CHAPTER VII

.

When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows' housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their eyes met.

“Broken?” he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.

“Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite,” responded the negress.

“Snake bite!” repeated Courtland with languid interest, “what snake?”

“Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which,” she replied. “But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone. Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed.”

Some faint chord of memory was touched by the girl's peculiar vocabulary.

“Ah,” said Courtland quickly, “you're Miss Dows' Sophy. Then you can tell me”--

“Nuffin, sah absomlutely nuffin!” interrupted the girl, shaking her head with impressive official dignity. “It's done gone fo'bid by de doctor! Yo' 're to lie dar and shut yo'r eye, honey,” she added, for the moment reverting unconsciously to the native maternal tenderness of her race, “and yo' 're not to bodder yo'se'f ef school keeps o' not. De medical man say distinctly, sah,” she concluded, sternly recalling her duty again, “no conversation wid de patient.”

But Courtland had winning ways with all dependents. “But you will answer me ONE question, Sophy, and I'll not ask another. Has”--he hesitated in his still uncertainty as to the actuality of his experience and its probable extent--“has--Cato--escaped?”

“If yo' mean dat sassy, bull-nigger oberseer of yo'se, cunnle, HE'S safe, yo' bet!” returned Sophy sharply. “Safe in his own quo'tahs night afo' las', after braggin' about the bloodhaowns he killed; and safe ober the county line yes'day moan'in, after kicking up all dis rumpus. If dar is a sassy, highfalutin' nigger I jiss 'spises--its dat black nigger Cato o' yo'se! Now,”--relenting--“yo' jiss wink yo' eye, honey, and don't excite yo'se'f about sach black trash; drap off to sleep comfor'ble. Fo' you do'an get annuder word out o' Sophy, shuah!”

As if in obedience, Courtland closed his eyes. But even in his weak state he was conscious of the blood coming into his cheek at Sophy's relentless criticism of the man for whom he had just periled his life and position. Much of it he felt was true; but how far had he been a dupe in his quixotic defense of a quarrelsome blusterer and cowardly bully? Yet there was the unmistakable shot and cold-blooded attempt at Cato's assassination! And there were the bloodhounds sent to track the unfortunate man! That was no dream--but a brutal inexcusable fact!

The medical practitioner of Redlands he remembered was conservative, old-fashioned, and diplomatic. But his sympathies had been broadened by some army experiences, and Courtland trusted to some soldierly and frank exposition of the matter from him. Nevertheless, Dr. Maynard was first healer, and, like Sophy, professionally cautious. The colonel had better not talk about it now. It was already two days old; the colonel had been nearly forty-eight hours in bed. It was a regrettable affair, but the natural climax of long-continued political and racial irritation--and not without GREAT provocation! Assassination was a strong word; could Colonel Courtland swear that Cato was actually AIMED AT, or was it not merely a demonstration to frighten a bullying negro? It might have been necessary to teach him a lesson--which the colonel by this time ought to know could only be taught to these inferior races by FEAR. The bloodhounds! Ah, yes!--well, the bloodhounds were, in fact, only a part of that wholesome discipline. Surely Colonel Courtland was not so foolish as to believe that, even in the old slave-holding days, planters sent dogs after runaways to mangle and destroy THEIR OWN PROPERTY? They might as well, at once, let them escape! No, sir! They were used only to frighten and drive the niggers out of swamps, brakes, and hiding-places--as no nigger had ever dared to face 'em. Cato might lie as much as he liked, but everybody knew WHO it was that killed Major Reed's hounds. Nobody blamed the colonel for it,--not even Major Reed,--but if the colonel had lived a little longer in the South, he'd have known it wasn't necessary to do that in self-preservation, as the hounds would never have gone for a white man. But that was not a matter for the colonel to bother about NOW. He was doing well; he had slept nearly thirty hours; there was no fever, he must continue to doze off the exhaustion of his powerful stimulant, and he, the doctor, would return later in the afternoon.

Perhaps it was his very inability to grasp in that exhausted state the full comprehension of the doctor's meaning, perhaps because the physical benumbing of his brain was stronger than any mental excitement, but he slept again until the doctor reappeared. “You're doing well enough now, colonel,” said the physician, after a brief examination of his patient, “and I think we can afford to wake you up a bit, and even let you move your arm. You're luckier than poor Tom Higbee, who won't be able to set his leg to the floor for three weeks to come. I haven't got all the buckshot out of it yet that Jack Dumont put there the other night.”

Courtland started slightly. Jack Dumont! That was the name of Sally Dows cousin of whom Champney had spoken! He had resolutely put aside from his returning memory the hazy recollection of the young girl's voice--the last thing he had heard that night--and the mystery that seemed to surround it. But there was no delusion in this cousin--his rival, and that of the equally deceived Champney. He controlled himself and repeated coldly:--

“Jack Dumont!”

“Yes. But of course you knew nothing of all that, while you were off in the swamp there. Yet, by Jingo! it was Dumont's shooting Higbee that helped YOU to get off your nigger a darned sight more than YOUR killing the dogs.”

“I don't understand,” returned Courtland coldly.

“Well, you see, Dumont, who had taken up No'th'n principles, I reckon, more to goad the Higbees and please Sally Dows than from any conviction, came over here that night. Whether he suspected anything was up, or wanted to dare Higbee for bedevilment, or was only dancing attendance on Miss Sally, no one knows. But he rode slap into Highee's party, called out, 'If you're out hunting, Tom, here's a chance for your score!' meaning their old vendetta feud, and brings his shot-gun up to his shoulder. Higbee wasn't quick enough, Dumont lets fly, drops Higbee, and then gallops off chased by the Reeds to avenge Higbee, and followed by the whole crowd to see the fun, which was a little better than nigger-driving. And that let you and Cato out, colonel.”

“And Dumont?”

“Got clean away to Foxboro' Station, leaving another score on his side for the Reeds and Higbees to wipe out as best they can. You No'th'n men don't believe in these sort of things, colonel, but taken as a straight dash and hit o' raiding, that stroke of Sally Dows' cousin was mighty fine!”

Courtland controlled himself with difficulty. The doctor had spoken truly. The hero of this miserable affair was HER cousin--HIS RIVAL! And to him--perhaps influenced by some pitying appeal of Miss Sally for the man she had deceived--Courtland owed his life! He instinctively drew a quick, sharp breath.

“Are you in pain?”

“Not at all. When can I get up?”

“Perhaps to-morrow.”

“And this arm?”

“Better not use it for a week or two.” He stopped, and, glancing paternally at the younger man, added gravely but kindly: “If you'll take my unprofessional advice, Colonel Courtland, you'll let this matter simmer down. It won't hurt you and your affairs here that folks have had a taste of your quality, and the nigger a lesson that his fellows won't forget.”

“I thank you,” returned Courtland coldly; “but I think I already understand my duty to the company I represent and the Government I have served.”

“Possibly, colonel,” said the doctor quietly; “but you'll let an older man remind you and the Government that you can't change the habits or relations of two distinct races in a few years. Your friend, Miss Sally Dows--although not quite in my way of thinking--has never attempted THAT.”

“I am fully aware that Miss Dows possesses diplomatic accomplishments and graces that I cannot lay claim to,” returned Courtland bitterly.

The doctor lifted his eyebrows slightly and changed the subject.

When he had gone, Courtland called for writing materials. He had already made up his mind, and one course alone seemed proper to him. He wrote to the president of the company, detailing the circumstances that had just occurred, admitting the alleged provocation given by his overseer, but pointing out the terrorism of a mob-law which rendered his own discipline impossible. He asked that the matter be reported to Washington, and some measures taken for the protection of the freedmen, in the mean time he begged to tender his own resignation, but he would stay until his successor was appointed, or the safety of his employees secured. Until then, he should act upon his own responsibility and according to his judgment. He made no personal charges, mentioned no names, asked for no exemplary prosecution or trial of the offenders, but only demanded a safeguard against a repetition of the offense. His next letter, although less formal and official, was more difficult. It was addressed to the commandant of the nearest Federal barracks, who was an old friend and former companion-in-arms. He alluded to some conversation they had previously exchanged in regard to the presence of a small detachment of troops at Redlands during the elections, which Courtland at the time, however, had diplomatically opposed. He suggested it now as a matter of public expediency and prevention. When he had sealed the letters, not caring to expose them to the espionage of the local postmaster or his ordinary servants, he intrusted them to one of Miss Sally's own henchmen, to be posted at the next office, at Bitter Creek Station, ten miles distant.

Unfortunately, this duty accomplished, the reaction consequent on his still weak physical condition threw him back upon himself and his memory. He had resolutely refused to think of Miss Sally; he had been able to withstand the suggestions of her in the presence of her handmaid--supposed to be potent in nursing and herb-lore--whom she had detached to wait upon him, and he had returned politely formal acknowledgments to her inquiries. He had determined to continue this personal avoidance as far as possible until he was relieved, on the ground of that BUSINESS expediency which these events had made necessary. She would see that he was only accepting the arguments with which she had met his previous advances. Briefly, he had recourse to that hopeless logic by which a man proves to himself that he has no reason for loving a certain woman, and is as incontestably convinced by the same process that he has. And in the midst of it he weakly fell asleep, and dreamed that he and Miss Sally were walking in the cemetery; that a hideous snake concealed among some lilies, over which the young girl was bending, had uplifted its triangular head to strike. That he seized it by the neck, struggled with it until he was nearly exhausted, when it suddenly collapsed and shrunk, leaving in his palm the limp, crushed, and delicately perfumed little thread glove which he remembered to have once slipped from her hand.

When he awoke, that perfume seemed to be still in the air, distinct from the fresh but homelier scents of the garden which stole through the window. A sense of delicious coolness came with the afternoon breeze, that faintly trilled the slanting slats of the blind with a slumberous humming as of bees. The golden glory of a sinking southern sun was penciling the cheap paper on the wall with leafy tracery and glowing arabesques. But more than that, the calm of some potent influence--or some unseen presence--was upon him, which he feared a movement might dispel. The chair at the foot of his bed was empty. Sophy had gone out. He did not turn his head to look further; his languid eyes falling aimlessly upon the carpet at his bedside suddenly dilated. For they fell also on the “smallest foot in the State.”

He started to his elbow, but a soft hand was laid gently yet firmly upon his shoulder, and with a faint rustle of muslin skirts Miss Sally rose from an unseen chair at the head of his bed, and stood beside him.

“Don't stir, co'nnle, I didn't sit where I could look in yo'r face for fear of waking yo'. But I'll change seats now.” She moved to the chair which Sophy had vacated, drew it slightly nearer the bed, and sat down.

“It was very kind of you--to come,” said Courtland hesitatingly, as with a strong effort he drew his eyes away from the fascinating vision, and regained a certain cold composure, “but I am afraid my illness has been greatly magnified. I really am quite well enough to be up and about my business, if the doctor would permit it. But I shall certainly manage to attend to my duty to-morrow, and I hope to be at your service.

“Meaning that yo' don't care to see me NOW, co'nnle,” she said lightly, with a faint twinkle in her wise, sweet eyes. “I thought of that, but as my business wouldn't wait, I brought it to yo'.” She took from the folds of her gown a letter. To his utter amazement it was the one he had given his overseer to post to the commandant that morning. To his greater indignation the seal was broken.

“Who has dared?” he demanded, half rising.

Her little hand was thrust out half deprecatingly. “No one yo' can fight, co'nnle; only ME. I don't generally open other folks' letters, and I wouldn't have done it for MYSELF; I did for yo'.”

“For me?”

“For yo'. I reckoned what yo' MIGHT do, and I told Sam to bring ME the letters first. I didn't mind what yo' wrote to the company--for they'll take care of yo', and their own eggs are all in the same basket. I didn't open THAT one, but I did THIS when I saw the address. It was as I expected, and yo' 'd given yo'self away! For if yo' had those soldiers down here, yo' 'd have a row, sure! Don't move, co'nnle, YO' may not care for that, it's in YO'R line. But folks will say that the soldiers weren't sent to prevent RIOTING, but that Co'nnle Courtland was using his old comrades to keep order on his property at Gov'ment expense. Hol' on! Hol' on! co'nnle,” said the little figure, rising and waving its pretty arms with a mischievous simulation of terrified deprecation. “Don't shoot! Of course yo' didn't mean THAT, but that's about the way that So'th'n men will put it to yo'r Gov'ment. For,” she continued, more gently, yet with the shrewdest twinkle in her gray eyes, “if yo' really thought the niggers might need Federal protection, yo' 'd have let ME write to the commandant to send an escort--not to YO, but to CATO--that HE might be able to come back in safety. Yo' 'd have had yo'r soldiers; I'd have had back my nigger, which”--demurely--“yo' don't seem to worry yo'self much about, co'nnle; and there isn't a So'th'n man would have objected. But,” still more demurely, and affectedly smoothing out her crisp skirt with her little hands, “yo' haven't been troubling me much with yo'r counsel lately.”

A swift and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland. For the first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was, perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their dexterity, tact, and expediency rose here incarnate, with the added grace of womanhood. A strange sense of relief--perhaps a dawning of hope--stole over him.

“But how will this insure Cato's safety hereafter, or give protection to the others?” he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

“The future won't concern YO' much, co'nnle, if as yo' say here yo'r resignation is sent in, and yo'r successor appointed,” she replied, with more gravity than she had previously shown.

“But you do not think I will leave YOU in this uncertainty,” he said passionately. He stopped suddenly, his brow darkened. “I forgot,” he added coldly, “you will be well protected. Your--COUSIN--will give you the counsel of race--and--closer ties.”

To his infinite astonishment, Miss Sally leaned forward in her chair and buried her laughing face in both of her hands. When her dimples had become again visible, she said with an effort, “Don't yo' think, co'nnle, that as a peacemaker my cousin was even a bigger failure than yo'self?”

“I don't understand,” stammered Courtland.

“Don't yo' think,” she continued, wiping her eyes demurely, “that if a young woman about my size, who had got perfectly tired and sick of all this fuss made about yo', because yo' were a No'th'n man, managing niggers--if that young woman wanted to show her people what sort of a radical and abolitionist a SO'TH'N man of their own sort might become, she'd have sent for Jack Dumont as a sample? Eh? Only, I declare to goodness, I never reckoned that he and Higbee would revive the tomfooling of the vendetta, and take to shootin' each other at once.”

“And your sending for your cousin was only a feint to protect me?” said Courtland faintly.

“Perhaps he didn't have to be SENT for, co'nnle,” she said, with a slight touch of coquetry. “Suppose we say, I LET HIM COME. He'd be hanging round, for he has property here, and wanted to get me to take it up with mine in the company. I knew what his new views and ideas were, and I thought I'd better consult Champney--who, being a foreigner, and an older resident than yo', was quite neutral. He didn't happen to tell YO' anything about it--did he, co'nnle?” she added with a grave mouth, but an indescribable twinkle in her eyes.

Courtland's face darkened. “He did--and he further told me, Miss Dows, that he himself was your suitor, and that you had refused him because of the objections of your people.”

She raised her eyes to his swiftly and dropped them.

“And yo' think I ought to have accepted him?” she said slowly.

“No! but--you know--you told me”--he began hurriedly. But she had already risen, and was shaking out the folds of her dress.

“We're not talking BUSINESS co'nnle--and business was my only excuse for coming here, and taking Sophy's place. I'll send her in to yo', now.”

“But, Miss Dows!--Miss Sally!”

She stopped--hesitated--a singular weakness for so self-contained a nature--and then slowly produced from her pocket a second letter--the one that Courtland had directed to the company. “I didn't read THIS letter, as I just told yo' co'nnle, for I reckon I know what's in it, but I thought I'd bring it with me too, in case YO' CHANGED YO'R MIND.”

He raised himself on his pillow as she turned quickly away; but in that single vanishing glimpse of her bright face he saw what neither he nor any one else had ever seen upon the face of Sally Dows--a burning blush!

“Miss Sally!” He almost leaped from the bed, but she was gone. There was another rustle at the door--the entrance of Sophy.

“Call her back, Sophy, quick!” he said.

The negress shook her turbaned head. “Not much, honey! When Miss Sally say she goes--she done gone, shuah!”

“But, Sophy!” Perhaps something in the significant face of the girl tempted him; perhaps it was only an impulse of his forgotten youth. “Sophy!” appealingly--“tell me!--is Miss Sally engaged to her cousin?”

“Wat dat?” said Sophy in indignant scorn. “Miss Sally engaged to dat Dumont! What fo'? Yo' 're crazy! No!”

“Nor Champney? Tell me, Sophy, has she a LOVER?”

For a moment the whites of Sophy's eyes were uplifted in speechless scorn. “Yo' ask dat! Yo' lyin' dar wid dat snake-bit arm! Yo' lyin' dar, and Miss Sally--who has only to whistle to call de fust quality in de State raoun her--coming and going here wid you, and trotting on yo'r arrants--and yo' ask dat! Yes! she has a lover, and what's me', she CAN'T HELP IT; and yo' 're her lover; and what's me', YO' can't help it either! And yo' can't back out of it now--bo'fe of yo'--nebber! Fo' yo' 're hers, and she's yo'rs--fo' ebber. For she sucked yo' blood.”

“What!” gasped Courtland, aghast at what he believed to be the sudden insanity of the negress.

“Yes! Whar's yo'r eyes? whar's yo'r years? who's yo' dat yo' didn't see nor heah nuffin? When dey dragged yo' outer de swamp dat night--wid de snake-bite freshen yo'r arm--didn't SHE, dat poh chile!--dat same Miss Sally--frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood and one soul! Go way, white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down dar! Hol' on, co'nnle, for massy's sake. Well, dar--I'll call her back!”

And she did!

“Look here--don't you know--it rather took me by surprise,” said Champney, a few days later, with a hearty grip of the colonel's uninjured hand; “but I don't bear malice, old fellow, and, by Jove! it was SUCH a sensible, all-round, business-like choice for the girl to make that no wonder we never thought of it before. Hang it all, you see a fellow was always so certain it would be something out of the way and detrimental, don't you know, that would take the fancy of a girl like that--somebody like that cousin of hers or Higbee, or even ME, by Jove that we never thought of looking beyond our noses--never thought of the BUSINESS! And YOU all the time so cold and silent and matter-of-fact about it! But I congratulate you! You've got the business down on a safe basis now, and what's more, you've got the one woman who can run it.”

They say he was a true prophet. At least the Syndicate affairs prospered, and in course of time even the Reeds and the Higbees

## participated in the benefits. There were no more racial disturbances;

only the districts polled a peaceful and SMALLER Democratic majority at the next election. There were not wanting those who alleged that Colonel Courtland had simply become MRS. COURTLAND'S SUPERINTENDENT; that she had absorbed him as she had every one who had come under her influence, and that she would not rest until she had made him a Senator (to represent Mrs. Courtland) in the councils of the nation. But when I last dined with them in Washington, ten years ago, I found them both very happy and comfortable, and I remember that Mrs. Courtland's remarks upon Federal and State interests, the proper education of young girls, and the management of the family, were eminently wise and practical.

THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER.

## PART I.

On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay a line of bluffs terminates in a promontory, at whose base, formed by the crumbling debris of the cliff above, there is a narrow stretch of beach, salt meadow, and scrub oak. The abrupt wall of rock behind it seems to isolate it as completely from the mainland as the sea before it separates it from the opposite shore. In spite of its contiguity to San Francisco,--opposite also, but hidden by the sharp re-entering curve of coast,--the locality was wild, uncultivated, and unfrequented. A solitary fisherman's cabin half hidden in the rocks was the only trace of habitation. White drifts of sea-gulls and pelican across the face of the cliff, gray clouds of sandpipers rising from the beach, the dripping flight of ducks over the salt meadows, and the occasional splash of a seal from the rocks, were the only signs of life that could be seen from the decks of passing ships. And yet the fisherman's cabin was occupied by Zephas Bunker and his young wife, and he had succeeded in wresting from the hard soil pasturage for a cow and goats, while his lateen-sailed fishing-boat occasionally rode quietly in the sheltered cove below.

Three years ago Zephas Bunker, an ex-whaler, had found himself stranded on a San Francisco wharf and had “hired out” to a small Petaluma farmer. At the end of a year he had acquired little taste for the farmer's business, but considerable for the farmer's youthful daughter, who, equally weary of small agriculture, had consented to elope with him in order to escape it. They were married at Oakland; he put his scant earnings into a fishing-boat, discovered the site for his cabin, and brought his bride thither. The novelty of the change pleased her, although perhaps it was but little advance on her previous humble position. Yet she preferred her present freedom to the bare restricted home life of her past; the perpetual presence of the restless sea was a relief to the old monotony of the wheat field and its isolated drudgery. For Mary's youthful fancy, thinly sustained in childhood by the lightest literary food, had neither been stimulated nor disillusioned by her marriage. That practical experience which is usually the end of girlish romance had left her still a child in sentiment. The long absences of her husband in his fishing-boat kept her from wearying of or even knowing his older and unequal companionship; it gave her a freedom her girlhood had never known, yet added a protection that suited her still childish dependency, while it tickled her pride with its equality. When not engaged in her easy household duties in her three-roomed cottage, or the care of her rocky garden patch, she found time enough to indulge her fancy over the mysterious haze that wrapped the invisible city so near and yet unknown to her; in the sails that slipped in and out of the Golden Gate, but of whose destination she knew nothing; and in the long smoke trail of the mail steamer which had yet brought her no message. Like all dwellers by the sea, her face and her thoughts were more frequently turned towards it; and as with them, it also seemed to her that whatever change was coming into her life would come across that vast unknown expanse. But it was here that Mrs. Bunker was mistaken.

It had been a sparkling summer morning. The waves were running before the dry northwest trade winds with crystalline but colorless brilliancy. Sheltered by the high, northerly bluff, the house and its garden were exposed to the untempered heat of the cloudless sun refracted from the rocky wall behind it. Some tarpaulin and ropes lying among the rocks were sticky and odorous; the scrub oaks and manzanita bushes gave out the aroma of baking wood; occasionally a faint pot-pourri fragrance from the hot wild roses and beach grass was blown along the shore; even the lingering odors of Bunker's vocation, and of Mrs. Bunker's cooking, were idealized and refined by the saline breath of the sea at the doors and windows. Mrs. Bunker, in the dazzling sun, bending over her peas and lettuces with a small hoe, felt the comfort of her brown holland sunbonnet. Secure in her isolation, she unbuttoned the neck of her gown for air, and did not put up the strand of black hair that had escaped over her shoulder. It was very hot in the lee of the bluff, and very quiet in that still air. So quiet that she heard two distinct reports, following each other quickly, but very faint and far. She glanced mechanically towards the sea. Two merchant-men in midstream were shaking out their wings for a long flight, a pilot boat and coasting schooner were rounding the point, but there was no smoke from their decks. She bent over her work again, and in another moment had forgotten it. But the heat, with the dazzling reflection from the cliff, forced her to suspend her gardening, and stroll along the beach to the extreme limit of her domain. Here she looked after the cow that had also strayed away through the tangled bush for coolness. The goats, impervious to temperature, were basking in inaccessible fastnesses on the cliff itself that made her eyes ache to climb. Over an hour passed, she was returning, and had neared her house, when she was suddenly startled to see the figure of a man between her and the cliff. He was engaged in brushing his dusty clothes with a handkerchief, and although he saw her coming, and even moved slowly towards her, continued his occupation with a half-impatient, half-abstracted air. Her feminine perception was struck with the circumstance that he was in deep black, with scarcely a gleam of white showing even at his throat, and that he wore a tall black hat. Without knowing anything of social customs, it seemed to her that his dress was inconsistent with his appearance there.

“Good-morning,” he said, lifting his hat with a preoccupied air. “Do you live here?”

“Yes,” she said wonderingly.

“Anybody else?”

“My husband.”

“I mean any other people? Are there any other houses?” he said with a slight impatience.

“No.”

He looked at her and then towards the sea. “I expect some friends who are coming for me in a boat. I suppose they can land easily here?”

“Didn't you yourself land here just now?” she said quickly.

He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, “No, I came over the cliff.”

“Down the cliff?” she repeated incredulously.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at his clothes; “it was a rough scramble, but the goats showed me the way.”

“And you were up on the bluff all the time?” she went on curiously.

“Yes. You see--I”--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, “Yes, I was there.”

Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss this lack of explanation. He was a very good-looking man of middle age, with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven. She had never seen any one like him before. She thought he looked like an illustration of some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.

“Won't you come in and rest yourself?” she said, motioning to the cabin.

“Thank you,” he said, still half absently. “Perhaps I'd better. It may be some time yet before they come.”

She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some water on the table before him. He thanked her again very gently, poured out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water. But when she glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it, and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea. There was something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.

His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her, only excited her interest the more. And then there was such an odd sadness in his eyes.

“Are you anxious for your folks' coming?” she said at last, following his outlook.

“I--oh no!” he returned, quickly recalling himself, “they'll be sure to come--sooner or later. No fear of that,” he added, half smilingly, half wearily.

Mrs. Bunker passed into the kitchen, where, while apparently attending to her household duties, she could still observe her singular guest. Left alone, he seated himself mechanically in the chair, and gazed fixedly at the fireplace. He remained a long time so quiet and unmoved, in spite of the marked ostentatious clatter Mrs. Bunker found it necessary to make with her dishes, that an odd fancy that he was scarcely a human visitant began to take possession of her. Yet she was not frightened. She remembered distinctly afterwards that, far from having any concern for herself, she was only moved by a strange and vague admiration of him.

But her prolonged scrutiny was not without effect. Suddenly he raised his dark eyes, and she felt them pierce the obscurity of her kitchen with a quick, suspicious, impatient penetration, which as they met hers gave way, however, to a look that she thought was gently reproachful. Then he rose, stretched himself to his full height, and approaching the kitchen door leaned listlessly against the door-post.

“I don't suppose you are ever lonely here?”

“No, sir.”

“Of course not. You have yourself and husband. Nobody interferes with you. You are contented and happy together.”

Mrs. Bunker did not say, what was the fact, that she had never before connected the sole companionship of her husband with her happiness. Perhaps it had never occurred to her until that moment how little it had to do with it. She only smiled gratefully at the change in her guest's abstraction.

“Do you often go to San Francisco?” he continued.

“I have never been there at all. Some day I expect we will go there to live.”

“I wouldn't advise you to,” he said, looking at her gravely. “I don't think it will pay you. You'll never be happy there as here. You'll never have the independence and freedom you have here. You'll never be your own mistress again. But how does it happen you never were in San Francisco?” he said suddenly.

If he would not talk of himself, here at least was a chance for Mrs. Bunker to say something. She related how her family had emigrated from Kansas across the plains and had taken up a “location” at Contra Costa. How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally. Even his dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs. Bunker to put up her hair and button her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.

“Then your husband's name is Bunker?” he said when she paused at last. “That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan. Well, Mrs. Bunker, YOUR family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your father calls himself a Free-States man. You ought to know something of farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers.”

All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being. And Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not end there. He talked of her husband's business--he explained the vast fishing resources of the bay and coast. He showed her how the large colony of Italian fishermen were inimical to the interests of California and to her husband--particularly as a native American trader. He told her of the volcanic changes of the bay and coast line, of the formation of the rocky ledge on which she lived. He pointed out to her its value to the Government for defensive purposes, and how it naturally commanded the entrance of the Golden Gate far better than Fort Point, and that it ought to be in its hands. If the Federal Government did not buy it of her husband, certainly the State of California should. And here he fell into an abstraction as deep and as gloomy as before. He walked to the window, paced the floor with his hand in his breast, went to the door, and finally stepped out of the cabin, moving along the ledge of rocks to the shore, where he stood motionless.

Mrs. Bunker had listened to him with parted lips and eyes of eloquent admiration. She had never before heard anyone talk like THAT--she had not believed it possible that any one could have such knowledge. Perhaps she could not understand all he said, but she would try to remember it after he had gone. She could only think now how kind it was of him that in all this mystery of his coming, and in the singular sadness that was oppressing him, he should try to interest her. And thus looking at him, and wondering, an idea came to her.

She went into her bedroom and took down her husband's heavy pilot overcoat and sou'wester, and handed them to her guest.

“You'd better put them on if you're going to stand there,” she said.

“But I am not cold,” he said wonderingly.

“But you might be SEEN,” she said simply. It was the first suggestion that had passed between them that his presence there was a secret. He looked at her intently, then he smiled and said, “I think you're right, for many reasons,” put the pilot coat over his frock coat, removed his hat with the gesture of a bow, handed it to her, and placed the sou'wester in its stead. Then for an instant he hesitated as if about to speak, but Mrs. Bunker, with a delicacy that she could not herself comprehend at the moment, hurried back to the cabin without giving him an opportunity.

Nor did she again intrude upon his meditations. Hidden in his disguise, which to her eyes did not, however, seem to conceal his characteristic figure, he wandered for nearly an hour under the bluff and along the shore, returning at last almost mechanically to the cabin, where, oblivious of his surroundings, he reseated himself in silence by the table with his cheek resting on his hand. Presently, her quick, experienced ear detected the sound of oars in their row-locks; she could plainly see from her kitchen window a small boat with two strangers seated at the stern being pulled to the shore. With the same strange instinct of delicacy, she determined not to go out lest her presence might embarrass her guest's reception of his friends. But as she turned towards the living room she found he had already risen and was removing his hat and pilot coat. She was struck, however, by the circumstance that not only did he exhibit no feeling of relief at his deliverance, but that a half-cynical, half-savage expression had taken the place of his former melancholy. As he went to the door, the two gentlemen hastily clambered up the rocks to greet him.

“Jim reckoned it was you hangin' round the rocks, but I couldn't tell at that distance. Seemed you borrowed a hat and coat. Well--it's all fixed, and we've no time to lose. There's a coasting steamer just dropping down below the Heads, and it will take you aboard. But I can tell you you've kicked up a h-ll of a row over there.” He stopped, evidently at some sign from her guest. The rest of the man's speech followed in a hurried whisper, which was stopped again by the voice she knew. “No. Certainly not.” The next moment his tall figure was darkening the door of the kitchen; his hand was outstretched. “Good-by, Mrs. Bunker, and many thanks for your hospitality. My friends here,” he turned grimly to the men behind him, “think I ought to ask you to keep this a secret even from your husband. I DON'T! They also think that I ought to offer you money for your kindness. I DON'T! But if you will honor me by keeping this ring in remembrance of it”--he took a heavy seal ring from his finger--“it's the only bit of jewelry I have about me--I'll be very glad. Good-by!” She felt for a moment the firm, soft pressure of his long, thin fingers around her own, and then--he was gone. The sound of retreating oars grew fainter and fainter and was lost. The same reserve of delicacy which now appeared to her as a duty kept her from going to the window to watch the destination of the boat. No, he should go as he came, without her supervision or knowledge.

Nor did she feel lonely afterwards. On the contrary, the silence and solitude of the isolated domain had a new charm. They kept the memory of her experience intact, and enabled her to refill it with his presence. She could see his tall figure again pausing before her cabin, without the incongruous association of another personality; she could hear his voice again, unmingled with one more familiar. For the first time, the regular absence of her husband seemed an essential good fortune instead of an accident of their life. For the experience belonged to HER, and not to him and her together. He could not understand it; he would have acted differently and spoiled it. She should not tell him anything of it, in spite of the stranger's suggestion, which, of course, he had only made because he didn't know Zephas as well as she did. For Mrs. Bunker was getting on rapidly; it was her first admission of the conjugal knowledge that one's husband is inferior to the outside estimate of him. The next step--the belief that he was deceiving HER as he was THEM--would be comparatively easy.

Nor should she show him the ring. The stranger had certainly never said anything about that! It was a heavy ring, with a helmeted head carved on its red carnelian stone, and what looked like strange letters around it. It fitted her third finger perfectly; but HIS fingers were small, and he had taken it from his little finger. She should keep it herself. Of course, if it had been money, she would have given it to Zephas; but the stranger knew that she wouldn't take money. How firmly he had said that “I don't!” She felt the warm blood fly to her fresh young face at the thought of it. He had understood her. She might be living in a poor cabin, doing all the housework herself, and her husband only a fisherman, but he had treated her like a lady.

And so the afternoon passed. The outlying fog began to roll in at the Golden Gate, obliterating the headland and stretching a fleecy bar across the channel as if shutting out from vulgar eyes the way that he had gone. Night fell, but Zephas had not yet come. This was unusual, for he was generally as regular as the afternoon “trades” which blew him there. There was nothing to detain him in this weather and at this season. She began to be vaguely uneasy; then a little angry at this new development of his incompatibility. Then it occurred to her, for the first time in her wifehood, to think what she would do if he were lost. Yet, in spite of some pain, terror, and perplexity at the possibility, her dominant thought was that she would be a free woman to order her life as she liked.

It was after ten before his lateen sail flapped in the little cove. She was waiting to receive him on the shore. His good-humored hirsute face was slightly apologetic in expression, but flushed and disturbed with some new excitement to which an extra glass or two of spirits had apparently added intensity. The contrast between his evident indulgence and the previous abstemiousness of her late guest struck her unpleasantly. “Well--I declare,” she said indignantly, “so THAT'S what kept you!”

“No,” he said quickly; “there's been awful times over in 'Frisco! Everybody just wild, and the Vigilance Committee in session. Jo Henderson's killed! Shot by Wynyard Marion in a duel! He'll be lynched, sure as a gun, if they ketch him.”

“But I thought men who fought duels always went free.”

“Yes, but this ain't no common duel; they say the whole thing was planned beforehand by them Southern fire-eaters to get rid o' Henderson because he's a Northern man and anti-slavery, and that they picked out Colonel Marion to do it because he was a dead shot. They got him to insult Henderson, so he was bound to challenge Marion, and that giv' Marion the chyce of weppings. It was a reg'lar put up job to kill him.”

“And what's all this to do with you?” she asked, with irritation.

“Hold on, won't you! and I'll tell you. I was pickin' up nets off Saucelito about noon, when I was hailed by one of them Vigilance tugs, and they set me to stand off and on the shore and watch that Marion didn't get away, while they were scoutin' inland. Ye see THE DUEL TOOK PLACE JUST OVER THE BLUFF THERE--BEHIND YE--and they allowed that Marion had struck away north for Mendocino to take ship there. For after overhaulin' his second's boat, they found out that they had come away from Saucelito ALONE. But they sent a tug around by sea to Mendocino to head him off there, while they're closin' in around him inland. They're bound to catch him sooner or later. But you ain't listenin', Mollie?”

She was--in every fibre--but with her head turned towards the window, and the invisible Golden Gate through which the fugitive had escaped. For she saw it all now--that glorious vision--her high-bred, handsome guest and Wynyard Marion were one and the same person. And this rough, commonplace man before her--her own husband--had been basely set to capture him!

## PART II.

During that evening and the next Mrs. Bunker, without betraying her secret, or exciting the least suspicion on the part of her husband, managed to extract from him not only a rough description of Marion which tallied with her own impressions, but a short history of his career. He was a famous politician who had held high office in the South; he was an accomplished lawyer; he had served in the army; he was a fiery speaker; he had a singular command of men. He was unmarried, but there were queer stories of his relations with some of the wives of prominent officials, and there was no doubt that he used them in some of his political intrigues. He, Zephas, would bet something that it was a woman who had helped him off! Did she speak?

Yes, she had spoken. It made her sick to sit there and hear such stories! Because a man did not agree with some people in politics it was perfectly awful to think how they would abuse him and take away his character! Men were so awfully jealous, too; if another man happened to be superior and fine-looking there wasn't anything bad enough for them to say about him! No! she wasn't a slavery sympathizer either, and hadn't anything to do with man politics, although she was a Southern woman, and the MacEwans had come from Kentucky and owned slaves. Of course, he, Zephas, whose ancestors were Cape Cod Quakers and had always been sailors, couldn't understand. She did not know what he meant by saying “what a long tail our cat's got,” but if he meant to call her a cat, and was going to use such language to her, he had better have stayed in San Francisco with his Vigilance friends. And perhaps it would have been better if he had stayed there before he took her away from her parents at Martinez. Then she wouldn't have been left on a desert rock without any chance of seeing the world, or ever making any friends or acquaintances!

It was their first quarrel. Discreetly made up by Mrs. Bunker in some alarm at betraying herself; honestly forgiven by Zephas in a rude, remorseful consciousness of her limited life. One or two nights later, when he returned, it was with a mingled air of mystery and satisfaction. “Well, Mollie,” he said cheerfully, “it looks as if your pets were not as bad as I thought them.”

“My pets!” repeated Mrs. Bunker, with a faint rising of color.

“Well, I call these Southern Chivs your pets, Mollie, because you stuck up for them so the other night. But never mind that now. What do you suppose has happened? Jim Rider, you know, the Southern banker and speculator, who's a regular big Injin among the 'Chivs,' he sent Cap Simmons down to the wharf while I was unloadin' to come up and see him. Well, I went, and what do y'u think? He told me he was gettin' up an American Fishin' Company, and wanted me to take charge of a first-class schooner on shares. Said he heard of me afore, and knew I was an American and a white man, and just the chap ez could knock them Eytalians outer the market.”

“Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Bunker quickly, but emphatically, “the fishing interest ought to be American and protected by the State, with regular charters and treaties.”

“I say, Mollie,” said her astonished but admiring husband, “you've been readin' the papers or listenin' to stump speakin' sure.”

“Go on,” returned Mrs. Bunker impatiently, “and say what happened next.”

“Well,” returned Zephas, “I first thought, you see, that it had suthin' to do with that Marion business, particklerly ez folks allowed he was hidin' somewhere yet, and they wanted me to run him off. So I thought Rider might as well know that I wasn't to be bribed, so I ups and tells him how I'd been lyin' off Saucelito the other day workin' for the other side agin him. With that he laughs, says he didn't want any better friends than me, but that I must be livin' in the backwoods not to know that Wynyard Marion had escaped, and was then at sea on his way to Mexico or Central America. Then we agreed to terms, and the long and short of it is, Mollie, that I'm to have the schooner with a hundred and fifty dollars a month, and ten per cent. shares after a year! Looks like biz, eh, Mollie, old girl? but you don't seem pleased.”

She had put aside the arm with which he was drawing her to him, and had turned her white face away to the window. So HE had gone--this stranger--this one friend of her life--she would never see him again, and all that would ever come of it was this pecuniary benefit to her husband, who had done nothing. He would not even offer her money, but he had managed to pay his debt to her in this way that their vulgar poverty would appreciate. And this was the end of her dream!

“You don't seem to take it in, Mollie,” continued the surprised Zephas. “It means a house in 'Frisco and a little cabin for you on the schooner when you like.”

“I don't want it! I won't have it! I shall stay here,” she burst out with a half-passionate, half-childish cry, and ran into her bedroom, leaving the astonished Zephas helpless in his awkward consternation.

“By Gum! I must take her to 'Frisco right off, or she'll be havin' the high strikes here alone. I oughter knowed it would come to this!” But although he consulted “Cap” Simmons the next day, who informed him it was all woman's ways when “struck,” and advised him to pay out all the line he could at such delicate moments, she had no recurrence of the outbreak. On the contrary, for days and weeks following she seemed calmer, older, and more “growed up;” although she resisted changing her seashore dwelling for San Francisco, she accompanied him on one or two of his “deep sea” trips down the coast, and seemed happier on their southern limits. She had taken to reading the political papers and speeches, and some cheap American histories. Captain Bunker's crew, profoundly convinced that their skipper's wife was a “woman's rights” fanatic, with the baleful qualities of “sea lawyer” superadded, marveled at his bringing her.

It was on returning home from one of these trips that they touched briefly at San Francisco, where the Secretary of the Fishing Company came on board. Mrs. Bunker was startled to recognize in him one of the two gentlemen who had taken Mr. Marion off in the boat, but as he did not appear to recognize her even after an awkward introduction by her husband, she would have recovered her equanimity but for a singular incident. As her husband turned momentarily away, the Secretary, with a significant gesture, slipped a letter into her hand. She felt the blood rush to her face as, with a smile, he moved away to follow her husband. She came down to the little cabin and impatiently tore open the envelope, which bore no address. A small folded note contained the following lines:--

“I never intended to burden you with my confidence, but the discretion, tact, and courage you displayed on our first meeting, and what I know of your loyalty since, have prompted me to trust myself again to your kindness, even though you are now aware whom you have helped, and the risks you ran. My friends wish to communicate with me and to forward to me, from time to time, certain papers of importance, which, owing to the tyrannical espionage of the Government, would be discovered and stopped in passing through the express or post-office. These papers will be left at your house, but here I must trust entirely to your wit and judgment as to the way in which they should be delivered to my agent at the nearest Mexican port. To facilitate your action, your husband will receive directions to pursue his course as far south as Todos Santos, where a boat will be ready to take charge of them when he is sighted. I know I am asking a great favor, but I have such confidence in you that I do not even ask you to commit yourself to a reply to this. If it can be done I know that you will do it; if it cannot, I will understand and appreciate the reason why. I will only ask you that when you are ready to receive the papers you will fly a small red pennant from the little flagstaff among the rocks. Believe me, your friend and grateful debtor,

“W. M.”

Mrs. Bunker cast a hasty glance around her, and pressed the letter to her lips. It was a sudden consummation of her vaguest, half-formed wishes, the realization of her wildest dreams! To be the confidante of the gallant but melancholy hero in his lonely exile and persecution was to satisfy all the unformulated romantic fancies of her girlish reading; to be later, perhaps, the Flora Macdonald of a middle-aged Prince Charlie did not, however, evoke any ludicrous associations in her mind. Her feminine fancy exalted the escaped duelist and alleged assassin into a social martyr. His actual small political intrigues and ignoble aims of office seemed to her little different from those aspirations of royalty which she had read about--as perhaps they were. Indeed, it is to be feared that in foolish little Mrs. Bunker, Wynyard Marion had found the old feminine adoration of pretension and privilege which every rascal has taken advantage of since the flood.

Howbeit, the next morning after she had returned and Zephas had sailed away, she flew a red bandana handkerchief on the little flagstaff before the house. A few hours later, a boat appeared mysteriously from around the Point. Its only occupant--a common sailor--asked her name, and handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a note to Marion, which, with a new and amazing diffidence, she composed and altered a dozen times, at last addressing the following in a large, school-girl hand: “Sir, I obey your commands to the last. Whatever your oppressors or enemies may do, you can always rely and trust upon She who in deepest sympathy signs herself ever, Mollie Rosalie MacEwan.” The substitution of her maiden name in full seemed in her simplicity to be a delicate exclusion of her husband from the affair, and a certain disguise of herself to alien eyes. The superscription, “To Mrs. Marion MacEwan from Mollie Bunker, to be called for by hand at Todos Santos,” also struck her as a marvel of ingenuity. The package was safely and punctually delivered by Zephas, who brought back a small packet directed to her, which on private examination proved to contain a letter addressed to “J. E. Kirby, to be called for,” with the hurried line: “A thousand thanks, W. M.” Mrs. Bunker drew a long, quick breath. He might have written more; he might have--but the wish remained still unformulated. The next day she ran up a signal; the same boat and solitary rower appeared around the Point, and took the package. A week later, when her husband was ready for sea, she again hoisted her signal. It brought a return package for Mexico, which she inclosed and readdressed, and gave to her husband. The recurrence of this incident apparently struck a bright idea from the simple Zephas.

“Look here, Mollie, why don't you come YOURSELF and see your aunt. I can't go into port without a license, and them port charges cost a heap o' red tape, for they've got a Filibuster scare on down there just now, but you can go ashore in the boat and I'll get permission from the Secretary to stand off and wait for you there for twenty-four hours.” Mrs. Bunker flushed and paled at the thought. She could see him! The letter would be sufficient excuse, the distrust suggested by her husband would give color to her delivering it in person. There was perhaps a brief twinge of conscience in taking this advantage of Zephas' kindness, but the next moment, with that peculiar logic known only to the sex, she made the unfortunate man's suggestion a condonation of her deceit. SHE hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her. He had only himself to thank.

Meantime the political excitement in which she had become a partisan without understanding or even conviction, presently culminated with the Presidential campaign and the election of Abraham Lincoln. The intrigues of Southern statesmen were revealed in open expression, and echoed in California by those citizens of Southern birth and extraction who had long, held place, power, and opinion there. There were rumors of secession, of California joining the South, or of her founding an independent Pacific Empire. A note from “J. E. Kirby” informed Mrs. Bunker that she was to carefully retain any correspondence that might be in her hands until further orders, almost at the same time that Zephas as regretfully told her that his projected Southern trip had been suspended. Mrs. Bunker was disappointed, and yet, in some singular conditions of her feelings, felt relieved that her meeting with Marion was postponed. It is to be feared that some dim conviction, unworthy a partisan, that in the magnitude of political events her own petty personality might be overlooked by her hero tended somewhat to her resignation.

Meanwhile the seasons had changed. The winter rains had set in; the trade winds had shifted to the southeast, and the cottage, although strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles, or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. At such times, in her accepted solitude, Mrs. Bunker gave herself up to strange moods and singular visions; the more audacious and more striking it seemed to her from their very remoteness, and the difficulty she was beginning to have in materializing them. The actual personality of Wynyard Marion, as she knew it in her one interview, had become very shadowy and faint in the months that passed, yet when the days were heavy she sometimes saw herself standing by his side in some vague tropical surroundings, and hailed by the multitude as the faithful wife and consort of the great Leader, President, Emperor--she knew not what! Exactly how this was to be managed, and the manner of Zephas' effacement from the scene, never troubled her childish fancy, and, it is but fair to say, her woman's conscience. In the logic before alluded to, it seemed to her that all ethical responsibility for her actions rested with the husband who had unduly married her. Nor were those visions always roseate. In the wild declamation of that exciting epoch which filled the newspapers there was talk of short shrift with traitors. So there were days when the sudden onset of a squall of hail against her window caused her to start as if she had heard the sharp fusillade of that file of muskets of which she had sometimes read in history.

One day she had a singular fright. She had heard the sound of oars falling with a precision and regularity unknown to her. She was startled to see the approach of a large eight-oared barge rowed by men in uniform, with two officers wrapped in cloaks in the stern sheets, and before them the glitter of musket barrels. The two officers appeared to be conversing earnestly, and occasionally pointing to the shore and the bluff above. For an instant she trembled, and then an instinct of revolt and resistance followed. She hurriedly removed the ring, which she usually wore when alone, from her finger, slipped it with the packet under the mattress of her bed, and prepared with blazing eyes to face the intruders. But when the boat was beached, the two officers, with scarcely a glance towards the cottage, proceeded leisurely along the shore. Relieved, yet it must be confessed a little piqued at their indifference, she snatched up her hat and sallied forth to confront them.

“I suppose you don't know that this is private property?” she said sharply.

The group halted and turned towards her. The orderly, who was following, turned his face aside and smiled. The younger officer demurely lifted his cap. The elder, gray, handsome, in a general's uniform, after a moment's half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure, gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.

“I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of that. We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a possible view of fortifying the bluff. It is very doubtful if you will be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government will not fail to make it good to you.” He turned carelessly to the aide beside him. “I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?”

“I don't know about that, general. They say that Marion, after he killed Henderson, escaped down this way,” said the young man.

“Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?”

“They say that Mrs. Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for him. The story of the escape is all out now.”

They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs. Bunker, only the younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn't as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.

She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed. Who was this Mrs. Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was equally well known that he went in the ship alone. If they had heard that some woman was with him here--why should they have supposed it was Mrs. Fairfax? Zephas might know something--but he was away. The thought haunted her that day and the next. On the third came a more startling incident.

She had been wandering along the edge of her domain in a state of restlessness which had driven her from the monotony of the house when she heard the barking of the big Newfoundland dog which Zephas had lately bought for protection and company. She looked up and saw the boat and its solitary rower at the landing. She ran quickly to the house to bring the packet. As she entered she started back in amazement. For the sitting-room was already in possession of a woman who was seated calmly by the table.

The stranger turned on Mrs. Bunker that frankly insolent glance and deliberate examination which only one woman can give another. In that glance Mrs. Bunker felt herself in the presence of a superior, even if her own eyes had not told her that in beauty, attire, and bearing the intruder was of a type and condition far beyond her own, or even that of any she had known. It was the more crushing that there also seemed to be in this haughty woman the same incongruousness and sharp contrast to the plain and homely surroundings of the cottage that she remembered in HIM.

“Yo' aw Mrs. Bunker, I believe,” she said in languid Southern accents. “How de doh?”

“I am Mrs. Bunker,” said Mrs. Bunker shortly.

“And so this is where Cunnle Marion stopped when he waited fo' the boat to take him off,” said the stranger, glancing lazily around, and delaying with smiling insolence the explanation she knew Mrs. Bunker was expecting. “The cunnle said it was a pooh enough place, but I don't see it. I reckon, however, he was too worried to judge and glad enough to get off. Yo' ought to have made him talk--he generally don't want much prompting to talk to women, if they're pooty.”

“He didn't seem in a hurry to go,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly. The next moment she saw her error, even before the cruel, handsome smile of her unbidden guest revealed it.

“I thought so,” she said lazily; “this IS the place and here's where the cunnle stayed. Only yo' oughtn't have given him and yo'self away to the first stranger quite so easy. The cunnle might have taught yo' THAT the two or three hours he was with yo'.”

“What do you want with me?” demanded Mrs. Bunker angrily.

“I want a letter yo' have for me from Cunnle Marion.”

“I have nothing for you,” said Mrs. Bunker. “I don't know who you are.”

“You ought to, considering you've been acting as messenger between the cunnle and me,” said the lady coolly.

“That's not true,” said Mrs. Bunker hotly, to combat an inward sinking.

The lady rose with a lazy, languid grace, walked to the door and called still lazily, “O Pedro!”

The solitary rower clambered up the rocks and appeared on the cottage threshold.

“Is this the lady who gave you the letters for me and to whom you took mine?”

“Si, senora.”

“They were addressed to a Mr. Kirby,” said Mrs. Bunker sullenly. “How was I to know they were for Mrs. Kirby?”

“Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby, and myself are all the same. You don't suppose the cunnle would give my real name and address? Did you address yo'r packet to HIS real name or to some one else. Did you let your husband know who they were for?”

Oddly, a sickening sense of the meanness of all these deceits and subterfuges suddenly came over Mrs. Bunker. Without replying she went to her bedroom and returned with Colonel Marion's last letter, which she tossed into her visitor's lap.

“Thank yo', Mrs. Bunker. I'll be sure to tell the cunnle how careful yo' were not to give up his correspondence to everybody. It'll please him mo' than to hear yo' are wearing his ring--which everybody knows--before people.”

“He gave it to me--he--he knew I wouldn't take money,” said Mrs. Bunker indignantly.

“He didn't have any to give,” said the lady slowly, as she removed the envelope from her letter and looked up with a dazzling but cruel smile. “A So'th'n gentleman don't fill up his pockets when he goes out to fight. He don't tuck his maw's Bible in his breast-pocket, clap his dear auntie's locket big as a cheese plate over his heart, nor let his sole leather cigyar case that his gyrl gave him lie round him in spots when he goes out to take another gentleman's fire. He leaves that to Yanks!”

“Did you come here to insult my husband?” said Mrs. Bunker in the rage of desperation.

“To insult yo' husband! Well--I came here to get a letter that his wife received from his political and natural enemy and--perhaps I DID!” With a side glance at Mrs. Bunker's crimson cheek she added carelessly, “I have nothing against Captain Bunker; he's a straightforward man and must go with his kind. He helped those hounds of Vigilantes because he believes in them. We couldn't bribe him if we wanted to. And we don't.”

If she only knew something of this woman's relations to Marion--which she only instinctively suspected--and could retaliate upon her, Mrs. Bunker felt she would have given up her life at that moment.

“Colonel Marion seems to find plenty that he can bribe,” she said roughly, “and I've yet to know who YOU are to sit in judgment on them. You've got your letter, take it and go! When he wants to send you another through me, somebody else must come for it, not you. That's all!”

She drew back as if to let the intruder pass, but the lady, without moving a muscle, finished the reading of her letter, then stood up quietly and began carefully to draw her handsome cloak over her shoulders. “Yo' want to know who I am, Mrs. Bunker,” she said, arranging the velvet collar under her white oval chin. “Well, I'm a So'th'n woman from Figinya, and I'm Figinyan first, last, and all the time.” She shook out her sleeves and the folds of her cloak. “I believe in State rights and slavery--if you know what that means. I hate the North, I hate the East, I hate the West. I hate this nigger Government, I'd kill that man Lincoln quicker than lightning!” She began to draw down the fingers of her gloves, holding her shapely hands upright before her. “I'm hard and fast to the Cause. I gave up house and niggers for it.” She began to button her gloves at the wrist with some difficulty, tightly setting together her beautiful lips as she did so. “I gave up my husband for it, and I went to the man who loved it better and had risked more for it than ever he had. Cunnle Marion's my friend. I'm Mrs. Fairfax, Josephine Hardee that was; HIS disciple and follower. Well, maybe those puritanical No'th'n folks might give it another name!”

She moved slowly towards the door, but on the threshold paused, as Colonel Marion had, and came back to Mrs. Bunker with an outstretched hand. “I don't see that yo' and me need quo'll. I didn't come here for that. I came here to see yo'r husband, and seeing YO' I thought it was only right to talk squarely to yo', as yo' understand I WOULDN'T talk to yo'r husband. Mrs. Bunker, I want yo'r husband to take me away--I want him to take me to the cunnle. If I tried to go in any other way I'd be watched, spied upon and followed, and only lead those hounds on his track. I don't expect yo' to ASK yo' husband for me, but only not to interfere when I do.”

There was a touch of unexpected weakness in her voice and a look of pain in her eyes which was not unlike what Mrs. Bunker had seen and pitied in Marion. But they were the eyes of a woman who had humbled her, and Mrs. Bunker would have been unworthy her sex if she had not felt a cruel enjoyment in it. Yet the dominance of the stranger was still so strong that she did not dare to refuse the proffered hand. She, however, slipped the ring from her finger and laid it in Mrs. Fairfax's palm.

“You can take that with you,” she said, with a desperate attempt to imitate the other's previous indifference. “I shouldn't like to deprive you and YOUR FRIEND of the opportunity of making use of it again. As for MY husband, I shall say nothing of you to him as long as you say nothing to him of me--which I suppose is what you mean.”

The insolent look came back to Mrs. Fairfax's face. “I reckon yo' 're right,” she said quietly, putting the ring in her pocket as she fixed her dark eyes on Mrs. Bunker, “and the ring may be of use again. Good-by, Mrs. Bunker.”

She waved her hand carelessly, and turning away passed out of the house. A moment later the boat and its two occupants pushed from the shore, and disappeared round the Point.

Then Mrs. Bunker looked round the room, and down upon her empty finger, and knew that it was the end of her dream. It was all over now--indeed, with the picture of that proud, insolent woman before her she wondered if it had ever begun. This was the woman she had allowed herself to think SHE might be. This was the woman HE was thinking of when he sat there; this was the Mrs. Fairfax the officers had spoken of, and who had made her--Mrs. Bunker--the go-between for their love-making! All the work that she had done for him, the deceit she had practiced on her husband, was to bring him and this woman together! And they both knew it, and had no doubt laughed at her and her pretensions!

It was with a burning cheek that she thought how she had intended to go to Marion, and imagined herself arriving perhaps to find that shameless woman already there. In her vague unformulated longings she had never before realized the degradation into which her foolish romance might lead her. She saw it now; that humiliating moral lesson we are all apt to experience in the accidental display of our own particular vices in the person we hate, she had just felt in Mrs. Fairfax's presence. With it came the paralyzing fear of her husband's discovery of her secret. Secure as she had been in her dull belief that he had in some way wronged her by marrying her, she for the first time began to doubt if this condoned the deceit she had practiced on him. The tribute Mrs. Fairfax had paid him--this appreciation of his integrity and honesty by an enemy and a woman like herself--troubled her, frightened her, and filled her with her first jealousy! What if this woman should tell him all; what if she should make use of him as Marion had of her! Zephas was a strong Northern partisan, but was he proof against the guileful charms of such a devil? She had never thought before of questioning his fidelity to her; she suddenly remembered now some rough pleasantries of Captain Simmons in regard to the inconstancy of his calling. No! there was but one thing for her to do: she would make a clean breast to him; she would tell him everything she had done except the fatal fancy that compelled her to it! She began to look for his coming now with alternate hope and fear--with unabated impatience! The night that he should have arrived passed slowly; morning came, but not Zephas. When the mist had lifted she ran impatiently to the rocks and gazed anxiously towards the lower bay. There were a few gray sails scarce distinguishable above the grayer water--but they were not his. She glanced half mechanically seaward, and her eyes became suddenly fixed. There was no mistake! She knew the rig!--she could see the familiar white lap-streak as the vessel careened on the starboard tack--it was her husband's schooner slowly creeping out of the Golden Gate!

## PART III.

Her first wild impulse was to run to the cove, for the little dingey always moored there, and to desperately attempt to overtake him. But the swift consciousness of its impossibility was followed by a dull, bewildering torpor, that kept her motionless, helplessly following the vessel with straining eyes, as if they could evoke some response from its decks. She was so lost in this occupation that she did not see that a pilot-boat nearly abreast of the cove had put out a two-oared gig, which was pulling quickly for the rocks. When she saw it, she trembled with the instinct that it brought her intelligence. She was right; it was a brief note from her husband, informing her that he had been hurriedly dispatched on a short sea cruise; that in order to catch the tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain everything on his return. Her relief was only partial; she was already experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble one. He could easily have “fetched” the bluff in tacking out of the Gate and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat. The next day she locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took up passengers to San Francisco. Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this last trip; indeed, did not know that he had gone out of the Bay. Mrs. Bunker was seized with a desperate idea. She called upon the Secretary of the Fishing Trust. That gentle man was business-like, but neither expansive nor communicative. Her husband had NOT been ordered out to sea by them; she ought to know that Captain Bunker was now his own master, choosing his own fishing grounds, and his own times and seasons. He was not aware of any secret service for the Company in which Captain Bunker was engaged. He hoped Mrs. Bunker would distinctly remember that the little matter of the duel to which she referred was an old bygone affair, and never anything but a personal matter, in which the Fishery had no concern whatever, and in which HE certainly should not again engage. He would advise Mrs. Bunker, if she valued her own good, and especially her husband's, to speedily forget all about it. These were ugly times, as it was. If Mrs. Bunker's services had not been properly rewarded or considered it was certainly a great shame, but really HE could not be expected to make it good. Certain parties had cost him trouble enough already. Besides, really, she must see that his position between her husband, whom he respected, and a certain other party was a delicate one. But Mrs. Bunker heard no more. She turned and ran down the staircase, carrying with her a burning cheek and blazing eye that somewhat startled the complacent official.

She did not remember how she got home again. She had a vague recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the bulletin boards that had such strange legends as “The Crisis,” “Details of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government,” “The Assassin of Henderson to the Fore Again,” “Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier.” Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had happened long ago. When she reached her house, late that night, the familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it, that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that with their meeting she would know it no more. For through all her childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one steadfast resolution. She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst. Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet him.

And so the days and nights slowly passed. The solitude which her previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery. Had she been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have suffered less. Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her wrongdoing. Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs. Fairfax--and SHE could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs. Bunker knew now that she herself had never had one--and was alone! Mrs. Fairfax had broken openly with her husband; but SHE had DECEIVED hers, and the experience and reckoning were still to come. In her miserable confession it was not strange that this half child, half woman, sometimes looked towards that gray sea, eternally waiting for her,--that sea which had taken everything from her and given her nothing in return,--for an obliterating and perhaps exonerating death!

The third day of her waiting isolation was broken upon by another intrusion. The morning had been threatening, with an opaque, motionless, livid arch above, which had taken the place of the usual flying scud and shaded cloud masses of the rainy season. The whole outlying ocean, too, beyond the bar, appeared nearer, and even seemed to be lifted higher than the Bay itself, and was lit every now and then with wonderful clearness by long flashes of breaking foam like summer lightning. She knew that this meant a southwester, and began, with a certain mechanical deliberation, to set her little domain in order against the coming gale. She drove the cows to the rude shed among the scrub oaks, she collected the goats and young kids in the corral, and replenished the stock of fuel from the woodpile. She was quite hidden in the shrubbery when she saw a boat making slow headway against the wind towards the little cove where but a moment before she had drawn up the dingey beyond the reach of breaking seas. It was a whaleboat from Saucelito containing a few men. As they neared the landing she recognized in the man who seemed to be directing the boat the second friend of Colonel Marion--the man who had come with the Secretary to take him off, but whom she had never seen again. In her present horror of that memory she remained hidden, determined at all hazards to avoid a meeting. When they had landed, one of the men halted accidentally before the shrubbery where she was concealed as he caught his first view of the cottage, which had been invisible from the point they had rounded.

“Look here, Bragg,” he said, turning to Marion's friend, in a voice which was distinctly audible to Mrs. Bunker. “What are we to say to these people?”

“There's only one,” returned the other. “The man's at sea. His wife's here. She's all right.”

“You said she was one of us?”

“After a fashion. She's the woman who helped Marion when he was here. I reckon he made it square with her from the beginning, for she forwarded letters from him since. But you can tell her as much or as little as you find necessary when you see her.”

“Yes, but we must settle that NOW,” said Bragg sharply, “and I propose to tell her NOTHING. I'm against having any more petticoats mixed up with our affairs. I propose to make an examination of the place without bothering our heads about her.”

“But we must give some reason for coming here, and we must ask her to keep dark, or we'll have her blabbing to the first person she meets,” urged the other.

“She's not likely to see anybody before night, when the brig will be in and the men and guns landed. Move on, and let Jim take soundings off the cove, while I look along the shore. It's just as well that there's a house here, and a little cover like this”--pointing to the shrubbery--“to keep the men from making too much of a show until after the earthworks are up. There are sharp eyes over at the Fort.”

“There don't seem to be any one in the house now,” returned the other after a moment's scrutiny of the cottage, “or the woman would surely come out at the barking of the dog, even if she hadn't seen us. Likely she's gone to Saucelito.”

“So much the better. Just as well that she should know nothing until it happens. Afterwards we'll settle with the husband for the price of possession; he has only a squatter's rights. Come along; we'll have bad weather before we get back round the Point again, but so much the better, for it will keep off any inquisitive longshore cruisers.”

They moved away. But Mrs. Bunker, stung through her benumbed and brooding consciousness, and made desperate by this repeated revelation of her former weakness, had heard enough to make her feverish to hear more. She knew the intricacies of the shrubbery thoroughly. She knew every foot of shade and cover of the clearing, and creeping like a cat from bush to bush she managed, without being discovered, to keep the party in sight and hearing all the time. It required no great discernment, even for an inexperienced woman like herself, at the end of an hour, to gather their real purpose. It was to prepare for the secret landing of an armed force, disguised as laborers, who, under the outward show of quarrying in the bluff, were to throw up breastworks, and fortify the craggy shelf. The landing was fixed for that night, and was to be effected by a vessel now cruising outside the Heads.

She understood it all now. She remembered Marion's speech about the importance of the bluff for military purposes; she remembered the visit of the officers from the Fort opposite. The strangers were stealing a march upon the Government, and by night would be in possession. It was perhaps an evidence of her newly awakened and larger comprehension that she took no thought of her loss of home and property,--perhaps there was little to draw her to it now,--but was conscious only of a more terrible catastrophe--a catastrophe to which she was partly accessory, of which any other woman would have warned her husband--or at least those officers of the Fort whose business it was to--Ah, yes! the officers of the Fort--only just opposite to her! She trembled, and yet flushed with an inspiration. It was not too late yet--why not warn them NOW?

But how? A message sent by Saucelito and the steamboat to San Francisco--the usual way--would not reach them tonight. To go herself, rowing directly across in the dingey, would be the only security of success. If she could do it? It was a long pull--the sea was getting up--but she would try.

She waited until the last man had stepped into the boat, in nervous dread of some one remaining. Then, when the boat had vanished round the Point again, she ran back to the cottage, arrayed herself in her husband's pilot coat, hat, and boots, and launched the dingey. It was a heavy, slow, but luckily a stanch and seaworthy boat. It was not until she was well off shore that she began to feel the full fury of the wind and waves, and knew the difficulty and danger of her undertaking. She had decided that her shortest and most direct course was within a few points of the wind, but the quartering of the waves on the broad bluff bows of the boat tended to throw it to leeward, a movement that, while it retarded her forward progress, no doubt saved the little craft from swamping. Again, the feebleness and shortness of her stroke, which never impelled her through a rising wave, but rather lifted her half way up its face, prevented the boat from taking much water, while her steadfast gaze, fixed only on the slowly retreating shore, kept her steering free from any fatal nervous vacillation, which the sight of the threatening seas on her bow might have produced. Preserved through her very weakness, ignorance, and simplicity of purpose, the dingey had all the security of a drifting boat, yet retained a certain gentle but persistent guidance. In this feminine fashion she made enough headway to carry her abreast of the Point, where she met the reflux current sweeping round it that carried her well along into the channel, now sluggish with the turn of the tide. After half an hour's pulling, she was delighted to find herself again in a reverse current, abreast of her cottage, but steadily increasing her distance from it. She was, in fact, on the extreme outer edge of a vast whirlpool formed by the force of the gale on a curving lee shore, and was being carried to her destination in a semicircle around that bay which she never could have crossed. She was moving now in a line with the shore and the Fort, whose flagstaff, above its green, square, and white quarters, she could see distinctly, and whose lower water battery and landing seemed to stretch out from the rocks scarcely a mile ahead. Protected by the shore from the fury of the wind, and even of the sea, her progress was also steadily accelerated by the velocity of the current, mingling with the ebbing tide. A sudden fear seized her. She turned the boat's head towards the shore, but it was swept quickly round again; she redoubled her exertions, tugging frantically at her helpless oars. She only succeeded in getting the boat into the trough of the sea, where, after a lurch that threatened to capsize it, it providentially swung around on its short keel and began to drift stern on. She was almost abreast of the battery now; she could hear the fitful notes of a bugle that seemed blown and scattered above her head; she even thought she could see some men in blue uniforms moving along the little pier. She was passing it; another fruitless effort to regain her ground, but she was swept along steadily towards the Gate, the whitening bar, and the open sea.

She knew now what it all meant. This was what she had come for; this was the end! Beyond, only a little beyond, just a few moments longer to wait, and then, out there among the breakers was the rest that she had longed for but had not dared to seek. It was not her fault; they could not blame HER. He would come back and never know what had happened--nor even know how she had tried to atone for her deceit. And he would find his house in possession of--of--those devils! No! No! she must not die yet, at least not until she had warned the Fort. She seized the oars again with frenzied strength; the boat had stopped under the unwonted strain, staggered, tried to rise in an uplifted sea, took part of it over her bow, struck down Mrs. Bunker under half a ton of blue water that wrested the oars from her paralyzed hands like playthings, swept them over the gunwale, and left her lying senseless in the bottom of the boat.

*****

“Hold har-rd--or you'll run her down.”

“Now then, Riley,--look alive,--is it slapin' ye are!”

“Hold yer jaw, Flanigan, and stand ready with the boat-hook. Now then, hold har-rd!”

The sudden jarring and tilting of the water-logged boat, a sound of rasping timbers, the swarming of men in shirtsleeves and blue trousers around her, seemed to rouse her momentarily, but she again fainted away.

When she struggled back to consciousness once more she was wrapped in a soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge she had remembered. But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew of mingled artillerymen and infantry.

“And where did ye drift from, darlint?”

Mrs. Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.

“I didn't drift. I was going to the Fort.”

“The Fort, is it?”

“Yes. I want to see the general.”

“Wadn't the liftenant do ye? Or shure there's the adjutant; he's a foine man.”

“Silence, Flanigan,” said the young officer sharply. Then turning to Mrs. Bunker he said, “Don't mind HIM, but let his wife take you to the canteen, when we get in, and get you some dry clothes.”

But Mrs. Bunker, spurred to convalescence at the indignity, protested stiffly, and demanded on her arrival to be led at once to the general's quarters. A few officers, who had been attracted to the pier by the rescue, acceded to her demand.

She recognized the gray-haired, handsome man who had come ashore at her house. With a touch of indignation at her treatment, she briefly told her story. But the general listened coldly and gravely with his eyes fixed upon her face.

“You say you recognized in the leader of the party a man you had seen before. Under what circumstances?”

Mrs. Bunker hesitated with burning cheeks. “He came to take Colonel Marion from our place.”

“When you were hiding him,--yes, we've heard the story. Now, Mrs. Bunker, may I ask you what you, as a Southern sympathizer, expect to gain by telling me this story?”

But here Mrs. Bunker burst out. “I am not a Southern sympathizer! Never! Never! Never! I'm a Union woman,--wife of a Northern man. I helped that man before I knew who he was. Any Christian, Northerner or Southerner, would have done the same!”

Her sincerity and passion were equally unmistakable. The general rose, opened the door of the adjoining room, said a few words to an orderly on duty, and returned. “What you are asking of me, Mrs. Bunker, is almost as extravagant and unprecedented as your story. You must understand, as well as your husband, that if I land a force on your property it will be to TAKE POSSESSION of it in the name of the Government, for Government purposes.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Bunker eagerly; “I know that. I am willing; Zephas will be willing.”

“And,” continued the general, fixing his eyes on her face, “you will also understand that I may be compelled to detain you here as a hostage for the safety of my men.”

“Oh no! no! please!” said Mrs. Bunker, springing up with an imploring feminine gesture; “I am expecting my husband. He may be coming back at any moment; I must be there to see him FIRST! Please let me go back, sir, with your men; put me anywhere ashore between them and those men that are coming. Lock me up; keep me a prisoner in my own home; do anything else if you think I am deceiving you; but don't keep me here to miss him when he comes!”

“But you can see him later,” said the general.

“But I must see him FIRST,” said Mrs. Bunker desperately. “I must see him first, for--for--HE KNOWS NOTHING OF THIS. He knows nothing of my helping Colonel Marion; he knows nothing of--how foolish I have been, and--he must not know it from others! There!” It was out at last. She was sobbing now, but her pride was gone. She felt relieved, and did not even notice the presence of two or three other officers, who had entered the room, exchanged a few hurried words with their superior, and were gazing at her in astonishment.

The general's brow relaxed, and he smiled. “Very well, Mrs. Bunker; it shall be as you like, then. You shall go and meet your husband with Captain Jennings here,”--indicating one of the officers,--“who will take charge of you and the party.”

“And,” said Mrs. Bunker, looking imploringly through her wet but pretty lashes at the officer, “he won't say anything to Zephas, either?”

“Not a syllable,” said Captain Jennings gravely. “But while the tug is getting ready, general, hadn't Mrs. Bunker better go to Mrs. Flanigan?”

“I think not,” said the general, with a significant look at the officer as he gallantly offered his arm to the astonished Mrs. Bunker, “if she will allow me the pleasure of taking her to my wife.”

There was an equally marked respect in the manner of the men and officers as Mrs. Bunker finally stepped on board the steam tug that was to convey the party across the turbulent bay. But she heeded it not, neither did she take any concern of the still furious gale, the difficult landing, the preternatural activity of the band of sappers, who seemed to work magic with their picks and shovels, the shelter tents that arose swiftly around her, the sheds and bush inclosures that were evoked from the very ground beneath her feet; the wonderful skill, order, and discipline that in a few hours converted her straggling dominion into a formal camp, even to the sentinel, who was already calmly pacing the rocks by the landing as if he had being doing it for years! Only one thing thrilled her--the sudden outburst, fluttering and snapping of the national flag from her little flagstaff. He would see it--and perhaps be pleased!

And indeed it seemed as if the men had caught the infection of her anxiety, for when her strained eyes could no longer pierce the murky twilight settling over the Gate, one came running to her to say that the lookout had just discovered through his glass a close-reefed schooner running in before the wind. It was her husband, and scarcely an hour after night had shut in the schooner had rounded to off the Point, dropped her boat, and sped away to anchorage. And then Mrs. Bunker, running bareheaded down the rocks, breaking in upon the hurried explanation of the officer of the guard, threw herself upon her husband's breast, and sobbed and laughed as if her heart would break!

Nor did she scarcely hear his hurried comment to the officer and unconscious corroboration of her story: how a brig had raced them from the Gate, was heading for the bar, but suddenly sheered off and put away to sea again, as if from some signal from the headland. “Yes--the bluff,” interrupted Captain Jennings bitterly, “I thought of that, but the old man said it was more diplomatic just now to PREVENT an attempt than even to successfully resist it.”

But when they were alone again in their little cottage, and Zephas' honest eyes--with no trace of evil knowledge or suspicion in their homely, neutral lightness--were looking into hers with his usual simple trustfulness, Mrs. Bunker trembled, whimpered, and--I grieve to say--basely funked her boasted confession. But here the Deity which protects feminine weakness intervened with the usual miracle. As he gazed at his wife's troubled face, an apologetic cloud came over his rugged but open brow, and a smile of awkward deprecating embarrassment suffused his eyes. “I declare to goodness, Mollie, but I must tell you suthin, although I guess I didn't kalkilate to say a word about it. But, darn it all, I can't keep it in. No! Lookin' inter that innercent face o' yourn”--pressing her flushing cheeks between his cool brown hands--“and gazing inter them two truthful eyes”--they blinked at this moment with a divine modesty--“and thinkin' of what you've just did for your kentry--like them revolutionary women o' '76--I feel like a darned swab of a traitor myself. Well! what I want ter tell you is this: Ye know, or ye've heard me tell o' that Mrs. Fairfax, as left her husband for that fire-eatin' Marion, and stuck to him through thick and thin, and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself. Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard.

“'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.

“'That's me, ma'am,' I says.

“'You're a Northern man and you go with your kind,' sez she; 'but you're a white man, and thar's no cur blood in you.' But you ain't listenin', Mollie; you're dead tired, lass,”--with a commiserating look at her now whitening face,--“and I'll haul in line and wait. Well, to cut it short, she wanted me to take her down the coast a bit to where she could join Marion. She said she'd been shook by his friends, followed by spies--and, blame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them Chivalry folks--ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind--was jes the kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o' Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her I didn't want the jewelry and dimons she offered me, but if she would come down to the wharf, after dark, I'd smuggle her aboard, and I'd allow to the men that she was YOUR AUNTIE ez I was givin' a free passage to! Lord! dear! think o' me takin' the name o' Mollie Bunker's aunt in vain for that sort o' woman! Think o' me,” continued Captain Bunker with a tentative chuckle, “sort o' pretendin' to hand yo'r auntie to Kernel Marion for--for his lady love! I don't wonder ye's half frighted and half laffin',” he added, as his wife uttered a hysterical cry; “it WAS awful! But it worked, and I got her off, and wot's more I got her shipped to Mazatlan, where she'll join Marion, and the two are goin' back to Virginy, where I guess they won't trouble Californy again. Ye know now, deary,” he went on, speaking with difficulty through Mrs. Bunker's clinging arms and fast dripping tears, “why I didn't heave to to say 'good-by.' But it's all over now--I've made a clean breast of it, Mollie--and don't you cry!”

But it was NOT all over. For a moment later Captain Bunker began to fumble in his waistcoat pocket with the one hand that was not clasping his wife's waist. “One thing more, Mollie; when I left her and refused to take any of her dimons, she put a queer sort o' ring into my hand, and told me with a kind o' mischievious, bedevilin' smile, that I must keep it to remember her by. Here it is--why, Mollie lass! are you crazy?”

She had snatched it from his fingers and was running swiftly from the cottage out into the tempestuous night. He followed closely, until she reached the edge of the rocks. And only then, in the struggling, fast-flying moonlight, she raised a passionate hand, and threw it far into the sea!

As he led her back to the cottage she said she was jealous, and honest Captain Bunker, with his arm around her, felt himself the happiest man in the world!

*****

From that day the flag flew regularly over the rocky shelf, and, in time, bugles and morning drumbeats were wafted from it to the decks of passing ships. For the Federal Government had adjudged the land for its own use, paid Captain Bunker a handsome sum for its possession, and had discreetly hidden the little cottage of Mrs. Bunker and its history forever behind bastion and casemate.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMP

## PART I.

The tiny lights that had been far scattered and intermittent as fireflies all along the dark stream at last dropped out one by one, leaving only the three windows of “Parks' Emporium” to pierce the profoundly wooded banks of the South Fork. So all-pervading was the darkness that the mere opening of the “Emporium” front door shot out an illuminating shaft which revealed the whole length of the little main street of “Buckeye,” while the simple passing of a single figure before one of the windows momentarily eclipsed a third of the settlement. This undue pre-eminence given to the only three citizens of Buckeye who were still up at ten o 'clock seemed to be hardly justified by their outward appearance, which was that of ordinary long-bearded and long-booted river bar miners. Two sat upon the counter with their hands upon their knees, the third leaned beside the open window.

It was very quiet. The faint, far barking of a dog, or an occasional subdued murmur from the river shallows, audible only when the wind rose slightly, helped to intensify their solitude. So supreme had it become that when the man at the window at last continued his conversation meditatively, with his face towards it, he seemed to be taking all Nature into his confidence.

“The worst thing about it is, that the only way we can keep her out of the settlement is by the same illegal methods which we deplore in other camps. We have always boasted that Buckeye could get along without Vigilance Committees or Regulators.”

“Yes, and that was because we started it on the principle of original selection, which we are only proposing to continue,” replied one of the men on the counter. “So there's nothing wrong about our sending a deputation to wait upon her, to protest against her settling here, and give her our reasons.”

“Yes, only it has all the impudence without the pluck of the Regulators. You demand what you are afraid to enforce. Come, Parks, you know she has all the rights on her side. Look at it squarely. She proposes to open a store and sell liquor and cigars, which she serves herself, in the broken-down tienda which was regularly given to her people by the Spanish grantee of the land we're squatting on. It's not her fault but ours if we've adopted a line of rules, which don't agree with hers, to govern the settlers on HER land, nor should she be compelled to follow them. Nor because we justify OUR squatting here, on the ground that the Spanish grant isn't confirmed yet, can we forbid her squatting under the same right.”

“But look at the moral question, Brace. Consider the example; the influence of such a shop, kept by such a woman, on the community! We have the right to protect ourselves--the majority.”

“That's the way the lynchers talk,” returned Brace. “And I'm not so sure about there being any moral question yet. You are assuming too much. There is no reason why she shouldn't run the tienda as decently--barring the liquor sale, which, however, is legal, and for which she can get a license--as a man could, and without interfering with our morals.”

“Then what is the use of our rules?”

“They were made for those who consented to adopt them, as we all did. They still bind US, and if we don't choose to buy her liquor or cigars that will dispose of her and her tienda much more effectually than your protest. It's a pity she's a lone unprotected woman. Now if she only had a husband”--

“She carries a dagger in her garter.”

This apparently irrelevant remark came from the man who had not yet spoken, but who had been listening with the languid unconcern of one who, relinquishing the labor of argument to others, had consented to abide by their decision. It was met with a scornful smile from each of the disputants, perhaps even by an added shrug of the shoulders from the woman's previous defender! HE was evidently not to be taken in by extraneous sentiment. Nevertheless, both listened as the speaker, slowly feeling his knees as if they were his way to a difficult subject, continued with the same suggestion of stating general fact, but waiving any argument himself. “Clarkson of Angels allows she's got a free, gaudy, picter-covered style with the boys, but that she can be gilt-edged when she wants to. Rowley Meade--him ez hed his skelp pulled over his eyes at one stroke, foolin' with a she bear over on Black Mountain--allows it would be rather monotonous in him attemptin' any familiarities with her. Bulstrode's brother, ez was in Marysville, said there was a woman--like to her, but not her--ez made it lively for the boys with a game called 'Little Monte,' and he dropped a hundred dollars there afore he came away. They do say that about seven men got shot in Marysville on account o' this one, or from some oneasiness that happened at her shop. But then,” he went on slowly and deferentially as the faces of the two others were lowered and became fixed, “SHE says she tired o' drunken rowdies,--there's a sameness about 'em, and it don't sell her pipes and cigars, and that's WHY she's coming here. Thompson over at Dry Creek sez that THAT'S where our reputation is playin' us! 'We've got her as a reward o' virtoo, and be d----d to us.' But,” cautiously, “Thompson ain't drawed a sober breath since Christmas.”

The three men looked in each other's faces in silence. The same thought occurred to each; the profane Thompson was right, and the woman's advent was the logical sequence of their own ethics. Two years previously, the Buckeye Company had found gold on the South Fork, and had taken up claims. Composed mainly of careful, provident, and thoughtful men,--some of cultivation and refinement,--they had adopted a certain orderly discipline for their own guidance solely, which, however, commended itself to later settlers, already weary of the lawlessness and reckless freedom which usually attended the inception of mining settlements. Consequently the birth of Buckeye was accompanied with no dangerous travail; its infancy was free from the diseases of adolescent communities. The settlers, without any express prohibition, had tacitly dispensed with gambling and drinking saloons; following the unwritten law of example, had laid aside their revolvers, and mingled together peacefully when their labors were ended, without a single peremptory regulation against drinking and playing, or carrying lethal weapons. Nor had there been any test of fitness or qualification for citizenship through previous virtue. There were one or two gamblers, a skillful duelist, and men who still drank whiskey who had voluntarily sought the camp. Of some such antecedents was the last speaker. Probably with two wives elsewhere, and a possible homicidal record, he had modestly held aloof from obtrusive argument.

“Well, we must have a meeting and put the question squarely to the boys to-morrow,” said Parks, gazing thoughtfully from the window. The remark was followed by another long silence. Beyond, in the darkness, Buckeye, unconscious of the momentous question awaiting its decision, slept on peacefully.

“I brought the keg of whiskey and brandy from Red Gulch to-day that Doctor Duchesne spoke of,” he resumed presently. “You know he said we ought to have some in common stock that he could always rely upon in emergencies, and for use after the tule fever. I didn't agree with him, and told him how I had brought Sam Denver through an attack with quinine and arrowroot, but he laughed and wanted to know if we'd 'resolved' that everybody should hereafter have the Denver constitution. That's the trouble with those old army surgeons,--they never can get over the 'heroics' of their past. Why he told Parson Jennings that he'd rather treat a man for jim-jams than one that was dying for want of stimulants. However, the liquor is here, and one of the things we must settle tomorrow is the question if it ought not to be issued only on Duchesne's prescription. When I made that point to him squarely, he grinned again, and wanted to know if I calculated to put the same restriction on the sale of patent medicines and drugs generally.”

“'N powder 'n shot,” contributed the indifferent man.

“Perhaps you'd better take a look at the liquor, Saunders,” said Parks, dismissing the ethical question. “YOU know more about it than we do. It ought to be the best.”

Saunders went behind the counter, drew out two demijohns, and, possibly from the force of habit, selected THREE mugs from the crockery and poured some whiskey into each, before he could check himself.

“Perhaps we had better compare tastes,” said Brace blandly. They all sipped their liquor slowly and in silence. The decision was favorable. “Better try some with water to see how it mixes,” said Saunders, lazily filling the glasses with a practiced hand. This required more deliberation, and they drew their chairs to the table and sat down. A slight relaxation stole over the thoughtful faces of Brace and Parks, a gentle perspiration came over the latter's brow, but the features and expression of Saunders never changed. The conversation took a broader range; politics and philosophy entered into it; literature and poetry were discussed by Parks and Brace, Saunders still retaining the air of a dispassionate observer, ready to be convinced, but abstaining from argument--and occasionally replenishing the glasses. There was felt to be no inconsistency between their present attitude and their previous conversation; rather it proved to them that gentlemen could occasionally indulge in a social glass together without frequenting a liquor saloon. This was stated with some degree of effusion by Parks and assented to with singular enthusiasm by Brace; Saunders nodding. It was also observed with great penetration by Brace that in having really GOOD, specially selected liquor like that, the great danger of the intoshikat'n 'fx--he corrected himself with great deliberation, “the intoxicating effects”--of adulterated liquors sold in drinking saloons was obviated. Mr. Brace thought also that the vitiated quality of the close air of a crowded saloon had a great deal to do with it--the excess of carbon--hic--he begged their pardon--carbonic acid gas undoubtedly rendered people “slupid and steepy.” “But here, from the open window,” he walked dreamily to it and leaned out admiringly towards the dark landscape that softly slumbered without, “one could drink in only health and poetry.”

“Wot's that?” said Saunders, looking up.

“I said health and poetry,” returned Brace with some dignity. “I repeat”--

“No. I mean wot's that noise? Listen.”

They listened so breathlessly that the soft murmur of the river seemed to flow in upon them. But above it quite distinctly came the regular muffled beat of horse-hoofs in the thick dust and the occasional rattle of wheels over rocky irregularities. But still very far and faint, and fading like the noises in a dream. Brace drew a long breath; Parks smiled and softly closed his eyes. But Saunders remained listening.

“That was over OUR road, near the turnpike!” he said musingly. “That's queer; thar ain't any of the boys away to-night, and that's a wagon. It's some one comin' here. Hark to that! There it is again.”

It was the same sound but more distinct and nearer, and then was lost again.

“They're dragging through the river sand that's just abreast o' Mallory's. Stopped there, I reckon. No! pushin' on again. Hear 'em grinding along the gravel over Hamilton's trailin's? Stopped agin--that's before Somerville's shanty. What's gone o' them now? Maybe they've lost the trail and got onto Gray's slide through the woods. It's no use lookin'; ye couldn't see anything in this nigger dark. Hol' on! If they're comin' through the woods, ye'll hear 'em again jest off here. Yes! by thunder! here they are.”

This time the clatter and horse-hoofs were before them, at the very door. A man's voice cried, “Whoa!” and there was a sudden bound on the veranda. The door opened; for an instant the entrance appeared to be filled with a mass of dazzling white flounces, and a figure which from waist to crown was impenetrably wrapped and swathed in black lace. Somewhere beneath its folds a soft Spanish, yet somewhat childish voice cried, “Tente. Hol' on,” turned and vanished. This was succeeded by the apparition of a silent, swarthy Mexican, who dropped a small trunk at their feet and vanished also. Then the white-flounced and black-laced figure reappeared as the departing wagon rattled away, glided to the centre of the room, placed on the trunk a small foot, whose low-quartered black satin slipper seemed to be held only by the toe, threw back with both hands the black lace mantilla, which was pinned by a rose over her little right ear, and with her hands slightly extended and waving softly said, “Mira caballeros! 'Ere we are again, boys! Viva! Aow ees your mother? Aow ees that for high? Behold me! just from Pike!”

Parks and Brace, who had partly risen, fell back hopelessly in their chairs again and gazed at the figure with a feeble smile of vacuous pain and politeness. At which it advanced, lowered its black eyes mischievously over the table and the men who sat there, poured out a glass of the liquor, and said: “I look towards you, boys! Don't errise. You are just a leetle weary, eh? A leetle. Oh yes! a leetle tired of crookin' your elbow--eh? Don't care if the school keep!--eh? Don't want any pie! Want to go 'ome, eh?”

But here Mr. Parks rose with slight difficulty, but unflinching dignity, and leaned impressively over the table, “May I ashk--may I be permitted to arsk, madam, to what we may owe the pleasure of thish--of this--visit?”

Her face and attitude instantly changed. Her arms dropped and caught up the mantilla with a quick but not ungraceful sweep, and in apparently a single movement she was draped, wrapped, and muffled from waist to crown as before. With a slight inclination of her head, she said in quite another voice: “Si, senor. I have arrive here because in your whole great town of Booki there is not so much as one”--she held up a small brown finger--“as much as ONE leetle light or fire like thees; be-cause in this grand pueblo there is not one peoples who have not already sleep in his bed but thees! Bueno! I have arrive all the same like a leetle bird, like the small fly arrive to the light! not to YOU--only to THE LIGHT! I go not to my casa for she is dark, and tonight she have nothing to make the fire or bed. I go not to the 'otel--there is not ONE”--the brown finger again uplifted--“'otel in Booki! I make the 'otel--the Fonda--in my hoose manana--to-morrow! Tonight I and Sanchicha make the bed for us 'ere. Sanchicha, she stands herself now over in the street. We have mooch sorrow we have to make the caballeros mooch tr-rouble to make disposition of his house. But what will you?”

There was another awkward silence, and then Saunders, who had been examining the intruder with languid criticism, removed his pipe from his mouth and said quietly:--

“That's the woman you're looking for--Jovita Mendez!”

## PART II.

The rest of that interview has not been recorded. Suffice it that a few minutes later Parks, Brace, and Saunders left the Emporium, and passed the night in the latter's cabin, leaving the Emporium in possession of Miss Mendez and her peon servant; that at the earliest dawn the two women and their baggage were transferred to the old adobe house, where, however, a Mexican workman had already arrived, and with a basketful of red tiles was making it habitable. Buckeye, which was popularly supposed to sleep with one eye on the river, and always first repaired there in the morning to wash and work, was only awake to the knowledge of the invasion at noon. The meeting so confidently spoken of the night before had NOT been called. Messrs. Parks and Brace were suffering from headaches--undoubtedly a touch of tule chill. Saunders, at work with his partner in Eagle Bar, was as usual generous with apparently irrelevant facts on all subjects--but that of the strangers. It would seem as if the self-constituted Committee of Safety had done nothing.

And nothing whatever seemed to happen! Thompson of Angels, smoking a meditative pipe at noon on the trail noticed the repairing of the old adobe house, casually spoke of it on his return to his work, without apparent concern or exciting any comment. The two Billinger brothers saw Jovita Mendez at the door of her house an hour later, were themselves seen conversing with her by Jim Barker, but on returning to their claim, neither they nor Barker exhibited any insurrectionary excitement. Later on, Shuttleworth was found in possession of two bundles of freshly rolled corn-husk cigarettes, and promised to get his partner some the next day, but that gentleman anticipated him. By nightfall nearly all Buckeye had passed in procession before the little house without exhibiting any indignation or protest. That night, however, it seemed as if the events for which the Committee was waiting were really impending. The adult female population of Buckeye consisted of seven women--wives of miners. That they would submit tamely to the introduction of a young, pretty, and presumably dangerous member of their own sex was not to be supposed. But whatever protest they made did not pass beyond their conjugal seclusion, and was apparently not supported by their husbands. Two or three of them, under the pretext of sympathy of sex, secured interviews with the fair intruder, the result of which was not, however, generally known. But a few days later Mrs. “Bob” Carpenter--a somewhat brick-dusty blonde--was observed wearing some black netting and a heavily flounced skirt, and Mrs. Shuttleworth in her next visit to Fiddletown wore her Paisley shawl affixed to her chestnut hair by a bunch of dog-roses, and wrapped like a plaid around her waist. The seven ladies of Buckeye, who had never before met, except on domestic errands to each other's houses or on Sunday attendance at the “First Methodist Church” at Fiddletown, now took to walking together, or in their husbands' company, along the upper bank of the river--the one boulevard of Buckeye. The third day after Miss Mendez' arrival they felt the necessity of immediate shopping expeditions to Fiddletown. This operation had hitherto been confined to certain periods, and restricted to the laying in of stores of rough household stuffs; but it now apparently included a wider range and more ostentatious quality. Parks' Emporium no longer satisfied them, and this unexpected phase of the situation was practically brought home to the proprietor in the necessity of extending the more inoffensive and peaceful part of his stock. And when, towards the end of the week, a cartload of pretty fixtures, mirrors, and furniture arrived at the tienda, there was a renewed demand at the Emporium for articles not in stock, and the consequent diverting of custom to Fiddletown. Buckeye found itself face to face with a hitherto undreamt of and preposterous proposition. It seemed that the advent of the strange woman, without having yet produced any appreciable effect upon the men, had already insidiously inveigled the adult female population into ostentatious extravagance.

At the end of a week the little adobe house was not only rendered habitable, but was even made picturesque by clean white curtains at its barred windows, and some bright, half-Moorish coloring of beams and rafters. Nearly the whole ground floor was given up to the saloon of the tienda, which consisted of a small counter at one side, containing bottles and glasses, and another, flanking it, with glass cases, containing cigars, pipes, and tobacco, while the centre of the room was given up to four or five small restaurant tables. The staff of Jovita was no longer limited to Sanchicha, but had been augmented by a little old man of indefinite antiquity who resembled an Aztec idol, and an equally old Mexican, who looked not unlike a brown-tinted and veined tobacco leaf himself, and might have stood for a sign. But the genius of the place, its omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita! Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity and attention; all-embracing in her courtesies; frank of speech and eye; quick at repartee and deftly handling the slang of the day and the locality with a childlike appreciation and an infantine accent that seemed to redeem it from vulgarity or unfeminine boldness! Few could resist the volatile infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted, and good-humor the rule laid down for her guests. If it occasionally required some mental agility to respond to her banter, a Californian gathering was, however, seldom lacking in humor. Yet she was always the principal performer to an admiring audience. Perhaps there was security in this multitude of admirers; perhaps there was a saving grace in this humorous trifling. The passions are apt to be serious and solitary, and Jovita evaded them with a jest,--which, if not always delicate or witty, was effective in securing the laughter of the majority and the jealousy of none.

At the end of the week another peculiarity was noticed. There was a perceptible increase of the Mexican population, who had always hitherto avoided Buckeye. On Sunday an Irish priest from El Pasto said mass in a patched-up corner of the old Mission ruin opposite Rollinson's Ford. A few lounging “Excelsior” boys were equally astonished to see Jovita's red rose crest and black mantilla glide by, and followed her unvarying smile and jesting salutation up to the shadow of the crumbling portal. At vespers nearly all Buckeye, hitherto virtuously skeptical and good-humoredly secure in Works without Faith, made a point of attending; it was alleged by some to see if Jovita's glossy Indian-inky eyes would suffer aberration in her devotions. But the rose-crested head was never lifted from the well-worn prayer-book or the brown hands which held a certain poor little cheap rosary like a child's string of battered copper coins. Buckeye lounged by the wall through the service with respectful tolerance and uneasy shifting legs, and came away. But the apparently simple event did not end there. It was unconsciously charged with a tremendous import to the settlement. For it was discovered the next day by Mrs. “Bob” Carpenter and Nan Shuttleworth that the Methodist Church at Fiddletown was too far away, and Buckeye ought to have a preacher of its own. Seats were fitted up in the loft of Carpenter's store-house, where the Reverend Henry McCorkle held divine service, and instituted a Bible class. At the end of two weeks it appeared that Jovita's invasion--which was to bring dissipation and ruin to Buckeye--had indirectly brought two churches! A chilling doubt like a cold mist settled along the river. As the two rival processions passed on the third Sunday, Jo Bateman, who had been in the habit of reclining on that day in his shirtsleeves under a tree, with a novel in his hand, looked gloomily after them. Then knocking the ashes from his pipe, he rose, shook hands with his partners, said apologetically that he had lately got into the habit of RESPECTING THE SABBATH, and was too old to change again, and so shook the red dust of Buckeye from his feet and departed.

As yet there had not been the slightest evidence of disorderly conduct on the part of the fair proprietress of the tienda, nor her customers, nor any drunkenness or riotous disturbance that could be at all attributed to her presence. There was, it is true, considerable hilarity, smoking, and some gambling there until a late hour, but this could not be said to interfere with the rest and comfort of other people. A clue to the mystery of so extraordinary a propriety was given by Jovita herself. One day she walked into Parks' Emporium and demanded an interview with the proprietor.

“You have made the rules for thees Booki?”

“Yes--that is--I and my friends have.”

“And when one shall not have mind the rule--when one have say, 'No! damn the rule,' what shall you make to him? Shall you aprison him?”

Mr. Parks hastened to say with a superior, yet engaging smile that it never had been necessary, as the rules were obligatory upon the honor and consent of all--and were never broken. “Except,” he added, still more engagingly, “she would remember, in her case--with their consent.”

“And your caballeros break not the rules?”

“No.”

“Then they shall not break the rules of me--at MY TIENDA! Look! I have made the rule that I shall not have a caballero drunk at my house; I have made the rule that I shall not sell him the aguardiente when he have too mooch. I have made the rule that when he gamble too mooch, when he put up too mooch money, I say 'No!' I will not that he shall! I make one more rule: that he shall not quarrel nor fight in my house. When he quarrel and fight, I say 'Go! Vamos! Get out!'”

“And very good rules they are too, Miss Mendez.”

Jovita fixed her shining black eyes on the smiling Parks. “And when he say, 'No, nevarre, damn the rules!' When he come drunk, remain drunk, play high and fight, YOU will not poonish him? YOU will not take him out?”

“Well, you see, the fact is, I have not the power.”

“Are you not the Alcalde?”

“No. There is a Justice of the Peace at Fiddletown, but even he could do nothing to enforce your rules. But if anything should happen, you can make a complaint to him.”

“Bueno. You have not the power; I have. I make not the complaint to Fiddletown. I make the complaint to Jose Perez, to Manuel, to Antonio, to Sanchicha--she is a strong one! I say 'Chook him out.' They chook him out! they remove him! He does not r-r-remain. Enough. Bueno. Gracias, senor, good-a-by!”

She was gone. For the next four days Parks was in a state of some anxiety--but it appeared unnecessarily so. Whether the interview had become known along the river did not transpire, but there seemed to be no reason for Miss Mendez to enforce her rules. It was said that once, when Thompson of Angels was a little too noisy, he had been quietly conducted by his friends from the tienda without the intervention of Jose. The frequenters of the saloon became its police.

Yet the event--long protracted--came at last! It was a dry, feverish, breezeless afternoon, when the short, echoless explosion of a revolver puffed out on the river, followed by another, delivered so rapidly that they seemed rolled into one. There was no mistaking that significant repetition. ONE shot might have been an accident; TWO meant intention. The men dropped their picks and shovels and ran--ran as they never before ran in Buckeye--ran mechanically, blindly groping at their belts and pockets for the weapons that hung there no longer; ran aimlessly, as to purpose, but following instinctively with hurried breath and quivering nostrils the cruel scent of powder and blood. Ran until, reaching the tienda, the foremost stumbled over the body of Shuttleworth; came upon the half-sitting, half-leaning figure of Saunders against its adobe wall! The doors were barred and closed, and even as the crowd charged furiously forward, a window was sharply shut above, in their very face.

“Stand back, gentlemen! Lift him up. What's the row? What is it, Saunders? Who did it? Speak, man!”

But Saunders, who was still supporting himself against the wall, only looked at them with a singular and half-apologetic smile, and then leaned forward as if to catch the eye of Shuttleworth, who was recovering consciousness in the uplifted arms of his companions. But neither spoke.

“It's some d----d Greaser inside!” said Thompson, with sudden ferocity. “Some of her cursed crew! Break down the doors, boys!”

“Stop!”

It was the voice of Shuttleworth, speaking with an effort. He was hard hit, somewhere in the groin; pain and blood were coming with consciousness and movement, and his face was ghastly. Yet there was the same singular smile of embarrassment which Saunders had worn, and a touch of invincible disgust in his voice as he stammered quickly, “Don't be d----d fools! It's no one in THERE. It's only me and HIM! He'll tell you that. Won't you, Saunders?”

“Yes,” said Saunders, leaning anxiously forward, with a brightening face. “D--n it all--can't you see? It's only--only us.”

“You and me, that's all,” repeated Shuttleworth, with a feverish laugh. “Only our d----d foolishness! Think of it, boys! He gave me the lie, and I drew!”

“Both of us full, you know--reg'lar beasts,” said Saunders, sinking back against the wall. “Kick me, somebody, and finish me off.”

“I don't see any weapons here,” said Brace gravely, examining the ground.

“They're inside,” said Shuttleworth with tremulous haste. “We began it in there--just like hogs, you know! Didn't we, Saunders?” bitterly.

“You bet,” said Saunders faintly. “Reg'lar swine.”

Parks looked graver still, and as he passed a handkerchief around the wounded man's thigh, said: “But I don't see where you got your pistols, and how you got out here.”

“Clinched, you know; sorter rolled over out here--and--and--oh, d--n it--don't talk!”

“He means,” said Shuttleworth still feebly, “that we--we--grabbed ANOTHER MAN'S six-shooter and--and--he that is--and they--he--he and me grabbed each other, and--don't you see--?” but here, becoming more involved and much weaker, he discreetly fainted away.

And that was all Buckeye ever knew of the affair! For they refused to speak of it again, and Dr. Duchesne gravely forbade any further interrogation. Both men's revolvers were found undischarged in their holsters, hanging in their respective cabins. The balls which were afterwards extracted from the two men singularly disappeared; Dr. Duchesne asserting with a grim smile that they had swallowed them.*

* It was a frontier superstition that the ball extracted from a gunshot wound, if swallowed by the wounded man, prevented inflammation or any supervening complications.

Nothing could be ascertained of the facts at the tienda, which at that hour of the day appeared to have been empty of customers, and was occupied only by Miss Mendez and her retainers. All surmises as to the real cause of the quarrel and the reason for the reticence of the two belligerents were suddenly and unexpectedly stopped by their departure from Buckeye as soon as their condition permitted, on the alleged opinion of Dr. Duchesne that the air of the river was dangerous to their convalescence. The momentary indignation against the tienda which the two combatants had checked, eventually subsided altogether. After all, the fight had taken place OUTSIDE; it was not even proven that the provocation had been given AT the tienda! Its popularity was undiminished.

## PART III.

It was the end of the rainy season, and a wet night. Brace and Parks were looking from the window over the swollen river, with faces quite as troubled as the stream below. Nor was the prospect any longer the same. In the past two years Buckeye had grown into a city. They could now count a half dozen church spires from the window of the three-storied brick building which had taken the place of the old wooden Emporium, but they could also count the brilliantly lit windows of an equal number of saloons and gambling-houses which glittered through the rain, or, to use the words of a local critic, “Shone seven nights in the week to the Gospel shops' ONE!” A difficulty had arisen which the two men had never dreamed of, and a struggle had taken place between the two rival powers, which was developing a degree of virulence and intolerance on both sides that boded no good to Buckeye. The disease which its infancy had escaped had attacked its adult growth with greater violence. The new American saloons which competed with Jovita Mendez' Spanish venture had substituted a brutal masculine sincerity for her veiled feminine methods. There was higher play, deeper drinking, darker passion. Yet the opposition, after the fashion of most reformers, were casting back to the origin of the trouble in Jovita, and were confounding principles and growth. “If it had not been for her the rule would never have been broken.” “If there was to be a cleaning out of the gambling houses, she must go first!”

The sounds of a harp and a violin played in the nearest saloon struggled up to them with the opening and shutting of its swinging baize inner doors. There was boisterous chanting from certain belated revelers in the next street which had no such remission. The brawling of the stream below seemed to be echoed in the uneasy streets; the quiet of the old days had departed with the sedate, encompassing woods that no longer fringed the river bank; the restful calm of Nature had receded before the dusty outskirts of the town.

“It's mighty unfortunate, too,” said Brace moodily, “that Shuttleworth and Saunders, who haven't been in the place since their row, have come over from Fiddletown to-day, and are banging around town. They haven't said anything that I know of, but their PRESENCE is quite enough to revive the old feeling against her shop. The Committee,” he added bitterly, “will be sure to say that not only the first gambling, but the first shooting in Buckeye took place there. If they get up that story again--no matter how quiet SHE has become since--no matter what YOU may say as mayor--it will go hard with her. What's that now?”

They listened breathlessly. Above the brawling of the river, the twanging of the harp-player, and the receding shouts of the revelers, they could hear the hollow wooden sidewalks resounding with the dull, monotonous trampling of closely following feet. Parks rose with a white face.

“Brace!”

“Yes!”

“Will you stand by me--and HER?”

“Stand by YOU AND HER? Eh? What? Good God! Parks!--you don't mean to say you--it's gone as far as THAT?”

“Will you or won't you?”

The sound of the trampling had changed to a shuffling on the pavement below, and then footsteps began to ascend the stairs.

Brace held out his hand quickly and grasped that of Parks as the door opened to half a dozen men. They were evidently the ringleaders of the crowd below. There was no hesitation or doubt in their manner; the unswerving directness which always characterized those illegal demonstrations lent it something of dignity. Nevertheless, Carpenter, the spokesman, flushed slightly before Parks' white, determined face.

“Come, Parks, you know what we're after,” he said bluntly. “We didn't come here to parley. We knew YOUR sentiments and what YOU think is your duty. We know what we consider OURS--and so do you. But we're here to give you a chance, either as mayor, or, if you prefer it, as the oldest citizen here, to take a hand in our business to-night. We're not ashamed of what we're going to do, and we're willing to abide by it; so there's no reason why we shouldn't speak aboveboard of it to you. We even invite you to take part in our last 'call' tonight at the Hall.”

“Go!” whispered Brace quickly, “YOU'LL GAIN TIME!”

Parks' face changed, and he turned to Carpenter. “Enough,” he said gravely. “I reserve what I have to say of these proceedings till I join you there.” He stopped, whispered a few words to Brace, and then disappeared as the men descended the stairs, and, joining the crowd on the pavement, proceeded silently towards the Town Hall. There was nothing in the appearance of that decorous procession to indicate its unlawful character or the recklessness with which it was charged.

There were thirty or forty men already seated in the Hall. The meeting was brief and to the point. The gambling saloons were to be “cleaned out” that night, the tables and appliances thrown into the street and burnt, the doors closed, and the gamblers were to be conducted to the outskirts of the town and forbidden to enter it again on pain of death.

“Does this yer refer to Jovita Mendez' saloon?” asked a voice.

To their surprise the voice was not Parks' but Shuttleworth's. It was also a matter to be noted that he stood a little forward of the crowd, and that there was a corresponding movement of a dozen or more men from Fiddletown who apparently were part of the meeting.

The chairman (No. 10) said there was to be no exception, and certainly not for the originator of disorder in Buckeye! He was surprised that the question should be asked by No. 72, who was an old resident of Buckeye, and who, with No. 73, had suffered from the character of that woman's saloon.

“That's jest it,” said Shuttleworth, “and ez I reckon that SAUNDERS AND ME did all the disorder there was, and had to turn ourselves out o' town on account of it, I don't see jest where SHE could come into this affair. Only,” he turned and looked around him, “in one way! And that way, gentlemen, would be for her to come here and boot one half o' this kempany out o' town, and shoot the other half! You hear me!--that's so!” He stopped, tugged a moment at his cravat and loosened his shirt-collar as if it impeded his utterance, and went on. “I've got to say suthin' to you gentlemen about me and Saunders and this woman; I've got to say suthin' that's hard for a white man to say, and him a married man, too--I've got to say that me and Saunders never had no QU'OLL, never had NO FIGHT at her shop: I've got to say that me and Saunders got shot by Jovita Mendez for INSULTIN' HER--for tryin' to treat her as if she was the common dirt of the turnpike--and served us right! I've got to say that Saunders and me made a bet that for all her airs she wasn't no better than she might be, and we went there drunk to try her--and that we got left, with two shots into us like hounds as we were! That's so!--wasn't it, Saunders?”

“With two shots inter us like hounds ez we were,” repeated Saunders with deliberate precision.

“And I've got to say suthin' more, gen'lemen,” continued Shuttleworth, now entirely removing his coat and vest, and apparently shaking himself free from any extraneous trammels. “I've got to say this--I've got to say that thar ain't a man in Buckeye, from Dirty Dick over yon to the mayor of this town, ez hasn't tried the same thing on and got left--got left, without shootin' maybe, more's the pity, but got left all the same! And I've got to say,” lifting his voice, “THAT EF THAT'S WHAT YOU CALL DISORDERLINESS IN HER--if that's what yo'r turnin' this woman out o' town for--why”--

He stopped, absolutely breathless and gasping. For there was a momentary shock of surprise and shame, and then he was overborne by peal after peal of inextinguishable laughter. But it was the laughter that precipitated doubt, enlightened justice, cleared confusion, and--saved them!

In vain a few struggled to remind them that the question of the OTHER saloons was still unaffected. It was lost in the motion enthusiastically put and carried that the Committee should instantly accompany Saunders and Shuttleworth to Jovita's saloon to make an apology in their presence. Five minutes later they halted hilariously before its door. But it was closed, dark, and silent!

Their sudden onset and alarm brought Sanchicha to the half-opened door. “Ah, yes! the Senorita? Bueno! She had just left for Fiddletown with the Senor Parks, the honorable mayor. They had been married only a few moments before by the Reverend Mr. McCorkle!”

THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA.

## PART I.

It was bitterly cold. When night fell over Lakeville, Wisconsin, the sunset, which had flickered rather than glowed in the western sky, took upon itself a still more boreal tremulousness, until at last it seemed to fade away in cold blue shivers to the zenith. Nothing else stirred; in the crisp still air the evening smoke of chimneys rose threadlike and vanished. The stars were early, pale, and pitiless; when the later moonlight fell, it appeared only to whiten the stiffened earth like snow, except where it made a dull, pewter-like film over the three frozen lakes which encompassed the town.

The site of the town itself was rarely beautiful, and its pioneers and founders had carried out the suggestions they had found there with loving taste and intelligence.

Themselves old voyageurs, trappers, and traders, they still loved Nature too well to exclude her from the restful homes they had achieved after years of toiling face to face with her. So a strip of primeval forest on the one side, and rolling level prairie on the other, still came up to the base of the hill, whereon they had built certain solid houses, which a second generation had beautified and improved with modern taste, but which still retained their old honesty of foundation and wholesome rustic space. These yet stood among the old trees, military squares, and broad sloping avenues of the town. Seen from the railway by day, the regularity of streets and blocks was hidden by environing trees; there remained only a picturesque lifting of rustic gardens, brown roofs, gables, spires, and cupolas above the mirroring lake: seen from the railway this bitter night, the invisible terraces and streets were now pricked out by symmetrical lines and curves of sparkling lights, which glittered through the leafless boughs and seemed to encircle the hill like a diadem.

Central in the chiefest square, and yet preserving its old lordly isolation in a wooded garden, the homestead of Enoch Lane stood with all its modern additions and improvements. Already these included not only the latest phases of decoration, but various treasures brought by the second generation from Europe, which they were wont to visit, but from which they always contentedly returned to their little provincial town. Whether there was some instinctive yearning, like the stirred sap of great forests, in their wholesome pioneer blood, or whether there was some occult fascination in the pretty town-crested hill itself, it was still certain that the richest inhabitants always preferred to live in Lakeville. Even the young, who left it to seek their fortune elsewhere, came back to enjoy their success under the sylvan vaults of this vast ancestral roof. And that was why, this 22d of December, 1870, the whole household of Gabriel Lane was awaiting the arrival from California of his brother, Sylvester Lane, at the old homestead which he had left twenty years ago.

“And you don't know how he looks?” said Kitty Lane to her father.

“I do, perfectly; rather chubby, with blue eyes, curly hair, fair skin, and blushes when you speak to him.”

“Papa!”

“Eh?--Oh, well, he USED to. You see that was twenty-five years ago, when he left here for boarding-school. He ran away from there, as I told you; went to sea, and finally brought up at San Francisco.”

“And you haven't had any picture, or photograph of him, since?”

“No--that is--I say!--you haven't, any of you, got a picture of Sylvester, have you?” he turned in a vague parenthetical appeal to the company of relatives and friends collected in the drawing-room after dinner.

“Cousin Jane has; she knows all about him!”

But it appeared that Cousin Jane had only heard Susan Marckland say that Edward Bingham had told her that he was in California when “Uncle Sylvester” had been nearly hanged by a Vigilance Committee for protecting a horse thief or a gambler, or some such person. This was felt to be ineffective as a personal description.

“He's sure to wear a big beard; they all do when they first come back,” said Amos Gunn, with metropolitan oraculousness.

“He has a big curling mustache, long silken hair, and broad shoulders,” said Marie du Page.

There was such piquant conviction in the manner of the speaker, who was also a very pretty girl, that they all turned towards her, and Kitty quickly said,--

“But YOU'VE never seen him?”

“No--but--” She stopped, and, lifting one shoulder, threw her spirited head sideways, in a pretty deprecatory way, with elevated eyebrows and an expression intended to show the otherwise untranslatable character of her impression. But it showed quite as pleasantly the other fact, that she was the daughter of a foreigner, an old French military explorer, and that she had retained even in Anglo-Saxon Lakeville some of the Gallic animation.

“Well, how many of you girls are going with me to meet him at the station?” said Gabriel, dismissing with masculine promptness the lesser question. “It's time to be off.”

“I'd like to go,” said Kitty, “and so would Cousin Jane; but really, papa, you see if YOU don't know him, and WE don't either, and you've got to satisfy yourself that it's the right man, and then introduce YOURSELF and then us--and all this on the platform before everybody--it makes it rather embarrassing for us. And then, as he's your younger brother and we're supposed to be his affectionate nieces, you know, it would make HIM feel SO ridiculous!”

“And if he were to KISS you,” said Marie tragically, “and then turn out not to be him!”

“So,” continued Kitty, “you'd better take Cousin John, who was more in Uncle Sylvester's time, to represent the Past of the family, and perhaps Mr. Gunn”--

“To represent the future, I suppose?” interrupted Gabriel in a wicked whisper.

“To represent a name that most men of the world in New York and San Francisco know,” went on Kitty, without a blush. “It would make recognition and introduction easier. And take an extra fur with you, dear--not for HIM but for yourself. I suppose he's lived so much in the open air as to laugh at our coddling.”

“I don't know about that,” said her father thoughtfully; “the last telegram I have from him, en route, says he's half frozen, and wants a close carriage sent to the station.”

“Of course,” said Marie impatiently, “you forget the poor creature comes from burning canyons and hot golden sands and perpetual sunshine.”

“Very well; but come along, Marie, and see how I've prepared his room,” and as her father left the drawing-room Kitty carried off her old schoolfellow upstairs.

The room selected for the coming Sylvester had been one of the elaborate guest-chambers, but was now stripped of its more luxurious furniture and arranged with picturesque yet rural extravagance. A few rare buffalo, bear, and panther skins were disposed over the bare floor, and even displayed gracefully over some elaborately rustic chairs. The handsome French bedstead had been displaced for a small wrought-iron ascetic-looking couch covered with a gorgeously striped Mexican blanket. The fireplace had been dismantled of its steel grate, and the hearth extended so as to allow a pile of symmetrically heaped moss-covered hickory logs to take its place. The walls were covered with trophies of the chase, buck-horns and deer-heads, and a number of Indian arrows stood in a sheaf in the corners beside a few modern guns and rifles.

“Perfectly lovely,” said Marie, “but”--with a slight shiver of her expressive shoulders--“a little cold and outdoorish, eh?”

“Nonsense,” returned Kitty dictatorially, “and if he IS cold, he can easily light those logs. They always build their open fires under a tree. Why, even Mr. Gunn used to do that when he was camping out in the Adirondacks last summer. I call it perfectly comfortable and SO natural.” Nevertheless, they had both tucked their chilly hands under the fleecy shawls they had snatched from the hall for this hyperborean expedition.

“You have taken much pains for him, Kaitee,” said Marie, with her faintest foreign intonation. “You will like this strange uncle--you?”

“He is a wonderful man, Marie; he's been everywhere, seen everything, and done everything out there. He's fought duels, been captured by Indians and tied to a stake to be tortured. He's been leader of a Vigilance Committee, and they say that he has often shot and killed men himself. I'm afraid he's been rather wicked, you know. He's lived alone in the woods like a hermit without seeing a soul, and then, again, he's been a chief among the Indians, with Heaven knows how many Indian wives! They called him 'The Pale-faced Thunderbolt,' my dear, and 'The Young Man who Swallows the Lightning,' or something like that.”

“And what can he want here?” asked Marie.

“To see us, my dear,” said Kitty loftily; “and then, too, he has to settle something about HIS share of the property; for you know grandpa left a share of it to him. Not that he's ever bothered himself about it, for he's rich,--a kind of Monte Cristo, you know,--with a gold mine and an island off the coast, to say nothing of a whole county that he owns, that is called after him, and millions of wild cattle that he rides among and lassos! It's dreadfully hard to do. You know you take a long rope with a slipknot, and you throw it around your head so, and”--

“Hark!” said Marie, with a dramatic start, and her finger on her small mouth, “he comes!”

There was the clear roll of wheels along the smooth, frozen carriage sweep towards the house, the sharp crisp click of hoofs on stone, the opening of heavy doors, the sudden sparkling invasion of frigid air, the uplifting of voices in greeting,--but all familiar! There were Gabriel Lane's cheery, hopeful tones, the soprano of Cousin Jane and Cousin Emma, the baritone of Mr. Gunn, and the grave measured oratorical utterance of Parson Dexter, who had joined the party at the station; but certainly the accents of no STRANGER. Had he come? Yes, for his name was just then called, and the quick ear of Marie had detected a light, lounging, alien footstep cross the cold strip of marble vestibule. The two girls exchanged a rapid glance; each looked into the mirror, and then interrogatively at the other, nodded their heads affirmatively, and descended to the drawing-room. A group had already drawn round the fire, and a small central figure, who, with its back turned towards them, was still enwrapped in an enormous overcoat of rich fur, was engaged in presenting an alternate small varnished leather boot to the warmth of the grate. As they entered the room the heavy fur was yielded up with apparent reluctance, and revealed to the astonished girls a man of ordinary stature with a slight and elegant figure set off by a traveling suit of irreproachable cut. His light reddish-yellow hair, mustache, and sunburned cheek, which seemed all of one color and outline, made it impossible to detect the gray of the one or the hollowness of the other, and gave no indication of his age. Yet there was clearly no mistake. Here was Gabriel Lane seizing their nervously cold fingers and presenting them to their “Uncle Sylvester.”

Far from attempting to kiss Kitty, the stranger for an instant seemed oblivious of the little hand she offered him in the half-preoccupied bow he gave her. But Marie was not so easily passed over, and, with her audacious face challenging his, he abstractedly imparted to the shake of her hand something of the fervor that he should have shown his relative. And, then, still warming his feet on the fender, he seemed to have forgotten them both.

“Accustomed as you have been, sir,” said the Reverend Mr. Dexter, seizing upon an awkward silence, and accenting it laboriously, “perhaps I should say INURED as you have been to the exciting and stirring incidents of a lawless and adventurous community, you doubtless find in a pastoral, yet cultivated and refined, seclusion like Lakeville a degree of”--

“Oh, several degrees,” said Uncle Sylvester, blandly flicking bits of buffalo hair from his well-fitting trousers; “it's colder, you know--much colder.”

“I was referring to a less material contrast,” continued Mr. Dexter, with a resigned smile; “yet, as to the mere question of cold, I am told, sir, that in California there are certain severe regions of altitude--although the mean temperature”--

“I suppose out in California you fellows would say our temperature was a darned sight MEANER, eh?” broke in Amos Gunn, with a confidential glance at the others, as if offering a humorous diversion suited to the Californian taste. Uncle Sylvester did not, however, smile. Gazing critically at Gunn, he said thoughtfully: “I think not; I've even known men killed for saying less than that,” and turned to the clergyman. “You are quite right; some of the higher passes are very cold. I was lost in one of them in '56 with a small party. We were seventy miles from any settlement, we had had nothing to eat for thirty-six hours; our campfire, melting the snow, sank twelve feet below the surface.” The circle closed eagerly around him, Marie, Kitty, and Cousin Jane pressing forward with excited faces; even the clergyman assumed an expression of profound interest. “A man by the name of Thompson, I think,” continued Uncle Sylvester, thoughtfully gazing at the fire, “was frozen a few yards away. Towards morning, having been fifty-eight hours without food, our last drop of whiskey exhausted, and the fire extinguished, we found”--

“Yes, yes!” said half a dozen voices.

“We found,” continued Uncle Sylvester, rubbing his hands cheerfully, “we found it--exceedingly cold. Yes--EXCEEDINGLY cold!”

There was a dead silence.

“But you escaped!” said Kitty breathlessly.

“I think so. I think we all escaped--that is, except Thompson, if his name WAS Thompson; it might have been Parker,” continued Uncle Sylvester, gazing with a certain languid astonishment on the eager faces around him.

“But HOW did you escape?”

“Oh, somehow! I don't remember exactly. I don't think,” he went on reflectively, “that we had to eat Thompson--if it was HIM--at least not then. No”--with a faint effort of recollection--“that would have been another affair. Yes,” assuringly to the eager, frightened eyes of Cousin Jane, “you are quite right, that was something altogether different. Dear me; one quite mixes up these things. Eh?”

A servant had entered, and after a hurried colloquy with Gabriel, the latter turned to Uncle Sylvester--

“Excuse me, but I think there must be some mistake! We brought up your luggage with you--two trunks--in the station wagon. A man has just arrived with three more, which he says are yours.”

“There should be five in all, I think,” said Uncle Sylvester thoughtfully.

“Maybe there are, sir, I didn't count exactly,” said the servant.

“All right,” said Uncle Sylvester cheerfully, turning to his brother. “You can put them in my room or on the landing, except two marked 'L' in a triangle. They contain some things I picked up for you and the girls. We'll look them over in the morning. And, if you don't mind, I'll excuse myself now and go to bed.”

“But it's only half past ten,” said Gabriel remonstratingly. “You don't, surely, go to bed at half past ten?”

“I do when I travel. Travel is SO exhausting. Good-night! Don't let anybody disturb themselves to come with me.”

He bowed languidly to the company, and disappeared with a yawn gracefully disguised into a parting smile.

“Well!” said Cousin Jane, drawing a long breath.

“I don't believe it's your Uncle Sylvester at all!” said Marie vivaciously. “It's some trick that Gabriel is playing upon us. And he's not even a good actor--he forgets his part.”

“And, then, five trunks for one single man! Heavens! what can he have in them” said Cousin Emma.

“Perhaps his confederates, to spring out upon us at night, after everybody's asleep.”

“Are you sure you remembered him, papa?” said Kitty sotto voce.

“Certainly. And, my dear child, he knows all the family history as well as you do; and”--continued her father with a slight laugh that did not, however, conceal a certain seriousness that was new to him--“I only wish I understood as much about the property as he does. By the way, Amos,” he broke off suddenly, turning to the young man, “he seemed to know your people.”

“Most men in the financial world do,” said Gunn a little superciliously.

“Yes; but he asked me if you hadn't a relative of some kind in Southern California or Mexico.”

A slight flush--so slight that only the keen, vivaciously observant eyes of Marie noticed it--passed over the young man's face.

“I believe it is a known fact that our branch of the family never emigrated from their native town,” he said emphatically. “The Gunns were rather peculiar and particular in that respect.”

“Then there were no offshoots from the old STOCK,” said Gabriel.

Nevertheless, this pet joke of Gabriel's did not dissipate the constraint and disappointment left upon the company by Uncle Sylvester's unsatisfying performance and early withdrawal, and they separated soon after, Kitty and Marie being glad to escape upstairs together. On the landing they met two of the Irish housemaids in a state of agitated exhaustion. It appeared that the “sthrange gintleman” had requested that his bed be remade from bedclothes and bedding ALWAYS CARRIED WITH HIM IN HIS TRUNKS! From their apologetic tone it was evident that he had liberally rewarded them. “Shure, Miss,” protested Norah, in deprecation of Kitty's flashing eye, “there's thim that's lived among shnakes and poysin riptiles and faverous disayses that's particklar av the beds and sheets they lie on. Hisht! Howly Mother! it's something else he's wanting now!”

The door of Uncle Sylvester's room had slowly opened, and a blue pyjama'd sleeve appeared, carefully depositing the sheaf of bows and arrows outside the door. “I say, Norah, or Bridget there, some of you take those infernal things away. And look out, will you, for the arrowheads are deadly poison. The fool who got 'em didn't know they were African, and not Indian at all! And hold on!” The hand vanished, and presently reappeared holding two rifles. “And take these away, too! They're loaded, capped, and NOT on the half-cock! A jar, a fall, the slightest shock is enough to send them off!”

“I'm dreadfully sorry that you should find it so uncomfortable in our house, Uncle Sylvester,” said Kitty, with a flushed cheek and vibrating voice.

“Oh, it's you--is it?” said Uncle Sylvester's voice cheerfully. “I thought it was Bridget out there. No, I don't intend to find it uncomfortable. That's why I'm putting these things outside. But, for Heaven's sake, don't YOU touch them. Leave that to the ineffable ass who put them there. Good-night!”

The door closed; the whispering voices of the girls faded from the corridor; the lights were lowered in the central hall, only the red Cyclopean eye of an enormous columnar stove, like a lighthouse, gleamed through the darkness. Outside, the silent night sparkled, glistened, and finally paled. Towards morning, having invested the sturdy wooden outer walls of the house and filmed with delicate tracery every available inch of window pane, it seemed stealthily to invade the house itself, stilling and chilling it as it drew closer around its central heart of warmth and life. Only once the frigid stillness was broken by the opening of a door and steps along the corridor. This was preceded by an acrid smell of burning bark.

It was subtle enough to permeate the upper floor and the bedroom of Marie du Page, who was that night a light and nervous sleeper. Peering from her door, she could see, on the lower corridor, the extraordinary spectacle of Uncle Sylvester, robed in a gorgeous Japanese dressing-gown of quilted satin trimmed with the fur of the blue fox, candle in hand, leisurely examining the wall of the passage. Presently, drawing out a footrule from his pocket, he actually began to measure it! Miss Du Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it, firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, or an impostor.

## PART II.

“It doesn't seem as if Uncle Sylvester was any the more comfortable for having his own private bedding with him,” said Kitty Lane, entering Marie's room early the next morning. “Bridget found him curled up in his furs like a cat asleep on the drawing-room sofa this morning.”

Marie started; she remembered her last night's vision. But some instinct--she knew not what--kept her from revealing it at this moment. She only said a little ironically:--

“Perhaps he missed the wild freedom of his barbaric life in a small bedroom.”

“No. Bridget says he said something about being smoked out of his room by a ridiculous wood fire. The idea! As if a man brought up in the woods couldn't stand a little smoke. No--that's his excuse! Marie!--do you know what I firmly believe?”

“No,” said Marie quickly.

“I firmly believe that poor man is ashamed of his past rough life, and does everything he can to forget it. That's why he affects those ultra-civilized and effeminate ways, and goes to the other extreme, as people always do.”

“Then you think he's really reformed, and isn't likely to take an impulse to rob and murder anybody again?”

“Why, Marie, what nonsense!”

Nevertheless, Uncle Sylvester appeared quite fresh and cheerful at breakfast. It seemed that he had lit the fire before undressing, but the green logs were piled so far into the room that the smoke nearly suffocated him. Fearful of alarming the house by letting the smoke escape through the door, he opened the window, and when it had partly dispersed, sought refuge himself from the arctic air of his bedroom in the drawing-room. So far the act did not seem inconsistent with his sanity, or even intelligence and consideration for others. But Marie fixed upon him a pair of black, audacious eyes.

“Did you ever walk in your sleep, Mr. Lane?”

“No; but”--thoughtfully breaking an egg--“I have ridden, I think.”

“In your sleep? Oh, do tell us all about it!” said Cousins Jane and Emma in chorus.

Uncle Sylvester cast a resigned glance out of the window. “Oh, yes--certainly; it isn't much. You see at one time I was in the habit of making long monotonous journeys, and they were often exhausting, and,” he added, becoming wearied as if at the recollection, “always dreadfully tiresome. As the trail was sometimes very uncertain and dangerous, I rode a very surefooted mule that could go anywhere where there was space big enough to set her small hoofs upon. One night I was coming down the slope of a mountain towards a narrow valley and river that were crossed by an old, abandoned flume, of which nothing was now left but the upright trestle-work and long horizontal string-piece. As the trail was very difficult and the mule's pace was slow, I found myself dozing at times, and at last I must have fallen asleep. I think I must have been awakened by a singular regularity in the movement of the mule--or else it was the monotony of step that had put me to sleep and the cessation of it awakened me. You see, at first I was not certain that I wasn't really dreaming. For the trail seemed to have disappeared; the wall of rock on one side had vanished also, and there appeared to be nothing ahead of me but the opposite hillside.”

Uncle Sylvester stopped to look out of the window at a passing carriage. Then he went on. “The moon came out, and I saw what had happened. The mule, either of her own free will, or obeying some movement I had given the reins in my sleep, had swerved from the trail, got on top of the flume, and was actually walking across the valley on the narrow string-piece, a foot wide, half a mile long, and sixty feet from the ground. I knew,” he continued, examining his napkin thoughtfully, “that she was perfectly surefooted, and that if I kept quiet she could make the passage, but I suddenly remembered that midway there was a break and gap of twenty feet in the continuous line, and that the string-piece was too narrow to allow her to turn round and retrace her steps.”

“Good heavens!” said Cousin Jane.

“I beg your pardon?” said Uncle Sylvester politely.

“I only said, 'Good heavens!' Well?” she added impatiently.

“Well?” repeated Uncle Sylvester vaguely. “Oh, that's all. I only wanted to explain what I meant by saying I had ridden in my sleep.”

“But,” said Cousin Jane, leaning across the table with grim deliberation and emphasizing each word with the handle of her knife, “how--did--you--and--that--mule get down?”

“Oh, with slings and ropes, you know--so,” demonstrating by placing his napkin-ring in a sling made of his napkin.

“And I suppose you carried the slings and ropes with you in your five trunks!” gasped Cousin Jane.

“No. Fellows on the river brought 'em in the morning. Mighty spry chaps, those river miners.”

“Very!” said Cousin Jane.

Breakfast over, they were not surprised that their sybaritic guest excused himself from an inspection of the town in the frigid morning air, and declined joining a skating party to the lake on the ground that he could keep warmer indoors with half the exertion. An hour later found him standing before the fire in Gabriel Lane's study, looking languidly down on his elder brother.

“Then, as far as I can see,” he said quietly, “you have made ducks and drakes of your share of the property, and that virtually you are in the hands of this man Gunn and his father.”

“You're putting it too strongly,” said Gabriel deprecatingly. “In the first place, my investments with Gunn's firm are by no means failures, and they only hold as security a mortgage on the forest land below the hill. It's scarcely worth the money. I would have sold it long ago, but it had been a fancy of father's to keep it wild land for the sake of old times and the healthiness of the town.”

“There used to be a log cabin there, where the old man had a habit of camping out whenever he felt cramped by civilization up here, wasn't there?” said Uncle Sylvester meditatively.

“Yes,” said Gabriel impatiently; “it's still there--but to return to Mr. Gunn. He has taken a fancy to Kitty, and even if I could not lift the mortgage, there's some possibility that the land would still remain in the family.”

“I think I'll drive over this afternoon and take a look at the old shanty if this infernal weather lets up.”

“Yes; but just now, my dear Sylvester, let us attend to business. I want to show you those investments.”

“Oh, certainly; trot 'em out,” said his brother, plucking up a simulation of interest as he took a seat at the table.

From a drawer of his desk Gabriel brought out a bundle of prospectuses and laid them before Uncle Sylvester.

A languid smile of recognition lit up the latter's face. “Ah! yes,” he said, glancing at them. “The old lot: 'Carmelita,' 'Santa Maria,' and 'Preciosa!' Just as I imagined--and yet who'd have thought of seeing them HERE! A good deal rouged and powdered, Miss Carmelita, since I first knew you! Considerably bolstered up by miraculous testimony to your powers, my dear Santa Maria, since the day I found you out, to my cost! And you too, Preciosa!--a precious lot of money I dropped on you in the old days!”

“You are joking,” said Gabriel, with an uneasy smile. “You don't mean to imply that this stock is old and worthless?”

“There isn't a capital in America or Europe where for the last five years it hasn't been floated with a new character each time. My dear Gabriel, that stock isn't worth the paper it is printed on.”

“But it is impossible that an experienced financier like Gunn could be deceived!”

“I'm sorry to hear THAT.”

“Come, Sylvester! confess you've taken a prejudice against Gunn from your sudden dislike of his son! And what have you against him?”

“I couldn't say exactly,” said Uncle Sylvester reflectively. “It may be his eyes, or only his cravat! But,” rising cheerfully and placing his hand lightly on his brother's shoulder, “don't YOU worry yourself about that stock, old man; I'LL see that somebody else has the worry and you the cash. And as to the land and--Kitty--well, you hold on to them both until you find out which the young man is really after.”

“And then?” said Gabriel, with a smile.

“Don't give him either! But, I say, haven't we had enough business this morning? Let's talk of something else. Who's the French girl?”

“Marie? She's the daughter of Jules du Page--don't you remember?--father's friend. When Jules died, it was always thought that father, who had half adopted her as a child, would leave her some legacy. But you know that father died without making a will, and that--rich as he was--his actual assets were far less than we had reason to expect. Kitty, who felt the disappointment as keenly as her friend, I believe would have divided her own share with her. It's odd, by the way, that father could have been so deceived in the amount of his capital, or how he got rid of his money in a way that we knew nothing of. Do you know, Sylvester, I've sometimes suspected”--

“What?” said Uncle Sylvester suddenly.

The bored languor of his face had abruptly vanished. Every muscle was alert; his gray eyes glittered.

“That he advanced money to Du Page, who lost it, or that they speculated together,” returned Gabriel, who, following Uncle Sylvester's voice only, had not noticed the change of expression.

“That would seem to be a weakness of the Lane family,” said Uncle Sylvester grimly, with a return of his former carelessness. “But that is not YOUR own opinion--that's a suggestion of some one else?”

“Well,” said Gabriel, with a laugh and a slight addition of color, “it WAS Gunn's theory. As a man of the world and a practical financier, you know.”

“And you've talked with HIM about it?”

“Yes. It was a matter of general wonder years ago.”

“Very likely--but, just now, don't you think we've had enough financial talk?” said Uncle Sylvester, with a bored contraction of his eyebrows. “Come,” looking around the room, “you've changed the interior of the old house.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, just after father's death it was put in the hands of a local architect or builder, one of father's old friends, but not a very skillful workman, who made changes while the family were away. That's why your present bedroom, which was father's old study, had a slice taken off it to make the corridor larger, and why the big chimney and hearthstone are still there, although the fireplace is modernized. That was Flint's stupidity.”

“Whose stupidity?” asked Uncle Sylvester, trimming his nails.

“Flint's--the old architect.”

“Why didn't you make him change it back again?”

“He left Lakeville shortly after, and I brought an architect from St. Louis after I returned from Europe. But nothing could be done to your room without taking down the chimney, so it remained as Flint left it.”

“That reminds me, Gabriel, I'm afraid I spoke rather cavalierly to Kitty, last night, about the arrangements of the room. The fact is, I've taken a fancy to it, and should like to fit it up myself. Have I your permission?”

“Certainly, my dear Sylvester.”

“I've some knickknacks in my trunks, and I'll do it at once.”

“As you like.”

“And you'll see that I am not disturbed; and you'll explain it to Kitty, with my apologies?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'm off.”

Gabriel glanced at his brother with a perplexed smile. Here was the bored traveler, explorer, gold-seeker, soldier of fortune, actually as pleased as a girl over the prospect of arranging his room! He called after him, “Sylvester!”

“Yes.”

“I say, if you could, you know, just try to interest these people to-night with some of your adventures--something told SERIOUSLY, you know, as if you really were in earnest--I'd be awfully obliged to you. The fact is,--you'll excuse me,--but they think you don't come up to your reputation.”

“They want a story?”

“Yes,--one of your experiences.”

“I'll give them one. Ta-ta!”

For the rest of the day Uncle Sylvester was invisible, although his

## active presence in his room was betrayed by the sound of hammering and

moving of furniture. As the remainder of the party were skating on the lake, this eccentricity was not remarked except by one,--Marie du Page,--who on pretense of a slight cold had stayed at home. But with her suspicions of the former night, she had determined to watch the singular relative of her friend. Added to a natural loyalty to the Lanes, she was moved by a certain curiosity and fascination towards this incomprehensible man.

The house was very quiet when she stole out of her room and passed softly along the corridor; she examined the wall carefully to discover anything that might have excited the visitor's attention. There were a few large engravings hanging there; could he have designed to replace them by some others? Suddenly she was struck with the distinct conviction that the wall of the corridor did not coincide with the wall of his room as represented by the line of the door. There was certainly a space between the two walls unaccounted for. This was undoubtedly what had attracted HIS attention; but what BUSINESS was it of his?

She reflected that she had seen in the wall of the conservatory an old closed staircase, now used as shelves for dried herbs and seeds, which she had been told was the old-time communication between the garden and Grandfather Lane's study,--the room now occupied by the stranger. Perhaps it led still farther, and thus accounted for the space. Determined to satisfy herself, she noiselessly descended to the conservatory. There, surely, was the staircase,--a narrow flight of wooden steps encumbered with packages of herbs,--losing itself in upper darkness. By the aid of a candle she managed to grope and pick her way up step by step. Then she paused. The staircase had abruptly ended on the level of the study, now cut off from it by the new partition. She was in a stifling inclosure, formed by the walls, scarcely eighteen inches wide. It was made narrower by a singular excrescence on the old wall, which seemed to have been a bricked closet, now half destroyed and in ruins. She turned to descend, when a strange sound from Uncle Sylvester's room struck her ear. It was the sound of tapping on the floor close to the partition, within a foot of where she was standing. At the same moment there was a decided movement of the plank of the flooring beneath the partition: it began to slide slowly, and then was gradually withdrawn into the room. With prompt presence of mind, she instantly extinguished her candle and drew herself breathlessly against the partition.

When the plank was entirely withdrawn, a ray of light slipped through the opening, revealing the bare rafters of the floor, and a hand and arm inserted under the partition, groping as if towards the bricked closet. As the fingers of the exploring hand were widely extended, Marie had no difficulty in recognizing on one of them a peculiar signet ring which Uncle Sylvester wore. A swift impulse seized her. To the audacious Marie impulse and action were the same thing. Bending stealthily over the aperture, she suddenly snatched the ring from the extended finger. The hand was quickly withdrawn with a start and uncontrolled exclamation, and she availed herself of that instant to glide rapidly down the stairs.

She regained her room stealthily, having the satisfaction a moment later of hearing Uncle Sylvester's door open and the sound of his footsteps in the corridor. But he was evidently unable to discover any outer ingress to the inclosure, or believed the loss of his ring an accident, for he presently returned. Meantime, what was she to do?

Tell Kitty of her discovery, and show the ring? No--not yet! Oddly enough, now that she had the ring, taken from his wicked finger in the very act, she found it as difficult as ever to believe in his burglarious design. She must wait. The mischief--if there had been mischief--was done; the breaking in of the bricked closet was, from the appearance of the ruins, a bygone act. Could it have been some youthful escapade of Uncle Sylvester's, the scene of which he was revisiting as criminals are compelled to do? And had there been anything taken from the closet--or was its destruction a part of the changes in the old house? How could she find out without asking Kitty? There was one way. She remembered that Mr. Gunn had once shown a great deal of interest to Kitty about the old homestead, and even of old Mr. Lane's woodland cabin. She would ask HIM. It was a friendly act, for Kitty had not of late been very kind to him.

The opportunity presented itself at dusk, as Mr. Gunn, somewhat abstracted, stood apart at the drawing-room window. Marie hoped he had enjoyed himself while skating; her stupid cold had kept her indoors. She had amused herself rambling about the old homestead; it was such a queer place, so full of old nooks and corners and unaccountable spaces. Just the place, she would think, where old treasures might have been stored. Eh?

Mr. Gunn had not spoken--he had only coughed. But in the darkness his eyes were fixed angrily on her face. Without observing it, she went on. She knew he was interested in the old house; she had heard him talk to Kitty about it: had Kitty ever said anything about some old secret hoarding place?

No, certainly not! And she was mistaken, he never was interested in the house! He could not understand what had put that idea in her head! Unless it was this ridiculous, shady stranger in the guise of an uncle whom they had got there. It was like his affectation!

“Oh, dear, no,” said Marie, with unmistakable truthfulness, “HE did not say anything. But,” with sudden inconsistent aggression, “is THAT the way you speak to Kitty of her uncle?”

Really he didn't know--he was joking only, and he was afraid he must just now ask her to excuse him. He had received letters that made it possible that he might be called suddenly to New York at any moment. Marie stared. It was evident that he had proposed to Kitty and been rejected! But she was no nearer her discovery.

Nor was there the least revelation in the calm, half-bored, yet good-humored presence of the wicked uncle at dinner. So indifferent did he seem, not only to his own villainy but even to the loss it had entailed, that she had a wild impulse to take the ring from her pocket and display it on her own finger before him then and there. But the conviction that he would in some way be equal to the occasion prevented her. The dinner passed off with some constraint, no doubt emanating from the conscious Kitty and Gunn. Nevertheless, when they had returned to the drawing-room, Gabriel rubbed his hands expectantly.

“I prevailed on Sylvester this morning to promise to tell us some of his experiences--something COMPLETE and satisfactory this time. Eh?”

Uncle Sylvester, warming his cold blood before the fire, looked momentarily forgetful and--disappointing. Cousins Jane and Emma shrugged their shoulders.

“Eh,” said Uncle Sylvester absently, “er--er--oh yes! Well” (more cheerfully), “about what, eh?”

“Let it be,” said Marie pointedly, fixing her black magnetic eyes on the wicked stranger, “let it be something about the DISCOVERY of gold, or a buried TREASURE HOARD, or a robbery.”

To her intense disgust Uncle Sylvester, far from being discomfited or confused, actually looked pleased, and his gray eyes thawed slightly.

“Certainly,” he said. “Well, then! Down on the San Joaquin River there was an old chap--one of the earliest settlers--in fact, he'd come on from Oregon before the gold discovery. His name, dear me!”--continued Uncle Sylvester, with an effort of memory and apparently beginning already to lose his interest in the story--“was--er--Flint.”

As Uncle Sylvester paused here, Cousin Jane broke in impatiently. “Well, that's not an uncommon name. There was an old carpenter here in your father's time who was called Flint.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Sylvester languidly. “But there is, or was, something uncommon about it--and that's the point of the story, for in the old time Flint and Gunn were of the same stock.”

“Is this a Californian joke?” said Gunn, with a forced smile on his flushed face. “If so, spare me, for it's an old one.”

“It's much older HISTORY, Mr. Gunn,” said Uncle Sylvester blandly, “which I remember from a boy. When the first Flint traded near Sault Sainte Marie, the Canadian voyageurs literally translated his name into Pierre a Fusil, and he went by that name always. But when the English superseded the French in numbers and language the name was literally translated back again into 'Peter Gunn,' which his descendants bear.”

“A labored form of the old joke,” said Gunn, turning contemptuously away.

“But the story,” said Cousins Jane and Emma. “The story of the gold discovery--never mind the names.”

“Excuse me,” said Uncle Sylvester, placing his hand in the breast of his coat with a delightful exaggeration of offended dignity. “But, doubts having been cast upon my preliminary statement, I fear I must decline proceeding further.” Nevertheless, he smiled unblushingly at Miss Du Page as he followed Gunn from the room.

The next morning those who had noticed the strained relations of Miss Kitty and Mr. Gunn were not surprised that the latter was recalled on pressing business to New York by the first train; but it was a matter of some astonishment to Gabriel Lane and Marie du Page that Uncle Sylvester should have been up early, and actually accompanied that gentleman as far as the station! Indeed, the languid explorer and gold-seeker exhibited remarkable activity, and, clad in a rough tourist suit, announced, over the breakfast-table, his intention of taking a long tramp through the woods, which he had not revisited since a boy. To this end he had even provided himself with a small knapsack, and for once realized Kitty's ideal of his character.

“Don't go too far,” said Gabriel, “for, although the cold has moderated, the barometer is falling fast, and there is every appearance of snow. Take care you are not caught in one of our blizzards.”

“But YOU are all going on the lake to skate!” protested Uncle Sylvester.

“Yes; for the very reason that it may be our last chance; but should it snow we shall be nearer home than you may be.”

Nevertheless, when it came on to snow, as Gabriel had predicted, the skating party was by no means so near home as he had imagined. A shrewd keenness and some stimulating electric condition of the atmosphere had tempted the young people far out on the lake, and they had ignored the first fall of fine grayish granulations that swept along the icy surface like little puffs of dust or smoke. Then the fall grew thicker, the gray sky contracted, the hurrying flakes, dashed against them by a fierce northwester, were larger, heavier, and seemed an almost palpable force that held them back. Their skates, already clogged with drift, were beginning to be useless. The bare wind-swept spaces were becoming rarer; they could only stumble on blindly towards the nearest shore. Nor when they reached it were they yet safe; they could scarcely stand against the still increasing storm that was fast obliterating the banks and stretch of meadow beyond. Their only hope of shelter was the range of woods that joined the hill. Holding hands in single file, the little party, consisting of Kitty, Marie, and Cousins Jane and Emma--stout-hearted Gabriel leading and Cousin John bringing up the rear--at last succeeded in reaching it, and were rejoiced to find themselves near old Lane's half-ruined cabin. To their added joy and astonishment, whiffs of whirling smoke were issuing from the crumbling chimney. They ran to the crazy door, pushed aside its weak fastening, and found--Uncle Sylvester calmly enjoying a pipe before a blazing fire. A small pickaxe and crowbar were lying upon a mound of freshly turned earth beside the chimney, where the rotten flooring had been torn up.

The tumultuous entrance of the skating party required no explanation; but when congratulations had been exchanged, the wet snow shaken off, and they had drawn round the fire, curious eyes were cast upon the solitary occupant and the pile of earth and debris before him.

“I believe,” said Gabriel laughingly, “that you have been so bored here that you have actually played at gold-hunting for amusement.”

Uncle Sylvester took the pipe from his mouth and nodded.

“It's a common diversion of yours,” said Marie audaciously.

Uncle Sylvester smiled sweetly.

“And have you been successful THIS TIME?” asked Marie.

“I got the color.”

“Eh?”

Uncle Sylvester rose and placed himself with his back to the fire, gently surveying the assembled group.

“I was interrupted in a story of gold-digging last evening,” he said blandly. “How far had I got?”

“You were down on the San Joaquin River in the spring of '50, with a chap named Flint,” chorused Cousins Jane and Emma promptly.

“Ah! yes,” said Uncle Sylvester. “Well, in those days there was a scarcity of money in the diggings. Gold dust there was in plenty, but no COIN. You can fancy it was a bother to weigh out a pinch of dust every time you wanted a drink of whiskey or a pound of flour; but there was no other legal tender. Pretty soon, however, a lot of gold and silver pieces found their way into circulation in our camp and the camps around us. They were foreign--old French and English coins. Here's one of them that I kept.” He took from his pocket a gold coin and handed it to Gabriel.

Lane rose to his feet with an exclamation:

“Why, this is like the louis-d'or that grandfather saved through the war and gave to father.”

Uncle Sylvester took the coin back, placed it in his left eye, like a monocle, and winked gravely at the company.

“It is the SAME!” he went on quietly. “I was interested, for I had a good memory, and I remembered that, as a boy, grandfather had shown me one of those coins and told me he was keeping them for old Jules du Page, who didn't believe in banks and bank-notes. Well, I traced them to a trader called Flint, who was shipping gold dust from Stockton to Peter Gunn & Sons, in New York.”

“To whom?” asked Gabriel quickly.

“Old Gunn--the father of your friend!” said Uncle Sylvester blandly. “We talked the matter over on our way to the station this morning. Well, to return. Flint only said that he had got them from a man called Thompson, who had got them from somebody else in exchange for goods. A year or two afterwards this same Thompson happened to be frozen up with me in Starvation Camp. When he thought he was dying he confessed that he had been bribed by Flint to say what he had said, but that he believed the coins were stolen. Meantime, Flint had disappeared. Other things claimed my attention. I had quite forgotten him, until one night, five years afterwards, I blundered into a deserted mining-camp, by falling asleep on my mule, who carried me across a broken flume, but--I think I told you that story already.”

“You never finished it,” said Cousin Jane sharply.

“Let me do so now, then. I was really saved by some Indians, who took me for a spirit up aloft there in the moonlight and spread the alarm. The first white man they brought me was a wretched drunkard known to the boys as 'Old Fusil,' or 'Fusel Oil,' who went into delirium tremens at the sight of me. Well, who do you suppose he turned out to be? Flint! Flint played out and ruined! Cast off and discarded by his relations in New York--the foundation of whose fortunes he had laid by the villainy they had accepted and condoned. For Flint, as the carpenter of the old homestead, had discovered the existence of a bricked closet in the wall of father's study, partitioned it off so that he could break into it without detection and rifle it at his leisure, and who had thus carried off that part of grandfather's hoard which father had concealed there. He knew it could never be missed by the descendants. But, through haste or ignorance, he DID NOT TOUCH THE PAPERS and documents also hidden there. And THEY told of the existence of grandfather's second cache, or hiding-place, beneath this hearth, and were left for me to discover.”

He coolly relit his pipe, fixed his eyes on Marie without apparently paying attention to the breathless scrutiny of the others, and went on: “Flint, alias Pierre a Fusil, alias Gunn, died a maniac. I resolved to test the truth of his story. I came here. I knew the old homestead, as a boy who had wandered over every part of it, far better than you, Gabriel, or any one. The elder Gunn had only heard of it through the criminal disclosure of his relative, and only wished to absorb it through his son in time, and thus obliterate all trace of Flint's outrage. I recognized the room perfectly--thanks to our dear Kitty, who had taken up the carpet, which thus disclosed the loose plank before the closet that was hidden by the partition. Under pretext of rearranging the room--for which Kitty will forgive me--I spent the day behind a locked door, making my way through the partition. There I found the rifled closet, but the papers intact. They contained a full description of the sum taken by Flint, and also of a larger sum buried in a cask beside this chimney. I had just finished unearthing it a few moments before you came. I had at first hoped to offer it to the family as a Christmas gift to-morrow, but”--He stopped and sucked slowly at his pipe.

“We anticipated you,” said Gabriel laughing.

“No,” said Uncle Sylvester coolly. “But because it don't happen to belong to YOU at all! According to the paper I have in my pocket, which is about as legal a document as I ever saw, it is father's free gift to Miss Marie du Page.”

Kitty threw her arms around her white and breathless friend with a joyful cry, and honest Gabriel's face shone with unselfish gratification.

“For yourself, my dear Gabriel, you must be satisfied with the fact that Messrs. Peter Gunn & Sons will take back your wildcat stock at the price you paid for it. It is the price they pay for their share in this little transaction, as I had the honor of pointing out to Mr. Gunn on our way to the station this morning.”

“Then you think that young Mr. Gunn knew that Flint was his relation, and that he had stolen father's money,” said Kitty, “and that Mr. Gunn only wanted to”--She stopped, with flashing eyes.

“I think he would have liked to have made an arrangement, my dear, that would keep the secret and the property in the family,” said Uncle Sylvester. “But I don't think he suspected the existence of the second treasure here.”

“And then, sir,” said Cousin Jane, “it appears that all these wretched, unsatisfactory scraps of stories you were telling us were nothing after all but”--

“My way of telling THIS one,” said Uncle Sylvester.

As the others were eagerly gathering around the unearthed treasure, Marie approached him timidly, all her audacity gone, tears in her eyes, and his ring held hesitatingly between her fingers. “How can I thank you--and how CAN you ever forgive me?”

“Well,” said Uncle Sylvester, gazing at her critically, “you might keep the ring to think over it.”

End of Project Gutenberg's Sally Dows and Other Stories, by Bret Harte