"They ought, I am sure, since the house is alone their realm. What a charming room! So light, so airy, with such a view! and the doors and windows in the right places, too. And this cunning little porch towards the west! I'm glad you have that porch, Mr. Rumway. I have always said every house should have a sunset porch. I enjoy mine so much these lovely summer evenings."

And so they went through the house: she delighted with it, in the main, but making little suggestions, here and there; he palpitating with her praises, as if they had been bestowed on himself. And, indeed, was not this house a part of himself, having so many of his sweetest hopes built into it? For what higher proof does a man give of a worthy love then in constructing a bright and cheerful shelter for the object of it—than in making sure of a fitting home?

"It will lack nothing," she said, as they stood together again on the "sunset porch," talking of so grouping the shrubbery as not to intercept the view.

"Except a mistress," he added, turning his eyes upon her face, full of intense meaning. "With the right woman in it, it will seem perfect to me, without her, it is nothing but a monument of my folly. There is but one woman I ever want to see in it. Can you guess who it is? Will you come?"

Mrs. Smiley looked up into the glowing face bent over her, searching the passionate dark eyes with her clear, cool gaze; while slowly the delicate color crept over face and neck, as her eyes fell before his ardent looks, and she drew in her breath quickly.

"I, I do not know; there are so many things to think of."

"What things? Let me help you consider them. If you mean—"

"O, mamma, mamma!" shouted Willie, from the street. "Here we are, and I've had such a splendid time. We've got some fish for you, too. Are you coming right home?" And there, on the sidewalk, was Chillis, carrying a basket, with his hat stuck full of flowers, and as regardless as a child of the drollery of his appearance.

Mrs. Smiley started a little as she caught the expression of his face, thinking it did not comport with the holiday appearance of his habiliments, and hastened at once to obey its silent appeal. Rumway walked beside her to the gate.

"Have you no answer for me?" he asked, hurriedly.

"Give me a week," she returned, and slipped away from him, taking the basket from Chillis, and ordering Willie to carry it, while she walked by the old man's side.

"You have been lookin' at your new house?" he remarked. "You need not try to hide your secret from me. I see it in your face;" and he looked long and wistfully upon the rosy record.

"If you see something in my face, I see something in yours. You have a trouble, a new pain of some kind. Yesterday you looked forty, and radiant; this evening your face is white and drawn by suffering."

"You do observe the old man's face sometimes, then? That other has not quite blotted it out? O, my lovely lady! How sweet an' dainty you look, in that white dress. It does my old eyes good to look at you."

"You are never too ill or sad to make me pretty compliments, Mr. Chillis. Do you know, I think I have grown quite vain since I have had you to flatter me. We constitute a mutual admiration society, I'm sure."

Then she led him into the rose-covered porch, and seated him in the "sleepy-hollow;" brought him a dish of strawberries, and told him to rest while she got ready his supper.

"Rest!" he answered; "I'm not tired. Willie an' I cooked our own supper, too. So you jest put Willie to bed—he's tired enough, I guess—an' then come an' talk to me. That's all I want to-night—is jest to hear the White Rose talk."

While Mrs. Smiley was occupied with Willie—his wants and his prattle—her guest sat motionless, his head on his hand, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair. He had that rare repose of bearing which is understood to be a sign of high breeding, but in him was temperament, or a quietude caught from nature and solitude. It gave a positive charm to his manner, whether animated or depressed; a dignified, introspective, self-possessed carriage, that suited with his powerfully built, symmetrical frame, and regular cast of features. Yet, self-contained as his usual expression was, his face was capable of vivid illuminations, and striking changes of aspect, under the influence of feelings either pleasant or painful. In the shadow of the rose-vines, and the gathering twilight, it would have been impossible to discern, by any change of feature, what his meditations might be now.

"The moon is full to-night," said Mrs. Smiley, bringing out her low rocker and placing it near her friend. "It will be glorious on the river, and all the 'young folks' will be out, I suppose."

"Did not Rumway ask you to go? Don't let me keep you at home, ef he did."

"No; I am not counted among young folks any longer," returned she, with a little sigh, that might mean something or nothing. Then a silence fell between them for several minutes. It was the fashion of these friends to wait for the spirit to move them to converse, and not unfrequently a silence longer than that which was in heaven came between their sentences; but to-night there was thunder in their spiritual atmosphere, and the stillness was oppressive. Mrs. Smiley beat a tattoo with her slipper.

"Rumway asked you to marry him, did he?" began Chillis, at last, in a low and measured tone.

"Yes."

"An' you accepted him?"

"Not yet"—in a quavering adagio.

"But you will?"

"Perhaps so. I do not know"—in a firmer voice.

"Rumway is doin' well, an' he is a pretty good fellow, as men go. But he is not half the man that I was at his age—or, rather, that I might have been, ef I had had sech a motive for bein' a man as he has."

"It is not difficult to believe that, Mr. Chillis. There is heroic material in you, and, I fear, none in Mr. Rumway." She spoke naturally and cheerfully now, as if she had no sentiment too sacred to be revealed about the person in question. "But why was there no motive?"

"Why? It was my fate; there was none—that's all. I had gone off to the mountains when a lad, an' couldn't git back—couldn't even git letters from home. The fur companies didn't allow o' correspondence—it made their men homesick. When I came to be a man, I did as the other men did, took an Indian wife, an' became the father o' half-breed children. I never expected to live any other way than jest as we lived then—roamin' about the mountains, exposed to dangers continually, an' reckless because it was no use to think. But, after I had been a savage for a dozen years—long enough to ruin any man—the fur companies began to break up. The beaver were all hunted out o' the mountains. The men were ashamed to go home—Indians as we all were—an' so drifted off down here, where it was possible to git somethin' to eat, an' where there was quite a settlement o' retired trappers, missionaries, deserted sailors, and such-like Whites."

"You brought your families with you?"

"Of course. We could not leave them in the mountains, with the children, to starve. Besides, we loved our children. They were not to blame for bein' half-Indian; an' we could not separate them from their mothers, ef we had a-wished. We did the only thing we could do, under the circumstances—married the mothers by White men's laws, to make the children legitimate. Even the heads of the Hudson's Bay Company were forced to comply with the sentiment of the White settlers; an' their descendants are among the first families of Oregon. But they had money an' position; the trappers had neither, though there were some splendid men among them—so our families were looked down upon. O, White Rose! didn't I use to have some bitter thoughts in those days? for my blood was high blood, in the State where I was raised."

"I can imagine it, very easily," said Mrs. Smiley, softly.

"But I never let on. I was wild and devil-may-care. To hide my mortification, I faced it out, as well as I could; but I wasn't made, in the beginnin', for that kind o' life, an' it took away my manhood. After the country began to settle up, an' families—real White families—began to move in, I used to be nearly crazy, sometimes. Many's the day that I've rode through the woods, or over the prairies, tryin' to git away from myself; but I never said a cross word to the squaw wife. Why should I?—it was not her fault. Sometimes she fretted at me (the Indian women are great scolds); but I did not answer her back. I displeased her with my vagabond ways, very likely—her White husband, to whom she looked for better things. I couldn't work; I didn't take no interest in work, like other men."

"O, Mr. Chillis! was not that a great mistake? Would not some kind of ambition have helped to fill up the blank in your life?"

"I didn't have any—I couldn't have any, with that old Indian woman sittin' there, in the corner o' my hearth. When the crazy fit came on, I jest turned my back on home, an' mounted my horse for a long, lonely ride, or went to town and drank whisky till I was past rememberin' my trouble. But I never complained. The men I associated with expected me to amuse them, an' I generally did, with all manner o' wild freaks an' incredible stories—some o' which were truer than they believed, for I had had plenty of adventures in the mountains. White Rose, do you imagine I ever loved that squaw wife o' mine?"

"I remember asking myself such a question, that night of the storm, as you stood by the fire, so still and strange. I was speculating about your history, and starting these very queries you have answered to-night."

"But you have never asked me."

"No; how could I? But I am glad to know. Now I understand the great patience—the tender, pathetic patience—which I have often remarked in you. Only those who have suffered long and silently can ever attain to it."

"An' so people say, 'Poor old Joe!' an' they don't know what they mean, when they say it. They think I am a man without the ambitions an' passions of other men; a simple, good fellow, without too much brain, an' only the heart of a fool. But they don't know me—they don't know me!"

"How could they, without hearing what you have just told me, or without knowing you as I know you?"

"They never will know. I don't want to be pitied for my mistakes. 'Poor old Joe' is proud, as well as poor."

Mrs. Smiley sat silent, gazing at the river's silver ripples. Her shapely hands were folded in her lap; her whole attitude quiet, absorbed. Whether she was thinking of what she had heard, or whether she had forgotten it, no one could have guessed from her manner; and Chillis could not wait to know. The fountains of the deep had been stirred until they would not rest.

"Was there no other question you asked yourself about the old mountain man which he can answer? Did you never wonder whether he ever had loved at all?"

"You have made me wonder, to-night, whether, at some period of your life, you have not loved some woman of your own race and color. You must have had some opportunities of knowing white women."

"Very few. An' my pride was agin seekin' what I knew was not for me; for the woman I fancied to myself was no common white woman. White Rose, I carried a young man's heart in my bosom until I was near sixty, an' then I lost it." He put out a hand and touched one of hers, ever so lightly. "I need not tell you any more."

A silence that made their pulses seem audible followed this confession. A heavy shadow descended upon both hearts, and a sudden dreary sense of an unutterable and unalterable sorrow burdened their spirits.

After a little, "Mr. Chillis! Mr. Chillis!" wailed the woman's pathetic voice; and "O, my lovely lady!" sighed the man's.

"What shall I do? what shall I do? I am so sorry. What shall I do?"

"Tell me to go. I knew it would have to end so. I knew that Rumway would drive me to say what I ought not to say; for he is not worthy of you—no man that I know of is. Ef I was as young as he, an' had his chance, I would make myself worthy o' you, or die. But it is too late. Old Joe Chillis may starve his heart, as he has many a time starved his body in the desert. But I did love you so! O, my sweet White Rose, I did love you so! always, from the first time I saw you."

"What is that you say?" said Mrs. Smiley, in a shocked voice.

"Always, I said, from the first time I saw you. My love was true; it did not harm you. I said, 'There is such a woman as God designed for me. But it is too late to have her now. I will jest worship her humbly, a great ways off, an' say "God bless her!" when she passes; an' think o' her sweet ways when I am ridin' through the woods, or polin' my huntin'-boat up the sloughs, among the willows an' pond-lilies. She would hardly blame me, ef she knew I loved her that way.'

"But it grew harder afterwards, White Rose, when you were grateful to me, in your pretty, womanly way, an' treated me so kindly before all the world, an' let your little boy love me, an' loved me yourself—I knew it—in a gentle, friendly fashion. O, but it was sweet!—but not sweet enough, sometimes. Ef I have been crazed for the lack o' love in my younger days, I have been crazed with love since then. There have been days when I could neither work nor eat, nights when I could not sleep, for thinkin' o' what might have been, but never could be; times when I have been tempted to upset my boat in the bay, an' never try to right it. But when I had almost conquered my madness, that you might never know, then comes this Rumway, with his fine looks, an' his fine house, an' his fine professions, an' blots me out entirely; for what will old Joe be worth to Madame Rumway, or to Madame Rumway's fine husband?"

Mrs. Smiley sat thoughtful and silent a long time after this declaration of love, that gave all and required so little. She was sorry for it; but since it was so, and she must know it, she was glad that she had heard it that night. She could place it in the balance with that other declaration, and decide upon their relative value to her; for she saw, as he did, that the two were incompatible—one must be given up.

"It is late," she said, rising. "You will come up and take breakfast with Willie and me, before you go home? My strawberries are in their prime."

"I thought you would a-told me to go, an' never come back," he said, stepping out into the moonlight with the elastic tread of twenty-five. He stopped and looked back at her, with a beaming countenance, like a boy's.

She was standing on the step above him, looking down at him with a pleasant but serious expression. "I am going to trust you never to repeat to me what you have said to-night. I know I can trust you."

"So be it, White Rose," he returned, with so rapid and involuntary a change of attitude, voice, and expression, that the pang of his hurt pierced her heart also. "But I know I can trust you," she repeated, as if she had not seen that shrinking from the blow. "And I am going to try to make your life a little pleasanter, and more like other people's. When you are dressed up, and ordered to behave properly, and made to look as handsome as you can, so that ladies shall take notice of you and flatter you with their eyes and tongues, and you come to have the same interest in the world that other men have—and why shouldn't you?—then your imagination will not be running away with you, or making angels out of common little persons like myself—how dreadfully prosy and commonplace you have no idea! And I forbid you to allow Willie to stick your hat full of flowers, when you go fishing together; and order you to make that young impudence respectful to you on all occasions—asserting your authority, if necessary. And, lastly, I prefer you should not call me Madame Rumway until I have a certified and legal claim to the title. Good-night."

He stood bareheaded, his face drooping and half-concealed, pulling the withered flowers out of his hat. Slowly he raised it, made a military salute, and placed it on his head. "It is for you to command and me to obey," he said.

"Breakfast at seven o'clock precisely," called out the tuneful voice of Mrs. Smiley after him, as he went down the garden-path with bent head, walking more like an old man than she had ever seen him. Then she went into the house, closed it carefully, after the manner of lone women, and went up to her room. But deliciously cool and fragrant as was the tiny chamber, Mrs. Smiley could not sleep that night. Nor did Chillis come to breakfast next morning.

A month passed away. Work was suspended on Mr. Rumway's house, the doors and windows boarded up, and the gate locked. Everybody knew it could mean but one thing—that Mrs. Smiley had refused the owner. But the handsome captain put a serene face upon it, and kept about his business industriously and like a gentleman. The fact that he did not return to his wild courses was remarked upon as something hardly to be credited, but greatly to his honor; for it was universally conceded, that such a disappointment as his was enough to drive almost any man to drink who had indulged in it previously; such is the generally admitted frailty of man's moral constitution.

Toward the last of August, Mrs. Smiley received a visit from Chillis. He was dressed with more than his customary regard to appearances, and looked a little paler and thinner than usual. Otherwise, he was just the same as ever; and, with no questions asked or answered on either side, their old relations were re-established, and Willie was rapturously excited with the prospect of more Saturday excursions. Yet there was this difference in their manner toward each other—that he now seldom addressed her as "White Rose," and never as "my lovely lady;" while it was she who made graceful little compliments to him, and was always gay and bright in his company, and constantly watchful of his comfort or pleasure. She prevailed upon him, too, to make calls with her upon other ladies; and gave him frequent commissions that would bring him in contact with a variety of persons. But she could not help seeing, that it was only in obedience to her wishes that he made calls, or mingled with the town-people; and when, one evening, returning together from a visit where he had been very much patronized, he had remarked, with a shrug and smile of self-contempt, "It is no use, Mrs. Smiley—oil an' water won't mix," she had given it up, and never more interfered with his old habits.

So the summer passed, and winter came again, with its long rains, dark days, and sad associations. Although Mrs. Smiley was not at all a "weakly woman," constant effort and care, and the absence of anything very flattering in her future, or inspiring in her present, wore upon her, exhausting her vitality too rapidly for perfect health, as the constantly increasing delicacy of her appearance testified. In truth, when the spring opened, she found herself so languid and depressed as to be hardly able to teach, in addition to her house-work. Then it was that the gossips took up her case once more, and declared, with considerable unanimity, that Mrs. Smiley was pining for the handsome Captain, after all, and, if ever she had refused him, was sorry for it—thus revenging themselves upon a woman audacious enough to refuse a man many others would have thought "good enough for them," and "too good for" so unappreciative a person.

With the first bright and warm weather, Willie went to spend a week with his friend, and Mrs. Smiley felt forced to take a vacation. A yachting-party were going over to the cape, and Captain Rumway was to take them out over the bar. Rumway himself sent an invitation to Mrs. Smiley—this being the first offer of amity he had felt able to make since the previous July. She laughed a little, to herself, when the note came (for she was not ignorant of the town-tattle—what school-teacher ever is?) and sent an acceptance. If Captain Rumway were half as courageous as she, the chatterers would be confounded, she promised herself, as she made her toilet for the occasion—not too nice for sea-water, but bright and pretty, and becoming, as her toilets always were.

So she sailed over to the cape with the "young folks," and, as widows can—particularly widows who have gossip to avenge—was more charming than any girl of them all, to others beside Captain Rumway. The officers of the garrison vied with each other in showing her attentions; and the light-house keeper, in exhibiting the wonders and beauties of the place, always, if unconsciously, appealed to Mrs. Smiley for admiration and appreciation. Yet she wore her honors modestly, contriving to share this homage with some other, and never accepting it as all meant for herself. And toward Captain Rumway her manner was as absolutely free from either coquetry or awkwardness as that of the most indifferent acquaintance. Nobody, seeing her perfectly frank yet quiet and cool deportment with her former suitor, could say, without falsehood, that she in any way concerned herself about him; and if he had heard that she was pining for him, he was probably undeceived during that excursion. Thus she came home feeling that she had vindicated herself, and with a pretty color in her face that made her look as girlish as any young lady of them all.

But, if Captain Rumway had reopened an acquaintance with Mrs. Smiley out of compassion for any woes she might be suffering on his account, or out of a design to show how completely he was master of himself, or, in short, for any motive whatever, he was taken in his own devices, and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Like the man in Scripture, out of whom the devils were cast only to return, his last estate was worse than the first, as he was soon compelled to acknowledge; and one of the first signs of this relapse into fatuity was the resumption of work on the unfinished house, and the ornamentation of the neglected grounds.

"I will make it such a place as she cannot refuse," he said to himself, more or less hopefully. "She will have to accept the house and grounds, with me thrown in. And whatever she is pining for, she is pining, that I can see. It may be for outdoor air and recreation, and the care which a husband only can give her. If it be that she can take them along with me."

Thus it was, that when Chillis brought Willie home from his long visit to the woods and streams, he saw the workmen busy on the Captain's house. He heard, too, about the excursion to the cape, and the inevitable comments upon Rumway's proceedings. But he said nothing about it to Mrs. Smiley, though he spent the evening in the snug little parlor, and they talked together of many things personally interesting to both; especially about Willie's education and profession in life.

"He ought to go to college," said his mother. "I wish him to be a scholarly man, whatever profession he decides upon afterward. I could not bear that he should not have a liberal education."

"Yes, Willie must be a gentleman," said Chillis; "for his mother's sake he must be that."

"But how to provide the means to furnish such an education as he ought to have, is what puzzles me," continued Mrs. Smiley, pausing in her needle-work to study that problem more closely, and gazing absently at the face of her guest. "Will ten years more of school-teaching do it, I wonder?"

"Ten years o' school-teachin', an' house-work, an' sewin'!" cried he. "Yes, long before that you will be under the sod o' the grave-yard! You cannot send the boy to college."

"Who, then?"—smiling at his vehemence.

"I will."

"You, Mr. Chillis? I thought...." She checked herself, fearing to hurt his pride.

"You thought I was poor, an' so I am, for I never tried to make money. I don't want money. But there is land belongin' to me out in the valley—five or six hundred acres—an' land is growin' more valuable every year. Ten years from now I reckon mine would pay a boy's schoolin'. So you needn't work yourself to death for that, Mrs. Smiley."

The tears sprang to the gray eyes which were turned upon him with such eloquent looks. "It is like you," she said, in a broken voice, "and I have nothing to say."

"You are welcome to my land, White Rose, an' there is nothin' to be said."

Then she bent her head over her sewing, feeling, indeed, that there was little use for words.

"Do you know," he asked, breaking a protracted silence, "that you have got to give up teachin'?"

"And do what? I might take to gardening. That would be better, perhaps; I have thought about it."

"Let me see your hands. They look like gardenin': two rose-leaves! Don't it make me wish to be back in my prime? Work for you! Wouldn't I love to work for you?"

"And do you not, in every way you can? Am I to have no pride about accepting so much service? What a poor creature you must take me for, Mr. Chillis."

"There is nothin' else in the world that I think of; nothin' else that I live for; an' after all it is so little, that I cannot save you from spoilin' your pretty looks with care. An' you have troubled yourself about me, too; don't think I haven't seen it. You fret your lovely soul about the old man's trouble, when you can't help it—you, nor nobody. An', after all, what does it matter about me? I am nothin', and you are everything. I want you to remember that, and do everything for your own happiness without wastin' a thought on me. I am content to keep my distance, ef I only see you happy and well off. Do you understand me?"

Mrs. Smiley looked up with a suffused face. "Mr. Chillis," she answered, "you make me ashamed of myself and my selfishness. Let us never refer to this subject again. Work don't hurt me; and since you have offered to provide for Willie's education, you have lifted half my burden. Why should you stand at a distance to see me happier than I am, when I am so happy as to have such a friend as you? How am I to be happier by your being at a distance, who have been the kindest of friends? You are out of spirits this evening, and you talk just a little—nonsense." And she smiled at him in a sweetly apologetic fashion for the word.

"That is like enough," he returned gravely; "but I want you to remember my words, foolish or not. Don't let me stand in your light—not for one minute; and don't forgit this: that Joe Chillis is happy when he sees the White Rose bloomin' and bright."

Contrary to his command, Mrs. Smiley did endeavor to forget these words in the weeks following, when the old mountain-man came no more to her rose-embowered cottage, and when Captain Rumway invented many ingenious schemes for getting the pale school-teacher to take more recreation and fresh air. She endeavored to forget them, but she could not, though her resolve to ignore them was as strong as it ever had been when her burdens had seemed lighter! But in spite of her resolve, and in spite of the fact that it could not be said that any encouragement had been given to repeat his addresses, Rumway continued to work at his house and grounds steadily, and, to all appearance, hopefully. And although he never consulted Mrs. Smiley now concerning the arrangement of either, he showed that he remembered her suggestions of the year before, by following them out without deviation.

Thus quietly, without incident, the June days slipped away, and the perfect July weather returned once more, when there was always a chair or two out on the sunset porch at evening. At last Chillis re-appeared, and took a seat in one of them, quite in the usual way. He had been away, he said, attending to some business.

"An' I have fixed that matter all right about the boy's schoolin'," he added. "The papers are made out in the clerk's office, an' will be sent to you as soon as they are recorded. There are five hundred and forty acres, which you will know how to manage better than I can tell you. You can sell by and by, ef you can't yet the money out of it any other way. The taxes won't be much, the land being unimproved."

"You do not mean that you have deeded all your land to Willie?" asked Mrs. Smiley. "I protest against it: he must not have it! Would you let us rob you," she asked wonderingly. "What are you to do, by and by, as you say?"

"Me? I shall do well enough. Money is o' no use to me. But ef I should want a meal or a blanket that I couldn't get, the boy wouldn't see me want them long. Ef he forgot old Joe Chillis, his mother wouldn't, I reckon."

"You pay too high a price for our remembrance, Mr. Chillis; we are not worth it. But why do you talk of forgetting? You are not going away from us?"

"Yes; I am goin' to start to-morrow for my old stampin' ground, east o' the mountains. My only livin' son is over there, somewhar. He don't amount to much—the Indian in him is too strong; but, like enough, he will be glad to see his father afore I die. An' I want to git away from here."

"You will come back? Promise me you will come back?" For something in his voice, and his settled expression of melancholy and renunciation, made her fear he was taking this step for a reason that could not be named between them.

"It is likely," he said; "but ef I come or no, don't fret about me. Just remember this that I am tellin' you now. The day I first saw you was the most fortunate day of my life. Ef I hadn't a-met you, I should have died as I had lived—like a creature without a soul. An' now I have a soul, in you. An' when I come to die, as I shall before many years, I shall die happy, thinkin' how my old hands had served the sweetest woman under heaven, and how they had been touched by hers so kindly, many a time, when she condescended to serve me."

What could she say to a charge like this? Yet say something she must, and so she answered, that he thought too highly of her, who was no better than other women; but, that, since in his great singleness of heart, he did her this honor, to set her above all the world, she could only be humbly grateful, and wish really to be what in his vivid imagination she seemed to him. Then she turned the talk upon less personal topics, and Willie was called and informed of the loss he was about to sustain; upon which there was a great deal of childish questioning, and boyish regret for the good times no more to be that summer.

"I should like to take care of your boat," said he—"your hunting-boat, I mean. If I had it over here, I would take mamma down to it every Saturday, and she could sew and do everything there, just as she does at home; and it would be gay, now, wouldn't it?"

"The old boat is sold, my boy; that an' the row-boat, and the pony, too. You'll have to wait till I come back for huntin', and fishin', and ridin'."

Then Mrs. Smiley knew almost certainly that this visit was the last she would ever receive from Joe Chillis, and, though she tried hard to seem unaffected by the parting, and to talk of his return hopefully, the effort proved abortive, and conversation flagged. Still he sat there silent and nearly motionless through the whole evening, thinking what thoughts she guessed only too well. With a great sigh, at last he rose to go.

"You will be sure to write at the end of your journey, and let us know how you find things there, and when you are coming back?"

"I will write," said he; "an' I want you to write back and tell me that you remember what I advised you some time ago." He took her hands, folded them in his own, kissed them reverently, and turned away.

Mrs. Smiley watched him going down the garden-walk, as she had watched him a year before, and noted how slow and uncertain his steps had grown since then. At the gate he turned and waved his hand, and she in turn fluttered her little white handkerchief. Then she sat down with the handkerchief over her head, and sobbed for full five minutes.

"There are things in life one cannot comprehend," she muttered to herself, "things we cannot dare to meddle with or try to alter; Providences, I suppose, they are. If God had made a man like that for me, of my own age, and given him opportunities suited to his capacities, and he had loved me as this man loves, what a life ours would have been!"

The summer weather and bracing north-west breezes from the ocean renewed, in a measure, Mrs. Smiley's health, and restored her cheerful spirits; and, if she missed her old friend, she kept silent about it, as she did about most things that concerned herself. To Willie's questioning she gave those evasive replies children are used to receive; but she frequently told him, in talks about his future, that Mr. Chillis had promised to send him to college, and that as long as he lived he must love and respect so generous a friend. "And, Willie," she never failed to add, "if ever you see an old man who is in need of anything; food, or clothes, or shelter; be very sure that you furnish them, as far as you are able." She was teaching him to pay his debt: "for, inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these," he had done it unto his benefactor.

September came, and yet no news had arrived from beyond the mountains. Captain Rumway's house was finished up to the last touch of varnish. The lawn, and the shrubbery, and fence were all just as they should be; yet, so far as anybody knew, no mistress had been provided for them, when, one warm and hazy afternoon, Mrs. Smiley received an invitation to look at the completed mansion, and pass her judgment upon it.

"I am going to furnish it in good style," said its master, rather vauntingly, Mrs. Smiley thought, "and I hoped you would be so good as to give me your assistance in making out a list of the articles required to fit the house up perfectly, from parlor to kitchen."

"Any lady can furnish a list of articles for each room, Mr. Rumway, more or less costly, as you may order; but only the lady who is to live in the house can tell you what will please her;" and she smiled the very shadow of a superior smile.

Mr. Rumway had foolishly thought to get his house furnished according to Mrs. Smiley's taste, and now found he should have to consult Mrs. Rumway's, present or prospective, and the discovery annoyed him. Yet, why should he be annoyed? Was not the very opportunity presented that he had desired, of renewing his proposal to her to take the establishment in charge? So, although it compelled him to change his programme, he accepted the situation, and seized the tide at flood.

"It is that lady—the one I entreat to come and live in it—whose wishes I now consult. Once more will you come?"

Mrs. Smiley, though persistently looking aside, had caught the eloquent glance of the Captain's dark eyes, and something of the warmth of his face was reflected in her own. But she remained silent, looking at the distant highlands, without seeing them.

"You must have seen," he continued, "that notwithstanding your former answer, I have been bold enough to hope you might change your mind; for, in everything I have done here, I have tried to follow your expressed wishes. I should in all else strive to make you as happy as by accepting this home you would make me. You do not answer; shall I say it is 'yes?'" He bent so close that his dark, half-curling mop of hair just brushed her golden braids, and gave her a little shock like electricity, making her start away with a blush.

"Will you give me time to decide upon my answer, Mr. Rumway?"

"You asked for time before," he replied, in an agitated voice, "and, after making me suffer a week of suspense, refused me."

"I know it," she said simply, "and I was sorry I had asked it; but my reasons are even more imperative than they were then for wishing to delay. I want to decide right, at last," she added, with a faint attempt at a smile.

"That will be right which accords with your feelings, and certainly you can tell me now what they are—whether you find me the least bit lovable or not."

The gray eyes flashed a look up into the dark eyes, half of mirth and half of real inquiry. "I think one might learn to endure you, Mr. Rumway," she answered, demurely. "But"—changing her manner—"I can not tell you whether or not I can marry you, until—until—well," she concluded desperately—"it may be a day, or a week, or a month. There is something to be decided, and until it is decided, I can not give an answer."

Captain Rumway looked very rebellious.

"I do not ask you to wait, Mr. Rumway," said Mrs. Smiley, tormentingly. "Your house need not be long without a mistress."

"Of course, I must wait, if you give me the least ground of hope. This place was made for you, and no other woman shall ever come into it as my wife—that I swear. If you will not have me, I will sell it, and live a bachelor."

Mrs. Smiley laughed softly and tunefully. "Perhaps you would prefer to limit your endurance, and tell me how long you will allow me to deliberate before you sell and retire to bachelorhood?"

"You know very well," he returned, ruefully, "that I shall always be hoping against all reason that the wished-for answer was coming at last."

"Then we will say no more about it at present."

"And I may come occasionally to learn whether that 'something' has been decided?"

"Yes, if you have the patience for it. But, I warn you, there is a chance of my having to say 'No.'"

"If there is only a chance of your having to say 'No,' I think I may incur the risk," said Rumway, with a sudden accession of hopefulness; and, as they walked home together once more, the gossips pronounced it an engagement. The Captain himself felt that it was, although, when he reviewed the conversation, he discovered that he founded his impression upon that one glance of the gray eyes, rather than upon anything that had been said. And Mrs. Smiley put the matter out of mind as much as possible, and waited.

One day, about the last of the month, a letter came to her from over the mountains. It ran in this wise:

"MY LOVELY LADY: I am once more among the familyar seanes of 40 year ago. My son is hear, an' about as I expected. I had rather be back at Clatsop, with the old bote; but, owin' to circumstances I can't controll, think it better to end my dais on this side ov the mountains. You need not look for me to come back, but I send you an' the boy my best love, an' hope you hav done as I advised.

"Yours, faithfully, til deth,

"JOE CHILLIS."

Soon after the receipt of this letter, Captain Rumway called to inquire concerning the settlement of the matter on which his marriage depended. That evening he stayed later than usual, and, in a long confidential talk which he had with Mrs. Smiley, learned that there was a condition attached to the consummation of his wishes, which required his recognition of the claims of "poor old Joe" to be considered a friend of the family. To do him justice, he yielded the point more gracefully than, from his consciousness of his own position, could have been expected.

The next day, Mrs. Smiley wrote as follows:

"DEAR MR. CHILLIS: I shall move into the new house about the last of October, according to your advice. We—that is, myself, and Willie, and the present owner of the house—shall be delighted if you will come and stay with us. But if you decide to remain with your son, believe that we think of you very often and very affectionately, and wish you every possible happiness. R. agrees with me that the land ought to be deeded back to you; and I think you had best return and get the benefit of it. It would make you very comfortable for life, properly managed, and about that we might help you. Please write and let us know what to do about it.

"Yours affectionately,

"ANNIE SMILEY."

No reply ever came to this letter; and, as it was written ten years ago, Mrs. Rumway has ceased to expect any. Willie is about to enter College.



HOW JACK HASTINGS SOLD HIS MINE.

The passenger train from the East came thundering down the head of the Humboldt Valley, just as morning brightened over the earth—refreshing eyes wearied with yesterday's mountains and canons, by a vision of green willows and ash trees, a stream that was not a torrent, and a stretch of grassy country.

Among the faces oftenest turned to the flitting views was that of a young, gracefully-formed, neatly-dressed, delicate-looking woman. The large brown eyes often returned from gazing at the landscape, to scan with seriousness some memoranda she held in her hand. "Arrive at Elko at eight o'clock a.m." said the memorandum. Consulting a tiny watch, whose hands pointed to ten minutes of eight, the lady began making those little preparations which betoken the journey's end at hand.

"What a strange looking place it is!" she thought, as the motley collection of board shanties and canvas houses came in sight;—for the famous Chloride District had been discovered but a few months before, and the Pacific Railroad was only four weeks open. "I wish Jack had come to meet me! I'm sure I don't see how I am to find the stage agent to give him Jack's letter. What a number of people!"

This mental ejaculation was called forth by the sight of the long platform in front of the eating-house, crowded with a surging mass of humanity just issuing from the dining-room. They were the passengers of the eastward-bound train, ready to rush headlong for the cars when the momently-expected "All aboard!" should be shouted at them by the conductor. Into this crowd the freshly-arrived passengers of the westward-bound train were a moment after ejected—each eyeing the other with a natural and pardonable interest.

The brown-eyed, graceful young lady conducted herself in a very business-like manner—presenting the checks for her baggage; inquiring out the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., and handing in her letter, all in the briefest possible time. Having secured a seat in a coach to Chloride Hill, with the promise of the agent to call for her when the time for departure arrived, the lady repaired to the dining-room just in time to see her acquaintances of the train departing. Sitting down alone to a hastily-cooked and underdone repast, she was about finishing a cup of bitter black coffee with a little shudder of disgust, when a gentleman seated himself opposite her at table. The glance the stranger cast in her direction was rather a lingering one; then he ordered his breakfast and ate it. Meanwhile the lady retired to the ladies' sitting-room.

After an hour of waiting, one, two, three, coaches rolled past the door, and the lady began to fear she had been forgotten, when the polite agent appeared to notify "Mrs. Hastings" that "the stage was ready." This was Mrs. Alice Hastings, then—wife of Mr. Jack Hastings, of Deep Canon, Chloride District. The agent thought Mr. Hastings had a very pretty wife, and expressed his opinion in his manner, as men will.

When, just before starting, there entered three of the roughest-looking men she had ever encountered, Mrs. Hastings began to fear that in his zeal to obey instructions, the agent had exceeded them, and in packing the first three coaches with first-comers, had left this one to catch up the fag end of travel. If the first impression, gained from sight, had made her shrink a little, what was her dismay when, at the end of ten minutes, one of her fellow-travelers—the only American of the three—produced a bottle of brandy, which, having offered it first to her, he passed to the bullet-headed Irishman and very shabby Jew: repeating the courtesy once in twenty minutes for several times.

Mrs. Hastings was a brave sort of woman, where courage was needful; and she now began to consider the case in hand with what coolness she could command. One hundred and thirty miles—eighteen or twenty hours of such companionship—with no chance of change or intermission; a wilderness country to travel over, and all the other coaches a long way ahead. The dainty denizen of a city home, shuddering inwardly, showed outwardly a serene countenance. Her American friend, with wicked black eyes and a jolly and reckless style of carrying himself, continued to offer brandy at short intervals.

"Best take some, Madame," said he; "this dust will choke you if you don't."

"Thanks," returned the lady, with her sweetest smile, "I could not drink brandy. I have wine in my traveling-basket, should I need it; but much prefer water."

At the next station, although hardly four minutes were lost in changing horses, the men procured for her a cup of water. Mrs. Hastings' thanks were frank and cordial. She even carefully opened a conversation about the country they were passing over, and contrived to get them to ask a question or two about herself. When they learned that she had come all the way from New York on the newly-opened railroad, their interest was at its height; and when they heard that she was going to join her husband in the Chloride District, their sympathy was thoroughly enlisted.

"Wonderful—such a journey! How she could be six days on the cars, and yet able to take such a stage-ride as this, is astonishing."

Such were the American's comments. The Jew thought of the waiting husband—for your Israelite is a man of domestic and family affections. "Her husband looking for her, and she behind time! How troubled he must be! Didn't he know how it was? Wasn't his wife gone away on a visit once, and didn't write; and he a running to the express office every morning and evening for a letter, and getting so anxious as to telegraph? Such an expense and loss of time!—and all because he felt so uneasy about his wife!"

The bullet-headed young Irishman said nothing. He was about half asleep from brandy and last night's travel; too stupid to know that his hat had flown out of the window, and was bowling along in the wind and dust half a mile behind—all the better for his head, which looked at a red heat now.

The lady had lifted the rude men up to her level, when directly they were ashamed of their brandy and other vices, and began to show instinctive traits of gentlemen. By the time they arrived at the dinner station, where half an hour was allowed for food and rest out of the eighteen or twenty, she had at least two humble servitors, who showed great concern for her comfort.

The day began to wane. They had traveled continuously over a long stretch of plain between two mountain ranges, over a country entirely uninhabited except by the stage company's employees, who kept the stations and tended the stock. This lone woman had seen but one other woman on the road. Plenty of teams—great "prairie schooners," loaded with every conceivable thing for supplying the wants of an isolated non-producing community, and drawn by ten or fourteen mules—had been passed through the day.

As night fell, Mrs. Hastings saw what she had never before seen or imagined—the camps of these teamsters by the roadside; horses and mules staked, or tied to the wagons; the men lying prone upon the earth, wrapped in blankets, their dust-blackened faces turned up to the frosty twinkling stars. Did people really live in that way?—how many superfluous things were there in a city!

The night was moonless and clear, and cold as at that altitude they always are. Sleep, from the roughness of the road, was impossible. Her companions dozed, and woke with exclamations when the heavy lurchings of the coach disturbed them too roughly. Mrs. Hastings never closed her eyes. When morning dawned, they were on the top of a range of mountains, like those that had been in sight all the day before. Down these heights they rattled away, and at four in the morning entered the streets of Chloride Hill—a city of board and canvas houses. Arrived at the stage office, the lady looked penetratingly into the crowd of men always waiting for the stages, but saw no face she recognized. Yes, one—and that the face of the gentleman who sat down opposite her at table in Elko.

"Permit me," he said; "I think you inquired for Mr. Hastings?"

"I did; he is my husband. I expected to find him here," she replied, feeling that sense of injury and desire to cry which tired women feel, jostled about in a crowd of men.

Leaving her a moment to say something to an employee of the office, the stranger returned immediately, saying to the man: "Take this lady to Mrs. Robb's boarding-house." Then to her: "I will inquire for your husband, and send him to you if he is in town. The hack does not go over to Deep Canon for several hours yet. Meanwhile you had better take some rest. You must be greatly fatigued."

Fatigued! her head swam round and round; and she really was too much exhausted to feel as disappointed as she might at Jack's non-appearance. Much relieved by the prospect of a place to rest in, she followed the man summoned to escort her, and fifteen minutes after was sound asleep on a sofa of the boarding-house.

Three hours of sleep and a partial bath did much to restore tired nature's equilibrium; and, although her head still felt absurdly light, Mrs. Hastings enjoyed the really excellent breakfast provided for her, wondering how such delicacies ever got to Chloride Hill. Breakfast over, and no news of Jack, the time began to drag wearily. She was more than half inclined to be angry—only relenting when she remembered that she was two or three days behind time, and of course Jack could not know when to expect her. She had very full directions, and if she could not find her way to Deep Canon she was a goose, that was all!

So she sent for the driver of the hack, told him to get her baggage from the express office; and started for Deep Canon. Who should she find in the hack but her friend of the morning!

"I could not hear of your husband," said he; "but you are sure to find him at home."

Mrs. Hastings smiled faintly, and hoped she should. Then she gave her thoughts to the peculiar scenery of the country, and to the sharpness of the descent, as they whirled rapidly down the four miles of canon at the bottom of which was the town of that name—another one of those places which had "come up as a flower" in a morning. She longed to ask about her husband and his "home"; but as there were several persons in the stage, she restrained her anxiety, and said never a word until they stopped before the door of a saloon where all the other passengers alighted. Then she told the driver she wanted to be taken to Mr. Hastings' house.

He didn't know where that was, he said, but would inquire.

Did he know Dr. Earle?

"That's him, ma'am;" pointing out her friend of the morning.

"How can I serve you?" he asked, raising his hat politely.

Mrs. Hastings blushed rosily, between vexation at Jack's invisibility and confusion at being so suddenly confronted with Dr. Earle.

"Mr. Hastings instructed me to inquire of you, if I had any difficulty in finding him," she said, apologetically.

"I will show you his place with pleasure," returned the Doctor pleasantly; and, jumping on the box, proceeded to direct the driver.

Had ladies of Mrs. Hastings' style been as plenty in Deep Canon as in New York, the driver would have grumbled at the no road he had to follow along the stony side of a hill and among the stumps of mahogany trees. But there were few like her in that mountain town, and his chivalry compelled him to go out of his way with every appearance of cheerfulness. Presently the stage stopped where the sloping ground made it very uncertain how long it could maintain its balance in that position; and the voice of Dr. Earle was heard saying "This is the place."

Mrs. Hastings, who had been looking out for some sign of home, was seized with a doubt of the credibility of her senses. It was on the tip of her tongue to say "This must be the house of some other Mr. Hastings," when she remembered prudence, and said nothing. Getting out and going toward the house to inquire, the door opened, and a man in a rough mining suit came quickly forward to meet her.

"Alice!"

"Jack!"

Dr. Earle and the driver studiously looked the other way while salutations were exchanged between Mr. and Mrs. Hastings. When they again ventured a look, the lady had disappeared within the cabin, the first glimpse of which had so dismayed her.

That afternoon, Jack initiated Alice into the mysteries of cooking by an open fire, and expatiated largely on the merits of his outside kitchen. Alice hinted to him that she was accustomed to sleep on something softer than a board, and the two went together to a store to purchase materials out of which to make a mattress.

After that, for two or three weeks, Mrs. Hastings was industriously engaged in wondering what her husband meant when he wrote that he had built a house, and was getting things ready to receive her. Reason or romance as she might, she could not make that single room of rough boards, roofed with leaky canvas and unfurnished with a single comfort of life, into a house or home. At last, Jack seemed to guess her thoughts, for she never spoke them.

"If I could sell my mine," he then often said, "I could fix things up."

"If you sold your mine, Jack, you would go back to New York, and then there would be no need of fixing up this place." Alice wanted to say "horrid" place, but refrained.

At length, from uncongenial air, water, food, and circumstances in general, the transplanted flower began to droop. The great heat and rarified mountain air caused frantic headaches, aggravated by the glare which came through the white canvas roof. Then came the sudden mountain tempests, when the rain deluged everything, and it was hard to find a spot to stand in where the water did not drip through. She grew wild, looking forever at bare mountain sides simmering in the sun by day, and at night over their tops up to the piercing stars. A constant anxious fever burnt in her blood, that the cold night air could not quench, though she often left her couch to let it blow chilly over her, in her loose night robes. Then she fell really ill.

Sitting by her bedside, Jack said: "If I could sell my mine!" And she had answered, "let the mine go, Jack, and let us go home. Nothing is gained by stopping in this dreadful place."

Then Mr. Hastings had replied to her, "I have no money, Alice, to go home with, not a cent. I borrowed ten dollars of Earle to-day to buy some fruit for you."

That was the last straw that broke the camel's back. By night Mrs. Hastings was delirious, and Dr. Earle was called.

"She has a nervous fever," he said, "and needs the carefullest nursing."

"Which she cannot have in this d——d place," Mr. Hastings replied, profanely.

"Why don't you try to get something to do?" asked Earle of the sad-visaged husband, a day or two after.

"What is there to do? Everything is flat; there is neither business nor money in this cursed country. I've stayed here trying to sell my mine, until I'm dead broke; nothing to live on here, and nothing to get out with. What I'm to do with my wife there, I don't know. Let her die, perhaps, and throw her bones up that ravine to bleach in the sun. God! what a position to be in!"

"But you certainly must propose to do something, and that speedily. Couldn't you see it was half that that brought this illness on your wife; the inevitable which she saw closing down upon you?"

"If I cannot sell my mine soon, I'll blow out my brains, as that poor German did last week. Alice heard the report of the shot which killed him, and I think it hastened on her sickness."

"And so you propose to treat her to another such scene, and put an end to her?" said Earle, savagely.

"Better so than to let her starve," Jack returned, growing pale with the burden of possibilities which oppressed him. "How the devil I am to save her from that last, I don't know. There is neither business, money, nor credit in this infernal town. I've been everywhere in this district, asking for a situation at something, and cannot get anything better than digging ground on the new road."

"Even that might be better than starving," said Dr. Earle.

Jack was a faithful nurse; Dr. Earle an attentive physician; young people with elastic constitutions die hard: so Alice began to mend, and in a fortnight was convalescent. Jack got a situation in a quartz mill where the Doctor was part owner.

Left all day alone in the cabin, Alice began staring again at the dreary mountains whose walls inclosed her on every side. The bright scarlet and yellow flowers which grew out of their parched soil sometimes tempted her to a brief walk; but the lightness of the air fatigued her, and she did not care to clamber after them.

One day, being lonely, she thought to please Jack by dressing in something pretty and going to the mill to see him. So, laying aside the wrapper which she had worn almost constantly lately, she robed herself in a delicate linen lawn, donned a coquettish little hat and parasol, and set out for the mill, a mile away. Something in the thought of the pleasant surprise it would be to Jack gave her strength and animation; and though she arrived somewhat out of breath, she looked as dainty and fresh as a rose, and Jack was immensely proud and flattered. He introduced her to the head of the firm, showed her over the mill, pointed out to her the mule-train packing wood for the engine fires, got the amalgamator to give her specimens, and in every way showed his delight.

After an hour or so she thought about going home; but the walk home looked in prospect very much longer than the walk to the mill. In truth, it was harder by reason of being up-hill. But opportunely, as it seemed, just as Jack was seeing her off the door-stone of the office, Dr. Earle drove up, and, comprehending the situation, offered to take Mrs. Hastings to her own door in his carriage, if she would graciously allow him five minutes to see the head man in.

When they were seated in the carriage, a rare luxury in Deep Canon; and had driven a half mile in embarrassed silence—for Mrs. Hastings somehow felt ashamed of her husband's dependence upon this man,—the Doctor spoke, and what he said was this:

"Your life is very uncongenial to you; you wish to escape from it, don't you?"

"Yes, I wish to escape; that is the word which suits my feeling—a very strange feeling it is."

"Describe it," said the Doctor, almost eagerly.

"Ever since I left the railroad, in the midst of a wilderness and was borne for so many hours away into the heart of a still more desert wilderness, my consciousness of things has been very much confused. I can only with difficulty realize that there is any such place as New York; and San Francisco is a fable. The world seems a great bare mountain plane; and I am hanging on to its edge by my fingertips, ready to drop away into space. Can you account for such impressions?"

"Easily, if I chose. May I tell you something?"

"What is it?"

"I've half a mind to run away with you."

Now, as Dr. Earle was a rather young and a very handsome man, had been very kind, and was now looking at her with eyes actually moistened with tears, a sudden sense of being on the edge of a pitfall overcame Mrs. Hastings; and she turned pale and red alternately. Yet, with the instinct of a pure woman, to avoid recognizing an ugly thought, she answered with a laugh as gay as she could make it.

"If you were a witch, and offered me half of your broomstick to New York, I don't know but I should take it;—that is, if there was room on it anywhere for Jack."

"There wouldn't be," said the Doctor, and said no more.

The old fever seemed to have returned that afternoon. The hills glared so that Mrs. Hastings closed the cabin door to shut out the burning vision. The ground-squirrels, thinking from the silence that no one was within, ran up the mahogany tree at the side, and scampered over the canvas roof in glee. One, more intent on gain than the rest, invaded Jack's outside kitchen, knocking down the tin dishes with a clang, and scattering the dirt from the turf roof over the flour-sack and the two white plates. Every sound made her heart beat faster. Afraid of the silence and loneliness at last, she reopened the door; and then a rough-looking man came to the entrance, to inquire if there were any silver leads up the ravine.

Leads? she could not say: prospectors in plenty there were.

Then he went his way, having satisfied his curiosity; and the door was closed again. Some straggling donkeys wandered near, which were mistaken for "Diggers;" and dreading their glittering eyes, the nervous prisoner drew the curtain over the one little sliding window. There was nothing to read, nothing to sew, no housekeeping duties, because no house to keep; she was glad when the hour arrived for preparing the late afternoon meal.

That night she dreamed that she was a skeleton lying up the canon—the sunshine parching her naked bones; that Dr. Earle came along with a pack-train going to the mill, and picking her up carefully, laid her on top of a bundle of wood; that the Mexican driver covered her up with a blanket, which so smothered her that she awakened, and started up gasping for breath. The feeling of suffocation continuing, she stole softly to the door, and opening it, let the chilly night air blow over her. Most persons would have found Mr. Hastings' house freely ventilated, but some way poor Alice found it hard to breathe in it.

The summer was passing; times grew, if possible, harder than before. The prospectors, who had found plenty of "leads," had spent their "bottom dollar" in opening them up and in waiting for purchasers, and were going back to California any way they could. The capitalists were holding off, satisfied that in the end all the valuable mines would fall into their hands, and caring nothing how fared the brave but unlucky discoverers. In fact, they overshot themselves, and made hard times for their own mills, the miners having to stop getting out rock.

Then Jack lost his situation. Very soon food began to be scarce in the cabin of Mr. Hastings. Scanty as it was, it was more than Alice craved; or rather, it was not what she craved. If she ate for a day or two, for the next two or three days she suffered with nausea and aversion to anything which the outside kitchen afforded. Jack seldom mentioned his mine now, and looked haggard and hopeless. The conversation between her husband and Dr. Earle, recorded elsewhere, had been overheard by Alice, lying half conscious; and she had never forgotten the threat about blowing out his brains in case he failed to sell his mine. Trifling as such an apprehension may appear to another, it is not unlikely that it had its effect to keep up her nervous condition. The summer was going—was gone. Mrs. Hastings had not met Dr. Earle for several weeks; and, despite herself, when the worst fears oppressed her, her first impulse was to turn to him. It had always seemed so easy for him to do what he liked!

Perhaps he was growing anxious to know if he could give the thumb-screw another turn. At all events, he directed his steps toward Mr. Hastings' house on the afternoon of the last day in August. Mrs. Hastings received him at the threshold and offered him the camp-stool—the only chair she had—in the shade outside the door; at the same time seating herself upon the door-step with the same grace as if it had been a silken sofa.

She was not daintily dressed this afternoon; for that luxury, like others, calls for the expenditure of a certain amount of money, and money Alice had not—not even enough to pay a Chinaman for "doing up" one of her pretty muslins. Neither had she the facilities for doing them herself, had she been skilled in that sort of labor; for even to do your own washing and ironing pre-supposes the usual conveniences of a laundry, and these did not belong to the furniture of the outside kitchen. She had not worn her linen lawn since the visit to the mill. The dust which blew freely through every crack of the shrunken boards precluded such extravagance. Thus it happened that a soiled cashmere wrapper was her afternoon wear. She had faded a good deal since her coming to Deep Canon; but still looked pretty and graceful, and rather too spirituelle.

The Doctor held in his hand, on the point of a knife, the flower of a cactus very common in the mountains, which he presented her, warning her at the same time against its needle-like thorns.

"It makes me sick," said Alice hastily, throwing it away. "It is the color of gold, which I want so much; and of the sunshine, which I hate so."

"I brought it to you to show you the little emerald bee that is always to be found in one: it is wonderously beautiful,—a living gem, is it not?"

"Yes, I know," Alice said, "I admired the first one I saw; but I admire nothing any longer—nothing at least which surrounds me here."

"I understand that, of course," returned the Doctor. "It is because your health is failing you—because the air disagrees with you."

"And because my husband is so unfortunate. If he could only get away from here—and I!" The vanity of such a supposition, in their present circumstances, brought the tears to her eyes and a quiver about her mouth.

"Why did you ever come here! Why did he ever ask you to come;—how dared he?" demanded the Doctor, setting his teeth together.

"That is a strange question, Doctor!" Mrs. Hastings answered with dignity, lifting her head like an antelope. "My husband was deceived by the same hopes which have ruined others. If I suffer, it is because we are both unfortunate."

"What will he do next?" questioned the Doctor curtly. The cruel meaning caused the blood to forsake her cheeks.

"I cannot tell what he will do,"—her brief answer rounded by an expressive silence.

"You might help him: shall I point out the way to you?"—watching her intently.

"Can you? can I help him?"—her whole form suddenly inspired with fresh life.

Dr. Earle looked into her eager face with a passion of jealous inquiry that made her cast down her eyes:

"Alice, do you love this Hastings?"

He called her Alice; he used a tone and asked a question which could not be misunderstood. Mrs. Hastings dropped her face into her hands, her hands upon her knees. She felt like a wild creature which the dogs hold at bay. She knew now what the man meant, and the temptation he used.

"Alice," he said again, "this man, your husband, possesses a prize he does not value; or does not know how to care for. Shall you stay here and starve with him? Is he worth it?"

"He is my husband," she answered simply, lifting up her face, calm, if mortally pale.

"And I might be your husband, after a brief interval," he said quickly. "There would have to be a divorce;—it could be conducted quietly. I do not ask you to commit yourself to dishonor. I will shield you; no care shall fall upon you, nor any reproach. Consider this well, dearest darling Alice! and what will be your fate if you depend upon him."

"Will it help him then, to desert him?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, unless by remaining with him you can insure his support. Maintain you he cannot. Suppose his mine were sold, he would waste that money as he wasted what he brought here. I don't want his mine, yet I will buy it tomorrow if that will satisfy you, and I have your promise to go with me. I told you once that I wanted to run away with you, and now I mean to. Shall I tell you my plan?"

"No, not to-day," Mrs. Hastings answered, struggling with her pain and embarrassment; "I could not bear it to-day, I think."

"How cruel I am while meaning to be kind! You are agitated as you ought not to be in your weak state. Shall I see you to-morrow—a professional visit, you know?"

"You will buy the mine?"—faintly, with something like a blush.

"Certainly; I swear I will—on what conditions, you know."

"On none other?"

"Shall I rob myself, not of money only, but of what is far dearer?—On none other." He rose, took her cold hand, clasped it fervently, and went away.

When Jack came home to his very meagre dinner, he brought a can of peaches, which, being opened, looked so deliciously cool and tempting that Alice could not refrain from volubly exulting over them. "But how did you get them, Jack?" she asked; "not by going into debt, I hope."

"No. I was in Scott's store, and Earle, happening to come in just as Scott was selling some, and praising them highly, paid for a can, and asked me to take them to you and get your opinion. They are splendid, by Jove!"

"I do not fancy them," said Alice, setting down her plate; "but don't tell the Doctor," she added hastily.

"You don't fancy anything, lately, Alice," Mr. Hastings replied, rather crossly.

"Never mind, Jack; my appetite will come when you have sold your mine;" and upon that the unreasonably fastidious woman burst into tears.

"As if my position is not trying enough without seeing you cry!" said Jack, pausing from eating long enough to look injured. Plastic Jack! your surroundings were having their effect on you.

The Mining News of the second of September had a notice of the sale of Mr. Hastings' mine, the "Sybil," bearing chloride of silver, to Dr. Eustance Earle, all of Deep Canon. The papers to be handed over and cash paid down at Chloride Hill on the seventh; at which time Dr. Earle would start for San Francisco on the business of the mining firm to which he belonged. Mr. Hastings, it was understood, would go east about the same time.

All the parties were at Chloride Hill on the morning of the seventh, promptly. By eleven o'clock, the above-mentioned transaction was completed. Shortly after, one of the Opposition Line's stages stopped at Mrs. Robb's boarding-house, and a lady, dressed for traveling, stepped quickly into it. Having few acquaintances, and being closely veiled, the lady passed unrecognized at the stage-office, where the other passengers got in.

Half an hour afterwards Mr. Jack Hastings received the following note:

"DEAR JACK: I sold your mine for you. Dr. Earle is running away with me, per agreement; but if you take the express this afternoon, you will reach Elko before the train leaves for San Francisco to-morrow. There is nothing worth going back for at Deep Canon. If you love me, save me.

"Devotedly,

"ALICE."

It is superfluous to state that Jack took the express, which, arriving at Elko before the Opposition, made him master of the situation. Not that he felt very masterful; he didn't. He was thinking of many things that it hurt him to remember; but he was meaning to do differently in future. He had at last sold his mine—no, he'd be d——d if he had sold it; but—Hallo! there's a big dust out on the road there!—it must be the other stage. Think what you'll do and say, Jack Hastings!

What he did say was: "Ah, Doctor! you here? It was lucky for my wife, wasn't it, since I got left, to have you to look after her? Thanks, old fellow; you are just in time for the train. Alice and I will stop over a day to rest. A thousand times obliged: good-bye! Alice, say good-bye to Doctor Earle! you will not see him again."

Their hands and eyes met. He was pale as marble: she flushed one instant, paled the next, with a curious expression in her eyes which the Doctor never forgot and never quite understood. It was enough to know that the game was up. He had another mine on his hands, and an ugly pain in his heart which he told himself bitterly would be obstinate of cure. If he only could be sure what that look in her eyes had meant!



WHAT THEY TOLD ME AT WILSON'S BAR.

The mining season was ended in the narrow valley of one of the Sacramento's northern tributaries, as, in fact, it was throughout the whole region of "placer diggings;" for it was October of a dry year, and water had failed early in all the camps. The afternoon of a long, idle day at Wilson's Bar was drawing to a close. The medium through which the sun's hot rays reached the parched earth was one of red dust, the effect of which was that of a mellow Indian summer haze, pleasing to the eye, if abhorred by the skin and lungs, compelled to take it in, whether brute or human. In the landscape was an incongruous mingling of beauty and deformity; the first, the work of nature; the last, the marring of man.

To the east and to the west rose hills, whose ruggedness was softened by distance to outlines of harmonious grandeur. Scattered over the valley between them, the stately "digger," or nut-pines, grew at near intervals, singly or in groups of three or five, harmonizing by their pale gray-green with the other half-tints of earth, air, and sky. Following the course of the dried up river was a line, more or less continuous, of the evergreen oaks, whose round, spreading tops are such a grateful relief to the eye in the immense levels of the lower Sacramento and upper San Joaquin valleys. Depending from these, hung long, venerable-looking beards of gray moss, as devoid of color as everything else in the landscape; everything else, except the California wild grape, which, so far from being devoid of color, was gorgeous enough in itself to lighten up the whole foreground of the picture. Growing in clumps upon the ground, it was gay as a bed of tulips. Clambering up occasional tall trees, it flaunted its crimson and party-colored foliage with true bacchanalian jollity, each leaf seeming drunk with its own red wine. There is truly nothing that grows in the Golden State more beautiful than the Vitus Californica in October.

That was Nature's side of the picture. The reverse was this: the earth everywhere torn and disfigured by prospectors, whose picks had produced the effect of some huge snout of swine, applied with the industry characteristic of that animal in forbidden grounds. Rude cabins were scattered about, chiefly in the neighborhood of the stream. Rockers, sluice-boxes, and sieves strewed its borders. Along the dusty road which led to Wilson's Bar toiled heavily laden trains of freight-wagons, carrying supplies for the coming winter. At each little deviation from the general level, the eight-mule teams strained every muscle; the dust-enswathed drivers swore frantically and whipped mercilessly; the immense wagons groaned and creaked, and—the world moved on, however much the pained observer might wish to bring it to a stand-still.

A rosy sunset beyond the western mountains was casting its soft glamour over the scene—happily not without one appreciative beholder—when Bob Matheny's wagon drew up in front of the Traveler's Rest, the principal hotel of Wilson's Bar. From the commotion which ensued immediately thereupon, it would appear that Matheny was a person widely and also somewhat favorably known; such ejaculations as "Hulloa! thar's Bob Matheny," "How-dy, old feller!" and many other similar expressions of welcome greeting him on all sides, as he turned from blocking the wheels of his wagon, which else might have backed down the slight incline that led to Traveler's Rest.

At the same moment that the hand-shaking was progressing, a young woman, mounted on a handsome filly, rode up to the rude steps of the hotel and prepared to dismount; and Bob Matheny instantly broke away from his numerous friends, to lift her from the saddle, which act occasioned a sympathetic smile in that same numerous circle, and a whisper ran round it, half audible, to the effect that Bob had "bin gittin' married," "A dog-goned purty gal," "The old cock's puttin' on frills," and similar appropriate remarks, ad infinitum. In the meantime—the young woman disappearing within the hotel, and Matheny occupying himself firstly with the wants of his team, and lastly with his own and those of his traveling companion—gossip had busily circulated the report among the idlers of Wilson's Bar that Bob Matheny had taken to himself a young wife, who was accompanying him on his monthly trip to the mountains. This report was published with the usual verbal commentaries, legends, and annotations; as relevant and piquant as that sort of gossip usually is, and as elegant as, from the dialect of Wilson's Bar, might be expected.

Late that evening, a group of honest miners discussed the matter in the Star Empire Saloon.

"He's the last man I'd a-suspected ov doin' sech a act," said Tom Davis, with a manly grief upon his honest countenance, as he hid the ace and right-bower under the brim of his ragged old sombrero, and proceeded to play the left upon the remainder of that suit—with emphasis, "the very last man!"

"It's a powerful temptation to a feller in his shoes," remarked the tall Kentuckian on his right. "A young gal is a mighty purty thing to look at, and takes a man's mind off from his misfortin's. You mind the verse, don't ye:

'Sorrows I divide, and joys I double?'"

"And give this world a world o' trouble," subjoined Davis's partner, with a good natured laugh at his own wit. "It's your deal, Huxly. Look and see if all the cards are in the pack. Deuced if I don't suspect somebody's hidin' them."

"Every keerd's thar thet I hed in my hands, ef you mean me," said the Kentuckian, sharply.

"Waal, I don't mean you. A feller may have his little joke, I suppose."

"Depends on the kind o' jokes. Here's the two missin' keerds on the floor. Now, ef you say I put 'em thar, it's a little joke I reckon I won't stand. Sabe?"

"Come, I'll pay for the drinks, old fel', if you'll allow me to apologize. Waiter, drinks all round. What'll you take, gentlemen?"

"Now, that's what I call blarsted 'an'some," remarked Huxley, who was an Englishman from Australia:

"'Friend of me soul, this goblet sip, 'Twill dry the starting tear; 'Tis not so bright as woman's lip, But oh, 'tis more sincere!'

"Here's to ye, me hearties."

"Which brings us back to our subject," responded Davis's partner, commonly called "Gentleman Bill," as the glasses were drained and sent away. "Do you believe in curses, Kentuck?"

"B'lieve in cusses? Don't the Bible tell about cussin'? Wasn't thar an old man in the Bible—I disremember his name—that cussed one of his sons, and blessed t'other one? I reckon I do b'lieve in cussin'."

His interlocutor laughed softly at the statement and argument. "Did you ever know any body to be cursed in such a manner that it was plain he was under a ban of unintermitting vengeance?"

"Ef you mean did I ever know a man as was cussed, I ken say I did, onct. He was a powerful mean man—a nigger-driver down in Tennessee. He was orful to swear, and cruel to the niggers, an' his wife besides. One day she died an' left a mite of a baby; an' he was so mad he swore he 'wouldn't bury her; the neighbors might bury her, an' the brat, too, if they liked.' As he was a-swearin' an' a-tearin' with all his might, an' a-callin' on God to cuss him ef he didn't do so an' so, all of a suddent, just as his mouth opened with a oath, he was struck speechless, an' never has spoke a word till this day!—leastways, not that I ever heard ov."

"That is what I should call a special example of Divine wrath," said Gentleman Bill, deftly dealing the cards for a new game. "What I meant to ask was, whether any one, yourself especially, had ever known one man to curse another man so as to bring ruin upon him, in spite of his will to resist it."

"Waal, I've heern tell of sech things; can't say as I know such a man, without it's Bob Matheny. He says he's cussed; an' I reckon he is. Everybody in Wilson's Bar has heern about that."

"Not everybody, for I am still ignorant of his story. Was that why Mr. Davis objected so strongly to his marriage? I begin to be interested. Count me another game, partner. I should like to hear about Mr. Matheny."

"You may tell the story, Davis," said Kentuck, magnanimously. "I want ter chaw terbacker fur awhile, an' I can't talk an' chaw."

Tom Davis gladly took up the theme, as it gave him an opportunity to display his oratorical and rhetorical abilities, of which he was almost as proud as he was of his skill in hiding cards in his sleeves, his hat, his hair, his boots.

"Gentlemen," he began, hesitating an instant—while, attention being fixed on what he was about to say, he stocked the cards—"gentlemen, it's one of the curusest things you ever heerd in yer life. It seems thar was a woman at the bottom of it—I believe thar allers is at the bottom of everything. Waal, he stole another man's sunflower—I've heerd Bob say so, hisself—an' the other feller got mad—as mad as thunder—an', when he found his gal had vamosed with Bob, he cursed him; an' his curse was this: that as long as he lived all that he did should prosper for a little while, an' jest when he begun to enj'y it, a curse should come onto it. Ef it wor business, when he thought he was sure of a good thing, it should fail. Ef it wor love, the woman he loved should die. Ef it wor children, they should grow up, and turn agin' him; or, if they stuck to him, the same curse should be on them; what they undertook should fail; what they loved should die."

"Did the woman he loved die? did his children desert him?" asked the Englishman, eagerly.

"His wife died seven year arter he married her; one ov his boys was killed by his horse fallin' on him; the other got into bad company down to Red Bluffs, an', arter leadin' the old man a devil of a life for two year or more, run off, an' got taken by the lynchers—so folks said. I b'lieve he has a gal, back in the States; but his wife's folks won't let her come to Californy. They're a-eddicatin' her quite grand, an' she writes a powerful nice letter. The old man showed me one, last time he was up to the Bar. Han'some as any school-marm's ever ye saw. But Bob says he don't see what's the use; somethin's sure to happen her; somethin' allers does happen to him an' to his chillern."

"Is that why he thinks he's cursed—because 'something always happens?'" asked Gentleman Bill, indifferently.

"Sart'in; an' it's so, as sure as yer born. Nothin' never pans out long with Bob Matheny. His beginnin's is all good, an' his endin's all bad. I reckon thar never was a man to Wilson's Bar has been cleaned eout, down to the bed-rock, as often as Matheny."

"Is he a good man?" asked the Englishman, interested.

"Never had a better man to Wilson's Bar," responded Kentuck, decidedly, as he cast his quid under the table. "He ain't a lucky feller, an' he's mighty superstitious an' the like; but I make a heap o' Bob Matheny. His luck an' his cuss don't hurt him none for me. It's jest a notion, mebbe."

"Notion or no notion," said Davis, with a knowing leer, "he's not the man to marry a nice gal like that 'un he's got up to the Rest. Better let her be for some lucky young feller as could make her happy. Don't you say so, boys?"

While the laugh went round, the crowd that had been gradually collecting and listening to the story, began to move, and then to part, as the man so much talked of forced his way toward the group of speakers.