fROM -THE- LIBRARY- OF 
 A. W. Ryder 
 
TALES OF 
 THE WEST 
 
Tales or the 
 West 
 
 . Nelson & Sons, Ltd. 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT 
 THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS 
 
 
 1^ 
 
 >.CA 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 MLISS 5 
 
 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP ... 44 
 
 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 61 
 
 HIGGLES 78 
 
 TENNESSEE S PARTNER 95 
 
 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH . 109 
 
 BROWN OF CALAVERAS 124 
 
 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 MUCK-A-MUCK 143 
 
 SELINA SEDILIA 153 
 
 THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN . . . 164 
 
 Miss Mix 174 
 
 MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY .... 187 
 
 GUY HEAVYSTONE 199 
 
ii CONTENTS. 
 
 JOHN JENKINS 209 
 
 FANTINE . . . . . . . . 216 
 
 " LA FEMME " . 224 
 
 THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD . . 230 
 N N. . . . . . . . .237 
 
 No TITLE ... . 243 
 
 LOTHAW 254 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN 268 
 
TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
MLISS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JUST where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in 
 gentler undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid 
 and yellow, on the side of a great red mountain, 
 stands " Smith s Pocket." Seen from the red road 
 at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white 
 houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the 
 mountain-side. The red stage, topped with red- 
 shirted passengers, is lost to view half-a-dozen 
 times in the tortuous descent, turning up unex 
 pectedly in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing 
 altogether within a hundred yards of the town. 
 It is probably owing to this sudden twist in the road 
 that the advent of a stranger at Smith s Pocket is 
 usually attended with a peculiar circumstance. 
 Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage-office, 
 the too-confident traveller is apt to walk straight out 
 of town under the impression that it lies in quite 
 another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel- 
 men, two miles from town, met one of these self- 
 reliant passengers with a carpet-bag, umbrella, Har 
 per s Magazine, and other evidences of " Civilization 
 118 
 
6 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 and RtffbiEment," plodding along over the road he had 
 just ridden, vainly endeavouring to find the settle 
 ment of Smith s Pocket. 
 
 An observant traveller might have found some 
 compensation for his disappointment in the weird 
 aspect of that vicinity. There were huge fissures on 
 the hill-side, and displacements of the red soil, resem 
 bling more the chaos of some primary elemental up 
 heaval than the work of man ; while, half-way down, 
 a long flume straddled its narrow body and dis 
 proportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous 
 fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every 
 step smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their 
 sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to 
 a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent 
 below, and here and there were the ruins of some 
 cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the 
 hearthstone open to the skies. 
 
 The settlement of Smith s Pocket owed its origin 
 to the finding of a " pocket " on its site by a veritable 
 Smith. Five thousand dollars were taken out of it 
 in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars 
 were expended by Smith and others in erecting a 
 flume and in tunnelling. And then Smith s Pocket 
 was found to be only a pocket, and subject like 
 other pockets to depletion. Although Smith 
 pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that 
 five thousand dollars was the first and last return 
 of his labour. The mountain grew reticent of its 
 golden secrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away 
 the remainder of Smith s fortune. Then Smith went 
 
MLISS. 7 
 
 into quartz-mining ; then into quartz-milling ; then 
 into hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy 
 degrees into saloon-keeping. Presently it was 
 whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal ; 
 then it was known that Smith was a habitual 
 drunkard, and then people began to think, as they 
 are apt to, that he had never been anything else. 
 But the settlement of Smith s Pocket, like that of 
 most discoveries, was happily not dependent on the 
 fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected 
 tunnels and found pockets. So Smith s Pocket be 
 came a settlement, with its two fancy stores, its two 
 hotels, its one express-office, and its two first families. 
 Occasionally its one long straggling street was over 
 awed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco 
 fashions, imported per express, exclusively to the 
 first families ; making outraged Nature, in the ragged 
 outline of her furrowed surface, look still more 
 homely, and putting personal insult on that greater 
 portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, 
 with a change of linen, brought merely the necessity 
 of cleanliness, without the luxury of adornment. 
 Then there was a Methodist. Church, and hard 
 by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the 
 mountain-side, a graveyard ; and then a little school- 
 house. 
 
 " The Master," as he was known to his little flock, 
 sat alone one night in the schoolhouse, with some 
 open copy-books before him, carefully making those 
 bold and full characters which are supposed to 
 combine the extremes of chirographical and moral 
 
8 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 excellence, and had got as far as " Riches are de 
 ceitful/ and was elaborating the noun with an in 
 sincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his 
 text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The wood 
 peckers had been busy about the roof during the day, 
 and the noise did not disturb his work. But the open 
 ing of the door, and the tapping continuing from the 
 inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly 
 startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and 
 shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, 
 uncombed, lustreless black hair falling over her sun 
 burned face, her red arms and feet streaked with the 
 red soil, were all familiar to him. It was Melissa 
 Smith, Smith s motherless child. 
 
 " What can she want here ? " thought the master. 
 Everybody knew " Mliss," as she was called, through 
 out the length and height of Red Mountain. Every 
 body knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, 
 ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and law 
 less character, were in their way as proverbial as the 
 story of her father s weaknesses, and as philosophi 
 cally accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with 
 and fought the school-boys with keener invective and 
 quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a 
 woodman s craft, and the master had met her before, 
 miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded 
 on the mountain road. The miners camps along 
 the stream supplied her with subsistence during these 
 voluntary pilgrimages, in freely-offered alms. Not 
 but that a larger protection had been previously 
 extended to Miss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, 
 
MLISS. 9 
 
 " stated " preacher, had placed her in the hotel as 
 servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had 
 introduced her to his scholars at Sunday-school. 
 But she threw plates occasionally at the landlord, 
 and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the 
 guests, and created in the Sabbath-school a sen 
 sation that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness 
 and placidity of that institution, that, with a decent 
 regard for the starched frocks and unblemished 
 morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of 
 the first families, the reverend gentleman had her 
 ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, 
 and such the character of Mliss, as she stood before the 
 master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the un 
 kempt hair, and bleeding feet, and asked his pity. 
 It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and com 
 manded his respect. 
 
 " I come here to-night," she said rapidly and 
 boldly, keeping her hard glance on his, " because I 
 knew you was alone. I wouldn t come here when 
 them gals was here. I hate em and they hates me. 
 That s why. You keep school, don t you ? I want 
 to be teached ! " 
 
 If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeli- 
 ness of her tangled hair and dirty face she had added 
 the humility of tears, the master would have ex 
 tended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing 
 more. But, with the natural, though illogical in 
 stincts of his species, her boldness awakened in him 
 something of that respect which all original natures 
 pay unconsciously to one another in any grade. 
 
io TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on 
 still rapidly, her hand on that door-latch, and her 
 eyes on his : 
 
 " My name s Mliss, Mliss Smith ! You can bet 
 your life on that. My father s Old Smith, Old 
 Bummer Smith, that s what s the matter with him. 
 Mliss Smith, and I m coming to school ! " 
 
 " Well ? " said the master. 
 
 Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often 
 wantonly and cruelly, for no other purpose than to 
 excite the violent impulses of her nature, the master s 
 phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped ; 
 she began to twist a lock of her hair between her 
 fingers ; and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over 
 the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly. 
 Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush 
 struggled up to her cheek, and tried to assert itself 
 through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn 
 of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling 
 on God to strike her dead, and fell quite weak and 
 helpless, with her face on the master s desk, crying 
 and sobbing as if her heart would break. 
 
 The master lifted her gently and waited for the 
 paroxysm to pass. When with face still averted, she 
 was repeating between her sobs the mea culpa of 
 childish penitence, that " she d be good, she didn t 
 mean to," &c., it came to him to ask her why she had 
 left Sabbath-school. 
 
 Why had she left the Sabbath-school ? why ? 
 O yes ! What did he (McSnagley) want to tell her 
 she was wicked for ! What did he tell her that God 
 
MLISS. IT 
 
 hated her for ? If God hated her, what did she want 
 to go to Sabbath-school for ? She didn t want to be 
 " beholden " to anybody who hated her. 
 
 Had she told McSnagley this ? 
 
 Yes, she had. 
 
 The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and 
 echoed so oddly in the little schoolhouse, and seemed 
 so inconsistent and discordant with the sighing of the 
 pines without, that he shortly corrected himself with 
 a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way, 
 however, and after a moment of serious silence he 
 asked about her father. 
 
 Her father? What father? Whose father? What 
 had he ever done for her ? Why did the girls hate 
 her ? Come now ! what made the folks say, " Old 
 Bummer Smith s Mliss ! " when she passed ? Yes ; 
 O yes ! She wished he was dead, she was 
 dead, everybody was dead; and her sobs broke 
 forth anew. 
 
 The master then, leaning over her, told her as well 
 as he could what you or I might have said after hear 
 ing such unnatural theories from childish lips ; only 
 bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I the 
 unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, 
 and the omnipresent shadow of her drunken father. 
 Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his shawl 
 around her, and, bidding her come early in the morn 
 ing, he walked with her down the road. There he 
 bade her " good-night." The moon shone brightly 
 on the narrow path before them. He stood and 
 watched the bent little figure as it staggered down 
 
12 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 the road, and waited until it had passed the little 
 graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where 
 it turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of 
 suffering outlined against the far-off patient stars. 
 Then he went back to his work. But the lines of the 
 copy-book thereafter faded into long parallels of 
 never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed 
 to pass sobbing and crying into the night. Then, 
 the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, 
 he shut the door and went home. 
 
 The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face 
 had been washed, and her coarse black hair bore 
 evidence of recent struggles with the comb, in which 
 both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look 
 shone occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was 
 tamer and more subdued. Then began a series of 
 little trials and self-sacrifices, in which master and 
 pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the 
 confidence and sympathy between them. Although 
 obedient under the master s eye, at times during 
 recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss 
 would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpi 
 tating young savage, finding himself matched with 
 his own weapons of torment, would seek the master 
 with torn jacket and scratched face, and com 
 plaints of the dreadful Mliss. There was a serious 
 division among the townspeople on the subject ; 
 some threatening to withdraw their children from 
 such evil companionship, and others as warmly 
 upholding the course of the master in his work of 
 reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence 
 
MLISS. 13 
 
 that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking 
 back afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually 
 out of the shadow of her past life, as though it were 
 but her natural progress down the narrow path on 
 which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their 
 first meeting. Remembering the experience of the 
 evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that 
 Rock of Ages on which that unskilful pilot had ship 
 wrecked her young faith. But if, in the course of 
 her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few 
 words which have lifted such as she above the level 
 of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent, if she 
 learned something of a faith that is symbolised by 
 suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes, it did 
 not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer 
 people had made up a little sum by which the ragged 
 Mliss was enabled to assume the garments of respect 
 and civilisation ; and often a rough shake of the hand 
 and words of homely commendation from a red- 
 shirted and burly figure sent a glow to the cheek of 
 the young master, and set him to thinking if it was 
 altogether deserved. 
 
 Three months had passed from the time of their 
 first meeting, and the master was sitting late one 
 evening over the moral and sententious copies, when 
 there came a tap at the door, and again Mliss stood 
 before him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, 
 and there was nothing perhaps but the long black 
 hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his former 
 apparition. " Are you busy ? " she asked. " Can 
 you come with me ? " and on his signifying his 
 
14 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 readiness, in her own wilful way she said, " Come, 
 then, quick ! " 
 
 They passed out of the door together and into the 
 dark road. As they entered the town the master 
 asked her whither she was going. She replied, " To 
 see my father." 
 
 It was the first time he had heard her call him by 
 that filial title, or indeed anything more than " Old 
 Smith " or the " Old Man." It was the first time in 
 three months that she had spoken of him at all, and 
 the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from 
 him since her great change. Satisfied from her 
 manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose, 
 he passively followed. In out-of-the-way places, 
 low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons ; in gambling- 
 hells and dance-houses, the master, preceded by Mliss, 
 came and went. In the reeking smoke and blasphem 
 ous outcries of low dens, the child, holding the mas 
 ter s hand, stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly 
 unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of her 
 pursuit. Some of the revellers, recognising Mliss, 
 called to the child to sing and dance for them, and 
 would have forced liquor upon her but for the 
 interference of the master. Others, recognising 
 him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour 
 slipped by. Then the child whispered in his ear that 
 there was a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed 
 by the long flume where she thought he still might 
 be. Thither they crossed, a toilsome half-hour s 
 walk, but in vain. They were returning by the 
 ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the 
 
MLISS. 15 
 
 lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, sud 
 denly, sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear 
 night air. The echoes caught it, and carried it round 
 and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking 
 all along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and 
 move quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few 
 moments, the stream rippled quite audibly beside 
 them, a few stones loosened themselves from the 
 hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind 
 seemed to surge the branches of the funereal pines, 
 and then the silence seemed to fall thicker, heavier, 
 and deadlier. The master turned towards Mliss with 
 an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child 
 had gone. Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran 
 quickly down the trail to the river s bed, and, 
 jumping from boulder to boulder, reached the 
 base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the 
 village. Midway of the crossing he looked up and 
 held his breath in awe. For high above him 
 on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little 
 figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in the 
 darkness. 
 
 He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights 
 moving about a central point on the mountain, soon 
 found himself breathless among a crowd of awe- 
 stricken and sorrowful men. 
 
 Out from among them the child appeared, and, 
 taking the master s hand, led him silently before what 
 seemed a ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was 
 quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her 
 look that of one to whom some long-expected event 
 
16 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 had at last happened, an expression that to the 
 master in his bewilderment seemed almost like relief. 
 The walls of the cavern were partly propped by 
 decaying timbers. The child pointed to what 
 appeared to be some ragged, cast-off clothes left in 
 the hole by the late occupant. The master approached 
 nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them. It 
 was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand 
 and a bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty 
 pocket. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference 
 to a " change of heart " supposed to be experienced 
 by Mliss was more forcibly described in the gulches 
 and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had 
 " struck a good lead." So when there was a new 
 grave added to the little enclosure, and at the expense 
 of the master a little board and inscription put 
 above it, the Red Mountain Banner came out quite 
 handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory 
 of one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully 
 to that " bane of noble intellects/ and otherwise 
 genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. 
 " He leaves an only child to mourn his loss," says the 
 Banner, " who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks 
 to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley." The Rev. 
 McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss s 
 conversion, and, indirectly attributing to the un- 
 
MLISS. 17 
 
 fortunate child the suicide of her father, made affect 
 ing allusions in Sunday-school to the beneficial effects 
 of the " silent tomb," and in this cheerful contempla 
 tion drove most of the children into speechless horror, 
 and caused the pink-and-white scions of the first 
 families to howl dismally and refuse to be comforted. 
 The long dry summer came. As each fierce day 
 burned itself out in little whiffs of pearl-grey smoke 
 on the mountain summits, and the upspringing breeze 
 scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green 
 wave which in early spring upheaved above Smith s 
 grave grew sere and dry and hard. In those days the 
 master, strolling in the little churchyard of a Sabbath 
 afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild 
 flowers plucked from the damp pine forests scattered 
 there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little 
 pine cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of 
 a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to 
 keep in their desks, intertwined with the plumes of 
 the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood-anemone ; 
 and here and there the master noticed the dark blue 
 cowl of the monk s-hood, or deadly aconite. There 
 was something in the odd association of this noxious 
 plant with these memorials which occasioned 
 a painful sensation to the master deeper than his 
 esthetic sense. One day, during a long walk, in cross 
 ing a wooded ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of 
 the forest, perchedupon a prostrate pine, on a f antastie 
 throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless 
 branches, her lap full of grasses and pine-burrs, and 
 crooning to herself one of the negro melodies of her 
 
i8 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 younger life. Recognising him at a distance, she made 
 room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave 
 assumption of hospitality and patronage that would 
 have been ridiculous had it not been so terribly 
 earnest, she fed him with pine-nuts and crab-apples. 
 The master took that opportunity to point out to 
 her the noxious and deadly qualities of the monk s- 
 hood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her lap, and 
 extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it 
 as long as she remained his pupil. This done, as 
 the master had tested her integrity before, he 
 rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had 
 overcome him on seeing them died away. 
 
 Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her 
 conversion became known, the master preferred that 
 of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kind-hearted speci 
 men of South- Western efflorescence, known in her 
 maidenhood as the " Per-rairie Rose." Being one of 
 those who contend resolutely against their own 
 natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self- 
 sacrifices and struggles, had at last subjugated her 
 naturally careless disposition to principles of " order," 
 which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as 
 " Heaven s first law." But she could not entirely 
 govern the orbits of her satellites, however regular 
 her own movements, and even her own " Jeemes " 
 sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature 
 asserted itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into 
 the cupboard " between meals," and Aristides came 
 home from school without shoes, leaving those 
 important articles on the threshold, for the delight 
 
MLISS. 19 
 
 of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia 
 and Cassandra were " keerless " of their clothes. 
 So with but one exception, however much the 
 " Prairie Rose " might have trimmed and pruned and 
 trained her o\vn matured luxuriance, the little shoots 
 came up defiantly wild and straggling. That one 
 exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. 
 She was the realisation of her mother s immaculate 
 conception, neat, orderly, and dull. 
 
 It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to 
 imagine that " Clytie " was a consolation and model 
 for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher threw 
 Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was " bad/ 
 and set her up before the child for adoration in her 
 penitential moments. It was not, therefore, sur 
 prising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming 
 to school, obviously as a favour to the master and 
 as an example for Mliss and others. For " Clytie " 
 was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother s 
 physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic 
 laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an early 
 bloomer. The youth of Smith s Pocket, to whom 
 this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April 
 and languished in May. Enamoured swains haunted 
 the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal. A few were 
 jealous of the master. 
 
 Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened 
 the master s eyes to another. He could not help 
 noticing that Clytie was romantic ; that in school 
 she required a great deal of attention ; that her 
 pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing ; that 
 
20 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 she usually accompanied the request with a cer 
 tain expectation in her eye that was somewhat dis 
 proportionate to the quality of service she verbally 
 required ; that she sometimes allowed the curves of 
 a round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was 
 writing her copies ; that she always blushed and 
 flung back her blonde curls when she did so. I 
 don t remember whether I have stated that the 
 master was a young man, it s of little consequence, 
 however ; he had been severely educated in the 
 school in which Clyde was taking her first lesson, 
 and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and 
 factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he 
 was. Perhaps an insufficient quality of food may 
 have tended to this asceticism. He generally 
 avoided Clytie ; but one evening, when she re 
 turned to the schoolhouse after something she had 
 forgotten, and did not find it until the master walked 
 home with her, I hear that he endeavoured to make 
 himself particularly agreeable, partly from the fact, 
 I imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and 
 bitterness to the already overcharged hearts of 
 Clytemnestra s admirers. 
 
 The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did 
 not come to school. Noon came, but not Mliss. 
 Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared that 
 they had left the school together, but the wilful 
 Mliss had taken another road. The afternoon 
 brought her not. In the evening he called on Mrs. 
 Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. 
 Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search of her, 
 
MLISS. 21 
 
 without discovering a trace that might lead to her 
 discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable 
 accomplice, but that equitable infant succeeded in 
 impressing the household with his innocence. Mrs. 
 Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the 
 child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, 
 what was almost as terrible, muddied and soiled 
 beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at 
 heart, the master returned to the schoolhouse. As 
 he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he 
 found a note lying before him addressed to himself, 
 in Mliss s handwriting. It seemed to be written on 
 a leaf torn from some old memorandum-book, and, 
 to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been sealed with 
 six broken wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the 
 master read as follows : 
 
 " RESPECTED SIR, When you read this, I am 
 run away. Never to come back. Never, NEVER, 
 NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, 
 and my Amerika s Pride [a highly coloured litho 
 graph from a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders. But 
 don t you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don t 
 you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is of 
 her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin. That is all 
 and no more at present from Yours respectfully, 
 
 " MELISSA SMITH." 
 
 The master sat pondering on this strange epistle 
 till the moon lifted its bright face above the distant 
 hills and illuminated the trail that led to the school- 
 
22 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 house, beaten quite hard with the coming and going 
 of little feet. Then, more satisfied in. mind, he tore 
 the missive into fragments and scattered them 
 along the road. 
 
 At sunrise the next morning he was picking his 
 way through the palm-like fern and thick under 
 brush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its 
 form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few 
 dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a 
 night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge where 
 he had once found Mliss. There he found the pros 
 trate pine and tasselled branches, but the throne was 
 vacant. As he drew nearer, what might have been 
 some frightened animal started through the crackling 
 limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen 
 monarch and sheltered itself in some friendly foliage. 
 The master, reaching the old seat, found the nest 
 still warm ; looking up in the intertwining branches, 
 he met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They 
 gazed at each other without speaking. She was 
 first to break the silence. 
 
 " What do you want ? " she asked curtly. 
 
 The master had decided on a course of action. 
 " I want some crab-apples," he said humbly. 
 
 " Shan t have em ! go away ! Why don t you 
 get em of Clytemnerestera ? " (It seemed to be a 
 relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional 
 syllables to that classical young woman s already 
 long-drawn title.) " O you wicked thing ! " 
 
 " I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since 
 dinner yesterday. I am famished ! " and the young 
 
MLISS. 23 
 
 man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned 
 against the tree. 
 
 Melissa s heart was touched. In the bitter days 
 of her gipsy life she had known the sensation he so 
 artfully simulated. Overcome by his heartbroken 
 tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she 
 said,- 
 
 " Dig under the tree near the roots, and you ll 
 find lots ; but mind you don t tell ! " f or Mliss had 
 her hoards as well as the rats and squirrels. 
 
 But the master, of course, was unable to find 
 them, the effects of hunger probably blinding his 
 senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered 
 at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and 
 questioned, 
 
 " If I come down and give you some, you ll 
 promise you won t touch me ? " 
 
 The master promised. 
 
 " Hope you ll die if you do ? " 
 
 The master accepted instant dissolution as a for 
 feit. Mliss slid down the tree. For a few moments 
 nothing transpired but the munching of the pine- 
 nuts. " Do you feel better ? " she asked with some 
 solicitude. The master confessed to a recuperated 
 feeling, and then, gravely thanking her, proceeded 
 to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone 
 far before she called him. He turned. She was 
 standing there quite white, with tears in her widely 
 opened orbs. The master felt that the right moment 
 had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, 
 and, looking in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, " Lissy, 
 
24 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 do you remember the first evening you came to 
 see me ? " 
 
 Lissy remembered. 
 
 " You asked me if you might come to school, for 
 you wanted to learn something and be better, and 
 I said " 
 
 " Come," responded the child, promptly. 
 
 " What would you say if the master now came to 
 you and said that he was lonely without his little 
 scholar, and that he wanted her to come and teach 
 him to be better ? " 
 
 The child hung her head for a few moments in 
 silence. The master waited patiently. Tempted 
 by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and 
 raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and 
 gazed at them. A squirrel ran half-way down the 
 furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there stopped. 
 
 " We are waiting, Lissy," said the master in a 
 whisper, and the child smiled. Stirred by a passing 
 breeze, the tree-tops rocked, and a long pencil of 
 light stole through their interlaced boughs full on 
 the doubting face and irresolute little figure. Sud 
 denly she took the master s hand in her quick way. 
 What she said was scarcely audible, but the master, 
 putting the black hair back from her forehead, 
 kissed her ; and so, hand in hand, they passed out 
 of the damp aisles and forest odours into the open 
 sunlit road. 
 
MLISS. 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other 
 scholars, Mliss still retained an offensive attitude in 
 regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element 
 was not entirely lulled in her passionate little breast. 
 Perhaps it was only that the round curves and 
 plump outline offered more extended pinching surface. 
 But while such ebullitions were under the master s 
 control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irre 
 pressible form. 
 
 The master in his first estimate of the child s char 
 acter could not conceive that she had ever possessed 
 a doll. But the master, like many other professed 
 readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than 
 a priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was 
 emphatically Mliss s doll, a smaller copy of herself. 
 Its unhappy existence had been a secret discovered 
 accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old- 
 time companion of Mliss s wanderings, and bore 
 evident marks of suffering. Its original complexion 
 was long since washed away by the weather and 
 anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very 
 much as Mliss had in days past. Its one gown of 
 faded stuff was dirty and ragged as hers had been. 
 Mliss had never been known to apply to it any 
 childish term of endearment. She never exhibited 
 it in the presence of other children. It was put 
 severely to bed in a hollow tree near the school- 
 house, and only allowed exercise during Mliss s 
 
36 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she 
 would to herself, it knew no luxuries. 
 
 Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable im 
 pulse, bought another doll and gave it to Mliss. 
 The child received it gravely and curiously. The 
 master, on looking at it one day, fancied he saw a 
 slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild 
 blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident be 
 fore long that Mliss had also noticed the same 
 resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen 
 head on the rocks when she was alone, and some 
 times dragged it with a string round its neck to and 
 from school. At other times, setting it up on her 
 desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and in 
 offensive body. Whether this was done in revenge 
 of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion 
 of Clytie s excellences upon her, or whether she had 
 an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other 
 heathens, and, indulging in that " fetish " ceremony, 
 imagined that the original of her wax model would 
 pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical question 
 I shall not now consider. 
 
 In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could 
 not help noticing in her different tasks the working 
 of a quick, restless, and vigorous conception. She 
 knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of child 
 hood. Her answers in class were always slightly 
 dashed with audacity. Of course she was not in 
 fallible. But her courage and daring in passing 
 beyond her own depth and that of the floundering 
 little swimmers around her, in their minds out- 
 
MUSS. 27 
 
 weighed all errors of judgment. Children are not 
 better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; 
 and whenever the little red hand flashed above her 
 desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the 
 master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his 
 own experience and judgment. 
 
 Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first 
 amused and entertained his fancy began to afflict 
 him with grave doubts. He could not but see that 
 Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and wilful. That 
 there was but one better quality which pertained to 
 her semi-savage disposition, the faculty of physical 
 fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though 
 not always an attribute of the noble savage, 
 Truth. Mliss was both fearless aud sincere ; perhaps 
 in such a character the adjectives were synonymous. 
 
 The master had been doing some hard thinking 
 on this subject, and had arrived at that conclusion 
 quite common to all who think sincerely, that he 
 was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when 
 he determined to call on the Rev. McSnagley for 
 advice. This decision was somewhat humiliating to 
 his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. 
 But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of their 
 first meeting ; and perhaps with a pardonable super 
 stition that it was not chance alone that had guided 
 her wilful feet to the school-house, and perhaps with 
 a complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity 
 of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to 
 McSnagley. 
 
 The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. 
 
28 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 Moreover, he observed that the master was looking 
 " peartish," and hoped he had got over the " neu- 
 ralgy " and " rheumatiz." He himself had been 
 troubled with a dumb " ager " since last Conference. 
 But he had learned to " rastle and pray." 
 
 Pausing a moment to enable the master to write 
 his certain method of curing the dumb " ager " upon 
 the book and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley 
 proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. " She is 
 an adornment to Christianity, and has a likely 
 growin young family," added Mr. McSnagley ; " and 
 there s that mannerly young gal, so well behaved, 
 Miss Clytie." In fact, Clytie s perfections seemed 
 to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for 
 several minutes upon them. The master was doubly 
 embarrassed. In the first place, there was an en 
 forced contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of 
 Clytie. Secondly, there was something unpleasantly 
 confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher s 
 earliest born. So that the master, after a few 
 futile efforts to say something natural, found it 
 convenient to recall another engagement, and left 
 without asking the information required, but in his 
 after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. 
 Mr. McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it. 
 
 Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil 
 once more in the close communion of old. The 
 child seemed to notice the change in the master s 
 manner, which had of late been constrained, and in 
 one of their long postprandial walks she stopped 
 suddenly, and, mounting a stump, looked full in his 
 
MLISS. 29 
 
 face with big, searching eyes. " You ain t mad ? " 
 said she, with an interrogative shake of the black 
 braids. "No." " Nor bothered ?" "No." "Nor 
 hungry ? " (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that 
 might attack a person at any moment.) " No." 
 " Nor thinking of her ? " " Of whom, Lissy ? " 
 " That white girl." (This was the latest epithet 
 invented by Mliss, who was a very dark brunette, 
 to express Clytemnestra.) " No." " Upon your 
 word ? " (A substitute for " Hope you ll die ? " 
 proposed by the master.) Yes." " And sacred 
 honour?" "Yes." Then Mliss gave him a fierce 
 little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For 
 two or three days after that she condescended to 
 appear more like other children, and be, as she ex 
 pressed it, " good." 
 
 Two years had passed since the master s advent at 
 Smith s Pocket, and as his salary was not large, and 
 the prospects of Smith s Pocket eventually becoming 
 the capital of the State not entirely definite, he 
 contemplated a change. He had informed the school 
 trustees privately of his intentions, but, educated 
 young men of unblemished moral character being 
 scarce at that time, he consented to continue his 
 school term through the winter to early spring. 
 None else knew of his intention except his one friend, 
 a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician, known 
 to the people of Wingdam as " Duchesny." He 
 never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or any 
 of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result 
 of a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a 
 
30 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 desire to be spared the questions and surmises of 
 vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never really 
 believed he was going to do anything before it was 
 done. 
 
 He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish 
 instinct, perhaps, which made him try to fancy his 
 feeling for the child was foolish, romantic, and un 
 practical. He even tried to imagine that she would 
 do better under the control of an older and sterner 
 teacher. Then she was nearly eleven, and in a few 
 years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would be a 
 woman. He had done his duty. After Smith s 
 death he addressed letters to Smith s relatives, and 
 received one answer from a sister of Melissa s mother. 
 Thanking the master, she stated her intention of 
 leaving the Atlantic States for California with her 
 husband in a few months. This was a slight super 
 structure for the airy castle which the master pic 
 tured for Mliss s home, but it was easy to fancy that 
 some loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims 
 of kindred, might better guide her wayward nature. 
 Yet, when the master had read the letter, Mliss 
 listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, 
 and afterwards cut figures out of it with her scissors, 
 supposed to represent Clytemnestra, labelled " the 
 white girl," to prevent mistakes, and impaled them 
 upon the outer walls of the school-house. 
 
 When the summer was about spent, and the last 
 harvest had been gathered in the valleys, the master 
 bethought him of gathering in a few ripened shoots 
 of the young idea, and of having his Harvest-Home, 
 
MLISS. 31 
 
 or Examination. So the savans and professionals of 
 Smith s Pocket were gathered to witness that time- 
 honoured custom of placing timid children in a con 
 strained position, and bullying them as in a witness- 
 box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious 
 and self-possessed were the lucky recipients of the 
 honours. The reader will imagine that in the 
 present instance Mliss and Clyde were pre-eminent, 
 and divided public attention : Mliss with her clear 
 ness of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie 
 with her placid self-esteem and saint-like correctness 
 of deportment. The other little ones were timid 
 and blundering. Mliss s readiness and brilliancy, of 
 course, captivated the greatest number and pro 
 voked the greatest applause. Mliss s antecedents 
 had unconsciously awakened the strongest sym 
 pathies of a class whose athletic forms were ranged 
 against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces 
 looked in at the windows. But Mliss s popularity 
 was overthrown by an unexpected circumstance. 
 
 McSnagley had invited himself, and had been 
 going through the pleasing entertainment of frighten 
 ing the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most 
 ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive 
 funereal tone ; and Mliss had soared into Astronomy, 
 and was tracking the course of our spotted ball 
 through space, and keeping time with the music of 
 the spheres, and denning the tethered orbits of the 
 planets, when McSnagley impressively arose. " Mee- 
 lissy ! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this 
 yere yearth and the move-ments of the sun, and I 
 
32 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 think ye said it had been a doing of it since the 
 creashun, eh ? " Mliss nodded a scornful affirmative. 
 " Well, war that the truth ? " said McSnagley, fold 
 ing his arms. Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her 
 little red lips tightly. The handsome outlines at the 
 windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a 
 saintly Raphael-face, with blonde beard and soft 
 blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the 
 diggings, turned toward the child and whispered, 
 " Stick to it, Mliss ! " The reverend gentleman 
 heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance 
 at the master, then at the children, and then rested 
 his look on Clytie. That young woman softly ele 
 vated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves 
 were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive specimen 
 bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshippers, 
 worn in honour of the occasion. There was a, mo 
 mentary silence. Clytie s round cheeks were very 
 pink and soft. Clytie s big eyes were very bright 
 and blue. Clytie s low-necked white book-muslin 
 rested softly on Clytie s white, plump shoulders. 
 Clytie looked at the master, and the master nodded. 
 Then Clytie spoke softly : 
 
 " Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it 
 obeyed him ! " There was a low hum of applause 
 in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on 
 McSnagley s face, a grave shadow on the master s, 
 and a comical look of disappointment reflected from 
 the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over her 
 Astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. 
 A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of 
 
MLISS. 33 
 
 astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from the 
 windows as Mliss brought her red fist down on the 
 desk, with the emphatic declaration 
 " It s a d n lie. I don t believe it ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The long wet season had drawn near its close. 
 Signs of spring were visible in the swelling buds 
 and rushing torrents. The pine forests exhaled the 
 fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, 
 the Ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. 
 On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain 
 at its southern aspect the long spike of the monk s- 
 hood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once 
 more shook its dark-blue bells. Again the billow 
 above Smith s grave was soft and green, its crest 
 just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. 
 The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers 
 in the past year, and the mounds were placed two 
 by two by the little paling until they reached 
 Smith s grave, and there there was but one. General 
 superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside 
 Smith was vacant. 
 
 There had been several placards posted about the 
 town, intimating that, at a certain period, a cele 
 brated dramatic company would perform, for a few 
 days, a series of " side-splitting " and " screaming 
 farces " ; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there 
 
 2 
 
34 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 would be some melodrama and a grand divertise- 
 ment, which would include singing, dancing, &c. 
 These announcements occasioned a great fluttering 
 among the little folk, and were the theme of much 
 excitement and great speculation among the master s 
 scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom 
 this sort of thing was sacred and rare, that she 
 should go, and on that momentous evening the 
 master and Mliss " assisted." 
 
 The performance was the prevalent style of heavy 
 mediocrity ; the melodrama was not bad enough 
 to laugh at nor good enough to excite. But the 
 master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished, 
 and felt something like self-accusation in noticing 
 the peculiar effect upon her excitable nature. The 
 red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of 
 her panting little heart. Her small passionate 
 lips were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried 
 breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and arched 
 her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal 
 comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss seldom 
 laughed. Nor was she discreetly affected to the 
 delicate extremes of the corner of a white hand 
 kerchief, as was the tender-hearted " Clyde," who 
 was talking with her " feller " and ogling the master 
 at the same moment. But when the performance 
 was over, and the green curtain fell on the little 
 stage, Mliss drew a long deep breath, and turned to 
 the master s grave face with a half-apologetic smile 
 and wearied gesture. Then she said, " Now take 
 me home ! " and dropped the lids of her black 
 
MLISS. 35 
 
 eyes, as if to dwell once more in fancy on the mimic 
 stage. 
 
 On their way to Mrs. Morpher s the master 
 thought proper to ridicule the whole performance. 
 Now he shouldn t wonder if Mliss thought that the 
 young lady who acted so beautifully was really in 
 earnest, and in love with the gentleman who wore 
 such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love with him, 
 it was a very unfortunate thing ! " Why ? " said 
 Mliss, with an upward sweep of the drooping lid. 
 " Oh ! well, he couldn t support his wife at his 
 present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine 
 clothes, and then they wouldn t receive as much wages 
 if they were married as if they were merely lovers, 
 that is," added the master, " if they are not already 
 married to somebody else ; but I think the husband 
 of the pretty young countess takes the tickets at the 
 door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the candles, 
 or does something equally refined and elegant. As 
 to the young man with nice clothes, which are really 
 nice now, and must cost at least two and a half or 
 three dollars, not to speak of that mantle of red 
 drugget, which I happen to know the price of, for I 
 bought some of it for my room once, as to this 
 young man, Lissy, he is a pretty good fellow, and if 
 he does drink occasionally, I don t think people 
 ought to take advantage of it and give him black 
 eyes and throw him in the mud. Do you ? I am 
 sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a long 
 time before I would throw it up in his face, as the 
 fellow did the other night at Wingdam." 
 
36 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was 
 trying to look in his eyes, which the young man 
 kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint idea 
 of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species 
 of sardonic humour, which was equally visible in her 
 actions and speech. But the young man continued 
 in this strain until they had reached Mrs. Morpher s, 
 and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. 
 Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refresh 
 ment and rest, and shading his eyes with his hand 
 to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra s siren 
 glances, he excused himself, and went home. 
 
 For two or three days after the advent of the 
 dramatic company, Mliss was late at school, and 
 the master s usual Friday afternoon ramble was for 
 once omitted, owing to the absence of his trust 
 worthy guide. As he was putting away his books 
 and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a small 
 voice piped at his side, " Please, sir ! " The master 
 turned, and there stood Aristides Morpher. 
 
 " Well, my little man," said the master im 
 patiently, " what is it ? quick ! " 
 
 " Please, sir, me and Kerg thinks that Mliss is 
 going to run away agin." 
 
 " What s that, sir ? " said the master, with that 
 unjust testiness with which we always receive dis 
 agreeable news. 
 
 " Why, sir, she don t stay home any more, and 
 Kerg and me see her talking with one of those 
 actor fellers, and she s with him now ; and please, 
 sir, yesterday she told Kerg and me she could make 
 
MLISS. 37 
 
 a speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, 
 and she spouted right off by heart," and the little 
 fellow paused in a collapsed condition. 
 
 " What actor ? " asked the master. 
 
 " Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And 
 gold pin. And gold chain," said the just Aristides, 
 putting periods for commas to eke out his breath. 
 
 The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an 
 unpleasant tightness in his chest and thorax, and 
 walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along by 
 his side, endeavouring to keep pace with his short 
 legs to the master s strides, when the master stopped 
 suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him. 
 " Where were they talking ? " asked the master, as 
 if continuing the conversation. 
 
 " At the Arcade," said Aristides. 
 
 When they reached the main street the master 
 paused. " Run down home," said he to the boy. 
 " If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me. 
 If she isn t there, stay home ; run ! " And off 
 trotted the short-legged Aristides. 
 
 The Arcade was just across the way, a long, 
 rambling building containing a bar-room, billiard- 
 room, and restaurant. As the young man crossed the 
 plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by 
 turned and looked after him. He looked at his 
 clothes, took out his handkerchief and wiped his 
 face, before he entered the bar-room. It contained 
 the usual number of loungers, who stared at him 
 as he entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly 
 and with such a strange expression that the master 
 
38 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only 
 his own reflection in a large mirror. This made the 
 master think that perhaps he was a little excited, and 
 so he took up a copy of the Red Mountain Banner 
 from one of the tables, and tried to recover his com 
 posure by reading the column of advertisements. 
 
 He then walked through the bar-room, through 
 the restaurant, and into the billiard-room. The 
 child was not there. In the latter apartment a person 
 was standing by one of the tables with a broad- 
 brimmed glazed hat on his head. The master recog 
 nised him as the agent of the dramatic company ; 
 he had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, 
 from the peculiar fashion of wearing his beard and 
 hair. Satisfied that the object of his search was 
 not there, he turned to the man with the glazed 
 hat. He had noticed the master, but tried that 
 common trick of unconsciousness, in which vulgar 
 natures always fail. Balancing a billiard-cue in his 
 hand, he pretended to play with a ball in the centre 
 of the table. The master stood opposite to him until 
 he raised his eyes ; when their glances met, the 
 master walked up to him. 
 
 He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but 
 when he began to speak, something kept rising in his 
 throat and retarded his utterance, and his own voice 
 frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and 
 resonant. 
 
 " I understand," he began, " that Melissa Smith, an 
 orphan, and one of my scholars, has talked with 
 you about adopting your profession. Is that so ? " 
 
MLISS. 39 
 
 The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table, 
 and made an imaginary shot, that sent the ball 
 spinning round the cushions. Then walking round 
 the table he recovered the ball and placed it upon 
 the spot. This duty discharged, getting ready for 
 another shot, he said, 
 
 " S pose she has ? " 
 
 The master choked up again, but, squeezing the 
 cushion of the table in his gloved hand, he went on 
 
 " If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you 
 that I am her guardian, and responsible for her 
 career. You know as well as I do the kind of life 
 you offer her. As you may learn of any one here, 
 I have already brought her out of an existence 
 worse than death, out of the streets and the con 
 tamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. 
 Let us talk like men. She has neither father, mother, 
 sister, or brother. Are you seeking to give her an 
 equivalent for these ? " 
 
 The man with the glazed hat examined the point 
 of his cue, and then looked around for somebody to 
 enjoy the joke with him. 
 
 " I know that she is a strange, wilful girl," con 
 tinued the master, " but she is better than she was. 
 I believe that I have some influence over her still. 
 I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no 
 further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a 
 
 gentleman, leave her to me. I am willing " 
 
 But here something rose again in the master s 
 throat, and the sentence remained unfinished. 
 
 The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the 
 
40 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 master s silence, raised his head with a coarse, brutal 
 laugh, and said in a loud voice, 
 
 " Want her yourself, do you ? That cock won t 
 fight here, young man ! " 
 
 The insult was more in the tone than the words, 
 more in the glance than tone, and more in the man s 
 instinctive nature than all these. The best appre 
 ciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The 
 master felt this, and, with his pent up, nervous 
 energy finding expression in the one act, he struck 
 the brute full in his grinning face. The blow sent 
 the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and 
 tore the glove and skin from the master s hand from 
 knuckle to joint. It opened up the corners of the 
 fellow s mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his 
 beard for some time to come. 
 
 There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and 
 the trampling of many feet. Then the crowd parted 
 right and left, and two sharp quick reports followed 
 each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again 
 about his opponent, and the master was standing 
 alone. He remembered picking bits of burning 
 wadding from his coat-sleeve with his left hand. 
 Some one was holding his other hand. Looking at 
 it, he saw it was still bleeding from the blow, but 
 his fingers were clenched around the handle of a 
 glittering knife. He could not remember when or 
 how he got it. 
 
 The man who was holding his hand was Mr. 
 Morpher. He hurried the master to the door, but 
 the master held back, and tried to tell him as well 
 
MUSS. 41 
 
 as he could with his parched throat about " Mliss." 
 " It s all right, my boy/ said Mr. Morpher. " She s 
 home ! " And they passed out into the street to 
 gether. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that 
 Mliss had come running into the house a few moments 
 before, and had dragged him out, saying that some 
 body was trying to kill the master at the Arcade. 
 Wishing to be alone, the master promised Mr. 
 Morpher that he would not seek the Agent again 
 that night, and parted from him, taking the road 
 toward the schoolhouse. He was surprised in near- 
 ing it to find the door open still more surprised to 
 find Mliss sitting there. 
 
 The master s nature, as I have hinted before, had, 
 like most sensitive organisations, a selfish basis. 
 The brutal taunt thrown out by his late adversary 
 still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he 
 thought, that such a construction might be put 
 upon his affection for the child, which at best was 
 foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not volun 
 tarily abnegated his authority and affection ? And 
 what had everybody else said about her ? Why 
 should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at 
 last obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they 
 had predicted ? And he had been a participant in 
 a low bar-room fight with a common boor, and risked 
 his life, to prove what ? What had he proved ? 
 Nothing ! What would the people say ? What would 
 his friends say ? What would McSnagley say ? 
 
 In his self-accusation the last person he should 
 have wished to meet was Mliss. He entered the door 
 
42 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 and, going up to his desk, told the child, in a few 
 cold words, that he was busy and wished to be alone. 
 As she rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, 
 buried his head in his hands. When he looked up 
 again she was still standing there. She was looking 
 at his face with an anxious expression. 
 
 " Did you kill him ? " she asked. 
 
 " No ! " said the master. 
 
 " That s what I gave you the knife for ! " said the 
 child, quickly. 
 
 " Gave me the knife ? " repeated the master, in 
 bewilderment. 
 
 " Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the 
 bar. Saw you hit him. Saw you both fall. He 
 dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why 
 didn t you stick him ? " said Mliss rapidly, with an 
 expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture 
 of the little red hand. 
 
 The master could only look his astonishment. 
 
 " Yes/ said Mliss. " If you d asked me, I d told 
 you I was off with the play-actors. Why was I off 
 with the play-actors ? Because you wouldn t tell me 
 you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell 
 the Doctor so. I wasn t a goin to stay here alone 
 with those Morphers. I d rather die first." 
 
 With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly 
 consistent with her character, she drew from her 
 bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding them out 
 at arm s-length, said in her quick vivid way, and in 
 the queer pronunciation of her old life, which she 
 fell into when unduly excited, 
 
MLISS. 43 
 
 " That s the poison plant you said would kill me. 
 I ll go with the play-actors, or I ll eat this and die 
 here. I don t care which. I won t stay here, where 
 they hate and despise me ! Neither would you 
 let me, if you didn t hate and despise me too ! " 
 
 The passionate little breast heaved, and two big 
 tears peeped over the edge of Miss s eyelids, but 
 she whisked them away with the corner of her 
 apron as if they had been wasps. 
 
 " If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss fiercely, 
 " to keep me from the play-actors, I ll poison myself. 
 Father killed himself, why shouldn t I ? You said 
 a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always 
 carry it here," and she struck her breast with her 
 clenched fist. 
 
 The master thought of the vacant plot beside 
 Smith s grave, and of the passionate little figure 
 before him. Seizing her hands in his and looking 
 full into her truthful eyes, he said, 
 
 " Lissy, will you go with me ?" 
 
 The child put her arms around his neck, and 
 said joyfully, " Yes." 
 
 " But now to-night ? " 
 
 " To-night ! " 
 
 And, hand in hand, they passed into the road, 
 the narrow road that had once brought her weary 
 feet to the master s door, and which it seemed she 
 should not tread again alone. The stars glittered 
 brightly above them. For good or ill the lesson had 
 been learned, and behind them the school of Red 
 Mountain closed upon them for ever. 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING 
 CAMP. 
 
 THERE was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could 
 not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not 
 novel enough to have called together the entire 
 settlement. The ditches and claims were not only 
 deserted, but " Tut tie s grocery " had contributed 
 its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly con 
 tinued their game the day that French Pete and 
 Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar 
 in the front room. The whole camp was collected 
 before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. 
 Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the 
 name of a woman was frequently repeated. It was 
 a name familiar enough in the camp, " Cherokee 
 Sal/ 
 
 Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a 
 coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. 
 But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring 
 Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, 
 when she most needed the ministration of her own 
 sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she 
 was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 45 
 
 even when veiled by sympathising womanhood, 
 but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse 
 had come to her in that original isolation which must 
 have made the punishment of the first transgression 
 so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of 
 her sin, that, at a moment when she most lacked her 
 sex s intuitive tenderness and care, she met only the 
 half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. 
 Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by 
 her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was " rough 
 on Sal," and, in the contemplation of her condition, 
 for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an 
 ace and two bowers in his sleeve. 
 
 It will be seen, also, that the situation was novel. 
 Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring 
 Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been 
 dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no 
 possibility of return ; but this was the first time 
 that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence 
 the excitement. 
 
 " You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent 
 citizen known as " Kentuck," addressing one of the 
 loungers. " Go in there, and see what you kin do. 
 You ve had experience in them things." 
 
 Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. 
 Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative head 
 of two families ; in fact, it was owing to some legal 
 informality in these proceedings that Roaring 
 Camp a city of refuge was indebted to his com 
 pany. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy 
 was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door 
 
46 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and 
 Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, 
 and awaited the issue. 
 
 The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. 
 One or two of these were actual fugitives from jus 
 tice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Phy 
 sically, they exhibited no indication of their past lives 
 and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael 
 face, with a profusion of blonde hair ; Oakhurst, 
 a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual 
 abstraction of a Hamlet ; the coolest and most 
 courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, 
 with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. 
 The term " roughs " applied to them was a distinction 
 rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details 
 of fingers, toes, ears, &c., the camp may have been 
 deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract 
 from their aggregate force. The strongest man had 
 but three fingers on his right hand ; the best shot 
 had but one eye. 
 
 Such was the physical aspect of the men that were 
 dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay in a tri 
 angular valley between two hills and a river. The 
 only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a 
 hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the 
 rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen 
 it from the rude bunk whereon she lay, seen it 
 winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the 
 stars above. 
 
 A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability 
 to the gathering. By degrees the natural levity of 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 47 
 
 Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered 
 aid taken regarding the result. Three to five that 
 " Sal would get through with it ; " even that the child 
 would survive ; side bets as to the sex and complexion 
 of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited 
 discussion an exclamation came from those nearest 
 the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above 
 the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush 
 of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, 
 querulous cry, a cry unlike anything heard before 
 in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river 
 ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as 
 if Nature had stopped to listen too. 
 
 The camp rose to its feet as one man ! It was pro 
 posed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but, in con 
 sideration of the situation of the mother, better 
 counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were 
 discharged ; for, whether owing to the rude surgery 
 of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was 
 sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it 
 were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so 
 passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, for 
 ever. I do not think that the announcement dis 
 turbed them much, except in speculation as to the 
 fate of the child. " Can he live now ? " was asked of 
 Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other 
 being of Cherokee Sal s sex and maternal condition 
 in the settlement was an ass. There was some con- 
 lecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. 
 It was less problematical than the ancient treatment 
 of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful. 
 
48 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 When these details were completed, which ex 
 hausted another hour, the door was opened, and the 
 anxious crowd of men, who had already formed 
 themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Be 
 side the low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the 
 mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, 
 stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed, 
 and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the 
 last arrival at Roaring Camp, Beside the candle- 
 box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. 
 " Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixture 
 of authority and ex officio complacency, " Gentle 
 men will please pass in at the front door, round the 
 table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to 
 contribute anything toward the orphan will find a 
 hat handy." The first man entered with his hat 
 on ; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, 
 and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In 
 such communities good and bad actions are catching. 
 As the procession filed in comments were audible, 
 criticisms addressed perhaps rather to Stumpy in 
 the character of showman : " Is that him ? " 
 " Mighty small specimen ; " " Hasn t mor n got the 
 colour ; " " Ain t bigger nor a derringer." The 
 contributions were as characteristic : A silver 
 tobacco box ; a doubloon ; a navy revolver, silver 
 mounted ; a gold specimen ; a very beautifully 
 embroidered lady s handkerchief (from Oakhurst 
 the gambler) ; a diamond breastpin ; a diamond 
 ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the 
 giver that he " saw that pin and went two diamonds 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 49 
 
 better ") ; a slung shot ; a Bible (contributor not 
 detected) ; a golden spur ; a silver teaspoon (the 
 initials, I regret to say, were not the giver s) ; a pair 
 of surgeon s shears ; a lancet ; a Bank of England 
 note for 5 ; and about $200 in loose gold and silver 
 coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained 
 a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity 
 as inscrutable as that of the newly-born on his right. 
 Only one incident occurred to break the monotony 
 of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the 
 candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in 
 a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held 
 it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and 
 embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert 
 itself in his weather-beaten cheek. " The d d little 
 cuss ! " he said, as he extricated his ringer, with 
 perhaps more tenderness and care than he might 
 have been deemed capable of showing. He held 
 that ringer a little apart from its fellows as he 
 went out, and examined it curiously. The examina 
 tion provoked the same original remark in regard 
 to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeat 
 ing it. " He rastled with my finger," he remarked 
 to Tipton, holding up the member, " the d d little 
 cuss ! " 
 
 It was four o clock before the camp sought repose. 
 A light burnt in the cabin where the watchers sat, 
 for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor did 
 Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with 
 great gusto his experience, invariably ending with 
 his characteristic condemnation of the newcomer. 
 
50 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication 
 of sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the 
 nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed, 
 he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly. 
 Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin, still 
 whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large 
 redwood tree he paused and retraced his steps, and 
 again passed the cabin. Half-way down to the river s 
 bank he again paused, and then returned and 
 knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy. 
 " How goes it ? " said Kentuck, looking past Stumpy 
 toward the candle-box. " All serene ! " replied 
 Stumpy. " Anything up ? " " Nothing." There 
 was a pause an embarrassing one Stumpy still 
 holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to 
 his finger, which he held up to Stumpy,. " Rastled 
 with it, the d d little cuss/ he said, and 
 retired. 
 
 The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture 
 as Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been 
 committed to the hillside, there was a formal meeting 
 of the camp to discuss what should be done with her 
 infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and 
 enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard 
 to the manner and feasibility of providing for ; ts 
 wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that 
 the argument partook of none of those fierce per- 
 sonalities with which discussions were usually con-= 
 ducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that 
 they should send the child to Red Dog,- a distance 
 of forty miles, where female attention could be 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 51 
 
 procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with 
 fierce and unanimous opposition. It was evident that 
 no plan which entailed parting from their new acqui 
 sition would for a moment be entertained. " Be 
 sides/ said Tom Ryder, " them fellows at Red Dog 
 would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us." 
 A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed 
 at Roaring Camp, as in other places. 
 
 The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also 
 met with objection. It was argued that no decent 
 woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp 
 as her home, and the speaker urged that " they 
 didn t want any more of the other kind." This 
 unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may 
 seem, was the first spasm of propriety, the first 
 symptom of the camp s regeneration. Stumpy 
 advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain deli 
 cacy in interfering with the selection of a possible 
 successor in office. But, when questioned, he averred 
 stoutly that he and " Jinny " the mammal before 
 alluded to could manage to rear the child. There was 
 something original, independent, and heroic about 
 the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was re 
 tained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento. 
 " Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of 
 gold-dust into the expressman s hand, " the best 
 that can be got, lace, you know, and filigree-work 
 and frills, dn the cost ! " 
 
 Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the 
 invigorating climate of the mountain camp was com 
 pensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the 
 
52 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmos 
 phere of the Sierra foot-hills, that air pungent 
 with balsamic odour, that ethereal cordial at once 
 bracing and exhilarating, he may have found food 
 and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that trans 
 muted ass s milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy 
 inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good 
 nursing. " Me and that ass," he would say, " has 
 been father and mother to him ! Don t you/ he 
 would add, apostrophising the helpless bundle before 
 him, " never go back on us." 
 
 By the time he was a month old the necessity of 
 giving him a name became apparent. He had gener 
 ally been known as " The Kid," " Stumpy s Boy," 
 " The Coyote " (an allusion to his vocal powers), 
 and even by Kentuck s endearing diminutive of 
 " The d d little cuss." But these were felt to be 
 vague and unsatisfactory and were at last dismissed 
 under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers 
 are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day 
 declared that the baby had brought " the luck " to 
 Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they 
 had been successful. " Luck " was the name agreed 
 upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater conveni 
 ence. No allusion was made to the mother, and the 
 father was unknown. " It s better," said the philo 
 sophical Oakhurst, " to take a fresh deal all round. 
 Call him Luck, and start him fair." A day was 
 accordingly set apart for the christening. What was 
 meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine 
 who has already gathered some idea of the reckless 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 53 
 
 irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of 
 ceremonies was one " Boston," a noted wag, and the 
 occasion seemed to promise the greatest f acetiousness. 
 This ingenious satirist had spent two days in pre 
 paring a burlesque of the Church service, with 
 pointed local allusions. The choir was properly 
 trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand godfather. 
 But after the procession had marched to the grove 
 with music and banners, and the child had been de 
 posited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped before 
 the expectant crowd. " It ain t my style to spoil 
 fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eyeing the 
 faces around him, " but it strikes me that this thing 
 ain t exactly on the squar. It s playing it pretty low 
 down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that he 
 ain t goin to understand. And ef there s goin to 
 be any godfathers round, I d like to see who s got 
 any better rights than me." A silence followed 
 Stumpy s speech. To the credit of all humourists be 
 it said that the first man to acknowledge its justice 
 was the satirist thus stopped of his fun. " But," 
 said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage, 
 " we re here for a christening, and we ll have it. I 
 proclaim you Thomas Luck, according to the laws 
 of the United States and the State of California, so 
 help me God." It was the first time that the name of 
 the Deity had been otherwise uttered than pro 
 fanely in the camp. The form of christening was 
 perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had 
 conceived ; but, strangely enough, nobody saw it 
 and nobody laughed. " Tommy " was christened as 
 
54 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 seriously as he would have been under a Christian 
 roof, and cried and was comforted in as orthodox 
 fashion. 
 
 And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring 
 Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the 
 settlement. The cabin assigned to " Tommy Luck " 
 or " The Luck," as he was more frequently called 
 first showed signs of improvement. It was kept 
 scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was 
 boarded, clothed, and papered. The rosewood cradle, 
 packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy s way 
 of putting it, " sorter killed the rest of the furniture." 
 So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity. 
 The men who were in the habit of lounging in at 
 Stumpy s to see " how The Luck got on " seemed 
 to appreciate the change, and, in self-defence, the 
 rival establishment of " Tuttle s grocery " be 
 stirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The 
 reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roar 
 ing Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal 
 cleanliness. Again, Stumpy imposed a kind of quar 
 antine upon those who aspired to the honour and 
 privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel morti 
 fication to Kentuck who, in the carelessness of a 
 large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun 
 to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like 
 a snake s, only sloughed off through decay to be 
 debarred this privilege from certain prudential 
 reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of inno 
 vation that he thereafter appeared regularly every 
 afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining from 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 55 
 
 his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary 
 laws neglected. " Tommy," who was supposed to 
 spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt 
 to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The 
 shouting and yelling which had gained the camp its 
 infelicitous title were not permitted within hearing 
 distance of Stumpy s. The men conversed in 
 whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity 
 was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and 
 throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, 
 known as " D n the luck i " and " Curse the 
 luck ! " was abandoned, as having a new personal 
 bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being 
 supposed to have a soothing, tranquillising quality, 
 and one song, sung by " Man-o -War Jack," an 
 English sailor from her Majesty s Australian colo 
 nies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugu 
 brious recital of the exploits of " the Arethusa, 
 Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a 
 prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, 
 " On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine 
 sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side 
 to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning 
 forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar 
 rocking of Jack or the length of his song it contained 
 ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious 
 deliberation to the bitter end, the lullaby generally 
 had the desired effect. At such times the men would 
 lie at full length under the trees in the soft summer 
 twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the 
 melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this 
 
56 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. " This 
 ere kind o think," said the Cockney Simmons, 
 meditatively reclining on his elbow, " is evingry." 
 It reminded him of Greenwich. 
 
 On the long summer days The Luck was usually 
 carried to the gulch from whence the golden store of 
 Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread 
 over pine-boughs, he would lie while the men were 
 working in the ditches below. Latterly there was a 
 rude attempt to decorate this bower with flowers 
 and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one 
 would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, 
 azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. 
 The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there 
 were beauty and significance in these trifles, which 
 they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their 
 feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of varie 
 gated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the 
 creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and 
 strengthened, and were invariably put aside for The 
 Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the 
 woods and hillsides yielded that would do for 
 Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never 
 child out of fairyland had before, it is to be hoped 
 that Tommy was content. He appeared to be securely 
 happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about 
 him, a contemplative light in his round grey eyes, 
 that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always 
 tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once, 
 having crept beyond his " corral," a hedge of 
 tesselated pine-boughs, which surrounded his bed,- 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 57 
 
 he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft 
 earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air 
 in that position for at least five minutes with un 
 flinching gravity. He was extricated without a mur 
 mur. I hesitate to record the many other instances 
 of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the 
 statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them 
 were not without a tinge of superstition. " I crep 
 up the bank just now," said Ken tuck one day, in a 
 breathless state of excitement, " and dern my skin 
 if he wasn t a talking to a jaybird as was a sittin 
 on his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable 
 as anything you please, a jawin at each other just 
 like two cherrybums." Howbeit, whether creeping 
 over the pine-boughs or lying lazily on his back 
 blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds 
 sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. 
 Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she 
 would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of 
 sunlight that fell just within his grasp ; she would 
 send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm 
 of bay and resinous gums ; to him the tall redwoods 
 nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees 
 buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accom 
 paniment. 
 
 Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. 
 They were "flush times/ and the luck was with them. 
 The claims had yielded enormously. The camp 
 was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously 
 on strangers. No encouragement was given to im 
 migration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, 
 
58 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 the land on either side of the mountain wall that 
 surrounded the camp they duly pre-empted. This, 
 and a reputation for singular proficiency with the 
 revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. 
 The expressman their only connecting link with the 
 surrounding world sometimes told wonderful stories 
 of the camp. He would say, " They ve a street up 
 there in Roaring that would lay over any street 
 in Red Dog. They ve got vines and flowers round 
 their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. 
 But they re mighty rough on strangers, and they 
 worship an Ingin baby." 
 
 With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for 
 further improvement. It was proposed to build a 
 hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or 
 two decent families to reside there for the sake of 
 The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female 
 companionship. The sacrifice that this concession 
 to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely sceptical 
 in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can 
 only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. 
 A few still held out. But the resolve could not be 
 carried into effect for three months, and the minority 
 meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn 
 up to prevent it. And it did. 
 
 The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the 
 foot-hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and 
 every mountain creek became a river, and every river 
 a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into 
 a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hill 
 sides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its 
 
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 59 
 
 drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been 
 twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been 
 forewarned. " Water put the gold into them 
 gulches/ said Stumpy. " It s been here once and 
 will be here again ! " And that night the North 
 Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and swept up 
 the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. 
 
 In the confusion of rushing water, crushing trees, 
 and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed 
 to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, 
 but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. 
 When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, near 
 est the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch 
 they found the body of its unlucky owner ; but the 
 pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring 
 Camp had disappeared. They were returning with 
 sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled 
 them. 
 
 It was a relief-boat from down the river. They 
 had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, 
 nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did any 
 body know them, and did they belong here ? 
 
 It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck 
 lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still 
 holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. 
 As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they 
 saw that the child was cold and pulseless. " He is 
 dead," said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. " Dead ? " 
 he repeated feebly. : Yes, my man, and you are 
 dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the expiring 
 Kentuck. " Dying ! " he repeated ; " he s a taking 
 
60 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 me with him. Tell the boys I ve got The Luck 
 with me now ; " and the strong man, clinging to 
 the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a 
 straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows 
 forever to the unknown sea. 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER 
 FLAT. 
 
 As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the 
 main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23rd 
 of November 1850, he was conscious of a change in 
 its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. 
 Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, 
 ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant 
 glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, 
 in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked 
 ominous. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst s calm, handsome face betrayed small 
 concern in these indications. Whether he was con 
 scious of any predisposing cause was another question. 
 " I reckon they re after somebody/ he reflected ; 
 " likely it s me/ He returned to his pocket the 
 handkerchief with which he had been whipping away 
 the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and 
 quietly discharged his mind of any further con 
 jecture. 
 
 In point of fact, Poker Flat was " after somebody/ 
 It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand 
 dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent 
 
62 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous 
 reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any 
 of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee 
 had determined to rid the town of all improper 
 persons. This was done permanently in regard 
 of two men who were then hanging from the boughs 
 of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the 
 banishment of certain other objectionable characters. 
 I regret to say that some of these were ladies. It 
 is but due to the sex, however, to state that their 
 impropriety was professional, and it was only in such 
 easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat 
 ventured to sit in judgment. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was 
 included in this category. A few of the committee 
 had urged hanging him as a possible example and a 
 sure method of reimbursing themselves from his 
 pockets of the sums he had won from them. " It s 
 agin justice/ said Jim Wheeler, " to let this yer young 
 man from Roaring Camp an entire stranger carry 
 away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity 
 residing in the breasts of those who had been for 
 tunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled 
 this narrower local prejudice. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic 
 calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of 
 the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a 
 gambler not to accept fate. With him life was at 
 best an uncertain game, and he recognised the usual 
 percentage in favour of the dealer. 
 
 A body of armed men accompanied the deported 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 63 
 
 wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the 
 settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known 
 to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimida 
 tion the armed escort was intended, the expatriated 
 party consisted of a young woman familiarly known 
 as " The Duchess ; " another who had won the title 
 of " Mother Shipton ; " and " Uncle Billy/ a sus 
 pected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The 
 cavalcade provoked no comments from the spec 
 tators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. 
 Only when the gulch which marked the uttermost 
 limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke 
 briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden 
 to return at the peril of their lives. 
 
 As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings 
 found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, 
 some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Par 
 thian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The 
 philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He 
 listened calmly to Mother Shipton s desire to cut 
 somebody s heart out, to the repeated statements of 
 the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the 
 alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of 
 Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good- 
 humour characteristic of his class, he insisted upon 
 exchanging his own riding-horse, " Five Spot," for 
 the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even 
 this act did not draw the party into any closer 
 sympathy. The young woman readjusted her some 
 what draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry ; 
 Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of " Five Spot " 
 
64 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the 
 whole party in one sweeping anathema. 
 
 The road to Sandy Bar a camp that, not having 
 as yet experienced the regenerating influences of 
 Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invita 
 tion to the emigrants lay over a steep mountain 
 range. It was distant a day s severe travel. In that 
 advanced season the party soon passed out of the 
 moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills into the 
 dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail 
 was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, 
 rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared 
 her intention of going no farther, and the party 
 halted. 
 
 The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A 
 wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by 
 precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently 
 toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked 
 the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable 
 spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But 
 Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey 
 to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were 
 not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he 
 pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philo 
 sophic commentary on the folly of " throwing up 
 their hand before the game was played out." But 
 they were furnished with liquor, which in this emer 
 gency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and 
 prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not 
 long before they were more or less under its influence. 
 Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 65 
 
 one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and 
 Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone re 
 mained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a 
 profession which required coolness, impassiveness, 
 and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he 
 " couldn t afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent 
 fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah- 
 trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first 
 time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself 
 in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and 
 face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously 
 neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. 
 The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable 
 companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet 
 he could not help feeling the want of that excitement 
 which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that 
 calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He 
 looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet 
 sheer above the circling pines around him, at the sky 
 ominously clouded, at the valley below, already deep 
 ening into shadow ; and, doing so, suddenly he heard 
 his own name called. 
 
 A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the 
 fresh, open face of the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst re 
 cognised Tom Simson, otherwise known as " The 
 Innocent/ of Sandy Bar. He had met him some 
 months before over a " little game," and had, with 
 perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune 
 
 3 
 
66 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 amounting to some forty dollars of that guileless 
 youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst 
 drew the youthful speculator behind the door and 
 thus addressed him : " Tommy, you re a good little 
 man, but you can t gamble worth a cent. Don t 
 try it over again." He then handed him his money 
 back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made 
 a devoted slave of Tom Simson. 
 
 There was a remembrance of this in his boyish 
 and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had 
 started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his 
 fortune. " Alone ? " No, not exactly alone ; in 
 fact (a giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods. 
 Didn t Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney ? She that 
 used to wait on the table at the Temperance House ? 
 They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake 
 Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and 
 v/ere going to Poker Flat to be married, and here 
 they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky 
 it was they had found a place to camp and company. 
 All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, 
 a stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind 
 the pine-tree, where she had been blushing unseen, 
 and rode to the side of her lover. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with senti 
 ment, still less with propriety ; but he had a vague 
 idea that the situation was not fortunate. He 
 retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently 
 to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, 
 and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognise in 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 67 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst s kick a superior power that would not 
 bear trifling. He then endeavoured to dissuade 
 Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He 
 even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, 
 nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the 
 Innocent met this objection by assuring the party 
 that he was provided with an extra mule loaded 
 with provisions, and by the discovery of a rude 
 attempt at a loghouse near the trail. " Piney can 
 stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the Innocent, point 
 ing to the Duchess, " and I can shift for myself." 
 
 Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst s admonishing foot 
 saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of 
 laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up 
 the canon until he could recover his gravity. There 
 he confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many 
 slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the 
 usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, 
 he found them seated by a fire for the air had 
 grown strangely chill and the sky overcast in appar 
 ently amicable conversation. Piney was actually 
 talking in an impulsive girlish fashion to the Duchess, 
 who was listening with an interest and animation she 
 had not shown for many days. The Innocent was 
 holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. 
 Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually 
 relaxing into amiability. " Is this yer a d d 
 picnic ? " said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he 
 surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, 
 and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly 
 an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes that dis- 
 
68 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 turbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular 
 nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and 
 cram his fist into his mouth. 
 
 As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a 
 slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees and 
 moaned through their long and gloomy aisles. The 
 ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-boughs, 
 was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, 
 they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sin 
 cere that it might have been heard above the swaying 
 pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother 
 Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon 
 this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without 
 a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the 
 men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes 
 were asleep. 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning 
 he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the 
 dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, 
 brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to 
 leave it, snow ! 
 
 He started to his feet with the intention of awaken 
 ing the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But 
 turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found 
 him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse 
 to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had 
 been tethered ; they were no longer there. The tracks 
 were already rapidly disappearing in the snow. 
 
 The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst 
 back to the fire with his usual calm. He did not 
 waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peace- 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 69 
 
 fully, with a smile on his good-humoured, freckled 
 face ; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters 
 as sweetly as though attended by celestial guardians, 
 and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his 
 shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the 
 dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of snow- 
 flakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What 
 could be seen of the landscape appeared magically 
 changed. He looked over the valley and summed 
 up the present and future in two words, " Snowed 
 in!" 
 
 A careful inventory of the provisions, which, 
 fortunately for the party, had been stored within the 
 hut, and so escaped the felonious fingers of Uncle 
 Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence 
 they might last ten days longer. " That is," said 
 Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, " if you re 
 willing to board us. If you ain t and perhaps 
 you d better not you can wait till Uncle Billy gets 
 back with provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. 
 Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle 
 Billy s rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that 
 he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally 
 stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to 
 the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew 
 the facts of their associate s defection. " They ll 
 find out the truth about us all when they find out 
 anything," he added significantly, " and there s no 
 good frightening them now." 
 
 Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the 
 disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the 
 
70 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 prospect of their enforced seclusion. " We ll have a 
 good camp for a week, and then the snow ll melt, 
 and we ll all go back together." The cheerful gaiety 
 of the young man and Mr. Oakhurst s calm infected 
 the others. The Innocent, with the aid of pine- 
 boughs, extemporised a thatch for the roofless cabin, 
 and the Duchess directed Piney in the rearrangement 
 of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the 
 blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest 
 extent. " I reckon now you re used to fine things 
 at Poker Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned 
 away sharply to conceal something that reddened 
 her cheeks through their professional tint, and Mother 
 Shipton requested Piney not to " chatter." But 
 when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search 
 for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter 
 echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, 
 and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the 
 whisky, which he had prudently cached. " And yet it 
 don t somehow sound like whisky, " said the gambler. 
 It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire 
 through the still blinding storm and the group around 
 it that he settled to the conviction that it was " square 
 fun." 
 
 Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with 
 the whisky as something debarred the free access of 
 the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, 
 in Mother Shipton s words, he " didn t say cards 
 once " during that evening. Haply the time was 
 beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat 
 ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 71 
 
 Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the 
 manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods 
 managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from 
 its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on 
 a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity 
 of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting 
 hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with 
 great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a 
 certain defiant tone and Covenanter s swing to its 
 chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused 
 it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in 
 the refrain : 
 
 " I m proud to live in the service of the Lord, 
 And I m bound to die in His army." 
 
 The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled 
 above the miserable group, and the flames of their 
 altar leaped heavenward, as if in token of the 
 vow. 
 
 At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds 
 parted, and the stars glittered keenly above the 
 sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional 
 habits had enabled him to live on the smallest 
 possible amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with 
 Tom Simson somehow managed to take upon him 
 self the greater part of that duty. He excused him 
 self to the Innocent by saying that he had " often 
 been a week without sleep." " Doing what ? " 
 asked Tom. " Poker ! " replied Oakhurst senten- 
 tiously. " When a man gets a streak of luck, 
 
72 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 nigger-luck, he don t get tired. The luck gives in 
 first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, 
 " is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it 
 for certain is that it s bound to change. And it s 
 finding out when it s going to change that makes 
 you. We ve had a streak of bad luck since we left 
 Poker Flat, you come along, and slap you get into 
 it, too. If you can hold your cards right along 
 you re all right. For," added the gambler, with 
 cheerful irrelevance 
 
 " I m proud to live in the service of the Lord, 
 And I m bound to die in His army." 
 
 The third day came, and the sun, looking through 
 the white-curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide 
 their slowly decreasing store of provisions for the 
 morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that 
 mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly 
 warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful 
 commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on 
 drift of snow piled high around the hut, a hope 
 less, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below 
 the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. 
 Through the marvellously clear air the smoke of the 
 pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. 
 Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle 
 of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction a final 
 malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, 
 and perhaps for that reason was invested with a 
 certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 73 
 
 privately informed the Duchess. " Just you go out 
 there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to 
 the task of amusing " the child," as she and the 
 Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no 
 chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory 
 of the pair thus to account for the fact that she 
 didn t swear and wasn t improper. 
 
 When night crept up again through the gorges, 
 the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in 
 fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering 
 camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching 
 void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion 
 was proposed by Piney, story-telling. Neither Mr. 
 Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate 
 their personal experiences, this plan would have 
 failed too, but for the Innocent. Some months 
 before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. 
 Pope s ingenious translation of the " Iliad." He 
 now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of 
 that poem having thoroughly mastered the argu 
 ment and fairly forgotten the words in the current 
 vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of 
 that night the Homeric demigods again walked the 
 earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the 
 winds, and the great pines in the canon seemed to 
 bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oak- 
 hurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most espe 
 cially was he interested in the fate of " Ash-heels," 
 as the Innocent persisted in denominating the 
 " swift-footed Achilles." 
 
 So, with small food and much of Homer and the 
 
74 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 accordion, a week passed over the heads of the out 
 casts. The sun again forsook them, and again from 
 leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the 
 land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy 
 circle, until at last they looked from their prison 
 over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered 
 twenty feet above their heads. It became more and 
 more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the 
 fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in the drifts. 
 And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from 
 the dreary prospect and looked into each other s 
 eyes and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled him 
 self coolly to the losing game before him. The 
 Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed 
 the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton once the 
 strongest of the party seemed to sicken and fade. 
 At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst 
 to her side. " I m going," she said, in a voice of 
 querulous weakness, " but don t say anything about 
 it. Don t waken the kids. Take the bundle from 
 under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. 
 It contained Mother Shipton s rations for the last 
 week, untouched. " Give em to the child," she 
 said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. " You ve 
 starved yourself," said the gambler. " That s what 
 they call it," said the woman querulously, as she 
 lay down again, and, turning her face to the wall, 
 passed quietly away. 
 
 The accordion and the bones were put aside that 
 day, and Homer was forgotten. When the body of 
 Mother Shipton had been committed to the snow, 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 75 
 
 Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed 
 him a pair of snowshoes, which he had fashioned from 
 the old pack-saddle. " There s one chance in a 
 hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney ; 
 " but it s there," he added, pointing toward Poker 
 Flat. " If you can reach there in two days she s 
 safe." " And you ? " asked Tom Simson. " I ll 
 stay here," was the curt reply. 
 
 The lovers parted with a long embrace. " You 
 are not going, too ? " said the Duchess, as she saw 
 Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him. 
 " As far as the canon," he replied. He turned sud 
 denly and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face 
 aflame, and her trembling limbs rigid with amaze 
 ment. 
 
 Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought 
 the storm again and the whirling snow. Then the 
 Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one had 
 quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a 
 few days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she 
 hid them from Piney. 
 
 The women slept but little. In the morning, 
 looking into each other s faces, they read their fate. 
 Neither spoke, but Piney, accepting the position of 
 the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around 
 the Duchess s waist. They kept this attitude for 
 the rest of the day. That night the storm reached 
 its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protect 
 ing pines, invaded the very hut. 
 
 Toward morning they found themselves unable to 
 feed the fire, which gradually died away. As the 
 
?6 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer 
 to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours : 
 " Piney, can you pray ? " " No, dear," said Piney, 
 simply. The Duchess, without knowing exactly 
 why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon 
 Piney s shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, 
 the younger and purer pillowing the head of her 
 soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell 
 asleep. 
 
 The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. 
 Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine- 
 boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled 
 about them as they slept. The moon through the 
 rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the 
 camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly 
 travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle 
 mercifully flung from above. 
 
 They slept all that day and the next, nor did they 
 waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence 
 of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the 
 snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have 
 told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them 
 which was she that had sinned. Even the law of 
 Poker Flat recognised this, and turned away, leaving 
 them still locked in each other s arms. 
 
 But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest 
 pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to 
 the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore the following, 
 written in pencil in a firm hand : 
 
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 77 
 t 
 
 BENEATH THIS TREE 
 
 LIES THE BODY 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN OAKHURST, 
 
 WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK 
 ON THE 23RD OF NOVEMBER 1850, 
 
 AND 
 
 HANDED IN HIS CHECKS 
 ON THE 7TH DECEMBER 1850. 
 
 I 
 
 And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his 
 side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in 
 life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the 
 strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of 
 Poker Flat. 
 
MIGGLES. 
 
 WE were eight including the driver. We had not 
 spoken during the passage of the last six miles, since 
 the jolting of the heavy vehicle over the roughen 
 ing road had spoiled the Judge s last poetical quota 
 tion. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, 
 his arm passed through the swaying strap and his 
 head resting upon it, altogether a limp, helpless 
 looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been 
 cut down too late. The French lady on the back 
 seat was asleep too, yet in a half-conscious propriety 
 of attitude, shown even in the disposition of the 
 handkerchief which she held to her forehead and 
 which partially veiled her face. The lady from 
 Virginia City, travelling with her husband, had long 
 since lost all individuality in a wild confusion of 
 ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls. There was no 
 sound but the rattling of wheels and the dash of rain 
 upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and we 
 became dimly aware of voices. The driver was 
 evidently in the midst of an exciting colloquy with 
 some one in the road, a colloquy of which such 
 fragments as " bridge gone," " twenty feet of 
 
MIGGLES. 79 
 
 water," " can t pass," were occasionally distin 
 guishable above the storm. Then came a lull, 
 and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the 
 parting adjuration 
 
 " Try Miggles s." 
 
 We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle 
 slowly turned, of a horseman vanishing through the 
 rain, and we were evidently on our way to Miggles s. 
 
 Who and where was Higgles ? The Judge, our 
 authority, did not remember the name, and he knew 
 the country thoroughly. The Washoe traveller 
 thought Higgles must keep a hotel. We only knew 
 that we were stopped by high water in front and 
 rear, and that Higgles was our rock of refuge. A 
 ten minutes splashing through a tangled byroad, 
 scarcely wide enough for the stage, and we drew up 
 before a barred and boarded gate in a wide stone 
 wall or fence about eight feet high. Evidently 
 Higgles s, and evidently Higgles did not keep a 
 hotel. 
 
 The driver got down and tried the gate. It was 
 securely locked. 
 
 "Higgles! O Higgles!" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Higg-ells ! You Higgles ! " continued the driver, 
 with rising wrath. 
 
 " Higglesy ! " joined in the expressman per 
 suasively. " O Higgy ! Hig i " 
 
 But no reply came from the apparently insensate 
 Higgles. The Judge, who had finally got the window 
 down, put his head out and propounded a series of 
 
8o TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 questions, which if answered categorically would 
 have undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, 
 but which the driver evaded by replying that " if 
 we didn t want to sit in the coach all night we had 
 better rise up and sing out for Higgles." 
 
 So we rose up and called on Higgles in chorus, 
 then separately. And when we had finished, a 
 Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called 
 for " Haygells ! " whereat we all laughed. While 
 we were laughing the driver cried " Shoo ! " 
 
 We listened. To our infinite amazement the 
 chorus of " Higgles " was repeated from the other 
 side of the wall, even to the final and supplemental 
 " Haygells." 
 
 " Extraordinary echo ! " said the Judge. 
 
 " Extraordinary d d skunk ! " roared the driver, 
 contemptuously. " Come out of that, Higgles, and 
 show yourself ! Be a man, Higgles ! Don t hide in 
 the dark ; I wouldn t if I were you, Higgles," con 
 tinued Yuba Bill, now dancing about in an excess 
 of fury. 
 
 " Higgles ! " continued the voice, " O Higgles ! " 
 
 " Hy good man ! Hr. Hyghail ! " said the Judge, 
 softening the asperities of the name as much as 
 possible. " Consider the inhospitality of refusing 
 shelter from the inclemency of the weather to help 
 less females. Really, my dear sir" But a 
 
 succession of " Higgles," ending in a burst of 
 laughter, drowned his voice. 
 
 Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy 
 stone from the road, he battered down the gate, and 
 
HIGGLES. 81 
 
 with the expressman entered the enclosure. We 
 followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gather 
 ing darkness all that we could distinguish was that 
 we were in a garden from the rose-bushes that 
 scattered over us a minute spray from their drip 
 ping leaves and before a long, rambling wooden 
 building. 
 
 " Do you know this Miggles ? " asked the Judge 
 of Yuba Bill. 
 
 " No, nor don t want to," said Bill shortly, who 
 felt the Pioneer Stage Company insulted in his per 
 son by the contumacious Miggles. 
 
 " But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge, as he 
 thought of the barred gate. 
 
 " Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, 
 " hadn t you better go back and sit in the coach 
 till yer introduced ? I m going in," and he pushed 
 open the door of the building. 
 
 A long room, lighted only by the embers of a fire 
 that was dying on the large hearth at its farther 
 extremity ; the walls curiously papered, and the 
 flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern ; 
 somebody sitting in a large armchair by the fire 
 place. All this we saw as we crowded together into 
 the room after the driver and expressman. 
 
 " Hello ! be you Miggles ? " said Yuba Bill to the 
 solitary occupant. 
 
 The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill 
 walked wrathfully toward it and turned the eye of 
 his coach-lantern upon its face. It was a man s 
 face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large 
 
82 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly 
 gratuitous solemnity which I had sometimes seen 
 in an owl s. The large eyes wandered from Bill s 
 face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on 
 that luminous object without further recognition. 
 
 Bill restrained himself with an effort. 
 
 " Higgles ! be you deaf ? You ain t dumb any 
 how, you know ? " and Yuba Bill shook the insensate 
 figure by the shoulder. 
 
 To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, 
 the venerable stranger apparently collapsed, sinking 
 into half his size and an undistinguishable heap of 
 clothing. 
 
 " Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking appeal- 
 ingly at us, and hopelessly retiring from the contest. 
 
 The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted 
 the mysterious invertebrate back into his original 
 position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to 
 reconnoitre outside, for it was evident that, from 
 the helplessness of this solitary man, there must be 
 attendants near at hand, and we all drew around 
 the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, 
 and had never lost his conversational amiability, 
 standing before us with his back to the hearth, 
 charged us, as an imaginary jury, as follows : 
 
 " It is evident that either our distinguished friend 
 here has reached that condition described by Shake 
 speare as the sere and yellow leaf, or has suffered 
 some premature abatement of his mental and 
 physical faculties. Whether he is really the 
 Higgles " 
 
HIGGLES. 83 
 
 Here he was interrupted by " Miggles ! O Higgles ! 
 Higglesy 1 Hig ! J} and, in fact, the whole chorus of 
 Higgles in very much the same key as it had once 
 before been delivered unto us. 
 
 We gazed at each other for a moment in some 
 alarm. The Judge, in particular, vacated his posi 
 tion quickly, as the voice seemed to come directly 
 over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon 
 discovered in a large magpie who was perched upon 
 a shelf over the fireplace, and who immediately re 
 lapsed into a sepulchral silence, which contrasted 
 singularly with his previous volubility. It was, 
 undoubtedly, his voice which we had heard in the 
 road, and our friend in the chair was not responsible 
 for the discourtesy. Yuba Bill, who re-entered the 
 room after an unsuccessful search, was loath to 
 accept the explanation, and still eyed the helpless 
 sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in 
 which he had put up his horses, but he came back 
 dripping and sceptical. " Thar ain t nobody but him 
 within ten mile of the shanty, and that } ar d d 
 old skeesicks knows it." 
 
 But the faith of the majority proved to be securely 
 based. Bill had scarcely ceased growling before we 
 heard a quick step upon the porch, the trailing of a 
 wet skirt, the door was flung open, and with a flash 
 of white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter 
 absence of ceremony or diffidence, a young woman 
 entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned back 
 against it. 
 
 " Oh, if you please, I m Higgles ! " 
 
84 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 And this was Higgles ! this bright-eyed, full- 
 throated young woman, whose wet gown of coarse 
 blue stuff could not hide the beauty of the feminine 
 curves to which it clung ; from the chestnut crown 
 of whose head, topped by a man s oil-skin sou wester, 
 to the little feet and ankles, hidden somewhere in the 
 recesses of her boy s brogans, all was grace ; this 
 was Higgles, laughing at us, too, in the most airy, 
 frank, offhand manner imaginable. 
 
 ; You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath, 
 and holding one little hand against her side, quite 
 unheeding the speechless discomfiture of our party 
 or the complete demoralisation of Yuba Bill, whose 
 features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous 
 and imbecile cheerfulness, " You see, boys, I was 
 mor n two miles away when you passed down the 
 road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I 
 ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but 
 Jim, and and I m out of breath and that lets 
 me out." 
 
 And here Higgles caught her dripping oil-skin hat 
 from her head, with a mischievous swirl that scat 
 tered a shower of raindrops over us ; attempted to 
 put back her hair ; dropped two hair-pins in the 
 attempt ; laughed, and sat down beside Yuba Bill, 
 with her hands crossed lightly on her lap. 
 
 The Judge recovered himself first and essayed an 
 extravagant compliment. 
 
 " I ll trouble you for that thar har-pin," said Higgles 
 gravely. Half-a-dozen hands were eagerly stretched 
 forward ; the missing hair-pin was restored to its 
 
HIGGLES. 85 
 
 fair owner ; and Higgles, crossing the room, looked 
 keenly in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes 
 looked back at hers with an expression we had never 
 seen before. Life and intelligence seemed to struggle 
 back into the rugged face. Higgles laughed again, 
 it was a singularly eloquent laugh, and turned 
 her black eyes and white teeth once more towards us. 
 
 " This afflicted person is" hesitated the Judge. 
 
 " Jim ! " said Higgles. 
 
 " Your father ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Brother ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Husband ? " 
 
 Higgles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the 
 two lady passengers, who I had noticed did not 
 participate in the general masculine admiration of 
 Higgles, and said, gravely, " No ; it s Jim ! " 
 
 There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers 
 moved closer to each other ; the Washoe husband 
 looked abstractedly at the fire, and the tall man 
 apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support 
 at this emergency. But Higgles s laugh, which was 
 very infectious, broke the silence. 
 
 " Come," she said briskly, " you must be hungry. 
 Who ll bear a hand to help me get tea ? " 
 
 She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments 
 Yuba Bill was engaged like Caliban in bearing logs 
 for this Hiranda ; the expressman was grinding coffee 
 on the veranda ; to myself the arduous duty of slic 
 ing bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each man 
 
86 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 his good humoured and voluble counsel. And when 
 Higgles, assisted by the Judge and our Hibernian 
 " deck-passenger," set the table with all the avail 
 able crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite 
 of the rain that beat against windows, the wind that 
 whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who 
 whispered together in the corner, or the magpie, who 
 uttered a satirical and croaking commentary on 
 their conversation from his perch above. In the now 
 bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were 
 papered with illustrated journals, arranged with 
 feminine taste and discrimination. The furniture 
 was extemporised and adapted from candle-boxes 
 and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico or 
 the skin of some animal. The arm-chair of the help 
 less Jim was an ingenious variation of a flour-barrel. 
 There was neatness, and even a taste for the pic 
 turesque, to be seen in the few details of the long 
 low room. 
 
 The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was 
 a social triumph, chiefly, I think, owing to the rare 
 tact of Higgles in guiding the conversation, asking 
 all the questions herself, yet bearing throughout 
 a frankness that rejected the idea of any conceal 
 ment on her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, 
 of our prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of 
 each other, of everything but our host and hostess. 
 It must be confessed that Higgles s conversation 
 was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and that 
 at times she employed expletives the use of which 
 had generally been yielded to our sex. But they 
 
HIGGLES. 87 
 
 were delivered with such a lighting up of teeth and 
 eyes, and were usually followed by a laugh a laugh 
 peculiar to Higgles so frank and honest that it 
 seemed to clear the moral atmosphere. 
 
 Once during the meal we heard a noise like the 
 rubbing of a heavy body against the outer walls of 
 the house. This was shortly followed by a scratching 
 and sniffling at the door. " That s Joaquin," said 
 Higgles, in reply to our questioning glances ; " would 
 you like to see him ? " Before we could answer she 
 had opened the door, and disclosed a half-grown 
 grizzly, who instantly raised himself on his haunches, 
 with his fore-paws hanging down in the popular 
 attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at 
 Higgles, with a very singular resemblance in his 
 manner to Yuba Bill. " That s my watch-dog," 
 said Higgles, in explanation. " Oh, he don t bite," 
 she added, as the two lady-passengers fluttered into 
 a corner. " Does he, old Toppy ? " (the latter remark 
 being addressed directly to the sagacious Joaquin). 
 " I tell you what, boys," continued Higgles, after 
 she had fed and closed the door on Ursa Minor, " you 
 were in big luck that Joaquin wasn t hanging round 
 when you dropped in to-night." " Where was he ? " 
 asked the Judge. " With me," said Higgles. " Lord 
 love you ! he trots round with me nights like as if he 
 was a man." 
 
 We were silent for a few moments, and listened to 
 the wind. Perhaps we all had the same picture be 
 fore us, of Higgles walking through the rainy woods 
 with her savage guardian at her side. The Judge, 
 
88 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 I remember, said something about Una and her lion ; 
 but Higgles received it, as she did other compliments, 
 with quiet gravity. Whether she was altogether 
 unconscious of the admiration she excited, she 
 could hardly have been oblivious of Yuba Bill s 
 adoration, I know not ; but her very frankness 
 suggested a perfect sexual equality that was cruelly 
 humiliating to the younger members of our party. 
 
 The incident of the bear did not add anything in 
 Miggles s favour to the opinions of those of her own 
 sex who were present. In fact, the repast over, a 
 chillness radiated from the two lady passengers that 
 no pine-boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as 
 a sacrifice upon the hearth could wholly overcome. 
 Higgles felt it ; and suddenly declaring that it was 
 time to " turn in," offered to show the ladies to their 
 bed in an adjoining room. You, boys, will have to 
 camp out here by the fire as well as you can," she 
 added, " for thar ain t but the one room." 
 
 Our sex by which, my dear sir, I allude of course 
 to the stronger portion of humanity has been 
 generally relieved from the imputation of curiosity 
 or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say, 
 that hardly had the door closed on Higgles than we 
 crowded together, whispering, snickering, smiling, 
 and exchanging suspicions, surmises, and a thousand 
 speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her 
 singular companion. I fear that we even hustled 
 that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless Hem- 
 non in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference 
 of the Past in his passionless eyes upon our wordy 
 
MIGGLES. 89 
 
 counsels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the 
 door opened again and Higgles re-entered. 
 
 But not, apparently, the same Higgles who a few 
 hours before had flashed upon us. Her eyes were 
 downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment on the 
 threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed 
 to have left behind her the frank fearlessness which 
 had charmed us a moment before. Coming into the 
 room, she drew a low stool beside the paralytic s 
 chair, sat down, drew the blanket over her shoulders, 
 and saying, " If it s all the same to you, boys, as 
 we re rather crowded, I ll stop here to-night/ took 
 the invalid s withered hand in her own, and turned 
 her eyes upon the dying fire. An instinctive feeling 
 that this was only premonitory to more confidential 
 relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous 
 curiosity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the 
 roof, wandering gusts of wind stirred the embers 
 into momentary brightness, until, in a lull of the 
 elements, Higgles suddenly lifted up her head, and, 
 throwing her hair over her shoulder, turned her face 
 upon the group and asked 
 
 " Is there any of you that knows me ? " 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 " Think again ! I lived at Harysville in 53. Every 
 body knew me there, and everybody had the right 
 to know me. I kept the Polka Saloon until I came to 
 live with Jim. That s six years ago. Perhaps I ve 
 changed some." 
 
 The absence of recognition may have discon 
 certed her. She turned her head to the fire again, 
 
90 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 and it was some seconds before she again spoke, and 
 then more rapidly 
 
 " Well, you see I thought some of you must have 
 known me. There s no great harm done anyway. 
 What I was going to say was this : Jim here " she 
 took his hand in both of hers as she spoke " used 
 to know me, if you didn t, and spent a heap of money 
 upon me. I reckon he spent all he had. And one 
 day it s six years ago this winter Jim came into 
 my back-room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see 
 him in that chair, and never moved again without 
 help. He was struck all of a heap, and never seemed 
 to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said 
 as how it was caused all along of his way of life, for 
 Jim was mighty free and wild like, and that he would 
 never get better, and couldn t last long anyway. 
 They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, 
 for he was no good to any one and would be a baby 
 all his life. Perhaps it was something in Jim s eye, 
 perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I said 
 No. I was rich then, for I was popular with every 
 body, gentlemen like yourself, sir, came to see me, 
 and I sold out my business and bought this yer 
 place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel, 
 you see, and I brought my baby here." 
 
 With a woman s intuitive tact and poetry, she had, 
 as she spoke, slowly shifted her position so as to bring 
 the mute figure of the ruined man between her and 
 her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if 
 she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent 
 and expressionless, it yet spoke for her ; helpless, 
 
HIGGLES. 91 
 
 crushed, and smitten with the Divine thunderbolt, 
 it still stretched an invisible arm around her. 
 
 Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, 
 she went on 
 
 " It was a long time before I could get the hang of 
 things about yer, for I was used to company and ex 
 citement. I couldn t get any woman to help me, and 
 a man I dursn t trust ; but what with the Indians 
 hereabout, who d do odd jobs for me, and having 
 everything sent from the North Fork, Jim and I 
 managed to worry through. The Doctor would run 
 up from Sacramento once in a while. He d ask to see 
 Miggles s baby, as he called Jim, and when he d 
 go away, he d say, Higgles, you re a trump, God 
 bless you ; and it didn t seem so lonely after that. 
 But the last time he was here he said, as he opened 
 the door to go, Do you know, Higgles, your baby 
 will grow up to be a man yet and an honour to his 
 mother ; but not here, Higgles, not here ! And I 
 
 thought he went away sad, and and " and 
 
 here Higgles s voice and head were somehow both lost 
 completely in the shadow. 
 
 " The folks about here are very kind," said Higgles, 
 after a pause, coming a little into the light again. 
 " The men from the Fork used to hang around here, 
 until they found they wasn t wanted, and the women 
 are kind, and don t call. I was pretty lonely until 
 I picked up Joaquin in the woods yonder one day, 
 when he wasn t so high, and taught him to beg for his 
 dinner ; and then thar s Polly that s the magpie 
 she knows no end of tricks, and makes it quite 
 
92 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 sociable of evenings with her talk, and so I don t feel 
 like as I was the only living being about the ranch. 
 And Jim here/ said Higgles, with her old laugh 
 again, and coming out quite into the firelight, " Jim 
 why, boys, you would admire to see how much he 
 knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring him 
 flowers, and he looks at em just as natural as if he 
 knew em ; and times, when we re sitting alone, I 
 read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord ! " 
 said Higgles, with her frank laugh, "I ve read him 
 that whole side of the house this winter. There never 
 was such a man for reading as Jim." 
 
 " Why," asked the Judge, "do you not marry this 
 man to whom you have devoted your youthful life ?" 
 
 "Well, you see," said Higgles, " it would be playing 
 it rather low down on Jim to take advantage of his 
 being so helpless. And then, too, if we were man 
 and wife, now, we d both know that I was bound to do 
 what I do now of my own accord." 
 
 " But you are young yet and attractive " 
 
 " It s getting late," said Higgles, gravely, " and 
 you d better all turn in. Good-night, boys ; " and 
 throwing the blanket over her head, Higgles laid her 
 self down beside Jim s chair, her head pillowed on the 
 low stool that held his feet, and spoke no more. The 
 fire slowly faded from the hearth ; we each sought 
 our blankets in silence ; and presently there was 
 no sound in the long room but the pattering of 
 the rain upon the roof and the heavy breathing of 
 the sleepers. 
 
 It was nearly morning when I awoke from a 
 
HIGGLES. 93 
 
 troubled dream. The storm had passed, the stars 
 were shining, and through the shutterless window the 
 full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines without, 
 looked into the room. It touched the lonely figure 
 in the chair with an infinite compassion, and seemed 
 to baptize with a shining flood the lowly head of the 
 woman whose hair, as in the sweet old story, bathed 
 the feet of him she loved. It even lent a kindly poetry 
 to the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half reclining on 
 his elbow between them and his passengers, with 
 savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And 
 then I fell asleep and only woke at broad day, with 
 Yuba Bill standing over me, and " All aboard " ring 
 ing in my ears. 
 
 Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Higgles 
 was gone. We wandered about the house and lingered 
 long after the horses were harnessed, but she did not 
 return. It was evident that she wished to avoid a 
 formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as 
 we had come. After we had helped the ladies into the 
 coach, we returned to the house and solemnly shook 
 hands with the paralytic Jim, as solemnly settling 
 him back into position after each hand-shake. Then 
 we looked for the last time around the long low room, 
 at the stool where Higgles had sat, and slowly took 
 our seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked, 
 and we were off ! 
 
 But as we reached the highroad, Bill s dexterous 
 hand laid the six horses back on their haunches, 
 and the stage stopped with a jerk. For there, on a 
 little eminence beside the road, stood Higgles, her 
 
94 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief 
 waving, and her white teeth flashing a last "good 
 bye/ We waved our hats in return. And then Yuba 
 Bill, as if fearful of further fascination, madly lashed 
 his horses forward, and we sank back in our seats. 
 We exchanged not a word until we reached the North 
 Fork and the stage drew up at the Independence 
 House. Then, the Judge leading, we walked into the 
 bar-room and took our places gravely at the bar. 
 
 " Are your glasses charged, gentlemen ? " said the 
 Judge, solemnly taking off his white hat. 
 
 They were. 
 
 " Well, then, here s to Higgles GOD BLESS HER ! " 
 
 Perhaps He had. Who knows ? 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 
 
 I DO not think that we ever knew his real name. 
 Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social 
 inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men 
 were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives 
 were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, 
 as in the case of " Dungaree Jack ; " or from some 
 peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," 
 so called from an undue proportion of that chemical 
 in his daily bread ; or from some unlucky slip, as 
 exhibited in " The Iron Pirate/ a mild, inoffensive 
 man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate 
 mispronunciation of the term " iron pyrites." Per 
 haps this may have been the beginning of a rude 
 heraldry ; but I am constrained to think that it was 
 because a man s real name in that day rested solely 
 upon his own unsupported statement. " Call your 
 self Clifford, do you ? " said Boston, addressing a 
 timid newcomer with infinite scorn ; " hell is full of 
 such Cliffords ! " He then introduced the unfortu 
 nate man, whose name happened to be really Clifford, 
 as " Jaybird Charley," an unhallowed inspiration 
 of the moment that clung to him ever after. 
 
96 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 But to return to Tennessee s Partner, whom we 
 never knew by any other than this relative title. 
 That he had ever existed as a separate and distinct 
 individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 
 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, osten 
 sibly to procure a wife. He never got any farther 
 than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by 
 a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel 
 where he took his meals. One morning he said some 
 thing to her which caused her to smile not unkindly, 
 to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over 
 his upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat 
 to the kitchen. He followed her, and emerged a few 
 moments later, covered with more toast and victory. 
 That day week they were married by a Justice of the 
 Peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that 
 something more might be made of this episode, but 
 I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, 
 in the gulches and bar-rooms, where all sentiment 
 was modified by a strong sense of humour. 
 
 Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps 
 for the reason that Tennessee, then living with his 
 partner, one day took occasion to say something to 
 the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, 
 she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated, 
 this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee fol 
 lowed her, and where they went to housekeeping 
 without the aid of a Justice of the Peace. Tennessee s 
 Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, 
 as was his fashion. But to everybody s surprise, 
 when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 97 
 
 without his partner s wife, she having smiled and 
 retreated with somebody else, Tennessee s Partner 
 was the first man to shake his hand and greet him with 
 affection. The boys who had gathered in the canon 
 to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their 
 indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but 
 for a certain look in Tennessee s Partner s eye that 
 indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, 
 he was a grave man, with a steady application to 
 practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty. 
 Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had 
 grown up on the Bar. He was known to be a gambler ; 
 he was suspected to be a thief. In these suspicions 
 Tennessee s Partner was equally compromised ; his 
 continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair 
 above quoted could only be accounted for on the 
 hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last 
 Tennessee s guilt became flagrant. One day he over 
 took a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The 
 stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled 
 the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, 
 but illogically concluded the interview in the follow 
 ing words : " And now, young man, I ll trouble you 
 for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You 
 see your weppings might get you into trouble at Red 
 Dog, and your money s a temptation to the evilly 
 disposed. I think you said your address was San 
 Francisco. I shall endeavour to call." It may be 
 stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of 
 humour, which no business preoccupation could 
 wholly subdue. 
 
 4 
 
98 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy 
 Bar made common cause against the highwayman. 
 Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion 
 as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed 
 around him, he made a desperate dash through the 
 Bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd before the 
 Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canon ; but 
 at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small 
 man on a grey horse. The men looked at each other 
 a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self- 
 possessed and independent, and both types of a 
 civilisation that in the seventeenth century would 
 have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply 
 " reckless." " What have you got there ? I call," 
 said Tennessee quietly. " Two bowers and an ace," 
 said the stranger as quietly, showing two revolvers 
 and a bowie-knife. That takes me," returned 
 Tennessee ; and, with this gambler s epigram, he 
 threw away his useless pistol and rode back with 
 his captor. 
 
 It was a wanii night. The cool breeze which 
 usually sprang up with the going down of the 
 sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that 
 evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canon 
 was stifling with heated resinous odours, and the 
 decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint 
 sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and 
 its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved 
 restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no 
 answering reflection from its tawny current . Against 
 the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 99 
 
 above the express office stood out staringly bright ; 
 and through their curtainless panes the loungers 
 below could see the forms of those who were even 
 then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all 
 this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, 
 remote and passionless, crowned with remoter pas 
 sionless stars. 
 
 The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as 
 was consistent with a judge and jury who felt them 
 selves to some extent obliged to justify, in their ver 
 dict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indict 
 ment. The law of Sandy Bar was implacable but 
 not vengeful. The excitement and personal feeling 
 of the chase were over ; with Tennessee safe in their 
 hands, they were ready to listen patiently to any 
 defence, which they were already satisfied was in 
 sufficient. There being no doubt in their own minds, 
 they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit 
 of any that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis 
 that he ought to be hanged on general principles, 
 they indulged him with more latitude of defence than 
 his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge 
 appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, 
 otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleas 
 ure in the responsibility he had created. " I don t 
 take any hand in this yer game," had been his 
 invariable but good-humoured reply to all questions. 
 The Judge who was also his captor for a moment 
 vaguely regretted that he had not shot him on sight " 
 that morning, but presently dismissed this human 
 weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Never- 
 
ioo TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 theless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was 
 said that Tennessee s Partner was there on behalf 
 of the prisoner, he was admitted at once without 
 question. Perhaps the younger members of the 
 jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irk 
 somely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief. 
 
 For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. 
 Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into 
 a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck 
 " jumper " and trousers streaked and splashed with 
 red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would 
 have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous. 
 As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpet 
 bag he was carrying, it became obvious, from par 
 tially developed legends and inscriptions, that the 
 material with which his trousers had been patched 
 had been originally intended for a less ambitious 
 covering. Yet he advanced with great gravity, and 
 after shaking the hand of each person in the room 
 with laboured cordiality, he wiped his serious per 
 plexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade 
 lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand 
 upon the table to steady himself, and thus addressed 
 the Judge : 
 
 " I was passin* by," he began, by way of apology, 
 " and I thought I d just step in and see how things 
 was gittin on with Tennessee thar, my pardner. 
 It s a hot night. I disremember any sich weather 
 before on the Bar." 
 
 He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering 
 any other meteorological recollection, he again had 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 101 
 
 recourse to his pocket-nan^ercbiet, and- ftv; some 
 moments mopped his face diligently. 
 
 " Have you anything to say on behalf of the 
 prisoner? " said the Judge finally. 
 
 " Thet s it," said Tennessee s Partner, in a tone of 
 relief. " I come yar as Tennessee s pardner, 
 knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet and 
 dry, in luck and out o luck. His ways ain t aller 
 my ways, but thar ain t any p ints in that young 
 man, thar ain t any liveliness as he s been up to, as 
 I don t know. And you sez to me, sez you, con 
 fidential-tike, and between man and man, sez you, 
 Do you know anything in his behalf ? and I sez 
 to you, sez I confidential like, as between man and 
 man, What should a man know of his pardner ? 
 
 " Is this all you have to say ? " asked the Judge 
 impatiently, feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous 
 sympathy of humour was beginning to humanise the 
 court. 
 
 " Thet s so," continued Tennessee s Partner. 
 " It ain t for me to say anything agin him. And 
 now, what s the case ? Here s Tennessee wants 
 money, wants it bad, and doesn t like to ask it of his 
 old pardner. Well, what does Tennessee do ? He 
 lays for a stranger and he fetches that stranger ; 
 and you lays for him and you fetches him ; and the 
 honours is easy. And I put it to you, bein a far- 
 minded man, and to you, gentlemen all, as far- 
 minded men, ef this isn t so." 
 
 " Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, " have 
 you any questions to ask this man ? " 
 
102 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 " No ! no ! " - continued Tennessee s Partner 
 hastily. " I play this yer hand alone. To come 
 down to the bed-rock, it s just this : Tennessee, thar, 
 has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a 
 stranger, and on this yer camp. And now, what s 
 the fair thing ? Some would say more, some would 
 say less. Here s seventeen hundred dollars in coarse 
 gold and a watch, it s about all my pile, and call 
 it square ! " And before a hand could be raised to 
 prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the 
 carpet-bag upon the table. 
 
 For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or 
 two men sprang to their feet, several hands groped 
 for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to " throw him 
 from the window " was only overridden by a gesture 
 from the Judge. Tennessee laughed. And appar 
 ently oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee s Partner 
 improved the opportunity to mop his face again with 
 his handkerchief. 
 
 When order was restored, and the man was made 
 to understand, by the use of forcible figures and rhet 
 oric, that Tennessee s offence could not be condoned 
 by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary 
 hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed 
 that his rough hand trembled slightly on the table. 
 He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the 
 gold to the carpet-bag, as if he had not yet entirely 
 caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed 
 the tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that 
 he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the 
 Judge, and saying, " This yer is a lone hand, played 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 103 
 
 alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the 
 jury and was about to withdraw, when the Judge 
 called him back. " If you have anything to say to 
 Tennessee, you had better say it now." For the first 
 time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his 
 strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, sho\\isd his 
 white teeth, and saying, " Euchred, old man ! " held 
 out his hand, Tennessee s Partner took it in his 
 own, and saying, " I just dropped in as I was passin 
 to see how things was gettin on," let the hand pas 
 sively fall, and adding that " it was a warm night," 
 again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and 
 without another word withdrew. 
 
 The two men never again met each other alive. 
 For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge 
 Lynch who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was 
 at least incorruptible firmty fixed in the mind of 
 that mythical personage any wavering determination 
 of Tennessee s fate ; and at the break of day he was 
 marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of 
 Marley s Hill. 
 
 How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to 
 say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of 
 the committee, were all duly reported, with the 
 addition of a warning moral and example to all future 
 evildoers, in the Red Dog Clarion by its editor, who 
 was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheer 
 fully refer the reader. But the beauty of that 
 midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and 
 air and sk3 T , the awakened life of the free woods and 
 hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and 
 
104 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through 
 each, was not reported, as not being a part of the 
 social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish 
 deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and 
 responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen 
 thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds 
 sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily 
 as before ; and possibly the Red Dog Clarion was right. 
 Tennessee s Partner was not in the group that 
 surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to 
 disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appear 
 ance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side 
 of the road. As they approached, they at once 
 recognised the venerable " Jenny " and the two- 
 wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee s Partner, 
 used by him in carrying dirt from his claim ; and 
 a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself, 
 sitting under a buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration 
 from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he 
 said he had come for the body of the " diseased," 
 "if it was all the same to the committee." He 
 didn t wish to " hurry anything ; " he could " wait." 
 He was not working that day ; and when the gentle 
 men were done with the " diseased/ he would take 
 him. " Ef thar is any present," he added, in 
 his simple, serious way, " as would care to jine in 
 the fun l, they kin come." Perhaps it was from a 
 sense of humour, which I have already intimated 
 was a feature of Sandy Bar, perhaps it was from 
 something even better than that, but two-thirds of 
 the loungers accepted the invitation at once. 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 105 
 
 It was noon when the body of Tennessee was 
 delivered into the hands of his partner. As the cart 
 drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained 
 a rough oblong box, apparently made from a sec 
 tion of sluicing, and half filled with bark and the 
 tassels of pine. The cart was further decorated with 
 slips of willow and made fragrant with buckeye- 
 blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, 
 Tennessee s Partner drew over it a piece of tarred 
 canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in 
 front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little 
 donkey forward. The equipage moved slowly on, 
 at that decorous pace which was habitual with 
 " Jenny " even under less solemn circumstances. 
 The men half curiously, half jestingly, but all 
 good-humouredly strolled along beside the cart, 
 some in advance, some a little in the rear of the 
 homely catafalque. But whether from the narrowing 
 of the road or some present sense of decorum, as the 
 cart passed on the company fell to the rear in 
 couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the 
 external show of a formal procession. Jack Folins- 
 bee, who had at the outset played a funeral march in 
 dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted 
 from a lack of sympathy and appreciation, not 
 having, perhaps, your true humourist s capacity to 
 be content with the enjoyment of his own fun. 
 
 The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this time 
 clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The red 
 woods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, 
 stood in Indian-file along the track, trailing an un- 
 
io6 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 couth benediction from their bending boughs upon 
 the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless in 
 activity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by 
 the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels has 
 tened to gain a secure outlook from higher boughs ; 
 and the blue-jays, spreading their wings, fluttered 
 before them like outriders, until the outskirts of 
 Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of 
 Tennessee s Partner. 
 
 Viewed under more favourable circumstances, it 
 would not have been a cheerful place. The un- 
 picturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines, the 
 unsavoury details, which distinguish the nest-building 
 of the California miner, were all here with the dreari 
 ness of decay superadded. A few paces from the 
 cabin there was a rough enclosure, which, in the brief 
 days of Tennessee s Partner s matrimonial felicity, 
 had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown 
 with fern. As we approached it, we were surprised 
 to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt 
 at cultivation was the broken soil about an open 
 grave. 
 
 The cart was halted before the enclosure, and 
 rejecting the offers of assistance with the same air 
 of simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout, 
 Tennessee s Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, 
 and deposited it unaided within the shallow grave, 
 He then nailed down the board which served as a 
 lid, and mounting the little mound of earth beside it, 
 took off his hat and slowly mopped his face with his 
 handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary 
 
TENNESSEE S PARTNER. 107 
 
 to speech, and they disposed themselves variously 
 on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant, 
 
 <f When a man/ began Tennessee s Partner slowly, 
 " has been running free all day, what s the natural 
 thing for him to do ? Why, to come home. And 
 if he ain t in a condition to go home, what can his 
 best friend do ? Why, bring him home. And here s 
 Tennessee has been running free, and we brings him 
 home from his wandering." He paused and picked 
 up a fragment of quartz, nibbed it thoughtfully 
 on his sleeve, and went on : "It ain t the first time 
 that I ve packed him on my back, as you see d me 
 now. It ain t the first time that I brought him to 
 this yer cabin when he couldn t help himself ; it ain t 
 the first time that I and Jinny have waited for him 
 on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him 
 home, when he couldn t speak and didn t know me. 
 And now that it s the last time, why " he paused 
 and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve " you see 
 it s sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentle 
 men," he added abruptly, picking up his long-handled 
 shovel, " the funTs over ; and my thanks, and 
 Tennessee s thanks, to you for your trouble." 
 
 Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to 
 fill in the grave, turning his back upon the crowd, 
 that after a few moments hesitation gradually with 
 drew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy 
 Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they 
 could see Tennessee s Partner, his work done, sitting 
 upon the grave, his shovel between his knees, and his 
 face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief. But 
 
io8 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 it was argued by others that you couldn t tell his 
 face from his handkerchief at that distance, and this 
 point remained undecided. 
 
 In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement 
 of that day, Tennessee s Partner was not forgotten. 
 A secret investigation had cleared him of any com 
 plicity in Tessessee s guilt, and left only a suspicion 
 of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of 
 calling on him, and proffering various uncouth but 
 well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude 
 health and great strength seemed visibly to decline ; 
 and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny 
 grass blades were beginning to peep from the rocky 
 mound above Tennessee s grave, he took to his bed. 
 
 One night, when the pines beside the cabin were 
 swaying in the storm and trailing their slender fingers 
 over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen 
 river were heard below, Tennessee s Partner lifted 
 his head from the pillow, saying, " It is time to go 
 for Tennessee ; I must put Jinny in the cart ; " 
 and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint 
 of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his 
 singular fancy : " There, now, steady, Jinny/ 
 steady, old girl. How dark it is ! Look out for the 
 ruts, and look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, 
 you know, when he s blind drunk, he drops down right 
 in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the 
 top of the hill. Thar ! I told you so ! thar he is, 
 coming this way, too, all by himself, sober, and 
 his face a-shining. Tennessee ! Pardner ! " 
 
 And so they met. 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 
 
 SANDY was very drunk. He was lying under an 
 azalea bush, in pretty much the same attitude in 
 which he had fallen some hours before. How long 
 he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn t 
 care ; how long he should lie there was a matter 
 equally indefinite and unconsidered, A tranquil 
 philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused 
 and saturated his moral being. 
 
 The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this 
 drunken man in particular, was not, I grieve to say, 
 of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to attract attention. 
 Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a 
 temporary tombstone at Sandy s head, bearing the 
 inscription, "Effects of McCorkle s whisky, kills 
 at forty rods," with a hand pointing to McCorkle s 
 saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local 
 satire, personal ; and was a reflection upon the unfair 
 ness of the process rather than a commentary upon 
 the impropriety of the result. With this facetious 
 exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wander 
 ing mule, released from his pack, had cropped the 
 scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curiously at 
 
no TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 the prostrate man ; a vagabond dog, with that deep 
 sympathy which the species have for drunken men, 
 had licked his dusty boots and curled himself up at 
 his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the sun 
 light, with a simulation of dissipation that was in 
 genious and dog-like in its implied flattery of the 
 unconscious man beside him. 
 
 Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly 
 swung around until they crossed the road, and their 
 trunks barred the open meadow with gigantic parallels 
 of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted 
 by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed 
 in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man. The 
 sun sank lower and lower, and still Sandy stirred 
 not. And then the repose of this philosopher was 
 disturbed, as other philosophers have been, by the 
 intrusion of an unphilosophical sex. 
 
 " Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock 
 that she had just dismissed from the log schoolhouse 
 beyond the pines, was taking her afternoon walk,, 
 Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on 
 the azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to 
 pluck it, picking her way through the red dust, not 
 without certain fierce little shivers of disgust and 
 some feline circumlocution. And then she came 
 suddenly upon Sandy ! 
 
 Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her 
 sex. But when she had paid that tribute to her 
 physical weakness she became overbold and halted 
 for a moment, at least six feet from this prostrate 
 monster, with her white skirts gathered in her hand, 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. in 
 
 ready for flight. But neither sound nor motion came 
 from the bush. With one little foot she then over 
 turned the satirical headboard, and muttered 
 " Beasts ! " an epithet which probably, at that 
 moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire 
 male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being 
 possessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, 
 perhaps, properly appreciated the demonstrative 
 gallantry for which the Calif ornian has been so justly 
 celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a 
 newcomer, perhaps fairly earned the reputation of 
 being " stuck up." 
 
 As she stood there she noticed, also, that the 
 slant sunbeams were heating Sandy s head to what 
 she judged to be an unhealthy temperature, and that 
 his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it 
 up and to place it over his face was a work requiring 
 some courage, particularly as his eyes were open. 
 Yet she did it and made good her retreat. But she 
 was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see 
 that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was 
 sitting up and saying something. 
 
 The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy s 
 mind he was satisfied that the rays of the sun were 
 beneficial and healthful ; that from childhood he had 
 objected to lying down in a hat ; that no people but 
 condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats ; 
 and that his right to dispense with them when he 
 pleased was inalienable. This was the statement of 
 his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward 
 expression was vague, being limited to a repeti- 
 
ii2 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 tion of the following formula : " Su shine all ri ! 
 Wasser maar, eh ? Wass up, su j shine ? " 
 
 Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from 
 her vantage of distance, asked him if there was any 
 thing that he wanted. 
 
 " Wass up ? Wasser maar ? " continued Sandy, 
 in a very high key. 
 
 " Get up, you horrid man ! " said Miss Mary, now 
 thoroughly incensed ; " get up and go home." 
 
 Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, 
 and Miss Mary trembled. He started forward a few 
 paces and then stopped. 
 
 " Wass I go home for ? " he suddenly asked, with 
 great gravity. 
 
 " Go and take a bath/ replied Miss Mary, eyeing 
 his grimy person with great disfavour. 
 
 To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled 
 off his coat and vest, threw them on the ground, 
 kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly forward, 
 darted headlong over the hill in the direction of the 
 river. 
 
 " Goodness Heavens ! the man will be drowned ! " 
 said Miss Mary ; and then, with feminine inconsis 
 tency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked 
 herself in. 
 
 That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, 
 the blacksmith s wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask 
 demurely if her husband ever got drunk. " Abner/ 
 responded Mrs. Stidger reflectively, " let s see ! 
 Abner hasn t been tight since last lection/ Miss 
 Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying in 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 113 
 
 the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would 
 have hurt him ; but this would have involved an ex 
 planation, which she did not then care to give. So 
 she contented herself with opening her grey eyes 
 widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger, a fine 
 specimen of South- Western efflorescence, and then 
 dismissed the subject altogether. The next day she 
 wrote to her dearest friend in Boston : " I think 
 I find the intoxicated portion of this community the 
 least objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, 
 of course. I do not know anything that could make 
 the women tolerable." 
 
 In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this 
 episode, except that her afternoon walks took there 
 after, almost unconsciously, another direction. She 
 noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster 
 of azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her 
 desk. This was not strange, as her little flock were 
 aware of her fondness for flowers, and invariably 
 kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and 
 lupines ; but, on questioning them, they one and all 
 professed ignorance of the azaleas. A few days later, 
 Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to 
 the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of 
 apparently gratuitous laughter, that threatened the 
 discipline of the school. All that Miss Mary could 
 get from him was, that some one had been " looking 
 in the winder." Irate and indignant, she sallied from 
 her hive to do battle with the intruder. As she 
 turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came 
 plump upon the quondam drunkard, now perfectly 
 
n 4 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 sober, and inexpressibly sheepish and guilt}?- 
 looking. 
 
 These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a 
 feminine advantage of, in her present humour. But 
 it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the 
 beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, 
 was amiable looking, in fact, a kind of blonde Sam 
 son, whose corn-coloured silken beard apparently 
 had never yet known the touch of barber s razor 
 or Delilah s shears. So that the cutting speech which 
 quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, 
 and she contented herself with receiving his stammer 
 ing apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered 
 skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered 
 the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a 
 new sense of revelation ; and then she laughed, and 
 the little people all laughed, and they were all un 
 consciously very happy. 
 
 It was on a hot day and not long after this that 
 two short-legged boys came to grief on the threshold 
 of the school with a pail of water, which they had 
 laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss 
 Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for 
 the spring herself. At the foot of the hill a/hadow 
 crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm dexterously 
 but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary 
 was both embarrassed and angry. " If you carried 
 more of that for yourself/ she said spitefully to 
 the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes 
 to its owner, " you d do better." In the submissive 
 silence that followed she regretted the speech, and 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 115 
 
 thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled. 
 Which caused the children to laugh again, a laugh 
 in which Miss Mary joined, until the colour came 
 faintly into her pale cheek. The next day a barrel 
 was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as 
 mysteriously filled with fresh spring-water every 
 morning. 
 
 Nor was this superior young person without other 
 quiet attentions. " Profane Bill," driver of the Slum- 
 gullion Stage, widely known in the newspapers for 
 his " gallantry " in invariably offering the box-seat 
 to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this 
 attention, on the ground that he had a habit of " cuss- 
 in* on up grades/ and gave her half the coach to her 
 self. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently 
 ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw 
 a decanter at the head of a confederate for mention 
 ing her name in a bar-room. The over-dressed 
 mother of a pupil whose/paternity was doubtful had 
 often lingered near this astute Vestal s temple, never 
 daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to 
 worship the priestess from afar. 
 
 With such unconscious intervals the monotonous 
 procession of blue skies, glittering sunshine, brief 
 twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red Gulch. 
 Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and 
 proper woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stid- 
 ger, that the balsamic odours of the firs " did her 
 chest good," for certainly her slight cough was less 
 frequent and her step was firmer ; perhaps she had 
 learned the unending lesson which the patient pines 
 
n6 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless 
 ears. And so one day she planned a picnic on Buck 
 eye Hill, and took the children with her. Away from 
 the dusty road, the straggling shanties, the yellow 
 ditches, the clamour of restless engines, the cheap 
 finery of shop- windows, the deeper glitter of paint 
 and coloured glass, and the thin veneering which 
 barbarism takes upon itself in such localities, what 
 infinite relief was theirs ! The last heap of ragged rock 
 and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed,- 
 how the waiting woods opened their long files to re 
 ceive them ! How the children perhaps because 
 they had not yet grown quite away from the breast 
 of the bounteous Mother threw themselves face 
 downward on her brown bosom with uncouth caresses, 
 filling the air with their laughter ; and how Miss 
 Mary herself felinely fastidious and intrenched 
 as she was in the purity of spotless skirts, collar, and 
 cuffs forgot all, and ran like a crested quail at the 
 head of her brood, until, romping, laughing, and 
 panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat 
 hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she 
 came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the 
 forest, upon the luckless Sandy ! 
 
 The explanations, apologies, and not overwise con 
 versation that ensued need not be indicated here. 
 It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had already 
 established some acquaintance with this ex-drunk 
 ard. Enough that he was soon accepted as one of the 
 party ; that the children, with that quick intelligence 
 which Providence gives the helpless, recognised a 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 117 
 
 friend, and played with his blonde beard and long 
 silken moustache, and took other liberties, as the 
 helpless are apt to do. And when he had built a fire 
 against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries 
 of woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At 
 the close of two such foolish, idle, happy hours he 
 found himself lying at the feet of the schoolmistress, 
 gazing dreamily in her face as she sat upon the sloping 
 hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in 
 very much the same attitude as he had lain when 
 first they met. Nor was the similitude greatly 
 forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature, 
 that had found a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is 
 to be feared was now finding an equal intoxication 
 in love. 
 
 I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this 
 himself. I know that he longed to be doing some 
 thing, slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage, or 
 sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this 
 sallow-faced, grey-eyed schoolmistress. As I should 
 like to present him in a heroic attitude, I stay my 
 hand with great difficulty at this moment, being only 
 withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong 
 conviction that it does not usually occur at such times. 
 And I trust that my fairest reader, who remembers 
 that, in a real crisis, it is always some uninteresting 
 stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adol- 
 phus, who rescues, will forgive the omission. 
 
 So they sat there undisturbed, the woodpeckers 
 chattering overhead and the voices of the children 
 coming pleasantly from the hollow below. What 
 
TALES OF THE \VEST. 
 
 they said matters little. What they thought 
 which might have been interesting did not tran 
 spire. The woodpeckers only learned how Miss Mary 
 was an orphan ; how she left her uncle s house to 
 come to California for the sake of health and inde 
 pendence ; how Sandy was an orphan too ; how he 
 came to California for excitement ; how he had lived 
 a wild life, and how he was trying to reform ; and 
 other details, which, from a woodpecker s view-point, 
 undoubtedly must have seemed stupid and a waste 
 of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon 
 spent ; and when the children were again gathered, 
 and Sandy, with a delicacy which the schoolmistress 
 well understood, took leave of them quietly at the 
 outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest 
 day of her weary life. 
 
 As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the 
 school term of Red Gulch to use a local euphuism 
 " dried up " also. In another day Miss Mary would 
 be free, and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would 
 know her no more. She was seated alone in the 
 schoolhouse, her cheek resting on her hand, her 
 eyes half closed in one of those day-dreams in which 
 Miss Mary, I fear, to the danger of school discipline, 
 was lately in the habit of indulging. Her lap was 
 full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories. 
 She was so preoccupied, with these and her own 
 thoughts, that a gentle tapping at the door passed 
 unheard, or translated itself into the remembrance of 
 far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself 
 more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 119 
 
 and opened the door. On the threshold stood a 
 woman, the self-assertion and audacity of whose 
 dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irre 
 solute bearing. 
 
 Miss Mary recognised at a glance the dubious 
 mother of her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was 
 disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious ; but 
 as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-uncon- 
 sciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and 
 gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It was, per 
 haps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, 
 after a moment s hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol 
 open and sticking in the dust beside the door, and then 
 sat down at the farther end of a long bench. Her 
 voice was husky as she began 
 
 " I heerd tell that you were goin down to the 
 Bay to-morrow, and I couldn t let you go until 
 I came to thank you for your kindness to my 
 Tommy/ 
 
 Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and 
 deserved more than the poor attention she could give 
 him. 
 
 " Thank you, miss ; thank ye ! " cried the stranger, 
 brightening even through the colour which Red 
 Gulch knew facetiously as her " war paint," and 
 striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long 
 bench nearer the schoolmistress. " I thank you, 
 miss, for that ; and if I am his mother, there ain t a 
 sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if 
 I ain t much as says it, thar ain t a sweeter, dearer, 
 angeler teacher lives than he s got." 
 
120 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a 
 ruler over her shoulder, opened her grey eyes widely 
 at this, but said nothing. 
 
 " It ain t for you to be complimented by the like 
 of me, I know," she went on hurriedly. " It ain t for 
 me to be comin here, in broad day, to do it, either ; 
 but I come to ask a favour, not for me, miss, not 
 for me, but for the darling boy." 
 
 Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmis 
 tress s eye, and putting her lilac-gloved hands to 
 gether, the fingers downward, between her knees, she 
 went on in a low voice 
 
 " You see, miss, there s no one the boy has any 
 claim on but me, and I ain t the proper person to 
 bring him up. I thought some, last year, of sending 
 him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked 
 of bringing a schoolma am here, I waited till I saw 
 you, and then I knew it was all right, and I could 
 keep my boy a little longer. And oh ! miss, he loves 
 you so much ; and if you could hear him talk about 
 you in his pretty way, and if he could ask you what 
 I ask you now, you couldn t refuse him. 
 
 " It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice 
 that trembled strangely between pride and humility, 
 " it s natural that he should take to you, miss, 
 for his father, when I first knew him, was a gentle 
 man and the boy must forget me, sooner or later, 
 and so I ain t a goin* to cry about that. For I 
 come to ask you to take my Tommy, God bless him 
 for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives, to to - 
 take him with you." 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 121 
 
 She had risen and caught the young girl s hand in 
 her own, and had fallen on her knees beside her. 
 
 " I ve money plenty, and it s all yours and his. Put 
 him in some good school, where you can go and see 
 him, and help him to to to forget his mother. 
 Do with him what you like. The worst you can do 
 will be kindness to what he will learn with me. 
 Only take him out of this wicked life, this cruel place, 
 this home of shame and sorrow. You will ! I know 
 you will, won t you ? You will, you must not, 
 you cannot say no ! You will make him as pure, as 
 gentle as yourself ; and when he has grown up, 
 you will tell him his father s name, the name that 
 hasn t passed my lips for years, the name of 
 Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy ! 
 Miss Mary ! do not take your hand away ! Miss 
 Mary, speak to me ! You will take my boy ? Do not 
 put your face from me. I know it ought not to look 
 on such as me. Miss Mary ! my God, be merciful ! 
 she is leaving me ! " 
 
 Miss Mary had risen, and, in the gathering twilight, 
 had felt herway to the open window. She stood there, 
 leaning against the casement, her eyes fixed on the 
 last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky. 
 There was still some of its light on her pure young 
 forehead, on her white collar, on her clasped white 
 hands, but all fading slowly away. The suppliant 
 had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her. 
 
 " I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here 
 all night ; but I cannot go until you speak. Do not 
 deny me now. You will ! I see it in your sweet 
 
122 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 face, uch a face as I have seen in my dreams. I 
 see it in your eyes, Miss Mary ! you will take my 
 boy ! " 
 
 The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss 
 Mary s eyes with something of its glory, flickered, 
 and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Red 
 Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary s 
 voice sounded pleasantly. 
 
 " I will take the boy. Send him to me to 
 night." 
 
 The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary s 
 skirts to her lips. She would have buried her hot 
 face in its virgin folds, but she dared not. She rose 
 to her feet. 
 
 " Does this man know of your intention ? " 
 asked Miss Mary suddenly. 
 
 " No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child 
 to know it." 
 
 "Go to him at once to-night now ! Tell him 
 what you have done. Tell him I have taken his child, 
 and tell him he must never see see the child 
 again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; 
 wherever I may take it, he must not follow ! There, 
 go now, please, I m weary, and have much yet to 
 do 1" 
 
 They walked together to the door. On the thresh 
 old the woman turned. 
 
 " Good-night ! " 
 
 She would have fallen at Miss Mary s feet. But at 
 the same moment the young girl reached out her 
 arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure 
 
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 123 
 
 breast for one brief moment, and then closed and 
 locked the door. 
 
 It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility 
 that Profane Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion 
 Stage the next morning, for the schoolmistress was 
 one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, 
 in obedience to a pleasant voice from the " inside," 
 he suddenly reined up his horses and respectfully 
 waited, as " Tommy " hopped out at the command 
 of Miss Mary. 
 
 " Not that bush, Tommy, the next." 
 
 Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife, and 
 cutting a branch from a tall azalea, bush, returned 
 with it to Miss Mary. 
 
 " All right now ? " 
 
 " All right ! " 
 
 And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of Red 
 Gulch. 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 
 
 A SUBDUED tone of conversation, and the absence 
 of cigar-smoke and boot-heels at the windows of the 
 Wingdam stage-coach, made it evident that one of 
 the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition 
 on the part of loungers at the stations to congregate 
 before the window, and some concern in regard to the 
 appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further in 
 dicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack 
 Hamlin, on the box-seat, noted with the smile of 
 cynical philosophy. Not that he depreciated the 
 sex, but that he recognised therein a deceitful ele 
 ment, the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind 
 away from the equally uncertain blandishments of 
 poker, of which it may be remarked that Mr. 
 Hamlin was a professional exponent. 
 
 So that, when he placed his narrow boot on the 
 wheel and leaped down, he did not even glance at the 
 window from which a green veil was fluttering, but 
 lounged up and down with that listless and grave in 
 difference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next 
 thing to good breeding. With his closely-buttoned 
 figure and self-contained air he was a marked contrast 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 125 
 
 to the other passengers, with their feverish restless 
 ness and boisterous emotion ; and even Bill Masters, 
 a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his 
 overflowing vitality, his intense appreciation of law 
 lessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled with 
 crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic 
 figure beside this lonely calculator of chances, with 
 his pale Greek face and Homeric gravity. 
 
 The driver called " All aboard ! " and Mr. Hamlin 
 returned to the coach. His foot was upon the wheel, 
 and his face raised to the level of the open window, 
 when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to 
 be the finest eyes in the world suddenly met his. 
 He quietly dropped down again, addressed a few 
 words to one of the inside passengers, effected an 
 exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. 
 Mr. Hamlin never allowed his philosophy to interfere 
 with decisive and prompt action. 
 
 I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint 
 upon the other passengers, particularly those who 
 were making themselves most agreeable to the lady. 
 One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed 
 to her information regarding Mr. Hamlin s profession 
 in a single epithet. Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or 
 whether he recognised in the informant a distinguished 
 jurist, from whom, but a few evenings before, he had 
 won several thousand dollars, I cannot say. His 
 colourless face betrayed no sign ; his black eyes, 
 quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the 
 legal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleas 
 ing features of his neighbour. An Indian stoicism 
 
126 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 said to be an inheritance from his maternal ancestor 
 stood him in good service, until the rolling wheels 
 rattled upon the river gravel at Scott s Ferry, and the 
 stage drew up at the International Hotel for dinner. 
 The legal gentleman and a member of Congress leaped 
 out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess, 
 while Colonel Starbottle of Siskiyou took charge of 
 her parasol and shawl. In this multiplicity of atten 
 tion there was a momentary confusion and delay. 
 Jack Hamlin quietly opened the opposite door of the 
 coach, took the lady s hand, with that decision and 
 positiveness which a hesitating and undecided sex 
 know how to admire, and in an instant had dexter 
 ously and gracefully swung her to the ground and 
 again lifted her to the platform. An audible chuckle 
 on the box, I fear, came from that other cynic, " Yuba 
 Bill/ the driver. " Look keerfully arter that bag 
 gage, Kernel," said the expressman, with affected 
 concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily 
 bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession to 
 the waiting-room. 
 
 Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse 
 was already saddled and awaiting him. He dashed 
 over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and out into the 
 dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one 
 leaving an unpleasant fancy behind him. The in 
 mates of dusty cabins by the roadside shaded their 
 eyes with their hands and looked after him, recog 
 nising the- man by his horse, and speculating what 
 " was up with Comanche Jack." Yet much of this 
 interest centred in the horse, in a community where 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 137 
 
 the time made by " French Pete s " mare, in his run 
 from the Sheriff of Calaveras, eclipsed all concern 
 in the ultimate fate of that worthy. 
 
 The sweating flanks of his grey at length recalled 
 him to himself. He checked his speed, and turning 
 into a by-road, sometimes used as a cut-off, trotted 
 leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly from his 
 fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape 
 changed and became more pastoral. Openings in 
 groves of pine and sycamore disclosed some rude 
 attempts at cultivation, a flowering vine trailed 
 over the porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked 
 her cradled babe under the roses of another. A little 
 farther on Mr. Hamlin came upon some barelegged 
 children wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought 
 upon them with a badinage peculiar to himself, that 
 they were emboldened to climb up his horse s legs 
 and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop an 
 exaggerated ferocity of demeanour, and to escape, 
 leaving behind some kisses and coin. And then, 
 advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs 
 of habitation failed, he began to sing, uplifting a 
 tenor so singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so 
 subdued and tender, that I wot the robins and linnets 
 stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin s voice was not 
 cultivated ; the subject of his song was some senti 
 mental lunacy, borrowed from the negro minstrels ; 
 but there thrilled through all some occult quality of 
 tone and expression that was unspeakably touching. 
 Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental 
 blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a 
 
TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 revolver at his back, sending his voice before him 
 through the dim woods with a plaint about his 
 " Nelly s grave/ in a way that overflowed the eyes 
 of the listener. A sparrow-hawk, fresh from his sixth 
 victim, possibly recognising in Mr. Hamlin a kindred 
 spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to 
 confess the superiority of man. With a superior 
 predatory capacity, he couldn t sing. 
 
 But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on 
 the highroad and at his former pace. Ditches and 
 banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps, and 
 decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland 
 and ravine, and indicated his approach to civilisation. 
 Then a church steeple came in sight, and he knew 
 that he had reached home. In a few moments he 
 was clattering down the single narrow street that 
 lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races,, ditches, and tail 
 ings at the foot of the hill , and dismounted before the 
 gilded windows of the " Magnolia "rsaloon. Passing 
 through the long bar-room, he pushed open a green- 
 baize door, entered a dark passage, opened another 
 door with a pass-key, and found himself in a dimly- 
 lighted room, whose furniture, though elegant and 
 costly for the locality, showed signs of abuse. The 
 inlaid centre-table was overlaid with stained disks 
 that were not contemplated in the original design, 
 the embroidered arm-chairs were discoloured, and 
 the green yelvet lounge, on which Mr. Hamlin threw 
 himself, was soiled at the foot with the red soil of 
 Wingdam. 
 
 Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 129 
 
 looking at a highly-coloured painting above him, 
 representing a young creature of opulent charms. It 
 occurred to him then, for the first time, that he had 
 never seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that, 
 if he should, he would not, probably, fall in love 
 with her. Perhaps he was thinking of another style 
 of beauty. But just then some one knocked at the 
 door. Without rising, he pulled a cord that appar 
 ently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open and 
 a man entered. 
 
 The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust, 
 a vigour not borne out in the face, which, 
 though handsome, was singularly weak and dis 
 figured by dissipation. He appeared to be also 
 under the influence of liquor, for he started on 
 seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, " I thought Kate was 
 here ; " stammered, and seemed confused and em 
 barrassed. 
 
 Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before 
 worn on the Wingdam coach, and sat up, quite re 
 freshed and ready for business. 
 
 :t You didn t come up on the stage," continued the 
 newcomer, " did you ? " 
 
 " No/ replied Hamlin ; " I left it at Scott s Ferry. 
 It isn t due for half an hour yet. But how s luck, 
 Brown ? " 
 
 "D d bad," said Brown, his face suddenly 
 
 assuming an expression of weak despair. " I m 
 cleaned out again, Jack," he continued, in a whining 
 tone, that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky 
 figure ; " can t you help me with a hundred till to- 
 
 5 
 
130 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 morrow s clean-up? You see I ve got to send 
 money home to the old woman, and you ve won 
 twenty times that amount from me." 
 
 The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, 
 but Jack overlooked it, and handed the sum to his 
 visitor. " The old woman business is about played 
 out, Brown," he added, by way of commentary; 
 " why don t you say you want to buck agin faro ? 
 You know you ain t married ! " 
 
 " Fact, sir," said Brown, with a sudden gravity, 
 as if the mere contact of the gold with the palm of 
 the hand had imparted some dignity to his frame. 
 
 " I ve got a wife a d d good one, too, if I do 
 
 say it in the States. It s three year since I ve seen 
 her, and a year since I ve writ to her. When things 
 is about straight, and we get down to the lead, I m 
 going to send for her." 
 
 " And Kate ? " queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previ 
 ous smile. 
 
 Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of 
 glance to cover his confusion, which his weak face 
 and whisky-muddled intellect but poorly carried out, 
 and said 
 
 "D n it, Jack, a man must have a little 
 
 liberty, you know. But come, what do you say to 
 a little game? Give us a show to double this 
 hundred." 
 
 Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. 
 Perhaps he knew that the man was predestined to 
 lose the money, and preferred that it should flow 
 back into his own coffers rather than anv other. 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 131 
 
 He nodded his head and drew his chair toward the 
 table. At the same moment there came a rap upon 
 the door. 
 
 " It s Kate/ said Mr. Brown. 
 
 Mr. Harnlin shot back the bolt and the door 
 opened. But, for the first time in his life, he stag 
 gered to his feet utterly unnerved and abashed, and 
 for the first time in his life the hot blood crimsoned 
 his colourless cheeks to his forehead. For before him 
 stood the lady he had lifted from the Wingdam coach, 
 whom Brown, dropping his cards with a hysterical 
 laugh, greeted as 
 
 " My old woman, by thunder ! " 
 
 They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears and 
 reproaches of her husband. I saw her in 1857 at 
 Marysville, and disbelieve the story. And the 
 Wingdam Chronicle of the next week, under the 
 head of " Touching Reunion/ said : " One of those 
 beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar to Cali 
 fornia life, occurred last week in our city. The wife 
 of one of Wingdam s eminent pioneers, tired of the 
 effete civilisation of the East and its inhospitable 
 climate, resolved to join her noble husband upon 
 these golden shores. Without informing him of 
 her intention, she undertook the long journey, and 
 arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be 
 easier imagined than described. The meeting is 
 said to have been indescribably affecting. We trust 
 her example may be followed." 
 
 Whether owing to Mrs. Brown s influence, or to 
 
132 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 some more successful speculations, Mr. Brown s 
 financial fortune from that day steadily improved. 
 He bought out his partners in the " Nip and Tuck " 
 lead with money which was said to have been won 
 at poker a week or two after his wife s arrival, but 
 which rumour, adopting Mrs. Brown s theory that 
 Brown had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to 
 have been furnished by Mr. Jack Hamlin. He built 
 and furnished the " Wingdam House," which pretty 
 Mrs. Brown s great popularity kept overflowing with 
 guests. He was elected to the Assembly, and gave 
 largess to churches. A street in Wingdam was named 
 in his honour. 
 
 Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed 
 wealthy and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and 
 anxious. As his wife s popularity increased, he 
 became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious 
 of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not 
 interfere with his wife s social liberty, it was because 
 it was maliciously whispered that his first and only 
 attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown 
 that terrified him into silence. Much of this kind 
 of gossip came from those of her own sex whom she 
 had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of 
 Wingdam, which, like most popular chivalry, was 
 devoted to an admiration of power, whether of mas 
 culine force or feminine beauty. It should be remem 
 bered, too, in her extenuation, that, since her 
 arrival, she had been the unconscious priestess of a 
 mythological worship, perhaps not more ennobling 
 to her womanhood than that which distinguished an 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 133 
 
 older Greek democracy. I think that Brown was 
 dimly conscious of this. But his only confidant was 
 Jack Hamlin, whose infelix reputation naturally 
 precluded any open intimacy with the family, and 
 whose visits were infrequent. 
 
 It was midsummer and a moonlit night, and Mrs. 
 Brown, very rosy, large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon 
 the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense of the mountain 
 breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense which 
 was not so fresh nor quite as innocent. Beside her 
 sat Colonel Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a 
 later addition to her court in the shape of a foreign 
 tourist. She was in good spirits. 
 
 " What do you see down the road ? " inquired the 
 gallant Colonel, who had been conscious, for the 
 last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown s attention was 
 diverted. 
 
 " Dust/ said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. " Only 
 Sister Anne s flock of sheep/ " 
 
 The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not 
 extend farther back than last week s paper, took a 
 more practical view. " It ain t sheep/ he continued ; 
 " it s a horseman. Judge, ain t that Jack Hamlin s 
 grey?" 
 
 But the Judge didn t know ; and, as Mrs. Brown 
 suggested the air was growing too cold for further 
 investigations, they retired to the parlour. 
 
 Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally 
 retired after dinner. Perhaps it was to show his 
 contempt for his wife s companions ; perhaps, like 
 other weak natures, he found pleasure in the exercise 
 
134 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 of absolute power over inferior animals. He had a 
 certain gratification in the training of a chestnut 
 mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased him, 
 which he couldn t do with Mrs. Brown. It was here 
 that he recognised a certain grey horse which had 
 just come in, and, looking a little farther on, found 
 his rider. Brown s greeting was cordial and hearty ; 
 Mr. Hamlin s somewhat restrained. But, at Brown s 
 urgent request, he followed him up the back-stairs 
 to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small room 
 looking out upon the stable-yard. It was plainly 
 furnished with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a 
 rack for guns and whips. 
 
 This yer s my home, Jack," said Brown with a 
 sigh, as he threw himself upon the bed and motioned 
 his companion to a chair. " Her room s t other end 
 of the hall. It s more n six months since we ve lived 
 together, or met, except at meals. It s mighty 
 rough papers on the head of the house, ain t it ? " 
 he said with a forced laugh. " But I m glad to see 
 
 you, Jack, d d glad," and he reached from the 
 
 bed, and again shook the unresponsive hand of 
 Jack Hamlin. 
 
 " I brought ye up here, for I didn t want to talk 
 in the stable ; though, for the matter of that, it s all 
 round town. Don t strike a light. We can talk here 
 in the moonshine. Put up your feet on that winder 
 and sit here beside me. Thar s whisky in that jug." 
 
 Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. 
 Brown of Calaveras turned his face to the wall and 
 continued 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 135 
 
 " If I didn t love the woman, Jack, I wouldn t 
 mind. But it s loving her, and seeing her day arter 
 day goin on at this rate, and no one to put down the 
 brake ; that s what gits me ! But I m glad to see 
 ye, Jack, d d glad." 
 
 In the darkness he groped about until he had found 
 and wrung his companion s hand again. He would 
 have detained it, but Jack slipped it into the buttoned 
 breast of his coat, and asked, listlessly, " How long 
 has this been going on ? " 
 
 " Ever since she came here ; ever since the day 
 she walked into the Magnolia/ I was a fool then ; 
 Jack, I m a fool now ; but I didn t know how much I 
 loved her till then. And she hasn t been the same 
 woman since. 
 
 " But that ain t all, Jack ; and it s what I wanted 
 to see you about, and I m glad you ve come. It 
 ain t that she doesn t love me any more ; it ain t 
 that she fools with every chap that comes along ; for 
 perhaps I staked her love and lost it, as I did every 
 thing else at the * Magnolia ; and perhaps foolin 
 is nateral to some women, and thar ain t no great 
 harm done, cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think 
 I think she loves somebody else. Don t move, 
 Jack ! don t move ; if your pistol hurts ye, take it 
 off. 
 
 "It s been more n six months now that she s 
 seemed unhappy and lonesome, and kinder nervous 
 and scared like. And sometimes I ve ketched her 
 lookin at me sort of timid and pitying. And she 
 writes to somebody. And for the last week she s 
 
136 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 been gathering her own things, trinkets, and 
 furbelows, and jew lry, and, Jack, I think she s 
 goin off. I could stand all but that. To have her 
 steal away like a thief ! " He put his face downward 
 to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no 
 sound but the ticking of a clock on the mantel. 
 Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and moved to the open 
 window. The moon no longer shone into the room, 
 and the bed and its occupant were in shadow. 
 " What shall I do, Jack ? " said the voice from the 
 darkness. 
 
 The answer came promptly and clearly from the 
 window-side, " Spot the man, and kill him on 
 sight." 
 
 " But, Jack " 
 
 " He s took the risk ! " 
 
 " But will that bring her back ? " 
 
 Jack did not reply, but moved from the window 
 towards the door. 
 
 " Don t go yet, Jack ; light the candle and sit 
 by the table. It s a comfort to see ye, if nothin* 
 else." 
 
 Jack hesitated and then complied. He drew a pack 
 of cards from his pocket and shuffled them, glancing 
 at the bed. But Brown s face was turned to the 
 wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he 
 cut them, and dealt one card on the opposite side of 
 the table towards the bed, and another on his side of 
 the table for himself. The first was a deuce ; his 
 own card a king. He then shuffled and cut again. 
 This time "dummy" had a queen and himself a 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 137 
 
 four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. 
 It brought his adversary a deuce and himself a 
 king again. " Two out of three," said Jack, 
 audibly. 
 
 " What s that, Jack ? " said Brown. 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 Then Jack tried his hand with dice ; but he always 
 threw sixes and his imaginary opponent aces. The 
 force of habit is sometimes confusing. 
 
 Meanwhile some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin s 
 presence, or the anodyne of liquor, or both, brought 
 surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept. Mr. Hamlin 
 moved his chair to the window and looked out on the 
 town of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully, its harsh 
 outlines softened and subdued, its glaring colours 
 mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that flowed 
 over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of 
 water hi the ditches and the sighing of the pines 
 beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the fir 
 mament, and as he did so a star shot across 
 the twinkling field. Presently another, and then 
 another. The phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin 
 a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes 
 
 another star should fall He sat there, watch 
 
 in hand, for twice that time, but the phenomenon 
 was not repeated. 
 
 The clock struck two and Brown still slept. Mr. 
 Hamlin approached the table and took from his pocket 
 a letter, which he read by the flickering candlelight. 
 It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in 
 a woman s hand, 
 
I 3 8 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 " Be at the corral with the buggy at three." 
 
 The sleeper moved uneasily and then awoke. 
 " Are you there, Jack ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Don t go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack, 
 dreamed of old times. I thought that Sue and me 
 was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack, 
 was who do you think ? you ! " 
 
 The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the 
 bed, the paper still in his hand. 
 
 " It s a good sign, ain t it ? " queried Brown. 
 
 " I reckon ! Say, old man, hadn t you better get 
 up?" 
 
 The " old man," thus affectionately appealed to, 
 rose, with the assistance of Hamlin s outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 " Smoke ? " 
 
 Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar. 
 
 " Light ? " 
 
 Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, 
 and held it for his companion. He continued to 
 hold it until it was consumed, and dropped the 
 fragment a fiery star from the open window. 
 He watched it as it fell, and then returned to his 
 friend. 
 
 " Old man," he said, placing his hands upon 
 Brown s shoulders, "in ten minutes I ll be on the 
 road, and gone like that spark. We won t see each 
 other agin ; but, before I go, take a fool s advice : 
 sell out all you ve got, take your wife with you, and 
 quit the country. It ain t no place for you nor her. 
 
BROWN OF CALAVERAS. 139 
 
 Tell her she must go ; make her go if she won t. 
 Don t whine because you can t be a saint and she ain t 
 an angel. Be a man, and treat her like a woman. 
 Don t be a d d fool. Good-bye." 
 
 He tore himself from Brown s grasp and leaped 
 down the stairs like a deer. At the stable-door he 
 collared the half-sleeping hostler, and backed him 
 against the wall. " Saddle my horse in two 
 
 minutes, or I ll " The ellipsis was frightfully 
 
 suggestive. 
 
 "The missis said you was to have the buggy," 
 stammered the man. 
 
 "D n the buggy!" 
 
 The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands 
 of the astounded hostler could manipulate buckle 
 and strap. 
 
 " Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin ? " said the man, 
 who, like all his class, admired the elan of his 
 fiery patron, and was really concerned in his wel 
 fare. 
 
 " Stand aside ! " 
 
 The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and 
 clatter, Jack was into the road. In another moment, 
 to the man s half-awakened eyes, he was but a moving 
 cloud of dust in the distance, towards which a star 
 just loosed from its brethren was trailing a stream of 
 fire. 
 
 But early that morning the dwellers by the Wing- 
 dam turnpike, miles away, heard a voice, pure as a 
 skylark s, singing afield. They who were asleep 
 turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth 
 
140 TALES OF THE WEST. 
 
 and love and olden days. Hard-faced men and 
 anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased their 
 labours and leaned upon their picks to listen to a 
 romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy 
 sunrise. 
 
CONDENSED NOVELS, 
 
MUCK-A-MUCK. 
 
 A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL. 
 
 AFTER COOPER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IT was toward the close of a bright October day. The 
 last rays of the setting sun were reflected from one of 
 those sylvan lakes peculiar to the Sierras of Cali 
 fornia. On the right the curling smoke of an Indian 
 village rose between the columns of the lofty pines, 
 while to the left the log cottage of Judge Tompkins, 
 embowered in buckeyes, completed the enchanting 
 picture. 
 
 Although the exterior of the cottage was humble 
 and unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness 
 of the landscape, its interior gave evidence of the 
 cultivation and refinement of its inmates. An 
 aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble 
 centre-table at one end of the apartment, while a 
 magnificent grand piano occupied the other. The 
 floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, 
 
144 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 and the walls were adorned with paintings from the 
 pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens, Tintoretto, Michael 
 Angelo, and the productions of the more modern 
 Turner, Kensett, Church, and Bierstadt. Although 
 Judge Tompkins had chosen the frontiers of civili 
 sation as his home, it was impossible for him to en 
 tirely forego the habits and tastes of his former life. 
 He was seated in a luxurious arm-chair, writing at 
 a mahogany escritoire, while his daughter, a lovely 
 young girl of seventeen summers, plied her crochet- 
 needle on an ottoman beside him. A bright fire of 
 pine logs flickered and flamed on the ample hearth. 
 
 Genevra Octavia Tompkins was Judge Tompkins s 
 only child. Her mother had long since died on the 
 Plains. Reared in affluence, no pains had been spared 
 with the daughter s education. She was a graduate 
 of one of the principal seminaries, and spoke French 
 with a perfect Benicia accent. Peerlessly beautiful, 
 she was dressed in a white moire antique robe trimmed 
 with tulle. That simple rosebud, with which most 
 heroines exclusively decorate their hair, was all she 
 wore in her raven locks. 
 
 The Judge was the first to break the silence. 
 
 " Genevra, the logs which compose yonder fire 
 seem to have been incautiously chosen. The sibila- 
 tion produced by the sap, which exudes copiously 
 therefrom, is not conducive to composition." 
 
 ; True, father, but I thought it would be pref 
 erable to the constant crepitation which is apt 
 to attend the combustion of more seasoned ligneous 
 fragments." 
 
MUCK-A-MUCK. 145 
 
 The Judge looked admiringly at the intellectual 
 features of the graceful girl, and half forgot the slight 
 annoyances of the green wood in the musical accents 
 of his daughter. He was smoothing her hair tenderly, 
 when the shadow of a tall figure, which suddenly 
 darkened the doorway, caused him to look up. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 It needed but a glance at the new-comer to detect 
 at once the form and features of the haughty abo 
 rigine, the untaught and untrammelled son of the 
 forest. Over one shoulder a blanket, negligently 
 but gracefully thrown, disclosed a bare and powerful 
 breast, decorated with a quantity of three-cent 
 postage stamps which he had despoiled from an 
 Overland Mail stage a few weeks previous. A cast- 
 off beaver of Judge Tompkins s, adorned by a simple 
 feather, covered his erect head, from beneath which 
 his straight locks descended. His right hand hung 
 lightly by his side, while his left was engaged in 
 holding on a pair of pantaloons, which the lawless 
 grace and freedom of his lower limbs evidently could 
 not brook. 
 
 " Why," said the Indian, in a low sweet tone, 
 " why does the Pale Face still follow the track of the 
 Red Man ? Why does he pursue him, even as O-kee 
 chow, the wild-cat, chases Ka-ka, the skunk ? Why 
 are the feet of Sorrel-top, the white chief, am^ng the 
 
146 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 acorns of Muck-a-Muck, the mountain forest ? 
 Why," he repeated, quietly but firmly abstracting 
 a silver spoon from the table " why do you seek to 
 drive him from the wigwams of his fathers ? His 
 brothers are already gone to the happy hunting- 
 grounds. Will the Pale Face seek him there ? " 
 And, averting his face from the Judge, he hastily 
 slipped a silver cake-basket beneath his blanket, to 
 conceal his emotion. 
 
 " Muck-a-Muck has spoken/ said Genevra softly. 
 " Let him now listen. Are the acorns of the moun 
 tain sweeter than the esculent and nutritious bean of 
 the Pale Face miner ? Does my brother prize the 
 edible qualities of the snail above that of the crisp 
 and oleaginous bacon ? Delicious are the grass 
 hoppers that sport on the hill-side, are they better 
 than the dried apples of the Pale Faces ? Pleasant 
 is the gurgle of the torrent, Kish-Kish, but is it better 
 than the cluck-cluck of old Bourbon from the old 
 stone bottle ? " 
 
 " Ugh ! " said the Indian," ugh ! good. The 
 White Rabbit is wise. Her words fall as the snow on 
 Tootoonolo, and the rocky heart of Muck-a-Muck 
 is hidden. What says my brother the Gray Gopher 
 of Dutch Flat ? " 
 
 " She has spoken, Muck-a-Muck/ said the Judge, 
 gazing fondly on his daughter. " It is well. Our 
 treaty is concluded. No, thank you, you need not 
 dance the Dance of Snow Shoes, or the Moccasin 
 Dance, the Dance of Green Corn, or the Treaty Dance. 
 I would be alone. A strange sadness overpowers me." 
 
MUCK-A-MUCK. 147 
 
 " I go," said the Indian. " Tell your great chief 
 in Washington, the Sachem Andy, that the Red Man 
 is retiring before the footsteps of the adventurous 
 Pioneer. Inform him, if you please, that westward 
 the star of empire takes its way, that the chiefs of 
 the Pi-Ute nation are for Reconstruction to a man, 
 and that Klamath will poll a heavy Republican vote 
 in the fall." 
 
 And folding his blanket more tightly around him, 
 Muck-a-Muck withdrew. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Genevra Tompkins stood at the door of the log- 
 cabin, looking after the retreating Overland Mail 
 stage which conveyed her father to Virginia City. 
 " He may never return again," sighed the young 
 girl, as she glanced at the frightfully rolling vehicle 
 and wildly careering horses, " at least, with un 
 broken bones. Should he meet with an accident ! 
 I mind me now a fearful legend, familiar to my 
 childhood. Can it be that the drivers on this line 
 are privately instructed to despatch all passengers 
 maimed by accident, to prevent tedious litigation ? 
 No, no. But why this weight upon my heart ? " 
 
 She seated herself at the piano and lightly passed 
 her hand over the keys. Then, in a clear mezzo- 
 soprano voice, she sang the first verse of one of the 
 most popular Irish ballads 
 
148 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 "O Art ah, ma dheelish, the distant dudheen 
 Lies soft in the moonlight, ma bouchal vourneeu : 
 The springing gossoons on the heather are still, 
 And the caubeens and colleens are heard on the hill." 
 
 But as the ravishing notes of her sweet voice died 
 upon the air, her hands sank listlessly to her side. 
 Music could not chase away the mysterious shadow 
 from her heart. Again she rose. Putting on a white 
 crape bonnet, and carefully drawing a pair of lemon- 
 coloured gloves over her taper fingers, she seized 
 her parasol, and plunged into the depths of the pine 
 forest. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Genevra had not proceeded many miles before a 
 weariness seized upon her fragile limbs, and she 
 would fain seat herself upon the trunk of a prostrate 
 pine, which she previously dusted with her hand 
 kerchief. The sun was just sinking below the horizon, 
 and the scene was one of gorgeous and sylvan beauty. 
 " How beautiful is Nature ! " murmured the innocent 
 girl, as, reclining gracefully against the root of the 
 tree, she gathered up her skirts and tied her handker 
 chief around her throat. But a low growl interrupted 
 her meditation. Starting to her feet, her eyes met a 
 sight which froze her blood with terror. 
 
 The only outlet to the forest was the narrow path, 
 barely wide enough for a single person, hemmed in 
 by trees and rocks, which she had just traversed. 
 
MUCK-A-MUCK. 149 
 
 Down this path, in Indian file, came a monstrous 
 grizzly, closely followed by a California lion, a wild 
 cat, and a buffalo, the rear being brought up by a 
 wild Spanish bull. The mouths of the three first 
 animals were distended with frightful significance, 
 the horns of the last were lowered as ominously. As 
 Genevra was preparing to faint, she heard a low voice 
 behind her. 
 
 " Eternally dog-gone my skin ef this ain t the 
 puttiest chance yet." 
 
 At the same moment, a long, shining barrel dropped 
 lightly from behind her, and rested over her shoulder. 
 
 Genevra shuddered. 
 
 " Dem ye don t move ! " 
 
 Genevra became motionless. 
 
 The crack of a rifle rang through the woods. Three 
 frightful yells were heard, and two sullen roars. Five 
 animals bounded into the air and five lifeless bodies 
 lay upon the plain. The well-aimed bullet had done 
 its work. Entering the open throat of the grizzly 
 it had traversed his body only to enter the throat of 
 the California lion, and in like manner the catamount, 
 until it passed through into the respective foreheads 
 of the bull and the buffalo, and finally fell flattened 
 from the rocky hillside. 
 
 Genevra turned quickly. " My preserver ! " she 
 shrieked, and fell into the arms of Natty Bumpo, 
 the celebrated Pike Ranger of Donner Lake. 
 
150 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The moon rose cheerfully above Donner Lake. On 
 its placid bosom a dug-out canoe glided rapidly, 
 containing Natty Bumpo and Genevra Tompkins. 
 
 Both were silent. The same thought possessed 
 each, and perhaps there was sweet companionship 
 even in the unbroken quiet. Genevra bit the handle 
 of her parasol and blushed. Natty Bumpo took a 
 fresh chew of tobacco. At length Genevra said, as if 
 in half -spoken reverie : 
 
 " The soft shining of the moon and the peaceful 
 ripple of the waves seem to say to us various things 
 of an instructive and moral tendency." 
 
 " You may bet yer pile * on that, Miss/ said her 
 companion gravely. " It s all the preachin and 
 psalm-singin I ve heern since I was a boy/ 
 
 " Noble being ! " said Miss Tompkins to herself, 
 glancing at the stately Pike as he bent over his paddle 
 to conceal his emotion. " Reared in this wild seclu 
 sion, yet he has become penetrated with visible con 
 sciousness of a Great First Cause." Then, collecting 
 herself, she said aloud : " Methinks twere pleasant 
 to glide ever thus down the stream of life, hand in 
 hand with the one being whom the soul claims as 
 its affinity. But what am I saying ? " and the 
 delicate-minded girl hid her face in her hands. 
 
 A long silence ensued, which was at length broken 
 by her companion. 
 
 * i.e. pile of money. 
 
MUCK-A-MUCK. 151 
 
 " Ef you mean you re on the marry," he said 
 thoughtfully, " I ain t in no wise partikler ! " 
 
 " My husband/ faltered the blushing girl ; and 
 she fell into his arms. 
 
 In ten minutes more the loving couple had landed 
 at Judge Tompkins s. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A year has passed away. Natty Bumpo was re 
 turning from Gold Hill, where he had been to purchase 
 provisions. On his way to Donner Lake, rumours 
 of an Indian uprising met his ears. " Dern their 
 pesky skins, ef they dare to touch my Jenny/ he 
 muttered between his clenched teeth. 
 
 It was dark when he reached the borders of the 
 lake. Around a glittering fire he dimly discerned 
 dusky figures dancing. They were in war paint. 
 Conspicuous among them was the renowned Muck-a- 
 Muck. But why did the fingers of Natty Bumpo 
 tighten convulsively around his rifle ? 
 
 The chief held in his hand long tufts of raven hair. 
 The heart of the pioneer sickened as he recognised 
 the clustering curls of Genevra. In a moment his 
 rifle was at his shoulder, and with a sharp " ping," 
 Muck-a-Muck leaped into the air a corpse. To dash 
 out the brains of the remaining savages, tear the 
 tresses from the stiffening hand of Muck-a-Muck, 
 and dash rapidly forward to the cottage of Judge 
 Tompkins, was the work of a moment. 
 
152 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 He burst open the door. Why did he stand trans 
 fixed with open mouth and distended eyeballs ? Was 
 the sight too horrible to be borne ? On the con 
 trary, before him, in her peerless beauty, stood 
 Genevra Tompkins, leaning on her father s arm. 
 
 " Ye r not scalped, then ! " gasped her lover. 
 
 " No. I have no hesitation in saying that I am not ; 
 but why this abruptness ? " responded Genevra. 
 
 Bumpo could not speak, but frantically produced 
 the silken tresses. Genevra turned her face aside. 
 
 " Why, that s her waterfall ! " said the Judge. 
 
 Bumpo sank fainting to the floor. 
 
 The famous Pike chieftain never recovered from the 
 deceit, and refused to marry Genevra, who died, 
 twenty years afterwards, of a broken heart. Judge 
 Tompkins lost his fortune in Wild Cat. The stage 
 passes twice a week the deserted cottage at Dormer 
 Lake. Thus was the death of Muck-a-Muck avenged. 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 
 
 BY MISS M. E. B DD N AND MRS. H N Y 
 W D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE sun was setting over Sloperton Grange, and 
 reddened the window of the lonely chamber in the 
 western tower, supposed to be haunted by Sir Edward 
 Sedilia, the founder of the Grange. In the dreamy 
 distance arose the gilded mausoleum of Lady Felicia 
 Sedilia, who haunted that portion of Sedilia Manor 
 known as " Stiff-uns Acre." A little to the left of the 
 Grange might have been seen a mouldering ruin, 
 known as " Guy s Keep/ haunted by the spirit of 
 Sir Guy Sedilia, who was found, one morning, crushed 
 by one of the fallen battlements. Yet, as the setting 
 sun gilded these objects, a beautiful and almost 
 holy calm seemed diffused about the Grange. 
 
 The Lady Selina sat by an oriel window over 
 looking the park. The sun sank gently in the bosom 
 of the German Ocean, and yet the lady did not lift 
 
154 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 her beautiful head from the finely curved arm and 
 diminutive hand which supported it. When dark 
 ness finally shrouded the landscape, she started, for 
 the sound of horse-hoofs clattered over the stones of 
 the avenue. She had scarcely risen before an aris 
 tocratic young man felt on his knees before her. 
 
 " My Selina ! " 
 
 "Edgardo! You here !" 
 
 " Yes, dearest/ 
 
 " And you you have seen nothing ? " said 
 the lady in an agitated voice and nervous manner, 
 turning her face aside to conceal her emotion. 
 
 " Nothing that is, nothing of any account," said 
 Edgardo. " I passed the ghost of your aunt in the 
 park, noticed the spectre of your uncle in the ruined 
 keep, and observed the familiar features of the 
 spirit of your great-grandfather at his post. But 
 nothing beyond these trifles, my Selina. Nothing 
 more, love, absolutely nothing." 
 
 The young man turned his dark, liquid orbs fondly 
 upon the ingenuous face of his betrothed. 
 
 " My own Edgardo ! and you still love me ? 
 You still would marry me in spite of this dark 
 mystery which surrounds me ? In spite of the fatal 
 history of my race ? In spite of the ominous 
 predictions of my aged nurse ? " 
 
 " I would, Selina ; " and the young man passed 
 his arm around her yielding waist. The two lovers 
 gazed at each other s faces in unspeakable bliss. 
 Suddenly Selina started. 
 
 " Leave me, Edgardo ! leave me ! A mysterious 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 155 
 
 something a fatal misgiving a dark ambiguity 
 an equivocal mistrust oppresses me. I would be 
 alone ! " 
 
 The young man arose, and cast a loving glance on 
 the ladv. " Then we will be married on the seven 
 teenth." 
 
 " The seventeenth," repeated Selina, with a mys 
 terious shudder. 
 
 They embraced and parted. As the clatter of 
 hoofs in the courtyard died away, the Lady Selina 
 sank into the chair she had just quitted. 
 
 " The seventeenth," she repeated slowly, with the 
 same fateful shudder. " Ah ! what if he should 
 know that I have another husband living ? Dare I 
 reveal to him that I have two legitimate and three 
 natural children ? Dare I repeat to him the history 
 of my youth ? Dare I confess that at the age of 
 seven I poisoned my sister, by putting verdigris in 
 her cream-tarts, that I threw my cousin from a 
 swing at the age of twelve ? That the lady s maid 
 who incurred the displeasure of my girlhood now lies 
 at the bottom of the horse-pond ? No ! no ! he is 
 too pure, too good, too innocent, to hear such 
 improper conversation ! " and her whole body 
 writhed as she rocked to and fro in a paroxysm of 
 grief. 
 
 But she was soon calm. Rising to her feet, she 
 opened a secret panel in the wall, and revealed 
 a slow-match ready for lighting. 
 
 " This match," said the Lady Selina, " is con 
 nected with a mine beneath the western tower, 
 
156 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 where [my three children are confined ; another 
 branch of it lies under the parish church, where the 
 record of my first marriage is kept. I have only to 
 light this match and the whole of my past life is 
 swept away ! " She approached the match with a 
 lighted candle. 
 
 But a hand was laid upon her arm, and with a 
 shriek the Lady Selina fell on her knees before the 
 spectre of Sir Guy. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Forbear, Selina," said the phantom in a hollow 
 voice. 
 
 " Why should I forbear ? " responded Selina 
 haughtily, as she recovered her courage. " You 
 know the secret of our race ? " 
 
 "I do. Understand me, I do not object to the 
 eccentricities of your youth. I know the fearful 
 fate which, pursuing you, led you to poison your 
 sister and drown your lady s maid. I know the 
 awful doom which I have brought upon this house ! 
 But if you make away with these children " 
 
 " Well," said the Lady Selina hastily. 
 
 " They will haunt you ! " 
 
 " Well, I fear them not," said Selina, drawing her 
 superb figure to its full height. 
 
 " But what place are they to haunt ? The 
 ruin is sacred to your uncle s spirit. Your aunt 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 157 
 
 monopolises the park, and, I must be allowed 
 to state, not unfrequently trespasses upon the 
 grounds of others. The horse-pond is frequented 
 by the spirit of your maid, and your murdered 
 sister walks these corridors. To be plain, there is 
 no room at Sloperton Grange for another ghost. I 
 cannot have them in my room, for you know I don t 
 like children. Think of this, rash girl, and forbear ! 
 Would you, Selina," said the phantom mournfully, 
 " would you force your great-grandfather s spirit 
 to take lodgings elsewhere ? " 
 
 Lady Selina s hand trembled ; the lighted candle 
 fell from her nerveless fingers. 
 
 " No/ she cried passionately ; " never ! " and fell 
 fainting to the floor. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Edgardo galloped rapidly towards Sloperton. When 
 the outline of the Grange had faded away in the 
 darkness, he reined his magnificent steed beside the 
 ruins of Guy s Keep. 
 
 " It wants but a few minutes of the hour," he said, 
 consulting his watch by the light of the moon. 
 " He dare not break his word. He will come." 
 He paused, and peered anxiously into the darkness. 
 " But come what may, she is mine," he continued, 
 as his thoughts reverted fondly to the fair lady he 
 had quitted. " Yet if she knew all. If she knew 
 
158 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 that I were a disgraced and ruined man, a felon 
 and an outcast. If she knew that at the age of 
 fourteen I murdered my Latin tutor and forged my 
 uncle s will. If she knew that I had three wives 
 already, and that the fourth victim of misplaced 
 confidence and my unfortunate peculiarity is ex 
 pected to be at Sloperton by to-night s train with 
 her baby. But no ; she must not know it. Con 
 stance must not arrive ; Burke the Slogger must 
 attend to that. 
 
 "Ha! here he is! Well ? " 
 
 These words were addressed to a ruffian in a 
 slouched hat, who suddenly appeared from Guy s 
 Keep. 
 
 " I be s here, measter," said the villain, with a 
 disgracefully low accent and complete disregard of 
 grammatical rules. 
 
 " It is well. Listen : I m in possession of facts 
 that will send you to the gallows. I know of the 
 murder of Bill Smithers, the robbery of the toll- 
 gate-keeper, and the making away of the youngest 
 daughter of Sir Reginald de Walton. A word from 
 me, and the officers of justice are on your track." 
 
 Burke the Slogger trembled. 
 
 " Hark ye ! serve my purpose, and I may yet save 
 you. The 5.30 train from Clapham will be due at 
 Sloperton at 9.25. It must not arrive ! " 
 
 The villain s eyes sparkled as he nodded at 
 Edgardo. 
 
 " Enough, you understand ; leave me ! " 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 159 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 About half a mile from Sloperton Station the South 
 Clapham and Medway line crossed a bridge over 
 Sloperton-on-Trent. As the shades of evening were 
 closing, a man in a slouched hat might have been 
 seen carrying a saw and axe under his arm, hanging 
 about the bridge. From time to time he disappeared 
 in the shadow of its abutments, but the sound of a 
 saw and axe still betrayed his vicinity. At exactly 
 nine o clock he reappeared, and crossing to the 
 Sloperton side, rested his shoulder against the abut 
 ment and gave a shove. The bridge swayed a moment, 
 and then fell with a splash into the water, leaving a 
 space of one hundred feet between the two banks. 
 This done, Burke the Slogger, for it was he, with 
 a fiendish chuckle seated himself on the divided 
 railway track and awaited the coming of the train. 
 
 A shriek from the woods announced its approach. 
 For an instant Burke the Slogger saw the glaring 
 of a red lamp. The ground trembled. The train 
 was going with fearful rapidity. Another second and 
 it had reached the bank. Burke the Slogger uttered 
 a fiendish laugh. But the next moment the train 
 leaped across the chasm, striking the rails exactly 
 even, and, dashing out the life of Burke the Slogger, 
 sped away to Sloperton. 
 
 The first object that greeted Edgardo, as he rode 
 up to the station on the arrival of the train, was 
 the body of Burke the Slogger hanging on the cow- 
 
160 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 catcher ; the second was the face of his deserted 
 wife looking from the windows of a second-class 
 carriage. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A nameless terror seemed to have taken possession 
 of Clarissa, Lady Selina s maid, as she rushed into the 
 presence of her mistress. 
 
 " Oh, my lady, such news ! " 
 
 " Explain yourself," said her mistress, rising. 
 
 " An accident has happened on the railway, and 
 a man has been killed." 
 
 " What not Edgardo ! " almost screamed Selina. 
 
 " No, Burke the Slogger, your ladyship ! " 
 
 " My first husband ! " said Lady Selina, sinking 
 on her knees. " Just Heaven, I thank thee ! " 
 
 . . 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The morning of the seventeenth dawned brightly 
 over Sloperton. " A fine day for the wedding," 
 said the sexton to Swipes, the butler of Sloperton 
 Grange. The aged retainer shook his head sadly. 
 " Alas ! there s no trusting in signs ! " he continued. 
 " Seventy-five years ago, on a day like this, my 
 
 young mistress " but he was cut short by 
 
 the appearance of a stranger. 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 161 
 
 " I would see Sir Edgardo/ said the new-comer 
 impatiently. 
 
 The bridegroom, who, with the rest of the wedding- 
 train, was about stepping into the carriage to proceed 
 to the parish church, drew the stranger aside. 
 
 "It s done ! " said the stranger, in a hoarse 
 whisper. 
 
 ""Ah ! and you buried her ? " 
 
 "With the others ! " 
 
 " Enough. No more at present. Meet me after 
 the ceremony, and you shall have your reward." 
 
 The stranger shuffled away, and Edgardo returned 
 to his bride. " A trifling matter of business I had for 
 gotten, my dear Selina ; let us proceed." And the 
 young man pressed the timid hand of his blushing 
 bride as he handed her into the carriage. The caval 
 cade rode out of the courtyard. At the same moment, 
 the deep bell on Guy s Keep tolled ominously. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Scarcely had the wedding-train left the Grange, 
 than Alice Sedilia, youngest daughter of Lady 
 Selina, made her escape from the western tower, 
 owing to a lack of watchfulness on the part of 
 Clarissa. The innocent child, freed from restraint, 
 rambled through the lonely corridors, and finally, 
 opening a door, found herself in her mother s boudoir. 
 For some time she amused herself by examining the 
 
 6 
 
162 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 various ornaments and elegant trifles with which it 
 was filled. Then, in pursuance of a childish freak, 
 she dressed herself in her mother s laces and ribbons. 
 In this occupation she chanced to touch a peg which 
 proved to be a spring that opened a secret panel in 
 the wall. Alice uttered a cry of delight as she 
 noticed what, to her childish fancy, appeared to be 
 the slow-match of a firework. Taking a lucifer match 
 in her hand she approached the fuse. She hesitated 
 a moment. What would her mother and her nurse 
 say ? 
 
 Suddenly the ringing of the chimes of Sloperton 
 parish church met her ear. Alice knew that the 
 sound signified that the marriage-party had entered 
 the church, and that she was secure from interruption. 
 With a childish smile upon her lips, Alice Sedilia 
 touched off the slow match. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 At exactly two o clock on the seventeenth, Rupert 
 Sedilia, who had just returned from India, was 
 thoughtfully descending the hill toward Sloperton 
 manor. "If I can prove that my aunt, Lady 
 Selina, was married before my father died, I can 
 establish my claim to Sloperton Grange," he uttered, 
 half aloud. He paused, for a sudden trembling of 
 the earth beneath his feet, and a terrific explosion, 
 as of a park of artillery, arrested his progress. At 
 
SELINA SEDILIA. 163 
 
 the same moment he beheld a dense cloud of smoke 
 envelop the churchyard of Sloperton, and the 
 western tower of the Grange seemed to be lifted 
 bodily from its foundation. The air seemed filled 
 with falling fragments, and two dark objects struck 
 the earth close at his feet. Rupert picked them up. 
 One seemed to be a heavy volume bound in brass. 
 
 A cry burst from his lips. 
 
 " The Parish Records/ He opened the volume 
 hastily. It contained the marriage of Lady Selina 
 to " Burke the Slogger." 
 
 The second object proved to be a piece of parch 
 ment. He tore it open with trembling fingers. It 
 was the missing will of Sir James Sedilia ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 When the bells again rang on the new parish church 
 of Sloperton it was for the marriage of Sir Rupert 
 Sedilia and his cousin, the only remaining members 
 of the family. 
 
 Five more ghosts were added to the supernatural 
 population of Sloperton Grange. Perhaps this was 
 the reason why Sir Rupert sold the property shortly 
 afterward, and that for many years a dark shadow 
 seemed to hang over the ruins of Sloperton Grange. 
 
THE 
 
 NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN, 
 
 BY AL X D R D M S. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SHOWING THE QUALITY OF THE CUSTOMERS OF 
 THE INKEEPER OF PROVINS. 
 
 TWENTY years after, the gigantic innkeeper of 
 Provins stood looking at a cloud of dust on the 
 highway. 
 
 This cloud of dust betokened the approach of a 
 traveller. Travellers had been rare that season 
 on the highway between Paris and Provins. 
 
 The heart of the innkeeper rejoiced. Turning to 
 Dame Perigord, his wife, he said, stroking his white 
 apron 
 
 " St. Denis ! make haste and spread the cloth. 
 Add a bottle of Charlevoix to the table. This 
 traveller, who rides so fast, by his pace must be a 
 Monseigneur." 
 
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN. 165 
 
 Truly the traveller, clad in the uniform of a 
 musketeer, as he drew up to the door of the hostelry, 
 did not seem to have spared his horse. Throwing 
 his reins to the landlord, he leaped lightly to the 
 ground. He was a young man of four-and-tvventy, 
 and spoke with a slight Gascon accent, 
 
 " I am hungry, Morbleu ! I wish to dine ! " 
 
 The gigantic innkeeper bowed and led the way to 
 a neat apartment, where a table stood covered with 
 tempting viands. The musketeer at once set to 
 work. Fowls, fish, and pates disappeared before him. 
 Perigord sighed as he witnessed the devastations. 
 Only once the stranger paused. 
 
 " Wine ! " Perigord brought wine. The stranger 
 drank a dozen bottles. Finally he rose to depart. 
 Turning to the expectant landlord, he said 
 
 " Charge it." 
 
 " To whom, your highness ? " said Perigord 
 anxiously. 
 
 " To his Eminence ! " 
 
 " Mazarin ! " ejaculated the innkeeper. 
 
 " The same. Bring me my horse/ and the mus 
 keteer, remounting his favourite animal, rode away. 
 
 The innkeeper slowly turned back into the ina 
 Scarcely had he reached the courtyard before the 
 clatter of hoofs again called him to the doorway. 
 A young musketeer of a light and graceful figure 
 rode up. 
 
 " Parbleu, my dear Perigord, I am famishing. 
 What have you got for dinner ? " 
 
 " Venison, capons, larks, and pigeons, your 
 
166 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 excellency," replied the obsequious landlord, bowing 
 to the ground. 
 
 " Enough ! " The young musketeer dismounted 
 and entered the inn. Seating himself at the table 
 replenished by the careful Perigord, he speedily 
 swept it as clean as the first comer. 
 
 " Some wine, my brave Perigord/ said the grace 
 ful young musketeer, as soon as he could find utter 
 ance. 
 
 Perigord brought three dozen of Charlevoix. 
 The young man emptied them almost at a 
 draught. 
 
 " By-by, Perigord," he said lightly, waving his 
 hand, as, preceding the astonished landlord, he slowly 
 withdrew. 
 
 " But, your highness, the bill," said the astounded 
 Perigord. 
 
 " Ah, the bill. Charge it ! " 
 
 " To whom ? " 
 
 " The Queen ! " 
 
 "What, Madame? " 
 
 " The same. Adieu, my good Perigord/ And 
 the graceful stranger rode away. An interval of 
 quiet succeeded, in which the innkeeper gazed woe 
 fully at liis wife. Suddenly he was startled by a 
 clatter of hoofs, and an aristocratic figure stood in 
 the doorway. 
 
 " Ah," said the courtier good-naturedly. " What, 
 do my eyes deceive me ? No, it is the festive and 
 luxurious Perigord. Perigord, listen. I famish. I 
 languish. I would dine." 
 
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN. 1*7 
 
 The innkeeper again covered the table with viands. 
 Again it was swept clean as the fields of Egypt 
 before the miraculous swarm of locusts. The 
 stranger looked up. 
 
 " Bring rne another fowl, my Perigord." 
 
 "Impossible, your excellency; the larder is 
 stripped clean." 
 
 " Another flitch of bacon, then." 
 
 " Impossible, your highness there is no more." 
 
 "Well, then, wine!" 
 
 The landlord brought one hundred and forty-four 
 bottles. The courtier drank them all. 
 
 " One may drink if one cannot eat/ said the aristo 
 cratic stranger, good-humouredly. 
 
 The innkeeper shuddered. 
 
 The guest rose to depart. The innkeeper came 
 slowly forward with his bill, to which he had covertly 
 added the losses which he had suffered from the 
 previous strangers. 
 
 " Ah, the bill. Charge it." 
 
 " Charge it ! to whom ? " 
 
 " To the King," said the guest. 
 
 " What ! his Majesty ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Farewell, Perigord." 
 
 The innkeeper groaned. Then he went out and 
 took down his sign. Then remarked to his wife 
 
 " I am a plain man, and don t understand politics. 
 It seems, however, that the country is in a troubled 
 state. Between his Eminence the Cardinal, his 
 Majesty the King, and her Majesty the Queen, I am 
 a ruined man." 
 
i68 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Stay," said Dame Perigord, " I have an idea." 
 
 " And that is " 
 
 " Become yourself a musketeer." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COMBAT. 
 
 On leaving Provins the first musketeer proceeded 
 to Nangis, where he was reinforced by thirty-three 
 followers. The second musketeer, arriving at Nangis 
 at the same moment, placed himself at the head of 
 thirty-three more. The third guest of the Landlord 
 of Provins arrived at Nangis in time to assemble 
 together thirty-three other musketeers. 
 
 The first stranger led the troops of his Eminence. 
 
 The second led the troops of the Queen. 
 
 The third led the troops of the King. 
 
 The fight commenced. It raged terribly for seven 
 hours. The first musketeer killed thirty of the 
 Queen s troops. The second musketeer killed thirty 
 of the King s troops. The third musketeer killed 
 thirty of his Eminence s troops. 
 
 By this time it will be perceived the number of 
 musketeers had been narrowed down to four on each 
 side. 
 
 Naturally the three principal warriors approached 
 each other. 
 
 They simultaneously uttered a cry. 
 
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN. 169 
 
 " Arainis ! " 
 
 " Athos ! " 
 
 (( D Artagnan ! " 
 
 They fell into each other s arms. 
 
 " And it seems that we are fighting against each 
 other, my children," said the Count de la Fere, mourn 
 fully. 
 
 " How singular! " exclaimed Arainis and D Arta 
 gnan. 
 
 " Let us stop this fratricidal warfare," said 
 Athos. 
 
 " We will ! " they exclaimed together. 
 
 " But how to disband our followers ? " queried 
 D Artagnan. 
 
 Aramis winked. They understood each other. 
 " Let us cut em down ! " 
 
 They cut em down. Aramis killed three. D Ar 
 tagnan three. Athos three. 
 
 The friends again embraced. " How like old 
 times," said Aramis. " How touching ! " exclaimed 
 the serious and philosophic Count de la Fere. 
 
 The galloping of hoofs caused them to withdraw 
 from each other s embraces. A gigantic figure 
 rapidly approached. 
 
 " The innkeeper of Provins ! " they cried, drawing 
 their swords. 
 
 " Perigord, down with him I " shouted D Artagnan. 
 
 " Stay," said Athos. 
 
 The gigantic figure was beside them. He uttered 
 a cry. 
 
 " Athos, Aramis, D Artagnan ! " 
 
170 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Porthos ! " exclaimed the astonished trio. 
 
 " The same." They all fell in each other s arms. 
 
 The Count de la Fere slowly raised his hands to 
 Heaven. " Bless you ! Bless us, my children ! 
 However different our opinions may be in regard to 
 politics, we have but one opinion in regard to our 
 own merits. Where can you find a better man than 
 Aramis ? " 
 
 " Than Porthos ? " said Aramis. 
 
 " Than D Artagnan ? " said Porthos. 
 
 " Than Athos ? " said D Artagnan. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHOWING HOW THE KING OF FRANCE WENT UP A 
 LADDER. 
 
 The King descended into the garden. Proceeding 
 cautiously along the terraced walk, he came to the 
 wall immediately below the windows of Madame. 
 To the left were two windows, concealed by vines. 
 They opened into the apartments of La Valliere. 
 
 The King sighed. 
 
 " It is about nineteen feet to that window," said 
 the King. " If I had a ladder about nineteen feet 
 long, it would reach to that window. This is logic." 
 
 Suddenly the King stumbled over something. 
 " St. Denis ! " he exclaimed, looking down. It was 
 a ladder, just nineteen feet long. 
 
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN. 171 
 
 The King placed it against the wall. In so doing, 
 he fixed the lower end upon the abdomen of a man 
 who lay concealed by the wall. The man did not 
 utter a cry or wince. The King suspected nothing. 
 He ascended the ladder. 
 
 .The ladder was too short. Louis the Grand was 
 not a tall man. He was still two feet below the 
 window. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said the King. 
 
 Suddenly the ladder was lifted two feet from below. 
 This enabled the King to leap in the window. At the 
 further end of the apartment stood a young girl, 
 with red hair and a lame leg. She was trembling 
 with emotion. 
 
 " Louise ! " 
 
 "The King!" 
 
 " Ah, my God, mademoiselle/ 
 
 " Ah, my God, sire." 
 
 But a low knock at the door interrupted the 
 lovers. The King uttered a cry of rage ; Louise 
 one of despair. 
 
 The door opened and D Artagnan entered. 
 
 " Good evening, sire/ said the musketeer. 
 
 The King touched a bell. Porthos appeared in 
 the doorway. 
 
 " Good evening, sire." 
 
 " Arrest M. D Artagnan." 
 
 Porthos looked at D Artagnan, and did not move. 
 
 The King almost turned purple with rage. He 
 again touched the bell. Athos entered. 
 
 " Count, arrest Porthos and D Artagnan." 
 
172 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 The Count de la Fere glanced at Porthos and 
 D Artagnan, and smiled sweetly. 
 
 " Sacre / Where is Aramis ? " said the King 
 violently. 
 
 " Here, sire/ and Aramis entered. 
 
 " Arrest Athos, Porthos, and D Artagnan. 
 
 Aramis bowed and folded his arms. 
 
 " Arrest yourself ! " 
 
 Aramis did not move. 
 
 The King shuddered and turned pale. " Am I not 
 King of France ? " 
 
 " Assuredly, sire, but we are also severally, Porthos, 
 Aramis, D Artagnan, and Athos." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the King. 
 
 " Yes, sire/ 
 
 " Wliat does this mean ? " 
 
 " It means, your majesty," said Aramis, stepping 
 forward, " that your conduct as a married man is 
 highly improper. I am an Abbe, and I object to 
 these improprieties. My friends here, D Artagnan, 
 Athos, and Porthos, pure-minded young men, are 
 also terribly shocked. Observe, sire, how they 
 blush ! " 
 
 Athos, Porthos, and D Artagnan blushed. 
 
 " Ah," said the King thoughtfully. " You teach 
 me a lesson. You are devoted and noble young 
 gentlemen, but your only weakness is your excessive 
 modesty. From this moment I make you all Marshals 
 and Dukes, with the exception of Aramis." 
 
 " And me, sire ? " said Aramis. 
 
 " You shall be an Archbishop ! " 
 
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN. 173 
 
 The four friends looked up and then rushed into 
 each other s arms. The King embraced Louise de la 
 Valliere, by way of keeping them company. A pause 
 ensued. At last Athos spoke 
 
 " Swear, my children, that, next to yourselves, 
 you will respect the King of France ; and remember 
 that Forty years after we will meet again." 
 
MISS MIX. 
 
 BY CH L TIE BR NTE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MY earliest impressions are of a huge, mis-shapen rock, 
 against which the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. 
 On this rock three pelicans are standing in a defiant 
 attitude. A dark sky lowers in the background, 
 while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye 
 with extreme disfavour the floating corpse of a 
 drowned woman in the foreground. A few brace 
 lets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewellery, 
 scattered around loosely, complete this remarkable 
 picture. 
 
 It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way, 
 symbolises, to my fancy, the character of a man. I 
 have never been able to explain exactly why. I 
 think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated 
 volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed 
 it before I was born. 
 
 As a child I was not handsome. When I consulted 
 
MISS MIX. 175 
 
 the triangular bit of looking-glass which I always 
 carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy, and freckled 
 face, shaded by locks like the colour of seaweed when 
 the. sun strikes it in deep water. My eyes were said 
 to be indistinctive ; they were a faint, ashen gray ; 
 but above them rose my only beauty a high, 
 massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, 
 like door-knobs of the purest porcelain. 
 
 Our family was a family of governesses. My 
 mother had been one, and my sisters had the same 
 occupation. Consequently, when, at the age of 
 thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertise 
 ment of Mr. Raw jester, clipped from that day s 
 Times, I accepted it as my destiny. Nevertheless, 
 a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite future 
 haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon 
 my little snow-white bed. The next morning, with 
 two band-boxes tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and a 
 hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage 
 for ever. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, 
 Esq., was encompassed by dark pines and funereal 
 hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the 
 turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues 
 of the park. As I approached the house I saw several 
 mysterious figures flit before the windows, and a yell 
 of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the 
 
176 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebod 
 ings, the housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old 
 woman, showed me into the library. 
 
 I entered, overcome with conflicting emotions. I 
 was dressed in a narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed 
 with black bugles. A thick green shawl was pinned 
 across my breast. My hands were encased with black 
 half-mittens worked with steel beads ; on my feet 
 were large pattens, originally the property of my 
 deceased grandmother. I carried a blue cotton 
 umbrella. As I passed before a mirror I could not 
 help glancing at it, nor could I disguise from myself 
 the fact that I was not handsome. 
 
 Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with 
 folded hands, calmly awaiting the arrival of my 
 master. Once or twice a fearful yell rang through 
 the house, or the rattling of chains, and curses uttered 
 in a deep, manly voice, broke upon the oppressive 
 stillness. I began to feel my soul rising with the 
 emergency of the moment. 
 
 " You look alarmed, miss. You don t hear any 
 thing, my dear, do you ? " asked the housekeeper 
 nervously c 
 
 " Nothing whatever," I remarked calmly, as a 
 terrific scream, followed by the dragging of chairs 
 and tables in the room above, drowned for a moment 
 my reply. " It is the silence, on the contrary, which 
 has made me foolishly nervous." 
 
 The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and 
 instantly made some tea for me. 
 
 I drank seven cups ; as I was beginning the 
 
MISS MIX. 177 
 
 eighth, I heard a crash, and the next moment a man 
 leaped into the room through the broken window. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The crash startled me from my self-control. The 
 housekeeper bent toward me and whispered 
 
 " Don t be excited. It s Mr. Rawjester, he 
 prefers to come in sometimes in this way. It s his 
 playfulness, ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " I perceive," I said calmly. " It s the unfettered 
 impulse of a lofty soul breaking the tyrannising bonds 
 of custom." And I turned toward him. 
 
 He had never once looked at me. He stood with 
 his back to the fire, which set off the herculean breadth 
 of his shoulders. His face was dark and expressive ; 
 his under jaw squarely formed, and remarkably 
 heavy. I was struck with his remarkable likeness 
 to a Gorilla. 
 
 As he absently tied the poker into hard knots 
 with his nervous fingers, I watched him with some 
 interest. Suddenly he turned toward me 
 
 " Do you think I m handsome, young woman ? " 
 
 " Not classically beautiful," I returned calmly ; 
 " but you have, if I may so express myself, an abstract 
 manliness, a sincere and wholesome barbarity 
 
 which, involving as it does the naturalness " but 
 
 I stopped, for he yawned at that moment, an action 
 which singularly developed the immense breadth of 
 
178 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 his lower jaw, and I saw he had forgotten me. 
 Presently he turned to the housekeeper 
 
 " Leave us." 
 
 The old woman withdrew with a courtesy. 
 
 Mr. Raw jester deliberately turned his back upon 
 me and remained silent for twenty minutes. I drew 
 my shawl the more closely around my shoulders and 
 closed my eyes. 
 
 11 You are the governess ? " at length he said. 
 
 " I am, sir." 
 
 " A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, 
 and the use of the globes ha ! a wretched remnant 
 of femininity, a skimp pattern of girlhood with a 
 premature flavour of tea-leaves and morality. Ugh ! 
 
 I bowed my head silently. 
 
 " Listen to me, girl ! " he said sternly ; " this 
 child you have come to teach my ward is not 
 legitimate. She is the offspring of my mistress, a 
 common harlot. Ah ! Miss Mix, what do you think 
 of me now ? " 
 
 " I admire," I replied calmly, " your sincerity. 
 A mawkish regard for delicacy might have kept this 
 disclosure to yourself. I only recognise in your 
 frankness that perfect community of thought and 
 sentiment which should exist between original na 
 tures." 
 
 I looked up ; he had already forgotten my presence, 
 and was engaged in pulling off his boots and coat. 
 This done, he sank down in an arm-chair before the 
 fire, and ran the poker wearily through his hair. I 
 could not help pitying him. 
 
MISS MIX. 179 
 
 The wind howled dismally without, and the rain 
 beat furiously against the windows. I crept toward 
 him and seated myself on a low stool beside his chair. 
 
 Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed 
 his foot absently in my lap. I affected not to notice 
 it. But he started and looked down. 
 
 " You here yet Carrothead ? Ah, I forgot. Do 
 you speak French ? " 
 
 " Oui, Monsieur" 
 
 " Taisez-vous ! " he said sharply, with singular 
 purity of accent. I complied. The wind moaned 
 fearfully in the chimney, and the light burned dim. 
 I shuddered in spite of myself. " Ah, you tremble, 
 girl ! " 
 
 " It is a fearful night. 5 
 
 " Fearful ! Call you this fearful, ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 Look ! you wretched little atom, look ! " and he 
 dashed forward, and, leaping out of the window, stood 
 like a statue in the pelting storm, with folded arms. 
 He did not stay long, but in a few minutes returned 
 by way of the hall chimney. I saw from the way 
 that he wiped his feet on my dress that he had again 
 forgotten my presence. 
 
 :i You are a governess. What can you teach ? " 
 he asked, suddenly and fiercely thrusting his face in 
 mine. 
 
 " Manners ! " I replied calmly. 
 
 "Ha! teach me /" 
 
 " You mistake yourself," I said, adjusting my 
 mittens. " Your manners require not the artificial 
 restraint of society. You are radically polite ; this 
 
i8o CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 impetuosity and ferociousness is simply the sincerity 
 which is the basis of a proper deportment. Your 
 instincts are moral ; your better nature, I see, is 
 religious. As St. Paul justly remarks see chap. 6, 
 8, 9, and 10 " 
 
 He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me, 
 I dodged it submissively but firmly. 
 
 " Excuse me," he remarked, as his under jaw slowly 
 relaxed. " Excuse me, Miss Mix but I can t stand 
 St. Paul ! Enough you are engaged." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I followed the housekeeper as she led the way 
 timidly to my room. As we passed into a dark hall 
 in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an iron 
 gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the 
 corridor were likewise grated. A strange noise, as of 
 shuffling feet and the howling of infuriated animals, 
 rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper 
 good-night, and taking the candle, I entered my 
 bedchamber. 
 
 I took off my dress, and putting on a yellow flannel 
 nightgown, which I could not help feeling did not 
 agree with my complexion, I composed myself to 
 rest by reading " Blair s Rhetoric " and " Paley s 
 Moral Philosophy." I had just put out the light, 
 when I heard voices in the corridor, I listened 
 
MISS MIX. 181 
 
 attentively. I recognised Mr. Rawjester s stern 
 tones. 
 
 " Have you fed No. I ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said a gruff voice, apparently belonging 
 to a domestic. 
 
 " How s No. 2 ? " 
 
 " She s a little off her feed, just now, but will pick 
 up in a day or two ! " 
 
 " And No. 3 ? " 
 
 " Perfectly furious, sir. Her tantrums are un 
 governable." 
 
 " Hush ! " 
 
 The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful 
 slumber. 
 
 I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical 
 forest. Suddenly I saw the figure of a gorilla ap 
 proaching me. As it neared me, I recognised the 
 features of Mr. Rawjester. He held his hand to his 
 side as if in pain. I saw that he had been wounded. 
 He recognised me and called me by name, but at 
 the same moment the vision changed to an Ashantee 
 village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes 
 were dancing and participating in some wild Obi 
 festival. I awoke with the strain still ringing in my 
 ears. 
 
 " Hokee-pokee wokee fum ! " 
 
 Good Heavens ! could I be dreaming ? I heard 
 the voice distinctly on the floor below, and smelt 
 something burning. I arose, with an indistinct pre 
 sentiment of evil, and hastily putting some cotton in 
 my ears and tying a towel about my head, I wrapped 
 
i&2 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 myself in a shawl and rushed downstairs. The door 
 of Mr. Rawjester s room was open. I entered. 
 
 Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, 
 from which even the clouds of smoke that came from 
 the burning curtains of his bed could not rouse him. 
 Around the room a large and powerful negress, scantily 
 attired, with her head adorned with feathers, was 
 dancing wildly, accompanying herself with bone 
 castanets. It looked like some terrible fetich. 
 
 I did not lose my calmness. After firmly emptying 
 the pitcher, basin, and slop-jar on the burning bed, 
 I proceeded cautiously to the garden, and returning 
 with the garden-engine, I directed a small stream at 
 Mr. Rawjester. 
 
 At my entrance the gigantic negress fled. Mr. 
 Rawjester yawned and woke. I explained to him, as 
 he rose dripping from the bed, the reason of my 
 presence. He did not seem to be excited, alarmed, 
 or discomposed. He gazed at me curiously. 
 
 " So you risked your life to save mine, eh ? you 
 canary-coloured teacher of infants." 
 
 I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly 
 over my yellow flannel nightgown. 
 
 You love me, Mary Jane, don t deny it ! This 
 trembling shows it ! " He drew me closely toward 
 him, and said, with his deep voice tenderly modu 
 lated : 
 
 " How s her pooty toot ens, did she get her ittle 
 tootens wet, bess her ? " 
 
 I understood his allusion to my feet. I glanced 
 down and saw that in my hurry I had put on a 
 
MISS MIX. 183 
 
 pair of his old India-rubbers. My feet were not 
 small or pretty , and the addition did not add to their 
 beauty. 
 
 " Let me go, sir/ I remarked quietly. :e This 
 is all improper ; it sets a bad example for your 
 child." And I firmly but gently extricated myself 
 from his grasp. I approached the door. He seemed 
 for a moment buried in deep thought. 
 
 r< You say this was a negress ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Humph, No. i, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Who is Number One, sir ? " 
 
 " My first," he remarked, with a significant and 
 sarcastic smile. Then, relapsing into his old manner, 
 he threw his boots at my head, and bade me begone. 
 I withdrew calmly. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French 
 with a perfect accent. Her mother had been a French 
 ballet-dancer, which probably accounted for it. 
 Although she was only six years old, it was easy to 
 perceive that she had been several times in love. She 
 once said to me 
 
 " Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion ? 
 Did you ever feel a fluttering here ? " and she placed 
 her hand upon her small chest, and sighed quaintly, 
 
184 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " a kind of distaste for bonbons and caramels, when the 
 world seemed as tasteless and hollow as a broken 
 cordial drop." 
 
 " Then you have felt it, Nina ? " I said quietly. 
 
 " Oh dear, yes. There was Buttons, that was our 
 page, you know, I loved him dearly, but papa sent 
 him away. Then there was Dick, the groom, but he 
 laughed at me and I suffered misery ! " and she 
 struck a tragic French attitude. f There is to be com 
 pany here to-morrow/ she added, rattling on with 
 childish naivete, " and papa s sweetheart Blanche 
 Marabout is to be here. You know they say she is 
 to be my mamma." 
 
 What thrill was this shot through me ? But I rose 
 calmly, and administering a slight correction to the 
 child, left the apartment. 
 
 Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the 
 scene of gaiety and merriment. That portion of the 
 mansion closed with a grating was walled up, and 
 the midnight shrieks no longer troubled me. 
 
 But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situa 
 tion. I was obliged to help Lady Blanche at her 
 toilette and help her to look beautiful. For what ? To 
 captivate him ? Oh no, no, but why this sudden 
 thrill and faintness ? Did he really love her ? I had 
 seen him pinch and swear at her. But I reflected 
 that he had thrown a candlestick at my head, 
 and my foolish heart was reassured. 
 
 It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message 
 obliged Mr. Rawjester to leave his guests for a few 
 hours. " Make yourselves merry, idiots," he added, 
 
MISS MIX. 185 
 
 under his breath, as he passed me. The door closed 
 and he was gone. 
 
 An half-hour passed. In the midst of the dancing 
 a shriek was heard, and out of the swaying crowd 
 of fainting women and excited men a wild figure 
 strode into the room. One glance showed it to be a 
 highwayman, heavily armed, holding a pistol in each 
 hand. 
 
 " Let no one pass out of this room ! " he said, in 
 a voice of thunder. " The house is surrounded and 
 you cannot escape. The first one who crosses yonder 
 threshold will be shot like a dog. Gentlemen, I ll 
 trouble you to approach in single file, and hand me 
 your purses and watches/ 
 
 Finding resistance useless, the order was ungra 
 ciously obeyed. 
 
 " Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry 
 and trinkets." 
 
 This order was still more ungraciously complied 
 with. As Blanche handed to the bandit captain her 
 bracelet, she endeavoured to conceal a diamond 
 necklace, the gift of Mr. Rawj ester, in her bosom. 
 But, with a demoniac grin, the powerful brute 
 tore it from its concealment, and administering a 
 hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her 
 aside. 
 
 It was now my turn. With a beating heart I made 
 my way to the robber chieftain, and sank at his feet. 
 " O sir, I am nothing but a poor governess, pray let 
 me go." 
 
 " O ho ! A governess ? Give me your last month s 
 
186 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 wages, then. Giv8 me what you have stolen from 
 your master ! " and he laughed fiendishly. 
 
 I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice : 
 " I have stolen nothing from you, Mr. Rawj ester ! " 
 
 " Ah, discovered ! Hush! listen, girl ! " he hissed, 
 in a fierce whisper, " utter a syllable to frustrate my 
 plans and you die aid me, and But he was 
 
 gone. 
 
 In a few moments the party, with the exception of 
 myself, were gagged and locked in the cellar. The 
 next moment torches were applied to the rich hang 
 ings, and the house was in flames. I felt a strong 
 hand seize me, and bear me out in the open air and 
 place me up on the hillside, where I could overlook 
 the burning mansion. It was Mr. Raw jester. 
 
 " Burn ! " he said, as he shook his fist at the 
 flames. Then sinking on his knees before me, he said 
 hurriedly 
 
 " Mary Jane, I love you ; the obstacles to our union 
 are or will be soon removed. In yonder mansion 
 were confined my three crazy wives. One of them, 
 as you know, attempted to kill me ! Ha ! this is 
 vengeance ! But will you be mine ? " 
 
 I fell, without a word, upon his neck. 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 
 
 .1 NAVAL OFFICER. 
 
 BY CAPTAIN M RRY T, R.N. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MY father was a north-country surgeon. He had 
 retired, a widower, from her Majesty s navy man} 
 years before, and had a small practice in his native 
 village. When I was seven years old he employed 
 me to carry medicines to his patients. Being of a 
 lively disposition, I sometimes amused myself, during 
 my daily rounds, by mixing the contents of the 
 different phials. Although I had no reason to 
 doubt that the general result of this practice was bene 
 ficial, yet, as the death of a consumptive curate fol 
 lowed the addition of a strong mercurial lotion to his 
 expectorant, my father concluded to withdraw me 
 from the profession and send me to school. 
 
 Grubbins, the schoolmaster, was a tyrant, and it 
 was not long before my impetuous and self-willed 
 nature rebelled against his authority. I soon began 
 
i88 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 to form plans of revenge. In this I was assisted by 
 Tom Snaffle, a schoolfellow. One day Tom sug 
 gested 
 
 " Suppose we blow him up. I ve got two pounds of 
 powder ! " 
 
 " No, that s too noisy/ I replied. 
 
 Tom was silent for a minute, and again spoke 
 
 " You remember how you flattened out the curate, 
 Pills ! Couldn t you give Grubbins something some 
 thing to make him leathery sick eh ? " 
 
 A flash of inspiration crossed my mind. I went to 
 the shop of the village apothecary. He knew me ; 
 I had often purchased vitriol, which I poured into 
 Grubbins s inkstand to corrode his pens and burn 
 up his coat-tail, on which he was in the habit of 
 wiping them. I boldly asked for an ounce of chloro 
 form. The young apothecary winked and handed 
 me the bottle. 
 
 It was Grubbins s custom to throw his handkerchief 
 over his head, recline in his chair and take a short 
 nap during recess. Watching my opportunity, as he 
 dozed, I managed to slip his handkerchief from his 
 face and substitute my own, moistened with chloro 
 form. In a few minutes he was insensible. Tom and I 
 then quickly shaved his head, beard, and eyebrows, 
 blackened his face with a mixture of vitriol and 
 burnt cork, and fled. There was a row and scandal 
 the next clay. My father always excused me by as 
 serting that Grubbins had got drunk, but somehow 
 found it convenient to procure me an appointment 
 in her Majesty s navy at an early day. 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 189 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 An official letter, with the Admiralty seal, informed 
 me that I was expected to join H.M. ship Belcher, 
 Captain Boltrope, at Portsmouth, without delay. 
 In a few days I presented myself to a tall, stern-vis- 
 aged man, who was slowly pacing the leeward side of 
 the quarter-deck. As I touched my hat he eyed me 
 sternly : 
 
 "So ho ! Another young suckling. The service 
 is going to the devil. Nothing but babes in the cock 
 pit and grannies in the board. Boatswain s mate, 
 pass the word for Mr. Cheek ! " 
 
 Mr. Cheek, the steward, appeared and touched his 
 hat. 
 
 " Introduce Mr. Breezy to the young gentlemen. 
 Stop ! Where s Mr. Swizzle ? " 
 
 " At the masthead, sir." 
 
 " Where s Mr. Lankey ? " 
 
 " At the masthead, sir." 
 
 " Mr. Briggs ? " 
 
 " Masthead, too, sir." 
 
 " And the rest of the young gentlemen ? " roared 
 the enraged officer. 
 
 " All masthead, sir." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Captain Boltrope, as he smiled grimly, 
 " under the circumstances, Mr. Breezy, you had 
 better go to the masthead too." 
 
CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 At the masthead I made the acquaintance of two 
 youngsters of about my own age, one of whom in 
 formed me that he had been there three hundred and 
 thirty-two days out of the year. 
 
 " In rough weather, when the old cock is out of 
 sorts, you know, we never come down/ added a 
 young gentleman of nine years, with a dirk nearly as 
 long as himself, who had been introduced to me as 
 Mr. Briggs. By the way, Pills/ he continued, how 
 did you come to omit giving the captain a naval 
 salute ? " 
 
 " Why, I touched my hat/ I said innocently. 
 
 " Yes, but that isn t enough, you know. That 
 will do very well at other times. He expects the 
 naval salute when you first come on board greeny! " 
 
 I began to feel alarmed, and begged him to 
 explain. 
 
 " Why, you see, after touching your hat, you should 
 have touched him lightly with your forefinger in his 
 waistcoat, so, and asked, How s his nibs ? you 
 see ? " 
 
 " How s his nibs ? " I repeated. 
 
 " Exactly. He would have drawn back a little, 
 and then you should have repeated the salute, re 
 marking, How s his royal nibs ? asking cautiously 
 after his wife and family, and requesting to be intro 
 duced to the gunner s daughter." 
 
 II The gunner s daughter ? " 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 191 
 
 " The same ; you know she takes care of us young 
 gentlemen ; now don t forget, Pillsy ! " 
 
 When we were called down to the deck I thought 
 it a good chance to profit by this instruction. I 
 approached Captain Boltrope and repeated the salute 
 without conscientiously omitting a single detail. He 
 remained for a moment livid and speechless. At 
 length he gasped out 
 
 " Boatswain s mate ! " 
 
 " If you please, sir," I asked tremulously, " I should 
 like to be introduced to the gunner s daughter ! " 
 
 " 0, very good, sir ! " screamed Captain Bolt- 
 rope, rubbing his hands and absolutely capering 
 about the deck with rage. " Oh, d n you ! Of 
 course you shall ! Oh, ho ! the gunner s daughter ! 
 Oh, h 11 ! this is too much ! Boatswain s mate ! " 
 Before I well knew where I was, I was seized, borne 
 to an eight-pounder, tied upon it and flogged ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 As we sat together in the cockpit, picking the weevils 
 out of our biscuit, Briggs consoled me for my late 
 mishap, adding that/the " naval salute/ as a custom, 
 seemed just then to be honoured more in the breach 
 than the observance. I joined in the hilarity occa 
 sioned by the witticism, and in a few moments we 
 were all friends. Presently Swizzle turned to me : 
 
192 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " We have just been planning how to confiscate 
 a keg of claret which Nips, the purser, keeps under 
 his bunk. The old nipcheese lies there drunk half the 
 day, and there s no getting at it." 
 
 " Let s get beneath the state-room and bore through 
 the deck, and so tap it," said Lankey. 
 
 The proposition was received with a shout of ap 
 plause. A long half-inch auger and bit was procured 
 from Chips, the carpenter s mate, and Swizzle, after 
 a careful examination of the timbers beneath the 
 wardroom, commenced operations. The auger at last 
 disappeared, when suddenly there was a slight dis 
 turbance on the deck above. Swizzle withdrew the 
 auger hurriedly ; from its point a few bright red 
 drops trickled. 
 
 " Huzza ! send her up again ! " cried Lankey. 
 
 The auger was again applied./ This time a shriek 
 was heard from the purser s cabin. Instantly the 
 light was doused, and the party retreated hurriedly 
 to the cockpit. A sound of snoring was heard as the 
 sentry stuck his head into the door. " All right, sir," 
 he replied in answer to the voice of the officer of the 
 deck. 
 
 The next morning we heard that Nips was in the 
 surgeon s hands, with a bad wound in the fleshy part 
 of his leg, and that the auger had .not struck claret. 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 193 
 
 / 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Now, Pills, you ll have a chance to smell powder," 
 said Briggs as he entered the cockpit and buckled 
 around his waist an enormous cutlass. " We have 
 just sighted a French ship." 
 
 We went on deck. Captain Boltrope grinned as 
 we touched our hats. He hated the purser. " Come, 
 young gentlemen, if you re boring for French claret, 
 yonder J s a good quality. Mind your con, sir," he 
 added, turning to the quartermaster, who was grin 
 ning. 
 
 The ship was already cleared for action. The men, 
 in their eagerness, had started the coffee from the tubs 
 and filled them with shot. Presently the Frenchman 
 yawed, and a shot from a long thirty-two came skip 
 ping over the water. It killed the quartermaster 
 and took off both of Lankey s legs. " Tell the purser 
 our account is squared," said the dying boy, with a 
 feeble smile. 
 
 The fight raged fiercely for two hours. I remember 
 killing the French admiral, as we boarded, but on 
 looking around for Briggs, after the smoke had cleared 
 away, I was intensely amused at witnessing the 
 following novel sight : 
 
 Briggs had pinned the French captain against the 
 mast with his cutlass, and was now engaged, with all 
 the hilarity of youth, in pulling the captain s coat- 
 tails between his legs, in imitation of a dancing- jack. 
 As the Frenchman lifted his legs and arms, at each 
 
194 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 jerk of Briggs s, I could not help participating in the 
 general mirth. 
 
 " You young devil, what are you doing ? " said 
 a stifled voice behind me. I looked up and beheld 
 Captain Boltrope, endeavouring to calm his stern 
 features, but the twitching around his mouth be 
 trayed his intense enjoyment of the scene. "Go to 
 the masthead up with you, sir ! " he repeated 
 sternly to Briggs. 
 
 " Very good, sir," said the boy, coolly preparing to 
 mount the shrouds. " Good-bye, Johnny Crapaud. 
 Humph ! " he added, in a tone intended for my ear, 
 " a pretty way to treat a hero. The service is going to 
 the devil ! " 
 
 I thought so too. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 We were ordered to the West Indies. Although 
 Captain Boltrope s manner toward me was still 
 severe, and even harsh, I understood that my name 
 had been favourably mentioned in the despatches. 
 
 Reader, were you ever at Jamaica ? If so, you re 
 member the negresses, the oranges, Port Royal Tom 
 the yellow fever. After being two weeks at the 
 station I was taken sick of the fever. In a month I 
 was delirious. During my paroxysms, I had a wild 
 distempered dream of a stern face bending anxiously 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 195 
 
 over my pillow, a rough hand smoothing my hair, 
 and a kind voice saying 
 
 " Bess his ittle heart ! Did he have the naughty 
 fever ? " This face seemed again changed to the well- 
 known stern features of Captain Boltrope. 
 
 When I was convalescent, a packet edged in black 
 was put in my hand. It contained the news of my 
 father s death, and a sealed letter which he had 
 requested to be given to me on his decease. I 
 opened it tremblingly. It read thus 
 
 " MY DEAR BOY, I regret to inform you that in 
 all probability you are not my son. Your mother, 
 I am grieved to say, was a highly improper person. 
 Who your father may be, I really cannot say, but 
 perhaps the Honourable Henry Boltrope, Captain 
 R.N., may be able to inform you. Circumstances 
 over which I have no control have deferred this im 
 portant disclosure. 
 
 " YOUR STRICKEN PARENT/ 
 
 And so Captain Boltrope was my father. Heavens 1 
 Was it a dream ? I recalled his stern manner, his 
 observant eye ; his ill-concealed uneasiness when in 
 my presence. I longed to embrace him. Staggering 
 to my feet, I rushed in my scanty apparel to the deck, 
 where Captain Boltrope was just then engaged in 
 receiving the Governor s wife and daughter. The 
 ladies shrieked ; the youngest, a beautiful girl, 
 blushed deeply. Heeding them not, I sank at his 
 feet, and, embracing them, cried 
 
196 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " My Father ! " 
 
 " Chuck him overboard ! " roared Captain Bolt- 
 rope. 
 
 11 Stay," pleaded the soft voice of Clara Maitland, 
 the Governor s daughter. 
 
 " Shave his head ! he s a wretched lunatic ! " 
 continued Captain Boltrope, while his voice trembled 
 with excitement. 
 
 " No, let me nurse and take care of him," said 
 the lovely girl, blushing as she spoke. " Mamma, 
 can t we take him home ? " 
 
 The daughter s pleading was not without effect. 
 In the meantime I had fainted. When I recovered 
 my senses I found myself in Governor Maitland s 
 mansion. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The reader will guess what followed. I fell deeply 
 in love with Clara Maitland, to whom I confided 
 the secret of my birth. The generous girl asserted 
 that she had detected the superiority of my manner 
 at once. We plighted our troth, and resolved to 
 wait upon events. 
 
 Briggs called to see me a few days afterward. He 
 said that the purser had insulted the whole cockpit, 
 and all the midshipmen had called him out. But 
 he added thoughtfully : " I don t see how we can 
 arrange the duel. You see there are six of us to fight 
 him." 
 
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY. 197 
 
 " Very easily/ I replied. " Let your fellows all 
 stand in a row, and take his fire ; that, you see, 
 gives him six chances to one, and he must be a bad 
 shot if he can t hit one of you ; while, on the other 
 hand, you see, he gets a volley from you six, and 
 one of you ll be certain to fetch him." 
 
 " Exactly ; " and away Briggs went, but soon 
 returned to say that the purser had declined, 
 " like a d d coward," he added. 
 
 But the news of the sudden and serious illness 
 of Captain Boltrope put off the duel. I hastened to 
 his bedside, but too late, an hour previous he had 
 given up the ghost. 
 
 I resolved to return to England. I made known 
 the secret of my birth, and exhibited my adopted 
 father s letter to Lady Maitland, who at once sug 
 gested my marriage with her daughter, before I 
 returned to claim the property. We were married, 
 and took our departure next day. 
 
 I made no delay in posting at once, in company 
 with my wife and my friend Briggs, to my native 
 village. Judge of my horror and surprise when 
 my late adopted father came out of his shop to wel 
 come me. 
 
 Then you are not dead ! " I gasped. 
 
 " No, my dear boy." 
 
 " And this letter ? " 
 
 My father as I must still call him glanced on 
 the paper, and pronounced it a forgery. Briggs 
 roared with laughter. I turned to him and demanded 
 an explanation. 
 
ig8 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Why, don t you see, Greeny, it s all a joke, 
 a midshipman s joke ! " 
 
 " But " I asked. 
 
 "Don t be a fool. You ve got a good wife, be 
 satisfied." 
 
 I turned to Clara, and was satisfied. Although 
 Mrs. Maitland never forgave me, the jolly old Gov 
 ernor laughed heartily over the joke, and so well 
 used his influence that I soon became, dear reader, 
 Admiral Breezy, K.C.B. 
 
GUY HEAVYSTONE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 " ENTIRE/ 
 A MUSCULAR NOVEL. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF " SWORD AND GUN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 "NEREI REPANDIROSTRUM INCURVICERVICUM PECUS." 
 
 A DINGY, swashy, splashy afternoon in October ; 
 a schoolyard filled with a mob of riotous boys. A 
 lot of us standing outside. 
 
 Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the 
 schoolroom. At the ominous interruption I shud 
 dered involuntarily, and called to Smithsye 
 
 " What s up, Smithums ? " 
 
 " Guy s cleaning out the fourth form," he replied. 
 
 At the same moment George de Coverly passed 
 me, holding his nose, from whence the bright 
 Norman blood streamed redly. To him the plebeian 
 Smithsye laughingly 
 
200 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Cully ! how s his nibs ? " 
 
 I pushed the door of the schoolroom open. There 
 are some spectacles which a man never forgets. 
 The burning of Troy probably seemed a large- 
 sized conflagration to the pious ^Eneas, and made an 
 impression on him which he carried away with the 
 feeble Anchises. 
 
 In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing the 
 piston-rod of a steam-engine, stood Guy Heavystone 
 alone. I say alone, for the pile of small boys on the 
 floor in the corner could hardly be called company. 
 
 I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy 
 Heavystone was then only fifteen. His broad, deep 
 chest, his sinewy and quivering flank, his straight 
 pastern, showed him to be a thorough-bred. Per 
 haps he was a trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held 
 his head haughtily erect. His eyes were glittering 
 but pitiless. There was a sternness about the lower 
 part of his face, the old Heavystone look, a 
 sternness, heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit 
 which, in one of his strange freaks, he wore in his 
 mouth to curb his occasional ferocity. His dress 
 was well adapted to his square-set and herculean 
 frame. A striped knit undershirt, close-fitting 
 striped tights, and a few spangles set off his figure ; 
 a neat Glengarry cap adorned his head. On it was 
 displayed the Heavystone crest, a cock regardant 
 on a dunghill or, and the motto, " Devil a better ! " 
 
 I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector 
 before the walls. I always make it a point to think 
 of something classical at such times. 
 
GUY HEAVYSTONE. 201 
 
 He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed. 
 Something like a smile struggled through his grim 
 lineaments. It was like looking on the Jungfrau 
 after having seen Mont Blanc, a trifle, only a trifle 
 less sublime and awful. Resting his hand lightly 
 on the shoulder of the head-master, who shuddered 
 and collapsed under his touch, he strode toward 
 me. 
 
 His walk was peculiar. You could not call it a 
 stride. It was like the " crest-tossing Bellerophon," 
 a kind of prancing gait. Guy Heavystone pranced 
 toward me. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Lord Lovel he stood at the garden gate, 
 A-combing his milk-white steed." 
 
 It was the winter of 186 when I next met Guy 
 Heavystone. He had left the University and had 
 entered the 79th " Heavies/* " I have exchanged 
 the gown for the sword, you see/* he said, grasping 
 my hand, and fracturing the bones of my little 
 finger, as he shook it. 
 
 I gazed at him with unmixed admiration. He was 
 squarer, sterner, and in every way smarter and more 
 remarkable than ever. I began to feel toward this 
 man as Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as some 
 body must have felt toward Archididasculus, as 
 Boswell felt toward Johnson. 
 
202 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Come into my den/ he said, and lifting me 
 gently by the seat of my pantaloons he carried me 
 upstairs and deposited me, before I could apologise, 
 on the sofa. I looked around the room. It was a 
 bachelor s apartment, characteristically furnished 
 in the taste of the proprietor. A few claymores and 
 battleaxes were ranged against the wall, and a 
 culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occu 
 pied the corner, the other end of the room being taken 
 up by a light battery. Foils, boxing-gloves, saddles, 
 and fishing-poles lay around carelessly. A small 
 pile of billets-doux lay upon a silver salver. The 
 man was not an anchorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad. 
 
 I never could tell what Guy thought of women. 
 * Poor little beasts," he would often say when the 
 conversation turned on any of his fresh conquests. 
 Then, passing his hand over his marble brow, the old 
 look of stern fixedness of purpose and unflinching 
 severity would straighten the lines of his mouth, 
 and he would mutter, half to himself, "S death ! " 
 
 " Come with me to Heavystone Grange. The 
 Exmoor Hounds throw off to-morrow. I ll give you 
 a mount, he said, as he amused himself by rolling 
 up a silver candle-stick between his fingers. " You 
 shall have Cleopatra. But stay," he added thought 
 fully ; " now I remember, I ordered Cleopatra to 
 be shot this morning." 
 
 " And why ? " I queried. 
 
 "She threw her rider yesterday and fell on 
 him" 
 
 " And killed him ? " 
 
GUY HEAVYSTONE. 203 
 
 " No. That s the reason why I have ordered her 
 to be shot. I keep no animals that are not dan 
 gerous I should add deadly! 1 He hissed the 
 last sentence between his teeth, and a gloomy 
 frown descended over his calm brow. 
 
 I affected to turn over the tradesmen s bills that 
 lay on the table, for, like all of the Heavystone race, 
 Guy seldom paid cash, and said 
 
 " You remind me of the time when Leonidas " 
 
 " Oh, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions. 
 Come ! " 
 
 We descended to dinner. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " He carries weight, he rides a race, 
 Tis for a thousand pound." 
 
 " There is Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette 
 and hardest rider in the country," said my com 
 panion, Ralph Mortmain, as we stood upon Dingleby 
 Common before the meet. 
 
 I looked up and beheld Guy Heavystone bending 
 haughtily over the saddle, as he addressed a beau 
 tiful brunette. She was indeed a splendidly groomed 
 and high-spirited woman. We were near enough to 
 overhear the following conversation, which any 
 high-toned reader will recognize as the common and 
 natural expression of the higher classes. 
 
 " When Diana takes the field the chase is not 
 
204 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 wholly confined to objects jerce nature?," said Guy, 
 darting a significant glance at his companion. Flora 
 did not shrink either from the glance or the meaning 
 implied in the sarcasm. 
 
 " If I were looking for an Endymion, now "- 
 she said archly, as she playfully cantered over a few 
 hounds and leaped a rive-barred gate. 
 
 Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest 
 of the party, and curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared 
 two of the huntsmen in a flying leap, galloped up the 
 front steps of the mansion, and dashing at full 
 speed through the hall leaped through the drawing- 
 room window and rejoined me, languidly, on the 
 lawn. 
 
 " Be careful of Flora Billingsgate/ he said to me, 
 in low stern tones, while his pitiless eye shot a bale 
 ful fire. " Garde z vous ! " 
 
 " Gnothi seauton," I replied calmly, not wishing 
 to appear to be behind him in perception or verbal 
 felicity. 
 
 Guy started off in high spirits. He was well 
 carried. He and the first whip, a ten-stone man, 
 were head and head at the last fence, while the 
 hounds were rolling over their fox a hundred yards 
 farther in the open. 
 
 But an unexpected circumstance occurred. 
 Coming back, his chestnut mare refused a ten-foot 
 wall. She reared and fell backward. Again he led 
 her up to it lightly ; again she refused, falling 
 heavily from the coping. Guy started to his feet. 
 The old pitiless fire shone in his eyes ; the old stern 
 
GUY HEAVYSTONE. 205 
 
 look settled around his mouth. Seizing the mare 
 by the tail and mane he threw her over the wall. 
 She landed twenty feet on the other side, erect and 
 trembling. Lightly leaping the same obstacle 
 himself, he remounted her. She did not refuse the 
 wall the next time. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " He holds him by his glittering eye." 
 
 Guy was in the North of Ireland, cock-shooting. 
 So Ralph Mortmain told me, and also that the match 
 between Mary Brandagee and Guy had been broken 
 off by Flora Billingsgate. " I don t like those 
 Billingsgates," said Ralph, " they re a bad stock. 
 Her father, Smithfield de Billingsgate, had an 
 unpleasant way of turning up the knave from the 
 bottom of the pack. But nous verrons ; let us go 
 and see Guy." 
 
 The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Cours 
 Crossing. When I reached the shooting-box, where 
 Guy was entertaining a select company of friends, 
 Flora Billingsgate greeted me with a saucy smile. 
 
 Guy was even squarer and sterner than ever. His 
 gusts of passion were more frequent, and it was with 
 difficulty that he could keep an able-bodied servant 
 in his family. His present retainers were more or 
 less maimed from exposure to the fury of their 
 
206 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 master. There was a strange cynicism, a cutting 
 sarcasm in his address, piercing through his polished 
 manner. I thought of Timon, etc., etc. 
 
 One evening, we were sitting over our Chambertin, 
 after a hard day s work, and Guy was listlessly turn 
 ing over some letters, when suddenly he uttered a 
 cry. Did you ever hear the trumpeting of a wounded 
 elephant ? It was like that. 
 
 I looked at him with consternation. He was 
 glancing at a letter which he held at arm s length, 
 and snorting, as it were, at it as he gazed. The 
 lower part of his face was stern, but not as rigid as 
 usual. He was slowly grinding between his teeth 
 the fragments of the glass he had just been drinking 
 from. Suddenly he seized one of his servants, and 
 forcing the wretch upon his knees, exclaimed, with 
 the roar of a tiger 
 
 " Dog ! why was this kept from me ? " 
 
 " Why, please sir, Miss Flora said as how it was a 
 reconciliation from Miss Brandagee, and it was to 
 be kept from you where you would not be likely to 
 see it, and and " 
 
 " Speak, dog ! and you " 
 
 " I put it among your bills, sir ! " 
 
 With a groan, like distant thunder, Guy fell swoon 
 ing to the floor. 
 
 He soon recovered, for the next moment a servant 
 came rushing into the room with the information 
 that a number of the ingenuous peasantry of the 
 neighbourhood were about to indulge that evening 
 in the national pastime of burning a farmhouse and 
 
GUY HEAVYSTONE. 207 
 
 shooting a landlord. Guy smiled a fearful smile, 
 without, however, altering his stern and pitiless 
 expression. 
 
 " Let them come/ he said calmly ; " I feel like 
 entertaining company." 
 
 We barricaded the doors and windows, and then 
 chose our arms from the armoury. Guy s choice was 
 a singular one : it was a landing net with a long 
 handle, and a sharp cavalry sabre. 
 
 We were not destined to remain long in ignorance 
 of its use. A howl was heard from without, and a 
 party of fifty or sixty armed men precipitated them 
 selves against the door. 
 
 Suddenly the window opened. With the rapidity 
 of lightning, Guy Heavystone cast the net over the 
 head of the ringleader, ejaculated " Habet ! " and 
 with a back stroke of his cavalry sabre severed the 
 member from its trunk, and drawing the net back 
 again, cast the gory head upon the floor, saying 
 quietly 
 
 " One." 
 
 Again the net was cast, the steel flashed, the net 
 was withdrawn, and an ominous " Two ! " accom 
 panied the head as it rolled on the floor. 
 
 " Do you remember what Pliny says of the 
 gladiator ? " said Guy, calmly wiping his sabre. 
 " How graphic is that passage commencing Inter 
 nos, etc. The sport continued until the heads 
 of twenty desperadoes had been gathered in. The 
 rest seemed inclined to disperse. Guy incautiously 
 showed himself at the door ; a ringing shot was 
 
208 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 heard, and he staggered back, pierced through the 
 heart. Grasping the door-post in the last uncon 
 scious throes of his mighty frame, the whole side of 
 the house yielded to that earthquake tremor, and 
 we had barely time to escape before the whole build 
 ing fell in ruins. I thought of Samson, the Giant 
 Judge, etc., etc. ; but all was over. 
 
 Guy Heavystone had died as he had lived, 
 hard. 
 
JOHN JENKINS ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE SMOKER REFORMED. 
 
 BY T. S. A TH R. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " ONE cigar a day ! " said Judge Boompointer. 
 
 " One cigar a day ! " repeated John Jenkins, as 
 with trepidation he dropped his half-consumed 
 cigar under his work-bench. 
 
 " One cigar a day is three cents a day," remarked 
 Judge Boompointer gravely ; " and do you know, 
 sir, what one cigar a clay, or three cents a day, 
 amounts to in the course of four years ? " 
 
 John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the 
 village school, and possessed considerable arith 
 metical ability. Taking up a shingle which lay upon 
 his work-bench, and producing a piece of chalk, with 
 a feeling of conscious pride he made an exhaustive 
 calculation. 
 
 " Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents, 5 * 
 
210 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 he replied, wiping the perspiration from his heated 
 brow, while his face flushed with honest en 
 thusiasm. 
 
 " Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead 
 of wasting it, you would now be the possessor of a 
 new suit of clothes, an illustrated Family Bible, a 
 pew in the church, a complete set of Patent Office 
 Reports, a hymn-book, and a paid subscription to 
 Arthur s Home Magazine/ which could be pur 
 chased for exactly forty-three dollars and eighty 
 cents ; and," added the Judge, with increasing 
 sternness, " if you calculate leap-year, which you 
 seem to have strangely omitted, you have three 
 cents more, sir ; three cents more ! What would 
 that buy you, sir ? " 
 
 " A cigar," suggested John Jenkins ; but, colour 
 ing again deeply, he hid his face. 
 
 " No, sir," said the Judge, with a sweet smile of 
 benevolence stealing over his stern features ; " pro 
 perly invested, it would buy you that which passeth 
 all price. Dropped into the missionary-box, who 
 can tell what heathen, now idly and joyously wan 
 toning in nakedness and sin, might be brought to 
 a sense of his miserable condition, and made, 
 through that three cents, to feel the torments of the 
 wicked ? " 
 
 With these words the Judge retired, leaving John 
 Jenkins buried in profound thought. " Three cents a 
 day," he muttered. " In forty years I might be worth 
 four hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten cents, 
 and then I might marry Mary. Ah, Mary ! " 
 
JOHN JENKINS. 211 
 
 The young carpenter sighed, and drawing a twenty- 
 five cent daguerreotype from his vest-pocket, gazed 
 long and fervidly upon the features of a young girl 
 in book muslin and a coral necklace. Then, with 
 a resolute expression, he carefully locked the door of 
 his work-shop and departed. 
 
 Alas ! his good resolutions were too late. We trifle 
 with the tide of fortune which too often nips us in 
 the bud and casts the dark shadow of misfortune 
 over the bright lexicon of youth ! That night the 
 half-consumed fragment of John Jenkins s cigar set 
 fire to his work-shop and burned it up, together with 
 all his tools and materials. There was no insurance. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DOWNWARD PATH. 
 
 " Then you still persist in marrying John 
 Jenkins ? " queried Judge Boompointer, as he play 
 fully, with paternal familiarity, lifted the golden 
 curls of the village belle, Mary Jones. 
 
 " I do," replied the fair young girl, in a low voice, 
 that resembled rock candy in its saccharine firmness, 
 " I do. He has promised to reform. Since he 
 lost all his property by fire "- 
 
 " The result of his pernicious habit, though he 
 illogically persists in charging it to me," interrupted 
 the Judge. 
 
212 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Since then, * continued the young girl, " he has 
 endeavoured to break himself off the habit. He 
 tells me that he has substituted the stalks of the 
 Indian ratan, the outer part of a leguminous plant 
 called the smoking-bean, and the fragmentary and 
 unconsumed remainder of cigars which occur at rare 
 and uncertain intervals along the road, which, as he 
 informs me, though deficient in quality and strength, 
 are comparatively inexpensive." And blushing at 
 her own eloquence, the young girl hid her curls on the 
 Judge s arm. 
 
 " Poor thing ! " muttered Judge Boompointer. 
 " Dare I tell her all ? Yet I must." 
 
 " I shall cling to him," continued the young girl, 
 rising with her theme, " as the young vine clings to 
 some hoary ruin. Nay, nay, chide me not, Judge 
 Boompointer. I will marry John Jenkins ! " 
 
 The Judge was evidently affected. Seating him 
 self at the table, he wrote a few lines hurriedly upon a 
 piece of paper, which he folded and placed in the 
 fingers of the destined bride of John Jenkins. 
 
 " Mary Jones," said the Judge, with impressive 
 earnestness, " take this trifle as a wedding gift from 
 one who respects your fidelity and truthfulness. At 
 the altar let it be a reminder of me." And covering 
 his face hastily with a handkerchief, the stern and 
 iron-willed man left the room. As the door closed, 
 Mary unfolded the paper. It was an order on the 
 corner grocery for three yards of flannel, a paper of 
 needles, four pounds of soap, one pound of starch, 
 and two boxes of matches ! 
 
JOHN JENKINS. 213 
 
 " Noble and thoughtful man ! " was all Mary Jones 
 could exclaim, as she hid her face in her hands and 
 burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 The bells of Cloverdale are ringing merrily. It is 
 a wedding. "How beautiful they look!" is the 
 exclamation that passes from lip to lip, as Mary 
 Jones, leaning timidly on the arm of John Jenkins, 
 enters the church. But the bride is agitated, and the 
 bridegroom betrays a feverish nervousness. As they 
 stand in the vestibule, John Jenkins fumbles ear 
 nestly in his vest-pocket. Can it be the ring he is 
 anxious about ? No. He draws a small brown 
 substance from his pocket, and biting off a piece, 
 hastily replaces the fragment and gazes furtively 
 around. Surety no one saw him ? Alas ! the eyes 
 of two of that wedding party saw the fatal act. 
 Judge Boompointer shook his head sternly. Mary 
 Jones sighed and breathed a silent prayer. Her 
 husband chewed ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. AND LAST. 
 
 " What ! more bread ? " said John Jenkins gruffly. 
 You re always asking for money for bread . D na 
 tion ! Do you want to ruin me by your extrava 
 gance ? " and as he uttered these words he drew from 
 his pocket a bottle of whisky, a pipe, and a paper of 
 tobacco. Emptying the first at a draught, he threw 
 
214 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 the empty bottle at the head of his eldest boy, a youth 
 of twelve summers. The missile struck the child full 
 in the temple, and stretched him a lifeless corpse. 
 Mrs. Jenkins, whom the reader will hardly recognise 
 as the once gay and beautiful Mary Jones, raised 
 the dead body of her son in her arms, and carefully 
 placing the unfortunate youth beside the pump in the 
 back-yard, returned with saddened step to the house. 
 At another time, and in brighter days, she might 
 have wept at the occurrence. She was past tears 
 now. 
 
 " Father, your conduct is reprehensible ! " said 
 little Harrison Jenkins, the youngest boy. " Where 
 do you expect to go when you die ? " 
 
 " Ah t " said John Jenkins fiercely ; " this comes of 
 giving children a liberal education ; this is the result 
 of Sabbath schools* Down, viper ! " 
 
 A tumbler thrown from the same parental fist 
 laid out the youthful Harrison cold. The four other 
 children had, in the meantime, gathered around the 
 table with anxious expectancy. With a chuckle, 
 the now changed and brutal John Jenkins produced 
 four pipes, and filling them with tobacco, handed 
 one to each of his offspring and bade them smoke. 
 " It s better than bread ! " laughed the wretch 
 hoarsely. 
 
 Mary Jenkins, though of a patient nature, felt it 
 her duty now to speak. " I have borne much, John 
 Jenkins," she said. " But I prefer that the children 
 should not smoke. It is an unclean habit, and soils 
 their clothes. I ask this as a special favour ! " 
 
JOHN JENKINS. 215 
 
 John Jenkins hesitated, the pangs of remorse 
 began to seize him. 
 
 " Promise me this, John ! " urged Mary upon her 
 knees. 
 
 " I promise ! " reluctantly answered John. 
 
 " And you will put the money in a savings-bank ? " 
 
 " I will," repeated her husband ; " and I ll give up 
 smoking, too." 
 
 " Tis :well, John Jenkins ! " said Judge Boom- 
 pointer, appearing suddenly from behind the door, 
 where he had been concealed during this interview. 
 " Nobly said ! my man. Cheer up ! I will see that 
 the children are decently buried." The husband 
 and wife fell into each other s anus. And Judge 
 Boompointer, gazing upon the affecting spectacle, 
 burst into tears. 
 
 From that day John Jenkins was an altered man. 
 
FANTINE. 
 
 AFTER THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 As long as there shall exist three paradoxes, a moral French 
 man, a religious atheist, and a believing sceptic ; so long, in fact, 
 as booksellers shall wait say twenty-five years for a new gos 
 pel ; so long as paper shall remain cheap and ink three sous a 
 bottle, I have no hesitation in saying that such books as these are 
 not utterly profitless. VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 I. 
 
 To be good is to be queer. What is a good man ? 
 Bishop Myriel. 
 
 My friend, you will possibly object to this. You 
 will say you know what a good man is. Perhaps you 
 will say your clergyman is a good man, for instance. 
 
 Bah ! you are mistaken ; you are an Englishman, 
 and an Englishman is a beast. 
 
 Englishmen think they are moral when they are 
 only serious. These Englishmen also wear ill- 
 shaped hats, and dress horribly ! 
 
 Bah ! they are canaille. 
 
FANTINE. 217 
 
 Still, Bishop Myriel was a good man, quite as 
 good as you. Better than you, in fact. 
 
 One day M. Myriel was in Paris. This angel used 
 to walk about the streets like any other man. He 
 was not proud, though fine-looking. Well, three 
 gamins de Paris called him bad names. Says 
 one 
 
 " Ah, mon Dieu ! there goes a priest ; look out for 
 your eggs and chickens ! " 
 
 What did this good man do ? He called to them 
 kindly. 
 
 " My children," said he, " this is clearly not your 
 fault. I recognise in this insult and irreverence 
 only the fault of your immediate progenitors. Let 
 us pray for your immediate progenitors." 
 
 They knelt down and prayed for their immediate 
 progenitors. 
 
 The effect was touching. 
 
 The Bishop looked calmly around. 
 
 11 On reflection," said he gravely, " I was mistaken ; 
 this is clearly the fault of Society. Let us pray for 
 Society." 
 
 They knelt down and prayed for Society. 
 
 The effect was sublimer yet. What do you think 
 of that ? You, I mean. 
 
 Everybody remembers the story of the Bishop 
 and Mother Nez Retrousse. Old Mother Nez 
 Retrousse sold asparagus. She was poor ; there s 
 a great deal of meaning in that word, my friend. 
 Some people say " poor but honest." I say, Bali ! 
 
 Bishop Myriel bought six bunches of asparagus. 
 
218 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 This good man had one charming failing ; he was 
 fond of asparagus. He gave her & franc and received 
 three sous change. 
 
 The sous were bad, counterfeit. What did this 
 good Bishop do ? He said : "I should not have 
 taken change from a poor woman/ 
 
 Then afterwards, to his housekeeper : " Never 
 take change from a poor woman." 
 
 Then he added to himself : " For the sous will 
 probably be bad." 
 
 II. 
 
 When a man commits a crime, society claps him in 
 prison. A prison is one of the worst hotels imagin 
 able. The people there are low and vulgar. The 
 butter is bad, the coffee is green e Ah, it is horrible ! 
 
 In prison, as in a bad hotel, a man soon loses, not 
 only his morals, but what is much worse to a French 
 man, his sense of refinement and delicacy. 
 
 Jean Valjean came from prison with confused 
 notions of society. He forgot the modern peculiari 
 ties of hospitality. So he walked off with the 
 Bishops candlestickSo 
 
 Let us consider : candlesticks were stolen ; that 
 was evident. Society put Jean Valjean in prison ; 
 that was evident, too. In prison, Society took away 
 his refinement ; that is evident, likewise. 
 
 Who is Society ? 
 
FANTINE. 219 
 
 You and I are Society. 
 
 My friend, you and I stole those candlesticks ! 
 
 III. 
 
 1 The Bishop thought so, too. He meditated pro 
 foundly for six days. On the morning of the seventh 
 he went to the Prefecture of Police. 
 
 He said : " Monsieur, have me arrested. I have 
 stolen candlesticks." 
 
 The official was governed by the law of Society, 
 and refused. 
 
 What did this Bishop do ? 
 
 He had a charming ball and chain 4 . made, affixed 
 to his leg, and wore it the rest of his life. 
 
 This is a fact ! 
 
 IV, 
 
 Love is a mystery. 
 
 A little friend of mine down in the country, at 
 Auvergne, said to me one day : " Victor, Love is 
 the world, it contains everything." 
 
 She was only sixteen, this sharp-witted little girl, 
 and a beautiful blonde. She thought everything of 
 me. 
 
 Fantine was one of those women who do wrong 
 
220 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 in the most virtuous and touching manner. This is 
 a peculiarity of French grisettes. 
 
 You are an Englishman, and you don t understand. 
 Learn, my friend, learn. Come to Paris and improve 
 your morals. 
 
 Fantine was the soul of modesty. She always 
 wore high-neck dresses. High-neck dresses are a 
 sign of modesty. 
 
 Fantine loved Tholmoyes. Why ? My God ! 
 What are you to do ? It was the fault of her parents, 
 and she hadn t any. How shall you teach her ? 
 You must teach the parent if you wish to educate 
 the child. How would you become virtuous ? 
 
 Teach your grandmother ! 
 
 V. 
 
 When Tholmoyes ran away from Fantine, which 
 was done in a charming, gentlemanly manner, 
 Fantine became convinced that a rigid sense of 
 propriety might look upon her conduct as immoral. 
 She was a creature of sensitiveness, and her eyes 
 were opened. 
 
 She was virtuous still, and resolved to break off 
 the liaison at once. 
 
 So she put up her wardrobe and baby in a bundle. 
 Child as she was, she loved them both. Then left 
 Paris. 
 
FANTINE. 221 
 
 VI. 
 
 Fan tine s native place had changed. 
 
 M. Madeline an angel, and inventor of jet-work 
 had been teaching the villagers how to make spurious 
 jet! 
 
 This is a progressive age. Those Americans, 
 children of the West, they make nutmegs out of 
 wood. 
 
 I, myself, have seen hams made of pine, in the 
 wigwams of those children of the forest. 
 
 But civilisation has acquired deception too. 
 Society is made up of deception. Even the best 
 French society. 
 
 Still there was one sincere episode. 
 
 Eh? 
 
 The French Revolution ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 M". Madeline was, if anything, better than Myriel. 
 M. Myriel was a saint, M. Madeline a good man. 
 M. Myriel was dead. M. Madeline was living. 
 That made all the difference. 
 M. Madeline made virtue profitable. I have seen 
 it written : 
 
 " Be virtuous and you will be happy." 
 
 Where did I see this written ? In the modern 
 
222 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 Bible ? No. In the Koran. No. In Rousseau ? 
 No. Diderot? No. Where then ? 
 In a copy-book. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 M. Madeline was M. le Maire. 
 
 This is how it came about. 
 
 For a long time he refused the honour. One day 
 an old woman, standing on the steps, said 
 
 " Bah, a good mayor is a good thing. 
 
 " You are a good thing. 
 
 " Be a good mayor." 
 
 This woman was a rhetorician. She understood 
 inductive ratiocination. 
 
 IX. 
 
 When this good M. Madeline, whom the reader will 
 perceive must have been a former convict, and a very 
 bad man gave himself up to justice as the real 
 Jean Valjean, about this same time, Fantine was 
 turned away from the manufactory, and met with 
 a number of losses from society. Society attacked 
 her, and this is what she lost 
 
 First her lover. 
 
 Then her child. 
 
 Then her place. 
 
 Then her hair. 
 
FANTINE. 223 
 
 Then her teeth. 
 Then her liberty. 
 Then her life. 
 
 What do you think of society after that ? I tell 
 you the present social system is a humbug. 
 
 X. 
 
 This is necessarily the end of Fantine. 
 
 There are other things that will be stated in other 
 volumes to follow. Don t be alarmed : there are 
 plenty of miserable people left. 
 
 Ait revoir my friend. 
 
"LA FEMME." 
 
 AFTER THE FRENCH OF M. MICHELET. 
 
 I. 
 
 WOMEN AS AN INSTITUTION. 
 
 " IF it were not for women, few of us would at 
 present be in existence." This is the remark of a 
 cautious and discreet writer. He was also sagacious 
 and intelligent. 
 
 Woman ! Look upon her and admire her. Gaze 
 upon her and love her. If she wishes to embrace 
 you, permit her. Remember she is weak and you 
 are strong. 
 
 But don t treat her unkindly. Don t make love 
 to another woman before her face, even if she be your 
 wife. Don t do it. Always be polite, even should 
 she fancy somebody better than you. 
 
 If your mother, my dear Amadis, had not fancied 
 your father better than somebody, you might have 
 been that somebody s son. Consider this. Always 
 be a philosopher, even about women. 
 
" LA FEMME." 
 
 Few men understand women. Frenchmen, per 
 haps, better than any one else. I am a Frenchman. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE INFANT. 
 
 She is a child a little thing an infant. 
 
 She has a mother and father. Let us suppose, 
 for example, they are married. Let us be moral if 
 we cannot be happy and free they are married 
 perhaps they love one another who knows ? 
 
 But she knows nothing of this ; she is an infant 
 a small thing a trifle ! 
 
 She is not lovely at first. It is cruel, perhaps, but 
 she is red, and positively ugly. She feels this keenly 
 and cries. She weeps. Ah, my God I how she weeps ! 
 Her cries and lamentations now are really distress 
 ing. 
 
 Tears stream from her in floods. She feels deeply 
 and copiously like M. Alphonse de Lamartine in his 
 " Confessions." 
 
 If you are her mother, Madame, you will fancy 
 worms ; you will examine her linen for pins, and 
 what not. Ah, hypocrite ! you, even you, misunder 
 stand her. 
 
 Yet she has charming natural impulses. See how 
 she tosses her dimpled arms. She looks longingly 
 
226 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 at her mother. She has a language of her own. She 
 says, " goo goo/ and " ga ga." 
 
 She demands something this infant ! 
 
 She is faint, poor thing. She famishes. She 
 wishes to be restored. Restore her, Mother ! 
 
 It is the first duty of a mother to restore her child ! 
 
 III. 
 
 THE DOLL. 
 
 She is hardly able to walk; she already totters under 
 the weight of a doll. 
 
 It is a charming and elegant affair. It has pink 
 cheeks and purple-black hair. She prefers brunettes, 
 for she has already, with the quick knowledge of a 
 French infant, perceived she is a blonde, and that her 
 doll cannot rival her. Mon Dieu, how touching ! 
 Happy child ! She spends hours in preparing its 
 toilette. She begins to show her taste in the exquisite 
 details of its dress. She loves it madly, devotedly. 
 She will prefer it to bonbons. She already anticipates 
 the wealth of love she will hereafter pour out on her 
 lover, her mother, her father, and finally, perhaps, 
 her husband. 
 
 This is the time the anxious parent will guide these 
 first outpourings. She will read her extracts from 
 Michelet s " L Amour/ Rousseau s " Heloise/ and 
 the " Revue des deux Mondes." 
 
" LA FEMME." 227 
 
 rv. 
 
 THE MUD PIE. 
 
 She was in tears to-day. 
 
 She had stolen away from her bonne and was with 
 some rustic infants. They had noses in the air, and 
 large, coarse hands and feet. 
 
 They had seated themselves around a pool in the 
 road, and were fashioning fantastic shapes in the 
 clayey soil with their hands. Her throat swelled and 
 her eyes sparkled with delight as, for the first time, 
 her soft palms touched the plastic mud. She made 
 a graceful and lovely pie. She stuffed it with stones 
 for almonds and plums. She forgot everything. 
 It was being baked in the solar rays, when madame 
 came and took her away. 
 
 She weeps. It is night, and she is weeping still. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE FIRST LOVE. 
 
 She no longer doubts her beauty. She is loved. 
 
 She saw him secretly. He is vivacious and 
 sprightly. He is famous. He has already had an 
 affair with Finfin, the fille de chambre, and poor 
 Finfin is desolate. He is noble. She knows he is 
 
CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 the son of Madame la Baronne Couturiere. She 
 adores him. 
 
 She affects not to notice him. Poor little thing ! 
 Hippolyte is distracted annihilated inconsolable 
 and charming. 
 
 She admires his boots, his cravat, his little gloves 
 his exquisite pantaloons his coat, and cane. 
 
 She offers to run away with him. He is trans 
 ported, but magnanimous. He is wearied, perhaps. 
 She sees him the next day offering flowers to the 
 daughter of Madame la Comtesse Blanchisseuse. 
 
 She is again in tears. 
 
 She reads " Paul et Virginie." She is secretly 
 transported. When she reads how the exemplary 
 young woman laid down her life rather than appear 
 en deshabille to her lover, she weeps again. Tasteful 
 and virtuous Bernardine de St. Pierre ! the daugh 
 ters of France admire you ! 
 
 All this time her doll is headless in the cabinet. 
 The mud pie is broken on the road. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE WIFE. 
 
 She is tired of loving and she marries. 
 
 Her mother thinks it, on the whole, the best thing. 
 As the day approaches, she is found frequently in 
 tears. Her mother will not permit the affianced one 
 
"LA FEMME." 329 
 
 to see her, and he makes several attempts to commit 
 suicide. 
 
 But something happens. Perhaps it is winter, 
 and the water is cold. Perhaps there are not enough 
 people present to witness his heroism. 
 
 In this way her future husband is spared to her. 
 She will offer philosophy. She will tell her she was 
 married herself. 
 
 But what is this new and ravishing light that 
 breaks upon her ? The toilette and wedding clothes ! 
 She is in a new sphere. 
 
 She makes out her list in her own charming writing. 
 Here it is. Let every mother heed it.* 
 
 She is married. On the day after, she meets her 
 old lover, Hippolyte. He is again transported. 
 
 VII. 
 
 HER OLD AGE. 
 
 A Frenchwoman never grows old. 
 
 * The delicate reader will appreciate the omission of certain 
 articles for which English synonyms are forbidden. 
 
THE DWELLER OF THE 
 THRESHOLD. 
 
 BY SIR ED D L XT N B LW R. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE PROMPTINGS OF THE IDEAL. 
 
 IT was noon. Sir Edward had stepped from his 
 brougham* and was proceeding on foot down the 
 Strand. He was dressed with his usual faultless taste, 
 but in alighting from his vehicle his foot had slipped, 
 and a small round disk of conglomerated soil, which in 
 stantly appeared on his high arched instep, marred 
 the harmonious glitter of his boots. Sir Edward was 
 fastidious. Casting his eyes around, at a little dis 
 tance he perceived the stand of a youthful boot 
 black. Thither he sauntered, and carelessly placing 
 his foot on the low stool, he waited the application 
 of the polisher s art. " Tis true," said Sir Edward 
 to himself, yet half aloud, "the contact of the Foul 
 and the Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny 
 
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD. 231 
 
 and the Beautiful and, yet, why am I here ? I 
 repeat it, calmly and deliberately why am I here ? 
 Ha ! Boy ! " 
 
 The Boy looked up his dark Italian eyes glanced 
 intelligently at the Philosopher, and, as with one hand 
 he tossed back his glossy curls from his marble brow, 
 and with the other he spread the equally glossy 
 Day & Martin over the Baronet s boot, he answered 
 in deep, rich tones : " The Ideal is subjective to the 
 Real. The exercise of apperception gives a dis- 
 tinctiveness to idiocracy, which is, however, subject 
 to the limits of ME. You are an admirer of the 
 Beautiful, sir. You wish your boots blacked. The 
 Beautiful is attainable by means of the Coin." 
 
 " Ah," said Sir Edward thoughtfully, gazing upon 
 the almost supernal beauty of the Child before him ; 
 " you speak well. You have read Kant/ " 
 
 The Boy blushed deeply. He drew a copy of 
 "Kant " from his blouse, but in his confusion several 
 other volumes dropped from his bosom on the 
 ground. The Baronet picked them up. 
 
 "Ah!" said the Philosopher, "what s this? 
 Cicero s De Senectute/ at your age, too ? Mar 
 tial s Epigrams/ Caesar s * Commentaries/ What ! 
 a classical scholar ? " 
 
 " E pluribus Unum. Nux vomica. Nil des- 
 perandum. Nihil fit ! " said the Boy enthusiasti 
 cally. The Philosopher gazed at the Child. A 
 strange presence seemed to transfuse and possess 
 him. Over the brow of the Boy glittered the pale 
 nimbus of the Student. 
 
232 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Ah, and Schiller s Robbers/ too ? " queried the 
 Philosopher. 
 
 " Das ist ausgespielt," said the Boy modestly. 
 
 " Then you have read my translation of Schiller s 
 Ballads . ? " continued the Baronet, with some show 
 of interest. 
 
 t( I have, and infinitely prefer them to the original/ 
 said the Boy, with intellectual warmth. " You 
 have shown how in Actual life we strive for a Goal 
 we .cannot reach ; how in the Ideal the Goal is attain 
 able, and there effort is victory. You have given 
 us the Antithesis which is a key to the Remainder, 
 and constantly balances before us the conditions of 
 the Actual and the privileges. of the Ideal/ 
 
 " My very words," said the Baronet ; " wonder 
 ful, wonderful ! " and. he gazed fondly at the Italian 
 boy, who again resumed his menial employment. 
 Alas ! the wings of the Ideal were folded. The 
 Student had been absorbed in the Boy. 
 
 But Sir Edward s boots were blacked, and he 
 turned to depart. Placing his hand upon the clus 
 tering tendrils that surrounded the classic nob of the 
 infant Italian, he said softly, like a strain of distant 
 music : 
 
 " Boy you have done well. Love the Good. 
 Protect the Innocent. Provide for the Indigent. 
 Respect the Philosopher. . . . Stay ! Can you tell me 
 what is The True, The Beautiful, The Innocent, The 
 Virtuous ? " 
 
 " They are things that commence with a capital 
 letter," said the Boy promptly. 
 
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD. 233 
 
 " Enough ! Respect everything that commences 
 with a capital letter ! Respect ME ! " and dropping 
 a halfpenny in the hand of the boy, he departed. 
 
 The Boy gazed fixedly at the coin. A frightful and 
 instantaneous change overspread his features. His 
 noble brow was corrugated with baser lines of calcu 
 lation. His black eye, serpent-like, glittered with 
 suppressed passion. Dropping upon his hands and 
 feet, he crawled to the curbstone and hissed after 
 the retreating form of the Baronet, the single word 
 
 " Bilk ! " 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 IN THE WORLD. 
 
 " Eleven years ago," said Sir Edward to himself, as 
 his brougham slowly rolled him toward the Com 
 mittee Room ; " just eleven years ago my natural 
 son disappeared mysteriously. I have no doubt in 
 the world but that this little bootblack is he. His 
 mother died in Italy. He resembles his mother very 
 much. Perhaps I ought to provide for him. Shall 
 I disclose myself ? No ! no ! Better he should taste 
 the sweets of Labour. Penury ennobles the mind and 
 kindles the Love of the Beautiful. I will act to him, 
 not like a Father, not like a Guardian, not like a 
 Friend but like a Philosopher ! " 
 
 With these words, Sir Edward entered the Com 
 mittee Room. His Secretary approached him. " Sir 
 
234 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 Edward, there are fears of a division in the House, 
 and the Prime Minister has sent for you." 
 
 "I will be there," said Sir Edward, as he 
 placed his hand on his chest and uttered a hollow 
 cough ! 
 
 No one who heard the Baronet that night, in his 
 sarcastic and withering speech on the Drainage and 
 Sewerage Bill, would have recognised the Lover of the 
 Ideal and the Philosopher of the Beautiful. No one 
 who listened to his eloquence would have dreamed of 
 the Spartan resolution this iron man had taken in 
 regard to the Lost Boy his own beloved Lionel. 
 None ! 
 
 " A fine speech from Sir Edward to-night," said 
 Lord Billingsgate, as arm-in-arm with the Premier, 
 he entered his carriage. 
 
 " Yes ! but how dreadfully he coughs ! " 
 
 " Exactly. Dr. Bolus says his lungs are entirely 
 gone ; he breathes entirely by an effort of will, 
 and altogether independent of pulmonary assist 
 ance." 
 
 " How strange ! " and the carriage rolled away. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD. 
 
 " Adon Ai, appear ! appear ! " 
 
 And as the Seer spoke, the awful Presence glided 
 
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD. 235 
 
 out of Nothingness, and sat, sphinx-like, at the feet 
 of the Alchemist. 
 
 " I am come ! " said the Thing. 
 
 " You should say, I have come/ it s better 
 grammar," said the Boy-Neophyte, thoughtfully 
 accenting the substituted expression. 
 
 " Hush, rash Boy," said the Seer sternly. " Would 
 you oppose your feeble knowledge to the infinite 
 intelligence of the Unmistakable ? A word, and you 
 are lost for ever." 
 
 The Boy breathed a silent prayer, and hand 
 ing a sealed package to the Seer, begged him to 
 hand it to his father in case of his premature 
 decease. 
 
 " You have sent for me," hissed the Presence, 
 " Behold me, Apokat hart icon, the Unpronounce 
 able. In me all things exist that are not already 
 co-existent. I am the Unattainable, the Intangible, 
 the Cause, and the Effect. In me observe the Brahma 
 of Mr. Emerson ; not only Brahma himself, but also 
 the sacred musical composition rehearsed by the faith 
 ful Hindoo. I am the real Gyges. None others are 
 genuine." 
 
 And the veiled Son of the Starbeam laid himself 
 loosely about the room, and permeated Space 
 generally. 
 
 " Unfathomable Mystery," said the Rosicrucian 
 in a low, sweet voice. " Brave Child with the 
 Vitreous Optic ! Thou who pervadest all things and 
 rubbest against us without abrasion of the cuticle. 
 I command thee, speak. " 
 
236 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 And the misty, intangible, indefinite Presence 
 spoke. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 MYSELF. 
 
 After the events related in the last chapter, the 
 reader will perceive that nothing was easier than to 
 reconcile Sir Edward to his son Lionel, nor to resusci 
 tate -the beautiful Italian girl, who, it appears, was 
 not dead, and to cause Sir Edward to marry his first 
 and boyish love, whom he had deserted. They were 
 married in St. George s, Hanover Square. As the 
 bridal party stood before the altar, Sir Edward, with 
 a sweet, sad smile, said in quite his old manner 
 
 :< The Sublime and Beautiful are the Real ;, the 
 only Ideal is the Ridiculous and Homely. Let us 
 always remember this. Let us through life endeavour 
 to personify the virtues, and always begin em with a 
 capital letter. Let us, whenever we can find an 
 opportunity, deliver our sentiments in the form of 
 roundhand copies. Respect the Aged. Eschew 
 Vulgarity. Admire Ourselves. Regard the Novelist." 
 
N N. 
 
 BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARA 
 GRAPHIC STYLE. 
 
 MADEMOISELLE, I swear to you that I love you. 
 
 You who read these pages. You who turn your 
 burning eyes upon these words words that I trace 
 Ah, Heaven ! the thought maddens me. 
 
 I will be calm. I will imitate the reserve of the 
 festive Englishman, who wears a spotted handker 
 chief which he calls a Belchio, who eats biftek, and 
 caresses a bulldog. I will subdue myself like him. 
 
 Ha ! Poto-beer ! All right Goddam ! 
 
 Or, I will conduct myself as the free-born Ameri 
 can the gay Brother Jonathan ! I will whittle me a 
 stick. I will whistle to myself " Yankee Doodle," 
 and forget my passion in excessive expectoration. 
 
 Hoho ! wake snakes and walk chalks. 
 
 THE world is divided into two great divisions: 
 Paris and the provinces. There is but one Paris. 
 There are several provinces, among which may be 
 numbered England, America, Russia, and Italy. 
 
238 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 N N. was a Parisian. 
 
 But N N. did not live in Paris. Drop a Parisian 
 in the provinces, and you drop a part of Paris with 
 him. Drop him in Senegambia, and in three days he 
 will give you an omelette soufflee, or a pate de foie gras, 
 served by the neatest of Senegambian filles, whom 
 he will call Mademoiselle. In three weeks he will 
 give you an opera. 
 
 N N. was not dropped in Senegambia, but in San 
 Francisco, quite as awkward. 
 
 They find gold in San Francisco, but they don t 
 understand gilding. 
 
 N N. existed three years in this place. He became 
 bald on the top of his head, as all Parisians do. Look 
 down from your box at the Opera Comique, Mademoi 
 selle, and count the bald crowns of the fast young men 
 in the pit. Ah you tremble ! They show where the 
 arrows of love have struck and glanced off. 
 
 N N. was almost near-sighted, as all Parisians 
 finally become. This is a gallant provision of Nature 
 to spare them the mortification of observing that 
 their lady friends grow old. After a certain age 
 every woman is handsome to a Parisian. 
 
 One day N N. was walking down Washington 
 Street. Suddenly he stopped. 
 
 He was standing before the door of a mantua- 
 maker. Beside the counter, at the farther extremity 
 of the shop, stood a young and elegantly formed 
 woman. Her face was turned from N N. He en 
 tered. With a plausible excuse, and seeming indiffer 
 ence, he gracefully opened conversation with the 
 
- N-N. 239 
 
 mantua-maker as only a Parisian can. But he had to 
 deal with a Parisian. His attempts to view the fea 
 tures of the fair stranger by the counter were deftly 
 combated by the shop woman. He was obliged to 
 retire. 
 
 N N. went home and lost his appetite. He 
 was haunted by the elegant basque and graceful 
 shoulders of the fair unknown, during the whole 
 night. 
 
 The next day he sauntered by the mantua-maker. 
 Ah ! Heavens ! A thrill ran through his frame, 
 and his fingers tingled with a delicious electricity. 
 The fair inconnue was there! He raised his hat 
 gracefully. He was not certain, but he thought that 
 a slight motion of her faultless bonnet betrayed re 
 cognition. He would have wildly darted into the shop, 
 but just then the figure of the mantua-maker appeared 
 in the doorway. 
 
 Did Monsieur wish anything ? 
 
 Misfortune ! Desperation. N N. purchased a 
 bottle of Prussic acid, a sack of charcoal, and a quire 
 of pink note-paper, and returned home. He wrote 
 a letter of farewell to the closely-fitting basque, 
 and opened the bottle of Prussic acid. 
 
 Some one knocked at his door. It was a Chinaman, 
 with his weekly linen. 
 
 These Chinese are docile, but not intelligent. 
 They are ingenious, but not creative. They are cun 
 ning in expedients, but deficient in tact. In love they 
 are simply barbarous. They purchase their wives 
 openly, and not constructively by attorney. By 
 
240 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 offering small sums for their sweethearts, they de 
 grade the value of the sex. 
 
 Nevertheless, N N. felt he was saved. He ex 
 plained all to the faithful Mongolian, and exhibited 
 the letter he had written. He implored him to de 
 liver it. 
 
 The Mongolian assented. The race are not cleanly 
 or sweet-savoured, but N N. fell upon his neck. He 
 embraced him with one hand, and closed his nostrils 
 with the other. Through him, he felt he clasped 
 the close-fitting basque. 
 
 The next day was one of agony and suspense. 
 Evening came, but no Mercy. N N. lit the charcoal. 
 But, to compose his nerves, he closed his door and 
 first walked mildly up and down Montgomery Street. 
 When he returned, he found the faithful Mongolian 
 on the steps. 
 
 All lity ! 
 
 These Chinese are not accurate in their pronuncia 
 tion. They avoid the r, like the English nobleman. 
 
 N N. gasped for breath. He leaned heavily against 
 the Chinaman. 
 
 Then you have seen her, Ching Long ? 
 
 Yes. All lity. She cum. Top side of house. 
 
 The docile barbarian pointed up the stairs, and 
 chuckled. 
 
 She here impossible ! Ah, Heaven, do I dream ? 
 
 Yes. All lity, top side of house. Good-bye, 
 John. 
 
 This is the familiar parting epithet of the Mongolian. 
 It is equivalent to our au revoir. 
 
N N. 241 
 
 N N. gazed with a stupefied air on the departing 
 servant. 
 
 He placed his hand on his throbbing heart. She 
 here, alone beneath this roof. O Heavens, what 
 happiness ! 
 
 But how? Torn from her home. Ruthlessly 
 dragged, perhaps, from her evening devotions, by the 
 hands of a relentless barbarian. Could she forgive 
 him ? 
 
 He dashed frantically up the stairs. He opened the 
 door. 
 
 She was standing beside his couch with averted 
 face. 
 
 A strange giddiness overtook him. He sank upon 
 his knees at the threshold. 
 
 Pardon, pardon. My angel, can you forgive 
 me ? 
 
 A terrible nausea now seemed added to the fearful 
 giddiness. His utterance grew thick and sluggish. 
 
 Speak, speak, enchantress. Forgiveness is all 
 I ask. My Love, my Life ! 
 
 She did not answer. He staggered to his feet. As 
 he rose, his eyes fell on the pan of burning charcoal. 
 A terrible suspicion flashed across his mind. This 
 giddiness this nausea. The ignorance of the bar 
 barian. This silence. O merciful heavens I she was 
 dying ! 
 
 He crawled toward her. He touched her. She fell 
 forward with a lifeless sound upon the floor. He 
 uttered a piercing shriek, and threw himself beside 
 her. 
 
242 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 A file of gendarmes, accompanied by the Chef 
 Burke, found him the next morning lying lifeless upon 
 the floor. They laughed brutally these cruel min 
 ions of the law and disengaged his arm from the 
 waist of the wooden dummy which they had come to 
 reclaim from the mantua-maker. 
 
 Emptying a few bucketfuls of water over his form, 
 they finally succeeded in robbing him, not only of his 
 mistress, but of that Death he had coveted without 
 her. 
 
 Ah ! we live in a strange world, Messieurs. 
 
NO TITLE. 
 
 BY W LK E C LL !N 7 S 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 THE following advertisement appeared in the Times 
 of the iyth of June 1845 : 
 
 VT 7ANTED. A few young men for a light genteel employment. 
 VV Address J. W., P. O. 
 
 In the same paper, of same date, in another column : 
 
 "PO LET. That commodious and elegant family mansion, 
 A No. 27 Limehouse Road, Pultneyville, will be rented low to 
 a respectable tenant if applied for immediately, the family being 
 about to remove to the Continent. 
 
 Under the local intelligence, in another column : 
 
 MISSING. An unknown elderly gentleman a week ago left his 
 lodgings in the Kent Road, since which nothing has been heard of 
 him. He left no trace of his identity except a portmanteau con 
 taining a couple of shirts marked " 209, WARD." 
 
244 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 To find the connection between the mysterious 
 disappearance of the elderly gentleman and the 
 anonymous communication, the relevancy of both 
 these incidents to the letting of a commodious 
 family mansion, and the dead secret involved in 
 the three occurrences, is the task of the writer of 
 this history. 
 
 A slim young man with spectacles, a large hat, 
 drab gaiters, and a note-book, sat late that night with 
 a copy of the " Times " before him and a pencil 
 which he rattled nervously between his teeth in the 
 coffee-room of the " Blue Dragon." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MARY JONES S NARRATIVE. 
 
 I am upper housemaid to the family that live at 
 No. 27 Limehouse Road, Pultneyville. I have been 
 requested by Mr. Wilkey Collings, which I takes the 
 liberty of here stating is a gentlemen born and bred, 
 and has some consideration for the feelings of ser 
 vants, and is not above rewarding them for their 
 trouble, which is more than you can say for some who 
 ask questions and gets short answers enough, gra 
 cious knows, to tell what I know about them. I have 
 been requested to tell my story in my own langwidge, 
 though, being no schoUard, mind cannot conceive. 
 I think my master is a brute. Do not know that he 
 
NO TITLE. 245 
 
 has ever attempted to poison my missus, which 
 is too good for him, and how she ever came to marry 
 him, heart only can tell, but believe him to be ca 
 pable of any such hatrosity. Have heard him swear 
 dreadful because of not having his shaving-water at 
 nine o clock precisely. Do not know whether he 
 ever forged a will or tried to get my missus property, 
 although, not having confidence in the man, should 
 not be surprised if he had done so. Believe that there 
 was always something mysterious in his conduct. 
 Remember distinctly how the family left home to go 
 abroad. Was putting up my back hair, last Satur 
 day morning, when I heard a ring. Says cook, 
 " That s missus bell, and mind you hurry or the 
 master ll know why." Says I, " Humbly thanking 
 you, mem, but taking advice of them as is competent 
 to give it, 111 take my time." Found missus dress 
 ing herself and master growling as usual. Says missus, 
 quite calm and easy like, " Mary, we begin to pack 
 to-day." " What for, mem ? " says I, taken aback. 
 " What s that hussy asking ? " says master from the 
 bedclothes quite savage like. " For the Continent 
 Italy," says missus. " Can you go, Mary ? " Her 
 voice was quite gentle and saintlike, but I knew 
 the struggle it cost, and says I, " With you, mem, 
 to India s torrid clime, if required, but with 
 African Gorillas," says I, looking toward the bed, 
 " never." " Leave the room," says master, starting 
 up and catching of his bootjack. " Why, Charles ! " 
 says missus, " how you talk ! " affecting surprise. 
 " Do go, Mary," says she, slipping a half-crown 
 
246 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 into my hand. I left the room scorning to take notice 
 of the odious wretch s conduct. 
 
 Cannot say whether my master and missus were 
 ever legally married. What with the dreadful state 
 of morals nowadays and them stories in the circulat 
 ing libraries, innocent girls don t know into what 
 society they might be obliged to take situations. 
 Never saw missus marriage certificate, though I have 
 quite accidental-like looked in her desk when open, 
 and would have seen it. Do not know of any lovers 
 missus might have had. Believe she had a liking for 
 John Thomas, footman, for she was always spiteful- 
 like poor lady when we were together though 
 there was nothing between us, as cook well knows, and 
 dare not deny, and missus needn t have been jealous. 
 Have never seen arsenic or Prussian acid in any of 
 the private drawers but have seen paregoric and 
 camphor. One of my master s friends was a Count 
 Moscow, a Russian papist which I detested. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SLIM YOUNG MAN S STORY. 
 
 I am by profession a reporter and writer for the 
 press. I live at Pultneyville. I have always had a pas 
 sion for the marvellous, and have been distinguished 
 for my facility in tracing out mysteries, and solving 
 enigmatical occurrences. On the night of the I7th 
 
NO TITLE. 247 
 
 June 1845, I left my office and walked homeward. 
 The night was bright and starlight. I was revolv 
 ing in my mind the words of a singular item I had 
 just read in the Times. I had reached the darkest 
 portion of the road, and found myself mechanically 
 repeating : " An elderly gentleman a week ago left 
 his lodgings on the Kent Road/ when suddenly I 
 heard a step behind me. 
 
 I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in 
 my face, and by the light of the newly risen moon 
 beheld an elderly gentleman, with green cotton 
 umbrella, approaching me. His hair, which was snow 
 white, was parted over a broad, open forehead. The 
 expression of his face, which was slightly flushed, 
 was that of amiability verging almost upon imbecility. 
 There was a strange, inquiring look about the widely 
 opened mild blue eye, a look that might have been 
 intensified to insanity, or modified to idiocy. As he 
 passed me, he paused and partly turned his face, with 
 a gesture of inquiry. I see him still, his white locks 
 blowing in the evening breeze, his hat a little on the 
 back of his head, and his figure painted in relief against 
 the dark blue sky. 
 
 Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me. A 
 weak smile played about his thin lips. In a voice 
 which had something of the tremulousness of age 
 and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility in it, he 
 asked, pointing to the rising moon, " Why ? 
 Hush!" 
 
 He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be look 
 ing anxiously down the road. I could feel his aged 
 
248 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 frame shaking with terror as he laid his thin hands 
 upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction 
 of the supposed danger. 
 
 " Hush ! did you not hear them coming ? " 
 
 I listened ; there was no sound but the soughing 
 of the roadside trees in the evening wind. I en 
 deavoured to reassure him, with such success that in 
 a few moments the old weak smile appeared on 
 his benevolent face. 
 
 " Why ? " But the look of interrogation was 
 succeeded by a hopeless blankness. 
 
 " Why ! " I repeated with assuring accents. 
 
 " Why," he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering 
 over his face, " is yonder moon, as she sails in the 
 blue empyrean, casting a flood of light o er hill and 
 dale, like Why," he repeated, with a feeble smile, 
 " is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean " 
 He hesitated, stammered, and gazed at me hope 
 lessly with the tears dripping from his moist and 
 widely opened eyes. 
 
 I took his hand kindly in my own. "Casting a 
 shadow o er hill and dale," I repeated quietly, leading 
 him up the subject, " like Come, now." 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, pressing my hand tremulously, 
 " you know it ? " 
 
 "I do. Why is it like the eh the com 
 modious mansion on the Limehouse Road ? " 
 
 A blank stare only followed. He shook his head 
 sadly. " Like the young men wanted for a light, 
 genteel employment ? " 
 
 He wagged his feeble old head cunningly. 
 
NO TITLE. 249 
 
 " Or, Mr. Ward/ I said, with bold confidence, 
 "like the mysterious disappearance from the Kent 
 Road ? " 
 
 The moment was full of suspense. He did not 
 seem to hear me. Suddenly he turned. 
 
 "Ha!" 
 
 I darted forward. But he had vanished in the dark 
 ness. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NO. 27 LI ME HO USE ROAD. 
 
 It was a hot midsummer evening. Limehouse Road 
 Was deserted save by dust and a few rattling butchers 
 carts, and the bell of the muffin and crumpet man. 
 A commodious mansion, which stood on the right 
 of the road as you enter Pultneyville, surrounded by 
 stately poplars and a high fence surmounted by a 
 chevaux de frise of broken glass, looked to the passing 
 and footsore pedestrian like the genius of seclusion 
 and solitude. A bill announcing in the usual terms 
 that the house was to let, hung from the bell at the 
 servants entrance. 
 
 As the shades of evening closed, and the long 
 shadows of the poplars stretched across the road, a 
 man carrying a small kettle stopped and gazed, first 
 at the bill and then at the house. When he had 
 reached the corner of the fence, he again stopped and 
 looked cautiously up and down the road. Apparently 
 
250 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 satisfied with the result of his scrutiny, he deliberately 
 sat himself down in the dark shadow of the fence, 
 and at once busied himself in some employment, 
 so well concealed as to be invisible to the gaze of 
 passers-by. At the end of an hour he retired cau 
 tiously. 
 
 But not altogether unseen. A slim young man, 
 with spectacles and note-book, stepped from behind 
 a tree as the retreating figure of the intruder was 
 lost in the twilight, and transferred from the fence 
 to his note-book the freshly stencilled inscription 
 " s T 1860 X." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 COUNT MOSCOW S NARRATIVE. 
 
 I am a foreigner. Observe ! To be a foreigner in 
 England is to be mysterious, suspicious, intriguing. 
 M. Collins has requested the history of my com 
 plicity with certain occurrences. It is nothing bah 
 absolutely nothing. 
 
 I write with ease and fluency. Why should I not 
 write ? Tra la la ! I am what you English call 
 corpulent. Ha, ha ! I am a pupil of Macchiavelli. 
 I find it much better to disbelieve everything, and to 
 approach my subject and wishes circuitously, than 
 in a direct manner. You have observed that playful 
 animal, the cat. Call it, and it does not come to 
 
NO TITLE. 251 
 
 directly, but nibs itself against all the furniture in 
 the room, and reaches you finally and scratches. 
 Ah, ha, scratches ! I am of the feline species. People 
 call me a villain bah ! 
 
 I know the family, living No. 27 Limehouse Road. 
 I respect the gentleman, a fine, burly specimen of 
 your Englishman, and Madame, charming, ravish 
 ing, delightful. When it became known to me that 
 they designed to let their delightful residence, and 
 visit foreign shores, I at once called upon them. I 
 kissed the hand of madame. I embraced the great 
 Englishman. Madame blushed slightly. The great 
 Englishman shook my hand like a mastiff. 
 
 I began in that dexterous, insinuating manner, of 
 which I am truly proud. I thought madame was ill. 
 Ah, no. A change, then, was all that was required. 
 I sat down at the piano and sang. In a few minutes 
 madame retired. I was alone with my friend. 
 
 Seizing his hand, I began with every demonstration 
 of courteous sympathy. I do not repeat my words, 
 for my intention was conveyed more in accent, em 
 phasis, and manner, than speech. I hinted to him 
 that he had another wife living. I suggested that 
 this was balanced ha ! by his wife s lover. That, 
 possibly, he wished to fly ; hence the letting of his 
 delightful mansion. That he regularly and system 
 atically beat his wife in the English manner, and 
 that she repeatedly deceived him. I talked of hope, 
 of consolation, of remedy. I carelessly produced a 
 bottle of strychnine and a small vial of stramonium 
 from, my pocket, and enlarged on the efficiency of 
 
252 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 drugs. His face, which had gradually become con 
 vulsed, suddenly became fixed with a frightful 
 expression. He started to his feet, and roared " You 
 d d Frenchman ! " 
 
 I instantly changed my tactics, and endeavoured 
 to embrace him. He kicked me twice, violently. 
 I begged permission to kiss madame s hand. He 
 replied by throwing me downstairs. 
 
 I am in bed with my head bound up, and beef 
 steaks upon my eyes, but still confident and buoyant. 
 I have not lost faith in Macchiavelli. Tra la la ! as 
 they sing in the opera. I kiss everybody s hands. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DR. DIGGS S STATEMENT. 
 
 My name is David Diggs. I am a surgeon, living at 
 No. 9 Tottenham Court. On the I5th of June 1854, 
 I was called to see an elderly gentleman lodging on 
 the Kent Road. Found him highly excited, with 
 strong febrile symptoms, pulse 120, increasing. 
 Repeated incoherently what I judged to be the popu 
 lar form of a conundrum. On closer examination 
 found acute hydrocephalus and both lobes of the 
 brain rapidly filling with water. In consultation with 
 an eminent phrenologist, it was further discovered 
 that all the organs were more or less obliterated, 
 except that of Comparison. Hence the patient was 
 
NO TITLE. 253 
 
 enabled to only distinguish the most common points 
 of resemblance between objects, without drawing 
 upon other faculties, such as Ideality or Language, 
 for assistance. Later in the day found him sinking 
 being evidently unable to carry the most ordinary 
 conundrum to a successful issue. Exhibited Tinct. 
 VaL, Ext. Opii, and Camphor, and prescribed quiet 
 and emollients. On the i7th the patient was missing. 
 
 CHAPTER LAST. 
 
 STATEMENT OF THE PUBLISHER. 
 
 On the i8th of June, Mr. Wilkie Collins left a roll 
 of manuscript with us for publication, without title 
 or direction, since which time he has not been heard 
 from. In spite of the care of the proof-readers, and 
 valuable literary assistance, it is feared that the 
 continuity of the story has been destroyed by some 
 accidental misplacing of chapters during its progress. 
 How and what chapters are so misplaced, the 
 publisher leaves to an indulgent public to discover. 
 
LOTHAW ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLE 
 MAN IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION. 
 
 By MR. BENJAMINS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I REMEMBER him a little boy/ said the Duchess. 
 " His mother was a dear friend of mine : you know, 
 she was one of my bridesmaids." 
 
 " And you have never seen him since, mamma ? " 
 asked the oldest married daughter, who did not look 
 a day older than her mother. 
 
 " Never ; he was an orphan shortly after. I have 
 often reproached myself, but it is so difficult to see 
 boys." 
 
 This simple yet first-class conversation existed in 
 the morning-room of Plusham, where the mistress 
 of the palatial mansion sat involved in the sacred 
 privacy of a circle of her married daughters. One 
 
LOTHAW. 255 
 
 dexterously applied golden knitting-needles to the 
 fabrication of a purse of floss silk of the rarest 
 texture, which none who knew the almost fabulous 
 wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined 
 to hold in its silken meshes a less sum than 1,000,000 
 sterling ; another adorned a slipper exclusively with 
 seed pearls ; a third emblazoned a page with rare pig 
 ments and the finest quality of gold-leaf. Beautiful 
 forms leaned over frames glowing with embroidery, 
 and beautiful frames leaned over forms inlaid with 
 mother-of-pearl. Others, more remote, occasionally 
 burst into melody as they tried the passages of a new 
 and exclusive air given to them in MS. by some 
 titled and devoted friend, for the private use of the 
 aristocracy alone, and absolutely prohibited for 
 publication. 
 
 The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, 
 wealth, and position, was married to the highest 
 noble in the Three Kingdoms. Those who talked 
 about such matters said that their progeny were 
 exactly like their parents, a peculiarity of the 
 aristocratic and wealthy. They all looked like 
 brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such 
 was their purity of blood, the perfection of their 
 manners, and the opulence of their condition, might 
 have been taken for their own children s elder son 
 and daughter. The daughters, with one exception, 
 were all married to the highest nobles in the land. 
 That exception was the Lady Coriander, who there 
 being no vacancy above a marquis and a rental of 
 1,000,000 waited. Gathered around the refined 
 
256 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their 
 glittering coronets, which, in filial respect to their 
 father s Tory instinct and their mother s Ritualistic 
 tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the 
 effect was dazzling as it was refined. It was this 
 peculiarity and their strong family resemblance 
 which led their brother-in-law, the good-humoured 
 St. Addlegourd, to say that, " Pon my soul, you 
 know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly 
 pack of court cards, you know." St. Addlegourd 
 was a radical. Having a rent-roll of 15,000,000, 
 and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, 
 he could afford to be. 
 
 "Mamma, I ve just dropped a pearl," said the 
 Lady Coriander, bending over the Persian hearthrug. 
 "From your lips, sweet friend," said Lowthaw 
 who came of age and entered the room at the same 
 moment. 
 
 " No, from my work. It was a very valuable 
 pearl, mamma ; papa gave Isaacs and Sons 50,000 
 for the two." 
 
 " Ah, indeed," said the Duchess, languidly rising ; 
 " let us go to luncheon." 
 
 " But your Grace," interposed Lothaw, who was 
 still quite young, and had dropped on all-fours on 
 the carpet in search of the missing gem, " consider 
 the value " 
 
 " Dear friend," interposed the Duchess, with in 
 finite tact, gently lifting him by the tails of his dress- 
 coat, " I am waiting for your arm." 
 
LOTHAW. 357 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lotbaw was immensely rich. The possessor of 
 seventeen castles, fifteen villas, nine shooting-boxes, 
 and seven town houses, he had other estates of which 
 he had not even heard. 
 
 Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none 
 badly. Next to their purity of blood and great 
 wealth, the family were famous for this accomplish 
 ment. Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and 
 after seriously damaging his aristocratically large 
 foot in an attempt to " tight croquet " the Lady 
 Aniseed s ball, he limped away to join the Duchess. 
 
 " I m going to the hennery," she said. 
 
 Let me go with you, I dearly love fowls broiled, 
 he added thoughtfully. 
 
 " The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large 
 Cochins the other day," continued the Duchess, 
 changing the subject with delicate tact. 
 
 " Lady Montairy, 
 Quite contrary. 
 How do your Cochins grow ? " 
 
 sang Lothaw gaily. 
 
 The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged 
 silence Lothaw abruptly and gravely said 
 
 " If you please, ma am, when I come into my 
 property I should like to build some improved dwell 
 ings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander." 
 
 9 
 
258 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your 
 aspirations are noble and eminently proper," said the 
 Duchess ; " Coriander is but a child, and yet," 
 she added, looking graciously upon her companion, 
 " for the matter of that, so are you." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Mr. Putney Padwick s was Lothavv s first grand 
 dinner-party. Yet, by carefully watching the others, 
 he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided 
 drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing 
 its contents with a spoon. The conversation was 
 peculiar and singularly interesting. 
 
 " Then you think that monogamy is simply a 
 question of the thermometer ? " said Mrs. Putney 
 Padwick to her companion. 
 
 " I certainly think that polygamy should be limited 
 by isothermal lines," replied Lothaw. 
 
 " I should say it was a matter of latitude," observed 
 a loud talkative man opposite. He was an Oxford 
 Professor, with a taste for satire, and had made him 
 self very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, 
 by speaking disparagingly of a former well-known 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, a great statesman 
 and brilliant novelist, whom he feared and hated. 
 
 Suddenly there was a sensation in the room ; among 
 the females it absolutely amounted to a nervous 
 thrill. His Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced. 
 
LOTHAW. 259 
 
 He entered with great suavity of manner, and, after 
 shaking hands with everybody, asking after their 
 relatives, and chucking the more delicate females 
 under the chin with a high-bred grace peculiar to 
 his profession, he sat down, saying " And how do 
 we all find ourselves this evening, my dears ? " in 
 several different languages, which he spoke fluently. 
 Lothaw s heart was touched. His deeply religious 
 convictions were impressed. He instantly went up 
 to this gifted being, confessed, and received absolu 
 tion. " To-morrow," he said to himself, " I will 
 partake of the Communion, and endow the Church 
 with my vast estates. For the present I ll let the 
 improved cottages go." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 As Lothaw turned to leave the Cardinal, he was 
 struck by a beautiful face. It was that of a matron, 
 slim, but shapely as an Ionic column. Her face was 
 Grecian, with Corinthian temples ; Hellenic eyes 
 that looked from jutting eyebrows, like dormer- 
 windows in an Attic forehead, completed her perfect 
 Athenian outline. She wore a black frock-coat 
 tightly buttoned over her bloomer trousers, and a 
 standing collar. 
 
 " Your lordship is struck by that face," said a 
 social parasite. 
 
 " I am ; who is she ? " 
 
CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 " Her name is Mary Ann. She is married to an 
 American, and has lately invented a new religion," 
 
 "Ah!" said Lothaw eagerly, with difficulty 
 restraining himself from rushing toward her. 
 
 " Yes ; shall I introduce you ? " 
 
 Lothaw thought of Lady Coriander s High 
 Church proclivities, of the Cardinal, and hesitated. 
 " No, I thank you, not now." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Lothaw was maturing. He had attended two 
 woman s rights conventions, three Fenian meetings, 
 had dined at White s, and had danced vis-a-vis to 
 a prince of the blood, and eaten off of gold plates at 
 Crecy House. 
 
 His stables were near Oxford, and occupied more 
 ground than the University. He was driving over 
 there one day, when he perceived some rustics and 
 menials endeavouring to stop a pair of runaway 
 horses attached to a carriage in which a lady and 
 gentleman were seated. Calmly awaiting the ter 
 mination of the accident, with high-bred courtesy 
 Lothaw forbore to interfere until the carriage was 
 overturned, the occupants thrown out, and the 
 runaways secured by the servants, when he advanced 
 and offered the lady the exclusive use of his Oxford 
 stables. 
 
 Turning upon him a face whose perfect Hellenic 
 
LOTHAW. 261 
 
 details he remembered, she slowly dragged a gentle 
 man from under the wheels into the light and pre 
 sented him with ladylike dignity as her husband, 
 Major-General Camperdown, an American. 
 
 " Ah," said Lothaw carelessly, " I believe I have 
 some land there. If I mistake not, my agent, Mr. 
 Putney Pad wick, lately purchased the State of 
 Illinois I think you call it." 
 
 " Exactly. As a former resident of the city of 
 Chicago,* let me introduce myself as your tenant." 
 
 Lothaw bowed graciously to the gentleman, who, 
 except that he seemed better dressed than most 
 Englishmen, showed no other signs of inferiority and 
 plebeian extraction. 
 
 " We have met before," said Lothaw to the lady 
 as she leaned on his arm, while they visited his 
 stables, the University, and other places of interest 
 in Oxford. " Pray tell me, what is this new religion 
 of yours ? " 
 
 " It is Woman Suffrage, Free Love, Mutual Affinity, 
 and Communism. Embrace it and me." 
 
 Lothaw did not know exactly what to do. She 
 however soothed and sustained his agitated frame 
 and sealed with an embrace his speechless form. 
 The General approached and coughed slightly with 
 gentlemanly tact. 
 
 " My husband will be too happy to talk with you 
 further on this subject," she said with quiet dignity, 
 as she regained the General s side. " Come with us 
 
 * The most important town in the State of Illinois, remarkable 
 for its sudden rise and commercial importance. 
 
262 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 to Oneida.* Brook Farm f is a thing of the 
 past." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 As Lot haw drove toward his country-seat, "The 
 Mural Enclosure," he observed a crowd, apparently 
 of the working-class, gathered around a singular- 
 looking man in the picturesque garb of an Ethiopian 
 serenader. " What does he say ? " inquired Lothaw 
 of his driver. 
 
 The man touched his hat respectfully and said, 
 " My Mary Ann." 
 
 " My Mary Ann ! " Lothaw s heart beat 
 rapidly. Who was this mysterious foreigner ? He 
 had heard from Lady Coriander of a certain Popish 
 plot ; but could he connect Mr. Camperdown with 
 it? 
 
 The spectacle of two hundred men at arms who 
 
 * A Communistic colony in Central New York State founded 
 by P\ither Noyes. Readers can learn all about it in Hepworth 
 Dixon s " New America," or they can consult Father Noyes own 
 work on " American Communities." Very recently it was reported 
 in London circles that Mr. Oliphant, late of our diplomatic ser 
 vice, had joined an American Socialist colony, but his reappear 
 ance in Piccadilly gives a denial to the rumour. ED. 
 
 t A school of American Socialists founded about thirty years 
 since, and to which Nathaniel Hawthorne and other distinguished 
 individuals belonged. The colony was settled at a farm a short 
 distance from Boston, and was under the patronage of Emerson 
 and Margaret Fuller, who, however, declined to become members. 
 
LOTHAW. 263 
 
 advanced to meet him at the gates of " The Mural 
 Enclosure " drove all else from the still youthful 
 and impressible mind of Lothaw. Immediately 
 behind them, on the steps of the baronial halls, 
 were ranged his retainers, led by the chief cook and 
 bottle-washer, and head crumb-remover. On either 
 side were two companies of laundry-maids, preceded 
 by the chief crimper and fluter, supporting a long 
 Ancestral Line, on which depended the family linen, 
 and under which the youthful lord of the manor 
 passed into the halls of his fathers. Twenty-four 
 scullions carried the massive gold and silver plate of 
 the family on their shoulders, and deposited it at 
 the feet of their master. The spoons were then 
 solemnly counted by the steward, and the perfect 
 ceremony ended. 
 
 Lothaw sighed. He sought out the gorgeously 
 gilded " Taj," or sacred mausoleum erected to his 
 grandfather in the second story front room, and wept 
 over the man he did not know. He wandered alone in 
 his magnificent park, and then, throwing himself on 
 a grassy bank, pondered on the Great First Cause, 
 and the necessity of religion. " I will send Mary 
 Ann a handsome present," said Lothaw thoughtfully. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Each of these pearls, my Lord, is worth fifty 
 thousand guineas," said Mr. Emanuel Amethyst, the 
 
264 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 fashionable jeweller, as he lightly lifted . a large 
 shovelful from a convenient bin behind his counter. 
 
 " Indeed/ said Lothaw carelessly, " I should prefer 
 to see some expensive ones." 
 
 " Some number sixes, I suppose/ said Mr. Eman- 
 uel Amethyst, taking a couple from the apex of a small 
 pyramid that lay piled on the shelf. " These are 
 about the size of the Duchess of Billingsgate s, but 
 they are in finer condition. The fact is, her Grace 
 permits her two children, the Marquis of Smithfield 
 and the Duke of St. Giles, two sweet pretty boys, 
 my Lord, to use them as marbles in their games. 
 Pearls require some attention, and I go down there 
 regularly twice a week to clean them. .Perhaps 
 your Lordship would like some ropes of pearls ? " 
 
 " About half a cable s length," said Lothaw 
 shortly, " and send them to my lodgings." 
 
 Mr. Emanuel Amethyst became thoughtful. " I 
 am afraid I have not the exact number that is 
 excuse me one moment. I will run over to the Tower 
 and borrow a few from the Crown jewels." And 
 before Lothaw could prevent him, he seized his hat 
 and left Lothaw alone. 
 
 His position certainly was embarrassing. He 
 could not move without stepping on costly gems 
 which had rolled from the counter ; the rarest dia 
 monds lay scattered on the shelves ; untold fortunes 
 in priceless emeralds lay within his grasp. Although 
 such was the aristocratic purity of his blood and the 
 strength of his religious convictions that he probably 
 would not have pocketed a single diamond, still he 
 
LOTHAW. 265 
 
 could not help thinking that he might be accused of 
 taking some. " You can search me, if you like," he 
 said when Mr. Emanuel Amethyst returned ; " but 
 I assure you, upon the honour of a gentleman, that 
 I have taken nothing." 
 
 " Enough, my Lord," said Mr. Emanuel Amethyst, 
 with a low bow ; " we never search the aristocracy." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 As Lothaw left Mr. Emanuel Amethyst s, he ran 
 against General Camperdown. How is Mary Ann ? " 
 he asked hurriedly. 
 
 " I regret to state that she is dying," said the 
 General, with a grave voice, as he removed his cigar 
 from his lips, and lifted his hat to Lothaw. 
 
 " Dying ! " said Lothaw incredulously. 
 
 " Alas, too true ! " replied the General. " The 
 engagements of a long lecturing season, exposure in 
 travelling by railway during the winter, and the im 
 perfect nourishment afforded by the refreshments 
 along the road, have told on her delicate frame. 
 But she wants to see you before she dies. Here is 
 the key of my lodging. I will finish my cigar out 
 here." 
 
 Lothaw hardly recognised those wasted Hellenic 
 outlines as he entered the dimly lighted room of the 
 dying woman. She was already a classic ruin, as 
 
266 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 wrecked and yet as perfect as the Parthenon. He 
 grasped her hand silently. 
 
 " Open-air speaking twice a week, and saleratus * 
 bread in the rural districts, have brought me to this," 
 she said feebly ; " but it is well. The cause pro 
 gresses. The tyrant man succumbs." 
 
 Lothaw could only press her hand. 
 
 " Promise me one thing. Don t whatever you 
 do become a Catholic." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " The Church does not recognise divorce. And 
 now embrace me. I would prefer at this supreme 
 moment to introduce myself to the next world 
 through the medium of the best society in this. 
 Good-bye. When I am dead, be good enough to 
 inform my husband of the fact." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lothaw spent the next six months on an Aryan 
 island, in an Aryan climate, and with an Aryan 
 race. 
 
 " This is an Aryan landscape," said his host, " and 
 
 * A preparation of soda used instead of yeast in making 
 bread and pastry. A few minutes before the repast is ready 
 the bread is made arid clapped into the oven. It is generally 
 served up hot, and hence perhaps has helped to spread dyspepsia 
 in the United States more than any other characteristic of 
 American cookery. ED. 
 
LOTHAW. 267 
 
 that is a Mary Ann statue." It was, in fact, a full- 
 length figure in marble of Mrs. General Camper- 
 down ! 
 
 " If you please, I should like to become a Pagan/ 
 said Lothaw, one day, after listening to an impas 
 sioned discourse on Greek art from the lips of his 
 host. 
 
 But that night, on consulting a well-known 
 spiritual medium, Lothaw received a message from 
 the late Mrs. General Camperdown, advising him to 
 return to jEngland. Two days later he presented 
 himself at Plusham. 
 
 " The young ladies are in the garden," said the 
 Duchess. " Don t you want to go and pick a 
 rose ? " she added with a gracious smile, and the 
 nearest approach to a wink that was consistent with 
 her patrician bearing and aquiline nose. 
 
 Lothaw went, and presently returned with the 
 blushing Coriander upon his arm. 
 
 " Bless you, my children," said the Duchess. 
 Then turning to Lothaw, she said : You have 
 simply fulfilled and accepted your inevitable destiny. 
 It was morally impossible for you to marry out of 
 this family. For the present, the Church of England 
 is safe." 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN, 
 
 A CHRISTMAS STORY. 
 
 BY CH R S D CK N S. 
 
 PART L 
 THE FIRST PHANTOM. 
 
 DON T tell me that it wasn t a knocker. I had seen 
 it often enough, and I ought to know. So ought 
 the three o clock beer, in dirty high-lows, swing 
 ing himself over the railing, or executing a demon 
 iacal jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, 
 although butchers as a general thing are scornful of 
 such trifles ; so ought the postman, to whom 
 knockers of the most extravagant description were 
 merely human weaknesses, that were to be pitied 
 and used. And so ought, for the matter of that, 
 etc., etc., etc. 
 
 But then it was such a knocker. A wild, extrava 
 gant, and utterly incomprehensible knocker. A 
 knocker so mysterious and suspicious that Police- 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 269 
 
 man X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take 
 it instantly in custody, but compromised with his 
 professonal instincts by sharply and sternly noting 
 it with an eye that admitted of no nonsense, but 
 confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An 
 ugly knocker ; a knocker with a hard, human face, 
 that was a type of the harder human face within. 
 A human face that held between its teeth a brazen 
 rod. So hereafter, in the mysterious future should 
 be held, etc., etc. 
 
 But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in 
 the glare of day, you should have seen it at night, 
 when it peered out of the gathering shadows and 
 suggested an ambushed figure ; when the light of 
 the street lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play 
 of sinister expression in its hard outlines ; when it 
 seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure 
 who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps 
 and passed into the mysterious house ; when the 
 swinging door disclosed a black passage into which 
 the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part 
 of the mysterious gloom ; when the night grew 
 boisterous and the fierce wind made furious charges 
 at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry it 
 away in triumph. Such a night as this. 
 
 It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that 
 had commenced life as a gentle country zephyr, but 
 wandering through manufacturing towns had be 
 come demoralised, and reaching the city had plunged 
 into extravagant dissipation and wild excesses. A 
 roistering wind that indulged in Bacchanalian 
 
270 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the 
 hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then 
 fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young 
 prodigals, to sea. 
 
 He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the 
 wind that roared in the chimney. Around him 
 novels and story-books were strewn thickly ; in his 
 lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and turned 
 the leaves wearily until his eyes rested upon a por 
 trait in its frontispiece. And as the wind howled 
 the more fiercely, and the darkness without fell 
 blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that por 
 trait appeared above his chair and leaned upon 
 his shoulder. The Haunted Man gazed at the 
 portrait and sighed. The figure gazed at the por 
 trait and sighed too. 
 
 " Here again ? " said the Haunted Man. 
 
 " Here again," it repeated in a low voice. 
 
 " Another novel ? " 
 
 " Another novel." 
 
 " The old story ? " 
 
 " The old story." 
 
 " I see a child," said the Haunted Man, gazing 
 from the pages of the book into the fire, " a most 
 unnatural child, a model infant. It is prematurely 
 old and philosophic. It dies in poverty to slow 
 music. It dies surrounded by luxury to slow 
 music. It dies with an accompaniment of golden 
 water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous 
 to its decease it makes a will ; it repeats the Lord s 
 Prayer, it kisses the boofer lady/ That child " 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 271 
 
 " Is mine/ said the phantom. 
 
 " I see a good woman, undersized. I see several 
 charming women, but they are all undersized. 
 They are more or less imbecile and idiotic, but 
 always fascinating and undersized. They wear co 
 quettish caps and aprons. I observe that femi 
 nine virtue is invariably below the medium height, 
 and that it is always babyish and infantine. These 
 women " 
 
 " Are mine." 
 
 " I see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady. She 
 is tall and queenly. I remark that all proud and 
 wicked women are tall and queenly. That 
 woman " 
 
 " Is mine," said the phantom, wringing his 
 hands. 
 
 "I see several things continually impending. I 
 observe that whenever an accident, a murder, or 
 death is about to happen, there is something in the 
 furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere, that 
 foreshadows and suggests it years in advance. I 
 cannot say that in real life I have noticed it, the 
 perception of this surprising fact belongs " 
 
 "To me ! " said the phantom. The Haunted 
 Man continued, in a despairing tone 
 
 "I see the influence of this in the magazines and 
 daily papers ; I see weak imitators rise up and 
 enfeeble the world with senseless formula. I am 
 getting tired of it. It won t do, Charles ! it won t 
 do ! " and the Haunted Man buried his head in 
 his hands and groaned. The figure looked down 
 
272 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 upon him sternly : the portrait in the frontispiece 
 frowned as he gazed. 
 
 " Wretched man," said the phantom, " and how 
 have these things affected you ? " 
 
 " Once I laughed and cried, but then I was 
 younger. Now, I would forget them if I could." 
 
 " Have then your wish. And take this with you, 
 man whom I renounce. From this day hence 
 forth you shall live with those whom I displace. 
 Without forgetting me, twill be your lot to walk 
 through life as if we had not met. But first, you 
 shall survey these scenes that henceforth must be 
 yours. At one to-night, prepare to meet the phan 
 tom I have raised. Farewell ! " 
 
 The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with 
 the dying wind, and the Haunted Man was alone. 
 But the firelight flickered gaily, and the light 
 danced on the walls, making grotesque figures of 
 the furniture. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " said the Haunted Man, rubbing his 
 hands gleefully; "now for a whiskey punch and a 
 cigar." 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE SECOND PHANTOM. 
 
 One ! The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly 
 died before the front door closed with a reverberat 
 ing clang. Steps were heard along the passage ; 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 273 
 
 the library door swung open of itself, and the Knocker 
 yes, the Knocker slowly strode into the room. 
 The Haunted Man rubbed his eyes, no ! there 
 could be no mistake about it, it was the Knocker s 
 face, mounted on a misty, almost imperceptible 
 body. The brazen rod was transferred from its 
 mouth to its right hand, where it was held like a 
 ghostly truncheon. 
 
 " It s a cold evening/ said the Haunted Man. 
 
 " It is/ said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice. 
 
 " It must be pretty cold out there," said the 
 Haunted Man, with vague politeness. " Do you 
 ever will you take some hot water and brandy ? " 
 
 " No," said the Goblin. 
 
 " Perhaps you d like it cold, by way of change ? " 
 continued the Haunted Man, correcting himself, as 
 he remembered the peculiar temperature with which 
 the Goblin was probably familiar. 
 
 " Time flies," said the Goblin coldly. " We have 
 no leisure for idle talk. Come ! " He moved his 
 ghostly truncheon toward the window, and laid 
 his hand upon the other s arm. At his touch the 
 body of the Haunted Man seemed to become as 
 thin and incorporeal as that of the Goblin himself, 
 and together they glided out of the window into the 
 black and blowy night. 
 
 In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the 
 Haunted Man seemed to leave him. At length 
 they stopped suddenly. 
 
 " What do you see ? " asked the Goblin. 
 
 " I see a battlemented mediaeval castle. Gallant 
 
274 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 men in mail ride over the drawbridge, and kiss their 
 gauntleted fingers to fair ladies, who wave their 
 lily hands in return. I see fight and fray and tour 
 nament. I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms 
 of delicate women, and shamelessly proclaiming 
 their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to leap 
 from a battlement. I see knightly deeds, violence, 
 rapine, and a good deal of blood. I ve seen pretty 
 much the same at Astley s." 
 
 " Look again." 
 
 " I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, 
 bare-legged men, priggish book-worms, more vio 
 lence, physical excellence, and blood. Always 
 blood, and the superiority of physical attain 
 ments." 
 
 " And how do you feel now ? " said the Goblin. 
 
 The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders. " None 
 the better for being carried back and asked to sym 
 pathise with a barbarous age/ 
 
 The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm ; they 
 again sped rapidly away through the black night 
 and again halted. 
 
 " What do you see ? " said the Goblin. 
 
 " I see a barrack room, with a mess table, and 
 a group of intoxicated Celtic officers telling funny 
 stories, and giving challenges to duel. I see a young 
 Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of 
 valour. I learn incidentally that the acme of all 
 heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regiment. I 
 hear a good deal of French ! No, thank you," said 
 the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 275 
 
 hand of the Goblin ; " I would rather not go to the 
 Peninsula, and don t care to have a private inter 
 view with Napoleon." 
 
 Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortu 
 nate man, and from a strange roaring below 
 them he judged they were above the ocean. A 
 ship hove in sight, and the Goblin stayed its 
 flight. " Look," he said, squeezing his companion s 
 arm. 
 
 The Haunted Man yawned. " Don t you think, 
 Charles, you re rather running this thing into the 
 ground ? Of course it s very moral and instructive, 
 and all that. But ain t there a little too much 
 pantomime about it ? Come now ! " 
 
 " Look ! " repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm 
 malevolently. The Haunted Man groaned. 
 
 " Oh, of course, I see her Majesty s ship Arethusa. 
 Of course I am familiar with her stern First Lieu 
 tenant, her eccentric Captain, her one fascinating 
 and several mischievous midshipmen. Of course I 
 know it s a splendid thing to see all this, and not 
 to be seasick. Oh, there the young gentlemen are 
 going to play a trick on the purser. For God s 
 sake, let us go," and the unhappy man absolutely 
 dragged the Goblin away with him. 
 
 When they next halted, it was at the edge of a 
 broad and boundless prairie, in the middle of an 
 oak opening. 
 
 " I see," said the Haunted Man, without waiting 
 for his cue, but mechanically, and as if he were 
 repeating a lesson which the Goblin had taught 
 
276 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 him, " I see the Noble Savage. He is very fine 
 to look at ! But I observe under his war-paint, 
 feathers, and picturesque blanket, dirt, disease, 
 and an unsymmetrical contour. I observe beneath 
 his inflated rhetoric deceit and hypocrisy ; beneath 
 his physical hardihood, cruelty, malice, and re 
 venge. The Noble Savage is a humbug. I remarked 
 the same to Mr. Catlin." 
 
 <f Come," said the phantom. 
 
 The Haunted Man sighed, and took out his 
 watch. " Couldn t we do the rest of this another 
 time ? " 
 
 " My hour is almost spent, irreverent being, but 
 there is yet a chance for your reformation. Come ! " 
 
 Again they sped through the night, and again 
 halted. The sound of delicious but melancholy 
 music fell upon their ears. 
 
 " I see/ said the Haunted Man, with something 
 of interest in his manner, " I see an old moss- 
 covered manse beside a sluggish, flowing river. I 
 see weird shapes ; witches, Puritans, clergymen, 
 little children, judges, mesmerised maidens, moving 
 to the sound of melody that thrills me with its sweet 
 ness and purity. But, although carried along its 
 calm and evenly flowing current, the shapes are 
 strange and frightful ; an eating lichen gnaws at 
 the heart of each; not only the clergymen, but 
 witch, maiden, judge, and Puritan, all wear Scarlet 
 Letters of some kind burned upon their hearts. I 
 am fascinated and thrilled, but I feel a morbid sensi 
 tiveness creeping over. me. I I beg your pardon." 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 277 
 
 The Goblin was yawning frightful!} . " Well, per 
 haps we had better go." 
 
 "One more, and the last," said the Goblin. 
 
 They were moving home. Streaks of red were 
 beginning to appear in the eastern sky. Along the 
 banks of the blackly flowing river by moorland and 
 stagnant fens, by low houses, clustering close to the 
 water s edge, like strange mollusks crawled upon 
 the beach to dry ; by misty black barges, the more 
 misty and indistinct seen through its mysterious 
 veil, the river fog was slowly rising. So rolled away 
 and rose from the heart of the Haunted Man, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 They stopped before a quaint mansion of red 
 brick. The Goblin waved his hand without speak 
 ing. 
 
 " I see," said the Haunted Man, " a gay draw 
 ing-room. I see my old friends of the club, of the 
 college, of societj , even as they lived and moved. 
 I see the gallant and unselfish men, whom I have 
 loved, and the snobs whom I have hated. I see 
 strangely mingling with them, and now and then 
 blending with their forms, our old friends Dick 
 Steele, Addison, and Congreve. I observe, though, 
 that these gentlemen have a habit of getting too much 
 in the way. The royal standard of Queen Anne, 
 not in itself a beautiful ornament, is rather too 
 prominent in the picture. The long galleries of 
 black oak, the formal furniture, the old portraits, 
 are picturesque, but depressing. The house is damp. 
 I enjoy myself better here on the lawn, where they 
 
278 CONDENSED NOVELS. 
 
 are getting up a Vanity Fair. See, the bell rings, 
 the curtain is rising, the puppets are brought out for 
 a new play. Let me see." 
 
 The Haunted Man was pressing forward in his 
 eagerness, but the hand of the Goblin stayed him, 
 and pointing to his feet he saw, between him and 
 the rising curtain, a new-made grave. And bending 
 above the grave in passionate grief, the Haunted 
 Man beheld the phantom of the previous night. 
 
 The Haunted Man started, and woke. The 
 bright sunshine streamed into the room. The air 
 was sparkling with frost. He ran joyously to the 
 window and opened it. A small boy saluted him 
 with " Merry Christmas." The Haunted Man in 
 stantly gave him a Bank of England note. " How 
 much like Tiny Tim, Tom, and Bobby that boy 
 looked, bless my soul, what a genius this Dickens 
 has ! " 
 
 A knock at the door, and Boots entered. 
 
 " Consider your salary doubled instantly. Have 
 you read David Copperfield ? " 
 
 " Yezzur." 
 
 11 Your salary is quadrupled. What do you think 
 of the Old Curiosity Shop ? " 
 
 The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, 
 and then into a roar of laughter. 
 
 " Enough ! Here are five thousand pounds. 
 Open a porter-house, and call it * Our Mutual Friend. 
 Huzza ! I feel so happy I " And the Haunted 
 Man danced about the room. 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN. 279 
 
 And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, 
 and yet glowing with the warmth of a good action, 
 the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save by those 
 shapes which make the dreams of children beauti 
 ful, reseated himself in his chair, and finished " Our 
 Mutual Friend." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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