PART II

The next afternoon he went to the fonda. Situated on the outskirts of the town which had long outgrown it, it still bore traces of its former importance as a hacienda, or smaller farm, of one of the old Spanish landholders. The patio, or central courtyard, still existed as a stable-yard for carts, and even one or two horses were tethered to the railings of the inner corridor, which now served as an open veranda to the fonda or inn. The opposite wing was utilized as a tienda, or general shop,--a magazine for such goods as were used by the Mexican inhabitants,--and belonged also to Ramierez.

Ramierez himself--round-whiskered and Sancho Panza-like in build--welcomed the editor with fat, perfunctory urbanity. The fonda and all it contained was at his disposicion.

The senora coquettishly bewailed, in rising and falling inflections, his long absence, his infidelity and general perfidiousness. Truly he was growing great in writing of the affairs of his nation--he could no longer see his humble friends! Yet not long ago--truly that very week--there was the head impresor of Don Pancho's imprenta himself who had been there!

A great man, of a certainty, and they must take what they could get! They were only poor innkeepers; when the governor came not they must welcome the alcalde. To which the editor--otherwise Don Pancho--replied with equal effusion. He had indeed recommended the fonda to his impresor, who was but a courier before him. But what was this? The impresor had been ravished at the sight of a beautiful girl--a mere muchacha--yet of a beauty that deprived the senses--this angel--clearly the daughter of his friend! Here was the old miracle of the orange in full fruition and the lovely fragrant blossom all on the same tree--at the fonda. And this had been kept from him!

“Yes, it was but a thing of yesterday,” said the senora, obviously pleased. “The muchacha--for she was but that--had just returned from the convent at San Jose, where she had been for four years. Ah! what would you? The fonda was no place for the child, who should know only the litany of the Virgin--and they had kept her there. And now--that she was home again--she cared only for the horse. From morning to night! Caballeros might come and go! There might be a festival--all the same to her, it made nothing if she had the horse to ride! Even now she was with one in the fields. Would Don Pancho attend and see Cota and her horse?”

The editor smilingly assented, and accompanied his hostess along the corridor to a few steps which brought them to the level of the open meadows of the old farm inclosure. A slight white figure on horseback was careering in the distance. At a signal from Senora Ramierez it wheeled and came down rapidly towards them. But when within a hundred yards the horse was suddenly pulled up vaquero fashion, and the little figure leaped off and advanced toward them on foot, leading the horse.

To his surprise, Mr. Grey saw that she had been riding bareback, and from her discreet halt at that distance he half suspected ASTRIDE! His effusive compliments to the mother on this exhibition of skill were sincere, for he was struck by the girl's fearlessness. But when both horse and rider at last stood before him, he was speechless and embarrassed.

For Richards had not exaggerated the girl's charms. She was indeed dangerously pretty, from her tawny little head to her small feet, and her figure, although comparatively diminutive, was perfectly proportioned. Gray eyed and blonde as she was in color, her racial peculiarities were distinct, and only the good-humored and enthusiastic Richards could have likened her to an American girl.

But he was the more astonished in noticing that her mustang was as distinct and peculiar as herself--a mongrel mare of the extraordinary type known as a “pinto,” or “calico” horse, mottled in lavender and pink, Arabian in proportions, and half broken! Her greenish gray eyes, in which too much of the white was visible, had, he fancied, a singular similarity of expression to Cota's own!

Utterly confounded, and staring at the girl in her white, many flounced frock, bare head, and tawny braids, as she stood beside this incarnation of equine barbarism, Grey could remember nothing like it outside of a circus.

He stammered a few words of admiration of the mare. Miss Cota threw out her two arms with a graceful gesture and a profound curtsey, and said--

“A la disposicion de le Usted, senor.”

Grey was quick to understand the malicious mischief which underlay this formal curtsey and danced in the girl's eyes, and even fancied it shared by the animal itself. But he was a singularly good rider of untrained stock, and rather proud of his prowess. He bowed.

“I accept that I may have the honor of laying the senorita's gift again at her little feet.”

But here the burly Ramierez intervened. “Ah, Mother of God! May the devil fly away with all this nonsense! I will have no more of it,” he said impatiently to the girl. “Have a care, Don Pancho,” he turned to the editor; “it is a trick!”

“One I think I know,” said Grey sapiently. The girl looked at him curiously as he managed to edge between her and the mustang, under the pretense of stroking its glossy neck. “I shall keep MY OWN spurs,” he said to her in a lower voice, pointing to the sharp, small-roweled American spurs he wore, instead of the large, blunt, five-pointed star of the Mexican pattern.

The girl evidently did not understand him then--though she did a moment later! For without attempting to catch hold of the mustang's mane, Grey in a single leap threw himself across its back. The animal, utterly unprepared, was at first stupefied. But by this time her rider had his seat. He felt her sensitive spine arch like a cat's beneath him as she sprang rocket-wise into the air.

But here she was mistaken! Instead of clinging tightly to her flanks with the inner side of his calves, after the old vaquero fashion to which she was accustomed, he dropped his spurred heels into her sides and allowed his body to rise with her spring, and the cruel spur to cut its track upward from her belly almost to her back.

She dropped like a shot, he dexterously withdrawing his spurs, and regaining his seat, jarred but not discomfited. Again she essayed a leap; the spurs again marked its height in a scarifying track along her smooth barrel. She tried a third leap, but this time dropped halfway as she felt the steel scraping her side, and then stood still, trembling. Grey leaped off!

There was a sound of applause from the innkeeper and his wife, assisted by a lounging vaquero in the corridor. Ashamed of his victory, Grey turned apologetically to Cota. To his surprise she glanced indifferently at the trickling sides of her favorite, and only regarded him curiously.

“Ah,” she said, drawing in her breath, “you are strong--and you comprehend!”

“It was only a trick for a trick, senorita,” he replied, reddening; “let me look after those scratches in the stable,” he added, as she was turning away, leading the agitated and excited animal toward a shed in the rear.

He would have taken the riata which she was still holding, but she motioned him to precede her. He did so by a few feet, but he had scarcely reached the stable door before she suddenly caught him roughly by the shoulders, and, shoving him into the entrance, slammed the door upon him.

Amazed and a little indignant, he turned in time to hear a slight sound of scuffling outside, and to see Cota re-enter with a flushed face.

“Pardon, senor,” she said quickly, “but I feared she might have kicked you. Rest tranquil, however, for the servant he has taken her away.”

She pointed to a slouching peon with a malevolent face, who was angrily driving the mustang toward the corral.

“Consider it no more! I was rude! Santa Maria! I almost threw you, too; but,” she added, with a dazzling smile, “you must not punish me as you have her! For you are very strong--and you comprehend.”

But Grey did not comprehend, and with a few hurried apologies he managed to escape his fair but uncanny tormentor. Besides, this unlooked-for incident had driven from his mind the more important object of his visit,--the discovery of the assailants of Richards and Colonel Starbottle.

His inquiries of the Ramierez produced no result. Senor Ramierez was not aware of any suspicious loiterers among the frequenters of the fonda, and except from some drunken American or Irish revelers he had been free of disturbance.

Ah! the peon--an old vaquero--was not an angel, truly, but he was dangerous only to the bull and the wild horses--and he was afraid even of Cota! Mr. Grey was fain to ride home empty of information.

He was still more concerned a week later, on returning unexpectedly one afternoon to his sanctum, to hear a musical, childish voice in the composing-room.

It was Cota! She was there, as Richards explained, on his invitation, to view the marvels and mysteries of printing at a time when they would not be likely to “disturb Mr. Grey at his work.” But the beaming face of Richards and the simple tenderness of his blue eyes plainly revealed the sudden growth of an evidently sincere passion, and the unwonted splendors of his best clothes showed how carefully he had prepared for the occasion.

Grey was worried and perplexed, believing the girl a malicious flirt. Yet nothing could be more captivating than her simple and childish curiosity, as she watched Richards swing the lever of the press, or stood by his side as he marshaled the type into files on his “composing-stick.” He had even printed a card with her name, “Senorita Cota Ramierez,” the type of which had been set up, to the accompaniment of ripples of musical laughter, by her little brown fingers.

The editor might have become quite sentimental and poetical had he not noticed that the gray eyes which often rested tentatively and meaningly on himself, even while apparently listening to Richards, were more than ever like the eyes of the mustang on whose scarred flanks her glance had wandered so coldly.

He withdrew presently so as not to interrupt his foreman's innocent tete-a-tete, but it was not very long after that Cota passed him on the highroad with the pinto horse in a gallop, and blew him an audacious kiss from the tips of her fingers.

For several days afterwards Richards's manner was tinged with a certain reserve on the subject of Cota which the editor attributed to the delicacy of a serious affection, but he was surprised also to find that his foreman's eagerness to discuss his unknown assailant had somewhat abated. Further discussion regarding it naturally dropped, and the editor was beginning to lose his curiosity when it was suddenly awakened by a chance incident.

An intimate friend and old companion of his--one Enriquez Saltillo--had diverged from a mountain trip especially to call upon him. Enriquez was a scion of one of the oldest Spanish-California families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current California slang with his native precision of speech--and a certain ironical levity still more his own.

It seemed, therefore, quite natural to Mr. Grey to find him seated with his feet on the editorial desk, his hat cocked on the back of his head, reading the “Clarion” exchanges. But he was up in a moment, and had embraced Grey with characteristic effusion.

“I find myself, my leetle brother, but an hour ago two leagues from this spot! I say to myself, 'Hola! It is the home of Don Pancho--my friend! I shall find him composing the magnificent editorial leader, collecting the subscription of the big pumpkin and the great gooseberry, or gouging out the eye of the rival editor, at which I shall assist!' I hesitate no longer; I fly on the instant, and I am here.”

Grey was delighted. Saltillo knew the Spanish population thoroughly--his own superior race and their Mexican and Indian allies. If any one could solve the mystery of the Ramierez fonda, and discover Richards's unknown assailant, it was HE! But Grey contented himself, at first, with a few brief inquiries concerning the beautiful Cota and her anonymous association with the Ramierez. Enriquez was as briefly communicative.

“Of your suspicions, my leetle brother, you are right--on the half! That leetle angel of a Cota is, without doubt, the daughter of the adorable Senora Ramierez, but not of the admirable senor--her husband. Ah! what would you? We are a simple, patriarchal race; thees Ramierez, he was the Mexican tenant of the old Spanish landlord--such as my father--and we are ever the fathers of the poor, and sometimes of their children. It is possible, therefore, that the exquisite Cota resemble the Spanish landlord. Ah! stop--remain tranquil! I remember,” he went on, suddenly striking his forehead with a dramatic gesture, “the old owner of thees ranch was my cousin Tiburcio. Of a consequence, my friend, thees angel is my second cousin! Behold! I shall call there on the instant. I shall embrace my long-lost relation. I shall introduce my best friend, Don Pancho, who lofe her. I shall say, 'Bless you, my children,' and it is feenish! I go! I am gone even now!”

He started up and clapped on his hat, but Grey caught him by the arm.

“For Heaven's sake, Enriquez, be serious for once,” he said, forcing him back into the chair. “And don't speak so loud. The foreman in the other room is an enthusiastic admirer of the girl. In fact, it is on his account that I am making these inquiries.”

“Ah, the gentleman of the pantuflos, whose trousers will not remain! I have seen him, friend. Truly he has the ambition excessif to arrive from the bed to go to the work without the dress or the wash. But,” in recognition of Grey's half serious impatience, “remain tranquil. On him I shall not go back! I have said! The friend of my friend is ever the same as my friend! He is truly not seducing to the eye, but without doubt he will arrive a governor or a senator in good time. I shall gif to him my second cousin. It is feenish! I will tell him now!”

He attempted to rise, but was held down and vigorously shaken by Grey.

“I've half a mind to let you do it, and get chucked through the window for your pains,” said the editor, with a half laugh. “Listen to me. This is a more serious matter than you suppose.”

And Grey briefly recounted the incident of the mysterious attacks on Starbottle and Richards. As he proceeded he noticed, however, that the ironical light died out of Enriquez's eyes, and a singular thoughtfulness, yet unlike his usual precise gravity, came over his face. He twirled the ends of his penciled mustache--an unfailing sign of Enriquez's emotion.

“The same accident that arrive to two men that shall be as opposite as the gallant Starbottle and the excellent Richards shall not prove that it come from Ramierez, though they both were at the fonda,” he said gravely. “The cause of it have not come to-day, nor yesterday, nor last week. The cause of it have arrive before there was any gallant Starbottle or excellent Richards; before there was any American in California--before you and I, my leetle brother, have lif! The cause happen first--TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO!”

The editor's start of impatient incredulity was checked by the unmistakable sincerity of Enriquez's face. “It is so,” he went on gravely; “it is an old story--it is a long story. I shall make him short--and new.”

He stopped and lit a cigarette without changing his odd expression.

“It was when the padres first have the mission, and take the heathen and convert him--and save his soul. It was their business, you comprehend, my Pancho? The more heathen they convert, the more soul they save, the better business for their mission shop. But the heathen do not always wish to be 'convert;' the heathen fly, the heathen skidaddle, the heathen will not remain, or will backslide. What will you do? So the holy fathers make a little game. You do not of a possibility comprehend how the holy fathers make a convert, my leetle brother?” he added gravely.

“No,” said the editor.

“I shall tell to you. They take from the presidio five or six dragons--you comprehend--the cavalry soldiers, and they pursue the heathen from his little hut. When they cannot surround him and he fly, they catch him with the lasso, like the wild hoss. The lasso catch him around the neck; he is obliged to remain. Sometime he is strangle. Sometime he is dead, but the soul is save! You believe not, Pancho? I see you wrinkle the brow--you flash the eye; you like it not? Believe me, I like it not, neither, but it is so!”

He shrugged his shoulders, threw away his half smoked cigarette, and went on.

“One time a padre who have the zeal excessif for the saving of soul, when he find the heathen, who is a young girl, have escape the soldiers, he of himself have seize the lasso and flung it! He is lucky; he catch her--but look you! She stop not--she still fly! She not only fly, but of a surety she drag the good padre with her! He cannot loose himself, for his riata is fast to the saddle; the dragons cannot help, for he is drag so fast. On the instant she have gone--and so have the padre. For why? It is not a young girl he have lasso, but the devil! You comprehend--it is a punishment--a retribution--he is feenish! And forever!

“For every year he must come back a spirit--on a spirit hoss--and swing the lasso, and make as if to catch the heathen. He is condemn ever to play his little game; now there is no heathen more to convert, he catch what he can. My grandfather have once seen him--it is night and a storm, and he pass by like a flash! My grandfather like it not--he is much dissatisfied! My uncle have seen him, too, but he make the sign of the cross, and the lasso have fall to the side, and my uncle have much gratification. A vaquero of my father and a peon of my cousin have both been picked up, lassoed, and dragged dead.

“Many peoples have died of him in the strangling. Sometime he is seen, sometime it is the woman only that one sees--sometime it is but the hoss. But ever somebody is dead--strangle! Of a truth, my friend, the gallant Starbottle and the ambitious Richards have just escaped!”

The editor looked curiously at his friend. There was not the slightest suggestion of mischief or irony in his tone or manner; nothing, indeed, but a sincerity and anxiety usually rare with his temperament. It struck him also that his speech had but little of the odd California slang which was always a part of his imitative levity. He was puzzled.

“Do you mean to say that this superstition is well known?” he asked, after a pause.

“Among my people--yes.”

“And do YOU believe in it?”

Enriquez was silent. Then he arose, and shrugged his shoulders. “Quien sabe? It is not more difficult to comprehend than your story.”

He gravely put on his hat. With it he seemed to have put on his old levity. “Come, behold, it is a long time between drinks! Let us to the hotel and the barkeep, who shall give up the smash of brandy and the julep of mints before the lasso of Friar Pedro shall prevent us the swallow! Let us skiddadle!”

Mr. Grey returned to the “Clarion” office in a much more satisfied condition of mind. Whatever faith he held in Enriquez's sincerity, for the first time since the attack on Colonel Starbottle he believed he had found a really legitimate journalistic opportunity in the incident. The legend and its singular coincidence with the outrages would make capital “copy.”

No names would be mentioned, yet even if Colonel Starbottle recognized his own adventure, he could not possibly object to this interpretation of it. The editor had found that few people objected to be the hero of a ghost story, or the favored witness of a spiritual manifestation. Nor could Richards find fault with this view of his own experience, hitherto kept a secret, so long as it did not refer to his relations with the fair Cota. Summoning him at once to his sanctum, he briefly repeated the story he had just heard, and his purpose of using it. To his surprise, Richards's face assumed a seriousness and anxiety equal to Enriquez's own.

“It's a good story, Mr. Grey,” he said awkwardly, “and I ain't sayin' it ain't mighty good newspaper stuff, but it won't do NOW, for the whole mystery's up and the assailant found.”

“Found! When? Why didn't you tell me before?” exclaimed Grey, in astonishment.

“I didn't reckon ye were so keen on it,” said Richards embarrassedly, “and--and--it wasn't my own secret altogether.”

“Go on,” said the editor impatiently.

“Well,” said Richards slowly and doggedly, “ye see there was a fool that was sweet on Cota, and he allowed himself to be bedeviled by her to ride her cursed pink and yaller mustang. Naturally the beast bolted at once, but he managed to hang on by the mane for half a mile or so, when it took to buck-jumpin'. The first 'buck' threw him clean into the road, but didn't stun him, yet when he tried to rise, the first thing he knowed he was grabbed from behind and half choked by somebody. He was held so tight that he couldn't turn, but he managed to get out his revolver and fire two shots under his arm. The grip held on for a minute, and then loosened, and the somethin' slumped down on top o' him, but he managed to work himself around. And then--what do you think he saw?--why, that thar hoss! with two bullet holes in his neck, lyin' beside him, but still grippin' his coat collar and neck-handkercher in his teeth! Yes, sir! the rough that attacked Colonel Starbottle, the villain that took me behind when I was leanin' agin that cursed fence, was that same God-forsaken, hell-invented pinto hoss!”

In a flash of recollection the editor remembered his own experience, and the singular scuffle outside the stable door of the fonda. Undoubtedly Cota had saved him from a similar attack.

“But why not tell this story with the other?” said the editor, returning to his first idea. “It's tremendously interesting.”

“It won't do,” said Richards, with dogged resolution.

“Why?”

“Because, Mr. Grey--that fool was myself!”

“You! Again attacked!”

“Yes,” said Richards, with a darkening face. “Again attacked, and by the same hoss! Cota's hoss! Whether Cota was or was not knowin' its tricks, she was actually furious at me for killin' it--and it's all over 'twixt me and her.”

“Nonsense,” said the editor impulsively; “she will forgive you! You didn't know your assailant was a horse WHEN YOU FIRED. Look at the attack on you in the road!”

Richards shook his head with dogged hopelessness. “It's no use, Mr. Grey. I oughter guessed it was a hoss then--thar was nothin' else in that corral. No! Cota's already gone away back to San Jose, and I reckon the Ramierez has got scared of her and packed her off. So, on account of its bein' HER hoss, and what happened betwixt me and her, you see my mouth is shut.”

“And the columns of the 'Clarion' too,” said the editor, with a sigh.

“I know it's hard, sir, but it's better so. I've reckoned mebbe she was a little crazy, and since you've told me that Spanish yarn, it mout be that she was sort o' playin' she was that priest, and trained that mustang ez she did.”

After a pause, something of his old self came back into his blue eyes as he sadly hitched up his braces and passed them over his broad shoulders. “Yes, sir, I was a fool, for we've lost the only bit of real sensation news that ever came in the way of the 'Clarion.'”

A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the hottest hour of the day on that Sierran foothill. The western sun, streaming down the mile-long slope of close-set pine crests, had been caught on an outlying ledge of glaring white quartz, covered with mining tools and debris, and seemed to have been thrown into an incandescent rage. The air above it shimmered and became visible. A white canvas tent on it was an object not to be borne; the steel-tipped picks and shovels, intolerable to touch and eyesight, and a tilted tin prospecting pan, falling over, flashed out as another sun of insufferable effulgence. At such moments the five members of the “Eureka Mining Company” prudently withdrew to the nearest pine-tree, which cast a shadow so sharply defined on the glistening sand that the impingement of a hand or finger beyond that line cut like a knife. The men lay, or squatted, in this shadow, feverishly puffing their pipes and waiting for the sun to slip beyond the burning ledge. Yet so irritating was the dry air, fragrant with the aroma of the heated pines, that occasionally one would start up and walk about until he had brought on that profuse perspiration which gave a momentary relief, and, as he believed, saved him from sunstroke. Suddenly a voice exclaimed querulously:--

“Derned if the blasted bucket ain't empty ag'in! Not a drop left, by Jimminy!”

A stare of helpless disgust was exchanged by the momentarily uplifted heads; then every man lay down again, as if trying to erase himself.

“Who brought the last?” demanded the foreman.

“I did,” said a reflective voice coming from a partner lying comfortably on his back, “and if anybody reckons I'm going to face Tophet ag'in down that slope, he's mistaken!” The speaker was thirsty--but he had principles.

“We must throw round for it,” said the foreman, taking the dice from his pocket.

He cast; the lowest number fell to Parkhurst, a florid, full-blooded Texan. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, wiping his forehead, and lifting the tin pail with a resigned air, “only EF anything comes to me on that bare stretch o' stage road,--and I'm kinder seein' things spotty and black now, remember you ain't anywhar NEARER the water than you were! I ain't sayin' it for myself--but it mout be rough on YOU--and”--

“Give ME the pail,” interrupted a tall young fellow, rising. “I'll risk it.”

Cries of “Good old Ned,” and “Hunky boy!” greeted him as he took the pail from the perspiring Parkhurst, who at once lay down again. “You mayn't be a professin' Christian, in good standin', Ned Bray,” continued Parkhurst from the ground, “but you're about as white as they make 'em, and you're goin' to do a Heavenly Act! I repeat it, gents--a Heavenly Act!”

Without a reply Bray walked off with the pail, stopping only in the underbrush to pluck a few soft fronds of fern, part of which he put within the crown of his hat, and stuck the rest in its band around the outer brim, making a parasol-like shade above his shoulders. Thus equipped he passed through the outer fringe of pines to a rocky trail which began to descend towards the stage road. Here he was in the full glare of the sun and its reflection from the heated rocks, which scorched his feet and pricked his bent face into a rash. The descent was steep and necessarily slow from the slipperiness of the desiccated pine needles that had fallen from above. Nor were his troubles over when, a few rods further, he came upon the stage road, which here swept in a sharp curve round the flank of the mountain, its red dust, ground by heavy wagons and pack-trains into a fine powder, was nevertheless so heavy with some metallic substance that it scarcely lifted with the foot, and he was obliged to literally wade through it. Yet there were two hundred yards of this road to be passed before he could reach that point of its bank where a narrow and precipitous trail dropped diagonally from it, to creep along the mountain side to the spring he was seeking.

When he reached the trail, he paused to take breath and wipe the blinding beads of sweat from his eyes before he cautiously swung himself over the bank into it. A single misstep here would have sent him headlong to the tops of pine-trees a thousand feet below. Holding his pail in one hand, with the other he steadied himself by clutching the ferns and brambles at his side, and at last reached the spring--a niche in the mountain side with a ledge scarcely four feet wide. He had merely accomplished the ordinary gymnastic feat performed by the members of the Eureka Company four or five times a day! But the day was exceptionally hot. He held his wrists to cool their throbbing pulses in the clear, cold stream that gurgled into its rocky basin; he threw the water over his head and shoulders; he swung his legs over the ledge and let the overflow fall on his dusty shoes and ankles. Gentle and delicious rigors came over him. He sat with half closed eyes looking across the dark olive depths of the canyon between him and the opposite mountain. A hawk was swinging lazily above it, apparently within a stone's throw of him; he knew it was at least a mile away. Thirty feet above him ran the stage road; he could hear quite distinctly the slow thud of hoofs, the dull jar of harness, and the labored creaking of the Pioneer Coach as it crawled up the long ascent, part of which he had just passed. He thought of it,--a slow drifting cloud of dust and heat, as he had often seen it, abandoned by even its passengers, who sought shelter in the wayside pines as they toiled behind it to the summit,--and hugged himself in the grateful shadows of the spring. It had passed out of hearing and thought, he had turned to fill his pail, when he was startled by a shower of dust and gravel from the road above, and the next moment he was thrown violently down, blinded and pinned against the ledge by the fall of some heavy body on his back and shoulders. His last flash of consciousness was that he had been struck by a sack of flour slipped from the pack of some passing mule.

How long he remained unconscious he never knew. It was probably not long, for his chilled hands and arms, thrust by the blow on his shoulders into the pool of water, assisted in restoring him. He came to with a sense of suffocating pressure on his back, but his head and shoulders were swathed in utter darkness by the folds of some soft fabrics and draperies, which, to his connecting consciousness, seemed as if the contents of a broken bale or trunk had also fallen from the pack. With a tremendous effort he succeeded in getting his arm out of the pool, and attempted to free his head from its blinding enwrappings. In doing so his hand suddenly touched human flesh--a soft, bared arm! With the same astounding discovery came one more terrible: that arm belonged to the weight that was pressing him down; and now, assisted by his struggles, it was slowly slipping toward the brink of the ledge and the abyss below! With a desperate effort he turned on his side, caught the body,--as such it was,--dragged it back on the ledge, at the same moment that, freeing his head from its covering,--a feminine skirt,--he discovered it was a woman!

She had been also unconscious, although the touch of his cold, wet hand on her skin had probably given her a shock that was now showing itself in a convulsive shudder of her shoulders and a half opening of her eyes. Suddenly she began to stare at him, to draw in her knees and feet toward her, sideways, with a feminine movement, as she smoothed out her skirt, and kept it down with a hand on which she leaned. She was a tall, handsome girl, from what he could judge of her half-sitting figure in her torn silk dust-cloak, which, although its cape and one sleeve were split into ribbons, had still protected her delicate, well-fitting gown beneath. She was evidently a lady.

“What--is it?--what has happened?” she said faintly, yet with a slight touch of formality in her manner.

“You must have fallen--from the road above,” said Bray hesitatingly.

“From the road above?” she repeated, with a slight frown, as if to concentrate her thought. She glanced upward, then at the ledge before her, and then, for the first time, at the darkening abyss below. The color, which had begun to return, suddenly left her face here, and she drew instinctively back against the mountain side. “Yes,” she half murmured to herself, rather than to him, “it must be so. I was walking too near the bank--and--I fell!” Then turning to him, she said, “And you found me lying here when you came.”

“I think,” stammered Bray, “that I was here when you fell, and I--I broke the fall.” He was sorry for it a moment afterward.

She lifted her handsome gray eyes to him, saw the dust, dirt, and leaves on his back and shoulders, the collar of his shirt torn open, and a few spots of blood from a bruise on his forehead. Her black eyebrows straightened again as she said coldly, “Dear me! I am very sorry; I couldn't help it, you know. I hope you are not otherwise hurt.”

“No,” he replied quickly. “But you, are you sure you are not injured? It must have been a terrible shock.”

“I'm not hurt,” she said, helping herself to her feet by the aid of the mountain-side bushes, and ignoring his proffered hand. “But,” she added quickly and impressively, glancing upward toward the stage road overhead, “why don't they come? They must have missed me! I must have been here a long time; it's too bad!”

“THEY missed you?” he repeated diffidently.

“Yes,” she said impatiently, “of course! I wasn't alone. Don't you understand? I got out of the coach to walk uphill on the bank under the trees. It was so hot and stuffy. My foot must have slipped up there--and--I--slid--down. Have you heard any one calling me? Have you called out yourself?”

Mr. Bray did not like to say he had only just recovered consciousness. He smiled vaguely and foolishly. But on turning around in her impatience, she caught sight of the chasm again, and lapsed quite white against the mountain side.

“Let me give you some water from the spring,” he said eagerly, as she sank again to a sitting posture; “it will refresh you.”

He looked hesitatingly around him; he had neither cup nor flask, but he filled the pail and held it with great dexterity to her lips. She drank a little, extracted a lace handkerchief from some hidden pocket, dipped its point in the water, and wiped her face delicately, after a certain feline fashion. Then, catching sight of some small object in the fork of a bush above her, she quickly pounced upon it, and with a swift sweep of her hand under her skirt, put on HER FALLEN SLIPPER, and stood on her feet again.

“How does one get out of such a place?” she asked fretfully, and then, glancing at him half indignantly, “why don't you shout?”

“I was going to tell you,” he said gently, “that when you are a little stronger, we can get out by the way I came in,--along the trail.”

He pointed to the narrow pathway along the perilous incline. Somehow, with this tall, beautiful creature beside him, it looked more perilous than before. She may have thought so too, for she drew in her breath sharply and sank down again.

“Is there no other way?”

“None!”

“How did YOU happen to be here?” she asked suddenly, opening her gray eyes upon him. “What did you come here for?” she went on, almost impertinently.

“To fetch a pail of water.” He stopped, and then it suddenly occurred to him that after all there was no reason for his being bullied by this tall, good-looking girl, even if he HAD saved her. He gave a little laugh, and added mischievously, “Just like Jack and Jill, you know.”

“What?” she said sharply, bending her black brows at him.

“Jack and Jill,” he returned carelessly; “I broke my crown, you know, and YOU,”--he did not finish.

She stared at him, trying to keep her face and her composure; but a smile, that on her imperious lips he thought perfectly adorable, here lifted the corners of her mouth, and she turned her face aside. But the smile, and the line of dazzling little teeth it revealed, were unfortunately on the side toward him. Emboldened by this, he went on, “I couldn't think what had happened. At first I had a sort of idea that part of a mule's pack had fallen on top of me,--blankets, flour, and all that sort of thing, you know, until”--

Her smile had vanished. “Well,” she said impatiently, “until?”

“Until I touched you. I'm afraid I gave you a shock; my hand was dripping from the spring.”

She colored so quickly that he knew she must have been conscious at the time, and he noticed now that the sleeve of her cloak, which had been half torn off her bare arm, was pinned together over it. When and how had she managed to do it without his detecting the act?

“At all events,” she said coldly, “I'm glad you have not received greater injury from--your mule pack.”

“I think we've both been very lucky,” he said simply.

She did not reply, but remained looking furtively at the narrow trail. Then she listened. “I thought I heard voices,” she said, half rising.

“Shall I shout?” he asked.

“No! You say there's no use--there's only this way out of it!”

“I might go up first, and perhaps get assistance--a rope or chair,” he suggested.

“And leave me here alone?” she cried, with a horrified glance at the abyss. “No, thank you! I should be over that ledge before you came back! There's a dreadful fascination in it even now. No! I think I'd rather go--at once! I never shall be stronger as long as I stay near it; I may be weaker.”

She gave a petulant little shiver, and then, though paler and evidently agitated, composed her tattered and dusty outer garments in a deft, ladylike way, and leaned back against the mountain side, He saw her also glance at his loosened shirt front and hanging neckerchief, and with a heightened color he quickly re-knotted it around his throat. They moved from the ledge toward the trail. Suddenly she started back.

“But it's only wide enough for ONE, and I never--NEVER--could even stand on it a minute alone!” she exclaimed.

He looked at her critically. “We will go together, side by side,” he said quietly, “but you will have to take the outside.”

“Outside!” she repeated, recoiling. “Impossible! I shall fall.”

“I shall keep hold of you,” he explained; “you need not fear that. Stop! I'll make it safer.” He untied the large bandanna silk handkerchief which he wore around his shoulders, knotted one end of it firmly to his belt, and handed her the other.

“Do you think you can hold on to that?”

“I--don't know,”--she hesitated. “If I should fall?”

“Stay a moment! Is your belt strong?” He pointed to a girdle of yellow leather which caught her tunic around her small waist.

“Yes,” she said eagerly, “it's real leather.”

He gently slipped the edge of the handkerchief under it and knotted it. They were thus linked together by a foot of handkerchief.

“I feel much safer,” she said, with a faint smile.

“But if I should fall,” he remarked, looking into her eyes, “you would go too! Have you thought of that?”

“Yes.” Her previous charming smile returned. “It would be really Jack and Jill this time.”

They passed out on the trail. “Now I must take YOUR arm,” he said laughingly; “not you MINE.” He passed his arm under hers, holding it firmly. It was the one he had touched. For the first few steps her uncertain feet took no hold of the sloping mountain side, which seemed to slip sideways beneath her. He was literally carrying her on his shoulder. But in a few moments she saw how cleverly he balanced himself, always leaning toward the hillside, and presently she was able to help him by a few steps. She expressed her surprise at his skill.

“It's nothing; I carry a pail of water up here without spilling a drop.”

She stiffened slightly under this remark, and indeed so far overdid her attempt to walk without his aid, that her foot slipped on a stone, and she fell outward toward the abyss. But in an instant his arm was transferred from her elbow to her waist, and in the momentum of his quick recovery they both landed panting against the mountain side.

“I'm afraid you'd have spilt the pail that time,” she said, with a slightly heightened color, as she disengaged herself gently from his arm.

“No,” he answered boldly, “for the pail never would have stiffened itself in a tiff, and tried to go alone.”

“Of course not, if it were only a pail,” she responded.

They moved on again in silence. The trail was growing a little steeper toward the upper end and the road bank. Bray was often himself obliged to seek the friendly aid of a manzanita or thornbush to support them. Suddenly she stopped and caught his arm. “There!” she said. “Listen! They're coming!”

Bray listened; he could hear at intervals a far-off shout; then a nearer one--a name--“Eugenia.” So that was HERS!

“Shall I shout back?” he asked.

“Not yet!” she answered. “Are we near the top?” A sudden glow of pleasure came over him--he knew not why, except that she did not look delighted, excited, or even relieved.

“Only a few yards more,” he said, with an unaffected half sigh.

“Then I'd better untie this,” she suggested, beginning to fumble at the knot of the handkerchief which linked them.

Their heads were close together, their fingers often met; he would have liked to say something, but he could only add: “Are you sure you will feel quite safe? It is a little steeper as we near the bank.”

“You can hold me,” she replied simply, with a superbly unconscious lifting of her arm, as she yielded her waist to him again, but without raising her eyes.

He did,--holding her rather tightly, I fear, as they clambered up the remaining slope, for it seemed to him as a last embrace. As he lifted her to the road bank, the shouts came nearer; and glancing up, he saw two men and a woman running down the hill toward them. He turned to Eugenia. In that instant she had slipped the tattered dust-coat from her shoulder, thrown it over her arm, set her hat straight, and was calmly awaiting them with a self-possession and coolness that seemed to shame their excitement. He noticed, too, with the quick perception of unimportant things which comes to some natures at such moments, that she had plucked a sprig of wild myrtle from the mountain side, and was wearing it on her breast.

“Goodness Heavens! Genie! What has happened! Where have you been?”

“Eugenia! this is perfect madness!” began the elder man didactically. “You have alarmed us beyond measure--kept the stage waiting, and now it is gone!”

“Genie! Look here, I say! We've been hunting for you everywhere. What's up?” said the younger man, with brotherly brusqueness.

As these questions were all uttered in the same breath, Eugenia replied to them collectively. “It was so hot that I kept along the bank here, while you were on the other side. I heard the trickle of water somewhere down there, and searching for it my foot slipped. This gentleman”--she indicated Bray--“was on a little sort of a trail there, and assisted me back to the road again.”

The two men and the woman turned and stared at Bray with a look of curiosity that changed quickly into a half contemptuous unconcern. They saw a youngish sort of man, with a long mustache, a two days' growth of beard, a not overclean face, that was further streaked with red on the temple, a torn flannel shirt, that showed a very white shoulder beside a sunburnt throat and neck, and soiled white trousers stuck into muddy high boots--in fact, the picture of a broken-down miner. But their unconcern was as speedily changed again into resentment at the perfect ease and equality with which he regarded them, a regard the more exasperating as it was not without a suspicion of his perception of some satire or humor in the situation.

“Ahem! very much obliged, I am sure. I--er”--

“The lady has thanked me,” interrupted Bray, with a smile.

“Did you fall far?” said the younger man to Eugenia, ignoring Bray.

“Not far,” she answered, with a half appealing look at Bray.

“Only a few feet,” added the latter, with prompt mendacity, “just a little slip down.”

The three new-comers here turned away, and, surrounding Eugenia, conversed in an undertone. Quite conscious that he was the subject of discussion, Bray lingered only in the hope of catching a parting glance from Eugenia. The words “YOU do it,” “No, YOU!” “It would come better from HER,” were distinctly audible to him. To his surprise, however, she suddenly broke through them, and advancing to him, with a dangerous brightness in her beautiful eyes, held out her slim hand. “My father, Mr. Neworth, my brother, Harry Neworth, and my aunt, Mrs. Dobbs,” she said, indicating each one with a graceful inclination of her handsome head, “all think I ought to give you something and send you away. I believe that is the way they put it. I think differently! I come to ask you to let me once more thank you for your good service to me to-day--which I shall never forget.” When he had returned her firm handclasp for a minute, she coolly rejoined the discomfited group.

“She's no sardine,” said Bray to himself emphatically, “but I suspect she'll catch it from her folks for this. I ought to have gone away at once, like a gentleman, hang it!”

He was even angrily debating with himself whether he ought not to follow her to protect her from her gesticulating relations as they all trailed up the hill with her, when he reflected that it would only make matters worse. And with it came the dreadful reflection that as yet he had not carried the water to his expecting and thirsty comrades. He had forgotten them for these lazy, snobbish, purse-proud San Franciscans--for Bray had the miner's supreme contempt for the moneyed trading classes. What would the boys think of him! He flung himself over the bank, and hastened recklessly down the trail to the spring. But here again he lingered--the place had become suddenly hallowed. How deserted it looked without her! He gazed eagerly around on the ledge for any trace that she had left--a bow, a bit of ribbon, or even a hairpin that had fallen from her.

As the young man slowly filled the pail he caught sight of his own reflection in the spring. It certainly was not that of an Adonis! He laughed honestly; his sense of humor had saved him from many an extravagance, and mitigated many a disappointment before this. Well! She was a plucky, handsome girl--even if she was not for him, and he might never set eyes on her again. Yet it was a hard pull up that trail once more, carrying an insensible pail of water in the hand that had once sustained a lovely girl! He remembered her reply to his badinage, “Of course not--if it were only a pail,” and found a dozen pretty interpretations of it. Yet he was not in love! No! He was too poor and too level headed for that! And he was unaffectedly and materially tired, too, when he reached the road again, and rested, leaving the spring and its little idyl behind.

By this time the sun had left the burning ledge of the Eureka Company, and the stage road was also in shadow, so that his return through its heavy dust was less difficult. And when he at last reached the camp, he found to his relief that his prolonged absence had been overlooked by his thirsty companions in a larger excitement and disappointment; for it appeared that a well-known San Francisco capitalist, whom the foreman had persuaded to visit their claim with a view to advance and investment, had actually come over from Red Dog for that purpose, and had got as far as the summit when he was stopped by an accident, and delayed so long that he was obliged to go on to Sacramento without making his examination.

“That was only his excuse--mere flap-doodle!” interrupted the pessimistic Jerrold. “He was foolin' you; he'd heard of suthin better! The idea of calling that affair an 'accident,' or one that would stop any man who meant business!”

Bray had become uneasily conscious. “What was the accident?” he asked.

“A d----d fool woman's accident,” broke in the misogynist Parkhurst, “and it's true! That's what makes it so cussed mean. For there's allus a woman at the bottom of such things--bet your life! Think of 'em comin' here. Thar ought to be a law agin it.”

“But what was it?” persisted Bray, becoming more apprehensive.

“Why, what does that blasted fool of a capitalist do but bring with him his daughter and auntie to 'see the wonderful scenery with popa dear!' as if it was a cheap Sunday-school panorama! And what do these chuckle-headed women do but get off the coach and go to wanderin' about, and playin' 'here we go round the mulberry bush' until one of 'em tumbles down a ravine. And then there's a great to do! and 'dear popa' was up and down the road yellin' 'Me cheyld! me cheyld!' And then there was camphor and sal volatile and eau de cologne to be got, and the coach goes off, and 'popa dear' gets left, and then has to hurry off in a buggy to catch it. So WE get left too, just because that God-forsaken fool, Neworth, brings his women here.”

Under this recital poor Bray sat as completely crushed as when the fair daughter of Neworth had descended upon his shoulders at the spring. He saw it all! HIS was the fault. It was HIS delay and dalliance with her that had checked Neworth's visit; worse than that, it was his subsequent audacity and her defense of him that would probably prevent any renewal of the negotiations. He had shipwrecked his partners' prospects in his absurd vanity and pride! He did not dare to raise his eyes to their dejected faces. He would have confessed everything to them, but the same feeling of delicacy for her which had determined him to keep her adventures to himself now forever sealed his lips. How might they not misconstrue his conduct--and HERS! Perhaps something of this was visible in his face.

“Come, old man,” said the cheerful misogynist, with perfect innocence, “don't take it so hard. Some time in a man's life a woman's sure to get the drop on him, as I said afore, and this yer woman's got the drop on five of us! But--hallo, Ned, old man--what's the matter with your head?” He laid his hand gently on the matted temple of his younger partner.

“I had--a slip--on the trail,” he stammered. “Had to go back again for another pailful. That's what delayed me, you know, boys,” he added. “But it's nothing!”

“Nothing!” ejaculated Parkhurst, clapping him on the back and twisting him around by the shoulders so that he faced his companions. “Nothing! Look at him, gentlemen; and he says it's 'nothing.' That's how a MAN takes it! HE didn't go round yellin' and wringin' his hands and sayin' 'Me pay-l! me pay-l!' when it spilt! He just humped himself and trotted back for another. And yet every drop of water in that overset bucket meant hard work and hard sweat, and was as precious as gold.”

Luckily for Bray, whose mingled emotions under Parkhurst's eloquence were beginning to be hysterical, the foreman interrupted.

“Well, boys! it's time we got to work again, and took another heave at the old ledge! But now that this job of Neworth's is over--I don't mind tellin' ye suthin.” As their leader usually spoke but little, and to the point, the four men gathered around him. “Although I engineered this affair, and got it up, somehow, I never SAW that Neworth standing on this ledge! No, boys! I never saw him HERE.” The look of superstition which Bray and the others had often seen on this old miner's face, and which so often showed itself in his acts, was there. “And though I wanted him to come, and allowed to have him come, I'm kinder relieved that he didn't, and so let whatsoever luck's in the air come to us five alone, boys, just as we stand.”

The next morning Bray was up before his companions, and although it was not his turn, offered to bring water from the spring. He was not in love with Eugenia--he had not forgotten his remorse of the previous day--but he would like to go there once more before he relentlessly wiped out her image from his mind. And he had heard that although Neworth had gone on to Sacramento, his son and the two ladies had stopped on for a day or two at the ditch superintendent's house on the summit, only two miles away. She might pass on the road; he might get a glimpse of her again and a wave of her hand before this thing was over forever, and he should have to take up the daily routine of his work again. It was not love--of THAT he was assured--but it was the way to stop it by convincing himself of its madness. Besides, in view of all the circumstances, it was his duty as a gentleman to show some concern for her condition after the accident and the disagreeable contretemps which followed it.

Thus Bray! Alas, none of these possibilities occurred. He found the spring had simply lapsed into its previous unsuggestive obscurity,--a mere niche in the mountain side that held only--water! The stage road was deserted save for an early, curly-headed schoolboy, whom he found lurking on the bank, but who evaded his company and conversation. He returned to the camp quite cured of his fancy. His late zeal as a water-carrier had earned him a day or two's exemption from that duty. His place was taken the next afternoon by the woman-hating Parkhurst, and he was the less concerned by it as he had heard that the same afternoon the ladies were to leave the summit for Sacramento.

But then occurred a singular coincidence. The new water-bringer was as scandalously late in his delivery of the precious fluid as his predecessor! An hour passed and he did not return. His unfortunate partners, toiling away with pick and crowbar on the burning ledge, were clamorous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. It could not be possible that Eugenia's accident had been repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! she was already gone. The mystery was presently cleared, however, by the abrupt appearance of Parkhurst running towards them, but WITHOUT HIS PAIL! The cry of consternation and despair which greeted that discovery was, however, quickly changed by a single breathless, half intelligible sentence he had shot before him from his panting lips. And he was holding something in his outstretched palm that was more eloquent than words. Gold!

In an instant they had him under the shade of the pine-tree, and were squatting round him like schoolboys. He was profoundly agitated. His story, far from being brief, was incoherent and at times seemed irrelevant, but that was characteristic. They would remember that he had always held the theory that, even in quartz mining, the deposits were always found near water, past or present, with signs of fluvial erosion! He didn't call himself one of your blanked scientific miners, but his head was level! It was all very well for them to say “Yes, yes!” NOW, but they didn't use to! Well! when he got to the spring, he noticed that there had been a kind of landslide above it, of course, from water cleavage, and there was a distinct mark of it on the mountain side, where it had uprooted and thrown over some small bushes!

Excited as Bray was, he recognized with a hysterical sensation the track made by Eugenia in her fall, which he himself had noticed. But he had thought only of HER.

“When I saw that,” continued Parkhurst, more rapidly and coherently, “I saw that there was a crack above the hole where the water came through--as if it had been the old channel of the spring. I widened it a little with my clasp knife, and then--in a little pouch or pocket of decomposed quartz--I found that! Not only that, boys,” he continued, rising, with a shout, “but the whole slope above the spring is a mass of seepage underneath, as if you'd played a hydraulic hose on it, and it's ready to tumble and is just rotten with quartz!”

The men leaped to their feet; in another moment they had snatched picks, pans, and shovels, and, the foreman leading, with a coil of rope thrown over his shoulders, were all flying down the trail to the highway. Their haste was wise. The spring was not on THEIR claim; it was known to others; it was doubtful if Parkhurst's discovery with his knife amounted to actual WORK on the soil. They must “take it up” with a formal notice, and get to work at once!

In an hour they were scattered over the mountain side, like bees clinging to the fragrant slope of laurel and myrtle above the spring. An excavation was made beside it, and the ledge broadened by a dozen feet. Even the spring itself was utilized to wash the hastily filled prospecting pans. And when the Pioneer Coach slowly toiled up the road that afternoon, the passengers stared at the scarcely dry “Notice of Location” pinned to the pine by the road bank, whence Eugenia had fallen two days before!

Eagerly and anxiously as Edward Bray worked with his companions, it was with more conflicting feelings. There was a certain sense of desecration in their act. How her proud lip would have curled had she seen him--he who but a few hours before would have searched the whole slope for the treasure of a ribbon, a handkerchief, or a bow from her dress--now delving and picking the hillside for that fortune her accident had so mysteriously disclosed. Mysteriously he believed, for he had not fully accepted Parkhurst's story. That gentle misogynist had never been an active prospector; an inclination to theorize without practice and to combat his partners' experience were all against his alleged process of discovery, although the gold was actually there; and his conduct that afternoon was certainly peculiar. He did but little of the real work; but wandered from man to man, with suggestions, advice, and exhortations, and the air of a superior patron. This might have been characteristic, but mingled with it was a certain nervous anxiety and watchfulness. He was continually scanning the stage road and the trail, staring eagerly at any wayfarer in the distance, and at times falling into fits of strange abstraction. At other times he would draw near to one of his fellow partners, as if for confidential disclosure, and then check himself and wander aimlessly away. And it was not until evening came that the mystery was solved.

The prospecting pans had been duly washed and examined, the slope above and below had been fully explored and tested, with a result and promise that outran their most sanguine hopes. There was no mistaking the fact that they had made a “big” strike. That singular gravity and reticence, so often observed in miners at these crises, had come over them as they sat that night for the last time around their old camp-fire on the Eureka ledge, when Parkhurst turned impulsively to Bray. “Roll over here,” he said in a whisper. “I want to tell ye suthin!”

Bray “rolled” beyond the squatting circle, and the two men gradually edged themselves out of hearing of the others. In the silent abstraction that prevailed nobody noticed them.

“It's got suthin to do with this discovery,” said Parkhurst, in a low, mysterious tone, “but as far as the gold goes, and our equal rights to it as partners, it don't affect them. If I,” he continued in a slightly patronizing, paternal tone, “choose to make you and the other boys sharers in what seems to be a special Providence to ME, I reckon we won't quarrel on it. It's a mighty curious, singular thing. It's one of those things ye read about in books and don't take any stock in! But we've got the gold--and I've got the black and white to prove it--even if it ain't exactly human.”

His voice sank so low, his manner was so impressive, that despite his known exaggeration, Bray felt a slight thrill of superstition. Meantime Parkhurst wiped his brow, took a folded slip of paper and a sprig of laurel from his pocket, and drew a long breath.

“When I got to the spring this afternoon,” he went on, in a nervous, tremulous, and scarcely audible voice, “I saw this bit o' paper, folded note-wise, lyin' on the ledge before it. On top of it was this sprig of laurel, to catch the eye. I ain't the man to pry into other folks' secrets, or read what ain't mine. But on the back o' this note was written 'To Jack!' It's a common enough name, but it's a singular thing, ef you'll recollect, thar ain't ANOTHER Jack in this company, not on the whole ridge betwixt this and the summit, except MYSELF! So I opened it, and this is what it read!” He held the paper sideways toward the leaping light of the still near camp-fire, and read slowly, with the emphasis of having read it many times before.

“'I want you to believe that I, at least, respect and honor your honest, manly calling, and when you strike it rich, as you surely will, I hope you will sometimes think of Jill.'”

In the thrill of joy, hope, and fear that came over Bray, he could see that Parkhurst had not only failed to detect his secret, but had not even connected the two names with their obvious suggestion. “But do you know anybody named Jill?” he asked breathlessly.

“It's no NAME,” said Parkhurst in a sombre voice, “it's a THING!”

“A thing?” repeated Bray, bewildered.

“Yes, a measure--you know--two fingers of whiskey.”

“Oh, a 'gill,'” said Bray.

“That's what I said, young man,” returned Parkhurst gravely.

Bray choked back a hysterical laugh; spelling was notoriously not one of Parkhurst's strong points. “But what has a 'gill' got to do with it?” he asked quickly.

“It's one of them Sphinx things, don't you see? A sort of riddle or rebus, you know. You've got to study it out, as them old chaps did. But I fetched it. What comes after 'gills,' eh?”

“Pints, I suppose,” said Bray.

“And after pints?”

“Quarts.”

“QUARTZ, and there you are. So I looked about me for quartz, and sure enough struck it the first pop.”

Bray cast a quick look at Parkhurst's grave face. The man was evidently impressed and sincere. “Have you told this to any one?” he asked quickly.

“No.”

“Then DON'T! or you'll spoil the charm, and bring us ill luck! That's the rule, you know. I really don't know that you ought to have told me,” added the artful Bray, dissembling his intense joy at this proof of Eugenia's remembrance.

“But,” said Parkhurst blankly, “you see, old man, you'd been the last man at the spring, and I kinder thought”--

“Don't think,” said Bray promptly, “and above all, don't talk; not a word to the boys of this. Stay! Give me the paper and the sprig. I've got to go to San Francisco next week, and I'll take care of it and think it out!” He knew that Parkhurst might be tempted to talk, but without the paper his story would be treated lightly. Parkhurst handed him the paper, and the two men returned to the camp-fire.

That night Bray slept but little. The superstition of the lover is no less keen than that of the gambler, and Bray, while laughing at Parkhurst's extravagant fancy, I am afraid was equally inclined to believe that their good fortune came through Eugenia's influence. At least he should tell her so, and her precious note became now an invitation as well as an excuse for seeking her. The only fear that possessed him was that she might have expected some acknowledgment of her note before she left that afternoon; the only thing he could not understand was how she had managed to convey the note to the spring, for she could not have taken it herself. But this would doubtless be explained by her in San Francisco, whither he intended to seek her. His affairs, the purchasing of machinery for their new claim, would no doubt give him easy access to her father.

But it was one thing to imagine this while procuring a new and fashionable outfit in San Francisco, and quite another to stand before the “palatial” residence of the Neworths on Rincon Hill, with the consciousness of no other introduction than the memory of the Neworths' discourtesy on the mountain, and, even in his fine feathers, Bray hesitated. At this moment a carriage rolled up to the door, and Eugenia, an adorable vision of laces and silks, alighted.

Forgetting everything else, he advanced toward her with outstretched hand. He saw her start, a faint color come into her face; he knew he was recognized; but she stiffened quickly again, the color vanished, her beautiful gray eyes rested coldly on him for a moment, and then, with the faintest inclination of her proud head, she swept by him and entered the house.

But Bray, though shocked, was not daunted, and perhaps his own pride was awakened. He ran to his hotel, summoned a messenger, inclosed her note in an envelope, and added these lines:--

DEAR MISS NEWORTH,--I only wanted to thank you an hour ago, as I should like to have done before, for the kind note which I inclose, but which you have made me feel I have no right to treasure any longer, and to tell you that your most generous wish and prophecy has been more than fulfilled.

Yours, very gratefully,

EDMUND BRAY.

Within the hour the messenger returned with the still briefer reply:--

“Miss Neworth has been fully aware of that preoccupation with his good fortune which prevented Mr. Bray from an earlier acknowledgment of her foolish note.”

Cold as this response was, Bray's heart leaped. She HAD lingered on the summit, and HAD expected a reply. He seized his hat, and, jumping into the first cab at the hotel door, drove rapidly back to the house. He had but one idea, to see her at any cost, but one concern, to avoid a meeting with her father first, or a denial at her very door.

He dismissed the cab at the street corner and began to reconnoitre the house. It had a large garden in the rear, reclaimed from the adjacent “scrub oak” infested sand hill, and protected by a high wall. If he could scale that wall, he could command the premises. It was a bright morning; she might be tempted into the garden. A taller scrub oak grew near the wall; to the mountain-bred Bray it was an easy matter to swing himself from it to the wall, and he did. But his momentum was so great that he touched the wall only to be obliged to leap down into the garden to save himself from falling there. He heard a little cry, felt his feet strike some tin utensil, and rolled on the ground beside Eugenia and her overturned watering-pot.

They both struggled to their feet with an astonishment that turned to laughter in their eyes and the same thought in the minds of each.

“But we are not on the mountains now, Mr. Bray,” said Eugenia, taking her handkerchief at last from her sobering face and straightening eyebrows.

“But we are quits,” said Bray. “And you now know my real name. I only came here to tell you why I could not answer your letter the same day. I never got it--I mean,” he added hurriedly, “another man got it first.”

She threw up her head, and her face grew pale. “ANOTHER man got it,” she repeated, “and YOU let another man”--

“No, no,” interrupted Bray imploringly. “You don't understand. One of my partners went to the spring that afternoon, and found it; but he neither knows who sent it, nor for whom it was intended.” He hastily recounted Parkhurst's story, his mysterious belief, and his interpretation of the note. The color came back to her face and the smile to her lips and eyes. “I had gone twice to the spring after I saw you, but I couldn't bear its deserted look without you,” he added boldly. Here, seeing her face grew grave again, he added, “But how did you get the letter to the spring? and how did you know that it was found that day?”

It was her turn to look embarrassed and entreating, but the combination was charming in her proud face. “I got the little schoolboy at the summit,” she said, with girlish hesitation, “to take the note. He knew the spring, but he didn't know YOU. I told him--it was very foolish, I know--to wait until you came for water, to be certain that you got the note, to wait until you came up, for I thought you might question him, or give him some word.” Her face was quite rosy now. “But,” she added, and her lip took a divine pout, “he said he waited TWO HOURS; that you never took the LEAST CONCERN of the letter or him, but went around the mountain side, peering and picking in every hole and corner of it, and then he got tired and ran away. Of course I understand it now, it wasn't YOU; but oh, please; I beg you, Mr. Bray, don't!”

Bray released the little hand which he had impulsively caught, and which had allowed itself to be detained for a blissful moment.

“And now, don't you think, Mr. Bray,” she added demurely, “that you had better let me fill my pail again while you go round to the front door and call upon me properly?”

“But your father”--

“My father, as a well-known investor, regrets exceedingly that he did not make your acquaintance more thoroughly in his late brief interview. He is, as your foreman knows, exceedingly interested in the mines on Eureka ledge. He will be glad if you will call.” She led him to a little door in the wall, which she unbolted. “And now 'Jill' must say good-by to 'Jack,' for she must make herself ready to receive a Mr. Bray who is expected.”

And when Bray a little later called at the front door, he was respectfully announced. He called another day, and many days after. He came frequently to San Francisco, and one day did not return to his old partners. He had entered into a new partnership with one who he declared “had made the first strike on Eureka mountain.”

MR. BILSON'S HOUSEKEEPER

When Joshua Bilson, of the Summit House, Buckeye Hill, lost his wife, it became necessary for him to take a housekeeper to assist him in the management of the hotel. Already all Buckeye had considered this a mere preliminary to taking another wife, after a decent probation, as the relations of housekeeper and landlord were confidential and delicate, and Bilson was a man, and not above female influence. There was, however, some change of opinion on that point when Miss Euphemia Trotter was engaged for that position. Buckeye Hill, which had confidently looked forward to a buxom widow or, with equal confidence, to the promotion of some pretty but inefficient chambermaid, was startled by the selection of a maiden lady of middle age, and above the medium height, at once serious, precise, and masterful, and to all appearances outrageously competent. More carefully “taking stock” of her, it was accepted she had three good points,--dark, serious eyes, a trim but somewhat thin figure, and well-kept hands and feet. These, which in so susceptible a community would have been enough, in the words of one critic, “to have married her to three men,” she seemed to make of little account herself, and her attitude toward those who were inclined to make them of account was ceremonious and frigid. Indeed, she seemed to occupy herself entirely with looking after the servants, Chinese and Europeans, examining the bills and stores of traders and shopkeepers, in a fashion that made her respected and--feared. It was whispered, in fact, that Bilson stood in awe of her as he never had of his wife, and that he was “henpecked in his own farmyard by a strange pullet.”

Nevertheless, he always spoke of her with a respect and even a reverence that seemed incompatible with their relative positions. It gave rise to surmises more or less ingenious and conflicting: Miss Trotter had a secret interest in the hotel, and represented a San Francisco syndicate; Miss Trotter was a woman of independent property, and had advanced large sums to Bilson; Miss Trotter was a woman of no property, but she was the only daughter of--variously--a late distinguished nobleman, a ruined millionaire, and a foreign statesman, bent on making her own living.

Alas, for romance! Miss Euphemia Trotter, or “Miss E. Trotter,” as she preferred to sign herself, loathing her sentimental prefix, was really a poor girl who had been educated in an Eastern seminary, where she eventually became a teacher. She had survived her parents and a neglected childhood, and had worked hard for her living since she was fourteen. She had been a nurse in a hospital, an assistant in a reformatory, had observed men and women under conditions of pain and weakness, and had known the body only as a tabernacle of helplessness and suffering; yet had brought out of her experience a hard philosophy which she used equally to herself as to others. That she had ever indulged in any romance of human existence, I greatly doubt; the lanky girl teacher at the Vermont academy had enough to do to push herself forward without entangling girl friendships or confidences, and so became a prematurely hard duenna, paid to look out for, restrain, and report, if necessary, any vagrant flirtation or small intrigue of her companions. A pronounced “old maid” at fifteen, she had nothing to forget or forgive in others, and still less to learn from them.

It was spring, and down the long slopes of Buckeye Hill the flowers were already effacing the last dented footprints of the winter rains, and the winds no longer brought their monotonous patter. In the pine woods there were the song and flash of birds, and the quickening stimulus of the stirring aromatic sap. Miners and tunnelmen were already forsaking the direct road for a ramble through the woodland trail and its sylvan charms, and occasionally breaking into shouts and horseplay like great boys. The schoolchildren were disporting there; there were some older couples sentimentally gathering flowers side by side. Miss Trotter was also there, but making a short cut from the bank and express office, and by no means disturbed by any gentle reminiscence of her girlhood or any other instinctive participation in the wanton season. Spring came, she knew, regularly every year, and brought “spring cleaning” and other necessary changes and rehabilitations. This year it had brought also a considerable increase in the sum she was putting by, and she was, perhaps, satisfied in a practical way, if not with the blind instinctiveness of others. She was walking leisurely, holding her gray skirt well over her slim ankles and smartly booted feet, and clear of the brushing of daisies and buttercups, when suddenly she stopped. A few paces before her, partly concealed by a myrtle, a young woman, startled at her approach, had just withdrawn herself from the embrace of a young man and slipped into the shadow. Nevertheless, in that moment, Miss Trotter's keen eyes had recognized her as a very pretty Swedish girl, one of her chambermaids at the hotel. Miss Trotter passed without a word, but gravely. She was not shocked nor surprised, but it struck her practical mind at once that if this were an affair with impending matrimony, it meant the loss of a valuable and attractive servant; if otherwise, a serious disturbance of that servant's duties. She must look out for another girl to take the place of Frida Pauline Jansen, that was all. It is possible, therefore, that Miss Jansen's criticism of Miss Trotter to her companion as a “spying, jealous old cat” was unfair. This companion Miss Trotter had noticed, only to observe that his face and figure were unfamiliar to her. His red shirt and heavy boots gave no indication of his social condition in that locality. He seemed more startled and disturbed at her intrusion than the girl had been, but that was more a condition of sex than of degree, she also knew. In such circumstances it is the woman always who is the most composed and self-possessed.

A few days after this, Miss Trotter was summoned in some haste to the office. Chris Calton, a young man of twenty-six, partner in the Roanoke Ledge, had fractured his arm and collar-bone by a fall, and had been brought to the hotel for that rest and attention, under medical advice, which he could not procure in the Roanoke company's cabin. She had a retired, quiet room made ready. When he was installed there by the doctor she went to see him, and found a good-looking, curly headed young fellow, even boyish in appearance and manner, who received her with that air of deference and timidity which she was accustomed to excite in the masculine breast--when it was not accompanied with distrust. It struck her that he was somewhat emotional, and had the expression of one who had been spoiled and petted by women, a rather unusual circumstance among the men of the locality. Perhaps it would be unfair to her to say that a disposition to show him that he could expect no such “nonsense” THERE sprang up in her heart at that moment, for she never had understood any tolerance of such weakness, but a certain precision and dryness of manner was the only result of her observation. She adjusted his pillow, asked him if there was anything that he wanted, but took her directions from the doctor, rather than from himself, with a practical insight and minuteness that was as appalling to the patient as it was an unexpected delight to Dr. Duchesne. “I see you quite understand me, Miss Trotter,” he said, with great relief.

“I ought to,” responded the lady dryly. “I had a dozen such cases, some of them with complications, while I was assistant at the Sacramento Hospital.”

“Ah, then!” returned the doctor, dropping gladly into purely professional detail, “you'll see this is very simple, not a comminuted fracture; constitution and blood healthy; all you've to do is to see that he eats properly, keeps free from excitement and worry, but does not get despondent; a little company; his partners and some of the boys from the Ledge will drop in occasionally; not too much of THEM, you know; and of course, absolute immobility of the injured parts.” The lady nodded; the patient lifted his blue eyes for an instant to hers with a look of tentative appeal, but it slipped off Miss Trotter's dark pupils--which were as abstractedly critical as the doctor's--without being absorbed by them. When the door closed behind her, the doctor exclaimed: “By Jove! you're in luck, Chris! That's a splendid woman! Just the one to look after you!” The patient groaned slightly. “Do what she says, and we'll pull you through in no time. Why! she's able to adjust those bandages herself!”

This, indeed, she did a week later, when the surgeon had failed to call, unveiling his neck and arm with professional coolness, and supporting him in her slim arms against her stiff, erect buckramed breast, while she replaced the splints with masculine firmness of touch and serene and sexless indifference. His stammered embarrassed thanks at the relief--for he had been in considerable pain--she accepted with a certain pride as a tribute to her skill, a tribute which Dr. Duchesne himself afterward fully indorsed.

On re-entering his room the third or fourth morning after his advent at the Summit House, she noticed with some concern that there was a slight flush on his cheek and a certain exaltation which she at first thought presaged fever. But an examination of his pulse and temperature dispelled that fear, and his talkativeness and good spirits convinced her that it was only his youthful vigor at last overcoming his despondency. A few days later, this cheerfulness not being continued, Dr. Duchesne followed Miss Trotter into the hall. “We must try to keep our patient from moping in his confinement, you know,” he began, with a slight smile, “and he seems to be somewhat of an emotional nature, accustomed to be amused and--er--er--petted.”

“His friends were here yesterday,” returned Miss Trotter dryly, “but I did not interfere with them until I thought they had stayed long enough to suit your wishes.”

“I am not referring to THEM,” said the doctor, still smiling; “but you know a woman's sympathy and presence in a sickroom is often the best of tonics or sedatives.”

Miss Trotter raised her eyes to the speaker with a half critical impatience.

“The fact is,” the doctor went on, “I have a favor to ask of you for our patient. It seems that the other morning a new chambermaid waited upon him, whom he found much more gentle and sympathetic in her manner than the others, and more submissive and quiet in her ways--possibly because she is a foreigner, and accustomed to servitude. I suppose you have no objection to HER taking charge of his room?”

Miss Trotter's cheek slightly flushed. Not from wounded vanity, but from the consciousness of some want of acumen that had made her make a mistake. She had really believed, from her knowledge of the patient's character and the doctor's preamble, that he wished HER to show some more kindness and personal sympathy to the young man, and had even been prepared to question its utility! She saw her blunder quickly, and at once remembering that the pretty Swedish girl had one morning taken the place of an absent fellow servant, in the rebound from her error, she said quietly: “You mean Frida! Certainly! she can look after his room, if he prefers her.” But for her blunder she might have added conscientiously that she thought the girl would prove inefficient, but she did not. She remembered the incident of the wood; yet if the girl had a lover in the wood, she could not urge it as a proof of incapacity. She gave the necessary orders, and the incident passed.

Visiting the patient a few days afterward, she could not help noticing a certain shy gratitude in Mr. Calton's greeting of her, which she quietly ignored. This forced the ingenuous Chris to more positive speech. He dwelt with great simplicity and enthusiasm on the Swedish girl's gentleness and sympathy. “You have no idea of--her--natural tenderness, Miss Trotter,” he stammered naively. Miss Trotter, remembering the wood, thought to herself that she had some faint idea of it, but did not impart what it was. He spoke also of her beauty, not being clever enough to affect an indifference or ignorance of it, which made Miss Trotter respect him and smile an unqualified acquiescence. Frida certainly was pretty! But when he spoke of her as “Miss Jansen,” and said she was so much more “ladylike and refined than the other servants,” she replied by asking him if his bandages hurt him, and, receiving a negative answer, graciously withdrew.

Indeed, his bandages gave him little trouble now, and his improvement was so marked and sustained that the doctor was greatly gratified, and, indeed, expressed as much to Miss Trotter, with the conscientious addition that he believed the greater part of it was due to her capable nursing! “Yes, ma'am, he has to thank YOU for it, and no one else!”

Miss Trotter raised her dark eyes and looked steadily at him. Accustomed as he was to men and women, the look strongly held him. He saw in her eyes an intelligence equal to his own, a knowledge of good and evil, and a toleration and philosophy, equal to his own, but a something else that was as distinct and different as their sex. And therein lay its charm, for it merely translated itself in his mind that she had very pretty eyes, which he had never noticed before, without any aggressive intellectual quality. And with this, alas! came the man's propensity to reason. It meant of course but ONE thing; he saw it all now! If HE, in his preoccupation and coolness, had noticed her eyes, so also had the younger and emotional Chris. The young fellow was in love with her! It was that which had stimulated his recovery, and she was wondering if he, the doctor, had observed it. He smiled back the superior smile of our sex in moments of great inanity, and poor Miss Trotter believed he understood her. A few days after this, she noticed that Frida Jansen was wearing a pearl ring and a somewhat ostentatious locket. She remembered now that Mr. Bilson had told her that the Roanoke Ledge was very rich, and that Calton was likely to prove a profitable guest. But it was not HER business.

It became her business, however, some days later, when Mr. Calton was so much better that he could sit in a chair, or even lounge listlessly in the hall and corridor. It so chanced that she was passing along the upper hall when she saw Frida's pink cotton skirt disappear in an adjacent room, and heard her light laugh as the door closed. But the room happened to be a card-room reserved exclusively for gentlemen's poker or euchre parties, and the chambermaids had no business there. Miss Trotter had no doubt that Mr. Calton was there, and that Frida knew it; but as this was an indiscretion so open, flagrant, and likely to be discovered by the first passing guest, she called to her sharply. She was astonished, however, at the same moment to see Mr. Calton walking in the corridor at some distance from the room in question. Indeed, she was so confounded that when Frida appeared from the room a little flurried, but with a certain audacity new to her, Miss Trotter withheld her rebuke, and sent her off on an imaginary errand, while she herself opened the card-room door. It contained simply Mr. Bilson, her employer; his explanation was glaringly embarrassed and unreal! Miss Trotter affected obliviousness, but was silent; perhaps she thought her employer was better able to take care of himself than Mr. Calton.

A week later this tension terminated by the return of Calton to Roanoke Ledge, a convalescent man. A very pretty watch and chain afterward were received by Miss Trotter, with a few lines expressing the gratitude of the ex-patient. Mr. Bilson was highly delighted, and frequently borrowed the watch to show to his guests as an advertisement of the healing powers of the Summit Hotel. What Mr. Calton sent to the more attractive and flirtatious Frida did not as publicly appear, and possibly Mr. Bilson did not know it. The incident of the cardroom was forgotten. Since that discovery, Miss Trotter had felt herself debarred from taking the girl's conduct into serious account, and it did not interfere with her work.

One afternoon Miss Trotter received a message that Mr. Calton desired a few moments' private conversation with her. A little curious, she had him shown into one of the sitting-rooms, but was surprised on entering to find that she was in the presence of an utter stranger! This was explained by the visitor saying briefly that he was Chris's elder brother, and that he presumed the name would be sufficient introduction. Miss Trotter smiled doubtfully, for a more distinct opposite to Chris could not be conceived. The stranger was apparently strong, practical, and masterful in all those qualities in which his brother was charmingly weak. Miss Trotter, for no reason whatever, felt herself inclined to resent them.

“I reckon, Miss Trotter,” he said bluntly, “that you don't know anything of this business that brings me here. At least,” he hesitated, with a certain rough courtesy, “I should judge from your general style and gait that you wouldn't have let it go on so far if you had, but the fact is, that darned fool brother of mine--beg your pardon!--has gone and got himself engaged to one of the girls that help here,--a yellow-haired foreigner, called Frida Jansen.”

“I was not aware that it had gone so far as that,” said Miss Trotter quietly, “although his admiration for her was well known, especially to his doctor, at whose request I selected her to especially attend to your brother.”

“The doctor is a fool,” broke in Mr. Calton abruptly. “He only thought of keeping Chris quiet while he finished his job.”

“And really, Mr. Calton,” continued Miss Trotter, ignoring the interruption, “I do not see what right I have to interfere with the matrimonial intentions of any guest in this house, even though or--as you seem to put it--BECAUSE the object of his attentions is in its employ.”

Mr. Calton stared--angrily at first, and then with a kind of wondering amazement that any woman--above all a housekeeper--should take such a view. “But,” he stammered, “I thought you--you--looked after the conduct of those girls.”

“I'm afraid you've assumed too much,” said Miss Trotter placidly. “My business is to see that they attend to their duties here. Frida Jansen's duty was--as I have just told you--to look after your brother's room. And as far as I understand you, you are not here to complain of her inattention to that duty, but of its resulting in an attachment on your brother's part, and, as you tell me, an intention as to her future, which is really the one thing that would make my 'looking after her conduct' an impertinence and interference! If you had come to tell me that he did NOT intend to marry her, but was hurting her reputation, I could have understood and respected your motives.”

Mr. Calton felt his face grow red and himself discomfited. He had come there with the firm belief that he would convict Miss Trotter of a grave fault, and that in her penitence she would be glad to assist him in breaking off the match. On the contrary, to find himself arraigned and put on his defense by this tall, slim woman, erect and smartly buckramed in logic and whalebone, was preposterous! But it had the effect of subduing his tone.

“You don't understand,” he said awkwardly yet pleadingly. “My brother is a fool, and any woman could wind him round her finger. SHE knows it. She knows he is rich and a partner in the Roanoke Ledge. That's all she wants. She is not a fit match for him. I've said he was a fool--but, hang it all! that's no reason why he should marry an ignorant girl--a foreigner and a servant--when he could do better elsewhere.”

“This would seem to be a matter between you and your brother, and not between myself and my servant,” said Miss Trotter coldly. “If you cannot convince HIM, your own brother, I do not see how you expect me to convince HER, a servant, over whom I have no control except as a mistress of her WORK, when, on your own showing, she has everything to gain by the marriage. If you wish Mr. Bilson, the proprietor, to threaten her with dismissal unless she gives up your brother,”--Miss Trotter smiled inwardly at the thought of the card-room incident,--“it seems to me you might only precipitate the marriage.”

Mr. Calton looked utterly blank and hopeless. His reason told him that she was right. More than that, a certain admiration for her clear-sightedness began to possess him, with the feeling that he would like to have “shown up” a little better than he had in this interview. If Chris had fallen in love with HER--but Chris was a fool and wouldn't have appreciated her!

“But you might talk with her, Miss Trotter,” he said, now completely subdued. “Even if you could not reason her out of it, you might find out what she expects from this marriage. If you would talk to her as sensibly as you have to me”--

“It is not likely that she will seek my assistance as you have,” said Miss Trotter, with a faint smile which Mr. Calton thought quite pretty, “but I will see about it.”

Whatever Miss Trotter intended to do did not transpire. She certainly was in no hurry about it, as she did not say anything to Frida that day, and the next afternoon it so chanced that business took her to the bank and post-office. Her way home again lay through the Summit woods. It recalled to her the memorable occasion when she was first a witness to Frida's flirtations. Neither that nor Mr. Bilson's presumed gallantries, however, seemed inconsistent, in Miss Trotter's knowledge of the world, with a serious engagement with young Calton. She was neither shocked nor horrified by it, and for that reason she had not thought it necessary to speak of it to the elder Mr. Calton.

Her path wound through a thicket fragrant with syringa and southernwood; the faint perfume was reminiscent of Atlantic hillsides, where, long ago, a girl teacher, she had walked with the girl pupils of the Vermont academy, and kept them from the shy advances of the local swains. She smiled--a little sadly--as the thought occurred to her that after this interval of years it was again her business to restrain the callow affections. Should she never have the matchmaking instincts of her sex; never become the trusted confidante of youthful passion? Young Calton had not confessed his passion to HER, nor had Frida revealed her secret. Only the elder brother had appealed to her hard, practical common sense against such sentiment. Was there something in her manner that forbade it? She wondered if it was some uneasy consciousness of this quality which had impelled her to snub the elder Calton, and rebelled against it.

It was quite warm; she had been walking a little faster than her usual deliberate gait, and checked herself, halting in the warm breath of the syringas. Here she heard her name called in a voice that she recognized, but in tones so faint and subdued that it seemed to her part of her thoughts. She turned quickly and beheld Chris Calton a few feet from her, panting, partly from running and partly from some nervous embarrassment. His handsome but weak mouth was expanded in an apologetic smile; his blue eyes shone with a kind of youthful appeal so inconsistent with his long brown mustache and broad shoulders that she was divided between a laugh and serious concern.

“I saw you--go into the wood--but I lost you,” he said, breathing quickly, “and then when I did see you again--you were walking so fast I had to run after you. I wanted--to speak--to you--if you'll let me. I won't detain you--I can walk your way.”

Miss Trotter was a little softened, but not so much as to help him out with his explanation. She drew her neat skirts aside, and made way for him on the path beside her.

“You see,” he went on nervously, taking long strides to her shorter ones, and occasionally changing sides in his embarrassment, “my brother Jim has been talking to you about my engagement to Frida, and trying to put you against her and me. He said as much to me, and added you half promised to help him! But I didn't believe him--Miss Trotter!--I know you wouldn't do it--you haven't got it in your heart to hurt a poor girl! He says he has every confidence in you--that you're worth a dozen such girls as she is, and that I'm a big fool or I'd see it. I don't say you're not all he says, Miss Trotter; but I'm not such a fool as he thinks, for I know your GOODNESS too. I know how you tended me when I was ill, and how you sent Frida to comfort me. You know, too,--for you're a woman yourself,--that all you could say, or anybody could, wouldn't separate two people who loved each other.”

Miss Trotter for the first time felt embarrassed, and this made her a little angry. “I don't think I gave your brother any right to speak for me or of me in this matter,” she said icily; “and if you are quite satisfied, as you say you are, of your own affection and Frida's, I do not see why you should care for anybody'sinterference.”

“Now you are angry with me,” he said in a doleful voice which at any other time would have excited her mirth; “and I've just done it. Oh, Miss Trotter, don't! Please forgive me! I didn't mean to say your talk was no good. I didn't mean to say you couldn't help us. Please don't be mad at me!”

He reached out his hand, grasped her slim fingers in his own, and pressed them, holding them and even arresting her passage. The act was without familiarity or boldness, and she felt that to snatch her hand away would be an imputation of that meaning, instead of the boyish impulse that prompted it. She gently withdrew her hand as if to continue her walk, and said, with a smile:--

“Then you confess you need help--in what way?”

“With her!”

Miss Trotter stared. “With HER!” she repeated. This was a new idea. Was it possible that this common, ignorant girl was playing and trifling with her golden opportunity? “Then you are not quite sure of her?” she said a little coldly.

“She's so high spirited, you know,” he said humbly, “and so attractive, and if she thought my friends objected and were saying unkind things of her,--well!”--he threw out his hands with a suggestion of hopeless despair--“there's no knowing what she might do.”

Miss Trotter's obvious thought was that Frida knew on which side her bread was buttered; but remembering that the proprietor was a widower, it occurred to her that the young woman might also have it buttered on both sides. Her momentary fancy of uniting two lovers somehow weakened at this suggestion, and there was a hardening of her face as she said, “Well, if YOU can't trust her, perhaps your brother may be right.”

“I don't say that, Miss Trotter,” said Chris pleadingly, yet with a slight wincing at her words; “YOU could convince her, if you would only try. Only let her see that she has some other friends beside myself. Look! Miss Trotter, I'll leave it all to you--there! If you will only help me, I will promise not to see her--not to go near her again--until you have talked with her. There! Even my brother would not object to that. And if he has every confidence in you, I'm showing you I've more--don't you see? Come, now, promise--won't you, dear Miss Trotter?” He again took her hand, and this time pressed a kiss upon her slim fingers. And this time she did not withdraw them. Indeed, it seemed to her, in the quick recurrence of her previous sympathy, as if a hand had been put into her loveless past, grasping and seeking hers in its loneliness. None of her school friends had ever appealed to her like this simple, weak, and loving young man. Perhaps it was because they were of her own sex, and she distrusted them.

Nevertheless, this momentary weakness did not disturb her good common sense. She looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then said, with a faint smile, “Perhaps she does not trust YOU. Perhaps you cannot trust yourself.”

He felt himself reddening with a strange embarrassment. It was not so much the question that disturbed him as the eyes of Miss Trotter; eyes that he had never before noticed as being so beautiful in their color, clearness, and half tender insight. He dropped her hand with a new-found timidity, and yet with a feeling that he would like to hold it longer.

“I mean,” she said, stopping short in the trail at a point where a fringe of almost impenetrable “buckeyes” marked the extreme edge of the woods,--“I mean that you are still very young, and as Frida is nearly your own age,”--she could not resist this peculiarly feminine innuendo,--“she may doubt your ability to marry her in the face of opposition; she may even think my interference is a proof of it; but,” she added quickly, to relieve his embarrassment and a certain abstracted look with which he was beginning to regard her, “I will speak to her, and,” she concluded playfully, “you must take the consequences.”

He said “Thank you,” but not so earnestly as his previous appeal might have suggested, and with the same awkward abstraction in his eyes. Miss Trotter did not notice it, as her own eyes were at that moment fixed upon a point on the trail a few rods away. “Look,” she said in a lower voice, “I may have the opportunity now for there is Frida herself passing.” Chris turned in the direction of her glance. It was indeed the young girl walking leisurely ahead of them. There was no mistaking the smart pink calico gown in which Frida was wont to array her rather generous figure, nor the long yellow braids that hung Marguerite-wise down her back. With the consciousness of good looks which she always carried, there was, in spite of her affected ease, a slight furtiveness in the occasional swift turn of her head, as if evading or seeking observation.

“I will overtake her and speak to her now,” continued Miss Trotter. “I may not have so good a chance again to see her alone. You can wait here for my return, if you like.”

Chris started out of his abstraction. “Stay!” he stammered, with a faint, tentative smile. “Perhaps--don't you think?--I had better go first and tell her you want to see her. I can send her here. You see, she might”--He stopped.

Miss Trotter smiled. “It was part of your promise, you know, that you were NOT to see her again until I had spoken. But no matter! Have it as you wish. I will wait here. Only be quick. She has just gone into the grove.”

Without another word the young man turned away, and she presently saw him walking toward the pine grove into which Frida had disappeared. Then she cleared a space among the matted moss and chickweed, and, gathering her skirts about her, sat down to wait. The unwonted attitude, the whole situation, and the part that she seemed destined to take in this sentimental comedy affected her like some quaint child's play out of her lost youth, and she smiled, albeit with a little heightening of color and lively brightening of her eyes. Indeed, as she sat there listlessly probing the roots of the mosses with the point of her parasol, the casual passer-by might have taken herself for the heroine of some love tryst. She had a faint consciousness of this as she glanced to the right and left, wondering what any one from the hotel who saw her would think of her sylvan rendezvous; and as the recollection of Chris kissing her hand suddenly came back to her, her smile became a nervous laugh, and she found herself actually blushing!

But she was recalled to herself as suddenly. Chris was returning. He was walking directly towards her with slow, determined steps, quite different from his previous nervous agitation, and as he drew nearer she saw with some concern an equally strange change in his appearance: his colorful face was pale, his eyes fixed, and he looked ten years older. She rose quickly.

“I came back to tell you,” he said, in a voice from which all trace of his former agitation had passed, “that I relieve you of your promise. It won't be necessary for you to see--Frida. I thank you all the same, Miss Trotter,” he said, avoiding her eyes with a slight return to his boyish manner. “It was kind of you to promise to undertake a foolish errand for me, and to wait here, and the best thing I can do is to take myself off now and keep you no longer. Please don't ask me WHY. Sometime I may tell you, but not now.”

“Then you have seen her?” asked Miss Trotter quickly, premising Frida's refusal from his face.

He hesitated a moment, then he said gravely, “Yes. Don't ask me any more, Miss Trotter, please. Good-by!” He paused, and then, with a slight, uneasy glance toward the pine grove, “Don't let me keep you waiting here any longer.” He took her hand, held it lightly for a moment, and said, “Go, now.”

Miss Trotter, slightly bewildered and unsatisfied, nevertheless passed obediently out into the trail. He gazed after her for a moment, and then turned and began rapidly to ascend the slope where he had first overtaken her, and was soon out of sight. Miss Trotter continued her way home; but when she had reached the confines of the wood she turned, as if taking some sudden resolution, and began slowly to retrace her steps in the direction of the pine grove. What she expected to see there, possibly she could not have explained; what she actually saw after a moment's waiting were the figures of Frida and Mr. Bilson issuing from the shade! Her respected employer wore an air of somewhat ostentatious importance mingled with rustic gallantry. Frida's manner was also conscious with gratified vanity; and although they believed themselves alone, her voice was already pitched into a high key of nervous affectation, indicative of the peasant. But there was nothing to suggest that Chris had disturbed them in their privacy and confidences. Yet he had evidently seen enough to satisfy himself of her faithlessness. Had he ever suspected it before?

Miss Trotter waited only until they had well preceded her, and then took a shorter cut home. She was quite prepared that evening for an interview which Mr. Bilson requested. She found him awkward and embarrassed in her cool, self-possessed presence. He said he deemed it his duty to inform her of his approaching marriage with Miss Jansen; but it was because he wished distinctly to assure her that it would make no difference in Miss Trotter's position in the hotel, except to promote her to the entire control of the establishment. He was to be married in San Francisco at once, and he and his wife were to go abroad for a year or two; indeed, he contemplated eventually retiring from business. If Mr. Bilson was uneasily conscious during this interview that he had once paid attentions to Miss Trotter, which she had ignored, she never betrayed the least recollection of it. She thanked him for his confidence and wished him happiness.

Sudden as was this good fortune to Miss Trotter, an independence she had so often deservedly looked forward to, she was, nevertheless, keenly alive to the fact that she had attained it partly through Chris's disappointment and unhappiness. Her sane mind taught her that it was better for him; that he had been saved an ill-assorted marriage; that the girl had virtually rejected him for Bilson before he had asked her mediation that morning. Yet these reasons failed to satisfy her feelings. It seemed cruel to her that the interest which she had suddenly taken in poor Chris should end so ironically in disaster to her sentiment and success to her material prosperity. She thought of his boyish appeal to her; of what must have been his utter discomfiture in the discovery of Frida's relations to Mr. Bilson that afternoon, but more particularly of the singular change it had effected in him. How nobly and gently he had taken his loss! How much more like a man he looked in his defeat than in his passion! The element of respect which had been wanting in her previous interest in him was now present in her thoughts. It prevented her seeking him with perfunctory sympathy and worldly counsel; it made her feel strangely and unaccountably shy of any other expression.

As Mr. Bilson evidently desired to avoid local gossip until after his marriage, he had enjoined secrecy upon her, and she was also debarred from any news of Chris through his brother, who, had he known of Frida's engagement, would have naturally come to her for explanation. It also convinced her that Chris himself had not revealed anything to his brother.

III

When the news of the marriage reached Buckeye Hill, it did not, however, make much scandal, owing, possibly, to the scant number of the sex who are apt to disseminate it, and to many the name of Miss Jansen was unknown. The intelligence that Mr. Bilson would be absent for a year, and that the superior control of the Summit Hotel would devolve upon Miss Trotter, DID, however, create a stir in that practical business community. No one doubted the wisdom of the selection. Every one knew that to Miss Trotter's tact and intellect the success of the hotel had been mainly due. Possibly, the satisfaction of Buckeye Hill was due to something else. Slowly and insensibly Miss Trotter had achieved a social distinction; the wives and daughters of the banker, the lawyer, and the pastor had made much of her, and now, as an independent woman of means, she stood first in the district. Guests deemed it an honor to have a personal interview with her. The governor of the State and the Supreme Court judges treated her like a private hostess; middle-aged Miss Trotter was considered as eligible a match as the proudest heiress in California. The old romantic fiction of her past was revived again,--they had known she was a “real lady” from the first! She received these attentions, as became her sane intellect and cool temperament, without pride, affectation, or hesitation. Only her dark eyes brightened on the day when Mr. Bilson's marriage was made known, and she was called upon by James Calton.

“I did you a great injustice,” he said, with a smile.

“I don't understand you,” she replied a little coldly.

“Why, this woman and her marriage,” he said; “you must have known something of it all the time, and perhaps helped it along to save Chris.”

“You are mistaken,” returned Miss Trotter truthfully. “I knew nothing of Mr. Bilson's intentions.”

“Then I have wronged you still more,” he said briskly, “for I thought at first that you were inclined to help Chris in his foolishness. Now I see it was your persuasions that changed him.”

“Let me tell you once for all, Mr. Calton,” she returned with an impulsive heat which she regretted, “that I did not interfere in any way with your brother's suit. He spoke to me of it, and I promised to see Frida, but he afterwards asked me not to. I know nothing of the matter.”

“Well,” laughed Mr. Calton, “WHATEVER you did, it was most efficacious, and you did it so graciously and tactfully that it has not altered his high opinion of you, if, indeed, he hasn't really transferred his affections to you.”

Luckily Miss Trotter had her face turned from him at the beginning of the sentence, or he would have noticed the quick flush that suddenly came to her cheek and eyes. Yet for an instant this calm, collected woman trembled, not at what Mr. Calton might have noticed, but at what SHE had noticed in HERSELF. Mr. Calton, construing her silence and averted head into some resentment of his familiar speech, continued hurriedly:--

“I mean, don't you see, that I believe no other woman could have influenced my brother as you have.”

“You mean, I think, that he has taken his broken heart very lightly,” said Miss Trotter, with a bitter little laugh, so unlike herself that Mr. Calton was quite concerned at it.

“No,” he said gravely. “I can't say THAT! He's regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you'd hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be,” he went on, with brotherly directness. “It wouldn't be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he's off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I reckon, I've been thinking of advising him to come up to the hotel once more till he's better. So long as SHE'S gone it would be all right, you know!”

By this time Miss Trotter was herself again. She reasoned, or thought she did, that this was a question of the business of the hotel, and it was clearly her duty to assent to Chris's coming. The strange yet pleasurable timidity which possessed her at the thought she ignored completely.

He came the next day. Luckily, she was so much shocked by the change in his appearance that it left no room for any other embarrassment in the meeting. His face had lost its fresh color and round outline; the lines of his mouth were drawn with pain and accented by his drooping mustache; his eyes, which had sought hers with a singular seriousness, no longer wore the look of sympathetic appeal which had once so exasperated her, but were filled with an older experience. Indeed, he seemed to have approximated so near to her own age that, by one of those paradoxes of the emotions, she felt herself much younger, and in smile and eye showed it; at which he colored faintly. But she kept her sympathy and inquiries limited to his physical health, and made no allusion to his past experiences; indeed, ignoring any connection between the two. He had been shockingly careless in his convalescence, had had a relapse in consequence, and deserved a good scolding! His relapse was a reflection upon the efficacy of the hotel as a perfect cure! She should treat him more severely now, and allow him no indulgences! I do not know that Miss Trotter intended anything covert, but their eyes met and he colored again. Ignoring this also, and promising to look after him occasionally, she quietly withdrew.

But about this time it was noticed that a change took place in Miss Trotter. Always scrupulously correct, and even severe in her dress, she allowed herself certain privileges of color, style, and material. She, who had always affected dark shades and stiff white cuffs and collars, came out in delicate tints and laces, which lent a brilliancy to her dark eyes and short crisp black curls, slightly tinged with gray. One warm summer evening she startled every one by appearing in white, possibly a reminiscence of her youth at the Vermont academy. The masculine guests thought it pretty and attractive; even the women forgave her what they believed a natural expression of her prosperity and new condition, but regretted a taste so inconsistent with her age. For all that, Miss Trotter had never looked so charming, and the faint autumnal glow in her face made no one regret her passing summer.

One evening she found Chris so much better that he was sitting on the balcony, but still so depressed that she was compelled so far to overcome the singular timidity she had felt in his presence as to ask him to come into her own little drawing-room, ostensibly to avoid the cool night air. It was the former “card-room” of the hotel, but now fitted with feminine taste and prettiness. She arranged a seat for him on the sofa, which he took with a certain brusque boyish surliness, the last vestige of his youth.

“It's very kind of you to invite me in here,” he began bitterly, “when you are so run after by every one, and to leave Judge Fletcher just now to talk to me, but I suppose you are simply pitying me for being a fool!”

“I thought you were imprudent in exposing yourself to the night air on the balcony, and I think Judge Fletcher is old enough to take care of himself,” she returned, with the faintest touch of coquetry, and a smile which was quite as much an amused recognition of that quality in herself as anything else.

“And I'm a baby who can't,” he said angrily. After a pause he burst out abruptly: “Miss Trotter, will you answer me one question?”

“Go on,” she said smilingly.

“Did you know--that--woman was engaged to Bilson when I spoke to you in the wood?”

“No!” she answered quickly, but without the sharp resentment she had shown at his brother's suggestion. “I only knew it when Mr. Bilson told me the same evening.”

“And I only knew it when news came of their marriage,” he said bitterly.

“But you must have suspected something when you saw them together in the wood,” she responded.

“When I saw them together in the wood?” he repeated dazedly.

Miss Trotter was startled, and stopped short. Was it possible he had not seen them together? She was shocked that she had spoken; but it was too late to withdraw her words. “Yes,” she went on hurriedly, “I thought that was why you came back to say that I was not to speak to her.”

He looked at her fixedly, and said slowly: “You thought that? Well, listen to me. I saw NO ONE! I knew nothing of this! I suspected nothing! I returned before I had reached the wood--because--because--I had changed my mind!”

“Changed your mind!” she repeated wonderingly.

“Yes! Changed my mind! I couldn't stand it any longer! I did not love the girl--I never loved her--I was sick of my folly. Sick of deceiving you and myself any longer. Now you know why I didn't go into the wood, and why I didn't care where she was nor who was with her!”

“I don't understand,” she said, lifting her clear eyes to his coldly.

“Of course you don't,” he said bitterly. “I didn't understand myself! And when you do understand you will hate and despise me--if you do not laugh at me for a conceited fool! Hear me out, Miss Trotter, for I am speaking the truth to you now, if I never spoke it before. I never asked the girl to marry me! I never said to HER half what I told to YOU, and when I asked you to intercede with her, I never wanted you to do it--and never expected you would.”

“May I ask WHY you did it then?” said Miss Trotter, with an acerbity which she put on to hide a vague, tantalizing consciousness.

“You would not believe me if I told you, and you would hate me if you did.” He stopped, and, locking his fingers together, threw his hands over the back of the sofa and leaned toward her. “You never liked me, Miss Trotter,” he said more quietly; “not from the first! From the day that I was brought to the hotel, when you came to see me, I could see that you looked upon me as a foolish, petted boy. When I tried to catch your eye, you looked at the doctor, and took your speech from him. And yet I thought I had never seen a woman so great and perfect as you were, and whose sympathy I longed so much to have. You may not believe me, but I thought you were a queen, for you were the first lady I had ever seen, and you were so different from the other girls I knew, or the women who had been kind to me. You may laugh, but it's the truth I'm telling you, Miss Trotter!”

He had relapsed completely into his old pleading, boyish way--it had struck her even as he had pleaded to her for Frida!

“I knew you didn't like me that day you came to change the bandages. Although every touch of your hands seemed to ease my pain, you did it so coldly and precisely; and although I longed to keep you there with me, you scarcely waited to take my thanks, but left me as if you had only done your duty to a stranger. And worst of all,” he went on more bitterly, “the doctor knew it too--guessed how I felt toward you, and laughed at me for my hopelessness! That made me desperate, and put me up to act the fool. I did! Yes, Miss Trotter; I thought it mighty clever to appear to be in love with Frida, and to get him to ask to have her attend me regularly. And when you simply consented, without a word or thought about it and me, I knew I was nothing to you.”

Miss Trotter felt a sudden thrill. The recollection of Dr. Duchesne's strange scrutiny of her, of her own mistake, which she now knew might have been the truth--flashed across her confused consciousness in swift corroboration of his words. It was a DOUBLE revelation to her; for what else was the meaning of this subtle, insidious, benumbing sweetness that was now creeping over her sense and spirit and holding her fast. She felt she ought to listen no longer--to speak--to say something--to get up--to turn and confront him coldly--but she was powerless. Her reason told her that she had been the victim of a trick--that having deceived her once, he might be doing so again; but she could not break the spell that was upon her, nor did she want to. She must know the culmination of this confession, whose preamble thrilled her so strangely.

“The girl was kind and sympathetic,” he went on, “but I was not so great a fool as not to know that she was a flirt and accustomed to attention. I suppose it was in my desperation that I told my brother, thinking he would tell you, as he did. He would not tell me what you said to him, except that you seemed to be indignant at the thought that I was only flirting with Frida. Then I resolved to speak with you myself--and I did. I know it was a stupid, clumsy contrivance. It never seemed so stupid before I spoke to you. It never seemed so wicked as when you promised to help me, and your eyes shone on me for the first time with kindness. And it never seemed so hopeless as when I found you touched with my love for another. You wonder why I kept up this deceit until you promised. Well, I had prepared the bitter cup myself--I thought I ought to drink it to the dregs.”

She turned quietly, passionately, and, standing up, faced him with a little cry. “Why are you telling me this NOW?”

He rose too, and catching her hands in his, said, with a white face, “Because I love you.”

*****

Half an hour later, when the under-housekeeper was summoned to receive Miss Trotter's orders, she found that lady quietly writing at the table. Among the orders she received was the notification that Mr. Calton's rooms would be vacated the next day. When the servant, who, like most of her class, was devoted to the good-natured, good-looking, liberal Chris, asked with some concern if the young gentleman was no better, Miss Trotter, with equal placidity, answered that it was his intention to put himself under the care of a specialist in San Francisco, and that she, Miss Trotter, fully approved of his course. She finished her letter,--the servant noticed that it was addressed to Mr. Bilson at Paris,--and, handing it to her, bade that it should be given to a groom, with orders to ride over to the Summit post-office at once to catch the last post. As the housekeeper turned to go, she again referred to the departing guest. “It seems such a pity, ma'am, that Mr. Calton couldn't stay, as he always said you did him so much good.” Miss Trotter smiled affably. But when the door closed she gave a hysterical little laugh, and then, dropping her handsome gray-streaked head in her slim hands, cried like a girl--or, indeed, as she had never cried when a girl.

When the news of Mr. Calton's departure became known the next day, some lady guests regretted the loss of this most eligible young bachelor. Miss Trotter agreed with them, with the consoling suggestion that he might return for a day or two. He did return for a day; it was thought that the change to San Francisco had greatly benefited him, though some believed he would be an invalid all his life.

Meantime Miss Trotter attended regularly to her duties, with the difference, perhaps, that she became daily more socially popular and perhaps less severe in her reception of the attentions of the masculine guests. It was finally whispered that the great Judge Boompointer was a serious rival of Judge Fletcher for her hand. When, three months later, some excitement was caused by the intelligence that Mr. Bilson was returning to take charge of his hotel, owing to the resignation of Miss Trotter, who needed a complete change, everybody knew what that meant. A few were ready to name the day when she would become Mrs. Boompointer; others had seen the engagement ring of Judge Fletcher on her slim finger.

Nevertheless Miss Trotter married neither, and by the time Mr. and Mrs. Bilson had returned she had taken her holiday, and the Summit House knew her no more.

Three years later, and at a foreign Spa, thousands of miles distant from the scene of her former triumphs, Miss Trotter reappeared as a handsome, stately, gray-haired stranger, whose aristocratic bearing deeply impressed a few of her own countrymen who witnessed her arrival, and believed her to be a grand duchess at the least. They were still more convinced of her superiority when they saw her welcomed by the well-known Baroness X., and afterwards engaged in a very confidential conversation with that lady. But they would have been still more surprised had they known the tenor of that conversation.

“I am afraid you will find the Spa very empty just now,” said the baroness critically. “But there are a few of your compatriots here, however, and they are always amusing. You see that somewhat faded blonde sitting quite alone in that arbor? That is her position day after day, while her husband openly flirts or is flirted with by half the women here. Quite the opposite experience one has of American women, where it's all the other way, is it not? And there is an odd story about her which may account for, if it does not excuse, her husband's neglect. They're very rich, but they say she was originally a mere servant in a hotel.”

“You forget that I told you I was once only a housekeeper in one,” said Miss Trotter, smiling.

“Nonsense. I mean that this woman was a mere peasant, and frightfully ignorant at that!”

Miss Trotter put up her eyeglass, and, after a moment's scrutiny, said gently, “I think you are a little severe. I know her; it's a Mrs. Bilson.”

“No, my dear. You are quite wrong. That was the name of her FIRST husband. I am told she was a widow who married again--quite a fascinating young man, and evidently her superior--that is what is so funny. She is a Mrs. Calton--'Mrs. Chris Calton,' as she calls herself.”

“Is her husband--Mr. Calton--here?” said Miss Trotter after a pause, in a still gentler voice.

“Naturally not. He has gone on an excursion with a party of ladies to the Schwartzberg. He returns to-morrow. You will find HER very stupid, but HE is very jolly, though a little spoiled by women. Why do we always spoil them?”

Miss Trotter smiled, and presently turned the subject. But the baroness was greatly disappointed to find the next day that an unexpected telegram had obliged Miss Trotter to leave the Spa without meeting the Caltons.