, she began to weep inearnest. I haven't seen her cry so since she came to us, not even thatmiserable first night. She struggled with herself, and seemed dreadfullyashamed, and angry with me that I should have seen her cry. Did she supposeI thought she was crying because she wasn't going to be a bride, after all?

 * * * * *

"Oh, Mrs. Daly, I feel so ill!" were Kitty's first words to me when I wokethis morning. I looked her over and questioned her, and concluded that asleepless night, with not very pleasant thoughts for company, might be heldresponsible for a good share of her wretchedness. 

"What were you lying awake about? Your new champion, Uncle George?" I askedher. 

She owned that it was. "Don't you see, Mrs. Daly, mamma doesn't leave roomfor the possibility of my refusing him. And if I do refuse him, he'llsimply take me back to England, and then, between him and mamma, and all ofthem, I don't know what may happen. "

"Kitty, " I said, "no girl who has just escaped from one unhappy engagementis going to walk straight into another with her eyes wide open. I won'tbelieve you could be so foolish as that. "

"You don't understand, " she said, "what the pressure will be at home--inall love and kindness, of course. And you don't know Uncle George. He isso sure that I need him, he'll force me to take him. He'll take me back toEngland in any case. "

"And would you not like to go, Kitty?"

"Ah, wouldn't I! But not in that way. "

She sat up in her flannel camp-gown, and began to braid up her loosenedhair. 

"Kitty, " I commanded, "lie down. You are not to get up till luncheon. "

"I have a plan, " she said, "and I must see Cecil Harshaw; he must help mecarry it out. There is no one else who can. "

"You have all day to see him in. "

"Not all day, Mrs. Daly. He must be ready to start to-morrow. Uncle Georgewill reach Bisuka on the fifteenth, not later. Cecil must meet him there;first, to prepare him for Micky's new arrangement, and second, to persuadehim that he does not owe me an offer of marriage in consequence. Cecilwill know how to manage it; he must know! I will not have any more of theHarshaws offering themselves as substitutes. It will be very strange if Icannot exist without them somehow. "

It struck me that the poor child's boast was a little premature, as sheseemed to be making rather free use of one of the substitutes still, asa shield against the others; but it was of a piece with the rest of thecomedy. I kept her in bed till she had had a cup of tea; afterward sheslept a little, and about noon she dressed herself and gave Cecil hisaudience. But first, at her request, I had possessed him with the mainfacts and given him an inkling of what was expected of him. His facechanged; he looked as he did after his steeplechase the day I saw himfirst, --except that he was cleaner, --grave, excited, and resolved. He hadtaken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a causelike this! I would have left them to have their little talk by themselves, but Kitty signified peremptorily that she wished me to stay, with aflushed, appealing look that softened the nervous tension of her manner. 

"I would do anything on earth for you, Kitty, " Cecil said most gently andfervently; "but don't ask me to give advice--to Uncle George of all men--ona question of this kind--unless you will allow me to be perfectly frank. "

"It's a family question, " said Kitty, ignoring his proviso. 

"I think it would get to be a personal question very soon between UncleGeorge and me. No; I meddled in one family question not very long ago. "

"It's very strange, " said Kitty restlessly, "if you can't help me outof this in some way. I cannot be so disrespectful to him, the dear oldgentleman! He ought not to be put in such a position, or I either. Howwould you like it if it were your father?"

Cecil reddened handsomely at this home thrust. "I'd have a deuce of a timeto stop him if he took the notion, you know; it's not exactly a son's or anephew's business. There is only one way in which I can help you, Kitty. You must know that. "

He had struck a different key, and his face was all one blush to correspondwith the new note in his voice. I think I never saw a manlier, moregenerous warmth of ardor and humility, or listened to words so simplyuttered in such telling tones. 

"What way is that?" asked Kitty coldly. 

"Forgive me! I could tell him that you are engaged to me. "

"That would be a nice way--to tell him a falsehood! I should hope I hadbeen humiliated enough"--

She snatched her handkerchief from her belt and pressed it to her burningface. I rose again to go. "Sit still, pray!" she murmured. 

"It need not be a falsehood, Kitty. Let it be anything you like. You maytrust me not to take advantage. A nominal engagement, if you choose, justto meet this exigency; or"--

"That would be cheating, " cried Kitty. 

"The cheat would bear a little harder on me than on any one else, I think. "

"You are too good!" Kitty smiled disdainfully. "First you offer yourself tome as a cure, and now as a preventive. "

"Kitty, I think you ought at least to take him seriously, " I remonstrated. 

"By all that's sacred, you'll find it's serious with me!" Cecil ejaculated. 

"Since when?" retorted Kitty. "How many weeks ago is it that I came outhere by your contrivance to marry your cousin? Is that the way a man showshis seriousness? You sacrificed more to marry me to Micky than some menwould to win a girl themselves. "

"I did, and for that very reason, " said Cecil. 

"I should like to see you prove it!"

"Kitty, excuse me, " I interrupted. "_I_ should like to ask Mr. Harshaw onequestion, if he does not mind. Do you happen to have that picture aboutyou, Mr. Harshaw?"

I thought I was looking at him very kindly, not at all like an inquisitor, but his face was set and stern. I doubt if he perceived or looked for myintention. 

"'That picture, ' Mrs. Daly?" he repeated. 

"The photograph of a young lady that you jumped into the river tosave--don't you remember?"

Cecil smiled slightly, and glanced at Kitty. "Did I say it was a photographof a lady?"

"No; you did not. But do you deny that it was?"

"Certainly not, Mrs. Daly. I have the picture with me; I always have it. "

"And do you think _that_ looks like seriousness? To be making suchprotestations to one girl with the portrait of another in your coat pocket?We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by theriver. "

He saw my meaning now, and thanked me with a radiant look. "Here is thepicture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely _you_ mighthave known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago and have wanted eversince; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I triedto save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because Ithought she loved him. Or, if he couldn't be saved, I wanted to expose himand save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I wasfor my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself foryour sake, Kitty. "

I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobodytried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as thelittle water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees besideher, whispering, "I stole it from Micky's room at the ranch. That was noplace for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?"

I think he will get one--of his own Kitty. 

 * * * * *

Our rival schemer, Mr. Norman Fleet, has arrived, and electricaltransmission has shaken hands with compressed air. The millennium must beon the way, for never did two men want so nearly the same thing, and yetagree to take each what the other does not need. 

Mr. Fleet does not "want the earth, " either, nor all the waters thereof;but the most astonishing thing is, he doesn't want the Snow Bank! He notonly doesn't want it himself, but is perfectly willing that Tom should haveit. In fact, do what we will, it seems to be impossible for us to tread onthe tail of that young man's coat. But having heard a little bird whisperthat he is in love, and successfully so, I am not so surprised at hisamiability. Neither am I altogether unprepared, if the little bird'swhisper be true, for the fact that Miss Malcolm is becoming reconciled toTom's designs upon her beloved scenery. For the sake of consistency, andthat pure devotion to the Beautiful, so rare in this sordid age, I couldhave wished that she had not weakened so suddenly; but for Tom's sake I amvery glad. She is clay in the hands of the potter, now that she knows myhusband does not want "all the water, " and that his success does not meanthe failure of Mr. Norman Fleet. 

Harshaw will take the Snow Bank scheme when he takes Kitty back to London. If he promotes it, I tell Tom, after the fashion in which he "boomed"Kitty's marriage to his cousin, we're not likely to see either him or theSnow Bank again. But "Harshaw is all right, " Tom says; and I believe thatthe luck is with him.