"It seemed most likely that he had planned an attack on the fort. If so, his associates would be waiting outside for a signal. He had intended, when he laid down close to the gate, to open it to them; but when I drove the pins in so tight, I caught a gleam from his eyes that was not a drunken one, and he knew that I suspected him. After that, it was a contest of skill and will between us. He was waiting his opportunity, and so was I.

"You think I've a quick ear, don't you? You see what my temperament is; all sense, all consciousness. My hearing was cultivated, too, by listening for Indians. Well, by and by, I detected a very stealthy movement outside the fort, and then a faint chirrup, such as a young squirrel might make. In an instant the drunken man sprang up; and I covered him with my rifle, cocked. He saw the movement and drew his pistol, but not before I had ordered him to throw down his arms, or DIE."

It is impossible to convey, by types, an idea of Ela's manner or tone as he pronounced these last words. They sounded from the bottom of his chest, and conveyed in the utterance a distinct notion that death was what was meant. Hearing him repeat the command, it was easy to believe that the miscreant dared not do more than hesitate in his obedience. After a moment's silence—which was the climax to his rendering of the scene—he continued:

"I haven't told you, yet, how the man looked. He was a tall, swarthy, black-bearded fellow, who might have been handsome once, but who had lost the look which distinguishes men in sympathy with their kind; so that then he resembled some cruel beast, in the shape of a man, yet whose disguise fitted him badly. His eyes burned like rubies, out of the gloomy caverns under his shaggy eyebrows. His lips were drawn apart, so that his teeth glistened. The man's whole expression, as he stood there, glaring at me, was Hate and Murder.

"My eye never winked, while he hesitated. He saw that, and it made him quail. With my finger on the trigger, I kept my rifle leveled, while he threw down his arms—pistols and knife—with a horrible oath. With the knife in his hand, he made a movement, as if he would rush on me; but changed his purpose in time to stop my fire. His cursing was awful; the foam flew from his mouth. He demanded to be let out of the fort; accused me of bad intentions toward him, and denounced me for a robber and murderer. To all his ravings I had but one answer: To be quiet, to obey me, and he might live; dare to disobey me, and he should die.

"I directed him to sit down on the opposite side of the fire—not to move from that one spot—not to make a doubtful motion. And then I told him I knew what he was, and what he had meant to do. When he became convinced of this, he broke down utterly, and wept like a child, declaring that now he knew my pluck, and I had been the first man ever to get the best of him, he loved me like a brother!

"There was a long night before us, and I had got to sit there, with my rifle across my knees, till morning. I could move a little, to stir up or add to the fire; but he could have no liberty whatever. The restraint was horrible to him. One moment he laughed uneasily—another cursed or cried. It was a strange scene, wasn't it? Finally, to pass the time, I asked him to relate the history of his life. He wanted first to shake hands, for the love he bore me. Touching my rifle, significantly, I pointed to a stick lying across the fire between us. 'That is our boundary line; don't go to reaching your hands over that.' Then he sank into a fit of gloom and sullenness.

"We must have remained thus silent until near midnight. Several times I observed him listening to slight sounds outside the fort. But his associates must have given up the game and gone off, for, as the morning hours approached, he ceased to listen, and everything remained quiet. His head was bent forward, his chin resting on his breast, the shaggy beard spreading over it like a mantle."

"How horrible it must have been to keep such company. Why not call on Edwards?"

"The boy was worn out, and there was no need. I was very much strung up, too; so that the exhaustion of sleeplessness, fatigue, or excitement was not felt or noticed. But he suffered. He was like a hyena caged, though he showed it only by involuntary movements and furtive glances. Finally, he could bear it no longer, and entreated me piteously, abjectly, to give him his freedom or blow out his brains. I told him he couldn't have his freedom just yet; but he knew how to get his brains blown out, if he desired it. Then followed more execration, ending in renewed protestations of regard for me. I reminded him that talking would relieve the irksomeness of his position, again inviting him to tell me his history. He replied that if he talked about himself, he would be sure to get excited and move about; but I promised to remind him.

"Once on the subject of himself, it seemed to have a fascination for him. What he told me was, in substance, this: He had been honestly raised, by good, affectionate parents, in the State of Missouri; loved a young girl in the town where he lived; and, wishing to marry her, had resolved to go to California, to make the necessary money, quickly. He was successful; returned full of joyful anticipations, and arrived at an old neighbor's, a few miles from his home, having hardly tasted food or taken any rest the previous twenty-four hours.

"While he hastily ate some breakfast and listened to the friendly gossip of his entertainers, one name, the name of her he loved, his promised wife, was mentioned. She was married. He staggered to his feet, asking the name of her husband; and when he heard it, he knew he had been betrayed by that man. He could recall a strange sensation in his brain, as if molten lead had been poured into it; that was the last of his recollections. Afterward, he learned that he had been weeks in a brain fever.

"When he had recovered, some of his old friends, thinking to do him honor, made an evening party for him. To this party came his love, and her husband; his betrayer. When she gave her hand to welcome him home, and looked in his eyes, he knew that she too had been betrayed. Again the molten lead seemed poured upon his brain. Turning to leave the room, fate placed in his path the man he now hated with a deadly hatred. With one blow of a knife, he laid him dead at his feet. A few hours later, in the desperation of trying to escape, he killed two other men. Then he eluded his pursuers, and got back to California. Since then he had reveled in murder, and every species of crime. Once he had seen, in the streets of Sacramento, the woman he loved. Up to that moment, it had never occurred to him that she was free. Following her to her home, he forced himself into her house, and reminded her of their former relations. She had denied all knowledge of him, finally calling upon her husband to satisfy him. The husband ordered him out of the house, and he shot him. Then the Vigilantes made it hazardous to remain in California. He fled to the mountains, where he was nearly starved out, when I took him in and fed and clothed him.

"Such was his story. My blood curdled in my veins, as I listened to the recitals of his atrocities. 'In God's name,' I said, 'who are you—what is your name?' 'I am BOONE HELM.'"

"Who was Boone Helm?" I asked.

"One of the greatest desperadoes that ever was on this coast. He met his fate, afterward, up east of the mountains."

"What did you do with him? What could you do with him?"

"You ought to have shot him while you had him," my husband suggested.

"I didn't want to shoot him. He said, if I had been a coward, I would have killed him. To confess the truth, the wretch appealed to my sympathies. I don't think he had ever been sane since the time when he felt the 'molten lead poured into his brain.' I knew somebody was sure to kill him, before long; so, when morning came, I called Edwards to open the gate; and, when it was unbarred, escorted my visitor out, telling him that there was not room enough in that part of the country for both of us, and that the next time I pointed my rifle at him it would be to shoot. I never saw him again."

"Then he did not molest the Chinese camp?"

"No. Edwards got his four hundred dollars, and went home to Boston."

There fell a silence upon us, and, through my open door, I could see that the cabin was nearly deserted. Ela seemed wearied—sighed, and made a movement, as if to go.

"What about your Guardian Angel?" my husband asked. "You have not told us about her second coming."

"I always say that she didn't come; or else I say that she came, and I drove her away. That is proper; isn't it, now?" glancing at me.

"But I want to know if you have seen her—if you never met her anywhere in the world—since that time. I have a right to be curious—yes, or no?" I urged, laughingly.

"How do you feel, now?"—with a light laugh and peculiar change of expression.

"O, better; a great deal better. To be perfectly cured, I only need to hear the sequel."

"I may as well tell it, I suppose. It has been running in my head all day. Wouldn't want my wife to know it. Didn't think of meeting her when I came down to 'Frisco. You see, I've been in Oregon a long while—never traveled on a railroad in my life—wanted to see something of the great outside world—and so, ran down to the great city to see the sights. The first thing I did, I went up to Colfax, on the cars; and while I was up there, the engineer invited me to take a ride on the engine—a special one. Now, I knew that he meant to astonish me, because he thought I was green; and I didn't know, really, how fast the thing ought to run. But we came down the grade with a speed that was ter-rif-ic!—more than a mile a minute, the engineer said. When we got to Lincoln, the fellow asked me, with his superior sort of smile, 'How I liked that rate of travel?' I told him I liked that pretty well; 'but, I suppose, when you want to make time, you can travel at a considerably more accelerated rate of locomotion?'"

How we laughed at the natural drollery of the man, the deliberate utterance, the unsophisticated air. While we laughed, he prepared himself to finish his story.

"It was only day before yesterday," he said, "that I met her. I happened to be in the parlor of the hotel when she came in. At first, I wasn't certain of its being her; but, as I watched her, I became certain of it. And she recognized me; I felt certain of that, too. It was in the early part of the evening, and I had to wait until the people in the parlor would disperse. She saw what I was waiting for, and stayed, too; she told me with her eyes that she remembered. After a while she went to the piano, and played and sang 'Kate Kearney.' Then I was satisfied that she would not leave me before I had spoken to her. As soon as the opportunity came, we confessed ourselves."

"Was she married? was she happy?"

"She was married, yes. Happy? she told me, as she had once before, that she was 'content.' She said it with a sigh, as she did the first time; and I doubted her as I did then. But they are putting out the lights. There is always, in this world, somebody going around, putting out our lights. Good-night."

"Good-night."



ON THE SANDS.

I was summering at our Oregon Newport, known to us by the aboriginal name of Clatsop. Had a balloonist, uninstructed in the geography and topography of this portion of the Pacific coast, dropped down among us, his impression would have been that he had alighted in a military encampment, very happily chosen, as military encampments usually are.

Given, one long, low, whitewashed house enclosed by whitewashed pickets; a group of tents outside the enclosure and on the bank of a beautiful graveled-bottom, tree-shadowed stream, and you have the brief summing up of accommodations for summer visitors at Clatsop. The plentiful sprinkling of army buttons among the guests—for there are two forts within a three hours' ride of this beach—tend to confirm the impression of military possession. Besides, our host of the whitewashed hotel is a half-breed; and there is enough of the native element hanging about the place, picking berries and digging clams, to suggest an Indian family where a temporary station might be demanded. It would only be by peeping inside those tents where ladies and children are more numerous than bearded men, that one could be convinced of the gypsy nature of this encampment; though, to be sure, one need not press inside to find them, for the gay campers are sauntering about in all directions, ladies with their escorts, children with their nurses, parties returning from boating or fishing, or riding or bathing: everybody living out in the open air the whole day through on one pretense or another, and only repairing to the hotel at meal times, when the exquisite dishes prepared by French half-breeds suffer the most instant demolition—such hunger does open air inspire.

I had come here just invalid enough to be benefited by our primitive style of living; not too delicate to endure it, nor too robust to enjoy the utter vagabondism of it. There had been no necessity upon us to ape fashionable manners; no obligation to dress three times a day; no balls to weary ourselves with at night. Therefore this daily recurring picnic was just sufficient for our physical recreation, while our mental powers took absolute rest. For weeks I had arisen every morning to a breakfast of salmon-trout. French coffee (au lait), delicious bread, and fresh berries; and afterwards to wander about in the cool sea-fog, well wrapped up in a water-proof cloak. Sometimes we made a boating party up the lovely Neah-can-a-cum, pulling our boat along under the overhanging alders and maples, frightening the trout into their hiding-places under the banks, instead of hooking them as was our ostensible design. The limpid clearness of the water seemed to reflect the trees from the very bottom, and truly made a medium almost as transparent as air, through which the pebbles at the greatest depth appeared within reach of our hands. A morning idled away in this manner, and an afternoon spent in seeing the bathers—I never trust my easily curdled blood to the chill of the sea—and in walking along the sands with a friend, or dreaming quietly by myself as I watched the surf rolling in all the way from Tilamook Head to Cape Disappointment,—these were my daily labors and recreations. The arrival of a bundle of letters, or, still better, of a new visitor, made what variety there was in our life.

I had both of these excitements in one day. One of my correspondents had written: "I hope to see you soon, and to have the opportunity, long sought, of telling you some of the experiences of my early life. When I promised you this I had not anticipated the pleasure of talking over the recollections of my youth while listening with you to the monotone of the great Pacific, whose 'ever, forever' is more significant to me than to most lovers of its music. I never gaze upon its restless waves, nor hear the sound of their ripple on the sands, or their thunder on the rocks without being reminded of one episode in my life peculiarly agitating to remember; but perhaps when I have told it to you, you may have power to exercise the restless spirit which rises in me at the recollection."

So here was promise of the intellectual aliment I had begun to crave after all these weeks of physical, without mental, action. I folded my letter with a feeling of self-congratulation, and turned to watch the movements of a newly arrived party for whom our half-breed host was spreading a tent, and placing in it rather an extra amount of furniture; for, be it known to the uninitiated, we had platform floors under our tents, real bedsteads, dressing-bureaus, rugs, and other comforts to match. That our new arrival exceeded us in elegant conveniences was, of course, duly noted by such idlers as we.

The party consisted of a lady, a little girl of ten, and a Kanaka servant. The lady's name, we learned, was Mrs. Sancy, and she was from the Sandwich Islands. More than that no one was informed. We discussed her looks, her manners, her dress, and her probable circumstances, as we sat around the camp-fire that evening, after the way of idle people. It occurred to me, as I glanced toward her tent door, illuminated by our blazing fire, and saw her regarding the weird scene with evident admiration of its picturesqueness, to ask her to come and sit with us and help us eat roast potatoes—roasted as they cook pigs in the Islands, by covering up in the ground with hot stones. The fact that the potatoes, and the butter which went with them, were purloined from our host's larder, gave a special flavor to the feast—accompanied as it was, too, by instrumental and vocal music, and enlivened by sallies of wit.

Mrs. Sancy seemed to enjoy the novelty of her surroundings, contributing her quota to the general fund of mirth and sparkling talk, and I congratulated myself on having acquired an interesting acquaintance, whose cheerfulness, notwithstanding the partial mourning of her dress, promised well for its continuance. Had she been sad or reserved she certainly would not have been sought as she was by our pleasure-loving summer idlers, consequently my chances of becoming intimate with her would have been greatly abridged. As she was, she soon became, without question, one of the chief social attractions; easily falling into our vagabond ways, yet embellishing them with so much grace and elegance that they became doubly precious to us on account of the new charm imparted to them. All the things any of us could do, Mrs. Sancy could do better; and one thing she could do that none of the rest of us could, which was to swim out and float herself in on a surf-board, like a native island woman; and seeing Mrs. Sancy do this became one of the daily sensations of Clatsop Beach.

I had known Mrs. Sancy about one week, and came to like her extremely, not only for her brilliant, social qualities, but on account of her native originality of thought, and somewhat peculiar culture. I say peculiar, because her thinking and reading seemed to be in the byways rather than the highways of ordinary culture. If she made a figure of speech, it was something noticeably original; if she quoted an author, it was one unfamiliar though forcible. And so she constantly supplied my mind with novelties which I craved, and became like a new education to me. One forenoon, a misty one, we were out on the beach alone, wrapped up in water-proofs, pacing up and down the sands, and watching the grey sullen sea, or admiring the way in which the masses of fog roll in among the tops of the giant firs on Tilamook Head, and were torn into fragments, and tangled among them.

"You never saw the like of this in the islands?" I said, meaning the foggy sea, and the dark, fir-clad mountains.

"I have seen this before;" she answered, waving her hand to indicate the scene as we then beheld it. "You look surprised, but I am familiar with every foot of this ground. I have lived years in this neighborhood—right over there, in fact, under the Head. This spot has, in truth, a strong fascination for me, and it was to see it once more that I made the voyage."

"You lived in this place, and liked it years ago! How strange! It is but a wilderness still, though a pleasant one, I admit."

She gave me a playfully superior smile: "We are apt to think ourselves the discoverers of every country where we chance to be set down; and so Adam thought he was the first man on the earth, though his sons went out and found cities where they learned the arts of civilization. So birth, and love, and death, never cease to be miracles to us, notwithstanding the millions who have been born, and loved, and died, before our experience began."

"But how did it happen," I urged, unable to repress my curiosity, "that you lived here, in this place, years ago? That seems so strange to me."

"My parents brought me here when a little child. It is a common enough history. My mother was an enthusiast with brain, who joined her fortunes to those of an enthusiast without brain, and emigrated to this coast, when it was an Indian country, in the vain hope of doing good to the savages. They only succeeded in doing harm to themselves, and indirectly, harm to the savages also. The spirit of the man became embittered, and the mean traits of his nature asserted themselves, and wreaked their malice, as is customary with mean natures, on the nearest or most inoffensive object. My poor mother! Maternity was marred for you by fear and pain and contempt; and whatever errors your child has fallen into, were an evil inheritance that only years of suffering and discipline could eradicate."

As Mrs. Sancy pronounced the last sentence, she seemed for the moment to have forgotten my presence, and stood, looking off over the calm grey sea, with absent unrecognizing gaze. After a brief silence she turned to me with a smile: "Pardon my mental desertion. It is not good to talk of our own lives. We all become Adams again, and imagine ourselves sole in the universe."

On this hint I changed the conversation, and we returned to the hotel to lunch, after which, I saw no more of Mrs. Sancy for that day.

That afternoon, my correspondent, Mr. Kittredge arrived; and as it was bright and sunny after the fog, we took a boat, and pulled along under the alders that shade the Neah-can-a-cum. It was there that I listened to this story:

"While I was still a young man, nearly fifteen years ago, I floated on this stream, as we are doing to-day. My companion was a young girl whom I shall call Teresa. She was very young, I remember now with sorrow, and very beautiful; though beautiful is not so much the word to describe her as charming—magnetic, graceful, intelligent. A lithe, rather tall figure, a high-bred, sensitive, fine face, and pleasing manners. She seemed older than she really was, on account of her commanding physique and distinguished manner.

"I will not go over the details of our acquaintance, which ripened rapidly into love;—so I thought. This was a new country then, even more emphatically that it is now; new with the charm of novelty—not new because it had ceased to progress, as is now the case. Scattered around here within a radius of a dozen miles were half-a-dozen other young men like myself, who had immigrated to the far west, in the spirit of romantic adventure; and once here, were forced to do whatever came to our hands to gain a subsistence. I lived on a farm which I improved, keeping house quite by myself, and spending my leisure hours in study. Of course, the other young men, similarly situated, often visited me, and we usually talked over authors, or such questions of the day as we were familiar with or interested in.

"But one evening love was the theme of our conversation, and incidently, Teresa's name was mentioned among us. I don't know who first uttered it, but I observed at once, that the faces of all three of my companions betrayed an interest too strong and too peculiar to be attributed to an ordinary acquaintanceship with the subject of our remarks. For myself, I felt my own face flushing hotly, as a horrible suspicion seized my consciousness, becoming on the instant, conviction too painful to endure.

"You being a woman, cannot imagine the situation. I believed myself to be Teresa's accepted lover; and so I knew intuitively, did all my three companions; their faces revealing their thoughts to me, as did mine to them. Whatever you women do in the presence of your rivals, I know not. Men rage. It is not often, either, that a man encounters more than one rival at a time. But three!—each of us poor rivals saw three rivals before him. Whatever of friendship had hitherto existed among us was forgotten in the extreme anguish of the moment, and we sat glaring at each other in silence, with heaving chests and burning brows.

"All but Charlie Darling—darling Charlie, we used to call him—his face was deathly white, and his eyes glowed like a panther's in the dark. Yet he was the first to recover himself. 'Boys,' said he, 'we ought not to have brought a lady's name into the discussion; but since Teresa's has been mentioned, we may as well have an understanding. I consider the young lady as engaged to me, and you will please remember that fact when you are talking of her.'

"He said it bravely, proudly, though his lip trembled a little, but he eyed us unflinchingly. No one replied for some moments. Then Tom Allen, a big clumsy, good-hearted, but conceited fellow, lifted his eyes slowly, and answered with a hysterical laugh: 'You may be her darling Charlie, but I'll be d——d if I am not to be her husband!'

"This was the match to the powder. Charlie, myself, and Harry King, each sprang simultaneously forward, as if we meant to choke poor Tom for his words. Again Charlie was the first to use reason:

"'Hold, boys;' cried he hoarsely; 'let us take a little time to reflect. Two of us have declared ourselves to be engaged to Teresa. Let us hear if she contemplates marrying King and Kittredge, also. What do you say, King?'

"'I say yes!' thundered King, bending his black brows, and bringing down his fist on the table by which he stood.

"'And I say, I contemplate marrying her,' was my answer to Charlie's challenge.

"Charlie flung himself into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. The action touched some spring in our ruder natures which responded in sympathy for our favorite, and had the effect to calm us, in manner at least. I motioned the others to sit down, and addressed myself to Charlie Darling. 'See here, Charlie?' I said, 'it seems that Teresa has been playing us false. A girl who could be engaged to four young men at once cannot be worth the regards of any of us. Let us investigate the matter, and if she is truly guilty of such falsehood, let us one and all quit her forever without a word of explanation. What do you say? do you agree to that?'

"'How are you going to investigate?' asked Tom Allen, roughly. 'Have not we each declared that she was committed to us individually, and what more can be said?'

"'It appears incredible to me that any girl, much less a girl like Teresa, could so compromise her self-respect as to encourage four suitors, each in such a manner as that he expected to marry her. It is so strange that I cannot believe it, except each man swears to his statement. Can we all swear to it?'

"I laid my little pocket-bible on the table, and set the example of taking an oath to the effect that Teresa had encouraged me to believe that she meant to marry me. King and Allen followed with a similar oath. Charlie Darling was the last to take the oath; but as he did so, a gleam of gladness broke over his pale, handsome face; for he could word his oath differently from ours. 'I swear before these witnesses and Almighty God,' said Charlie, 'that Teresa Bryant is my promised wife.'

"'That takes the wind out of our sails,' remarked Allen.

"'Do you allow other men to kiss your promised wife?' asked King, with a sneer.

"Charlie sprang at King, and had his hand on his throat in an instant; but Allen and I interfered to part them. It was no difficult matter, for Darling, excited as he was, felt the force of my observations on the quarrel. I said: 'Shall a trifling girl make us enemies, when she has so behaved that no one of us can trust her. You, Darling, do not, cannot have confidence in her promise, after all you have this night learned. You had best accept my first suggestion, and join with the rest of us in renouncing her forever and at once.'

"'That I will not,' broke out King, vehemently. 'Her word is no better than her acts, and I have as much right to her as Charlie Darling, or either of you, and I'll not give up the right to a man of you.'

"'We'll have to fight a four-cornered duel,' remarked Tom Allen, beginning to see the ludicrous side of the affair. 'Shall we choose up, two on a side?'

"'I will withdraw my pretensions,' I reiterated, 'if the others will do so, or even if King and Allen will quit the field to Charlie, who feels himself bound by Teresa's promise to him.'

"'I have said I would not withdraw,' replied King, sullenly. And thus we contended, hot-browed and angry-voiced, for more than an hour. Then rough but practical Tom proposed a scheme, which was no less than to compel Teresa to decide between us. After long deliberation, an agreement was entered into, and I hope I shall not shock you too much when I tell you what it was."

Kittredge paused, and looked at me doubtingly. I glanced aside at the over-hanging trees, the glints of sunshine on the bank, a brown bird among the leaves, at anything, rather than him, for he was living over again the excitement of that time, and his face was not pleasant to study. After a little waiting, I answered:

"I must know the remainder of the story, since I know so much; what did you agree upon?"

"A plan was laid by which Teresa should be confronted with her four lovers, and forced to explain her conduct. To carry out our design it was necessary to use artifice, and I was chosen as the one who should conduct the affair. I invited her to accompany me to a neighboring farm-house to meet the young folks of the settlement. There was nothing unusual in this, as in those primitive times great latitude was granted to young people in their social intercourse. To mount her horse and ride several miles to a neighbor's house with a single escort, not to return until far into the night, was the common privilege of any young lady, and therefore there was no difficulty about obtaining either her consent or that of her parents to my proposition.

"We set off just at sunset, riding along the beach some distance, admiring the gorgeous western sky, the peaceful sea, and watching the sand-pipers skating out on the wet sands after every receding wave. I had never seen Teresa more beautiful, more sparkling, or more fascinating in every way; and my heart grew 'very little' as the Indians say. It was impossible to accuse her even in my thoughts, while under that bewitching influence. She was so full of life and vivacity that she did not observe the forced demeanor I wore, or if she did, had too much tact to seem to do so. As for me, guarded both by my hidden suspicions and by my promise to my friends, I uttered no word of tenderness or admiration with my tongue, whatever my eyes may have betrayed.

"The road we were going led past my house. When we were almost abreast of it I informed Teresa that there were some of our friends waiting for us there, and invited her to alight. Without suspicion she did so.——Don't look at me that way, if you can help it. It was terribly mean of us fellows, as I see it now. It looked differently then; and we had none of us seen much of the world and were rude in our notions of propriety.

"When she came inside of the house and saw only three men in place of the girls of her acquaintance she expected to meet, she cast a rapid, surprised glance all round, blushed, asked, 'where are the girls?'—all in the most natural manner. There was positively nothing in her deportment to betray a guilty conscience. I recognized that, and so, I could see, did Darling. He made haste to hand her a chair, which she declined, still looking about her with a puzzled, questioning air. I was getting nervous already over my share in the business, and so plunged at once into explanation.

"'Teresa,' I said, 'we four fellows have made a singular discovery, recently, to the effect that we each believed himself to be your accepted lover. We have met together to hear your explanation. Is there a man in the house you are engaged to?"

"She gave one quick, scrutinizing glance at our faces, and read in them that we were in earnest. Indeed, the scene would have given scope to the genius of a Hogarth. Alternate red and white chased each other in quick succession over her brow, cheeks, neck. Her eyes scintillated, and her chest heaved.

"'Please answer us, Teresa,' said Darling, after a most painful silence of a minute, which seemed an hour.

"She raised her flashing eyes to his, and her tones seemed to stab him as she uttered, 'You? you too?' Then gathering up her riding-skirt, she made haste to leave us, but found the door guarded by Tom Allen. When she saw that she was really a prisoner among us, alarm seized her, and woman-like, she began to cry, but not passionately or humbly. Her spirit was still equal to the occasion, and she faced us with the tears running over her cheeks.

"'If there is a man among you with a spark of honor, open this door! Mr. Kittredge, this is your house. Allow me to ask if I am to be retained a prisoner in it, or what you expect to gain by my forcible detention?"

"Tom Allen whispered something unheard by any save her, and she struck at him with her riding-whip. This caused both Darling and myself to interpose, and I turned door-keeper while Allen retreated to the other side of the room with rather a higher color than usual on his lumpish face. All this while—not a long while, at all—King had remained in sullen silence, scowling at the proceedings. At this juncture, however, he spoke:

"'Boys,' said he, 'this joke has gone far enough, and if you will permit us to take our leave, I will see Miss Bryant safe home.'

"Involuntarily she turned toward the only one who proffered help; but Darling and I were too angry at the ruse to allow him to succeed, and stood our ground by the door. 'You see, Teresa, how it is,' continued King, glancing at us defiantly: 'these fellows mean to keep you a prisoner in this house until they make you do and say as they please.'

"'What is it you wish me to do and say?" asked Teresa, with forced composure.

"'We wish you to state,' said I, hoarsely, 'whether or not you are or have been engaged to either of us. We want you to say it because we are all candidates for your favor, and because there is a dispute among us as to whose claim is the strongest. It will put an end to our quarrel, and secure to you the instant return of your liberty, if you will declare the truth.'

"At that she sank down on a chair and covered her face with her hands. After a little time she gathered courage and looked up at Darling and me. I observed, even then, that she took no notice of the others. 'If I am promised to either of you, you know it. But this I say now: if I were a hundred times promised, I would break that promise after such insult as you have all offered me this evening. Let me go!'

"What Charlie Darling suffered all through the interview had been patent to each of us. When she delivered his sentence in tones so determined, a cry that was a groan escaped his colorless lips. To say that I did not writhe under her just scorn would be false. Tears, few, but hot and bitter, blinded my eyes. She took no further notice of any of us, but sat waiting for her release.

"'You knew by this time,' I said, 'that you had been deceived.'

"I felt by this time that I had been a fool—a poor, coarse fool; there had been treachery somewhere, and that all together we were a villainous lot. I was only hesitating about how to get out of the scrape decently, when Darling spoke in a voice that was hardly recognizable:

"'Teresa, we were engaged; I told these others so before; but they would not believe me. On the contrary, each one claims to have received such encouragement from you as to entitle him to be considered your favored lover. Hard as it was for me to believe such falsehood possible to you, two of these claimants insisted upon their rights against mine, and they overruled my judgment and wishes to such a degree that I consented to this trial for you. It has resulted in nothing except shame to us and annoyance to you! I beg your pardon. More I will not say to-night.'

"Then she rose up and faced us all again with burning cheeks and flashing eyes. 'If any other man says I have given him a promise, or anything amounting to a promise, he lies. To Tom Allen I have always been friendly, and have romped with him at our little parties; but to-night he grossly insulted me, and I will never speak to him again. As to Harry King, I was friendly with him, too, until about a fortnight ago he presumed to kiss me rudely, in spite of resistance, since which time I have barely recognized him. If Mr. Kittredge says I have made him any promises, he is unworthy of the great respect I have always had for him;' and with that last word she broke down, and sobbed as if her heart would break. But it was only for a few minutes that she cried—she was herself again before we had recovered our composure.

"'What was it Tom Allen said to you?' asked Charlie, when her tears were dried.

"'He said he would have me, if the rest did cast me off. Thank you,' with a mocking courtesy to Allen. 'It is fortunate for you—and for you all, that I have no "big brother."'

"'I beg you will believe no "big brother" could add to my punishment,' Charlie answered; and I felt included in the confession. Then he offered to see her home without more delay, but she declined any escort whatever, only requesting us to remain where we were until she had been gone half an hour; and rode off into the moonlight and solitude unattended, with what feelings in her heart God knows. We all watched her until she was hidden from sight by the shadows of a grove of pines, and I still remember the shudder with which I saw her plunge recklessly into the gloom—manlike, careful about her beautiful body, and not regarding her tender girl heart."

"That must have been a pleasant half hour for you," I could not help remarking.

"Pleasant! yes; we were like a lot of devils chained. That night dissolved all friendships between any two of us, except between Darling and me; and that could never be quite the same again, for had I not shown him that I believed myself a favored rival? though I afterwards pretended to impute my belief to vanity."

"How did you account to yourself for the delusion? Had she not flirted, as it is called, with you?"

"She had certainly caused me to be deluded, innocently or otherwise, into a belief that she regarded me with peculiar favor; and I had been accustomed to take certain little liberties with her, which probably seemed of far greater importance to me than they did to her; for her passional nature was hardly yet awakened, and among our primitive society there was no great restraint upon any innocent familiarities."

"What became of her after that night?—did she marry Darling?"

The answer did not come at once. Thought and feeling were with the past; and I could not bring myself to intrude the present upon it, but busied myself with the leaves and vines and mosses that I had snatched from the banks in passing, while my friend was absorbed in his silent reminiscences.

"You have not heard the saddest part of the story yet," he said at last, slowly and reluctantly. "She kept her word with each of us; ignoring Allen and King entirely; and only vouchsafing a passing word to Charlie and me. Poor Charlie was broken-hearted. He had never been strong, and now he was weak, ill; in short, fell into a decline, and died in the following year."

"Did the story never get out?"

"Not the true story. That scoundrel King spread a rumor abroad which caused much mischief, and was most cruel after what we had done to outrage her feelings in the first instance; but that was his revenge for her slight—I never knew whether she regretted Darling or not. She was so sensitive and willfully proud that she would have died herself sooner than betray a regret for any one who had offended her. Her mother died, and her father took her away with him to the Sandwich Islands. It was said he was not kind to her, especially after her 'disgrace,' as he called it."

"She never forgave you? What do you know about her subsequent history?"

"Nothing of it. But she had her revenge for what went before. After she went to the Islands I wrote her a very full and perfect confession of my fault, and the extenuating circumstances, and offered her my love, with the assurance that it had always been hers. What do you think she wrote me in return? Only this: that once she had loved me; that she had but just made the discovery that she loved me, and not Charlie Darling, when we mutually insulted her as we did, and forced her to discard both of us; for which she was not now sorry."

"After all, she was not an angel," I said, laughing lightly, to his embarrassment.

"But to think of using a girl of sixteen like that!"

"You are in a self-accusing mood to-day. Let us talk of our neighbors. Bad as that practice is, I believe it is better than talking about ourselves:—Mrs. Sancy thinks so, I know?"

"Who is Mrs. Sancy?"

"I will introduce you to-morrow."

Next to being principal in a romantic affaire de coeur is the excitement of being an interested third party. In consonance with this belief I laid awake most of the night imagining the possible and probable "conclusion of the whole matter." I never doubted that Mrs. Sancy was Teresa, nor that she was more fascinating at thirty-one than she had been at sixteen: but fifteen years work great changes in the intellectual and moral person, and much as I desired to play the part of Fate in bringing these two people together, I was very doubtful about the result. But I need not have troubled myself to assume the prerogative of Fate, which by choosing its own instruments saved me all responsibility in the matter.

As Mr. Kittredge messed with a party of military officers, and was off on an early excursion to unknown localities, I saw nothing of him the following morning. We were to ride on the beach after lunch, returning on the turn of the tide to see the bathers. Therefore no opportunity seemed likely to present itself before evening for the promised introduction.

The afternoon proved fine, and we were cantering gaily along in the fresh breeze and sunshine, when another party appeared, advancing from the opposite direction, whom I knew to be Mrs. Sancy, her little daughter Isabelle, and the Kanaka servant. The child and servant were galloping hard, and passed us with a rush. But the lady seemed in a quieter mood, riding easily and carelessly, with an air of pre-occupation. Suddenly she too gave her horse whip and rein, and as she dashed past I heard her exclaim, "The quicksands! the quicksands!"

Instinctively we drew rein, turned, and followed. We rode hard for a few minutes, without overtaking her; then slackened our speed on seeing her come up with the child, and arrest the race which had so alarmed her.

"There are no quicksands in this direction;" was the first remark of Kittredge when we could speak.

"What should make her think so?"

"There were quicksands there a number of years ago, and by her manner she must have known it then."

"And by the same token," I replied, "she cannot have been here since the change."

"Who is she?"

"My friend, Mrs. Sancy."

"Where is she from?"

"From the quicksands;" I replied evasively, as I saw the lady approaching us.

"I fear you have shared my fright," she said, as soon as she came within speaking distance. "When I used to be familiar with these sands there was a dangerous spot out there; but I perceive time has effaced it, as he does so many things;" smiling, and bowing to my escort.

"There are some things time never effaces, even from the sands," returned Kittredge, growing visibly pale.

"That is contrary to the poets," laughingly she rejoined; "but I believe the poets have been superseded by the scientists, who prove everything for you by a fossil."

I could not help watching her to learn how much or how little recognition there was in her face. The color came and went, I could perceive; but whether with doubt or certainty I could not determine. I felt I ought to introduce them, but shrunk from helping on the denouement in that way. In my embarrassment I said nothing. We were now approaching the vicinity of the bathing-houses, and seeing the visitors collecting for the bath, an excuse was furnished for quickening our paces. Mrs. Sancy bowed and left us. Mr. Kittredge seemed to have lost the power of speech.

Fifteen minutes after I was sitting on some drift-wood, watching the pranks of the gayest of the crowd as they "jumped the rollers," when Mrs. Sancy came out of a dressing-room, followed by her Kanaka with a surf-board. Her bathing-dress was very jaunty and becoming, and her skill as a swimmer drew to her a great deal of attention. To swim out and float in on the rollers seemed to be to her no more of a feat than it would be to a sea-gull, she did it so easily and gracefully. But to-day something went wrong with her. Either she was too warm from riding, or her circulation was disturbed by the meeting with Kittredge, or both; at all events the second time she swam out she failed to return. The board slipped away from her, and she sank out of sight.

While I gazed horror-stricken, scarce understanding what had taken place, a man rushed past me in his bathing clothes, running out to where the water was deep enough to float him, and striking out rapidly from there. I could not recognize him in that dress, but I knew it was Kittredge. Fate had sent him. The incoming tide kept her where she sank, and he soon brought her to the surface and through the surf to the beach. I spread my cloak on the sand, and, wrapping her in it, began rubbing and rolling her, with the assistance of other ladies, for resuscitation from drowning.

In three minutes more Kittredge was kneeling by my side with a brandy-flask, administering its contents drop by drop, and giving orders. "It is congestion," said he. "You must rub her chest, her back, her hands and feet; so, so. She will die in your hands if you are not quick. For God's sake, work fast!"

By his presence of mind she was saved as by a miracle. When she was removed to her lodgings, and able to converse, she asked me who it was that had rescued her.

"Mr. Kittredge," I said.

"The same I met on the beach?"

"The same."

She smiled in a faint, half-dreaming way, and turned away her face. She thought I did not know her secret.

I am not going to let my hero take advantage of the first emotion of gratitude after a service, to mention his wishes in, as many story-tellers do. I consider it a mean advantage; besides Mr. Kittredge did not do it. In fact, he absented himself for a week. When he returned, I introduced him formally to Mrs. Sancy, and we three walked together down to the beach, and seated ourselves on a white old cottonwood that had floated out of the Columbia river, and been cast by the high tides of winter above the shelving sands.

We were rather a silent party for a few minutes. In his abstraction, Mr. Kittredge reached down and traced a name in the sand with the point of my parasol stick—TERESA.

Then, seeing the letters staring at him, he looked up at her, and said, "I could not brush them out if I would. Time has failed to do that." Her gaze wandered away, out to sea, up towards the Capes, down toward the Head; and a delicate color grew upon her cheek. "It has scarcely changed in fifteen years," she said. "I did not count on finding all things the same."

With that I made a pretense of leaving them, to seek shells along the beach; for I knew that fate could no longer be averted. When I returned she was aware that I possessed the secret of both, and she smiled upon me a recognition of my right to be pleased with what I saw; what I beheld seeming the prelude to a happy marriage. That night I wrote in my diary, after some comments on my relations with Mr. Kittredge:

"It is best to be off with the old love, Before you are on with the new."



AN OLD FOOL.

PART I.

The annual rain-fall on the lower Columbia River is upward of eighty inches—often almost ninety; and the greater amount of this fall is during the winter months, from November to March, generally the least intermittent in December. I mention this climatic fact, the better to be understood in attempting to describe a certain December afternoon in the year 186-.

It lacked but two days of Christmas, and the sun had not shone out brightly for a single hour in three weeks. On this afternoon the steady pour from the clouds was a strong reminder of the ancient deluge. Between the rain itself and the mist which always accompanies the rain-fall in Oregon, the world seemed nearly blotted out. Standing on the wharf at Astoria, the noble river looked like a great gray caldron of steaming water, evaporating freely at 42 deg.. The lofty highlands on the opposite shore had lost all shape, or certain altitude. The stately forest of firs along their summits were shrouded in ever-changing masses of whitish-gray fog. Nothing could be seen of the light-house on the headland at the mouth of the river; nothing of Tongue Point, two miles above Astoria; and only a dim presentment of the town itself, and the hills at the back of it. Even the old Astorians, used to this sort of weather and not disliking it, having little to do in the winter time, and being always braced up by sea-airs that even this fresh-water flood could not divest of their tonic flavor—these old sea-dogs, pilots, fishermen, and other amphibia, were constrained at last to give utterance to mild growls at the persistent character of the storm.

A crowd of these India-rubber clad, red-cheeked, and, alas! too often red-nosed old men of the sea, had taken shelter in the Railroad Saloon—called that, apparently, because there was no railroad then within hundreds of miles—and were engaged in alternate wild railings at the weather, reminiscences of other storms, and whisky-drinking; there being an opinion current among these men that water-proof garments alone did not suffice to keep out the all-prevailing wet.

"If 'twant that we're so near the sea, with a good wide sewage of river to carry off the water, we should all be drownded; thet's my view on't," said Rumway, a bar pilot, whose dripping hat-rim and general shiny appearance gave point to his remark.

"You can't count on the sea to befriend you this time, Captain. Better git yer ark alongside the wharf; fur we're goin' to hev the Columbia runnin' up stream to-night, sure as you're born."

"Hullo! Is that you, Joe Chillis? What brought you to town in this kind o' weather? And what do you know about the tides?—that's my business, I calculate."

"Mebbe it is; and mebbe a bar pilot knows more about the tides nor a mountain man. But there'll be a rousin' old tide to-night, and a sou'wester, to boot; you bet yer life on that!"

"I'll grant you thet a mountain man knows a heap thet other men don't. But I'll never agree thet he can tell me anything about my business. Take a drink, Joe, and then let's hear some o' your mountain yarns."

"Thankee; don't keer ef I do. I can't stop to spin yarns, tho', this evenin'. I've got to git home. It won't be easy work pullin' agin the tide an hour or two from now."

"What's your hurry?" "A story—a story!" "Let's make a night of it." "O, come, Joe, you are not wanted at home. Cabin won't run away; wife won't scold." "Stop along ov us till mornin';" were the various rather noisy and ejaculatory remarks upon Chillis's avowed intention of abandoning good and appreciative company, without stopping to tell one of his ever-ready tales of Indian and bear fighting in the Rocky Mountains thirty years before.

"Why, you ain't goin' out again till you've shaken off the water, Joe. You're dripping like a Newfoundland;" said Captain Rumway, as Chillis put down his empty glass, and turned toward the door, which he had entered not five minutes before. This thoughtfulness for his comfort, however, only meant, "Stay till you've taken another drink, and then maybe you will tell us a story;" and Chillis knew the bait well enough to decline it.

"Thankee, Captain. One bucketful more or less won't make no difference. I'm wet to the skin now. Thank ye all, gentlemen; I've got business to attend to this evenin'. Have any of you seen Eb Smiley this arternoon?"—looking back, with his hand on the door-knob. "I'd like to speak to him afore I leave, ef you can tell me whar to find him."

"You'll find him in there," answered the bar-tender, crooking his thumb toward a room leading out of the saloon, containing a tumbled single-bed and a wooden settee, besides various masculine bijouterie in the shape of boots, old and new, clean and dirty; candle and cigar ends; dusty bits of paper on a stand, the chief ornament of which was a black-looking derringer; coats, vests, fishing-tackle; and cheap prints, adorning the walls in the wildest disregard of effect—except, indeed, the effect aimed at were chaos.

Into this apartment Chillis unceremoniously thrust himself through the half-open door, frowning as darkly as his fine and pleasant features would admit of, and muttering to himself, "Damme, I thought as much."

On the wooden settee reclined a man thirty years his junior—Chillis was over sixty, though he did not look it—sleeping the heavy, stupid sleep of intoxication. The old hunter did not stand upon ceremony, nor hesitate to invade the sleeper's privacy, but marched up to the settee, his ragged old blanket-coat dripping tiny streams from every separate tatter, and proceeded at once roughly to arouse the drunken man by a prolonged and vigorous shaking.

"Wha'er want? Lemme 'lone," grumbled Smiley, only dimly conscious of what was being said or done to him.

"Get up, I say. Get up, you fool! and come along home. Your wife is needin' ye. Go home and take care of her and the boy. Come along—d'ye hear?"

But the sleeper's brain was impervious to sound or sense. He only muttered, in a drowsy whisper, "Lemme 'lone," a few times, and went off into a deeper stupor than before.

"You miserable cuss," snarled Chillis, in his wrath, "be d——d to you, then! Drink yerself to death, ef you want to—the sooner the better;" and, with this parting adjuration, and an extra shake, the old mountain man, who had drank barrels of alcohol himself with comparative immunity from harm, turned his back upon this younger degenerate victim of modern whisky, and strode out of the room and the house, without stopping to reply to the renewed entreaties of his friends to remain and "make a night of it."

Making directly for the wharf, where his boat was moored, half filled with water, he hastily bailed it out, pushed off, and, dropping the oars into the row-locks, bent to the work before him; for the tide was already beginning to run up, and the course he had to take brought him dead against it for the first two or three miles, after which the tide would be with him, and, if there should not be too much sea, the labor of impelling the boat would be materially lessened.

The lookout from a small boat was an ugly one at three o'clock of this rainy December afternoon. A dense, cold fog had been rolling in from the sea for the last half hour, and the wind was rising with the tide. Under the shelter of the hills at the foot of which Astoria nestled, the wind did not make itself felt; but once past "The Point," and in the exposed waters of Young's Bay, the south-westers had a fair sweep of the great river, of which the bay is only an inlet. One of these dreaded storms was preparing to make itself felt, as Chillis had predicted, and as he now saw by the way in which the mist was being blown off the face of the river, and the "white-caps" came instead. Before he arrived off the Point he laid down his oars, and, taking out of his coat-pocket a saturated yellow cotton handkerchief, proceeded to tie his old soft felt hat down over his ears, and otherwise make ready for a struggle with wind and water—neither of them adversaries to be trifled with, as he knew.

Not a minute too soon, either; for, just when he had resumed the oars, the boat, having drifted out of her course, was caught by a wave and a blast on its broadside, and nearly upset.

"Steady, little gal," said Chillis, bringing his boat round, head to the wind. "None o' your capers now. Thar is serious work on hand, an' I want you to behave better'n ever you did afore. It's you an' me, an' the White Rose, this time, sure," and he pressed his lips together grimly, and peered out from under his bent old hat at the storm which was driving furiously against his broad breast, and into his white, anxious face, almost blinding and strangling him. His boat was a small one—too small for the seas of the lower Columbia—but it was trim and light, and steered easily. Besides, the old mountaineer was a skilled oarsman, albeit this accomplishment was not a part of the education of American hunters and trappers, as it was of the French voyageurs. Keeping his little craft head to the wind, he took each wave squarely on the prow, and with a powerful stroke of the oars cut through it, or sprang over it, and then made ready for the next. Meanwhile, the storm increased, the rain driving at an angle of 45 deg., and in sheets that flapped smotheringly about him like wet blankets, and threatened to swamp his boat without assistance from the waves. It was growing colder, too, and his sodden garments were of little service to protect him from the chill that comes with a south-wester; nor was the grip of the naked hands upon the oars stimulating to the circulation of his old blood through the swollen fingers.

But old Joe Chillis had a distinct comprehension of the situation, and felt himself to be master of it. He had gone over to Astoria that day, not to drink whisky and tell stories, but to do a good turn for the "White Rose." Failing in his purpose, he was going back again, at any cost, to make up for the miscarriage of that effort. Death itself could not frighten him; for what was the Columbia in a storm to the dangers he had passed through in years of hunting and trapping in the Rocky Mountains? He had seemed to bear a charmed life then; he would believe that the charm had not deserted him.

But, O, how his old arms ached! and the storm freshening every minute, with two miles further to row, in the teeth of it. The tide was with him now; but the wind was against the tide, and made an ugly sea. If he only could reach the mouth of the creek before dark. If he could? Why, he must. The tide would be up so that he could not find the entrance in the dark. He worked resolutely—worked harder than ever—but he did not accomplish so much, because his strength was giving out. When he first became aware of this, he heaved a great sigh, as if his heart were broken, then pressed his lips together as before, and peered through the thick gray twilight, looking for the creek's mouth while yet there was a little light.

He was now in the very worst part of the bay, where the current from Young's River was strongest, setting out toward the Columbia, and where the wind had the fairest sweep, blowing from the coast across the low Clatsop plains. Only the tide and his failing strength were opposed to these; would they enable him to hold his own? He set his teeth harder than ever, but it was all in vain, and directly the catastrophe came. His strength wavered, the boat veered round, a sudden gust and roll of water took it broadside, and over she went, keel up, more than a mile from land.

But this was not the last of Joe Chillis—not by any manner of means. He had trapped beaver too many years to mind a ducking more or less, if he only had his strength. So, when he came up, he clutched an oar that was floating past him, and looked about for the boat. She was not far off—the tide was holding her, bobbing up and down like a cork. In a few minutes she was righted, and Chillis had scrambled in, losing his oar while doing it, and regaining it while being nearly upset again.

It had become a matter of life and death now to keep afloat, with only one oar to fight the sea with; and, though hoping little from the expedient, in such a gale—blowing the wrong way, besides—Chillis shouted for assistance in every lull of the tempest. To his own intense astonishment, as well as relief, his hail was answered.

"Where away?" came on the wind, the sound seeming to flap and flutter like a shred of torn sail.

"Off the creek, about a mile?" shouted Chillis, with those powerful lungs of his, that had gotten much of their bellows-like proportions during a dozen years of breathing the thin air of the mountains.

"All right!" was returned on the snapping, fluttering gale. After this answer, Chillis contented himself with keeping his boat right side up, and giving an occasional prolonged "Oh-whoo!" to guide his rescuers through the thickening gloom. How long it seemed, with the growing darkness, and the effort to avoid another upset! But the promised help came at last, in the shape of the mail-carrier's plunger, her trim little mast catching his eyes, shining white and bare out of the dusk. Directly he heard the voices of the mail-carrier and another.

"Where be ye? Who be ye?"

"Right here, under yer bow. Joe Chillis, you bet your life!"

"Waal, come aboard here, mighty quick. Make fast. Mind your boat; don't let her strike us. Pole off—pole off, with yer oar!"

"Mind your oars," returned Chillis; "I'll mind mine"—every word spoken with a yell.

"What was the row, out there?" asks the mail-carrier, making a trumpet of his hand.

"Boat flopped over; lost an oar," answered Chillis, keeping his little craft from flying on board by main force.

"Guess I won't go over to-night," says the carrier. "'Taint safe for the mail"—The wind snatching the word "mail" out of his mouth, and scattering it over the water as if it had been a broken bundle of letters. "I'll go back to Skippanon"—the letters flying every way again.

"Couldn't get over noways, now," shouts back Chillis, glad in his heart that he could not, and that the chance, or mischance, favored his previous designs. Then he said no more, but watched his boat, warding it off carefully until they reached the mouth of the creek and got inside, with nothing worse to contend against than the insolent wind and rain.

"This is a purty stiff tide, for this time o' day. It won't take long to pull up to Skippanon, with all this water pushin' us along. Goin' home to-night, Joe?"

"Yes, I'm goin' home, ef I can borrer an oar," said Chillis. "My house ain't altogether safe without me, in sech weather as this."

"Safer 'n most houses, ef she don't break away from her moorin's," returned the mail-carrier, laughing. "Ef I can git somebody to take my place for a week, I'm comin' up to spend it with you, an' do some shootin'. Nothin' like such an establishment as yours to go huntin' in—house an' boat all in one—go where you please, an' stay as long as you please."

"Find me an oar to git home with, an' you can come an' stay as long as the grub holds out."

"Waal, I can do that, I guess, when we git to the landin'. I keep an extra pair or two for emergencies. But it's gittin' awful black, Chillis, an' I don't envy you the trip up the creek. It's crooked as a string o' S's, an' full o' shoals, to boot."

"It won't be shoal to-night," remarked Chillis, and relapsed into silence.

In a few minutes the boat's bow touched the bank. "Mind the tiller!" called out both oarsmen, savagely. But as no one minded it, and it was too dark to see what was the matter, the mail-carrier dropped his oar, and stepped back to the stern to feel what it was.

"He's fast asleep, or drunk, or dead, I don't know which," he called to the other oarsman, as he got hold of the steering gear, and headed the boat up-stream again. His companion made no reply, and the party proceeded in silence to the landing. Here, by dint of much shouting and hallooing, the inmates of a house close by became informed of something unusual outside, and, after a suitable delay, a man appeared, carrying a lantern.

"It's you, is it?" he said to the mail-carrier. "I reckoned you wouldn't cross to-night. Who ye got in there?"

"It's Joe Chillis. We picked him up outside, about a mile off the land. His boat had been upset, an' he'd lost an oar; an' ef we hadn't gone to his assistance it would have been the last of old Joe, I guess."

"Hullo, Joe! Why don't you git up?" asked the man, seeing that Chillis did not rise, or change his position.

"By George! I don't know what's the matter with him. Give me the lantern;" and the mail-carrier took the light and flashed it over Chillis's face.

"I don't know whether he's asleep, or has fainted, or what. He's awful white, an' there's an ugly cut in his shoulder, an' his coat all torn away. Must have hurt himself tryin' to right his boat, I guess. George! the iron on the rowlock must have struck right into the flesh."

"He didn't say he was hurt," rejoined the other oarsman.

"It's like enough he didn't know it," said the man with the lantern. "When a man's in danger he doesn't feel a hurt. Poor old Joe! he wasn't drunk, or he couldn't have handled his boat at all in this weather. We must take him in, I s'pose."

Then the three men lifted him upon his feet, and, by shaking and talking, aroused him sufficiently to walk with their support to the house. There they laid him on a bench, and brought him a glass of hot whisky and water; and the women of the house gathered about shyly, gazing compassionately upon the ugly wound in the old man's delicate white flesh, white and delicate as the fairest woman's.

Presently, Chillis sat up and looked about him. "Have you got me the oars?" he said to the mail-carrier.

"You won't row any more to-night, Joe, I guess," the carrier answered, smiling grimly. "Look at your shoulder, man."

"Shoulder be d——d!" retorted Chillis. "Beg pardon, ladies; I didn't see you. Been asleep, haven't I? Perhaps, sence you seem to think I'm not fit for rowin', one of these ladies will do me the favor to help me put myself in order. Have you a piece of court-plaster, or a healing salve, ma'am?"—to the elder woman. "Ladies mostly keep sech trifles about them, I believe."

Then he straightened himself up to his magnificent height, and threw out his broad, round chest, as if the gash in his shoulder were an epaulet or a band of stars instead.

"Of course, I can do something for you," said the woman he had addressed, very cheerfully and quickly. "I have the best healing salve in all the country;" and, running away, she quickly returned with a roll of linen, and the invaluable salve.

"I must look at the wound, and see if it wants washing out. Ugh! O, dear! it is a dreadful cut, and ragged. You will have to go to the doctor with that, I'm afraid. But I'll just put this on to-night, to prevent your taking cold in it; though you will take cold, anyway, if you do not get a change of clothes;" and the good woman looked round at her husband, asking him with her eyes to offer this very necessary kindness.

"You'll stop with us to-night, Joe," said the man, in answer to this appeal, "an' the sooner you git off them wet clothes the better. I'll lend you some o' mine."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Chillis, you must get out of these wet things, and put on some of Ben's. Then you will let me get you a bit of hot supper, and go right to bed. You don't look as if you could sit up. There!" she added, as the salve was pressed gently down over the torn flesh, and heaving a deep sigh, "if you feel half as sick as I do, just looking at it, you will do well to get ready to lie down."

"Thankee, ma'am. It's worth a man's while to git hurt a leetle, ef he has a lady to take care o' him," answered Chillis, gallantly. "But I can't accept your kindness any furder to-night. Ef I can git the loan of a lantern an' a pair o' oars, it is all I ask, for home I must go, as soon as possible."

"Ben will lend you a lantern," said the mail-carrier, "an' I will lend you the oars, as I promised; but what on earth you want to go any further in this storm for, beats me."

"This storm has only jist begun, and its goin' to last three days," returned Chillis. "No use waitin' for it to quit; so, good-night to you all. I've made a pretty mess o' your floor," he added, turning to glance at the little black puddles that had drained out of his great spongy blanket coat, and run down through his leaky boots on to the white-scoured boards of the kitchen; then, glancing from them to the mistress of the house—"I hope you'll excuse me." And with that he opened the door quickly, and shut himself out into the tempest once more, making his way by the lantern's aid to the boat-house at the landing, where he helped himself to what he needed, and was soon pulling up the creek. Luckily there was no current against him, for it was sickening work making the oar-stroke with that hurt in his shoulder.

He could see by the light of the lantern, which he occasionally held aloft, that the long grass of the tide-marsh was already completely submerged, the immense flats looking like a sea, with the wind driving the water before it in long rolls, or catching it up and flirting it through the air in spray and foam. His only guide to his course was the scattering line of low willows whose tops still bent and shook above the flood, indicating the slightly raised banks of the creek, everything more distant being hidden in the profound darkness which brooded over and seemed a part of the storm. But even with these landmarks he wandered a good deal in his reckoning, and an hour or more had elapsed before his watchful eyes caught the gleam of what might have been a star reflected in the ocean.

"Thank God!" he whispered, and pulled a little faster toward that spark of light.

In ten minutes more, he moored his boat to the hitching-post in front of a tiny cottage, from whose uncurtained window the light of a brisk wood-fire was shining. As the chain clanked in the ring, the door opened, and a woman and child looked out.

"Is that you, Eben?" asked the woman, in an eager voice, made husky by previous weeping. "I certainly feared you were drowned." Then seeing, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, that the figure still lingering about the boat was not her husband's she shrank back, fearing the worst.

"I'm sorry I'm not the one you looked for, Mrs. Smiley," answered Chillis, standing on the bit of portico, with its dripping honeysuckle vines swinging in the wind; "but I'm better than nobody, I reckon, an' Smiley will hardly be home to-night. The bay's awful rough, an' ef I hadn't started over early, I shouldn't have ventured, neither. No, you needn't look for your husband to-night, ma'am."

"Will you not come in by the fire, Mr. Chillis?" asked the woman, hesitatingly, seeing that he seemed waiting to be invited.

"Thankee. But I shall spile your floor, ef I do. I'm a perfect sponge, not fit to come near a lady, nohow. I thought," he added, as he closed the door and advanced to the hearth, "that I would jest stop an' see ef I could do anything for you, seein' as I guessed you'd be alone, and mebbe afeard o' the storm an' the high tide. Ladies mostly is afeard to be alone at sech times"—untying the yellow cotton handkerchief and throwing his sodden hat upon the stone hearth.

"Do you think there is any danger?" asked Mrs. Smiley, embarrassed, yet anxious. She stood in the middle of the room, behind him, with that irresolute air an inexperienced person has in unexpected circumstances.

He turned around with his back to the blaze, while a faint mist of evaporation began to creep out all over him, and occasionally to dart out in slender streams and float up the wide chimney.

"There's no danger now, an' mebbe there won't be any. But the tide will not turn much afore midnight, an' it's higher now than it generally is when it is full."

"What's that?" cried Willie, the boy, his senses sharpened by the mention of danger.

"It's the wind rattlin' my boat-chains," returned Chillis, smiling at the little fellow's startled looks.

"Your boat-chain!" echoed his mother, not less startled. "Was it your boat that you were fastening to the hitching-post? I thought it was your horse. Is the water up so high, then, already?"—her cheeks paling as she spoke.

"I dragged it up a little way," returned Chillis, slowly, and turning his face back to the fire. He was listening attentively, and thought he caught the sound of lapping water.

"Have you just come from Astoria?" asked Mrs. Smiley, approaching, and standing at one corner of the hearth. The fire-light shone full upon her now, and revealed a clear white face; large, dark-gray eyes, full of sadness and perplexity; a beautifully shaped head, coiled round and round with heavy twists of golden hair, that glittered in its high lights like burnished metal; and a figure at once full and lithe in its proportions, clad in a neat-fitting dress of some soft, dark material, set off with a tiny white collar and bright ribbon. It was easy to see why she was the "White Rose" to the rough old mountain man. She was looking up at him with an eager, questioning gaze, that meant, O, ever so much more than her words.

"Not quite direct. I stopped down at the landin', an' I lost a little time gittin' capsized in the bay. I left about three o'clock."

"Might not Eben have left a little later," the gray eyes added, "and have been capsized, too?"

"He wouldn't try to cross half an hour later—I'll wager my head on that. He can't get away from town to-night; an', what is worse, I don't think he can cross for two or three days. We've got our Christmas storm on hand, an' a worse one than we've had for twenty years, or I'm mistaken."

"If you thought the storm was going to be severe, why did you not warn Eben, Mr. Chillis?" The gray eyes watched him steadily.

"I did say, there would be a sou'-wester uncommon severe; but Rumway laughed at me for prophesyin' in his company. Besides, I was in a hurry to get off, myself, and wouldn't argue with 'em. Smiley's a man to take his own way pretty much, too."

"I wish you had warned him," sighed Mrs. Smiley, and turned wearily away. She left her guest gazing into the fire and still steaming in a very unsavory manner, lighted a candle, set it in the window, and opened the door to look out. What she saw made her start back with a cry of affright, and hurriedly close the door.

"Your boat is this side of the hitching-post, and the water is all around us!"

"An' it is not yet eight o'clock. I guessed it would be so."

Just then, a fearful blast shook the house, and the boat's chain clanked nearer. Willie caught his mother's hand, and shivered all over with terror. "O, mamma!" he sobbed, "will the water drown our house?"

"I hope not, my boy. It may come up and wet our warm, dry floor; but I trust it will not give us so much trouble. We do not like wet feet, do we, Willie?"

Then the mother, intent on soothing the child, sat down in the fire-light and held his curly head in her lap, whispering little cooing sentences into his ear whenever he grew restless; while her strange, unbidden guest continued to evaporate in one corner of the hearth, sitting with his hands on his knees, staring at something in the coals. There was no attempt at conversation. There had never, until this evening, been a dozen words exchanged between these neighbors, who knew each other by sight and by reputation well enough. Joe Chillis was not a man whose personal appearance—so far as clothes went—nor whose reputation, would commend him to women generally—the one being shabby and careless, the other smacking of recklessness and whisky. Not that any great harm was known of the man; but that he was out of the pale of polite society even in this new and isolated corner of the earth. He had had an Indian wife in his youth; being more accustomed to the ways of her people than of his own. For nearly twenty years he had lived a thriftless, bachelor existence, known among men, and by hearsay among women, as a noted story-teller, and genial, devil-may-care, old mountain man, whose heart was in the right place, but who never drew very heavily upon his brain resources, except to embellish a tale of his early exploits in Indian-fighting, bear-killing and beaver-trapping. It was with a curious feeling of wonder that Mrs. Smiley found herself tete-a-tete with him at her own fireside; and, in spite of her anxiety about other matters, she could not help studying him a good deal, as he sat there, silent and almost as motionless as a statue; nor keep from noticing his splendid physique, and the aristocratic cut of his features; nor from imagining him as he must have been in his youth. She was absorbed for a little while, picturing this gallant young White among his Indian associates—trying to fancy how he treated his squaw wife, and whether he really cared for her as he would for a White woman; then, she wondered what kind of an experience his present life would be for any one else—herself, for instance—living most of the year on a flat-boat housed in, and hiding in sloughs, and all manner of watery, out-of-the-way places. She loved forest and stream, and sylvan shades, well enough; but not well enough for that. So a human creature who could thus voluntarily exile himself must be peculiar. But Joe Chillis did not look peculiar; he looked as alive and human as anybody—in fact, particularly alive and human just now; and it was not any eccentricity which had brought him to her this night, but a real human reason. What was the reason?

What with his mother's cooing whispers, and the passing of her light hand over his hair, Willie had fallen asleep. Mrs. Smiley lifted him in her arms and laid him on the lounge, covering him carefully, and touching him tenderly, kissing his bright curls at the last. Chillis turned to watch her—he could not help it. Perhaps he speculated about her way of living and acting, as she had speculated about his. Meantime, the tempest outside increased in fury, and the little cottage trembled with its fitful shocks.

Now that Willie was asleep, Mrs. Chillis felt a growing nervousness and embarrassment. She could not bring herself to sit down again, alone with Joe Chillis. Not that she was afraid of him—there was nothing in his appearance to inspire a dread of the man; but she wanted to know what he was there for. The sensitive nerves of the man felt this mental inquiry of her, but he would not be the first to speak; so he let her flutter about—brightening the fire, putting to right things that were right enough as they were, and making a pretense of being busied with household cares. At length, there was nothing more to do except to wind the clock, which stood on the mantel, over the hearth. Here was her opportunity. "The evening has seemed very long," she said, "but it is nine o'clock, at last."

Chillis got up, went to the door, and opened it. The boat was bumping against the floor of the tiny portico. She saw it, too, and her heart gave a great bound. Chillis came back, and sat down by the fire, looking very grave and preoccupied. With a little shiver, she sat down opposite. It was clear that he had no intention of going; and, strange as she felt the situation to be, she experienced a sort of relief that he was there. She was not a cowardly woman, nor was her guest one she would have been likely to appeal to in any peril; but, since a possible peril had come, and he was there of his own accord, she owned to herself she was not sorry. She was a woman, any way, and must needs require services of men, whoever they might be. Having disposed of this question, it occurred to her to be gracious to the man whose services she had made up her mind to accept. Glancing into his face, she noticed its pallor; and then remembered what he had said about being capsized in the bay, and that he was an old man; and then, that he might not have had any supper. All of which inspired her to say, "I beg pardon, Mr. Chillis. I presume you have eaten nothing this evening. I shall get you something, right away—a cup of hot coffee, for instance." And, without waiting to hear his faint denial, Mrs. Smiley made all haste to put her hospitable intentions into practice, and soon had spread a little table with a very appetizing array of cold meats, fruit, bread, and coffee.

While her guest, with a few words of thanks, accepted and disposed of the refreshments, Mrs. Smiley sat and gazed at the fire in her turn. The little cottage trembled, the windows rattled, the storm roared without, and—yes, the water actually lapped against the house! She started, turning to the door. The wind was driving the flood in under it. She felt a chill run through her flesh.

"Mr. Chillis, the water is really coming into the house!"

"Yes, I reckoned that it would," returned the old man, calmly, rising from the table and returning to the hearth. "That is the nicest supper I've had for these dozen years; and it has done me good, too. I was a little wore out with pullin' over the bay, agin the wind."

Mrs. Smiley looked at him curiously, and then at the water splashing in under the door. He understood her perfectly.

"A wettin' wouldn't hurt you, though it would be disagreeable, an' I should be sorry to have you put to that inconvenience. But the wind and the water may unsettle the foundation o' your house, the chimney bein' on the outside, an' no support to it. Even that would not certainly put you in danger, as the frame would likely float. But I knew, ef sech a thing should happen, an' you here alone, you would be very much frightened, an' perhaps lose your life a-tryin' to save it."

"And you came up from the landing in all this storm to take care of me?" Mrs. Smiley exclaimed, with flushing cheeks.

"I came all the way from Astoria to do it," answered Chillis, looking at the new-blown roses of her face.

"And Eben——" She checked herself, and fixed her eyes upon the hearth.

"He thought there was no danger, most likely."

"Mr. Chillis, I can never thank you!" she cried, fervently, as she turned to glance at the sleeping child.

"White Rose," he answered, under his breath, "I don't want any thanks but those I've got." Then, aloud to her: "You might have some blankets ready, in case we are turned out o' the house. The fire will be 'most sure to be put out, any way, an' you an' the boy will be cold."

Mrs. Smiley was shivering with that tenseness of the nerves which the bravest women suffer from, when obliged to wait the slow but certain approach of danger. Her teeth chattered together, as she went about her band-box of a house, collecting things that would be needed, should she be forced to abandon the shelter of its lowly roof; and, as she was thus engaged, she thought the place had never seemed so cosy as it did this wild and terrible night. She put on her rubber overshoes, tied snugly on a pretty woollen hood, got ready a pile of blankets and a warm shawl, lighted a large glass lantern (as she saw the water approaching the fireplace), and, last, proceeded to arouse Willie, and wrap him up in overcoat, little fur cap, and warm mittens; when all was done, she turned and looked anxiously at the face of her guest. It might have been a mask, for all she could learn from it. He was silently watching her, not looking either depressed or hopeful. She went up to him, and touched his sleeve. "How wet you are, still," she said, compassionately. "I had forgotten that you must have been uncomfortable after your capsize in the bay. Perhaps it is not too late to change your clothes. You will find some of Eben's in the next room. Shall I lay them out for you?"

He smiled when she touched him, a bright, warm smile, that took away ten years of his age; but he did not move.

"No," said he, "it's no use now, to put on dry clothes. It won't hurt me to be wet; I'm used to it; but I shall be sorry when this cheerful fire is out."

He had hardly spoken, when a blast struck the house, more terrific than any that had gone before it, and a narrow crack became visible between the hearth-stone and the floor, through which the water oozed in quite rapidly. Mrs. Smiley's face blanched.

"That started the house a leetle," said Chillis, lighting his lantern by the fire.

"Could we get to the landing, do you think?" asked Mrs. Smiley, springing instinctively to the lounge, where the child lay in a half-slumber.

"Not afore the tide begins to run out. Ef it was daylight, we might, by keepin' out o' the channel; but the best we can do now is to stick to the place we're in as long as it holds together, or keeps right side up. When we can't stay no longer, we'll take to the boat."

"I believe you know best, Mr. Chillis; but it's frightful waiting for one's house to float away from under one's feet, or fall about one's head. And the tide, too! I have always feared and hated the tides, they have been a horror to me ever since I came here. It seems so dreadful to have the earth slowly sinking into the sea; for that is the way it appears to do, you know."

"Yes, I remember hearin' you say you were nervous about the tides, once, when I called here to see your husband. Curious, that I often thought o' that chance sayin' o' yours, isn't it?"

Mrs. Smiley's reply was a smothered cry of terror, as another blast—sudden, strong, protracted—pushed the house still further away from the fire-place, letting the storm in at the opening; for it was from that direction that the wind came.

"Now she floats!" exclaimed Chillis. "We'll soon know whether she's seaworthy or not. I had better take a look at my boat, I reckon; for that's our last resort, in case your ark is worthless, Mrs. Smiley." He laughed softly, and stepped more vigorously than he had done, as the danger grew more certain.

"All right yet—cable not parted; ready to do us a good turn, if we need it."

"We shall not be floated off to the bay, shall we?" asked Mrs. Smiley, trying to smile too.

"Not afore the tide turns, certain."

"It seems to me that I should feel safer anywhere than here. Unseen dangers always are harder to battle with, even in imagination. I do not wish to put you to any further trouble; but I should not mind the storm and the open boat so much as seeing my house going to pieces, with me in it—and Willie."

"I've been a-thinkin'," replied Chillis, "that the house, arter all, ain't goin' to be much protection, with the water splashin' under foot, an' the wind an' rain drivin' in on that side where the chimney is took away. It's an awful pity such a neat, nice little place should come to grief, like this—a real snug little home!"

"And what else were you thinking?"—bringing him back to the subject of expedients.

"You mentioned goin' to the landin'. Well, we can't go there; for I doubt ef I could find the way in the dark, with the water over the tops of the bushes on the creek bank. Besides, in broad daylight it would be tough work, pullin' agin' the flood; an' I had the misfortin to hurt my shoulder, tryin' to right my boat in the bay, which partly disables me, I am sorry to say; for I should like to put my whole strength to your service."

"O, Mr. Chillis!—say no more, I beg. How selfish I am! when you have been so kind—with a bruise on your shoulder, and all! Cannot I do anything for you? I have liquor in the closet, if you would like to bathe with it."

"See—she moves again!" cried he, as the house swayed yet further away from the smouldering fire. "I've heard of 'abandonin' one's hearth-stone;' but I'd no idea that was the way they done it."

"I had best get the brandy, any way, I think. We may need it, if we are forced to go into the boat. But do let me do something for you now, Mr. Chillis? It seems cruel, that you have been in your wet clothes for hours, and tired and bruised besides."

"Thankee—'tain't no use!"—as she offered him the brandy-flask. "The lady down at the landin' put on a plaster, as you can see for yourself"—throwing back the corner of a cloth cape the woman had placed over his shoulders, to cover the rent in his coat. "The doctor will have to fix it up, I reckon; for it is cut up pretty bad with the iron."

Mrs. Smiley turned suddenly sick. She was just at that stage of excitement when "a rose-leaf on the beaker's brim" causes the overflow of the cup. The undulations of the water, under the floor and over it, contributed still further to the feeling; and she hurried to the lounge to save herself from falling. Here she threw herself beside Willie, and cried a little, quietly, under cover of her shawl.

"There she goes! Well, this isn't pleasant, noways," said Chillis, as the house, freed with a final crash from impediments, swayed about unsteadily, impelled by wind and water. "I was sayin', a bit ago, that we could not git to the landin', at present. There are three ways o' choosin', though, which are these: to stay where we are; to git into the boat, an' let the house take its chances; or to try to git to my cabin, where we would be safe an' could keep warm."

"How long would it take us to get to your house?" asked Mrs. Smiley, from under her shawl.

"An hour, mebbe. We should have to feel our way."

Mrs. Smiley reflected. Sitting out in an open boat, without trying to do anything, would be horrible; staying where she was would be hardly less so. It would be six or seven hours still to daylight. There was no chance of the storm abating, though the water must recede after midnight.

"Let us go," she said, sitting up. "You will not desert me, I know; and why should I keep you here all night, in anxiety and peril? Once at home, you can rest and nurse yourself."

"So be it; an' God help us!"

"Amen!"

Chillis opened the door and looked out, placing a light first in the window. Then coming back for a basin, he waded out, bailed his boat, and, unfastening the chain, hauled it alongside the doorway. Mrs. Smiley had hastily put some provisions into a tin bucket, with a cover, and some things for Willie into another, and stood holding them, ready to be stowed away.

"You will have to take the tiller," said Chillis, placing the buckets safely in the boat.

"I meant to take an oar," said she.

"If you know how to steer, it will be better for me to pull alone. Now, let us have the boy, right in the bottom here, with plenty o' blankets under and over him; the same for yourself. The lanterns—so. Now, jump in!"

"The fire is dead on the hearth," she said, looking back through the empty house, and across the gap of water showing through the broken wall. "What a horrible scene! God sent you, Mr. Chillis, to help me live through it."

"I believe he did. Are you quite ready?"

"Quite; only tell me what I must do. I wish I could help you."

"You do?" he answered; and then he bent himself to the work before him, with a sense of its responsibility which exalted it into a deed of the purest chivalry.

* * * * *

PART II.

The widow Smiley did not live on Clatsop Plains. Ever since the great storm at Christmas, when her house was carried off its foundations by the high tide, she had refused to go back to it. When the neighbors heard of her husband's death, they took her over to Astoria to see him buried, for there was no home to bring him to, and she had never returned. Smiley, they say, was drowned where he fell, in the streets of Astoria, that night of the high tide, being too intoxicated to get up. But nobody told the widow that. They said to her that he stumbled off the wharf, in the dark, and that the tide brought him ashore, and that was enough for her to know.

She was staying with the family at the landing when the news came, two days after his death. Joe Chillis brought her things down to the landing, and had them sent over to Astoria, where she decided to stay; and afterward she sold the farm and bought a small house in town, where, after two or three months, she opened a school for young children. And the women of the place had all taken to making much of Joe Chillis, in consideration of his conduct during that memorable time, and of his sufferings in consequence; for he was laid up a long while afterward with that hurt in his shoulder, and the consequences of his exposure. Mrs. Smiley always treated him with the highest respect, and did not conceal that she had a great regard for him, if he was nothing but an old mountain man, who had had a squaw wife; which regard, under the circumstances, was not to be wondered at.

Widow Smiley was young, and pretty, and smart; and Captain Rumway, the pilot, was dreadfully taken up with her, and nobody would blame her for taking a second husband, who was able and willing to provide well for her. If it was to be a match, nobody would speak a word against it. It was said that he had left off drinking on her account, and was building a fine house up on the hill, on one of the prettiest lots in town. Such was the gossip about Mrs. Smiley, a year and a half after the night of the high tide.

It was the afternoon of a July day, in Astoria; and, since we have given the reader so dismal a picture of December, let us, in justice, say a word about this July day. All day long the air had been as bright and clear as crystal, and the sun had sparkled on the blue waters of the noblest of rivers without blinding the eyes with glare, or sickening the senses with heat. Along either shore rose lofty highlands, crowned with cool-looking forests of dark-green firs. Far to the east, like a cloud on the horizon, the snowy cone of St. Helen's mountain stood up above the wooded heights of the Cascade Range, with Mount Adams peeping over its shoulder. Quite near, and partly closing off the view up the river, was picturesque Tongue Point—a lovely island of green—connected with the shore only by a low and narrow isthmus. From this promontory to the point below the town, the bank of the river was curtained and garlanded with blossoming shrubs—mock-orange, honeysuckle, spirea, aerifolia, crimson roses, and clusters of elder-berries, lavender, scarlet, and orange—everywhere, except where men had torn them away to make room for their improvements.

Looking seaward, there was the long line of white surf which marks where sea and river meet, miles away; with the cape and light-house tower standing out in sharp relief against the expanse of ocean beyond, and sailing vessels lying off the bar waiting for Rumway and his associates to come off and show them the entrance between the sand-spits. And nearer, all about on the surface of the sparkling river, snowy sails were glancing in the sun, like the wings of birds that skim beside them. It is hard, in July, to believe it has ever been December.

Perhaps Mrs. Smiley was thinking so, as from her rose-embowered cottage-porch on the hill, not far from Captain Rumway's new house, she watched the sun sinking in a golden glory behind the light-house and the cape. Her school dismissed for the week, and her household tasks completed, she was taking her repose in a great sleepy-hollow of a chair, near enough to the roses to catch their delicate fragrance. Her white dress looked fresh and dainty, with a rose-colored ribbon at the throat, and a bunch of spirea; sea-foam, Willie called it, in her gleaming, braided hair. Her great gray eyes, neither sad nor bright, but sweetly serious, harmonized the delicate pure tones that made up her person and her dress, leaving nothing to be desired, except, perhaps, a suggestion of color in the clear, white oval of her cheeks. And that an accident supplied.

For, while the sun yet sent lances of gold up out of the sea, the garden gate clicked, and Captain Rumway came up the walk. He was a handsome man, of fine figure, with a bronzed complexion, dark eyes, and hair always becomingly tossed up, owing to a slight wave in it, and a springy quality it had of its own. The sun and sea-air, while they had bronzed his face, had imparted to his cheeks that rich glow which is often the only thing lacking to make a dark face beautiful. Looking at him, one could hardly help catching something of his glow, if only through admiration of it. Mrs. Smiley's sudden color was possibly to be accounted for on this ground.

"Good evening, Mrs. Smiley," he said, lifting his hat gracefully. "I have come to ask you to walk over and look at my house. No, thank you; I will not come in, if you are ready for the walk. I will stop here and smell these roses while you get your hat."

"Is your house so nearly completed, then?" she asked, as they went down the walk together.

"So nearly, that I require a woman's opinion upon the inside arrangements; and there is no one whose judgment upon such matters I value more than yours."

"I suppose you mean to imply that I am a good housekeeper? But there is great diversity of taste among good housekeepers, Mr. Rumway."

"Your taste will suit me—that I am sure of. I did not see Willie at home; is he gone away?" he asked, to cover a sudden embarrassing consciousness.

"I let him go home with Mr. Chillis, last evening, but I expect him home to-night."

"Poor old Joe! He takes a great deal of comfort with the boy. And no wonder!—he is a charming child, worthy such parentage,"—glancing at his companion's face.

"I am glad when anything of mine gives Mr. Chillis pleasure," returned Mrs. Smiley, looking straight ahead. "I teach Willie to have a great respect and love for him. It is the least we can do."

Rumway noticed the inclusive we, and winced. "He is a strange man," he said, by way of answer.

"A hero!" cried Mrs. Smiley firmly.

"And never more so then when in whisky," added Rumway, ungenerously.

"Younger and more fortunate men have had that fault," she returned, thinking of Eben.

"And conquered it," he added, thinking of himself.

"Here we are. Just step in this door-way a bit and look at the view. Glorious, isn't it? I have sent for a lot of very choice shrubs and trees for the grounds, and mean to make this the prettiest place in town."

"It must be very pretty, with this view," replied Mrs. Smiley, drinking in the beauty of the scene with genuine delight.

"Please to step inside. Now, it is about the arrangement of the doors, windows, closets, and all that, I wanted advice. I am told that ladies claim to understand these things better than men."