SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS

By Bret Harte

From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 7

P. F. COLLIER & SON

NEW YORK

SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS

CHAPTER I. 

Where the San Leandro turnpike stretches its dusty, hot, andinterminable length along the valley, at a point where the heat and dusthave become intolerable, the monotonous expanse of wild oats on eitherside illimitable, and the distant horizon apparently remoter than ever, it suddenly slips between a stunted thicket or hedge of "scrub oaks, "which until that moment had been undistinguishable above the long, misty, quivering level of the grain. The thicket rising gradually inheight, but with a regular slope whose gradient had been determinedby centuries of western trade winds, presently becomes a fair wood oflive-oak, and a few hundred yards further at last assumes the aspect ofa primeval forest. A delicious coolness fills the air; the long, shadowyaisles greet the aching eye with a soothing twilight; the murmurof unseen brooks is heard, and, by a strange irony, the enormous, widely-spaced stacks of wild oats are replaced by a carpet oftiny-leaved mosses and chickweed at the roots of trees, and the minutestclover in more open spaces. The baked and cracked adobe soil of the nowvanished plains is exchanged for a heavy red mineral dust and gravel, rocks and boulders make their appearance, and at times the road iscrossed by the white veins of quartz. It is still the San Leandroturnpike, --a few miles later to rise from this canada into the upperplains again, --but it is also the actual gateway and avenue to theRobles Rancho. When the departing visitors of Judge Peyton, now ownerof the rancho, reach the outer plains again, after twenty minutes'drive from the house, the canada, rancho, and avenue have as completelydisappeared from view as if they had been swallowed up in the plain. 

A cross road from the turnpike is the usual approach to the casa ormansion, --a long, low quadrangle of brown adobe wall in a bare butgently sloping eminence. And here a second surprise meets the stranger. He seems to have emerged from the forest upon another illimitable plain, but one utterly trackless, wild, and desolate. It is, however, onlya lower terrace of the same valley, and, in fact, comprises the threesquare leagues of the Robles Rancho. Uncultivated and savage as itappears, given over to wild cattle and horses that sometimes sweep infrightened bands around the very casa itself, the long south wall of thecorral embraces an orchard of gnarled pear-trees, an old vineyard, anda venerable garden of olives and oranges. A manor, formerly granted byCharles V. To Don Vincente Robles, of Andalusia, of pious and asceticmemory, it had commended itself to Judge Peyton, of Kentucky, a modernheretic pioneer of bookish tastes and secluded habits, who had bought itof Don Vincente's descendants. Here Judge Peyton seemed to haverealized his idea of a perfect climate, and a retirement, half-studious, half-active, with something of the seignioralty of the old slaveholderthat he had been. Here, too, he had seen the hope of restoring hiswife's health--for which he had undertaken the overland emigration--morethan fulfilled in Mrs. Peyton's improved physical condition, albeitat the expense, perhaps, of some of the languorous graces of ailingAmerican wifehood. 

It was with a curious recognition of this latter fact that Judge Peytonwatched his wife crossing the patio or courtyard with her arm around theneck of her adopted daughter "Suzette. " A sudden memory crossed his mindof the first day that he had seen them together, --the day that he hadbrought the child and her boy-companion--two estrays from an emigranttrain on the plains--to his wife in camp. Certainly Mrs. Peyton wasstouter and stronger fibred; the wonderful Californian climate hadmaterialized her figure, as it had their Eastern fruits and flowers, butit was stranger that "Susy"--the child of homelier frontier blood andparentage, whose wholesome peasant plumpness had at first attractedthem--should have grown thinner and more graceful, and even seemed tohave gained the delicacy his wife had lost. Six years had imperceptiblywrought this change; it had never struck him before so forcibly as onthis day of Susy's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for theholidays. 

The woman and child had reached the broad veranda which, on one side ofthe patio, replaced the old Spanish corridor. It was the single moderninnovation that Peyton had allowed himself when he had broken thequadrangular symmetry of the old house with a wooden "annexe" oraddition beyond the walls. It made a pleasant lounging-place, shadowedfrom the hot midday sun by sloping roofs and awnings, and sheltered fromthe boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court. But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning, inspite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete. Thenervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showedin her pretty but discontented face, and knit her curved eyebrows, andPeyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife's face as the young girlsuddenly and half-laughingly broke away and fluttered off towards theold garden. 

Mrs. Peyton looked up and caught her husband's eye. 

"I am afraid Susy finds it more dull here every time she returns, " shesaid, with an apologetic smile. "I am glad she has invited one of herschool friends to come for a visit to-morrow. You know, yourself, John, "she added, with a slight partisan attitude, "that the lonely old houseand wild plain are not particularly lively for young people, howevermuch they may suit YOUR ways. "

"It certainly must be dull if she can't stand it for three weeks inthe year, " said her husband dryly. "But we really cannot open the SanFrancisco house for her summer vacation, nor can we move from the ranchoto a more fashionable locality. Besides, it will do her good to runwild here. I can remember when she wasn't so fastidious. In fact, I wasthinking just now how changed she was from the day when we picked herup"--

"How often am I to remind you, John, " interrupted the lady, with someimpatience, "that we agreed never to speak of her past, or even to thinkof her as anything but our own child. You know how it pains me! And thepoor dear herself has forgotten it, and thinks of us only as her ownparents. I really believe that if that wretched father and mother ofhers had not been killed by the Indians, or were to come to life again, she would neither know them nor care for them. I mean, of course, John, " she said, averting her eyes from a slightly cynical smile onher husband's face, "that it's only natural for young children to beforgetful, and ready to take new impressions. "

"And as long, dear, as WE are not the subjects of this youthfulforgetfulness, and she isn't really finding US as stupid as the rancho, "replied her husband cheerfully, "I suppose we mustn't complain. "

"John, how can you talk such nonsense?" said Mrs. Peyton impatiently. "But I have no fear of that, " she added, with a slightly ostentatiousconfidence. "I only wish I was as sure"--

"Of what?"

"Of nothing happening that could take her from us. I do not mean death, John, --like our first little one. That does not happen to one twice; butI sometimes dread"--

"What? She's only fifteen, and it's rather early to think about the onlyother inevitable separation, --marriage. Come, Ally, this is mere fancy. She has been given up to us by her family, --at least, by all that weknow are left of them. I have legally adopted her. If I have not madeher my heiress, it is because I prefer to leave everything to YOU, andI would rather she should know that she was dependent upon you for thefuture than upon me. "

"And I can make a will in her favor if I want to?" said Mrs. Peytonquickly. 

"Always, " responded her husband smilingly; "but you have ample time tothink of that, I trust. Meanwhile I have some news for you which maymake Susy's visit to the rancho this time less dull to her. You rememberClarence Brant, the boy who was with her when we picked her up, and whoreally saved her life?"

"No, I don't, " said Mrs. Peyton pettishly, "nor do I want to! You know, John, how distasteful and unpleasant it is for me to have those dreary, petty, and vulgar details of the poor child's past life recalled, and, thank Heaven, I have forgotten them except when you choose to dragthem before me. You agreed, long ago, that we were never to talk of theIndian massacre of her parents, so that we could also ignore it beforeher; then why do you talk of her vulgar friends, who are just asunpleasant? Please let us drop the past. "

"Willingly, my dear; but, unfortunately, we cannot make others do it. And this is a case in point. It appears that this boy, whom we broughtto Sacramento to deliver to a relative"--

"And who was a wicked little impostor, --you remember that yourself, John, for he said that he was the son of Colonel Brant, and that he wasdead; and you know, and my brother Harry knew, that Colonel Brant wasalive all the time, and that he was lying, and Colonel Brant was not hisfather, " broke in Mrs. Peyton impatiently. 

"As it seems you do remember that much, " said Peyton dryly, "it is onlyjust to him that I should tell you that it appears that he was not animpostor. His story was TRUE. I have just learned that Colonel Brant WASactually his father, but had concealed his lawless life here, as wellas his identity, from the boy. He was really that vague relative to whomClarence was confided, and under that disguise he afterwards protectedthe boy, had him carefully educated at the Jesuit College of San Jose, and, dying two years ago in that filibuster raid in Mexico, left him aconsiderable fortune. "

"And what has he to do with Susy's holidays?" said Mrs. Peyton, withuneasy quickness. "John, you surely cannot expect her ever to meet thiscommon creature again, with his vulgar ways. His wretched associateslike that Jim Hooker, and, as you yourself admit, the blood of anassassin, duelist, and--Heaven knows what kind of a pirate his fatherwasn't at the last--in his veins! You don't believe that a lad of thistype, however much of his father's ill-gotten money he may have, can befit company for your daughter? You never could have thought of invitinghim here?"

"I'm afraid that's exactly what I have done, Ally, " said the smiling butunmoved Peyton; "but I'm still more afraid that your conception of hispresent condition is an unfair one, like your remembrance of his past. Father Sobriente, whom I met at San Jose yesterday, says he is veryintelligent, and thoroughly educated, with charming manners and refinedtastes. His father's money, which they say was an investment for him inCarson's Bank five years ago, is as good as any one's, and his father'sblood won't hurt him in California or the Southwest. At least, he isreceived everywhere, and Don Juan Robinson was his guardian. Indeed, asfar as social status goes, it might be a serious question if the actualdaughter of the late John Silsbee, of Pike County, and the adoptedchild of John Peyton was in the least his superior. As Father Sobrienteevidently knew Clarence's former companionship with Susy and herparents, it would be hardly politic for us to ignore it or seem to beashamed of it. So I intrusted Sobriente with an invitation to youngBrant on the spot. "

Mrs. Peyton's impatience, indignation, and opposition, which hadsuccessively given way before her husband's quiet, masterful good humor, here took the form of a neurotic fatalism. She shook her head withsuperstitious resignation. 

"Didn't I tell you, John, that I always had a dread of somethingcoming"--

"But if it comes in the shape of a shy young lad, I see nothingsingularly portentous in it. They have not met since they were quitesmall; their tastes have changed; if they don't quarrel and fight theymay be equally bored with each other. Yet until then, in one way oranother, Clarence will occupy the young lady's vacant caprice, andher school friend, Mary Rogers, will be here, you know, to dividehis attentions, and, " added Peyton, with mock solemnity, "preserve theinterest of strict propriety. Shall I break it to her, --or will you?"

"No, --yes, " hesitated Mrs. Peyton; "perhaps I had better. "

"Very well, I leave his character in your hands; only don't prejudiceher into a romantic fancy for him. " And Judge Peyton lounged smilinglyaway. 

Then two little tears forced themselves from Mrs. Peyton's eyes. Againshe saw that prospect of uninterrupted companionship with Susy, uponwhich each successive year she had built so many maternal hopes andconfidences, fade away before her. She dreaded the coming of Susy'sschool friend, who shared her daughter's present thoughts and intimacy, although she had herself invited her in a more desperate dread of thechild's abstracted, discontented eyes; she dreaded the advent of the boywho had shared Susy's early life before she knew her; she dreaded theordeal of breaking the news and perhaps seeing that pretty animationspring into her eyes, which she had begun to believe no solicitude ortenderness of her own ever again awakened, --and yet she dreaded stillmore that her husband should see it too. For the love of this recreatedwoman, although not entirely materialized with her changed fibre, hadnevertheless become a coarser selfishness fostered by her loneliness andlimited experience. The maternal yearning left unsatisfied by the lossof her first-born had never been filled by Susy's thoughtless acceptanceof it; she had been led astray by the child's easy transference ofdependence and the forgetfulness of youth, and was only now dimlyconscious of finding herself face to face with an alien nature. 

She started to her feet and followed the direction that Susy had taken. For a moment she had to front the afternoon trade wind which chilled heras it swept the plain beyond the gateway, but was stopped by theadobe wall, above whose shelter the stunted treetops--through years ofexposure--slanted as if trimmed by gigantic shears. At first, lookingdown the venerable alley of fantastic, knotted shapes, she saw no traceof Susy. But half way down the gleam of a white skirt against a thicketof dark olives showed her the young girl sitting on a bench in aneglected arbor. In the midst of this formal and faded pageantry shelooked charmingly fresh, youthful, and pretty; and yet the unfortunatewoman thought that her attitude and expression at that moment suggestedmore than her fifteen years of girlhood. Her golden hair still hungunfettered over her straight, boy-like back and shoulders; her shortskirt still showed her childish feet and ankles; yet there seemed to besome undefined maturity or a vague womanliness about her that stung Mrs. Peyton's heart. The child was growing away from her, too!

"Susy!"

The young girl raised her head quickly; her deep violet eyes seemed alsoto leap with a sudden suspicion, and with a half-mechanical, secretivemovement, that might have been only a schoolgirl's instinct, her righthand had slipped a paper on which she was scribbling between the leavesof her book. Yet the next moment, even while looking interrogativelyat her mother, she withdrew the paper quietly, tore it up into smallpieces, and threw them on the ground. 

But Mrs. Peyton was too preoccupied with her news to notice thecircumstance, and too nervous in her haste to be tactful. "Susy, yourfather has invited that boy, Clarence Brant, --you know that creaturewe picked up and assisted on the plains, when you were a mere baby, --tocome down here and make us a visit. "

Her heart seemed to stop beating as she gazed breathlessly at the girl. But Susy's face, unchanged except for the alert, questioning eyes, remained fixed for a moment; then a childish smile of wonder opened hersmall red mouth, expanded it slightly as she said simply:--

"Lor, mar! He hasn't, really!"

Inexpressibly, yet unreasonably reassured, Mrs. Peyton hurriedlyrecounted her husband's story of Clarence's fortune, and was evenjoyfully surprised into some fairness of statement. 

"But you don't remember him much, do you, dear? It was so long ago, and--you are quite a young lady now, " she added eagerly. 

The open mouth was still fixed; the wondering smile would have beenidiotic in any face less dimpled, rosy, and piquant than Susy's. Aftera slight gasp, as if in still incredulous and partly reminiscentpreoccupation, she said without replying:--

"How funny! When is he coming?"

"Day after to-morrow, " returned Mrs. Peyton, with a contented smile. 

"And Mary Rogers will be here, too. It will be real fun for her. "

Mrs. Peyton was more than reassured. Half ashamed of her jealous fears, she drew Susy's golden head towards her and kissed it. And the younggirl, still reminiscent, with smilingly abstracted toleration, returnedthe caress. 

CHAPTER II. 

It was not thought inconsistent with Susy's capriciousness that sheshould declare her intention the next morning of driving her pony buggyto Santa Inez to anticipate the stage-coach and fetch Mary Rogers fromthe station. Mrs. Peyton, as usual, supported the young lady's whim andopposed her husband's objections. 

"Because the stage-coach happens to pass our gate, John, it is no reasonwhy Susy shouldn't drive her friend from Santa Inez if she prefers it. It's only seven miles, and you can send Pedro to follow her on horsebackto see that she comes to no harm. "

"But that isn't Pedro's business, " said Peyton. 

"He ought to be proud of the privilege, " returned the lady, with a tossof her head. 

Peyton smiled grimly, but yielded; and when the stage-coach drew up thenext afternoon at the Santa Inez Hotel, Susy was already waiting in herpony carriage before it. Although the susceptible driver, expressman, and passengers generally, charmed with this golden-haired vision, would have gladly protracted the meeting of the two young friends, thetransfer of Mary Rogers from the coach to the carriage was effected withconsiderable hauteur and youthful dignity by Susy. Even Mary Rogers, two years Susy's senior, a serious brunette, whose good-humor did not, however, impair her capacity for sentiment, was impressed and evenembarrassed by her demeanor; but only for a moment. When they had drivenfrom the hotel and were fairly hidden again in the dust of the outlyingplain, with the discreet Pedro hovering in the distance, Susy droppedthe reins, and, grasping her companion's arm, gasped, in tones ofdramatic intensity:--

"He's been heard from, and is coming HERE!"

"Who?"

A sickening sense that her old confidante had already lost touch withher--they had been separated for nearly two weeks--might have passedthrough Susy's mind. 

"Who?" she repeated, with a vicious shake of Mary's arm, "why, ClarenceBrant, of course. "

"No!" said Mary, vaguely. 

Nevertheless, Susy went on rapidly, as if to neutralize the effect ofher comrade's vacuity. 

"You never could have imagined it! Never! Even I, when mother told me, Ithought I should have fainted, and ALL would have been revealed!"

"But, " hesitated the still wondering confidante, "I thought that was allover long ago. You haven't seen him nor heard from him since that dayyou met accidentally at Santa Clara, two years ago, have you?"

Susy's eyes shot a blue ray of dark but unutterable significance intoMary's, and then were carefully averted. Mary Rogers, although perfectlysatisfied that Susy had never seen Clarence since, neverthelessinstantly accepted and was even thrilled with this artful suggestionof a clandestine correspondence. Such was the simple faith of youthfulfriendship. 

"Mother knows nothing of it, of course, and a word from you or him wouldruin everything, " continued the breathless Susy. "That's why I cameto fetch you and warn you. You must see him first, and warn him at anycost. If I hadn't run every risk to come here to-day, Heaven knows whatmight have happened! What do you think of the ponies, dear? They'remy own, and the sweetest! This one's Susy, that one Clarence, --butprivately, you know. Before the world and in the stables he's onlyBirdie. "

"But I thought you wrote to me that you called them 'Paul andVirginie, '" said Mary doubtfully. 

"I do, sometimes, " said Susy calmly. "But one has to learn to suppressone's feelings, dear!" Then quickly, "I do so hate deceit, don't you?Tell me, don't you think deceit perfectly hateful?"

Without waiting for her friend's loyal assent, she continued rapidly:"And he's just rolling in wealth! and educated, papa says, to thehighest degree!"

"Then, " began Mary, "if he's coming with your mother's consent, and ifyou haven't quarreled, and it is not broken off, I should think you'd bejust delighted. "

But another quick flash from Susy's eyes dispersed these beatificvisions of the future. "Hush!" she said, with suppressed dramaticintensity. "You know not what you say! There's an awful mystery hangsover him. Mary Rogers, " continued the young girl, approaching her smallmouth to her confidante's ear in an appalling whisper. "His fatherwas--a PIRATE! Yes--lived a pirate and was killed a pirate!"

The statement, however, seemed to be partly ineffective. Mary Rogers wasstartled but not alarmed, and even protested feebly. "But, " she said, "if the father's dead, what's that to do with Clarence? He was alwayswith your papa--so you told me, dear--or other people, and couldn'tcatch anything from his own father. And I'm sure, dearest, he alwaysseemed nice and quiet. "

"Yes, SEEMED, " returned Susy darkly, "but that's all you know! It was inhis BLOOD. You know it always is, --you read it in the books, --youcould see it in his eye. There were times, my dear, when he wasthwarted, --when the slightest attention from another person to merevealed it! I have kept it to myself, --but think, dearest, of theeffects of jealousy on that passionate nature! Sometimes I tremble tolook back upon it. "

Nevertheless, she raised her hands and threw back her lovely golden manefrom her childish shoulders with an easy, untroubled gesture. It wassingular that Mary Rogers, leaning back comfortably in the buggy, alsoaccepted these heart-rending revelations with comfortably knittedbrows and luxuriously contented concern. If she found it difficult torecognize in the picture just drawn by Susy the quiet, gentle, and sadlyreserved youth she had known, she said nothing. After a silence, lazilywatching the distant wheeling vacquero, she said:--

"And your father always sends an outrider like that with you? How nice!So picturesque--and like the old Spanish days. "

"Hush!" said Susy, with another unutterable glance. 

But this time Mary was in full sympathetic communion with her friend, and equal to any incoherent hiatus of revelation. 

"No!" she said promptly, "you don't mean it!"

"Don't ask me, I daren't say anything to papa, for he'd be simplyfurious. But there are times when we're alone, and Pedro wheels down sonear with SUCH a look in his black eyes, that I'm all in a tremble. It'sdreadful! They say he's a real Briones, --and he sometimes says somethingin Spanish, ending with 'senorita, ' but I pretend I don't understand. "

"And I suppose that if anything should happen to the ponies, he'd justrisk his life to save you. "

"Yes, --and it would be so awful, --for I just hate him!"

"But if I was with you, dear, he couldn't expect you to be as gratefulas if you were alone. Susy!" she continued after a pause, "if you juststirred up the ponies a little so as to make 'em go fast, perhaps hemight think they'd got away from you, and come dashing down here. Itwould be so funny to see him, --wouldn't it?"

The two girls looked at each other; their eyes sparkled already witha fearful joy, --they drew a long breath of guilty anticipation. For amoment Susy even believed in her imaginary sketch of Pedro's devotion. 

"Papa said I wasn't to use the whip except in a case of necessity, "she said, reaching for the slender silver-handled toy, and settingher pretty lips together with the added determination of disobedience. "G'long!"--and she laid the lash smartly on the shining backs of theanimals. 

They were wiry, slender brutes of Mojave Indian blood, only latelybroken to harness, and still undisciplined in temper. The lash sentthem rearing into the air, where, forgetting themselves in the slackenedtraces and loose reins, they came down with a succession of bounds thatbrought the light buggy leaping after them with its wheels scarcelytouching the ground. That unlucky lash had knocked away the bonds ofa few months' servitude and sent the half-broken brutes instinctivelycareering with arched backs and kicking heels into the field towards thenearest cover. 

Mary Rogers cast a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they hadnot calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and thefaithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inchesof rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possiblesalvation as completely as if he had been miles away. Nevertheless, the girls were not frightened; perhaps they had not time. There was, however, the briefest interval for the most dominant of feminineemotions, and it was taken advantage of by Susy. 

"It was all YOUR fault, dear!" she gasped, as the forewheels of thebuggy, dropping into a gopher rut, suddenly tilted up the back of thevehicle and shot its fair occupants into the yielding palisades of dustygrain. The shock detached the whiffletree from the splinter-bar, snappedthe light pole, and, turning the now thoroughly frightened animals againfrom their course, sent them, goaded by the clattering fragments, flyingdown the turnpike. Half a mile farther on they overtook the gleamingwhite canvas hood of a slowly moving wagon drawn by two oxen, and, swerving again, the nearer pony stepped upon a trailing trace andingloriously ended their career by rolling himself and his companion inthe dust at the very feet of the peacefully plodding team. 

Equally harmless and inglorious was the catastrophe of Susy and herfriend. The strong, elastic stalks of the tall grain broke their falland enabled them to scramble to their feet, dusty, disheveled, butunhurt, and even unstunned by the shock. Their first instinctive criesover a damaged hat or ripped skirt were followed by the quick reactionof childish laughter. They were alone; the very defection of Pedroconsoled them, in its absence of any witness to their disaster; eventheir previous slight attitude to each other was forgotten. They gropedtheir way, pushing and panting, to the road again, where, beholdingthe overset buggy with its wheels ludicrously in the air, they suddenlyseized and shook each other, and in an outburst of hilarious ecstasy, fairly laughed until the tears came into their eyes. 

Then there was a breathless silence. 

"The stage will be coming by in a moment, " composedly said Susy. "Fixme, dear. "

Mary Rogers calmly walked around her friend, bestowing a practicalshake there, a pluck here, completely retying one bow and restoring anengaging fullness to another, yet critically examining, with her head onone side, the fascinating result. Then Susy performed the same functionfor Mary with equal deliberation and deftness. Suddenly Mary started andlooked up. 

"It's coming, " she said quickly, "and they've SEEN US. "

The expression of the faces of the two girls instantly changed. Apained dignity and resignation, apparently born of the most harrowingexperiences and controlled only by perfect good breeding, was distinctlysuggested in their features and attitude as they stood patiently by thewreck of their overturned buggy awaiting the oncoming coach. In sharpcontrast was the evident excitement among the passengers. A few rosefrom their seats in their eagerness; as the stage pulled up in the roadbeside the buggy four or five of the younger men leaped to the ground. 

"Are you hurt, miss?" they gasped sympathetically. 

Susy did not immediately reply, but ominously knitted her prettyeyebrows as if repressing a spasm of pain. Then she said, "Not at all, "coldly, with the suggestion of stoically concealing some lasting orperhaps fatal injury, and took the arm of Mary Rogers, who had, in themean time, established a touching yet graceful limp. 

Declining the proffered assistance of the passengers, they helped eachother into the coach, and freezingly requesting the driver to stop atMr. Peyton's gate, maintained a statuesque and impressive silence. Atthe gates they got down, followed by the sympathetic glances of theothers. 

To all appearance their escapade, albeit fraught with dangerouspossibilities, had happily ended. But in the economy of human affairs, as in nature, forces are not suddenly let loose without more or lesssympathetic disturbance which is apt to linger after the impellingcause is harmlessly spent. The fright which the girls had unsuccessfullyattempted to produce in the heart of their escort had passed him tobecome a panic elsewhere. Judge Peyton, riding near the gateway of hisrancho, was suddenly confronted by the spectacle of one of his vacquerosdriving on before him the two lassoed and dusty ponies, with a face thatbroke into violent gesticulating at his master's quick interrogation. 

"Ah! Mother of God! It was an evil day! For the bronchos had run away, upset the buggy, and had only been stopped by a brave Americano of anox-team, whose lasso was even now around their necks, to prove it, andwho had been dragged a matter of a hundred varas, like a calf, at theirheels. The senoritas, --ah! had he not already said they were safe, bythe mercy of Jesus!--picked up by the coach, and would be here at thismoment. "

"But where was Pedro all the time? What was he doing?" demanded Peyton, with a darkened face and gathering anger. 

The vacquero looked at his master, and shrugged his shoulderssignificantly. At any other time Peyton would have remembered thatPedro, as the reputed scion of a decayed Spanish family, and claimingsuperiority, was not a favorite with his fellow-retainers. But thegesture, half of suggestion, half of depreciation, irritated Peytonstill more. 

"Well, where is this American who DID something when there wasn't aman among you all able to stop a child's runaway ponies?" he saidsarcastically. "Let me see him. "

The vacquero became still more deprecatory. 

"Ah! He had driven on with his team towards San Antonio. He would notstop to be thanked. But that was the whole truth. He, Incarnacion, couldswear to it as to the Creed. There was nothing more. "

"Take those beasts around the back way to the corral, " said Peyton, thoroughly enraged, "and not a word of this to any one at the casa, doyou hear? Not a word to Mrs. Peyton or the servants, or, by Heaven, I'llclear the rancho of the whole lazy crew of you at once. Out of the waythere, and be off!"

He spurred his horse past the frightened menial, and dashed down thenarrow lane that led to the gate. But, as Incarnacion had truly said, "It was an evil day, " for at the bottom of the lane, ambling slowlyalong as he lazily puffed a yellow cigarette, appeared the figure ofthe erring Pedro. Utterly unconscious of the accident, attributing thedisappearance of his charges to the inequalities of the plain, and, in truth, little interested in what he firmly believed was his purelyartificial function, he had even made a larger circuit to stop at awayside fonda for refreshments. 

Unfortunately, there is no more illogical sequence of human emotion thanthe exasperation produced by the bland manner of the unfortunate objectwho has excited it, although that very unconcern may be the convincingproof of innocence of intention. Judge Peyton, already influenced, wasfurious at the comfortable obliviousness of his careless henchman, androde angrily towards him. Only a quick turn of Pedro's wrist kept thetwo men from coming into collision. 

"Is this the way you attend to your duty?" demanded Peyton, in a thick, suppressed voice, "Where is the buggy? Where is my daughter?"

There was no mistaking Judge Peyton's manner, even if the reason ofit was not so clear to Pedro's mind, and his hot Latin blood flewinstinctively to his face. But for that, he might have shown someconcern or asked an explanation. As it was, he at once retorted with thenational shrug and the national half-scornful, half-lazy "Quien sabe?"

"Who knows?" repeated Peyton, hotly. "I do! She was thrown out of herbuggy through your negligence and infernal laziness! The ponies ranaway, and were stopped by a stranger who wasn't afraid of riskinghis bones, while you were limping around somewhere like a slouching, cowardly coyote. "

The vacquero struggled a moment between blank astonishment andinarticulate rage. At last he burst out:--

"I am no coyote! I was there! I saw no runaway!"

"Don't lie to me, sir!" roared Peyton. "I tell you the buggy wassmashed, the girls were thrown out and nearly killed"--He stoppedsuddenly. The sound of youthful laughter had come from the bottom of thelane, where Susy Peyton and Mary Rogers, just alighted from the coach, in the reaction of their previous constrained attitude, were flyinghilariously into view. A slight embarrassment crossed Peyton's face; astill deeper flush of anger overspread Pedro's sullen cheek. 

Then Pedro found tongue again, his native one, rapidly, violently, half incoherently. "Ah, yes! It had come to this. It seems he was nota vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his ownbefore the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey ofmuchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or--why not?--anappendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such amuchacha! A picked-up foundling--a swineherd's daughter--to beennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownishtricks, --tricks of a swineherd's daughter, --he, Pedro, was to be broughtto book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! DonJuan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than hecould make a lady of her!"

The two young girls were rapidly approaching. Judge Peyton spurred hishorse beside the vacquero's, and, swinging the long thong of his bridleominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:--

"Vamos!"

Pedro's hand slid towards his sash. Peyton only looked at him with arigid smile of scorn. 

"Or I'll lash you here before them both, " he added in a lower voice. 

The vacquero met Peyton's relentless eyes with a yellow flash of hate, drew his reins sharply, until his mustang, galled by the cruel bit, reared suddenly as if to strike at the immovable American, then, apparently with the same action, he swung it around on its hind legs, ason a pivot, and dashed towards the corral at a furious gallop. 

CHAPTER III. 

Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valorIncarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly inthe dust beside his wagon. At a first glance his slouching figure, takenin connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggesta hero. As he emerged from the dusty cloud it could be seen that he waswearing a belt from which a large dragoon revolver and hunting knifewere slung, and placed somewhat ostentatiously across the wagon seatwas a rifle. Yet the other contents of the wagon were of a singularlyinoffensive character, and even suggested articles of homely barter. Culinary utensils of all sizes, tubs, scullery brushes, and clocks, withseveral rolls of cheap carpeting and calico, might have been the waresof some traveling vender. Yet, as they were only visible through a flapof the drawn curtains of the canvas hood, they did not mitigate thegeneral aggressive effect of their owner's appearance. A red bandannahandkerchief knotted and thrown loosely over his shoulders, a slouchedhat pulled darkly over a head of long tangled hair, which, however, shadowed a round, comfortable face, scantily and youthfully bearded, were part of these confusing inconsistencies. 

The shadows of the team wagon were already lengthening grotesquely overthe flat, cultivated fields, which for some time had taken the place ofthe plains of wild oats in the branch road into which they had turned. The gigantic shadow of the proprietor, occasionally projected before it, was in characteristic exaggeration, and was often obliterated by a puffof dust, stirred by the plodding hoofs of the peaceful oxen, and sweptacross the field by the strong afternoon trades. The sun sank lower, although a still potent presence above the horizon line; the creakingwagon lumbered still heavily along. Yet at intervals its belligerentproprietor would start up from his slouching, silent march, break outinto violent, disproportionate, but utterly ineffective objurgationof his cattle, jump into the air and kick his heels together in someparoxysm of indignation against them, --an act, however, which wasreceived always with heavy bovine indifference, the dogged scorn ofswaying, repudiating heads, or the dull contempt of lazily flickingtails. 

Towards sunset one or two straggling barns and cottages indicated theirapproach to the outskirts of a country town or settlement. Here the teamhalted, as if the belligerent-looking teamster had felt his appearancewas inconsistent with an effeminate civilization, and the oxen wereturned into an open waste opposite a nondescript wooden tenement, halffarmhouse and half cabin, evidently of the rudest Western origin. He mayhave recognized the fact that these "shanties" were not, as the ordinarytraveler might infer, the first rude shelter of the original pioneersor settlers, but the later makeshifts of some recent Western immigrantswho, like himself, probably found themselves unequal to the settledhabits of the village, and who still retained their nomadic instincts. It chanced, however, that the cabin at present was occupied by a NewEngland mechanic and his family, who had emigrated by ship around CapeHorn, and who had no experience of the West, the plains, or its people. It was therefore with some curiosity and a certain amount of fascinatedawe that the mechanic's only daughter regarded from the open door of herdwelling the arrival of this wild and lawless-looking stranger. 

Meantime he had opened the curtains of the wagon and taken from itsinterior a number of pots, pans, and culinary utensils, which heproceeded to hang upon certain hooks that were placed on the outer ribsof the board and the sides of the vehicle. To this he added a roll ofrag carpet, the end of which hung from the tailboard, and a roll of pinkcalico temptingly displayed on the seat. The mystification and curiosityof the young girl grew more intense at these proceedings. It lookedlike the ordinary exhibition of a traveling peddler, but the gloomyand embattled appearance of the man himself scouted so peaceful andcommonplace a suggestion. Under the pretense of chasing away a maraudinghen, she sallied out upon the waste near the wagon. It then becameevident that the traveler had seen her, and was not averse to herinterest in his movements, although he had not changed his attitude ofsavage retrospection. An occasional ejaculation of suppressed passion, as if the memory of some past conflict was too much for him, escaped himeven in this peaceful occupation. As this possibly caused the young girlto still hover timidly in the distance, he suddenly entered thewagon and reappeared carrying a tin bucket, with which he somewhatostentatiously crossed her path, his eyes darkly wandering as if seekingsomething. 

"If you're lookin' for the spring, it's a spell furder on--by thewillows. "

It was a pleasant voice, the teamster thought, albeit with a dry, crisp, New England accent unfamiliar to his ears. He looked into the depthsof an unlovely blue-check sunbonnet, and saw certain small, irregularfeatures and a sallow check, lit up by a pair of perfectly innocent, trustful, and wondering brown eyes. Their timid possessor seemed to be agirl of seventeen, whose figure, although apparently clad in one of hermother's gowns, was still undeveloped and repressed by rustic hardshipand innutrition. As her eyes met his she saw that the face of thisgloomy stranger was still youthful, by no means implacable, and, even atthat moment, was actually suffused by a brick-colored blush! In mattersof mere intuition, the sex, even in its most rustic phase, is still oursuperior; and this unsophisticated girl, as the trespasser stammered, "Thank ye, miss, " was instinctively emboldened to greater freedom. 

"Dad ain't tu hum, but ye kin have a drink o' milk if ye keer for it. "

She motioned shyly towards the cabin, and then led the way. Thestranger, with an inarticulate murmur, afterwards disguised as a cough, followed her meekly. Nevertheless, by the time they had reached thecabin he had shaken his long hair over his eyes again, and a darkabstraction gathered chiefly in his eyebrows. But it did not efface fromthe girl's mind the previous concession of a blush, and, although itadded to her curiosity, did not alarm her. He drank the milk awkwardly. But by the laws of courtesy, even among the most savage tribes, shefelt he was, at that moment at least, harmless. A timid smile flutteredaround her mouth as she said:--

"When ye hung up them things I thought ye might be havin' suthing toswap or sell. That is, "--with tactful politeness, --"mother was wantin'a new skillet, and it would have been handy if you'd had one. But"--withan apologetic glance at his equipments--"if it ain't your business, it'sall right, and no offense. "

"I've got a lot o' skillets, " said the strange teamster, with markedcondescension, "and she can have one. They're all that's left outer aheap o' trader's stuff captured by Injuns t'other side of Laramie. Wehad a big fight to get 'em back. Lost two of our best men, --scalped atBloody Creek, --and had to drop a dozen redskins in their tracks, --me andanother man, --lyin' flat in er wagon and firin' under the flaps o'the canvas. I don't know ez they waz wuth it, " he added in gloomyretrospect; "but I've got to get rid of 'em, I reckon, somehow, afore Iwork over to Deadman's Gulch again. "

The young girl's eyes brightened timidly with a feminine mingling ofimaginative awe and personal, pitying interest. He was, after all, soyoung and amiable looking for such hardships and adventures. And withall this, he--this Indian fighter--was a little afraid of HER!

"Then that's why you carry that knife and six-shooter?" she said. "Butyou won't want 'em now, here in the settlement. "

"That's ez mebbe, " said the stranger darkly. He paused, and thensuddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled hisrevolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheathof the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obligedto withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in allits naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smilingcomplacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader willremember that Mars had once hung his "battered shield, " his lance, and"uncontrolled crest. "

Nevertheless, the warlike teamster was not without embarrassment. Muttering something about the necessity of "looking after his stock, "he achieved a hesitating bow, backed awkwardly out of the door, andreceiving from the conquering hands of the young girl his weapons again, was obliged to carry them somewhat ingloriously in his hands acrossthe road, and put them on the wagon seat, where, in company with theculinary articles, they seemed to lose their distinctively aggressivecharacter. Here, although his cheek was still flushed from his peacefulencounter, his voice regained some of its hoarse severity as he drovethe oxen from the muddy pool into which they had luxuriantly wandered, and brought their fodder from the wagon. Later, as the sun was setting, he lit a corn-cob pipe, and somewhat ostentatiously strolled down theroad, with a furtive eye lingering upon the still open door of thefarmhouse. Presently two angular figures appeared from it, the farmerand his wife, intent on barter. 

These he received with his previous gloomy preoccupation, and a slightvariation of the story he had told their daughter. It is possiblethat his suggestive indifference piqued and heightened the bargaininginstincts of the woman, for she not only bought the skillet, butpurchased a clock and a roll of carpeting. Still more, in some effusionof rustic courtesy, she extended an invitation to him to sup with them, which he declined and accepted in the same embarrassed breath, returningthe proffered hospitality by confidentially showing them a couple ofdried scalps, presumably of Indian origin. It was in the same momentof human weakness that he answered their polite query as to "what theymight call him, " by intimating that his name was "Red Jim, "--a title ofachievement by which he was generally known, which for the present mustsuffice them. But during the repast that followed this was shortened to"Mister Jim, " and even familiarly by the elders to plain "Jim. " Onlythe young girl habitually used the formal prefix in return for the "MissPhoebe" that he called her. 

With three such sympathetic and unexperienced auditors the gloomyembarrassment of Red Jim was soon dissipated, although it could hardlybe said that he was generally communicative. Dark tales of Indianwarfare, of night attacks and wild stampedes, in which he had alwaystaken a prominent part, flowed freely from his lips, but little elseof his past history or present prospects. And even his narratives ofadventure were more or less fragmentary and imperfect in detail. 

"You woz saying, " said the farmer, with slow, matter of fact, NewEngland deliberation, "ez how you guessed you woz beguiled amongst theInjins by your Mexican partner, a pow'ful influential man, and yet youwoz the only one escaped the gen'ral slarterin'. How came the Injins tokill HIM, --their friend?"

"They didn't, " returned Jim, with ominously averted eyes. 

"What became of him?" continued the farmer. 

Red Jim shadowed his eyes with his hand, and cast a dark glance ofscrutiny out of the doors and windows. The young girl perceived it withtimid, fascinated concern, and said hurriedly:--

"Don't ask him, father! Don't you see he mustn't tell?"

"Not when spies may be hangin' round, and doggin' me at every step, "said Red Jim, as if reflecting, with another furtive glance towardsthe already fading prospect without. "They've sworn to revenge him, " headded moodily. 

A momentary silence followed. The farmer coughed slightly, and lookeddubiously at his wife. But the two women had already exchanged feminineglances of sympathy for this evident slayer of traitors, and wereapparently inclined to stop any adverse criticism. 

In the midst of which a shout was heard from the road. The farmer andhis family instinctively started. Red Jim alone remained unmoved, --afact which did not lessen the admiration of his feminine audience. Thehost rose quickly, and went out. The figure of a horseman had haltedin the road, but after a few moments' conversation with the farmer theyboth moved towards the house and disappeared. When the farmer returned, it was to say that "one of them 'Frisco dandies, who didn't keerabout stoppin' at the hotel in the settlement, " had halted to give his"critter" a feed and drink that he might continue his journey. He hadasked him to come in while the horse was feeding, but the stranger had"guessed he'd stretch his legs outside and smoke his cigar;" he mighthave thought the company "not fine enough for him, " but he was "civilspoken enough, and had an all-fired smart hoss, and seemed to know howto run him. " To the anxious inquiries of his wife and daughter he addedthat the stranger didn't seem like a spy or a Mexican; was "as youngas HIM, " pointing to the moody Red Jim, "and a darned sight morepeaceful-like in style. "

Perhaps owing to the criticism of the farmer, perhaps from some stilllurking suspicion of being overheard by eavesdroppers, or possibly froma humane desire to relieve the strained apprehension of the women, RedJim, as the farmer disappeared to rejoin the stranger, again droppedinto a lighter and gentler vein of reminiscence. He told them how, whena mere boy, he had been lost from an emigrant train in company with alittle girl some years his junior. How, when they found themselves aloneon the desolate plain, with the vanished train beyond their reach, heendeavored to keep the child from a knowledge of the real danger oftheir position, and to soothe and comfort her. How he carried her onhis back, until, exhausted, he sank in a heap of sage-brush. How he wassurrounded by Indians, who, however, never suspected his hiding-place;and how he remained motionless and breathless with the sleeping childfor three hours, until they departed. How, at the last moment, he hadperceived a train in the distance, and had staggered with her thither, although shot at and wounded by the trainmen in the belief that hewas an Indian. How it was afterwards discovered that the child was thelong-lost daughter of a millionaire; how he had resolutely refusedany gratuity for saving her, and she was now a peerless young heiress, famous in California. Whether this lighter tone of narrative suited himbetter, or whether the active feminine sympathy of his auditorshelped him along, certain it was that his story was more coherent andintelligible and his voice less hoarse and constrained than in hisprevious belligerent reminiscences; his expression changed, and even hisfeatures worked into something like gentler emotion. The bright eyesof Phoebe, fastened upon him, turned dim with a faint moisture, andher pale cheek took upon itself a little color. The mother, afterinterjecting "Du tell, " and "I wanter know, " remained open-mouthed, staring at her visitor. And in the silence that followed, a pleasant, but somewhat melancholy voice came from the open door. 

"I beg your pardon, but I thought I couldn't be mistaken. It IS my oldfriend, Jim Hooker!"

Everybody started. Red Jim stumbled to his feet with an inarticulate andhysteric exclamation. Yet the apparition that now stood in the doorwaywas far from being terrifying or discomposing. It was evidently thestranger, --a slender, elegantly-knit figure, whose upper lip was faintlyshadowed by a soft, dark mustache indicating early manhood, and whoseunstudied ease in his well-fitting garments bespoke the dweller ofcities. Good-looking and well-dressed, without the consciousness ofbeing either; self-possessed through easy circumstances, yet withoutself-assertion; courteous by nature and instinct as well as from anexperience of granting favors, he might have been a welcome additionto even a more critical company. But Red Jim, hurriedly seizing hisoutstretched hand, instantly dragged him away from the doorway into theroad and out of hearing of his audience. 

"Did you hear what I was saying?" he asked hoarsely. 

"Well, yes, --I think so, " returned the stranger, with a quiet smile. 

"Ye ain't goin' back on me, Clarence, are ye, --ain't goin' to gimme awayafore them, old pard, are ye?" said Jim, with a sudden change to almostpathetic pleading. 

"No, " returned the stranger, smiling. "And certainly not before thatinterested young lady, Jim. But stop. Let me look at you. "

He held out both hands, took Jim's, spread them apart for a moment witha boyish gesture, and, looking in his face, said half mischievously, half sadly, "Yes, it's the same old Jim Hooker, --unchanged. "

"But YOU'RE changed, --reg'lar war paint, Big Injin style!" said Hooker, looking up at him with an awkward mingling of admiration and envy. "Heard you struck it rich with the old man, and was Mister Brant now!"

"Yes, " said Clarence gently, yet with a smile that had not only a tingeof weariness but even of sadness in it. 

Unfortunately, the act, which was quite natural to Clarence'ssensitiveness, and indeed partly sprang from some concern in his oldcompanion's fortunes, translated itself by a very human process toHooker's consciousness as a piece of rank affectation. HE would havebeen exalted and exultant in Clarence's place, consequently any otherexhibition was only "airs. " Nevertheless, at the present moment Clarencewas to be placated. 

"You didn't mind my telling that story about your savin' Susy as my own, did ye?" he said, with a hasty glance over his shoulder. "I only did itto fool the old man and women-folks, and make talk. You won't blow onme? Ye ain't mad about it?"

It had crossed Clarence's memory that when they were both youngerJim Hooker had once not only borrowed his story, but his name andpersonality as well. Yet in his loyalty to old memories there wasmingled no resentment for past injury. "Of course not, " he said, with asmile that was, however, still thoughtful. "Why should I? Only I oughtto tell you that Susy Peyton is living with her adopted parents not tenmiles from here, and it might reach their ears. She's quite a young ladynow, and if I wouldn't tell her story to strangers, I don't think YOUought to, Jim. "

He said this so pleasantly that even the skeptical Jim forgot what hebelieved were the "airs and graces" of self-abnegation, and said, "Let's go inside, and I'll introduce you, " and turned to the house. ButClarence Brant drew back. "I'm going on as soon as my horse is fed, for I'm on a visit to Peyton, and I intend to push as far as Santa Inezstill to-night. I want to talk with you about yourself, Jim, " headded gently; "your prospects and your future. I heard, " he went onhesitatingly, "that you were--at work--in a restaurant in San Francisco. I'm glad to see that you are at least your own master here, "--he glancedat the wagon. "You are selling things, I suppose? For yourself, oranother? Is that team yours? Come, " he added, still pleasantly, but inan older and graver voice, with perhaps the least touch of experiencedauthority, "be frank, Jim. Which is it? Never mind what things you'vetold IN THERE, tell ME the truth about yourself. Can I help you in anyway? Believe me, I should like to. We have been old friends, whateverdifference in our luck, I am yours still. "

Thus adjured, the redoubtable Jim, in a hoarse whisper, with a furtiveeye on the house, admitted that he was traveling for an itinerantpeddler, whom he expected to join later in the settlement; that hehad his own methods of disposing of his wares, and (darkly) that hisproprietor and the world generally had better not interfere with him;that (with a return to more confidential lightness) he had already"worked the Wild West Injin" business so successfully as to dispose ofhis wares, particularly in yonder house, and might do even more if notprematurely and wantonly "blown upon, " "gone back on, " or "given away. "

"But wouldn't you like to settle down on some bit of land like this, andimprove it for yourself?" said Clarence. "All these valley terraces arebound to rise in value, and meantime you would be independent. It couldbe managed, Jim. I think I could arrange it for you, " he went on, with aslight glow of youthful enthusiasm. "Write to me at Peyton's ranch, and I'll see you when I come back, and we'll hunt up something foryou together. " As Jim received the proposition with a kind of gloomyembarrassment, he added lightly, with a glance at the farmhouse, "Itmight be near HERE, you know; and you'd have pleasant neighbors, andeven eager listeners to your old adventures. "

"You'd better come in a minit before you go, " said Jim, clumsily evadinga direct reply. Clarence hesitated a moment, and then yielded. For anequal moment Jim Hooker was torn between secret jealousy of his oldcomrade's graces and a desire to present them as familiar associationsof his own. But his vanity was quickly appeased. 

Need it be said that the two women received this fleck and foam ofa super-civilization they knew little of as almost an impertinencecompared to the rugged, gloomy, pathetic, and equally youthful hero ofan adventurous wilderness of which they knew still less? What availedthe courtesy and gentle melancholy of Clarence Brant beside themysterious gloom and dark savagery of Red Jim? Yet they received himpatronizingly, as one who was, like themselves, an admirer of manlygrace and power, and the recipient of Jim's friendship. The farmer aloneseemed to prefer Clarence, and yet the latter's tacit indorsement of RedJim, through his evident previous intimacy with him, impressed the manin Jim's favor. All of which Clarence saw with that sensitive perceptionwhich had given him an early insight into human weakness, yet still hadnever shaken his youthful optimism. He smiled a little thoughtfully, butwas openly fraternal to Jim, courteous to his host and family, and, as he rode away in the faint moonlight, magnificently opulent in hislargess to the farmer, --his first and only assertion of his position. 

The farmhouse, straggling barn, and fringe of dusty willows, the whitedome of the motionless wagon, with the hanging frying pans and kettlesshowing in the moonlight like black silhouettes against the staringcanvas, all presently sank behind Clarence like the details of a dream, and he was alone with the moon, the hazy mystery of the level, grassyplain, and the monotony of the unending road. As he rode slowly along hethought of that other dreary plain, white with alkali patches and brownwith rings of deserted camp-fires, known to his boyhood of deprivation, dependency, danger, and adventure, oddly enough, with a strange delight;and his later years of study, monastic seclusion, and final easeand independence, with an easy sense of wasted existence and uselesswaiting. He remembered his homeless childhood in the South, whereservants and slaves took the place of the father he had never known, and the mother that he rarely saw; he remembered his abandonment to amysterious female relation, where his natural guardians seemed tohave overlooked and forgotten him, until he was sent, an all too youngadventurer, to work his passage on an overland emigrant train across theplains; he remembered, as yesterday, the fears, the hopes, the dreamsand dangers of that momentous journey. He recalled his little playmate, Susy, and their strange adventures--the whole incident that theimaginative Jim Hooker had translated and rehearsed as his own--rosevividly before him. He thought of the cruel end of that pilgrimage, which again left him homeless and forgotten by even the relative he wasseeking in a strange land. He remembered his solitary journey to thegold mines, taken with a boy's trust and a boy's fearlessness, andthe strange protector he had found there, who had news of his missingkinsman; he remembered how this protector--whom he had at onceinstinctively loved--transferred him to the house of this new-foundrelation, who treated him kindly and sent him to the Jesuit school, butwho never awakened in him a feeling of kinship. He dreamed again of hislife at school, his accidental meeting with Susy at Santa Clara, thekeen revival of his boyish love for his old playmate, now a prettyschoolgirl, the petted adopted child of wealthy parents. He recalledthe terrible shock that interrupted this boyish episode: the news of thedeath of his protector, and the revelation that this hard, silent, andmysterious man was his own father, whose reckless life and desperatereputation had impelled him to assume a disguise. 

He remembered how his sudden accession to wealth and independence hadhalf frightened him, and had always left a lurking sensitiveness thathe was unfairly favored, by some mere accident, above his less luckycompanions. The rude vices of his old associates had made him impatientof the feebler sensual indulgences of the later companions ofhis luxury, and exposed their hollow fascinations; his sensitivefastidiousness kept him clean among vulgar temptations; his clearperceptions were never blinded by selfish sophistry. Meantime hisfeeling for Susy remained unchanged. Pride had kept him from seeking thePeytons. His present visit was as unpremeditated as Peyton's invitationhad been unlooked for by him. Yet he had not allowed himself to bedeceived. He knew that this courtesy was probably due to the change inhis fortune, although he had hoped it might have been some change intheir opinion brought about by Susy. But he would at least seeher again, not in the pretty, half-clandestine way she had thoughtnecessary, but openly and as her equal. 

In his rapid ride he seemed to have suddenly penetrated the peacefulcalm of the night. The restless irritation of the afternoon trade windshad subsided; the tender moonlight had hushed and tranquilly possessedthe worried plain; the unending files of wild oats, far spaced anddistinct, stood erect and motionless as trees; something of the sedatesolemnity of a great forest seemed to have fallen upon their giantstalks. There was no dew. In that light, dry air, the heavier dust nolonger rose beneath the heels of his horse, whose flying shadow passedover the field like a cloud, leaving no trail or track behind it. In thepreoccupation of his thought and his breathless retrospect, the youngman had ridden faster than he intended, and he now checked his pantinghorse. The influence of the night and the hushed landscape stole overhim; his thoughts took a gentler turn; in that dim, mysterious horizonline before him, his future seemed to be dreamily peopled with airy, graceful shapes that more or less took the likeness of Susy. She wasbright, coquettish, romantic, as he had last seen her; she was older, graver, and thoughtfully welcome of him; or she was cold, distant, andseverely forgetful of the past. How would her adopted father and motherreceive him? Would they ever look upon him in the light of a suitor tothe young girl? He had no fear of Peyton, --he understood his own sex, and, young as he was, knew already how to make himself respected; buthow could he overcome that instinctive aversion which Mrs. Peyton hadso often made him feel he had provoked? Yet in this dreamy hush of earthand sky, what was not possible? His boyish heart beat high with daringvisions. 

He saw Mrs. Peyton in the porch, welcoming him with that maternal smilewhich his childish longing had so often craved to share with Susy. Peyton would be there, too, --Peyton, who had once pushed back his tornstraw hat to look approvingly in his boyish eyes; and Peyton, perhaps, might be proud of him. 

Suddenly he started. A voice in his very ear!

"Bah! A yoke of vulgar cattle grazing on lands that were thine by rightand law. Neither more nor less than that. And I tell thee, Pancho, likecattle, to be driven off or caught and branded for one's own. Ha! Thereare those who could swear to the truth of this on the Creed. Ay! andbring papers stamped and signed by the governor's rubric to prove it. And not that I hate them, --bah! what are those heretic swine to me? Butthou dost comprehend me? It galls and pricks me to see them swellingthemselves with stolen husks, and men like thee, Pancho, ousted fromtheir own land. "

Clarence had halted in utter bewilderment. No one was visible beforehim, behind him, on either side. The words, in Spanish, came from theair, the sky, the distant horizon, he knew not which. Was he stilldreaming? A strange shiver crept over his skin as if the air had grownsuddenly chill. Then another mysterious voice arose, incredulous, halfmocking, but equally distinct and clear. 

"Caramba! What is this? You are wandering, friend Pancho. You are stillsmarting from his tongue. He has the grant confirmed by his brigandgovernment; he has the POSSESSION, stolen by a thief like himself; andhe has the Corregidors with him. For is he not one of them himself, thisJudge Peyton?"

Peyton! Clarence felt the blood rush back to his face in astonishmentand indignation. His heels mechanically pressed his horse's flanks, andthe animal sprang forward. 

"Guarda! Mira!" said the voice again in a quicker, lower tone. Butthis time it was evidently in the field beside him, and the heads andshoulders of two horsemen emerged at the same moment from the tall ranksof wild oats. The mystery was solved. The strangers had been makingtheir way along a lower level of the terraced plain, hidden by thegrain, not twenty yards away, and parallel with the road they were nowascending to join. Their figures were alike formless in long stripedserapes, and their features undistinguishable under stiff blacksombreros. 

"Buenas noches, senor, " said the second voice, in formal and cautiousdeliberation. 

A sudden inspiration made Clarence respond in English, as if he had notcomprehended the stranger's words, "Eh?"

"Gooda-nighta, " repeated the stranger. 

"Oh, good-night, " returned Clarence. They passed him. Their spurstinkled twice or thrice, their mustangs sprang forward, and the nextmoment the loose folds of their serapes were fluttering at their sideslike wings in their flight. 

CHAPTER IV. 

After the chill of a dewless night the morning sun was apt to lookardently upon the Robles Rancho, if so strong an expression coulddescribe the dry, oven-like heat of a Californian coast-range valley. Before ten o'clock the adobe wall of the patio was warm enough to permitlingering vacqueros and idle peons to lean against it, and the exposedannexe was filled with sharp, resinous odors from the oozing sap ofunseasoned "redwood" boards, warped and drying in the hot sunshine. Evenat that early hour the climbing Castilian roses were drooping againstthe wooden columns of the new veranda, scarcely older than themselves, and mingling an already faded spice with the aroma of baking wood andthe more material fragrance of steaming coffee, that seemed dominanteverywhere. 

In fact, the pretty breakfast-room, whose three broad windows, alwaysopen to the veranda, gave an al fresco effect to every meal, was apathetic endeavor of the Southern-bred Peyton to emulate the soft, luxurious, and open-air indolence of his native South, in a climate thatwas not only not tropical, but even austere in its most fervid moments. Yet, although cold draughts invaded it from the rear that morning, JudgePeyton sat alone, between the open doors and windows, awaiting theslow coming of his wife and the young ladies. He was not in an entirelycomfortable mood that morning. Things were not going on well at Robles. That truculent vagabond, Pedro, had, the night before, taken himself offwith a curse that had frightened even the vacqueros, who most hated himas a companion, but who now seemed inclined to regard his absence as aninjury done to their race. Peyton, uneasily conscious that his own angerhad been excited by an exaggerated conception of the accident, wasnow, like most obstinate men, inclined to exaggerate the importance ofPedro's insolence. He was well out of it to get rid of this quarrelsomehanger-on, whose presumption and ill-humor threatened the discipline ofthe rancho, yet he could not entirely forget that he had employed himon account of his family claims, and from a desire to placate racialjealousy and settle local differences. For the inferior Mexicans andIndian half-breeds still regarded their old masters with affection;were, in fact, more concerned for the integrity of their caste thanthe masters were themselves, and the old Spanish families who had madealliances with Americans, and shared their land with them, had rarelysucceeded in alienating their retainers with their lands. Certainexperiences in the proving of his grant before the Land Commission hadtaught Peyton that they were not to be depended upon. And latelythere had been unpleasant rumors of the discovery of some unlooked-forclaimants to a division of the grant itself, which might affect his owntitle. 

He looked up quickly as voices and light steps on the veranda at lastheralded the approach of his tardy household from the corridor. But, inspite of his preoccupation, he was startled and even awkwardly impressedwith a change in Susy's appearance. She was wearing, for the first time, a long skirt, and this sudden maturing of her figure struck him, as aman, much more forcibly than it would probably have impressed a woman, more familiar with details. He had not noticed certain indications ofwomanhood, as significant, perhaps, in her carriage as her outlines, which had been lately perfectly apparent to her mother and Mary, butwhich were to him now, for the first time, indicated by a few inches ofskirt. She not only looked taller to his masculine eyes, but these fewinches had added to the mystery as well as the drapery of the goddess;they were not so much the revelation of maturity as the suggestion thatit was HIDDEN. So impressed was he, that a half-serious lecture on heryesterday's childishness, the outcome of his irritated reflections thatmorning, died upon his lips. He felt he was no longer dealing with achild. 

He welcomed them with that smile of bantering approbation, supposed tokeep down inordinate vanity, which for some occult reason one alwaysreserves for the members of one's own family. He was quite consciousthat Susy was looking very pretty in this new and mature frock, and thatas she stood beside his wife, far from ageing Mrs. Peyton's good looksand figure, she appeared like an equal companion, and that they mutually"became" one another. This, and the fact that they were all, includingMary Rogers, in their freshest, gayest morning dresses, awakened ahalf-humorous, half-real apprehension in his mind, that he was nowhopelessly surrounded by a matured sex, and in a weak minority. 

"I think I ought to have been prepared, " he began grimly, "for thisaddition to--to--the skirts of my family. "

"Why, John, " returned Mrs. Peyton quickly; "do you mean to sayyou haven't noticed that the poor child has for weeks been lookingpositively indecent?"

"Really, papa, I've been a sight to behold. Haven't I, Mary?" chimed inSusy. 

"Yes, dear. Why, Judge, I've been wondering that Susy stood it so well, and never complained. "

Peyton glanced around him at this compact feminine embattlement. It wasas he feared. Yet even here he was again at fault. 

"And, " said Mrs. Peyton slowly, with the reserved significance of thefeminine postscript in her voice, "if that Mr. Brant is coming hereto-day, it would be just as well for him to see that SHE IS NO LONGER ACHILD, AS WHEN HE KNEW HER. "

An hour later, good-natured Mary Rogers, in her character of "adear, "--which was usually indicated by the undertaking of small errandsfor her friend, --was gathering roses from the old garden for Susy'sadornment, when she saw a vision which lingered with her for many aday. She had stopped to look through the iron grille in the adobe wall, across the open wind-swept plain. Miniature waves were passing overthe wild oats, with glittering disturbances here and there in thedepressions like the sparkling of green foam; the horizon line wassharply defined against the hard, steel-blue sky; everywhere thebrand-new morning was shining with almost painted brilliancy; the vigor, spirit, and even crudeness of youth were over all. The young girl wasdazzled and bewildered. Suddenly, as if blown out of the waving grain, or an incarnation of the vivid morning, the bright and striking figureof a youthful horseman flashed before the grille. It was Clarence Brant!Mary Rogers had always seen him, in the loyalty of friendship, withSusy's prepossessed eyes, yet she fancied that morning that he hadnever looked so handsome before. Even the foppish fripperies of hisriding-dress and silver trappings seemed as much the natural expressionof conquering youth as the invincible morning sunshine. Perhaps itmight have been a reaction against Susy's caprice or some latentsusceptibility of her own; but a momentary antagonism to her friendstirred even her kindly nature. What right had Susy to trifle with suchan opportunity? Who was SHE to hesitate over this gallant prince?

But Prince Charming's quick eyes had detected her, and the next momenthis beautiful horse was beside the grating, and his ready hand ofgreeting extended through the bars. 

"I suppose I am early and unexpected, but I slept at Santa Inez lastnight, that I might ride over in the cool of the morning. My things arecoming by the stage-coach, later. It seemed such a slow way of comingone's self. "

Mary Rogers's black eyes intimated that the way he had taken was theright one, but she gallantly recovered herself and remembered herposition as confidante. And here was the opportunity of deliveringSusy's warning unobserved. She withdrew her hand from Clarence's frankgrasp, and passing it through the grating, patted the sleek, shiningflanks of his horse, with a discreet division of admiration. 

"And such a lovely creature, too! And Susy will be so delighted! andoh, Mr. Brant, please, you're to say nothing of having met her at SantaClara. It's just as well not to begin with THAT here, for, you see"(with a large, maternal manner), "you were both SO young then. "

Clarence drew a quick breath. It was the first check to his vision ofindependence and equal footing! Then his invitation was NOT the outcomeof a continuous friendship revived by Susy, as he had hoped; the Peytonshad known nothing of his meeting with her, or perhaps they would nothave invited him. He was here as an impostor, --and all because Susy hadchosen to make a mystery of a harmless encounter, which might havebeen explained, and which they might have even countenanced. He thoughtbitterly of his old playmate for a brief moment, --as brief as Mary'santagonism. The young girl noticed the change in his face, butmisinterpreted it. 

"Oh, there's no danger of its coming out if you don't say anything, " shesaid, quickly. "Ride on to the house, and don't wait for me. You'll findthem in the patio on the veranda. "

Clarence moved on, but not as spiritedly as before. Nevertheless therewas still dash enough about him and the animal he bestrode to stir intoadmiration the few lounging vacqueros of a country which was apt tojudge the status of a rider by the quality of his horse. Nor was thefavorable impression confined to them alone. Peyton's gratification rangout cheerily in his greeting:--

"Bravo, Clarence! You are here in true caballero style. Thanks for thecompliment to the rancho. "

For a moment the young man was transported back again to his boyhood, and once more felt Peyton's approving hand pushing back the worn strawhat from his childish forehead. A faint color rose to his cheeks; hiseyes momentarily dropped. The highest art could have done no more! Theslight aggressiveness of his youthful finery and picturesque good lookswas condoned at once; his modesty conquered where self-assertion mighthave provoked opposition, and even Mrs. Peyton felt herself impelledto come forward with an outstretched hand scarcely less frank than herhusband's. Then Clarence lifted his eyes. He saw before him the womanto whom his childish heart had gone out with the inscrutable longing andadoration of a motherless, homeless, companionless boy; the woman whohad absorbed the love of his playmate without sharing it with him; whohad showered her protecting and maternal caresses on Susy, a waif likehimself, yet had not only left his heart lonely and desolate, but hadeven added to his childish distrust of himself the thought that hehad excited her aversion. He saw her more beautiful than ever in herrestored health, freshness of coloring, and mature roundness of outline. He was unconsciously touched with a man's admiration for her withoutlosing his boyish yearnings and half-filial affection; in her newmaterialistic womanhood his youthful imagination had lifted her toa queen and goddess. There was all this appeal in his still boyisheyes, --eyes that had never yet known shame or fear in the expression oftheir emotions; there was all this in the gesture with which he liftedMrs. Peyton's fingers to his lips. The little group saw in this act onlya Spanish courtesy in keeping with his accepted role. But a thrill ofsurprise, of embarrassment, of intense gratification passed over her. For he had not even looked at Susy!

Her relenting was graceful. She welcomed him with a winning smile. Thenshe motioned pleasantly towards Susy. 

"But here is an older friend, Mr. Brant, whom you do not seem torecognize, --Susy, whom you have not seen since she was a child. "

A quick flush rose to Clarence's cheek. The group smiled at this evidentyouthful confession of some boyish admiration. But Clarence knew thathis truthful blood was merely resenting the deceit his lips were sealedfrom divulging. He did not dare to glance at Susy; it added to thegeneral amusement that the young girl was obliged to present herself. But in this interval she had exchanged glances with Mary Rogers, who hadrejoined the group, and she knew she was safe. She smiled with graciouscondescension at Clarence; observed, with the patronizing superiorityof age and established position, that he had GROWN, but had not greatlychanged, and, it is needless to say, again filled her mother's heartwith joy. Clarence, still intoxicated with Mrs. Peyton's kindliness, and, perhaps, still embarrassed by remorse, had not time to remark thegirl's studied attitude. He shook hands with her cordially, and then, in the quick reaction of youth, accepted with humorous gravity theelaborate introduction to Mary Rogers by Susy, which completed thislittle comedy. And if, with a woman's quickness, Mrs. Peyton detected acertain lingering glance which passed between Mary Rogers and Clarence, and misinterpreted it, it was only a part of that mystification intowhich these youthful actors are apt to throw their mature audiences. 

"Confess, Ally, " said Peyton, cheerfully, as the three young peoplesuddenly found their tongues with aimless vivacity and inconsequentlaughter, and started with unintelligible spirits for an exploration ofthe garden, "confess now that your bete noir is really a very manly aswell as a very presentable young fellow. By Jove! the padres have made aSpanish swell out of him without spoiling the Brant grit, either!Come, now; you're not afraid that Susy's style will suffer from HIScompanionship. 'Pon my soul, she might borrow a little of his courtesyto his elders without indelicacy. I only wish she had as sincere a wayof showing her respect for you as he has. Did you notice that he reallydidn't seem to see anybody else but you at first? And yet you never werea friend to him, like Susy. "

The lady tossed her head slightly, but smiled. 

"This is the first time he's seen Mary Rogers, isn't it?" she saidmeditatively. 

"I reckon. But what's that to do with his politeness to you?"

"And do her parents know him?" she continued, without replying. 

"How do I know? I suppose everybody has heard of him. Why?"

"Because I think they've taken a fancy to each other. "

"What in the name of folly, Ally"--began the despairing Peyton. 

"When you invite a handsome, rich, and fascinating young man into thecompany of young ladies, John, " returned Mrs. Peyton, in her severestmanner, "you must not forget you owe a certain responsibility to theparents. I shall certainly look after Miss Rogers. "

CHAPTER V. 

Although the three young people had left the veranda together, when theyreached the old garden Clarence and Susy found themselves considerablyin advance of Mary Rogers, who had become suddenly and deeply interestedin the beauty of a passion vine near the gate. At the first discovery oftheir isolation their voluble exchange of information about themselvesand their occupations since their last meeting stopped simultaneously. Clarence, who had forgotten his momentary irritation, and had recoveredhis old happiness in her presence, was nevertheless conscious of someother change in her than that suggested by the lengthened skirt and thelater and more delicate accentuation of her prettiness. It was not heraffectation of superiority and older social experience, for that wasonly the outcome of what he had found charming in her as a child, andwhich he still good-humoredly accepted; nor was it her characteristicexaggeration of speech, which he still pleasantly recognized. It wassomething else, vague and indefinite, --something that had been unnoticedwhile Mary was with them, but had now come between them like someunknown presence which had taken the confidante's place. He remainedsilent, looking at her half-brightening cheek and conscious profile. Then he spoke with awkward directness. 

"You are changed, Susy, more than in looks. "

"Hush, " said the girl in a tragic whisper, with a warning gesturetowards the blandly unconscious Mary. 

"But, " returned Clarence wonderingly, "she's your--our friend, youknow. "

"I DON'T know, " said Susy, in a still deeper tone, "that is--oh, don'task me! But when you're always surrounded by spies, when you can't sayyour soul is your own, you doubt everybody!" There was such a prettydistress in her violet eyes and curving eyebrows, that Clarence, albeitvague as to its origin and particulars, nevertheless possessed himselfof the little hand that was gesticulating dangerously near his own, andpressed it sympathetically. Perhaps preoccupied with her emotions, shedid not immediately withdraw it, as she went on rapidly: "And if youwere cooped up here, day after day, behind these bars, " pointing to thegrille, "you'd know what I suffer. "

"But"--began Clarence. 

"Hush!" said Susy, with a stamp of her little foot. 

Clarence, who had only wished to point out that the whole lower end ofthe garden wall was in ruins and the grille really was no prevention, "hushed. "

"And listen! Don't pay me much attention to-day, but talk to HER, "indicating the still discreet and distant Mary, "before father andmother. Not a word to her of this confidence, Clarence. To-morrow rideout alone on your beautiful horse, and come back by way of the woods, beyond our turning, at four o'clock. There's a trail to the right of thebig madrono tree. Take that. Be careful and keep a good lookout, for shemustn't see you. "

"Who mustn't see me?" said the puzzled Clarence. 

"Why, Mary, of course, you silly boy!" returned the girl impatiently. "She'll be looking for ME. Go now, Clarence! Stop! Look at that lovelybig maiden's-blush up there, " pointing to a pink-suffused specimenof rose grandiflora hanging on the wall. "Get it, Clarence, --thatone, --I'll show you where, --there!" They had already plunged into theleafy bramble, and, standing on tiptoe, with her hand on his shoulderand head upturned, Susy's cheek had innocently approached Clarence'sown. At this moment Clarence, possibly through some confusion of color, fragrance, or softness of contact, seemed to have availed himself of theopportunity, in a way which caused Susy to instantly rejoin Mary Rogerswith affected dignity, leaving him to follow a few moments later withthe captured flower. 

Without trying to understand the reason of to-morrow's rendezvous, andperhaps not altogether convinced of the reality of Susy's troubles, he, however, did not find that difficulty in carrying out her other commandswhich he had expected. Mrs. Peyton was still gracious, and, withfeminine tact, induced him to talk of himself, until she was presentlyin possession of his whole history, barring the episode of his meetingwith Susy, since he had parted with them. He felt a strange satisfactionin familiarly pouring out his confidences to this superior woman, whom he had always held in awe. There was a new delight in her womanlyinterest in his trials and adventures, and a subtle pleasure even in herhalf-motherly criticism and admonition of some passages. I am afraid heforgot Susy, who listened with the complacency of an exhibitor; Mary, whose black eyes dilated alternately with sympathy for the performer anddeprecation of Mrs. Peyton's critical glances; and Peyton, who, however, seemed lost in thought, and preoccupied. Clarence was happy. The softlyshaded lights in the broad, spacious, comfortably furnished drawing-roomshone on the group before him. It was a picture of refined domesticitywhich the homeless Clarence had never known except as a vague, half-painful, boyish remembrance; it was a realization of welcome thatfar exceeded his wildest boyish vision of the preceding night. With thatrecollection came another, --a more uneasy one. He remembered how thatvision had been interrupted by the strange voices in the road, and theirvague but ominous import to his host. A feeling of self-reproach cameover him. The threats had impressed him as only mere braggadocio, --heknew the characteristic exaggeration of the race, --but perhaps he oughtto privately tell Peyton of the incident at once. 

The opportunity came later, when the ladies had retired, and Peyton, wrapped in a poncho in a rocking-chair, on the now chilly veranda, looked up from his reverie and a cigar. Clarence casually introduced theincident, as if only for the sake of describing the supernatural effectof the hidden voices, but he was concerned to see that Peyton wasconsiderably disturbed by their more material import. After questioninghim as to the appearance of the two men, his host said: "I don't mindtelling you, Clarence, that as far as that fellow's intentions go he isquite sincere, although his threats are only borrowed thunder. He isa man whom I have just dismissed for carelessness and insolence, --twothings that run in double harness in this country, --but I should be moreafraid to find him at my back on a dark night, alone on the plains; thanto confront him in daylight, in the witness box, against me. He wasonly repeating a silly rumor that the title to this rancho and the ninesquare leagues beyond would be attacked by some speculators. "

"But I thought your title was confirmed two years ago, " said Clarence. 

"The GRANT was confirmed, " returned Peyton, "which means that theconveyance of the Mexican government of these lands to the ancestor ofVictor Robles was held to be legally proven by the United States LandCommission, and a patent issued to all those who held under it. I and myneighbors hold under it by purchase from Victor Robles, subject to theconfirmation of the Land Commission. But that confirmation was onlyof Victor's GREAT-GRANDFATHER'S TITLE, and it is now alleged that asVictor's father died without making a will, Victor has claimed anddisposed of property which he ought to have divided with his SISTERS. Atleast, some speculating rascals in San Francisco have set up what theycall 'the Sisters' title, ' and are selling it to actual settlers onthe unoccupied lands beyond. As, by the law, it would hold possessionagainst the mere ordinary squatters, whose only right is based, as youknow, on the presumption that there is NO TITLE CLAIMED, it gives thepossessor immunity to enjoy the use of the property until the case isdecided, and even should the original title hold good against his, thesuccessful litigant would probably be willing to pay for improvementsand possession to save the expensive and tedious process of ejectment. "

"But this does not affect YOU, who have already possession?" saidClarence quickly. 

"No, not as far as THIS HOUSE and the lands I actually OCCUPY ANDCULTIVATE are concerned; and they know that I am safe to fight to thelast, and carry the case to the Supreme Court in that case, untilthe swindle is exposed, or they drop it; but I may have to pay themsomething to keep the squatters off my UNOCCUPIED land. "

"But you surely wouldn't recognize those rascals in any way?" said theastonished Clarence. 

"As against other rascals? Why not?" returned Peyton grimly. "I only payfor the possession which their sham title gives me to my own land. If byaccident that title obtains, I am still on the safe side. " After a pausehe said, more gravely, "What you overheard, Clarence, shows me that theplan is more forward than I had imagined, and that I may have to fighttraitors here. "

"I hope, sir, " said Clarence, with a quick glow in his earnestface, "that you'll let me help you. You thought I did once, youremember, --with the Indians. "

There was so much of the old Clarence in his boyish appeal and eager, questioning face that Peyton, who had been talking to him as a youngerbut equal man of affairs, was startled into a smile, "You did, Clarence, though the Indians butchered your friends, after all. I don't know, though, but that your experiences with those Spaniards--you must haveknown a lot of them when you were with Don Juan Robinson and at thecollege--might be of service in getting at evidence, or smashing theirwitnesses if it comes to a fight. But just now, MONEY is everything. They must be bought OFF THE LAND if I have to mortgage it for thepurpose. That strikes you as a rather heroic remedy, Clarence, eh?"he continued, in his old, half-bantering attitude towards Clarence'sinexperienced youth, "don't it?"

But Clarence was not thinking of that. Another more audacious butequally youthful and enthusiastic idea had taken possession of his mind, and he lay awake half that night revolving it. It was true that it wassomewhat impractically mixed with his visions of Mrs. Peyton and Susy, and even included his previous scheme of relief for the improvident andincorrigible Hooker. But it gave a wonderful sincerity and happinessto his slumbers that night, which the wiser and elder Peyton might haveenvied, and I wot not was in the long run as correct and sagacious asPeyton's sleepless cogitations. And in the early morning Mr. ClarenceBrant, the young capitalist, sat down to his traveling-desk and wrotetwo clear-headed, logical, and practical business letters, --one to hisbanker, and the other to his former guardian, Don Juan Robinson, ashis first step in a resolve that was, nevertheless, perhaps as wildlyquixotic and enthusiastic as any dream his boyish and unselfish hearthad ever indulged. 

At breakfast, in the charmed freedom of the domestic circle, Clarenceforgot Susy's capricious commands of yesterday, and began to addresshimself to her in his old earnest fashion, until he was warned bya significant knitting of the young lady's brows and monosyllabicresponses. But in his youthful loyalty to Mrs. Peyton, he was morepained to notice Susy's occasional unconscious indifference to heradopted mother's affectionate expression, and a more conscious disregardof her wishes. So uneasy did he become, in his sensitive concern forMrs. Peyton's half-concealed mortification, that he gladly acceptedPeyton's offer to go with him to visit the farm and corral. As theafternoon approached, with another twinge of self-reproach, he wasobliged to invent some excuse to decline certain hospitable plansof Mrs. Peyton's for his entertainment, and at half past three stolesomewhat guiltily, with his horse, from the stables. But he had to passbefore the outer wall of the garden and grille, through which he hadseen Mary the day before. Raising his eyes mechanically, he was startledto see Mrs. Peyton standing behind the grating, with her abstracted gazefixed upon the wind-tossed, level grain beyond her. She smiled as shesaw him, but there were traces of tears in her proud, handsome eyes. 

"You are going to ride?" she said pleasantly. 

"Y-e-es, " stammered the shamefaced Clarence. 

She glanced at him wistfully. 

"You are right. The girls have gone away by themselves. Mr. Peyton hasridden over to Santa Inez on this dreadful land business, and I supposeyou'd have found him a dull riding companion. It is rather stupid here. I quite envy you, Mr. Brant, your horse and your freedom. "

"But, Mrs. Peyton, " broke in Clarence, impulsively, "you have a horse--Isaw it, a lovely lady's horse--eating its head off in the stable. Won'tyou let me run back and order it; and won't you, please, come out withme for a good, long gallop?"

He meant what he said. He had spoken quickly, impulsively, but with theperfect understanding in his own mind that his proposition meant thecomplete abandonment of his rendezvous with Susy. Mrs. Peyton wasastounded and slightly stirred with his earnestness, albeit unaware ofall it implied. 

"It's a great temptation, Mr. Brant, " she said, with a playful smile, which dazzled Clarence with its first faint suggestion of a refinedwoman's coquetry; "but I'm afraid that Mr. Peyton would think me goingmad in my old age. No. Go on and enjoy your gallop, and if you shouldsee those giddy girls anywhere, send them home early for chocolate, before the cold wind gets up. "

She turned, waved her slim white hand playfully in acknowledgment ofClarence's bared head, and moved away. 

For the first few moments the young man tried to find relief in furiousriding, and in bullying his spirited horse. Then he pulled quickly up. What was he doing? What was he going to do? What foolish, vapid deceitwas this that he was going to practice upon that noble, queenly, confiding, generous woman? (He had already forgotten that she had alwaysdistrusted him. ) What a fool he was not to tell her half-jokingly thathe expected to meet Susy! But would he have dared to talk half-jokinglyto such a woman on such a topic? And would it have been honorablewithout disclosing the WHOLE truth, --that they had met secretly before?And was it fair to Susy?--dear, innocent, childish Susy! Yet somethingmust be done! It was such trivial, purposeless deceit, after all; forthis noble woman, Mrs. Peyton, so kind, so gentle, would never objectto his loving Susy and marrying her. And they would all live happilytogether; and Mrs. Peyton would never be separated from them, but alwaysbeaming tenderly upon them as she did just now in the garden. Yes, hewould have a serious understanding with Susy, and that would excuse theclandestine meeting to-day. 

His rapid pace, meantime, had brought him to the imperceptible inclineof the terrace, and he was astonished, in turning in the saddle, to findthat the casa, corral, and outbuildings had completely vanished, andthat behind him rolled only the long sea of grain, which seemed to haveswallowed them in its yellowing depths. Before him lay the wooded ravinethrough which the stagecoach passed, which was also the entrance tothe rancho, and there, too, probably, was the turning of which Susy hadspoken. But it was still early for the rendezvous; indeed, he was inno hurry to meet her in his present discontented state, and he made alistless circuit of the field, in the hope of discovering the phenomenathat had caused the rancho's mysterious disappearance. When he hadfound that it was the effect of the different levels, his attention wasarrested by a multitude of moving objects in a still more distantfield, which proved to be a band of wild horses. In and out amongthem, circling aimlessly, as it seemed to him, appeared two horsemenapparently performing some mystic evolution. To add to their singularperformance, from time to time one of the flying herd, driven by thehorsemen far beyond the circle of its companions, dropped suddenly andunaccountably in full career. The field closed over it as if it had beenswallowed up. In a few moments it appeared again, trotting peacefullybehind its former pursuer. It was some time before Clarence grasped themeaning of this strange spectacle. Although the clear, dry atmospheresharply accented the silhouette-like outlines of the men and horses, sogreat was the distance that the slender forty-foot lasso, which inthe skillful hands of the horsemen had effected these captures, wasCOMPLETELY INVISIBLE! The horsemen were Peyton's vacqueros, making aselection from the young horses for the market. He remembered nowthat Peyton had told him that he might be obliged to raise money bysacrificing some of his stock, and the thought brought back Clarence'suneasiness as he turned again to the trail. Indeed, he was hardly inthe vein for a gentle tryst, as he entered the wooded ravine to seek themadrono tree which was to serve as a guide to his lady's bower. 

A few rods further, under the cool vault filled with woodland spicing, he came upon it. In its summer harlequin dress of scarlet and green, with hanging bells of poly-tinted berries, like some personified sylvanFolly, it seemed a fitting symbol of Susy's childish masquerade ofpassion. Its bizarre beauty, so opposed to the sober gravity of thesedate pines and hemlocks, made it an unmistakable landmark. Here hedismounted and picketed his horse. And here, beside it, to the right, ran the little trail crawling over mossy boulders; a narrow yellow trackthrough the carpet of pine needles between the closest file of trees;an almost imperceptible streak across pools of chickweed at their roots, and a brown and ragged swath through the ferns. As he went on, theanxiety and uneasiness that had possessed him gave way to a languidintoxication of the senses; the mysterious seclusion of these woodlanddepths recovered the old influence they had exerted over his boyhood. Hewas not returning to Susy, as much as to the older love of his youth, ofwhich she was, perhaps, only an incident. It was therefore with an oddboyish thrill again that, coming suddenly upon a little hollow, likea deserted nest, where the lost trail made him hesitate, he heard thecrackle of a starched skirt behind him, was conscious of the subtle odorof freshly ironed and scented muslin, and felt the gentle pressure ofdelicate fingers upon his eyes. 

"Susy!"

"You silly boy! Where were you blundering to? Why didn't you look aroundyou?"

"I thought I would hear your voices. "

"Whose voices, idiot?"

"Yours and Mary's, " returned Clarence innocently, looking round for theconfidante. 

"Oh, indeed! Then you wanted to see MARY? Well, she's looking for mesomewhere. Perhaps you'll go and find her, or shall I?"

She was offering to pass him when he laid his hand on hers to detainher. She instantly evaded it, and drew herself up to her full height, incontestably displaying the dignity of the added inches to her skirt. All this was charmingly like the old Susy, but it did not bid fairto help him to a serious interview. And, looking at the pretty, pink, mocking face before him, with the witchery of the woodland still uponhim, he began to think that he had better put it off. 

"Never mind about Mary, " he said laughingly. "But you said you wanted tosee me, Susy; and here I am. "

"Said I wanted to see you?" repeated Susy, with her blue eyes lifted incelestial scorn and wonderment. "Said I wanted to see you? Are you notmistaken, Mr. Brant? Really, I imagined that you came here to see ME. "

With her fair head upturned, and the leaf of her scarlet lip temptinglycurled over, Clarence began to think this latest phase of herextravagance the most fascinating. He drew nearer to her as he saidgently, "You know what I mean, Susy. You said yesterday you weretroubled. I thought you might have something to tell me. "

"I should think it was YOU who might have something to tell me after allthese years, " she said poutingly, yet self-possessed. "But I suppose youcame here only to see Mary and mother. I'm sure you let them know thatplainly enough last evening. "

"But you said"--began the stupefied Clarence. 

"Never mind what I said. It's always what I say, never what YOU say; andyou don't say anything. "

The woodland influence must have been still very strong upon Clarencethat he did not discover in all this that, while Susy's generalcapriciousness was unchanged, there was a new and singular insincerityin her manifest acting. She was either concealing the existence of someother real emotion, or assuming one that was absent. But he did notnotice it, and only replied tenderly:--

"But I want to say a great deal to you, Susy. I want to say that if youstill feel as I do, and as I have always felt, and you think you couldbe happy as I would be if--if--we could be always together, we need notconceal it from your mother and father any longer. I am old enough tospeak for myself, and I am my own master. Your mother has been very kindto me, --so kind that it doesn't seem quite right to deceive her, --andwhen I tell her that I love you, and that I want you to be my wife, Ibelieve she will give us her blessing. "

Susy uttered a strange little laugh, and with an assumption of coyness, that was, however, still affected, stooped to pick a few berries from amanzanita bush. 

"I'll tell you what she'll say, Clarence. She'll say you're frightfullyyoung, and so you are!"

The young fellow tried to echo the laugh, but felt as if he had receiveda blow. For the first time he was conscious of the truth: this girl, whom he had fondly regarded as a child, had already passed him in therace; she had become a woman before he was yet a man, and now stoodbefore him, maturer in her knowledge, and older in her understanding, ofherself and of him. This was the change that had perplexed him; thiswas the presence that had come between them, --a Susy he had never knownbefore. 

She laughed at his changed expression, and then swung herself easily toa sitting posture on the low projecting branch of a hemlock. The actwas still girlish, but, nevertheless, she looked down upon him ina superior, patronizing way. "Now, Clarence, " she said, with ahalf-abstracted manner, "don't you be a big fool! If you talk that wayto mother, she'll only tell you to wait two or three years until youknow your own mind, and she'll pack me off to that horrid school again, besides watching me like a cat every moment you are here. If you wantto stay here, and see me sometimes like this, you'll just behave as youhave done, and say nothing. Do you see? Perhaps you don't care to come, or are satisfied with Mary and mother. Say so, then. Goodness knows, Idon't want to force you to come here. "

Modest and reserved as Clarence was generally, I fear that bashfulnessof approach to the other sex was not one of these indications. He walkedup to Susy with appalling directness, and passed his arm around herwaist. She did not move, but remained looking at him and his intrudingarm with a certain critical curiosity, as if awaiting some novelsensation. At which he kissed her. She then slowly disengaged his arm, and said:--

"Really, upon my word, Clarence, " in perfectly level tones, and slippedquietly to the ground. 

He again caught her in his arms, encircling her disarranged hair andpart of the beribboned hat hanging over her shoulder, and remainedfor an instant holding her thus silently and tenderly. Then she freedherself with an abstracted air, a half smile, and an unchanged colorexcept where her soft cheek had been abraded by his coat collar. 

"You're a bold, rude boy, Clarence, " she said, putting back her hairquietly, and straightening the brim of her hat. "Heaven knows whereyou learned manners!" and then, from a safer distance, with the samecritical look in her violet eyes, "I suppose you think mother wouldallow THAT if she knew it?"

But Clarence, now completely subjugated, with the memory of the kissupon him and a heightened color, protested that he only wanted to maketheir intercourse less constrained, and to have their relations, eventheir engagement, recognized by her parents; still he would take heradvice. Only there was always the danger that if they were discoveredshe would be sent back to the convent all the same, and his banishment, instead of being the probation of a few years, would be a perpetualseparation. 

"We could always run away, Clarence, " responded the young girl calmly. "There's nothing the matter with THAT. "

Clarence was startled. The idea of desolating the sad, proud, handsomeMrs. Peyton, whom he worshiped, and her kind husband, whom he was justabout to serve, was so grotesque and confusing, that he said hopelessly, "Yes. "

"Of course, " she continued, with the same odd affectation of coyness, which was, however, distinctly uncalled for, as she eyed him from underher broad hat, "you needn't come with me unless you like. I can run awayby myself, --if I want to! I've thought of it before. One can't standeverything!"

"But, Susy, " said Clarence, with a swift remorseful recollection of herconfidence yesterday, "is there really anything troubles you? Tell me, dear. What is it?"

"Oh, nothing--EVERYTHING! It's no use, --YOU can't understand! YOU likeit, I know you do. I can see it; it's your style. But it's stupid, it'sawful, Clarence! With mamma snooping over you and around you all day, with her 'dear child, ' 'mamma's pet, ' and 'What is it, dear?' and 'Tellit all to your own mamma, ' as if I would! And 'my own mamma, ' indeed! Asif I didn't know, Clarence, that she ISN'T. And papa, caring for nothingbut this hideous, dreary rancho, and the huge, empty plains. It's worsethan school, for there, at least, when you went out, you could seesomething besides cattle and horses and yellow-faced half-breeds! Buthere--Lord! it's only a wonder I haven't run away before!"

Startled and shocked as Clarence was at this revelation, accompanied asit was by a hardness of manner that was new to him, the influence ofthe young girl was still so strong upon him that he tried to evade it asonly an extravagance, and said with a faint smile, "But where would yourun to?"

She looked at him cunningly, with her head on one side, and then said:--

"I have friends, and"--

She hesitated, pursing up her pretty lips. 

"And what?"

"Relations. "

"Relations?"

"Yes, --an aunt by marriage. She lives in Sacramento. She'd be overjoyedto have me come to her. Her second husband has a theatre there. "

"But, Susy, what does Mrs. Peyton know of this?"

"Nothing. Do you think I'd tell her, and have her buy them up as she hasmy other relations? Do you suppose I don't know that I've been bought uplike a nigger?"

She looked indignant, compressing her delicate little nostrils, and yet, somehow, Clarence had the same singular impression that she was onlyacting. 

The calling of a far-off voice came faintly through the wood. 

"That's Mary, looking for me, " said Susy composedly. "You must go, now, Clarence. Quick! Remember what I said, --and don't breathe a word ofthis. Good-by. "

But Clarence was standing still, breathless, hopelessly disturbed, andirresolute. Then he turned away mechanically towards the trail. 

"Well, Clarence?"

She was looking at him half reproachfully, half coquettishly, withsmiling, parted lips. He hastened to forget himself and his troublesupon them twice and thrice. Then she quickly disengaged herself, whispered, "Go, now, " and, as Mary's call was repeated, Clarence heardher voice, high and clear, answering, "Here, dear, " as he was plunginginto the thicket. 

He had scarcely reached the madrono tree again and remounted his horse, before he heard the sound of hoofs approaching from the road. Inhis present uneasiness he did not care to be discovered so near therendezvous, and drew back into the shadow until the horseman shouldpass. It was Peyton, with a somewhat disturbed face, riding rapidly. Still less was he inclined to join or immediately follow him, but he wasrelieved when his host, instead of taking the direct road to the rancho, through the wild oats, turned off in the direction of the corral. 

A moment later Clarence wheeled into the direct road, and presentlyfound himself in the long afternoon shadows through the thickest of thegrain. He was riding slowly, immersed in thought, when he was suddenlystartled by a hissing noise at his ear, and what seemed to be theuncoiling stroke of a leaping serpent at his side. Instinctively hethrew himself forward on his horse's neck, and as the animal shiedinto the grain, felt the crawling scrape and jerk of a horsehair lariatacross his back and down his horse's flanks. He reined in indignantlyand stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level ofthe grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanishedas if it had been indeed a gliding snake. Had he been the victim of apractical joke, or of the blunder of some stupid vacquero? For he madeno doubt that it was the lasso of one of the performers he had watchedthat afternoon. But his preoccupied mind did not dwell long upon it, andby the time he had reached the wall of the old garden, the incident wasforgotten. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Relieved of Clarence Brant's embarrassing presence, Jim Hooker did not, however, refuse to avail himself of that opportunity to expound to thefarmer and his family the immense wealth, influence, and importance ofthe friend who had just left him. Although Clarence's plan had suggestedreticence, Hooker could not forego the pleasure of informing themthat "Clar" Brant had just offered to let him into an extensive landspeculation. He had previously declined a large share or originallocation in a mine of Clarence's, now worth a million, because it wasnot "his style. " But the land speculation in a country of unsettledtitles and lawless men, he need not remind them, required someexperience of border warfare. He would not say positively, although heleft them to draw their own conclusions with gloomy significance, thatthis was why Clarence had sought him. With this dark suggestion, he tookleave of Mr. And Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter Phoebe the next day, not without some natural human emotion, and peacefully drove his teamand wagon into the settlement of Fair Plains. 

He was not prepared, however, for a sudden realization of hisimaginative prospects. A few days after his arrival in Fair Plains, he received a letter from Clarence, explaining that he had not time toreturn to Hooker to consult him, but had, nevertheless, fulfilled hispromise, by taking advantage of an opportunity of purchasing the Spanish"Sisters'" title to certain unoccupied lands near the settlement. Asthese lands in part joined the section already preempted and occupied byHopkins, Clarence thought that Jim Hooker would choose that part for thesake of his neighbor's company. He inclosed a draft on San Francisco, for a sum sufficient to enable Jim to put up a cabin and "stock" theproperty, which he begged he would consider in the light of a loan, tobe paid back in installments, only when the property could afford it. At the same time, if Jim was in difficulty, he was to inform him. Theletter closed with a characteristic Clarence-like mingling of enthusiasmand older wisdom. "I wish you luck, Jim, but I see no reason why youshould trust to it. I don't know of anything that could keep you frommaking yourself independent of any one, if you go to work with a LONGAIM and don't fritter away your chances on short ones. If I were you, old fellow, I'd drop the Plains and the Indians out of my thoughts, orat least out of my TALK, for a while; they won't help you in the longrun. The people who believe you will be jealous of you; those who don't, will look down upon you, and if they get to questioning your littleIndian romances, Jim, they'll be apt to question your civilized facts. That won't help you in the ranching business and that's your only realgrip now. " For the space of two or three hours after this, Jim wasreasonably grateful and even subdued, --so much so that his employer, towhom he confided his good fortune, frankly confessed that he believedhim from that unusual fact alone. Unfortunately, neither the practicallesson conveyed in this grim admission, nor the sentiment of gratitude, remained long with Jim. Another idea had taken possession of his fancy. Although the land nominated in his bill of sale had been, except on theoccasion of his own temporary halt there, always unoccupied, unsought, and unclaimed, and although he was amply protected by legalcertificates, he gravely collected a posse of three or four idlers fromFair Plains, armed them at his own expense, and in the dead of nighttook belligerent and forcible possession of the peaceful domain whichthe weak generosity and unheroic dollars of Clarence had purchased forhim! A martial camp-fire tempered the chill night winds to the pulses ofthe invaders, and enabled them to sleep on their arms in the field theyhad won. The morning sun revealed to the astonished Hopkins familythe embattled plain beyond, with its armed sentries. Only then did Jimhooker condescend to explain the reason of his warlike occupation, withdark hints of the outlying "squatters" and "jumpers, " whose incursionstheir boldness alone had repulsed. The effect of this romantic situationupon the two women, with the slight fascination of danger importedinto their quiet lives, may well be imagined. Possibly owing to someincautious questioning by Mr. Hopkins, and some doubts of the disciplineand sincerity of his posse, Jim discharged them the next day; butduring the erection of his cabin by some peaceful carpenters from thesettlement, he returned to his gloomy preoccupation and the ostentatiouswearing of his revolvers. As an opulent and powerful neighbor, he tookhis meals with the family while his house was being built, and generallyimpressed them with a sense of security they had never missed. 

Meantime, Clarence, duly informed of the installation of Jim as histenant, underwent a severe trial. It was necessary for his plans thatthis should be kept a secret at present, and this was no easy thing forhis habitually frank and open nature. He had once mentioned that he hadmet Jim at the settlement, but the information was received with suchindifference by Susy, and such marked disfavor by Mrs. Peyton, thathe said no more. He accompanied Peyton in his rides around the rancho, fully possessed himself of the details of its boundaries, the debatablelands held by the enemy, and listened with beating pulses, but a hushedtongue, to his host's ill-concealed misgivings. 

"You see, Clarence, that lower terrace?" he said, pointing to afar-reaching longitudinal plain beyond the corral; "it extends from mycorral to Fair Plains. That is claimed by the sisters' title, and, asthings appear to be going, if a division of the land is made it will betheirs. It's bad enough to have this best grazing land lying just onthe flanks of the corral held by these rascals at an absurd prohibitoryprice, but I am afraid that it may be made to mean something even worse. According to the old surveys, these terraces on different levels werethe natural divisions of the property, --one heir or his tenant takingone, and another taking another, --an easy distinction that saved thenecessity of boundary fencing or monuments, and gave no trouble topeople who were either kinsmen or lived in lazy patriarchal concord. That is the form of division they are trying to reestablish now. Well, "he continued, suddenly lifting his eyes to the young man's flushed face, in some unconscious, sympathetic response to his earnest breathlessness, "although my boundary line extends half a mile into that field, my houseand garden and corral ARE ACTUALLY UPON THAT TERRACE OR LEVEL. " Theycertainly appeared to Clarence to be on the same line as the long fieldbeyond. "If, " went on Peyton, "such a decision is made, these men willpush on and claim the house and everything on the terrace. "

"But, " said Clarence quickly, "you said their title was only valuablewhere they have got or can give POSSESSION. You already have yours. Theycan't take it from you except by force. "

"No, " said Peyton grimly, "nor will they dare to do it as long as I liveto fight them. "

"But, " persisted Clarence, with the same singular hesitancy of manner, "why didn't you purchase possession of at least that part of the landwhich lies so dangerously near your own house?"

"Because it was held by squatters, who naturally preferred buying whatmight prove a legal title to their land from these impostors than tosell out their possession to ME at a fair price. "

"But couldn't you have bought from them both?" continued Clarence. 

"My dear Clarence, I am not a Croesus nor a fool. Only a man who wasboth would attempt to treat with these rascals, who would now, ofcourse, insist that THEIR WHOLE claim should be bought up at their ownprice, by the man who was most concerned in defeating them. "

He turned away a little impatiently. Fortunately he did not observe thatClarence's averted face was crimson with embarrassment, and that a faintsmile hovered nervously about his mouth. 

Since his late rendezvous with Susy, Clarence had had no chance tointerrogate her further regarding her mysterious relative. That thatshadowy presence was more or less exaggerated, if not an absolute myth, he more than half suspected, but of the discontent that had produced it, or the recklessness it might provoke, there was no doubt. She might betempted to some act of folly. He wondered if Mary Rogers knew it. Yet, with his sensitive ideas of loyalty, he would have shrunk from anyconfidence with Mary regarding her friend's secrets, although hefancied that Mary's dark eyes sometimes dwelt upon him with mournfulconsciousness and premonition. He did not imagine the truth, that thisromantic contemplation was only the result of Mary's conviction thatSusy was utterly unworthy of his love. It so chanced one morning thatthe vacquero who brought the post from Santa Inez arrived earlier thanusual, and so anticipated the two girls, who usually made a youthfulpoint of meeting him first as he passed the garden wall. The letter bagwas consequently delivered to Mrs. Peyton in the presence of the others, and a look of consternation passed between the young girls. ButMary quickly seized upon the bag as if with girlish and mischievousimpatience, opened it, and glanced within it. 

"There are only three letters for you, " she said, handing them toClarence, with a quick look of significance, which he failed tocomprehend, "and nothing for me or Susy. "

"But, " began the innocent Clarence, as his first glance at the lettersshowed him that one was directed to Susy, "here is"--

A wicked pinch on his arm that was nearest Mary stopped his speech, andhe quickly put the letters in his pocket. 

"Didn't you understand that Susy don't want her mother to see thatletter?" asked Mary impatiently, when they were alone a moment later. 

"No, " said Clarence simply, handing her the missive. 

Mary took it and turned it over in her hands. 

"It's in a man's handwriting, " she said innocently. 

"I hadn't noticed it, " returned Clarence with invincible naivete, "butperhaps it is. "

"And you hand it over for me to give to Susy, and ain't a bit curious toknow who it's from?"

"No, " returned Clarence, opening his big eyes in smiling and apologeticwonder. 

"Well, " responded the young lady, with a long breath of melancholyastonishment, "certainly, of all things you are--you really ARE!" Withwhich incoherency--apparently perfectly intelligible to herself--sheleft him. She had not herself the slightest idea who the letter wasfrom; she only knew that Susy wanted it concealed. 

The incident made little impression on Clarence, except as part of thegeneral uneasiness he felt in regard to his old playmate. It seemedso odd to him that this worry should come from HER, --that she herselfshould form the one discordant note in the Arcadian dream that he hadfound so sweet; in his previous imaginings it was the presence of Mrs. Peyton which he had dreaded; she whose propinquity now seemed so fullof gentleness, reassurance, and repose. How worthy she seemed of anysacrifice he could make for her! He had seen little of her for the lasttwo or three days, although her smile and greeting were always readyfor him. Poor Clarence did not dream that she had found from certainincontestable signs and tokens, both in the young ladies and himself, that he did not require watching, and that becoming more resigned toSusy's indifference, which seemed so general and passive in quality, shewas no longer tortured by the sting of jealousy. 

Finding himself alone that afternoon, the young man had wanderedsomewhat listlessly beyond the low adobe gateway. The habits of thesiesta obtained in a modified form at the rancho. After luncheon, itsmasters and employees usually retired, not so much from the torridheat of the afternoon sun, but from the first harrying of the afternoontrades, whose monotonous whistle swept round the walls. A stragglingpassion vine near the gate beat and struggled against the wind. Clarencehad stopped near it, and was gazing with worried abstraction across thetossing fields, when a soft voice called his name. 

It was a pleasant voice, --Mrs. Peyton's. He glanced back at the gateway;it was empty. He looked quickly to the right and left; no one was there. 

The voice spoke again with the musical addition of a laugh; it seemedto come from the passion vine. Ah, yes; behind it, and half overgrownby its branches, was a long, narrow embrasured opening in the wall, defended by the usual Spanish grating, and still further back, as in theframe of a picture, the half length figure of Mrs. Peyton, very handsomeand striking, too, with a painted picturesqueness from the effect of thecheckered light and shade. 

"You looked so tired and bored out there, " she said. "I am afraid youare finding it very dull at the rancho. The prospect is certainly notvery enlivening from where you stand. "

Clarence protested with a visible pleasure in his eyes, as he held backa spray before the opening. 

"If you are not afraid of being worse bored, come in here and talkwith me. You have never seen this part of the house, I think, --my ownsitting-room. You reach it from the hall in the gallery. But Lola orAnita will show you the way. "

He reentered the gateway, and quickly found the hall, --a narrow, archedpassage, whose black, tunnel-like shadows were absolutely unaffectedby the vivid, colorless glare of the courtyard without, seen through anopening at the end. The contrast was sharp, blinding, and distinct;even the edges of the opening were black; the outer light halted onthe threshold and never penetrated within. The warm odor of verbenaand dried rose leaves stole from a half-open door somewhere in thecloistered gloom. Guided by it, Clarence presently found himself on thethreshold of a low-vaulted room. Two other narrow embrasured windowslike the one he had just seen, and a fourth, wider latticed casement, hung with gauze curtains, suffused the apartment with a clear, yetmysterious twilight that seemed its own. The gloomy walls were warmedby bright-fringed bookshelves, topped with trifles of light femininecoloring and adornment. Low easy-chairs and a lounge, small fancifultables, a dainty desk, gayly colored baskets of worsteds or mysteriouskaleidoscopic fragments, and vases of flowers pervaded the apartmentwith a mingled sense of grace and comfort. There was a womanlyrefinement in its careless negligence, and even the delicate wrapper ofJapanese silk, gathered at the waist and falling in easy folds to thefeet of the graceful mistress of this charming disorder, looked a partof its refined abandonment. 

Clarence hesitated as on the threshold of some sacred shrine. But Mrs. Peyton, with her own hands, cleared a space for him on the lounge. 

"You will easily suspect from all this disorder, Mr. Brant, that I spenda greater part of my time here, and that I seldom see much company. Mr. Peyton occasionally comes in long enough to stumble over a footstool orupset a vase, and I think Mary and Susy avoid it from a firm convictionthat there is work concealed in these baskets. But I have my bookshere, and in the afternoons, behind these thick walls, one forgets theincessant stir and restlessness of the dreadful winds outside. Justnow you were foolish enough to tempt them while you were nervous, orworried, or listless. Take my word for it, it's a great mistake. Thereis no more use fighting them, as I tell Mr. Peyton, than of fighting thepeople born under them. I have my own opinion that these winds weresent only to stir this lazy race of mongrels into activity, but they areenough to drive us Anglo-Saxons into nervous frenzy. Don't you thinkso? But you are young and energetic, and perhaps you are not affected bythem. "

She spoke pleasantly and playfully, yet with a certain nervous tensionof voice and manner that seemed to illustrate her theory. At least, Clarence, in quick sympathy with her slightest emotion, was touched byit. There is no more insidious attraction in the persons we admire, thanthe belief that we know and understand their unhappiness, and that ouradmiration for them is lifted higher than a mere mutual instinctivesympathy with beauty or strength. This adorable woman had suffered. Thevery thought aroused his chivalry. It loosened, also, I fear, his quick, impulsive tongue. 

Oh, yes; he knew it. He had lived under this whip of air and sky forthree years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peonsaround him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian. He spent his mornings on horseback in fields like these, until thevientos generales, as they called them, sprang up and drove him nearlyfrantic; and his only relief was to bury himself among the books in hisguardian's library, and shut out the world, --just as she did. The smilewhich hovered around the lady's mouth at that moment arrested Clarence, with a quick remembrance of their former relative positions, and asudden conviction of his familiarity in suggesting an equality ofexperience, and he blushed. But Mrs. Peyton diverted his embarrassmentwith an air of interested absorption in his story, and said:--

"Then you know these people thoroughly, Mr. Brant? I am afraid that WEdo not. "

Clarence had already gathered that fact within the last few days, and, with his usual impulsive directness, said so. A slight knitting of Mrs. Peyton's brows passed off, however, as he quickly and earnestly went onto say that it was impossible for the Peytons in their present relationsto the natives to judge them, or to be judged by them fairly. How theywere a childlike race, credulous and trustful, but, like all credulousand trustful people, given to retaliate when imposed upon with a largerinsincerity, exaggeration, and treachery. How they had seen their housesand lands occupied by strangers, their religion scorned, their customsderided, their patriarchal society invaded by hollow civilization orfrontier brutality--all this fortified by incident and illustration, the outcome of some youthful experience, and given with the glowingenthusiasm of conviction. Mrs. Peyton listened with the usual dividedfeminine interest between subject and speaker. 

Where did this rough, sullen boy--as she had known him--pick up thisdelicate and swift perception, this reflective judgment, and this oddfelicity of expression? It was not possible that it was in him while hewas the companion of her husband's servants or the recognized "chum" ofthe scamp Hooker. No. But if HE could have changed like this, why notSusy? Mrs. Peyton, in the conservatism of her sex, had never been quitefree from fears of her adopted daughter's hereditary instincts; but, with this example before her, she now took heart. Perhaps the change wascoming slowly; perhaps even now what she thought was indifference andcoldness was only some abnormal preparation or condition. But she onlysmiled and said:--

"Then, if you think those people have been wronged, you are not on ourside, Mr. Brant?"

What to an older and more worldly man would have seemed, and probablywas, only a playful reproach, struck Clarence deeply, and brought hispent-up feelings to his lips. 

"YOU have never wronged them. You couldn't do it; it isn't in yournature. I am on YOUR side, and for you and yours always, Mrs. Peyton. From the first time I saw you on the plains, when I was brought, aragged boy, before you by your husband, I think I would gladly havelaid down my life for you. I don't mind telling you now that I was evenjealous of poor Susy, so anxious was I for the smallest share in yourthoughts, if only for a moment. You could have done anything with me youwished, and I should have been happy, --far happier than I have been eversince. I tell you this, Mrs. Peyton, now, because you have just doubtedif I might be 'on your side, ' but I have been longing to tell it all toyou before, and it is that I am ready to do anything you want, --all youwant, --to be on YOUR SIDE and at YOUR SIDE, now and forever. "

He was so earnest and hearty, and above all so appallingly andblissfully happy, in this relief of his feelings, smiling as if it werethe most natural thing in the world, and so absurdly unconscious of histwenty-two years, his little brown curling mustache, the fire inhis wistful, yearning eyes, and, above all, of his clasped hands andlover-like attitude, that Mrs. Peyton--at first rigid as stone, thensuffused to the eyes--cast a hasty glance round the apartment, put herhandkerchief to her face, and laughed like a girl. 

At which Clarence, by no means discomposed, but rather accepting heremotion as perfectly natural, joined her heartily, and added:--

"It's so, Mrs. Peyton; I'm glad I told you. You don't mind it, do you?"

But Mrs. Peyton had resumed her gravity, and perhaps a touch of herprevious misgivings. 

"I should certainly be very sorry, " she said, looking at him critically, "to object to your sharing your old friendship for your little playmatewith her parents and guardians, or to your expressing it to THEM asfrankly as to her. "

She saw the quick change in his mobile face and the momentary arrest ofits happy expression. She was frightened and yet puzzled. It was not thesensitiveness of a lover at the mention of the loved one's name, and yetit suggested an uneasy consciousness. If his previous impulsive outbursthad been prompted honestly, or even artfully, by his passion for Susy, why had he looked so shocked when she spoke of her?

But Clarence, whose emotion had been caused by the sudden recall of hisknowledge of Susy's own disloyalty to the woman whose searching eyeswere upon him, in his revulsion against the deceit was, for an instant, upon the point of divulging all. Perhaps, if Mrs. Peyton had shown moreconfidence, he would have done so, and materially altered the evolutionof this story. But, happily, it is upon these slight human weaknessesthat your romancer depends, and Clarence, with no other reason than theinstinctive sympathy of youth with youth in its opposition to wisdom andexperience, let the opportunity pass, and took the responsibility of itout of the hands of this chronicler. 

Howbeit, to cover his confusion, he seized upon the second idea that wasin his mind, and stammered, "Susy! Yes, I wanted to speak to you abouther. " Mrs. Peyton held her breath, but the young man went on, althoughhesitatingly, with evident sincerity. "Have you heard from any of herrelations since--since--you adopted her?"

It seemed a natural enough question, although not the sequitur she hadexpected. "No, " she said carelessly. "It was well understood, after thenearest relation--an aunt by marriage--had signed her consent to Susy'sadoption, that there should be no further intercourse with the family. There seemed to us no necessity for reopening the past, and Susy herselfexpressed no desire. " She stopped, and again fixing her handsome eyes onClarence, said, "Do you know any of them?"

But Clarence by this time had recovered himself, and was able to answercarelessly and truthfully that he did not. Mrs. Peyton, still regardinghim closely, added somewhat deliberately, "It matters little now whatrelations she has; Mr. Peyton and I have complete legal control over heruntil she is of age, and we can easily protect her from any folly ofher own or others, or from any of the foolish fancies that sometimesovertake girls of her age and inexperience. "

To her utter surprise, however, Clarence uttered a faint sigh of relief, and his face again recovered its expression of boyish happiness. "I'mglad of it, Mrs. Peyton, " he said heartily. "No one could understandbetter what is for her interest in all things than yourself. Not, " hesaid, with hasty and equally hearty loyalty to his old playmate, "thatI think she would ever go against your wishes, or do anything that sheknows to be wrong, but she is very young and innocent, --as much of achild as ever, don't you think so, Mrs. Peyton?"

It was amusing, yet nevertheless puzzling, to hear this boyish young mancomment upon Susy's girlishness. And Clarence was serious, for he hadquite forgotten in Mrs. Peyton's presence the impression of superioritywhich Susy had lately made upon him. But Mrs. Peyton returned tothe charge, or, rather, to an attack upon what she conceived to beClarence's old position. 

"I suppose she does seem girlish compared to Mary Rogers, who is a muchmore reserved and quiet nature. But Mary is very charming, Mr. Brant, and I am really delighted to have her here with Susy. She has suchlovely dark eyes and such good manners. She has been well brought up, and it is easy to see that her friends are superior people. I mustwrite to them to thank them for her visit, and beg them to let her staylonger. I think you said you didn't know them?"

But Clarence, whose eyes had been thoughtfully and admiringly wanderingover every characteristic detail of the charming apartment, here raisedthem to its handsome mistress, with an apologetic air and a "No" of suchunaffected and complete abstraction, that she was again dumbfounded. Certainly, it could not be Mary in whom he was interested. 

Abandoning any further inquisition for the present, she let the talknaturally fall upon the books scattered about the tables. The youngman knew them all far better than she did, with a cognate knowledge ofothers of which she had never heard. She found herself in the attitudeof receiving information from this boy, whose boyishness, however, seemed to have evaporated, whose tone had changed with the subject, andwho now spoke with the conscious reserve of knowledge. Decidedly, shemust have grown rusty in her seclusion. This came, she thought bitterly, of living alone; of her husband's preoccupation with the property; ofSusy's frivolous caprices. At the end of eight years to be outstrippedby a former cattle-boy of her husband's, and to have her Frenchcorrected in a matter of fact way by this recent pupil of the priests, was really too bad! Perhaps he even looked down upon Susy! She smileddangerously but suavely. 

"You must have worked so hard to educate yourself from nothing, Mr. Brant. You couldn't read, I think, when you first came to us. No? Couldyou really? I know it has been very difficult for Susy to get on withher studies in proportion. We had so much to first eradicate in the wayof manners, style, and habits of thought which the poor child hadpicked up from her companions, and for which SHE was not responsible. Of course, with a boy that does not signify, " she added, with felinegentleness. 

But the barbed speech glanced from the young man's smoothly smilingabstraction. 

"Ah, yes. But those were happy days, Mrs. Peyton, " he answered, with anexasperating return of his previous boyish enthusiasm, "perhaps becauseof our ignorance. I don't think that Susy and I are any happier forknowing that the plains are not as flat as we believed they were, andthat the sun doesn't have to burn a hole in them every night when itsets. But I know I believed that YOU knew everything. When I once sawyou smiling over a book in your hand, I thought it must be a differentone from any that I had ever seen, and perhaps made expressly for you. I can see you there still. Do you know, " quite confidentially, "that youreminded me--of course YOU were much younger--of what I remembered of mymother?"

But Mrs. Peyton's reply of "Ah, indeed, " albeit polite, indicated somecoldness and lack of animation. Clarence rose quickly, but cast a longand lingering look around him. 

"You will come again, Mr. Brant, " said the lady more graciously. "If youare going to ride now, perhaps you would try to meet Mr. Peyton. He islate already, and I am always uneasy when he is out alone, --particularlyon one of those half-broken horses, which they consider good enough forriding here. YOU have ridden them before and understand them, but I amafraid that's another thing WE have got to learn. "

When the young man found himself again confronting the glittering lightof the courtyard, he remembered the interview and the soft twilight ofthe boudoir only as part of a pleasant dream. There was a rude awakeningin the fierce wind, which had increased with the lengthening shadows. It seemed to sweep away the half-sensuous comfort that had pervadedhim, and made him coldly realize that he had done nothing to solve thedifficulties of his relations to Susy. He had lost the one chance ofconfiding to Mrs. Peyton, --if he had ever really intended to do so. It was impossible for him to do it hereafter without a confession ofprolonged deceit. 

He reached the stables impatiently, where his attention was attractedby the sound of excited voices in the corral. Looking within, he wasconcerned to see that one of the vacqueros was holding the draggingbridle of a blown, dusty, and foam-covered horse, around whom a dozenidlers were gathered. Even beneath its coating of dust and foam andthe half-displaced saddle blanket, Clarence immediately recognized thespirited pinto mustang which Peyton had ridden that morning. 

"What's the matter?" said Clarence, from the gateway. 

The men fell apart, glancing at each other. One said quickly inSpanish:--

"Say nothing to HIM. It is an affair of the house. "

But this brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to beoverlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them. "Ah! come, now. What drunken piggishness is this? Speak!"

"The padron has been--perhaps--thrown, " stammered the first speaker. "His horse arrives, --but he does not. We go to inform the senora. "

"No, you don't! mules and imbeciles! Do you want to frighten her todeath? Mount, every one of you, and follow me!"

The men hesitated, but for only a moment. Clarence had a fine assortmentof Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeoexperience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervorand discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guiltyconsciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against thestockade of the corral in fear. In another moment the vacqueros hadhastily mounted, and, with Clarence at their head, were dashing down theroad towards Santa Inez. Here he spread them in open order in the grain, on either side of the track, himself taking the road. 

They did not proceed very far. For when they had reached the gradualslope which marked the decline to the second terrace, Clarence, obeyingan instinct as irresistible as it was unaccountable, which for the lastfew moments had been forcing itself upon him, ordered a halt. The casaand corral had already sunk in the plain behind them; it was the spotwhere the lasso had been thrown at him a few evenings before! Biddingthe men converge slowly towards the road, he went on more cautiously, with his eyes upon the track before him. Presently he stopped. Therewas a ragged displacement of the cracked and crumbling soil and theunmistakable scoop of kicking hoofs. As he stooped to examine them, oneof the men at the right uttered a shout. By the same strange instinctClarence knew that Peyton was found!

He was, indeed, lying there among the wild oats at the right of theroad, but without trace of life or scarcely human appearance. Hisclothes, where not torn and shredded away, were partly turned insideout; his shoulders, neck, and head were a shapeless, undistinguishablemask of dried earth and rags, like a mummy wrapping. His left boot wasgone. His large frame seemed boneless, and, except for the cerements ofhis mud-stiffened clothing, was limp and sodden. 

Clarence raised his head suddenly from a quick examination of the body, and looked at the men around him. One of them was already canteringaway. Clarence instantly threw himself on his horse, and, putting spursto the animal, drew a revolver from his holster and fired over the man'shead. The rider turned in his saddle, saw his pursuer, and pulled up. 

"Go back, " said Clarence, "or my next shot won't MISS you. "

"I was only going to inform the senora, " said the man with a shrug and aforced smile. 

"I will do that, " said Clarence grimly, driving him back with himinto the waiting circle; then turning to them he said slowly, withdeliberate, smileless irony, "And now, my brave gentlemen, --knightsof the bull and gallant mustang hunters, --I want to inform YOU that Ibelieve that Mr. Peyton was MURDERED, and if the man who killed him isanywhere this side of hell, I intend to find him. Good! You understandme! Now lift up the body, --you two, by the shoulders; you two, by thefeet. Let your horses follow. For I intend that you four shall carryhome your master in your arms, on foot. Now forward to the corral by theback trail. Disobey me, or step out of line and"--He raised the revolverominously. 

If the change wrought in the dead man before them was weird andterrifying, no less distinct and ominous was the change that, during thelast few minutes, had come over the living speaker. For it was no longerthe youthful Clarence who sat there, but a haggard, prematurely worn, desperate-looking avenger, lank of cheek, and injected of eye, whosewhite teeth glistened under the brown mustache and thin pale lips thatparted when his restrained breath now and then hurriedly escaped them. 

As the procession moved on, two men slunk behind with the horses. 

"Mother of God! Who is this wolf's whelp?" said Manuel. 

"Hush!" said his companion in a terrified whisper. "Have you not heard?It is the son of Hamilton Brant, the assassin, the duelist, --he whowas fusiladed in Sonora. " He made the sign of the cross quickly. "JesusMaria! Let them look out who have cause, for the blood of his father isin him!"

CHAPTER VII. 

What other speech passed between Clarence and Peyton's retainers was notknown, but not a word of the interview seemed to have been divulged bythose present. It was generally believed and accepted that Judge Peytonmet his death by being thrown from his half-broken mustang, and draggedat its heels, and medical opinion, hastily summoned from Santa Inezafter the body had been borne to the corral, and stripped of itshideous encasings, declared that the neck had been broken, and death hadfollowed instantaneously. An inquest was deemed unnecessary. 

Clarence had selected Mary to break the news to Mrs. Peyton, and thefrightened young girl was too much struck with the change still visiblein his face, and the half authority of his manner, to decline, or evento fully appreciate the calamity that had befallen them. After the firstbenumbing shock, Mrs. Peyton passed into that strange exaltation ofexcitement brought on by the immediate necessity for action, followed bya pallid calm, which the average spectator too often unfairly accepts asincongruous, inadequate, or artificial. There had also occurred oneof those strange compensations that wait on Death or disrupture bycatastrophe: such as the rude shaking down of an unsettled life, theforcible realization of what were vague speculations, the breaking ofold habits and traditions, and the unloosing of half-conscious bonds. Mrs. Peyton, without insensibility to her loss or disloyalty to heraffections, nevertheless felt a relief to know that she was now reallySusy's guardian, free to order her new life wherever and under whatconditions she chose as most favorable to it, and that she could disposeof this house that was wearying to her when Susy was away, and whichthe girl herself had always found insupportable. She could settle thisquestion of Clarence's relations to her daughter out of hand withoutadvice or opposition. She had a brother in the East, who would besummoned to take care of the property. This consideration for the livingpursued her, even while the dead man's presence still awed the hushedhouse; it was in her thoughts as she stood beside his bier and adjustedthe flowers on his breast, which no longer moved for or against thesevanities; and it stayed with her even in the solitude of her darkenedroom. 

But if Mrs. Peyton was deficient, it was Susy who filled the popularidea of a mourner, and whose emotional attitude of a grief-strickendaughter left nothing to be desired. It was she who, when the house wasfilled with sympathizing friends from San Francisco and the few nearneighbors who had hurried with condolences, was overflowing in herreminiscences of the dead man's goodness to her, and her own undyingaffection; who recalled ominous things that he had said, and strangepremonitions of her own, the result of her ever-present filial anxiety;it was she who had hurried home that afternoon, impelled with vaguefears of some impending calamity; it was she who drew a picture ofPeyton as a doting and almost too indulgent parent, which Mary Rogersfailed to recognize, and which brought back vividly to Clarence'srecollection her own childish exaggerations of the Indian massacre. Iam far from saying that she was entirely insincere or merely acting atthese moments; at times she was taken with a mild hysteria, brought onby the exciting intrusion of this real event in her monotonous life, by the attentions of her friends, the importance of her suffering as anonly child, and the advancement of her position as the heiress of theRobles Rancho. If her tears were near the surface, they were at leastgenuine, and filmed her violet eyes and reddened her pretty eyelidsquite as effectually as if they had welled from the depths of her being. Her black frock lent a matured dignity to her figure, and paled herdelicate complexion with the refinement of suffering. Even Clarence wasmoved in that dark and haggard abstraction that had settled upon himsince his strange outbreak over the body of his old friend. 

The extent of that change had not been noticed by Mrs. Peyton, whohad only observed that Clarence had treated her grief with a grave andsilent respect. She was grateful for that. A repetition of his boyishimpulsiveness would have been distasteful to her at such a moment. Sheonly thought him more mature and more subdued, and as the only man nowin her household his services had been invaluable in the emergency. 

The funeral had taken place at Santa Inez, where half the countygathered to pay their last respects to their former fellow-citizen andneighbor, whose legal and combative victories they had admired, and whomdeath had lifted into a public character. The family were returning tothe house the same afternoon, Mrs. Peyton and the girls in one carriage, the female house-servants in another, and Clarence on horseback. Theyhad reached the first plateau, and Clarence was riding a little inadvance, when an extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond, began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the firstcarriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement itwas Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he wasnevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion. In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted downwith a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, andalmost rudely demanded his business. 

"Gord, Clarence, it ain't foolin'. The Sisters' title was decidedyesterday. "

"I knew it, you fool! It's YOUR title! You were already on your land andin possession. What the devil are you doing HERE?"

"Yes, --but, " stammered Jim, "all the boys holding that title moved uphere to 'make the division' and grab all they could. And I followed. AndI found out that they were going to grab Judge Peyton's house, becauseit was on the line, if they could, and findin' you was all away, by GordTHEY DID! and they're in it! And I stoled out and rode down here to warnye. "

He stopped, looked at Clarence, glanced darkly around him and then downon his accoutrements. Even in that supreme moment of sincerity, he couldnot resist the possibilities of the situation. 

"It's as much as my life's worth, " he said gloomily. "But, " with a darkglance at his weapons, "I'll sell it dearly. "

"Jim!" said Clarence, in a terrible voice, "you're not lying again?"

"No, " said Jim hurriedly. "I swear it, Clarence! No! Honest Injin thistime. And look. I'll help you. They ain't expectin' you yet, and theythink ye'll come by the road. Ef I raised a scare off there by thecorral, while you're creepin' ROUND BY THE BACK, mebbe you could get inwhile they're all lookin' for ye in front, don't you see? I'll raise abig row, and they needn't know but what ye've got wind of it and broughta party with you from Santa Inez. "

In a flash Clarence had wrought a feasible plan out of Jim's fantasy. 

"Good, " he said, wringing his old companion's hand. "Go back quietlynow; hang round the corral, and when you see the carriage climbing thelast terrace raise your alarm. Don't mind how loud it is, there'll benobody but the servants in the carriages. "

He rode quickly back to the first carriage, at whose window Mrs. Peyton's calm face was already questioning him. He told her briefly andconcisely of the attack, and what he proposed to do. 

"You have shown yourself so strong in matters of worse moment thanthis, " he added quietly, "that I have no fears for your courage. I haveonly to ask you to trust yourself to me, to put you back at once in yourown home. Your presence there, just now, is the one important thing, whatever happens afterwards. "

She recognized his maturer tone and determined manner, and noddedassent. More than that, a faint fire came into her handsome eyes; thetwo girls kindled their own at that flaming beacon, and sat with flushedchecks and suspended, indignant breath. They were Western Americans, andnot over much used to imposition. 

"You must get down before we raise the hill, and follow me on footthrough the grain. I was thinking, " he added, turning to Mrs. Peyton, "of your boudoir window. "

She had been thinking of it, too, and nodded. 

"The vine has loosened the bars, " he said. 

"If it hasn't, we must squeeze through them, " she returned simply. 

At the end of the terrace Clarence dismounted, and helped them from thecarriage. He then gave directions to the coachmen to follow the roadslowly to the corral in front of the casa, and tied his horse behindthe second carriage. Then, with Mrs. Peyton and the two young girls, heplunged into the grain. 

It was hot, it was dusty, their thin shoes slipped in the crumblingadobe, and the great blades caught in their crape draperies, but theyuttered no complaint. Whatever ulterior thought was in their minds, theywere bent only on one thing at that moment, --on entering the house atany hazard. Mrs. Peyton had lived long enough on the frontier to knowthe magic power of POSSESSION. Susy already was old enough to feel theacute feminine horror of the profanation of her own belongings by alienhands. Clarence, more cognizant of the whole truth than the others, wasequally silent and determined; and Mary Rogers was fired with the zealof loyalty. 

Suddenly a series of blood-curdling yells broke from the directionof the corral, and they stopped. But Clarence at once recognized thewell-known war-whoop imitation of Jim Hooker, --infinitely more gruesomeand appalling than the genuine aboriginal challenge. A half dozen shotsfired in quick succession had evidently the same friendly origin. 

"Now is our time, " said Clarence eagerly. "We must run for the house. "

They had fortunately reached by this time the angle of the adobe wall ofthe casa, and the long afternoon shadows of the building were in theirfavor. They pressed forward eagerly with the sounds of Jim Hooker's shamencounter still in their ears, mingled with answering shouts of defiancefrom strange voices within the building towards the front. 

They rapidly skirted the wall, even passing boldly before the backgateway, which seemed empty and deserted, and the next moment stoodbeside the narrow window of the boudoir. Clarence's surmises werecorrect; the iron grating was not only loose, but yielded to a vigorouswrench, the vine itself acting as a lever to pull out the rusty bars. The young man held out his hand, but Mrs. Peyton, with the suddenagility of a young girl, leaped into the window, followed by Mary andSusy. The inner casement yielded to her touch; the next moment theywere within the room. Then Mrs. Peyton's flushed and triumphant facereappeared at the window. 

"It's all right; the men are all in the courtyard, or in the front ofthe house. The boudoir door is strong, and we can bolt them out. "

"It won't be necessary, " said Clarence quietly; "you will not bedisturbed. "

"But are you not coming in?" she asked timidly, holding the window open. 

Clarence looked at her with his first faint smile since Peyton's death. 

"Of course I am, but not in THAT way. I am going in by THE FRONT GATE. "

She would have detained him, but, with a quick wave of his hand, he lefther, and ran swiftly around the wall of the casa toward the front. Thegate was half open; a dozen excited men were gathered before it and inthe archway, and among them, whitened with dust, blackened with powder, and apparently glutted with rapine, and still holding a revolver in hishand, was Jim Hooker! As Clarence approached, the men quickly retreatedinside the gate and closed it, but not before he had exchanged a meaningglance with Jim. When he reached the gate, a man from within roughlydemanded his business. 

"I wish to see the leader of this party, " said Clarence quietly. 

"I reckon you do, " returned the man, with a short laugh. "But Ikalkilate HE don't return the compliment. "

"He probably will when he reads this note to his employer, " continuedClarence still coolly, selecting a paper from his pocketbook. It wasaddressed to Francisco Robles, Superintendent of the Sisters' Title, anddirected him to give Mr. Clarence Brant free access to the property andthe fullest information concerning it. The man took it, glanced at it, looked again at Clarence, and then passed the paper to a third man amongthe group in the courtyard. The latter read it, and approached the gatecarelessly. 

"Well, what do you want?"

"I am afraid you have the advantage of me in being able to transactbusiness through bars, " said Clarence, with slow but malevolentdistinctness, "and as mine is important, I think you had better open thegate to me. "

The slight laugh that his speech had evoked from the bystanders waschecked as the leader retorted angrily:--

"That's all very well; but how do I know that you're the man representedin that letter? Pancho Robles may know you, but I don't. "

"That you can find out very easily, " said Clarence. "There is a manamong your party who knows me, --Mr. Hooker. Ask him. "

The man turned, with a quick mingling of surprise and suspicion, to thegloomy, imperturbable Hooker. Clarence could not hear the reply of thatyoung gentleman, but it was evidently not wanting in his usual dark, enigmatical exaggeration. The man surlily opened the gate. 

"All the same, " he said, still glancing suspiciously at Hooker, "I don'tsee what HE'S got to do with you. "

"A great deal, " said Clarence, entering the courtyard, and stepping intothe veranda; "HE'S ONE OF MY TENANTS. "

"Your WHAT?" said the man, with a coarse laugh of incredulity. 

"My tenants, " repeated Clarence, glancing around the courtyardcarelessly. Nevertheless, he was relieved to notice that the threeor four Mexicans of the party did not seem to be old retainers of therancho. There was no evidence of the internal treachery he had feared. 

"Your TENANTS!" echoed the man, with an uneasy glance at the faces ofthe others. 

"Yes, " said Clarence, with business brevity; "and, for the matter ofthat, although I have no reason to be particularly proud of it, SO AREYOU ALL. You ask my business here. It seems to be the same as yours, --tohold possession of this house! With this difference, however, " hecontinued, taking a document from his pocket. "Here is the certificate, signed by the County Clerk, of the bill of sale of the entire Sisters'title to ME. It includes the whole two leagues from Fair Plains tothe old boundary line of this rancho, which you forcibly entered thismorning. There is the document; examine it if you like. The only shadowof a claim you could have to this property you would have to derive fromME. The only excuse you could have for this act of lawlessness wouldbe orders from ME. And all that you have done this morning is only theassertion of MY legal right to this house. If I disavow your act, as Imight, I leave you as helpless as any tramp that was ever kicked froma doorstep, --as any burglar that was ever collared on the fence by aconstable. "

It was the truth. There was no denying the authority of the document, the facts of the situation, or its ultimate power and significance. There was consternation, stupefaction, and even a half-humorousrecognition of the absurdity of their position on most of the facesaround him. Incongruous as the scene was, it was made still moregrotesque by the attitude of Jim Hooker. Ruthlessly abandoning theparty of convicted trespassers, he stalked gloomily over to the sideof Clarence, with the air of having been all the time scornfully inthe secret and a mien of wearied victoriousness, and thus halting, hedisdainfully expectorated tobacco juice on the ground between himand his late companions, as if to form a line of demarcation. Thefew Mexicans began to edge towards the gateway. This defection of hisfollowers recalled the leader, who was no coward, to himself again. 

"Shut the gate, there!" he shouted. 

As its two sides clashed together again, he turned deliberately toClarence. 

"That's all very well, young man, as regards the TITLE. You may haveBOUGHT up the land, and legally own every square inch of howlingwilderness between this and San Francisco, and I wish you joy ofyour d--d fool's bargain; you may have got a whole circus like that, "pointing to the gloomy Jim, "at your back. But with all your money andall your friends you've forgotten one thing. You haven't got possession, and we have. "

"That's just where we differ, " said Clarence coolly, "for if you takethe trouble to examine the house, you will see that it is already inpossession of Mrs. Peyton, --MY TENANT. "

He paused to give effect to his revelations. But he was, nevertheless, unprepared for an unrehearsed dramatic situation. Mrs. Peyton, who hadbeen tired of waiting, and was listening in the passage, at the mentionof her name, entered the gallery, followed by the young ladies. Theslight look of surprise upon her face at the revelation she had justheard of Clarence's ownership, only gave the suggestion of her havingbeen unexpectedly disturbed in her peaceful seclusion. One of theMexicans turned pale, with a frightened glance at the passage, as if heexpected the figure of the dead man to follow. 

The group fell back. The game was over, --and lost. No one recognized itmore quickly than the gamblers themselves. More than that, desperate andlawless as they were, they still retained the chivalry of Western men, and every hat was slowly doffed to the three black figures that stoodsilently in the gallery. And even apologetic speech began to loosen theclenched teeth of the discomfited leader. 

"We--were--told there was no one in the house, " he stammered. 

"And it was the truth, " said a pert, youthful, yet slightly affectedvoice. "For we climbed into the window just as you came in at the gate. "

It was Susy's words that stung their ears again; but it was Susy'spretty figure, suddenly advanced and in a slightly theatrical attitude, that checked their anger. There had been a sudden ominous silence, as the whole plot of rescue seemed to be revealed to them in thoseaudacious words. But a sense of the ludicrous, which too often was theonly perception that ever mitigated the passions of such assemblies, here suddenly asserted itself. The leader burst into a loud laugh, whichwas echoed by the others, and, with waving hats, the whole party sweptpeacefully out through the gate. 

"But what does all this mean about YOUR purchasing the land, Mr. Brant?"said Mrs. Peyton quickly, fixing her eyes intently on Clarence. 

A faint color--the useless protest of his truthful blood--came to hischeek. 

"The house is YOURS, and yours alone, Mrs. Peyton. The purchase of thesisters' title was a private arrangement between Mr. Peyton and myself, in view of an emergency like this. "

She did not, however, take her proud, searching eyes from his face, andhe was forced to turn away. 

"It was SO like dear, good, thoughtful papa, " said Susy. "Why, blessme, " in a lower voice, "if that isn't that lying old Jim Hooker standingthere by the gate!"

CHAPTER VIII. 

Judge Peyton had bequeathed his entire property unconditionally to hiswife. But his affairs were found to be greatly in disorder, and hispapers in confusion, and although Mrs. Peyton could discover no actualrecord of the late transaction with Mr. Brant, which had saved her thepossession of the homestead, it was evident that he had spent large sumsin speculative attempts to maintain the integrity of his estate. Thatenormous domain, although perfectly unencumbered, had been neverthelessunremunerative, partly through the costs of litigation and partlythrough the systematic depredations to which its great size and longline of unprotected boundary had subjected it. It had been invadedby squatters and "jumpers, " who had sown and reaped crops withoutdiscovery; its cattle and wild horses had strayed or been driven beyondits ill-defined and hopeless limits. Against these difficulties thewidow felt herself unable and unwilling to contend, and with the adviceof her friends and her lawyer, she concluded to sell the estate, exceptthat portion covered by the Sisters' title, which, with the homestead, had been reconveyed to her by Clarence. She retired with Susy to thehouse in San Francisco, leaving Clarence to occupy and hold the casa, with her servants, for her until order was restored. The Robles Ranchothus became the headquarters of the new owner of the Sisters' title, from which he administered its affairs, visited its incumbencies, overlooked and surveyed its lands, and--occasionally--collected itsrents. There were not wanting critics who averred that these werescarcely remunerative, and that the young San Francisco fine gentleman, who was only Hamilton Brant's son, after all, yet who wished to apethe dignity and degree of a large landholder, had made a very foolishbargain. I grieve to say that one of his own tenants, namely, JimHooker, in his secret heart inclined to that belief, and looked uponClarence's speculation as an act of far-seeing and inordinate vanity. 

Indeed, the belligerent Jim had partly--and of course darkly--intimatedsomething of this to Susy in their brief reunion at the casa duringthe few days that followed its successful reoccupation. And Clarence, remembering her older caprices, and her remark on her first recognitionof him, was quite surprised at the easy familiarity of her receptionof this forgotten companion of their childhood. But he was still moreconcerned in noticing, for the first time, a singular sympatheticunderstanding of each other, and an odd similarity of occasional actionand expression between them. It was a part of this monstrous peculiaritythat neither the sympathy nor the likeness suggested any particularfriendship or amity in the pair, but rather a mutual antagonism andsuspicion. Mrs. Peyton, coldly polite to Clarence's former COMPANION, but condescendingly gracious to his present TENANT and retainer, did notnotice it, preoccupied with the annoyance and pain of Susy's frequentreferences to the old days of their democratic equality. 

"You don't remember, Jim, the time that you painted my face in thewagon, and got me up as an Indian papoose?" she said mischievously. 

But Jim, who had no desire to recall his previous humble position beforeMrs. Peyton or Clarence, was only vaguely responsive. Clarence, althoughjoyfully touched at this seeming evidence of Susy's loyalty to the past, nevertheless found himself even more acutely pained at the distressit caused Mrs. Peyton, and was as relieved as she was by Hooker'sreticence. For he had seen little of Susy since Peyton's death, andthere had been no repetition of their secret interviews. Neither had he, nor she as far as he could judge, noticed the omission. He had been morethan usually kind, gentle, and protecting in his manner towards her, with little reference, however, to any response from her, yet he wasvaguely conscious of some change in his feelings. He attributed it, whenhe thought of it at all, to the exciting experiences through which hehad passed; to some sentiment of responsibility to his dead friend; andto another secret preoccupation that was always in his mind. He believedit would pass in time. Yet he felt a certain satisfaction that she wasno longer able to trouble him, except, of course, when she pained Mrs. Peyton, and then he was half conscious of taking the old attitude ofthe dead husband in mediating between them. Yet so great was hisinexperience that he believed, with pathetic simplicity of perception, that all this was due to the slow maturing of his love for her, andthat he was still able to make her happy. But this was something tobe thought of later. Just now Providence seemed to have offered him avocation and a purpose that his idle adolescence had never known. He didnot dream that his capacity for patience was only the slow wasting ofhis love. 

Meantime that more wonderful change and recreation of the Californianlandscape, so familiar, yet always so young, had come to the rancho. Theleague-long terrace that had yellowed, whitened, and wasted for half ayear beneath a staring, monotonous sky, now under sailing clouds, flyingand broken shafts of light, and sharply defined lines of rain, had takena faint hue of resurrection. The dust that had muffled the roads andbyways, and choked the low oaks that fringed the sunken canada, hadlong since been laid. The warm, moist breath of the southwest trades hadsoftened the hard, dry lines of the landscape, and restored its color asof a picture over which a damp sponge had been passed. The broad expanseof plateau before the casa glistened and grew dark. The hidden woods ofthe canada, cleared and strengthened in their solitude, dripped alongthe trails and hollows that were now transformed into running streams. The distinguishing madrono near the entrance to the rancho had changedits crimson summer suit and masqueraded in buff and green. 

Yet there were leaden days, when half the prospect seemed to be seenthrough palisades of rain; when the slight incline between the terracesbecame a tumultuous cascade, and the surest hoofs slipped on trails ofunctuous mud; when cattle were bogged a few yards from the highway, andthe crossing of the turnpike road was a dangerous ford. There weredays of gale and tempest, when the shriveled stalks of giant oats werestricken like trees, and lay across each other in rigid angles, anda roar as of the sea came up from the writhing treetops in the sunkenvalley. There were long weary nights of steady downpour, hammeringon the red tiles of the casa, and drumming on the shingles of thenew veranda, which was more terrible to be borne. Alone, but for theservants, and an occasional storm-stayed tenant from Fair Plains, Clarence might have, at such times, questioned the effect of thisseclusion upon his impassioned nature. But he had already beenaccustomed to monastic seclusion in his boyish life at El Refugio, andhe did not reflect that, for that very reason, its indulgences mighthave been dangerous. From time to time letters reached him from theouter world of San Francisco, --a few pleasant lines from Mrs. Peyton, inanswer to his own chronicle of his half stewardship, giving the news ofthe family, and briefly recounting their movements. She was afraid thatSusy's sensitive nature chafed under the restriction of mourning in thegay city, but she trusted to bring her back for a change to Robles whenthe rains were over. This was a poor substitute for those brief, happyglimpses of the home circle which had so charmed him, but he acceptedit stoically. He wandered over the old house, from which the perfumeof domesticity seemed to have evaporated, yet, notwithstanding Mrs. Peyton's playful permission, he never intruded upon the sanctity of theboudoir, and kept it jealously locked. 

He was sitting in Peyton's business room one morning, when Incarnacionentered. Clarence had taken a fancy to this Indian, half steward, halfvacquero, who had reciprocated it with a certain dog-like fidelity, but also a feline indirectness that was part of his nature. He had beenearly prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, wherethe young American's generosity had left a romantic record among thecommon people. He had been pleased to approve of his follies beforethe knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commendeditself to him as corroborative testimony. "Of true hidalgo blood, markyou, " he had said oracularly. "Wherefore was his father sacrificed bymongrels! As to the others, believe me, --bah!"

He stood there, sombrero in hand, murky and confidential, steamingthrough his soaked serape and exhaling a blended odor of equineperspiration and cigarette smoke. 

"It was, perhaps, as the master had noticed, a brigand's own day!Bullying, treacherous, and wicked! It blew you off your horse if you somuch as lifted your arms and let the wind get inside your serape; and asfor the mud, --caramba! in fifty varas your forelegs were like bears, andyour hoofs were earthen plasters!"

Clarence knew that Incarnacion had not sought him with meremeteorological information, and patiently awaited further developments. The vacquero went on:--

"But one of the things this beast of a weather did was to wash down thestalks of the grain, and to clear out the trough and hollows between, and to make level the fields, and--look you! to uncover the stones andrubbish and whatever the summer dust had buried. Indeed, it was even asa miracle that Jose Mendez one day, after the first showers, came upona silver button from his calzas, which he had lost in the early summer. And it was only that morning that, remembering how much and with whatfire Don Clarencio had sought the missing boot from the foot of theSenor Peyton when his body was found, he, Incarnacion, had thought hewould look for it on the falda of the second terrace. And behold, Motherof God it was there! Soaked with mud and rain, but the same as when thesenor was alive. To the very spur!"

He drew the boot from beneath his serape and laid it before Clarence. The young man instantly recognized it, in spite of its weather-beatencondition and its air of grotesque and drunken inconsistency to theusually trim and correct appearance of Peyton when alive. "It is thesame, " he said, in a low voice. 

"Good!" said Incarnacion. "Now, if Don Clarencio will examine theAmerican spur, he will see--what? A few horse-hairs twisted and caughtin the sharp points of the rowel. Good! Is it the hair of the horse thatSenor rode? Clearly not; and in truth not. It is too long for the flanksand belly of the horse; it is not the same color as the tail and themane. How comes it there? It comes from the twisted horsehair rope of ariata, and not from the braided cowhide thongs of the regular lasso of avacquero. The lasso slips not much, but holds; the riata slips much andstrangles. "

"But Mr. Peyton was not strangled, " said Clarence quickly. 

"No, for the noose of the riata was perhaps large, --who knows? Itmight have slipped down his arms, pinioned him, and pulled him off. Truly!--such has been known before. Then on the ground it slipped again, or he perhaps worked it off to his feet where it caught on his spur, andthen he was dragged until the boot came off, and behold! he was dead. "

This had been Clarence's own theory of the murder, but he had onlyhalf confided it to Incarnacion. He silently examined the spur with theaccusing horse-hair, and placed it in his desk. Incarnacion continued:--

"There is not a vacquero in the whole rancho who has a horse-hair riata. We use the braided cowhide; it is heavier and stronger; it is forthe bull and not the man. The horse-hair riata comes from over therange--south. "

There was a dead silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain uponthe roof of the veranda. Incarnacion slightly shrugged his shoulders. 

"Don Clarencio does not know the southern county? Francisco Robles, cousin of the 'Sisters, '--he they call 'Pancho, '--comes from the south. Surely when Don Clarencio bought the title he saw Francisco, for he wasthe steward?"

"I dealt only with the actual owners and through my bankers in SanFrancisco, " returned Clarence abstractedly. 

Incarnacion looked through the yellow corners of his murky eyes at hismaster. 

"Pedro Valdez, who was sent away by Senor Peyton, is the foster-brotherof Francisco. They were much together. Now that Francisco is rich fromthe gold Don Clarencio paid for the title, they come not much together. But Pedro is rich, too. Mother of God! He gambles and is a finegentleman. He holds his head high, --even over the Americanos he gambleswith. Truly, they say he can shoot with the best of them. He boasts andswells himself, this Pedro! He says if all the old families were likehim, they would drive those western swine back over the mountainsagain. "

Clarence raised his eyes, caught a subtle yellow flash fromIncarnacion's, gazed at him suddenly, and rose. 

"I don't think I have ever seen him, " he said quietly. "Thank you forbringing me the spur. But keep the knowledge of it to yourself, goodNascio, for the present. "

Nascio nevertheless still lingered. Perceiving which, Clarence handedhim a cigarette and proceeded to light one himself. He knew that thevacquero would reroll his, and that that always deliberate occupationwould cover and be an excuse for further confidence. 

"The Senora Peyton does not perhaps meet this Pedro in the society ofSan Francisco?"

"Surely not. The senora is in mourning and goes not out in society, norwould she probably go anywhere where she would meet a dismissed servantof her husband. "

Incarnacion slowly lit his cigarette, and said between the puffs, "Andthe senorita--she would not meet him?"

"Assuredly not. "

"And, " continued Incarnacion, throwing down the match and putting hisfoot on it, "if this boaster, this turkey-cock, says she did, you couldput him out like that?"

"Certainly, " said Clarence, with an easy confidence he was, however, farfrom feeling, "if he really SAID it--which I doubt. "

"Ah, truly, " said Incarnacion; "who knows? It may be another SenoritaSilsbee. "

"The senora's adopted daughter is called MISS PEYTON, friend Nascio. Youforget yourself, " said Clarence quietly. 

"Ah, pardon!" said Incarnacion with effusive apology; "but she was bornSilsbee. Everybody knows it; she herself has told it to Pepita. TheSenor Peyton bequeathed his estate to the Senora Peyton. He namednot the senorita! Eh, what would you? It is the common cackle of thebarnyard. But I say 'Mees Silsbee. ' For look you. There is a Silsbee ofSacramento, the daughter of her aunt, who writes letters to her. Pepitahas seen them! And possibly it is only that Mees of whom the brigandPedro boasts. "

"Possibly, " said Clarence, "but as far as this rancho is concerned, friend Nascio, thou wilt understand--and I look to thee to make theothers understand--that there is no Senorita SILSBEE here, only theSenorita PEYTON, the respected daughter of the senora thy mistress!" Hespoke with the quaint mingling of familiarity and paternal gravity ofthe Spanish master--a faculty he had acquired at El Refugio in a likevicarious position, and which never failed as a sign of authority. "Andnow, " he added gravely, "get out of this, friend, with God's blessing, and see that thou rememberest what I told thee. "

The retainer, with equal gravity, stepped backwards, saluted with hissombrero until the stiff brim scraped the floor, and then solemnlywithdrew. 

Left to himself, Clarence remained for an instant silent and thoughtfulbefore the oven-like hearth. So! everybody knew Susy's real relations tothe Peytons, and everybody but Mrs. Peyton, perhaps, knew that shewas secretly corresponding with some one of her own family. In othercircumstances he might have found some excuse for this assertion of herindependence and love of her kindred, but in her attitude towards Mrs. Peyton it seemed monstrous. It appeared impossible that Mrs. Peytonshould not have heard of it, or suspected the young girl's disaffection. Perhaps she had, --it was another burden laid upon her shoulders, --butthe proud woman had kept it to herself. A film of moisture came acrosshis eyes. I fear he thought less of the suggestion of Susy's secretmeeting with Pedro, or Incarnacion's implied suspicions that Pedro wasconcerned in Peyton's death, than of this sentimental possibility. Heknew that Pedro had been hated by the others on account of his position;he knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predispositionto extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, andparticularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road, it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue thanphysical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put uponPedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance toPeyton's own half-scornful intimation of the only kind of retaliationthat Pedro would be likely to take. The unsuccessful attempt uponhimself he had always thought might have been an accident, or if it wasreally a premeditated assault, it might have been intended actually forHIMSELF and not Peyton, as he had first thought, and his old friend hadsuffered for HIM, through some mistake of the assailant. The purpose, which alone seemed wanting, might have been to remove Clarence as apossible witness who had overheard their conspiracy--how much of it theydid not know--on the Fair Plains Road that night. The only clue he heldto the murderer in the spur locked in his desk, merely led him beyondthe confines of the rancho, but definitely nowhere else. It was, however, some relief to know that the crime was not committed by one ofPeyton's retainers, nor the outcome of domestic treachery. 

After some consideration he resolved to seek Jim Hooker, who might bepossessed of some information respecting Susy's relations, either fromthe young girl's own confidences or from Jim's personal knowledge of theold frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton, he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the younggirl's own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, howeverdistasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead thesense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had alwaysbelieved was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And hehad an instinctive reliance on her fellow poseur's ability to detect it. A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone, he rode to Fair Plains. 

The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to haveincreased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changedagain. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge andreeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, afull-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detourbefore the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkinsfarm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quiteunprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, athree-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared!There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentleacclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, anda part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabinshowed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. Butthe house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed, the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull, blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone wasintact. 

Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weekshad elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof withJim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look ofyears of abandonment and decay. The wild land seemed to have thrown offits yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all itsprimal forces over the freed soil. Wild oats and mustard were springingalready in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreadingover a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles. Somebattered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as ifthey had been relics of the earliest immigration. 

Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across theroad. His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of thekitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slightfigure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking headsand shoulders of her parents. The face of the young girl was pale anddrawn with anxiety, at which Clarence's simple astonishment took a shadeof concern. 

"I am looking for Mr. Hooker, " he said uneasily. "And I don't seem to beable to find either him or his house. "

"And you don't know what's gone of him?" said the girl quickly. 

"No; I haven't seen him for two weeks. "

"There, I told you so!" said the girl, turning nervously to her parents. "I knew it. He hasn't seen him for two weeks. " Then, looking almosttearfully at Clarence's face, she said, "No more have we. "

"But, " said Clarence impatiently, "something must have happened. Whereis his house?"

"Taken away by them jumpers, " interrupted the old farmer; "a lot ofroughs that pulled it down and carted it off in a jiffy before our veryeyes without answerin' a civil question to me or her. But he wasn'tthere, nor before, nor since. "

"No, " added the old woman, with flashing eyes, "or he'd let 'em havewhat ther' was in his six-shooters. "

"No, he wouldn't, mother, " said the girl impatiently, "he'd CHANGED, andwas agin all them ideas of force and riotin'. He was for peace andlaw all the time. Why, the day before we missed him he was tellin' meCalifornia never would be decent until people obeyed the laws and thetitles were settled. And for that reason, because he wouldn't fightagin the law, or without the consent of the law, they've killed him, orkidnapped him away. "

The girl's lips quivered, and her small brown hands twisted the edges ofher blue checked apron. Although this new picture of Jim's peacefulnesswas as astounding and unsatisfactory as his own disappearance, there wasno doubt of the sincerity of poor Phoebe's impression. 

In vain did Clarence point out to them there must be some mistake; thatthe trespassers--the so-called jumpers--really belonged to the sameparty as Hooker, and would have no reason to dispossess him; that, infact, they were all HIS, Clarence's, tenants. In vain he assured them ofHooker's perfect security in possession; that he could have driven theintruders away by the simple exhibition of his lease, or that he couldhave even called a constable from the town of Fair Plains to protect himfrom mere lawlessness. In vain did he assure them of his intention tofind his missing friend, and reinstate him at any cost. The convictionthat the unfortunate young man had been foully dealt with was fixed inthe minds of the two women. For a moment Clarence himself was staggeredby it. 

"You see, " said the young girl, with a kindling face, "the day beforehe came back from Robles, ther' were some queer men hangin' round hiscabin, but as they were the same kind that went off with him the day theSisters' title was confirmed, we thought nothing of it. But when hecame back from you he seemed worried and anxious, and wasn't a bit likehimself. We thought perhaps he'd got into some trouble there, or beendisappointed. He hadn't, had he, Mr. Brant?" continued Phoebe, with anappealing look. 

"By no means, " said Clarence warmly. "On the contrary, he was able to dohis friends good service there, and was successful in what he attempted. Mrs. Peyton was very grateful. Of course he told you what had happened, and what he did for us, " continued Clarence, with a smile. 

He had already amused himself on the way with a fanciful conceptionof the exaggerated account Jim had given of his exploits. But thebewildered girl shook her head. 

"No, he didn't tell us ANYTHING. "

Clarence was really alarmed. This unprecedented abstention of Hooker'swas portentous. 

"He didn't say anything but what I told you about law and order, "she went on; "but that same night we heard a good deal of talking andshouting in the cabin and around it. And the next day he was talkingwith father, and wanting to know how HE kept his land without troublefrom outsiders. "

"And I said, " broke in Hopkins, "that I guessed folks didn't bother aman with women folks around, and that I kalkilated that I wasn't quiteas notorious for fightin' as he was. "

"And he said, " also interrupted Mrs. Hopkins, "and quite in his nat'ralway, too, --gloomy like, you remember, Cyrus, " appealingly to herhusband, --"that that was his curse. "

The smile that flickered around Clarence's mouth faded, however, as hecaught sight of Phoebe's pleading, interrogating eyes. It was really toobad. Whatever change had come over the rascal it was too evident thathis previous belligerent personality had had its full effect upon thesimple girl, and that, hereafter, one pair of honest eyes would bewistfully following him. 

Perplexed and indignant, Clarence again closely questioned her as to thepersonnel of the trespassing party who had been seen once or twice sincepassing over the field. He had at last elicited enough information toidentify one of them as Gilroy, the leader of the party that had invadedRobles rancho. His cheek flushed. Even if they had wished to take atheatrical and momentary revenge on Hooker for the passing treachery tothem which they had just discovered, although such retaliation wasonly transitory, and they could not hold the land, it was an insultto Clarence himself, whose tenant Jim was, and subversive of all theirlegally acquired rights. He would confront this Gilroy at once; hishalf-wild encampment was only a few miles away, just over the boundariesof the Robles estate. Without stating his intention, he took leave ofthe Hopkins family with the cheerful assurance that he would probablyreturn with some news of Hooker, and rode away. 

The trail became more indistinct and unfrequented as it diverged fromthe main road, and presently lost itself in the slope towards the east. The horizon grew larger: there were faint bluish lines upon it which heknew were distant mountains; beyond this a still fainter white line--theSierran snows. Presently he intersected a trail running south, andremarked that it crossed the highway behind him, where he had once metthe two mysterious horsemen. They had evidently reached the terracethrough the wild oats by that trail. A little farther on were afew groups of sheds and canvas tents in a bare and open space, withscattered cattle and horsemen, exactly like an encampment, or thegathering of a country fair. As Clarence rode down towards them he couldsee that his approach was instantly observed, and that a simultaneousmovement was made as if to anticipate him. For the first time herealized the possible consequences of his visit, single-handed, but itwas too late to retrace his steps. With a glance at his holster, he rodeboldly forward to the nearest shed. A dozen men hovered near him, butsomething in his quiet, determined manner held them aloof. Gilroy wason the threshold in his shirtsleeves. A single look showed him thatClarence was alone, and with a careless gesture of his hand he warnedaway his own followers. 

"You've got a sort of easy way of droppin' in whar you ain't invited, Brant, " he said with a grim smile, which was not, however, without acertain air of approval. "Got it from your father, didn't you?"

"I don't know, but I don't believe HE ever thought it necessary to warntwenty men of the approach of ONE, " replied Clarence, in the same tone. "I had no time to stand on ceremony, for I have just come from Hooker'squarter section at Fair Plains. "

Gilroy smiled again, and gazed abstractedly at the sky. 

"You know as well as I do, " said Clarence, controlling his voice withan effort, "that what you have done there will have to be undone, if youwish to hold even those lawless men of yours together, or keep yourselfand them from being run into the brush like highwaymen. I've no fear forthat. Neither do I care to know what was your motive in doing it; but Ican only tell you that if it was retaliation, I alone was and still amresponsible for Hooker's action at the rancho. I came here to know justwhat you have done with him, and, if necessary, to take his place. "

"You're just a little too previous in your talk, I reckon, Brant, "returned Gilroy lazily, "and as to legality, I reckon we stand on thesame level with yourself, just here. Beginnin' with what you came for:as we don't know where your Jim Hooker is, and as we ain't done anythin'to HIM, we don't exackly see what we could do with YOU in his place. Ez to our motives, --well, we've got a good deal to say about THAT. We reckoned that he wasn't exackly the kind of man we wanted for aneighbor. His pow'ful fightin' style didn't suit us peaceful folks, andwe thought it rather worked agin this new 'law and order' racket to havesuch a man about, to say nuthin' of it prejudicin' quiet settlers. He had too many revolvers for one man to keep his eye on, and wasaltogether too much steeped in blood, so to speak, for ordinary washin'and domestic purposes! His hull get up was too deathlike and clammy; sowe persuaded him to leave. We just went there, all of us, and exhortedhim. We stayed round there two days and nights, takin' turns, talkin'with him, nuthin' more, only selecting subjects in his own style toplease him, until he left! And then, as we didn't see any use for hishouse there, we took it away. Them's the cold facts, Brant, " he added, with a certain convincing indifference that left no room for doubt, "andyou can stand by 'em. Now, workin' back to the first principle you laiddown, --that we'll have to UNDO what we've DONE, --we don't agree withyou, for we've taken a leaf outer your own book. We've got it herein black and white. We've got a bill o' sale of Hooker's house andpossession, and we're on the land in place of him, --AS YOUR TENANTS. "He reentered the shanty, took a piece of paper from a soap-box on theshell, and held it out to Clarence. "Here it is. It's a fair and squaredeal, Brant. We gave him, as it says here, a hundred dollars for it! Nohumbuggin', but the hard cash, by Jiminy! AND HE TOOK THE MONEY. "

The ring of truth in the man's voice was as unmistakable as thesignature in Jim's own hand. Hooker had sold out! Clarence turnedhastily away. 

"We don't know where he went, " continued Gilroy grimly, "but I reckonyou ain't over anxious to see him NOW. And I kin tell ye something toease your mind, --he didn't require much persuadin'. And I kin tell yeanother, if ye ain't above takin' advice from folks that don't pertendto give it, " he added, with the same curious look of interest in hisface. "You've done well to get shut of him, and if you got shut of a fewmore of his kind that you trust to, you'd do better. "

As if to avoid noticing any angry reply from the young man, he reenteredthe cabin and shut the door behind him. Clarence felt the uselessness offurther parley, and rode away. 

But Gilroy's Parthian arrow rankled as he rode. He was not greatlyshocked at Jim's defection, for he was always fully conscious ofhis vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim'sextravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and, perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicialto others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfishnatures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion's weaknessin his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim onthe land, to subject his singular temperament to the temptations ofsuch a life and such surroundings; he should never have made use of hisservices at the rancho. He had done him harm rather than good in hisill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have saidthat Gilroy's parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly. It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint orcorrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For inGilroy's warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatalityhad marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had broughtno happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemedto have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, itnow seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence atthe rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, asit had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from hisfather, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was ridingonward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixedupon some vague point between his horse's sensitive ears, when a sudden, intelligent, forward pricking of them startled him, and an apparitionarose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other senseaway. 

It was the figure of a handsome young horseman as abstracted as himself, but evidently on better terms with his own personality. He was darkhaired, sallow cheeked, and blue eyed, --the type of the old SpanishCalifornian. A burnt-out cigarette was in his mouth, and he was ridinga roan mustang with the lazy grace of his race. But what arrestedClarence's attention more than his picturesque person was the narrow, flexible, long coil of gray horse-hair riata which hung from hissaddle-bow, but whose knotted and silver-beaded terminating lash hewas swirling idly in his narrow brown hand. Clarence knew and instantlyrecognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider, used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made theobject of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artisticskill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning senseof repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached. What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himselfknew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grewlanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity, and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at afurious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instanthis knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow. Butthe next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collecthis thoughts. What was he intending to do, and for what reason! He hadmet hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred likethis, even to the riata. And he certainly was not dressed like either ofthe mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening. Helooked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowlydisappearing. Clarence turned and rode on his way. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Without disclosing the full extent of Jim's defection and desertion, Clarence was able to truthfully assure the Hopkins family of hispersonal safety, and to promise that he would continue his quest, andsend them further news of the absentee. He believed it would be foundthat Jim had been called away on some important business, but that notdaring to leave his new shanty exposed and temptingly unprotected, hehad made a virtue of necessity by selling it to his neighbors, intendingto build a better house on its site after his return. Having comfortedPhoebe, and impulsively conceived further plans for restoring Jim toher, --happily without any recurrence of his previous doubts as to hisown efficacy as a special Providence, --he returned to the rancho. If hethought again of Jim's defection and Gilroy's warning, it was only tostrengthen himself to a clearer perception of his unselfish duty andsingleness of purpose. He would give up brooding, apply himself morepractically to the management of the property, carry out his plansfor the foundation of a Landlords' Protective League for the southerncounties, become a candidate for the Legislature, and, in brief, tryto fill Peyton's place in the county as he had at the rancho. He wouldendeavor to become better acquainted with the half-breed laborers onthe estate and avoid the friction between them and the Americans; he wasconscious that he had not made that use of his early familiarity withtheir ways and language which he might have done. If, occasionally, thefigure of the young Spaniard whom he had met on the lonely road obtrudeditself on him, it was always with the instinctive premonition that hewould meet him again, and the mystery of the sudden repulsion be in someway explained. Thus Clarence! But the momentary impulse that had drivenhim to Fair Plains, the eagerness to set his mind at rest regarding Susyand her relatives, he had utterly forgotten. 

Howbeit some of the energy and enthusiasm that he breathed into thesevarious essays made their impression. He succeeded in forming theLandlords' League; under a commission suggested by him the stragglingboundaries of Robles and the adjacent claims were resurveyed, defined, and mutually protected; even the lawless Gilroy, from extending anamused toleration to the young administrator, grew to recognize andaccept him; the peons and vacqueros began to have faith in a man whoacknowledged them sufficiently to rebuild the ruined Mission Chapel onthe estate, and save them the long pilgrimage to Santa Inez on Sundaysand saints' days; the San Francisco priest imported from Clarence'sold college at San Jose, and an habitual guest at Clarence's hospitableboard, was grateful enough to fill his flock with loyalty to the youngpadron. 

He had returned from a long drive one afternoon, and had just thrownhimself into an easy-chair with the comfortable consciousness of a restfairly earned. The dull embers of a fire occasionally glowed in theoven-like hearth, although the open casement of a window let in thesoft breath of the southwest trades. The angelus had just rung from therestored chapel, and, mellowed by distance, seemed to Clarence to lendthat repose to the wind-swept landscape that it had always lacked. 

Suddenly his quick ear detected the sound of wheels in the ruts of thecarriage way. Usually his visitors to the casa came on horseback, andcarts and wagons used only the lower road. As the sound approachednearer, an odd fancy filled his heart with unaccountable pleasure. Couldit be Mrs. Peyton making an unexpected visit to the rancho? He held hisbreath. The vehicle was now rolling on into the patio. The clatter ofhoofs and a halt were followed by the accents of women's voices. Oneseemed familiar. He rose quickly, as light footsteps ran along thecorridor, and then the door opened impetuously to the laughing face ofSusy!

He came towards her hastily, yet with only the simple impulse ofastonishment. He had no thought of kissing her, but as he approached, she threw her charming head archly to one side, with a mischievousknitting of her brows and a significant gesture towards the passage, that indicated the proximity of a stranger and the possibility ofinterruption. 

"Hush! Mrs. McClosky's here, " she whispered. 

"Mrs. McClosky?" repeated Clarence vaguely. 

"Yes, of course, " impatiently. "My Aunt Jane. Silly! We just cut awaydown here to surprise you. Aunty's never seen the place, and here was agood chance. "

"And your mother--Mrs. Peyton? Has she--does she?"--stammered Clarence. 

"Has she--does she?" mimicked Susy, with increasing impatience. "Why, ofcourse she DOESN'T know anything about it. She thinks I'm visiting MaryRogers at Oakland. And I am--AFTERWARDS, " she laughed. "I just wrote toAunt Jane to meet me at Alameda, and we took the stage to Santa Inezand drove on here in a buggy. Wasn't it real fun? Tell me, Clarence! Youdon't say anything! Tell me--wasn't it real fun?"

This was all so like her old, childlike, charming, irresponsible self, that Clarence, troubled and bewildered as he was, took her hands anddrew her like a child towards him. 

"Of course, " she went on, yet stopping to smell a rosebud in hisbuttonhole, "I have a perfect right to come to my own home, goodnessknows! and if I bring my own aunt, a married woman, with me, --although, "loftily, "there may be a young unmarried gentleman alone there, --still Ifail to see any impropriety in it!"

He was still holding her; but in that instant her manner had completelychanged again; the old Susy seemed to have slipped away and evaded him, and he was retaining only a conscious actress in his arms. 

"Release me, Mr. Brant, please, " she said, with a languid affectedglance behind her; "we are not alone. "

Then, as the rustling of a skirt sounded nearer in the passage, sheseemed to change back to her old self once more, and with a lightningflash of significance whispered, --

"She knows everything!"

To add to Clarence's confusion, the woman who entered cast a quickglance of playful meaning on the separating youthful pair. She was anineffective blonde with a certain beauty that seemed to be graduallysuccumbing to the ravages of paint and powder rather than years;her dress appeared to have suffered from an equally unwise excess ofornamentation and trimming, and she gave the general impression ofhaving been intended for exhibition in almost any other light than theone in which she happened to be. There were two or three mud-stainson the laces of her sleeve and underskirt that were obtrusivelyincongruous. Her voice, which had, however, a ring of honest intentionin it, was somewhat over-strained, and evidently had not yet adjusteditself to the low-ceilinged, conventual-like building. 

"There, children, don't mind me! I know I'm not on in this scene, but Igot nervous waiting there, in what you call the 'salon, ' with only thoseGreaser servants staring round me in a circle, like a regular chorus. My! but it's anteek here--regular anteek--Spanish. " Then, with a glanceat Clarence, "So this is Clarence Brant, --your Clarence? Interduce me, Susy. "

In his confusion of indignation, pain, and even a certain conception ofthe grim ludicrousness of the situation, Clarence grasped despairinglyat the single sentence of Susy's. "In my own home. " Surely, at least, itwas HER OWN HOME, and as he was only the business agent of her adoptedmother, he had no right to dictate to her under what circumstancesshe should return to it, or whom she should introduce there. In herindependence and caprice Susy might easily have gone elsewhere with thisastounding relative, and would Mrs. Peyton like it better? Clinging tothis idea, his instinct of hospitality asserted itself. He welcomed Mrs. McClosky with nervous effusion:--

"I am only Mrs. Peyton's major domo here, but any guest of herDAUGHTER'S is welcome. "

"Yes, " said Mrs. McClosky, with ostentatious archness, "I reckon Susyand I understand your position here, and you've got a good berth of it. But we won't trouble you much on Mrs. Peyton's account, will we, Susy?And now she and me will just take a look around the shanty, --it is realold Spanish anteek, ain't it?--and sorter take stock of it, and youyoung folks will have to tear yourselves apart for a while, and playpropriety before me. You've got to be on your good behavior whileI'm here, I can tell you! I'm a heavy old 'doo-anna. ' Ain't I, Susy?School-ma'ms and mother superiors ain't in the game with ME fordiscipline. "

She threw her arms around the young girl's waist and drew her towardsher affectionately, an action that slightly precipitated some powderupon the black dress of her niece. Susy glanced mischievously atClarence, but withdrew her eyes presently to let them rest withunmistakable appreciation and admiration on her relative. A pang shotthrough Clarence's breast. He had never seen her look in that way atMrs. Peyton. Yet here was this stranger, provincial, overdressed, andextravagant, whose vulgarity was only made tolerable through her goodhumor, who had awakened that interest which the refined Mrs. Peyton hadnever yet been able to touch. As Mrs. McClosky swept out of the roomwith Susy he turned away with a sinking heart. 

Yet it was necessary that the Spanish house servants should not suspectthis treason to their mistress, and Clarence stopped their childishcuriosity about the stranger with a careless and easy acceptance ofSusy's sudden visit in the light of an ordinary occurrence, and with afamiliarity towards Mrs. McClosky which became the more distasteful tohim in proportion as he saw that it was evidently agreeable to her. But, easily responsive, she became speedily confidential. Without a singlequestion from himself, or a contributing remark from Susy, in half anhour she had told him her whole history. How, as Jane Silsbee, an eldersister of Susy's mother, she had early eloped from the paternal homein Kansas with McClosky, a strolling actor. How she had married himand gone on the stage under his stage name, effectively preventing anyrecognition by her family. How, coming to California, where her husbandhad become manager of the theatre at Sacramento, she was indignant tofind that her only surviving relation, a sister-in-law, living in thesame place, had for a money consideration given up all claim to theorphaned Susy, and how she had resolved to find out "if the poor childwas happy. " How she succeeded in finding out that she was not happy. How she wrote to her, and even met her secretly at San Francisco andOakland, and how she had undertaken this journey partly for "a lark, "and partly to see Clarence and the property. There was no doubt of thespeaker's sincerity; with this outrageous candor there was an equalobliviousness of any indelicacy in her conduct towards Mrs. Peyton thatseemed hopeless. Yet he must talk plainly to her; he must say to herwhat he could not say to Susy; upon HER Mrs. Peyton's happiness--hebelieved he was thinking of Susy's also--depended. He must take thefirst opportunity of speaking to her alone. 

That opportunity came sooner than he had expected. After dinner, Mrs. McClosky turned to Susy, and playfully telling her that she had "to talkbusiness" with Mr. Brant, bade her go to the salon and await her. Whenthe young girl left the room, she looked at Clarence, and, with thatassumption of curtness with which coarse but kindly natures believe theyovercome the difficulty of delicate subjects, said abruptly:--

"Well, young man, now what's all this between you and Susy? I'm lookingafter her interests--same as if she was my own girl. If you've gotanything to say, now's your time. And don't you shilly-shally too longover it, either, for you might as well know that a girl like that canhave her pick and choice, and be beholden to no one; and when she don'tcare to choose, there's me and my husband ready to do for her all thesame. We mightn't be able to do the anteek Spanish Squire, but we've gotour own line of business, and it's a comfortable one. "

To have this said to him under the roof of Mrs. Peyton, from whom, inhis sensitiveness, he had thus far jealously guarded his own secret, waseven more than Clarence's gentleness could stand, and fixed his waveringresolution. 

"I don't think we quite understand each other, Mrs. McClosky, " he saidcoldly, but with glittering eyes. "I have certainly something to say toyou; if it is not on a subject as pleasant as the one you propose, it is, nevertheless, one that I think you and I are more competent todiscuss together. "

Then, with quiet but unrelenting directness, he pointed out to her thatSusy was a legally adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton, and, as a minor, utterly under her control; that Mrs. Peyton had no knowledge of anyopposing relatives; and that Susy had not only concealed the fact fromher, but that he was satisfied that Mrs. Peyton did not even know ofSusy's discontent and alienation; that she had tenderly and carefullybrought up the helpless orphan as her own child, and even if she had notgained her affection was at least entitled to her obedience and respect;that while Susy's girlish caprice and inexperience excused HERconduct, Mrs. Peyton and her friends would have a right to expect moreconsideration from a person of Mrs. McClosky's maturer judgment. Thatfor these reasons, and as the friend of Mrs. Peyton, whom he could alonerecognize as Susy's guardian and the arbiter of her affections, he mustdecline to discuss the young girl with any reference to himself or hisown intentions. 

An unmistakable flush asserted itself under the lady's powder. 

"Suit yourself, young man, suit yourself, " she said, with equally directresentment and antagonism; "only mebbee you'll let me tell you thatJim McClosky ain't no fool, and mebbee knows what lawyers think of anarrangement with a sister-in-law that leaves a real sister out! Mebbeethat's a 'Sister's title' you ain't thought of, Mr. Brant! And mebbeeyou'll find out that your chance o' gettin' Mrs. Peyton's consent ain'tas safe to gamble on as you reckon it is. And mebbee, what's more to thepurpose, if you DID get it, it might not be just the trump card to fetchSusy with! And to wind up, Mr. Brant, when you DO have to come down tothe bed-rock and me and Jim McClosky, you may find out that him and mehave discovered a better match for Susy than the son of old Ham Brant, who is trying to play the Spanish grandee off his father's money on acouple of women. And we mayn't have to go far to do it--or to get THEREAL THING, Mr. Brant!"

Too heartsick and disgusted to even notice the slur upon himself or theimport of her last words, Clarence only rose and bowed as she jumped upfrom the table. But as she reached the door he said, half appealingly:--

"Whatever are your other intentions, Mrs. McClosky, as we are bothSusy's guests, I beg you will say nothing of this to her while we arehere, and particularly that you will not allow her to think for a momentthat I have discussed MY relations to her with anybody. "

She flung herself out of the door without a reply; but on entering thedark low-ceilinged drawing-room she was surprised to find that Susy wasnot there. She was consequently obliged to return to the veranda, whereClarence had withdrawn, and to somewhat ostentatiously demand of theservants that Susy should be sent to her room at once. But the younggirl was not in her own room, and was apparently nowhere to be found. Clarence, who had now fully determined as a last resource to make adirect appeal to Susy herself, listened to this fruitless search withsome concern. She could not have gone out in the rain, which was againfalling. She might be hiding somewhere to avoid a recurrence of thescene she had perhaps partly overheard. He turned into the corridorthat led to Mrs. Peyton's boudoir. As he knew that it was locked, he wassurprised to see by the dim light of the hanging lamp that a duplicatekey to the one in his desk was in the lock. It must be Susy's, and theyoung girl had probably taken refuge there. He knocked gently. There wasa rustle in the room and the sound of a chair being moved, but no reply. Impelled by a sudden instinct he opened the door, and was met by a coolcurrent of air from some open window. At the same moment the figure ofSusy approached him from the semi-darkness of the interior. 

"I did not know you were here, " said Clarence, much relieved, he knewnot why, "but I am glad, for I wanted to speak with you alone for a fewmoments. "

She did not reply, but he drew a match from his pocket and lit the twocandles which he knew stood on the table. The wick of one was stillwarm, as if it had been recently extinguished. As the light slowlyradiated, he could see that she was regarding him with an air ofaffected unconcern, but a somewhat heightened color. It was like her, and not inconsistent with his idea that she had come there to avoid anafter scene with Mrs. McClosky or himself, or perhaps both. The room wasnot disarranged in any way. The window that was opened was the casementof the deep embrasured one in the rear wall, and the light curtainbefore it still swayed occasionally in the night wind. 

"I'm afraid I had a row with your aunt, Susy, " he began lightly, in hisold familiar way; "but I had to tell her I didn't think her conduct toMrs. Peyton was exactly the square thing towards one who had been asdevoted to you as she has been. "

"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't go over all that again, " said Susyimpatiently. "I've had enough of it. "

Clarence flashed, but recovered himself. 

"Then you overheard what I said, and know what I think, " he said calmly. 

"I knew it BEFORE, " said the young girl, with a slight supercilious tossof the head, and yet a certain abstraction of manner as she went to thewindow and closed it. "Anybody could see it! I know you always wantedme to stay here with Mrs. Peyton, and be coddled and monitored andcatechised and shut up away from any one, until YOU had been coddled andmonitored and catechised by somebody else sufficiently to suit herideas of your being a fit husband for me. I told aunty it was no use ourcoming here to--to"--

"To do what?" asked Clarence. 

"To put some spirit into you, " said the young girl, turning upon himsharply; "to keep you from being tied to that woman's apron-strings. Tokeep her from making a slave of you as she would of me. But it is ofno use. Mary Rogers was right when she said you had no wish to pleaseanybody but Mrs. Peyton, and no eyes for anybody but her. And if ithadn't been too ridiculous, considering her age and yours, she'd say youwere dead in love with her. "

For an instant Clarence felt the blood rush to his face and then sinkaway, leaving him pale and cold. The room, which had seemed towhirl around him, and then fade away, returned with appallingdistinctness, --the distinctness of memory, --and a vision of the firstday that he had seen Mrs. Peyton sitting there, as he seemed to see hernow. For the first time there flashed upon him the conviction that theyoung girl had spoken the truth, and had brusquely brushed the veil fromhis foolish eyes. He WAS in love with Mrs. Peyton! That was what hisdoubts and hesitation regarding Susy meant. That alone was the source, secret, and limit of his vague ambition. 

But with the conviction came a singular calm. In the last few momentshe seemed to have grown older, to have loosed the bonds of oldcompanionship with Susy, and the later impression she had given him ofher mature knowledge, and moved on far beyond her years and experience. And it was with an authority that was half paternal, and in a voice hehimself scarcely recognized, that he said:--

"If I did not know you were prejudiced by a foolish and indiscreetwoman, I should believe that you were trying to insult me as you haveyour adopted mother, and would save you the pain of doing both in HERhouse by leaving it now and forever. But because I believe you arecontrolled against your best instinct by that woman, I shall remainhere with you to frustrate her as best I can, or until I am able to layeverything before Mrs. Peyton except the foolish speech you have justmade. "

The young girl laughed. "Why not THAT one too, while you're about it?See what she'll say. "

"I shall tell her, " continued Clarence calmly, "only what YOU yourselfhave made it necessary for me to tell her to save you from folly anddisgrace, and only enough to spare her the mortification of hearing itfirst from her own servants. "

"Hearing WHAT from her own servants? What do you mean? How dare you?"demanded the young girl sharply. 

She was quite real in her anxiety now, although her attitude of virtuousindignation struck him as being like all her emotional expression, namely, acting. 

"I mean that the servants know of your correspondence with Mrs. McClosky, and that she claims to be your aunt, " returned Clarence. "Theyknow that you confided to Pepita. They believe that either Mrs. McCloskyor you have seen"--

He had stopped suddenly. He was about to say that the servants(particularly Incarnacion) knew that Pedro had boasted of having metSusy, when, for the first time, the tremendous significance of what hehad hitherto considered as merely an idle falsehood flashed upon him. 

"Seen whom?" repeated Susy in a higher voice, impatiently stamping herfoot. 

Clarence looked at her, and in her excited, questioning face saw aconfirmation of his still half-formed suspicions. In his own abruptpause and knitted eyebrows she must have read his thoughts also. Theireyes met. Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shiftedas she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference, almost grotesque in its unreality. His eyes slowly turned to the window, the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and thencame back to her face again. Then he drew a deep breath. 

"I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy, " he said slowly. "I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than anact of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice. Neitherdo I want to appeal to you or frighten you, but I must tell you now, that I know certain facts that might make such a simple act of follymonstrous, inconceivable in YOU, and almost accessory to a crime! I cantell you no more. But so satisfied am I of such a possibility, that Ishall not scruple to take any means--the strongest--to prevent eventhe remotest chance of it. Your aunt has been looking for you; you hadbetter go to her now. I will close the room and lock the door. Meantime, I should advise you not to sit so near an open window with a candle atnight in this locality. Even if it might not be dangerous for you, itmight be fatal to the foolish creatures it might attract. "

He took the key from the door as he held it open for her to pass out. She uttered a shrill little laugh, like a nervous, mischievous child, and, slipping out of her previous artificial attitude as if it had beena mantle, ran out of the room. 

CHAPTER X. 

As Susy's footsteps died away, Clarence closed the door, walked to thewindow, and examined it closely. The bars had been restored since he hadwrenched them off to give ingress to the family on the day of recapture. He glanced around the room; nothing seemed to have been disturbed. Nevertheless he was uneasy. The suspicions of a frank, trustful naturewhen once aroused are apt to be more general and far-reaching than thespecific distrusts of the disingenuous, for they imply the overthrow ofa whole principle and not a mere detail. Clarence's conviction that Susyhad seen Pedro recently since his dismissal led him into the wildestsurmises of her motives. It was possible that without her having reasonto suspect Pedro's greater crime, he might have confided to her hisintention of reclaiming the property and installing her as the mistressand chatelaine of the rancho. The idea was one that might have appealedto Susy's theatrical imagination. He recalled Mrs. McClosky's sneerat his own pretensions and her vague threats of a rival of more linealdescent. The possible infidelity of Susy to himself touched him lightlywhen the first surprise was over; indeed, it scarcely could be calledinfidelity, if she knew and believed Mary Rogers's discovery; and theconviction that he and she had really never loved each other now enabledhim, as he believed, to look at her conduct dispassionately. Yet it washer treachery to Mrs. Peyton and not to himself that impressed him most, and perhaps made him equally unjust, through his affections. 

He extinguished the candles, partly from some vague precautions he couldnot explain, and partly to think over his fears in the abstraction andobscurity of the semi-darkness. The higher windows suffused a faintlight on the ceiling, and, assisted by the dark lantern-like glowcast on the opposite wall by the tunnel of the embrasured window, the familiar outlines of the room and its furniture came back to him. Somewhat in this fashion also, in the obscurity and quiet, came backto him the events he had overlooked and forgotten. He recalled now somegossip of the servants, and hints dropped by Susy of a violent quarrelbetween Peyton and Pedro, which resulted in Pedro's dismissal, but whichnow seemed clearly attributable to some graver cause than inattentionand insolence. He recalled Mary Rogers's playful pleasantries with Susyabout Pedro, and Susy's mysterious air, which he had hithertoregarded only as part of her exaggeration. He remembered Mrs. Peyton'sunwarrantable uneasiness about Susy, which he had either overlooked orreferred entirely to himself; she must have suspected something. To hisquickened imagination, in this ruin of his faith and trust, he believedthat Hooker's defection was either part of the conspiracy, or that hehad run away to avoid being implicated with Susy in its discovery. This, too, was the significance of Gilroy's parting warning. He andMrs. Peyton alone had been blind and confiding in the midst of thistreachery, and even HE had been blind to his own real affections. 

The wind had risen again, and the faint light on the opposite wall grewtremulous and shifting with the movement of the foliage without. Butpresently the glow became quite obliterated, as if by the interventionof some opaque body outside the window. He rose hurriedly and went tothe casement. But at the same moment he fancied he heard the jamming ofa door or window in quite another direction, and his examination ofthe casement before him showed him only the silver light of the thinlyclouded sky falling uninterruptedly through the bars and foliage on theinterior of the whitewashed embrasure. Then a conception of his mistakeflashed across him. The line of the casa was long, straggling, andexposed elsewhere; why should the attempt to enter or communicatewith any one within be confined only to this single point? And why notsatisfy himself at once if any trespassers were lounging around thewalls, and then confront them boldly in the open? Their discovery andidentification was as important as the defeat of their intentions. 

He relit the candle, and, placing it on a small table by the wall beyondthe visual range of the window, rearranged the curtain so that, whileit permitted the light to pass out, it left the room in shadow. He thenopened the door softly, locked it behind him, and passed noiselesslyinto the hall. Susy's and Mrs. McClosky's rooms were at the further endof the passage, but between them and the boudoir was the open patio, andthe low murmur of the voices of servants, who still lingered until heshould dismiss them for the night. Turning back, he moved silently downthe passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden. This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution. The rain hadrecommenced. Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from apeg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and "sou'wester" of Peyton's, which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking thedoor behind him. To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol from thestablemen, he did not attempt to take out his own horse, but trusted tofind some vacquero's mustang in the corral. By good luck an old "BlueGrass" hack of Peyton's, nearest the stockade as he entered, alloweditself to be quickly caught. Using its rope headstall for a bridle, Clarence vaulted on its bare back, and paced cautiously out into theroad. Here he kept the curve of the long line of stockade until hereached the outlying field where, half hidden in the withered, sapless, but still standing stalks of grain, he slowly began a circuit of thecasa. 

The misty gray dome above him, which an invisible moon seemed to havequicksilvered over, alternately lightened and darkened with passinggusts of fine rain. Nevertheless he could see the outline of the broadquadrangle of the house quite distinctly, except on the west side, where a fringe of writhing willows beat the brown adobe walls with theirimploring arms at every gust. Elsewhere nothing moved; the view wasuninterrupted to where the shining, watery sky met the equally shining, watery plain. He had already made a half circuit of the house, and wasstill noiselessly picking his way along the furrows, muffled with soakedand broken-down blades, and the velvety upspringing of the "volunteer"growth, when suddenly, not fifty yards before him, without sound orwarning, a figure rode out of the grain upon the open crossroad, anddeliberately halted with a listless, abstracted, waiting air. Clarenceinstantly recognized one of his own vacqueros, an undersized half-breed, but he as instantly divined that he was only an outpost or confederate, stationed to give the alarm. The same precaution had prevented eachhearing the other, and the lesser height of the vacquero had renderedhim indistinguishable as he preceded Clarence among the grain. As theyoung man made no doubt that the real trespasser was nearer the casa, along the line of willows, he wheeled to intercept him without alarminghis sentry. Unfortunately, his horse answered the rope bridle clumsily, and splashed in striking out. The watcher quickly raised his head, andClarence knew that his only chance was now to suppress him. Determinedto do this at any hazard, with a threatening gesture he charged boldlydown upon him. 

But he had not crossed half the distance between them when the manuttered an appalling cry, so wild and despairing that it seemed to chilleven the hot blood in Clarence's veins, and dashed frenziedly down thecross-road into the interminable plain. Before Clarence could determineif that cry was a signal or an involuntary outburst, it was followedinstantly by the sound of frightened and struggling hoofs clatteringagainst the wall of the casa, and a swaying of the shrubbery near theback gate of the patio. Here was his real quarry! Without hesitation hedug his heels into the flanks of his horse and rode furiously towardsit. As he approached, a long tremor seemed to pass through theshrubbery, with the retreating sound of horse hoofs. The unseentrespasser had evidently taken the alarm and was fleeing, and Clarencedashed in pursuit. Following the sound, for the shrubbery hid thefugitive from view, he passed the last wall of the casa; but it soonbecame evident that the unknown had the better horse. The hoof-beatsgrew fainter and fainter, and at times appeared even to cease, untilhis own approach started them again, eventually to fade away in thedistance. In vain Clarence dug his heels into the flanks of his heaviersteed, and regretted his own mustang; and when at last he reached theedge of the thicket he had lost both sight and sound of the fugitive. The descent to the lower terrace lay before him empty and desolate. Theman had escaped!

He turned slowly back with baffled anger and vindictiveness. However, he had prevented something, although he knew not what. The principal hadgot away, but he had identified his confederate, and for the first timeheld a clue to his mysterious visitant. There was no use to alarm thehousehold, which did not seem to have been disturbed. The trespasserswere far away by this time, and the attempt would hardly be repeatedthat night. He made his way quietly back to the corral, let loose hishorse, and regained the casa unobserved. He unlocked the arched door inthe wall, reentered the darkened passage, stopped a moment to openthe door of the boudoir, glance at the closely fastened casement, andextinguish the still burning candle, and, relocking the door securely, made his way to his own room. 

But he could not sleep. The whole incident, over so quickly, hadnevertheless impressed him deeply, and yet like a dream. The strangeyell of the vacquero still rang in his ears, but with an unearthly andsuperstitious significance that was even more dreamlike in its meaning. He awakened from a fitful slumber to find the light of morning in theroom, and Incarnacion standing by his bedside. 

The yellow face of the steward was greenish with terror, and his lipswere dry. 

"Get up, Senor Clarencio; get up at once, my master. Strange things havehappened. Mother of God protect us!"

Clarence rolled to his feet, with the events of the past nightstruggling back upon his consciousness. 

"What mean you, Nascio?" he said, grasping the man's arm, whichwas still mechanically making the sign of the cross, as he mutteredincoherently. "Speak, I command you!"

"It is Jose, the little vacquero, who is even now at the padre's house, raving as a lunatic, stricken as a madman with terror! He has seenhim, --the dead alive! Save us!"

"Are you mad yourself, Nascio?" said Clarence. "Whom has he seen?"

"Whom? God help us! the old padron--Senor Peyton himself! He rushedtowards him here, in the patio, last night--out of the air, the sky, theground, he knew not, --his own self, wrapped in his old storm cloak andhat, and riding his own horse, --erect, terrible, and menacing, with anawful hand upholding a rope--so! He saw him with these eyes, as I seeyou. What HE said to him, God knows! The priest, perhaps, for he hasmade confession!"

In a flash of intelligence Clarence comprehended all. He rose grimly andbegan to dress himself. 

"Not a word of this to the women, --to any one, Nascio, dost thouunderstand?" he said curtly. "It may be that Jose has been partaking toofreely of aguardiente, --it is possible. I will see the priest myself. But what possesses thee? Collect thyself, good Nascio. "

But the man was still trembling. 

"It is not all, --Mother of God! it is not all, master!" he stammered, dropping to his knees and still crossing himself. "This morning, besidethe corral, they find the horse of Pedro Valdez splashed and spatteredon saddle and bridle, and in the stirrup, --dost thou hear? theSTIRRUP, --hanging, the torn-off boot of Valdez! Ah, God! The same asHIS! Now do you understand? It is HIS vengeance. No! Jesu forgive me! itis the vengeance of God!"

Clarence was staggered. 

"And you have not found Valdez? You have looked for him?" he said, hurriedly throwing on his clothes. 

"Everywhere, --all over the plain. The whole rancho has been out sincesunrise, --here and there and everywhere. And there is nothing! Of coursenot. What would you?" He pointed solemnly to the ground. 

"Nonsense!" said Clarence, buttoning his coat and seizing his hat. "Follow me. "

He ran down the passage, followed by Incarnacion, through the excited, gesticulating crowd of servants in the patio, and out of the back gate. He turned first along the wall of the casa towards the barred window ofthe boudoir. Then a cry came from Incarnacion. 

They ran quickly forward. Hanging from the grating of the window, likea mass of limp and saturated clothes, was the body of Pedro Valdez, withone unbooted foot dangling within an inch of the ground. His head waspassed inside the grating and fixed as at that moment when the firstspring of the frightened horse had broken his neck between the bars asin a garrote, and the second plunge of the terrified animal had carriedoff his boot in the caught stirrup when it escaped. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The winter rains were over and gone, and the whole long line ofCalifornian coast was dashed with color. There were miles of yellow andred poppies, leagues of lupines that painted the gently rounded hillswith soft primary hues, and long continuous slopes, like low mountainsystems, of daisies and dandelions. At Sacramento it was already summer;the yellow river was flashing and intolerable; the tule and marshgrasses were lush and long; the bloom of cottonwood and sycamorewhitened the outskirts of the city, and as Cyrus Hopkins and hisdaughter Phoebe looked from the veranda of the Placer Hotel, accustomedas they were to the cool trade winds of the coast valleys, they felthomesick from the memory of eastern heats. 

Later, when they were surveying the long dinner tables at the tabled'hote with something of the uncomfortable and shamefaced loneliness ofthe provincial, Phoebe uttered a slight cry and clutched her father'sarm. Mr. Hopkins stayed the play of his squared elbows and glancedinquiringly at his daughter's face. There was a pretty animation in it, as she pointed to a figure that had just entered. It was that of a youngman attired in the extravagance rather than the taste of the prevailingfashion, which did not, however, in the least conceal a decidedrusticity of limb and movement. A long mustache, which looked unkempt, even in its pomatumed stiffness, and lank, dark hair that had bent butnever curled under the barber's iron, made him notable even in thatheterogeneous assembly. 

"That's he, " whispered Phoebe. 

"Who?" said her father. 

Alas for the inconsistencies of love! The blush came with the name andnot the vision. 

"Mr. Hooker, " she stammered. 

It was, indeed, Jim Hooker. But the role of his exaggeration was nolonger the same; the remorseful gloom in which he had been habituallysteeped had changed into a fatigued, yet haughty, fastidiousness morein keeping with his fashionable garments. He was more peaceful, yet notentirely placable, and, as he sat down at a side table and pulled downhis striped cuffs with his clasped fingers, he cast a glance of criticaldisapproval on the general company. Nevertheless, he seemed to befurtively watchful of his effect upon them, and as one or two whisperedand looked towards him, his consciousness became darkly manifest. 

All of which might have intimidated the gentle Phoebe, but did notdiscompose her father. He rose, and crossing over to Hooker's table, clapped him heartily on the back. 

"How do, Hooker? I didn't recognize you in them fine clothes, but Phoebeguessed as how it was you. "

Flushed, disconcerted, irritated, but always in wholesome awe of Mr. Hopkins, Jim returned his greeting awkwardly and half hysterically. Howhe would have received the more timid Phoebe is another question. ButMr. Hopkins, without apparently noticing these symptoms, went on:--

"We're only just down, Phoebe and me, and as I guess we'll want to talkover old times, we'll come alongside o' you. Hold on, and I'll fetchher. "

The interval gave the unhappy Jim a chance to recover himself, to regainhis vanished cuffs, display his heavy watch-chain, curl his mustache, and otherwise reassume his air of blase fastidiousness. But the transfermade, Phoebe, after shaking hands, became speechless under theseperfections. Not so her father. 

"If there's anything in looks, you seem to be prospering, " he saidgrimly; "unless you're in the tailorin' line, and you're only showin'off stock. What mout ye be doing?"

"Ye ain't bin long in Sacramento, I reckon?" suggested Jim, withpatronizing pity. 

"No, we only came this morning, " returned Hopkins. 

"And you ain't bin to the theatre?" continued Jim. 

"No. "

"Nor moved much in--in--gin'ral fash'nable sassiety?"

"Not yet, " interposed Phoebe, with an air of faint apology. 

"Nor seen any of them large posters on the fences, of 'The PrairieFlower; or, Red-handed Dick, '--three-act play with five tableaux, --justthe biggest sensation out, --runnin' for forty nights, --money turnedaway every night, --standin' room only?" continued Jim, with prolongedtoleration. 

"No. "

"Well, I play Red-handed Dick. I thought you might have seen it andrecognized me. All those people over there, " darkly indicating the longtable, "know me. A fellow can't stand it, you know, being stared at bysuch a vulgar, low-bred lot. It's gettin' too fresh here. I'll have togive the landlord notice and cut the whole hotel. They don't seem tohave ever seen a gentleman and a professional before. "

"Then you're a play-actor now?" said the farmer, in a tone which didnot, however, exhibit the exact degree of admiration which shone inPhoebe's eyes. 

"For the present, " said Jim, with lofty indifference. "You see I wasin--in partnership with McClosky, the manager, and I didn't like thestyle of the chump that was doin' Red-handed Dick, so I offered to takehis place one night to show him how. And by Jinks! the audience, afterthat night, wouldn't let anybody else play it, --wouldn't stand even thebiggest, highest-priced stars in it! I reckon, " he added gloomily, "I'llhave to run the darned thing in all the big towns in Californy, --if Idon't have to go East with it after all, just for the business. But it'san awful grind on a man, --leaves him no time, along of the invitationshe gets, and what with being run after in the streets and stared at inthe hotels he don't get no privacy. There's men, and women, too, overat that table, that just lie in wait for me here till I come, and don'tlift their eyes off me. I wonder they don't bring their opery-glasseswith them. "

Concerned, sympathizing, and indignant, poor Phoebe turned her brownhead and honest eyes in that direction. But because they were honest, they could not help observing that the other table did not seem to bepaying the slightest attention to the distinguished impersonator ofRed-handed Dick. Perhaps he had been overheard. 

"Then that was the reason ye didn't come back to your location. I alwaysguessed it was because you'd got wind of the smash-up down there, aforewe did, " said Hopkins grimly. 

"What smash-up?" asked Jim, with slightly resentful quickness. 

"Why, the smash-up of the Sisters' title, --didn't you hear that?"

There was a slight movement of relief and a return of gloomy hauteur inJim's manner. 

"No, we don't know much of what goes on in the cow counties, up here. "

"Ye mout, considerin' it concerns some o' your friends, " returnedHopkins dryly. "For the Sisters' title went smash as soon as it wasknown that Pedro Valdez--the man as started it--had his neck brokenoutside the walls o' Robles Rancho; and they do say as this yer Brant, YOUR friend, had suthin' to do with the breaking of it, though it waslaid to the ghost of old Peyton. Anyhow, there was such a big skeerthat one of the Greaser gang, who thought he'd seen the ghost, being aPapist, to save his everlasting soul went to the priest and confessed. But the priest wouldn't give him absolution until he'd blown thehull thing, and made it public. And then it turned out that all thedockyments for the title, and even the custom-house paper, were FORGEDby Pedro Valdez, and put on the market by his confederates. And that'sjust where YOUR friend, Clarence Brant, comes in, for HE had bought upthe whole title from them fellers. Now, either, as some say, he was inthe fraud from the beginnin', and never paid anything, or else he was anall-fired fool, and had parted with his money like one. Some allowthat the reason was that he was awfully sweet on Mrs. Peyton's adopteddaughter, and ez the parents didn't approve of him, he did THIS so asto get a holt over them by the property. But he's a ruined man, anyway, now; for they say he's such a darned fool that he's goin' to pay for allthe improvements that the folks who bought under him put into the land, and that'll take his last cent. I thought I'd tell you that, for Isuppose YOU'VE lost a heap in your improvements, and will put in yourclaim?"

"I reckon I put nearly as much into it as Clar Brant did, " said Jimgloomily, "but I ain't goin' to take a cent from him, or go back on himnow. "

The rascal could not resist this last mendacious opportunity, althoughhe was perfectly sincere in his renunciation, touched in his sympathy, and there was even a film of moisture in his shifting eyes. 

Phoebe was thrilled with the generosity of this noble being, who couldbe unselfish even in his superior condition. She added softly:--

"And they say that the girl did not care for him at all, but wasactually going to run off with Pedro, when he stopped her and sent forMrs. Peyton. "

To her surprise, Jim's face flushed violently. 

"It's all a dod-blasted lie, " he said, in a thick stage whisper. "It'sonly the hogwash them Greasers and Pike County galoots ladle out toeach other around the stove in a county grocery. But, " recalling himselfloftily, and with a tolerant wave of his be-diamonded hand, "wot kinyou expect from one of them cow counties? They ain't satisfied till theydrive every gentleman out of the darned gopher-holes they call their'kentry. '"

In her admiration of what she believed to be a loyal outburst for hisfriend, Phoebe overlooked the implied sneer at her provincial home. Buther father went on with a perfunctory, exasperating, dusty aridity:--

"That mebbee ez mebbee, Mr. Hooker, but the story down in our precinctgoes that she gave Mrs. Peyton the slip, --chucked up her situation asadopted darter, and went off with a queer sort of a cirkiss woman, --oneof her own KIN, and I reckon one of her own KIND. "

To this Mr. Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke ofthe waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. Hepressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed tohave a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advisedthem to come early. They would see him after the performance and suptogether. He must leave them now, as he had to be punctually at thetheatre, and if he lingered he should be pestered by interviewers. Hewithdrew under a dazzling display of cuff and white handkerchief, and with that inward swing of the arm and slight bowiness of the leggenerally recognized in his profession as the lounging exit of highcomedy. 

The mingling of awe and an uneasy sense of changed relations which thatmeeting with Jim had brought to Phoebe was not lessened when she enteredthe theatre with her father that evening, and even Mr. Hopkins seemed toshare her feelings. The theatre was large, and brilliant in decoration, the seats were well filled with the same heterogeneous mingling she hadseen in the dining-room at the Placer Hotel, but in the parquet weresome fashionable costumes and cultivated faces. Mr. Hopkins was notaltogether so sure that Jim had been "only gassing. " But the gorgeousdrop curtain, representing an allegory of Californian prosperity andabundance, presently uprolled upon a scene of Western life almost asstriking in its glaring unreality. From a rose-clad English cottage ina subtropical landscape skipped "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower. " Thebriefest of skirts, the most unsullied of stockings, the tiniest ofslippers, and the few diamonds that glittered on her fair neck andfingers, revealed at once the simple and unpretending daughter of theAmerican backwoodsman. A tumult of delighted greeting broke from theaudience. The bright color came to the pink, girlish cheeks, gratifiedvanity danced in her violet eyes, and as she piquantly bowed heracknowledgments, this great breath of praise seemed to transfigure andpossess her. A very young actor who represented the giddy world ina straw hat and with an effeminate manner was alternately petted andgirded at by her during the opening exposition of the plot, until thestatement that a "dark destiny" obliged her to follow her uncle in anemigrant train across the plains closed the act, apparently extinguishedhim, and left HER the central figure. So far, she evidently was thefavorite. A singular aversion to her crept into the heart of Phoebe. 

But the second act brought an Indian attack upon the emigrant train, andhere "Rosalie" displayed the archest heroism and the pinkest and mostdistracting self-possession, in marked contrast to the giddy worldlingwho, having accompanied her apparently for comic purposes best known tohimself, cowered abjectly under wagons, and was pulled ignominiously outof straw, until Red Dick swept out of the wings with a chosen band anda burst of revolvers and turned the tide of victory. Attired as apicturesque combination of the Neapolitan smuggler, river-bar miner, and Mexican vacquero, Jim Hooker instantly began to justify the plauditsthat greeted him and the most sanguinary hopes of the audience. A gloomybut fascinating cloud of gunpowder and dark intrigue from that momenthung about the stage. 

Yet in this sombre obscuration Rosalie had passed a happy six months, coming out with her character and stockings equally unchanged andunblemished, to be rewarded with the hand of Red Dick and the discoveryof her father, the governor of New Mexico, as a white-haired, butobjectionable vacquero, at the fall of the curtain. 

Through this exciting performance Phoebe sat with a vague and increasingsense of loneliness and distrust. She did not know that Hooker had addedto his ordinary inventive exaggeration the form of dramatic composition. But she had early detected the singular fact that such shadowy outlinesof plot as the piece possessed were evidently based on his previousnarrative of his OWN experiences, and the saving of Susy Peyton--byhimself! There was the episode of their being lost on the plains, ashe had already related it to her, with the addition of a few years toSusy's age and some vivid picturesqueness to himself as Red Dick. Shewas not, of course, aware that the part of the giddy worldling wasJim's own conception of the character of Clarence. But what, even toher provincial taste, seemed the extravagance of the piece, she felt, insome way, reflected upon the truthfulness of the story she had heard. Itseemed to be a parody on himself, and in the laughter which some of themost thrilling points produced in certain of the audience, she heardan echo of her own doubts. But even this she could have borne if Jim'sconfidence had not been given to the general public; it was no longerHERS alone, she shared it with them. And this strange, bold girl, whoacted with him, --the "Blanche Belville" of the bills, --how often he musthave told HER the story, and yet how badly she had learned it! It wasnot her own idea of it, nor of HIM. In the last extravagant scene sheturned her weary and half-shamed eyes from the stage and looked aroundthe theatre. Among a group of loungers by the wall a face thatseemed familiar was turned towards her own with a look of kindly andsympathetic recognition. It was the face of Clarence Brant. When thecurtain fell, and she and her father rose to go, he was at their side. He seemed older and more superior looking than she had ever thought himbefore, and there was a gentle yet sad wisdom in his eyes and voice thatcomforted her even while it made her feel like crying. 

"You are satisfied that no harm has come to our friend, " he saidpleasantly. "Of course you recognized him?"

"Oh, yes; we met him to-day, " said Phoebe. Her provincial pride impelledher to keep up a show of security and indifference. "We are going tosupper with him. "

Clarence slightly lifted his brows. 

"You are more fortunate than I am, " he said smilingly. "I only arrivedhere at seven, and I must leave at midnight. "

Phoebe hesitated a moment, then said with affected carelessness:--

"What do you think of the young girl who plays with him? Do you knowher? Who is she?"

He looked at her quickly, and then said, with some surprise:--

"Did he not tell you?"

"She WAS the adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton, --Miss Susan Silsbee, " hesaid gravely. 

"Then she DID run away from home as they said, " said Phoebe impulsively. 

"Not EXACTLY as they said, " said Clarence gently. "She elected to makeher home with her aunt, Mrs. McClosky, who is the wife of the managerof this theatre, and she adopted the profession a month ago. As itnow appears that there was some informality in the old articles ofguardianship, Mrs. Peyton would have been powerless to prevent her fromdoing either, even if she had wished to. "

The infelicity of questioning Clarence regarding Susy suddenly flashedupon the forgetful Phoebe, and she colored. Yet, although sad, he didnot look like a rejected lover. 

"Of course, if she is here with her own relatives, that makes all thedifference, " she said gently. "It is protection. "

"Certainly, " said Clarence. 

"And, " continued Phoebe hesitatingly, "she is playing with--with--an oldfriend--Mr. Hooker!"

"That is quite proper, too, considering their relations, " said Clarencetolerantly. 

"I--don't--understand, " stammered Phoebe. 

The slightly cynical smile on Clarence's face changed as he looked intoPhoebe's eyes. 

"I've just heard that they are married, " he returned gently. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Nowhere had the long season of flowers brought such glory as to thebroad plains and slopes of Robles Rancho. By some fortuitous chance ofsoil, or flood, or drifting pollen, the three terraces had each taken adistinct and separate blossom and tint of color. The straggling line ofcorral, the crumbling wall of the old garden, the outlying chapel, andeven the brown walls of the casa itself, were half sunken in the tallracemes of crowding lupines, until from the distance they seemed to beslowly settling in the profundity of a dark-blue sea. The second terracewas a league-long flow of gray and gold daisies, in which the cattledazedly wandered mid-leg deep. A perpetual sunshine of yellow dandelionslay upon the third. The gentle slope to the dark-green canada was abroad cataract of crimson poppies. Everywhere where water had stood, great patches of color had taken its place. It seemed as if the rainshad ceased only that the broken heavens might drop flowers. 

Never before had its beauty--a beauty that seemed built upon a cruel, youthful, obliterating forgetfulness of the past--struck Clarence askeenly as when he had made up his mind that he must leave the placeforever. For the tale of his mischance and ill-fortune, as told byHopkins, was unfortunately true. When he discovered that in his desireto save Peyton's house by the purchase of the Sisters' title he himselfhad been the victim of a gigantic fraud, he accepted the loss of thegreater part of his fortune with resignation, and was even satisfied bythe thought that he had at least effected the possession of the propertyfor Mrs. Peyton. But when he found that those of his tenants who hadbought under him had acquired only a dubious possession of theirlands and no title, he had unhesitatingly reimbursed them for theirimprovements with the last of his capital. Only the lawless Gilroy hadgood-humoredly declined. The quiet acceptance of the others didnot, unfortunately, preclude their settled belief that Clarence hadparticipated in the fraud, and that even now his restitution was makinga dangerous precedent, subversive of the best interests of the State, and discouraging to immigration. Some doubted his sanity. Only one, struck with the sincerity of his motive, hesitated to take his money, with a look of commiseration on his face. 

"Are you not satisfied?" asked Clarence, smiling. 

"Yes, but"--

"But what?"

"Nothin'. Only I was thinkin' that a man like you must feel awfullonesome in Calforny!"

Lonely he was, indeed; but his loneliness was not the loss of fortunenor what it might bring. Perhaps he had never fully realized his wealth;it had been an accident rather than a custom of his life, and when ithad failed in the only test he had made of its power, it is to be fearedthat he only sentimentally regretted it. It was too early yet for himto comprehend the veiled blessings of the catastrophe in its mercifuldisruption of habits and ways of life; his loneliness was still thehopeless solitude left by vanished ideals and overthrown idols. He wassatisfied that he had never cared for Susy, but he still cared for thebelief that he had. 

After the discovery of Pedro's body that fatal morning, a brief butemphatic interview between himself and Mrs. McClosky had followed. Hehad insisted upon her immediately accompanying Susy and himself toMrs. Peyton in San Francisco. Horror-stricken and terrified at thecatastrophe, and frightened by the strange looks of the excitedservants, they did not dare to disobey him. He had left them with Mrs. Peyton in the briefest preliminary interview, during which he spoke onlyof the catastrophe, shielding the woman from the presumption of havingprovoked it, and urging only the importance of settling the questionof guardianship at once. It was odd that Mrs. Peyton had been lessdisturbed than he imagined she would be at even his charitable versionof Susy's unfaithfulness to her; it even seemed to him that she hadalready suspected it. But as he was about to withdraw to leave her tomeet them alone, she had stopped him suddenly. 

"What would you advise me to do?"

It was his first interview with her since the revelation of his ownfeelings. He looked into the pleading, troubled eyes of the woman he nowknew he had loved, and stammered:--

"You alone can judge. Only you must remember that one cannot force anaffection any more than one can prevent it. "

He felt himself blushing, and, conscious of the construction of hiswords, he even fancied that she was displeased. 

"Then you have no preference?" she said, a little impatiently. 

"None. "

She made a slight gesture with her handsome shoulders, but she onlysaid, "I should have liked to have pleased you in this, " and turnedcoldly away. He had left without knowing the result of the interview;but a few days later he received a letter from her stating that she hadallowed Susy to return to her aunt, and that she had resigned all claimsto her guardianship. 

"It seemed to be a foregone conclusion, " she wrote; "and although Icannot think such a change will be for her permanent welfare, it is herpresent WISH, and who knows, indeed, if the change will be permanent?I have not allowed the legal question to interfere with my judgment, although her friends must know that she forfeits any claim upon theestate by her action; but at the same time, in the event of her suitablemarriage, I should try to carry out what I believe would have been Mr. Peyton's wishes. "

There were a few lines of postscript: "It seems to me that the changewould leave you more free to consult your own wishes in regard tocontinuing your friendship with Susy, and upon such a footing as mayplease you. I judge from Mrs. McClosky's conversation that she believedyou thought you were only doing your duty in reporting to me, and thatthe circumstances had not altered the good terms in which you all threeformerly stood. "

Clarence had dropped the letter with a burning indignation that seemedto sting his eyes until a scalding moisture hid the words before him. What might not Susy have said? What exaggeration of his affection wasshe not capable of suggesting? He recalled Mrs. McClosky, and rememberedher easy acceptance of him as Susy's lover. What had they told Mrs. Peyton? What must be her opinion of his deceit towards herself? It washard enough to bear this before he knew he loved her. It was intolerablenow! And this is what she meant when she suggested that he shouldrenew his old terms with Susy; it was for HIM that this ill-disguised, scornful generosity in regard to Susy's pecuniary expectations wasintended. What should he do? He would write to her, and indignantly denyany clandestine affection for Susy. But could he do that, in honor, in truthfulness? Would it not be better to write and confess all?Yes, --EVERYTHING. 

Fortunately for his still boyish impulsiveness, it was at this time thatthe discovery of his own financial ruin came to him. The inquest on thebody of Pedro Valdez and the confession of his confidant had revealedthe facts of the fraudulent title and forged testamentary documents. Although it was correctly believed that Pedro had met his death in anescapade of gallantry or intrigue, the coroner's jury had returned averdict of "accidental death, " and the lesser scandal was lost in thewider, far-spreading disclosure of fraud. When he had resolved to assumeall the liabilities of his purchase, he was obliged to write to Mrs. Peyton and confess his ruin. But he was glad to remind her that it didnot alter HER status or security; he had only given her the possession, and she would revert to her original and now uncontested title. But asthere was now no reason for his continuing the stewardship, and as hemust adopt some profession and seek his fortune elsewhere, he begged herto relieve him of his duty. Albeit written with a throbbing heart andsuffused eyes, it was a plain, business-like, and practical letter. Herreply was equally cool and matter of fact. She was sorry to hear of hislosses, although she could not agree with him that they could logicallysever his present connection with the rancho, or that, placed uponanother and distinctly business footing, the occupation would not be asremunerative to him as any other. But, of course, if he had a preferencefor some more independent position, that was another question, althoughhe would forgive her for using the privilege of her years to remindhim that his financial and business success had not yet justified hisindependence. She would also advise him not to decide hastily, or, atleast, to wait until she had again thoroughly gone over her husband'spapers with her lawyer, in reference to the old purchase of the Sisters'title, and the conditions under which it was bought. She knew that Mr. Brant would not refuse this as a matter of business, nor would thatfriendship, which she valued so highly, allow him to imperil thepossession of the rancho by leaving it at such a moment. As soon as shehad finished the examination of the papers, she would write again. Herletter seemed to leave him no hope, if, indeed, he had ever indulgedin any. It was the practical kindliness of a woman of business, nothingmore. As to the examination of her husband's papers, that was anatural precaution. He alone knew that they would give no record ofa transaction which had never occurred. He briefly replied that hisintention to seek another situation was unchanged, but that he wouldcheerfully await the arrival of his successor. Two weeks passed. ThenMr. Sanderson, Mrs. Peyton's lawyer, arrived, bringing an apologeticnote from Mrs. Peyton. She was so sorry her business was still delayed, but as she had felt that she had no right to detain him entirely atRobles, she had sent to Mr. Sanderson to TEMPORARILY relieve him, thathe might be free to look around him or visit San Francisco in referenceto his own business, only extracting a promise from him that he wouldreturn to Robles to meet her at the end of the week, before settlingupon anything. 

The bitter smile with which Clarence had read thus far suddenly changed. Some mysterious touch of unbusiness-like but womanly hesitation, thathe had never noticed in her previous letters, gave him a faint sense ofpleasure, as if her note had been perfumed. He had availed himself ofthe offer. It was on this visit to Sacramento that he had accidentallydiscovered the marriage of Susy and Hooker. 

"It's a great deal better business for her to have a husband in the'profesh' if she's agoin' to stick to it, " said his informant, Mrs. McClosky, "and she's nothing if she ain't business and profesh, Mr. Brant. I never see a girl that was born for the stage--yes, you mightsay jess cut out o' the boards of the stage--as that girl Susy is! Andthat's jest what's the matter; and YOU know it, and I know it, and thereyou are!"

It was with these experiences that Clarence was to-day reentering thewooded and rocky gateway of the rancho from the high road of the canada;but as he cantered up the first slope, through the drift of scarletpoppies that almost obliterated the track, and the blue and yellowblooms of the terraces again broke upon his view, he thought only ofMrs. Peyton's pleasure in this changed aspect of her old home. She hadtold him of it once before, and of her delight in it; and he had oncethought how happy he should be to see it with her. 

The servant who took his horse told him that the senora had arrived thatmorning from Santa Inez, bringing with her the two Senoritas Hernandezfrom the rancho of Los Canejos, and that other guests were expected. Andthere was the Senor Sanderson and his Reverence Padre Esteban. Truly anaffair of hospitality, the first since the padron died. Whatever dreamClarence might have had of opportunities for confidential interview wasrudely dispelled. Yet Mrs. Peyton had left orders to be informed at onceof Don Clarencio's arrival. 

As he crossed the patio and stepped upon the corridor he fancied healready detected in the internal arrangements the subtle influence ofMrs. Peyton's taste and the indefinable domination of the mistress. Foran instant he thought of anticipating the servant and seeking her in theboudoir, but some instinct withheld him, and he turned into the studywhich he had used as an office. It was empty; a few embers glimmered onthe hearth. At the same moment there was a light step behind him, and Mrs. Peyton entered and closed the door behind her. She wasvery beautiful. Although paler and thinner, there was an odd sort ofanimation about her, so unlike her usual repose that it seemed almostfeverish. 

"I thought we could talk together a few moments before the guestsarrive. The house will be presently so full, and my duties as hostesscommence. "

"I was--about to seek you--in--in the boudoir, " hesitated Clarence. 

She gave an impatient shiver. 

"Good heavens, not there! I shall never go there again. I should fancyevery time I looked out of the window that I saw the head of that manbetween the bars. No! I am only thankful that I wasn't here at the time, and that I can keep my remembrance of the dear old place unchanged. " Shechecked herself a little abruptly, and then added somewhat irrelevantlybut cheerfully, "Well, you have been away? What have you done?"

"Nothing, " said Clarence. 

"Then you have kept your promise, " she said, with the same nervoushilarity. 

"I have returned here without making any other engagement, " he saidgravely; "but I have not altered my determination. "

She shrugged her shoulders again, or, as it seemed, the skin of hertightly fitting black dress above them, with the sensitive shiver of ahighly groomed horse, and moved to the hearth as if for warmth; put herslim, slippered foot upon the low fender, drawing, with a quick hand, the whole width of her skirt behind her until it clingingly accented thelong, graceful curve from her hip to her feet. All this was so unlikeher usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it. With hereyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing hertoe to its warmth and drawing it away, she said:--

"Of course, you must please yourself. I am afraid I have no right exceptthat of habit and custom to keep you here; and you know, " she added, with an only half-withheld bitterness, "that they are not always veryeffective with young people who prefer to have the ordering of their ownlives. But I have something still to tell you before you finally decide. I have, as you know, been looking over my--over Mr. Peyton's papers verycarefully. Well, as a result, I find, Mr. Brant, that there is no recordwhatever of his wonderfully providential purchase of the Sisters' titlefrom you; that he never entered into any written agreement with you, andnever paid you a cent; and that, furthermore, his papers show me thathe never even contemplated it; nor, indeed, even knew of YOUR owningthe title when he died. Yes, Mr. Brant, it was all to YOUR foresight andprudence, and YOUR generosity alone, that we owe our present possessionof the rancho. When you helped us into that awful window, it was YOURhouse we were entering; and if it had been YOU, and not those wretches, who had chosen to shut the doors on us after the funeral, we could neverhave entered here again. Don't deny it, Mr. Brant. I have suspected it along time, and when you spoke of changing YOUR position, I determined tofind out if it wasn't I who had to leave the house rather than you. Onemoment, please. And I did find out, and it WAS I. Don't speak, please, yet. And now, " she said, with a quick return to her previous nervoushilarity, "knowing this, as you did, and knowing, too, that I would knowit when I examined the papers, --don't speak, I'm not through yet, --don'tyou think that it was just a LITTLE cruel for you to try to hurry me, and make me come here instead of your coming to ME in San Francisco, when I gave you leave for that purpose?"

"But, Mrs. Peyton, " gasped Clarence. 

"Please don't interrupt me, " said the lady, with a touch of her oldimperiousness, "for in a moment I must join my guests. When I found youwouldn't tell me, and left it to me to find out, I could only go awayas I did, and really leave you to control what I believed was your ownproperty. And I thought, too, that I understood your motives, and, to befrank with you, that worried me; for I believed I knew the dispositionand feelings of a certain person better than yourself. "

"One moment, " broke out Clarence, "you MUST hear me, now. Foolish andmisguided as that purchase may have been, I swear to you I had only onemotive in making it, --to save the homestead for you and your husband, who had been my first and earliest benefactors. What the result of itwas, you, as a business woman, know; your friends know; your lawyer willtell you the same. You owe me nothing. I have given you nothing but therepossession of this property, which any other man could have done, andperhaps less stupidly than I did. I would not have forced you to comehere to hear this if I had dreamed of your suspicions, or even if I hadsimply understood that you would see me in San Francisco as I passedthrough. "

"Passed through? Where were you going?" she said quickly. 

"To Sacramento. "

The abrupt change in her manner startled him to a recollection of Susy, and he blushed. She bit her lips, and moved towards the window. 

"Then you saw her?" she said, turning suddenly towards him. The inquiryof her beautiful eyes was more imperative than her speech. 

Clarence recognized quickly what he thought was his cruel blunder intouching the half-healed wound of separation. But he had gone too far tobe other than perfectly truthful now. 

"Yes; I saw her on the stage, " he said, with a return of his boyishearnestness; "and I learned something which I wanted you to firsthear from me. She is MARRIED, --and to Mr. Hooker, who is in the sametheatrical company with her. But I want you to think, as I honestly do, that it is the best for her. She has married in her profession, which isa great protection and a help to her success, and she has married a manwho can look lightly upon certain qualities in her that others mightnot be so lenient to. His worst faults are on the surface, and will wearaway in contact with the world, and he looks up to her as his superior. I gathered this from her friend, for I did not speak with her myself; Idid not go there to see her. But as I expected to be leaving you soon, I thought it only right that as I was the humble means of first bringingher into your life, I should bring you this last news, which I supposetakes her out of it forever. Only I want you to believe that YOU havenothing to regret, and that SHE is neither lost nor unhappy. "

The expression of suspicious inquiry on her face when he began changedgradually to perplexity as he continued, and then relaxed into a faint, peculiar smile. But there was not the slightest trace of that pain, wounded pride, indignation, or anger, that he had expected to see uponit. 

"That means, I suppose, Mr. Brant, that YOU no longer care for her?"

The smile had passed, yet she spoke now with a half-real, half-affectedarchness that was also unlike her. 

"It means, " said Clarence with a white face, but a steady voice, "thatI care for her now as much as I ever cared for her, no matter to whatfolly it once might have led me. But it means, also, that there was notime when I was not able to tell it to YOU as frankly as I do now"--

"One moment, please, " she interrupted, and turned quickly towardsthe door. She opened it and looked out. "I thought they were callingme, --and--I--I--MUST go now, Mr. Brant. And without finishing mybusiness either, or saying half I had intended to say. But wait"--sheput her hand to her head in a pretty perplexity, "it's a moonlightnight, and I'll propose after dinner a stroll in the gardens, and youcan manage to walk a little with me. " She stopped again, returned, said, "It was very kind of you to think of me at Sacramento, " held out herhand, allowed it to remain for an instant, cool but acquiescent, in hiswarmer grasp, and with the same odd youthfulness of movement and gestureslipped out of the door. 

An hour later she was at the head of her dinner table, serene, beautiful, and calm, in her elegant mourning, provokingly inaccessiblein the sweet deliberation of her widowed years; Padre Esteban was ather side with a local magnate, who had known Peyton and his wife, whileDonna Rosita and a pair of liquid-tongued, childlike senoritas were nearClarence and Sanderson. To the priest Mrs. Peyton spoke admiringly ofthe changes in the rancho and the restoration of the Mission Chapel, andtogether they had commended Clarence from the level of their superiorpassionless reserve and years. Clarence felt hopelessly young andhopelessly lonely; the naive prattle of the young girls beside himappeared infantine. In his abstraction, he heard Mrs. Peyton allude tothe beauty of the night, and propose that after coffee and chocolatethe ladies should put on their wraps and go with her to the old garden. Clarence raised his eyes; she was not looking at him, but there wasa slight consciousness in her face that was not there before, andthe faintest color in her cheek, still lingering, no doubt, from theexcitement of conversation. 

It was a cool, tranquil, dewless night when they at last straggled out, mere black and white patches in the colorless moonlight. The brilliancyof the flower-hued landscape was subdued under its passive, paleausterity; even the gray and gold of the second terrace seemed dulledand confused. At any other time Clarence might have lingered over thisstrange effect, but his eyes followed only a tall figure, in a longstriped burnous, that moved gracefully beside the soutaned priest. As heapproached, it turned towards him. 

"Ah! here you are. I just told Father Esteban that you talked of leavingto-morrow, and that he would have to excuse me a few moments while youshowed me what you had done to the old garden. "

She moved beside him, and, with a hesitation that was not unlike a moreyouthful timidity, slipped her hand through his arm. It was for thefirst time, and, without thinking, he pressed it impulsively to hisside. I have already intimated that Clarence's reserve was at timesqualified by singular directness. 

A few steps carried them out of hearing; a few more, and they seemedalone in the world. The long adobe wall glanced away emptily besidethem, and was lost; the black shadows of the knotted pear-trees werebeneath their feet. They began to walk with the slight affectation oftreading the shadows as if they were patterns on a carpet. Clarence wasvoiceless, and yet he seemed to be moving beside a spirit that must befirst addressed. 

But it was flesh and blood nevertheless. 

"I interrupted you in something you were saying when I left the office, "she said quietly. 

"I was speaking of Susy, " returned Clarence eagerly; "and"--

"Then you needn't go on, " interrupted Mrs. Peyton quickly. "I understandyou, and believe you. I would rather talk of something else. We have notyet arranged how I can make restitution to you for the capital you sankin saving this place. You will be reasonable, Mr. Brant, and not leaveme with the shame and pain of knowing that you ruined yourself for thesake of your old friends. For it is no more a sentimental idea of mineto feel in this way than it is a fair and sensible one for you to implythat a mere quibble of construction absolves me from responsibility. Mr. Sanderson himself admits that the repossession you gave us is a fair andlegal basis for any arrangement of sharing or division of the propertywith you, that might enable you to remain here and continue the work youhave so well begun. Have you no suggestion, or must it come from ME, Mr. Brant?"

"Neither. Let us not talk of that now. "

She did not seem to notice the boyish doggedness of his speech, exceptso far as it might have increased her inconsequent and nervously pitchedlevity. 

"Then suppose we speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcelyexchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluentSpanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid. But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young peoplearound me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know Ihave taken a great fancy to Miss Rogers, and have asked her to visit me. I think she is a good friend of yours, although perhaps she is a littleshy. What's the matter? You have nothing against her, have you?"

Clarence had stopped short. They had reached the end of the pear-treeshadows. A few steps more would bring them to the fallen south wallof the garden and the open moonlight beyond, but to the right an olivealley of deeper shadow diverged. 

"No, " he said, with slow deliberation; "I have to thank Mary Rogers forhaving discovered something in me that I have been blindly, foolishly, and hopelessly struggling with. "

"And, pray, what was that?" said Mrs. Peyton sharply. 

"That I love you!"

Mrs. Peyton was fairly startled. The embarrassment of any truth isapt to be in its eternal abruptness, which no deviousness of tact orcircumlocution of diplomacy has ever yet surmounted. Whatever had beenin her heart, or mind, she was unprepared for this directness. The bolthad dropped from the sky; they were alone; there was nothing between thestars and the earth but herself and this man and this truth; it couldnot be overlooked, surmounted, or escaped from. A step or two more wouldtake her out of the garden into the moonlight, but always into thisawful frankness of blunt and outspoken nature. She hesitated, and turnedthe corner into the olive shadows. It was, perhaps, more dangerous;but less shameless, and less like truckling. And the appallingly directClarence instantly followed. 

"I know you will despise me, hate me; and, perhaps, worst of all, disbelieve me; but I swear to you, now, that I have always lovedyou, --yes, ALWAYS! When first I came here, it was not to see my oldplaymate, but YOU, for I had kept the memory of you as I first sawyou when a boy, and you have always been my ideal. I have thought of, dreamed of, worshiped, and lived for no other woman. Even when I foundSusy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that Imight, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with YOUalways; that I might be a part of YOUR home, your family, and have aplace with her in YOUR heart; for it was you I loved, and YOU only. Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I amtelling you. God help me!"

If she only COULD have laughed, --harshly, ironically, or even mercifullyand kindly! But it would not come. And she burst out:--

"I am not laughing. Good heavens, don't you see? It is ME you are makingridiculous. "

"YOU ridiculous?" he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice. "You--a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistressof these lands where I am only steward--made ridiculous, not by mypresumption, but by my confession? Was the saint you just now admired inFather Esteban's chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who werekneeling before it?"

"Hush! This is wicked! Stop!"

She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voiceand manner. She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw itbetween passion and impiety. 

"Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you. I lovedyou when I came here, --even when your husband was alive. Don't be angry, Mrs. Peyton; HE would not, and need not, have been angry; he would havepitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of hispassion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but ONE. And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought ofme at all. It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in theboudoir. I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; withyour presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind, --yes, Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy. Only, then, Iknew not what it was. "

"But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now, " said Mrs. Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a momentafter on her lips. "I remember it very well. You told me then thatI REMINDED YOU OF YOUR MOTHER. Well, I am not old enough to be yourmother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might havebeen, the mother of your wife. That was what you meant then; thatis what you mean now. I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make meridiculous. I ask your pardon. Let us leave it as it was that day in theboudoir, as it is NOW. Let me still remind you of your mother, --I knowshe must have been a good woman to have had so good a son, --and whenyou have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me fora mother's blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection andmisunderstanding of this evening. "

Her voice did not, however, exhibit that exquisite maternal tendernesswhich the beatific vision ought to have called up, and the persistentvoice of Clarence could not be evaded in the shadow. 

"I said you reminded me of my mother, " he went on at her side, "becauseI knew her and lost her only as a child. She never was anything to mebut a memory, and yet an ideal of all that was sweet and lovable inwoman. Perhaps it was a dream of what she might have been when she wasas young in years as you. If it pleases you still to misunderstand me, it may please you also to know that there is a reminder of her evenin this. I have no remembrance of a word of affection from her, nor acaress; I have been as hopeless in my love for her who was my mother, asof the woman I would make my wife. "

"But you have seen no one, you know no one, you are young, you scarcelyknow your own self! You will forget this, you will forget ME! Andif--if--I should--listen to you, what would the world say, what wouldYOU yourself say a few years hence? Oh, be reasonable. Think of it, --itwould be so wild, --so mad! so--so--utterly ridiculous!"

In proof of its ludicrous quality, two tears escaped her eyes inthe darkness. But Clarence caught the white flash of her withdrawnhandkerchief in the shadow, and captured her returning hand. It wastrembling, but did not struggle, and presently hushed itself to rest inhis. 

"I'm not only a fool but a brute, " he said in a lower voice. "Forgiveme. I have given you pain, --you, for whom I would have died. "

They had both stopped. He was still holding her sleeping hand. His armhad stolen around the burnous so softly that it followed the curvesof her figure as lightly as a fold of the garment, and was presumablyunfelt. Grief has its privileges, and suffering exonerates aquestionable situation. In another moment her fair head MIGHT havedropped upon his shoulder. But an approaching voice uprose in theadjoining broad allee. It might have been the world speaking through thevoice of the lawyer Sanderson. 

"Yes, he is a good fellow, and an intelligent fellow, too, but a perfectchild in his experience of mankind. "

They both started, but Mrs. Peyton's hand suddenly woke up and graspedhis firmly. Then she said in a higher, but perfectly level tone:--

"Yes, I think with you we had better look at it again in the sunlightto-morrow. But here come our friends; they have probably been waitingfor us to join them and go in. "

* * * * *

The wholesome freshness of early morning was in the room when Clarenceawoke, cleared and strengthened. His resolution had been made. He wouldleave the rancho that morning, to enter the world again and seek hisfortune elsewhere. This was only right to HER, whose future it shouldnever be said he had imperiled by his folly and inexperience; and if, ina year or two of struggle he could prove his right to address her again, he would return. He had not spoken to her since they had parted in thegarden, with the grim truths of the lawyer ringing in his ears, but hehad written a few lines of farewell, to be given to her after hehad left. He was calm in his resolution, albeit a little pale andhollow-eyed for it. 

He crept downstairs in the gray twilight of the scarce-awakened house, and made his way to the stables. Saddling his horse, and mounting, he paced forth into the crisp morning air. The sun, just risen, waseverywhere bringing out the fresh color of the flower-strewn terraces, as the last night's shadows, which had hidden them, were slowly beatenback. He cast a last look at the brown adobe quadrangle of the quiethouse, just touched with the bronzing of the sun, and then turned hisface towards the highway. As he passed the angle of the old garden hehesitated, but, strong in his resolution, he put the recollection oflast night behind him, and rode by without raising his eyes. 

"Clarence!"

It was HER voice. He wheeled his horse. She was standing behind thegrille in the old wall as he had seen her standing on the day he hadridden to his rendezvous with Susy. A Spanish manta was thrown over herhead and shoulders, as if she had dressed hastily, and had run out tointercept him while he was still in the stable. Her beautiful face waspale in its black-hooded recess, and there were faint circles around herlovely eyes. 

"You were going without saying 'goodby'!" she said softly. 

She passed her slim white hand between the grating. Clarence leaped tothe ground, caught it, and pressed it to his lips. But he did not let itgo. 

"No! no!" she said, struggling to withdraw it. "It is better as itis--as--as you have decided it to be. Only I could not let you gothus, --without a word. There now, --go, Clarence, go. Please! Don't yousee I am behind these bars? Think of them as the years that separateus, my poor, dear, foolish boy. Think of them as standing between us, growing closer, heavier, and more cruel and hopeless as the years goon. "

Ah, well! they had been good bars a hundred and fifty years ago, when itwas thought as necessary to repress the innocence that was behind themas the wickedness that was without. They had done duty in the conventat Santa Inez, and the monastery of Santa Barbara, and had been broughthither in Governor Micheltorrenas' time to keep the daughters of Roblesfrom the insidious contact of the outer world, when they took the airin their cloistered pleasance. Guitars had tinkled against them in vain, and they had withstood the stress and storm of love tokens. But, likemany other things which have had their day and time, they had retainedtheir semblance of power, even while rattling loosely in their sockets, only because no one had ever thought of putting them to the test, and, in the strong hand of Clarence, assisted, perhaps, by the leaningfigure of Mrs. Peyton, I grieve to say that the whole grille suddenlycollapsed, became a frame of tinkling iron, and then clanked, bar bybar, into the road. Mrs. Peyton uttered a little cry and drew back, andClarence, leaping the ruins, caught her in his arms. 

For a moment only, for she quickly withdrew from them, and althoughthe morning sunlight was quite rosy on her cheeks, she said gravely, pointing to the dismantled opening:--

"I suppose you MUST stay now, for you never could leave me here aloneand defenseless. "

He stayed. And with this fulfillment of his youthful dreams the romanceof his young manhood seemed to be completed, and so closed the secondvolume of this trilogy. But what effect that fulfillment of youthhad upon his maturer years, or the fortunes of those who were nearlyconcerned in it, may be told in a later and final chronicle.