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

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

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

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

"But I thought men who fought duels always went free."

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

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

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

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

PART II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"W. M."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am Mrs. Bunker," said Mrs. Bunker shortly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Si, senora."

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

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

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

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

"He gave it to me—he—he knew I wouldn't take money," said Mrs. Bunker indignantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You said she was one of us?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

"Hold har-rd—or you'll run her down."

"Now then, Riley,—look alive,—is it slapin' ye are!"

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

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

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

"And where did ye drift from, darlint?"

Mrs. Bunker bridled feebly at the epithet.

"I didn't drift. I was going to the Fort."

"The Fort, is it?"

"Yes. I want to see the general."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But you can see him later," said the general.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.

"'That's me, ma'am,' I says.

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

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

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

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

*****

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



THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMP

PART I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then what is the use of our rules?"

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

"She carries a dagger in her garter."

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

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

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

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

"'N powder 'n shot," contributed the indifferent man.

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

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

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

"Wot's that?" said Saunders, looking up.

"I said health and poetry," returned Brace with some dignity. "I repeat"—

"No. I mean wot's that noise? Listen."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's the woman you're looking for—Jovita Mendez!"

PART II.

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

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

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

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

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

"You have made the rules for thees Booki?"

"Yes—that is—I and my friends have."

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

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

"And your caballeros break not the rules?"

"No."

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

"And very good rules they are too, Miss Mendez."

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

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

"Are you not the Alcalde?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stop!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You bet," said Saunders faintly. "Reg'lar swine."

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART III.

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

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

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

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

"Brace!"

"Yes!"

"Will you stand by me—and HER?"

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

"Will you or won't you?"

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

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

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

"Go!" whispered Brace quickly, "YOU'LL GAIN TIME!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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