B 3 3E7 MDE 
 
J. F. CRAWFORD, 
 
 I .OOKSKLI.ER, 
 
 4th ami K, Sac. 
 

MAKIAIST ROOKE; 
 
 THE QUEST FOE FOKTUNE. 
 
 01 
 
 By HENRY SEDLEY. 
 
 .... I met a fool i the forest, 
 
 A motley fool ; a miserable world ! 
 
 As I do live by food I met a fool ; 
 
 Who laid him down and bask d him in the sun, 
 
 And rail d on Lady Fortune in good terms ; 
 
 In good set terms, and yet a motley fool. 
 "Good morrow, fool," quoth 1 1 " " No, sir." quoth he, 
 " Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune." 
 
 And thereby hangs a tale. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 S H IE 31 ID O 3ST & O O IMI DP j^ ILsT 
 1S65. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, 
 
 BY HENRY D. SEDLEY, 
 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 A. S. A r . BEMAN & CO. 
 PWMTEB1 
 
 92 AND 1)4 GKAND BTEKET, 
 NEW YORK. 
 
MARIAN ROQKE 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FAR beyond the tossing Atlantic, far beyond that chain of 
 blue mountains which early settlers once thought the ultima 
 thule of white encroachment. far beyond the turbid stream 
 whose vast dimensions make sea-coasts of its shores, and bear 
 the spoils of a continent to the Gulf. aye, and even far beyond 
 that stern range of once impassable Rocky Mountains, the ever- 
 restless Anglo-Saxon has pushed his way, until there is scarcely 
 a streamlet he has left unexplored, scarcely a square mile he has 
 left untrodden. To speak of change in connection with America 
 seems idle now, for the words have become all but synonymous. 
 And yet these mutations, so far as they are connected with the occu 
 pation of fresh territory, must, through physical necessity, come 
 to an end; the swifter the racer the sooner he comes to his 
 goal, and the rapidity of a nation s growth bespeaks an early 
 maturity, if not a premature decay. There are those who may 
 find abundant significance in the fact that all of the many vast 
 tracts belonging to the United States which had undergone ter 
 ritorial organization, became permanently settled during the 
 present decade. There were no more lands, none at least in 
 the direction of the setting sun, to wrest from the unwilling 
 savage, no more to conquer from the weaker neighbor ; the ex 
 citing progress had come to an end at last, for the extraordinary 
 people, who for an eventful century had been struggling, fight- 
 
 
4 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ing, and floating their way westward. There was nothing 
 further to be accomplished by those who had moved their na 
 tional boundary from the Alleghanies to the Pacific. 
 
 Fifteen years ago it was not so. There were then far reach 
 ing spaces, where the elk and the antelope could feed in peace, 
 and the bison still roam undisturbed. Spaces where no human 
 beings, save 4 bands of the thin and scattered tribes of Sioux, 
 Fawners , &ncl Apaches ever found their way to break with rude 
 chase or ruder battle, the solitude of nature. Spaces where we 
 fcritay ;supoqse jthat for ages and ages back no sounds save those 
 of riatiireV oWri everlasting processes had interrupted the solemn 
 stillness. And these tracts might to-day have been equally 
 vacant and silent, might have been yet unoccupied, or, as some 
 would have it, yet unpolluted by the white man, but for one 
 thing, which since 1492 has been working such wondrous effects 
 upon mankind and their habitation, the potent agent of 
 discovery. 
 
 The same irresistible lure which wrought the fall of Monte- 
 zuma and the Incas, the sad possession which plunged Mexico 
 and Peru into a sea of troubles, whence they have never alto 
 gether emerged, has prematurely developed and populated these 
 occidental wilds which, by a natural process, and making all 
 allowance for a prodigious immigration, would otherwise have 
 remained virgin for another half century. 
 
 When the news reached the Atlantic States, in 1849, of Cap 
 tain Batter s discovery, with the subsequent report that portions 
 of the soil of California were literally spangled with gold, a rush 
 ensued for the favored region, such as scarcely ever has occurred 
 in history. Some crowded on board steamships bound for the 
 Isthmus of Darien, with intention to cross to Panama, and again 
 take ship to San Francisco. Some, with more patience or fewer 
 dollars, contented themselves with sailing ships going by the 
 circuitous passage of the Horn. Some, and these latter includ 
 ed many a bold frontiersman, with plenty of pluck, but often 
 times no money at all, unable or unwilling to buy transport by 
 sea, betook themselves to the more hazardous and more adven 
 turous resource of crossing the plains. 
 
 It is true that nearly fifty years before such an exploit had 
 been attempted and performed. Americans, familiar with the 
 annals of Congress, and few of them are not, knew that in 
 1803, "Captain Meriwether Lewis, of the 1st Regiment of In 
 fantry, was appointed, with a party of men, to explore the 
 river Missouri, from its mouth to its source, and crossing the 
 highlands by the shortest portage, to seek the best water com- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 5 
 
 nranication thence to the Pacific ocean ; and Lieutenant Clark 
 was appointed second in command." But this expedition, ag 
 well as others which succeeded it, besides being heavily armed, 
 well disciplined, accompanied by skilful guides and trappers, and 
 under government authority, accomplished, as was intended, 
 most of its journey by water, a method of transit presenting 
 many advantages over those Avhose sole aim was that of getting 
 as quickly as possible from one point to another. The pilgrims 
 of 49 sought only to get at the Californian gold, and cared little 
 about the navigable facilities of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, 
 or the flora and fauna to be found upon their banks. Thus they 
 attempted short cuts, seeking to make . their course coincide as 
 nearly as possible with a parallel of latitude from their point of 
 departure- Sometimes they succeeded, to the benefit of those 
 who come after ; but often in such efforts, they paid the last 
 penalty for then* enterprise, and perished miserably in sterile 
 waterless expanse or freezing mountain pass ; so that not long 
 ago there were tracks, marked by the whitening bones of their 
 first discoverers, which did sad service for later adventurers, 
 who closely followed them as guides ; a ghastly remembrancer 
 of the episode in the Babes in the Wood, save that now there 
 were no unthinking or pitying robins to cover or remove the 
 relics of those who had gone before. 
 
 Some of these unfortunates had perished of hunger and thirst ; 
 for although in those days there was no lack of game in certain 
 places, yet in the heart of the continent there are long stretches 
 of country divided by no water-courses, and where, if agriculture 
 ever flourishes hereafter, it must be with the aid of extensive ir 
 rigation. In the dry season these stretches are utterly destitute 
 of water, and therefore as empty of fur or feather as Sahara 
 itself. Into these inhospitable tracts, sometimes by miscalcula 
 tion of their position, sometimes to avoid hostile Indians, way 
 farers would stray and wander about until exhaustion forced 
 them to lie down and die. There were also many cases where trains 
 would be attacked and captmed by the savages, whose numbers, 
 now yearly decreasing, were then formidable, and who, possessing 
 great numbers of fleet horses, were often able to gather in such 
 force as to overcome resistance however brave, and almost 
 invariably butchered whoever might have survived the fight. 
 
 All these dangers had been evaded by a little caravan, which, 
 on a bright afternoon in June, 1850, was slowly descending the 
 last slopes which lead down from the Rocky Mountains on the 
 further side of the South-west Pass. There were four large 
 wagons, or ox-carts of the sort used in the western country, 
 
6 . MARIAN ROOKE J OR, 
 
 with huge wheels, and tall canvas tops. Each of these vehi 
 cles was drawn by oxen, which, albeit they showed signs of a 
 heavy journey, were yet in tolerable condition. The third in 
 the line was somewhat the larger of the four, and, in truth, its 
 tent-like cover sheltered what constituted an apartment of very 
 fair proportions, and which, as we shall see, was capable of af 
 fording no little comfort to its occupants. At the head of the 
 column rode a large sinewy man of fifty, who bestrode a power 
 ful mule, and who was constantly scrutinizing notwithstanding 
 the rays of the sun which were slanting directly athwart his 
 face the sweep of plains and valleys which lay below. In his 
 immediate rear, and in front of the wagons, walked pensively 
 about a dozen head of cattle, on either side of whom there were 
 a couple of men mounted on horses of the plains ; while be 
 hind the wagons again rode half-a-dozen more, with rifle on 
 shoulder, forming the end of the train. 
 
 For many weeks had the travellers been pressing their way 
 towards the west. They had traversed monotonous plains, 
 seemingly interminable, whose arid surfaces bore scarcely any 
 vegetation but bushes of wild sage and the more obnoxious 
 prickly pear. They had crossed innumerable water-courses, 
 fringed with the cottonwood and the willow, sometimes by ford 
 ing, sometimes by rafting, sometimes by horse-ferry constructed 
 of their own resources. They had climbed many a steep hill, 
 each like the other, with unvarying crests of cedar, pine, and 
 wild mahogany. They had camped in many a little timber 
 "island," whose welcome shelter and security in the otherwise 
 unbroken plain invited their weary feet to tarry for the night. 
 But, although they had experienced vicissitudes, had lost some 
 of then* cattle, had encountered many Indians, and had more 
 than once been short of water, the little band had been spared 
 graver disaster, and had lost none of their number by violence 
 or disease. Their immunity was, no doubt, partly due to good 
 fortune ; but their numbers and somewhat formidable appear- 
 , ance had likewise been serviceable, for they were a powerful- 
 * looking body of men, and mustered over a dozen rifles. More 
 over, the consequences of some of their recent acts of murder 
 and plunder had begotten among the tribes of the plains a 
 wholesome dread of their " Great Father" at Washington, and 
 uncomfortable doubts as to the length of his arm. The passes 
 of the great mountain range had become, under these circum 
 stances, the most critical portion of the overland route ; the 
 distance from the settlements, and the all but impossibility of 
 tracing out offenders, combining to multiply their dangers. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 7 
 
 No wonder, then, that those who crossed the plains should be 
 delightecl when they had left the great central chain of the 
 Rocky Mountains behind them. 
 
 The man at the head of the column turned in his saddle as 
 if to escape for a moment the glare of the falling sun, and 
 gazed at the scene behind him. He gazed upon a countless 
 succession of hills, mere swells at first of red and brown, with 
 clumps here and there of hardy redwood and scrawny mahog 
 any, the foliage touched ever and anon with a glint of gold. 
 Further off, as the panorama receded, the swells sharpened into 
 points and crags crowned with bristling pines, and broken 
 with masses of granite and flint, all bathed in hues of various 
 purple. Furthest yet, but with numberless gradations between, 
 rose the solemn, dark, blue peaks of the central range, crested 
 with snow, which, suffused with the oblique rays of the sun, shot 
 forth all manner of radiant colors. The spectator saw no 
 more of earth beyond, nothing but the pure, delicate blue 
 of the approaching evening ; a background, indeed, of the same 
 color as the mountains, and yet so wonderfully in contrast. 
 
 The man gazed at the vista for a while, not altogether uncon 
 scious of its beauty, and then suddenly gave vent to a cheery 
 shout : 
 
 " Hurrah, boys ! We ve passed the wust of it ! We re gittin 
 out o the foot-hills, and to-night we ll sleep west o the 
 mountains!" 
 
 A responsive cheer broke from the men nearest the speaker, 
 and those behind, readily guessing its purport, without quite 
 catching the words which inspired it, took up the cry and cheered 
 until the welkin rang again. 
 
 As the echoes subsided, a voice far away to the west took up 
 the cry once more, and sent it back in tones which, although 
 distant, were distinct and clear ; and directly after this again was 
 heard the ringing bay of a dog. 
 
 i; That s Luke 1" said the pioneer of the column. And " That s 
 Luke!" said the cattle-drivers behind, and the horsemen in the 
 rear of the train. And "That s Luke," was repeated by two or 
 three feminine voices, whilst their owners heads were thrust 
 forth from the wagon the third in the line. 
 
 " I hope he s got some venison," said one on the right. " I m 
 blamed tired of hung beef and penimican {pr more n a week, and 
 only half a pint o whiskey a day." 
 
 " Pshaw, Jabe Fitch," retorted his companion, a long Ken- 
 tuckian, with an eye and face like a hawk, * * ye think o noth 
 ing but the inside o yer stomach ; be thankful ye ve got yer 
 
8 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 ecalp on the outside o yer head. That s the fii st lookout, goin* 
 through the mountains." 
 
 " A place for everything, and everything in its place, Dick 
 Railes," quoth the other, " as my old grandmother used to tell. 
 When we was goin through a skeary place, why, I say look out 
 for safety and nothin else ; when we ve got out o the woods, I 
 allow we ve got a right to holler !" 
 
 "Ay, but maybe we ain t out of em yet." 
 
 "No? Why, Uncle Seth thinks there s ne er an Injun twixt 
 this and Stockton ; that is, once out o the foot hills." 
 
 " Seth Armstrong s cute, he is ; but he don t allers know every 
 thing. It ain t the call of an Illinise or Ohio farmer to be up to 
 all the ins and outs o the redskins, like as if he was raised on 
 the frontier." 
 
 " You don t s pose " 
 
 " There may not be an Injun within a hundred mile on us ; 
 and then, again, look thar. " 
 
 The speaker pointed as he spoke, and his interlocutor peered 
 long and earnestly in the direction indicated ere he could make 
 out what the practised eyes of the Kentuckian had detected some 
 time before. Far away on the right, perhaps a couple of miles 
 distant, so tiny as to be nearly invisible, curled upwards a spiral 
 of smoke, blue and delicate against the green and brown of the 
 earth and the foliage. Jabez Fitch looked for some time, and 
 then drew a long breath. 
 
 "Thunder! hadn t we better let on to Uncle Sethf 
 
 "No. Leastways not yet. Maybe Luke s lit a fire ; though 
 it ain t like him afore night. Maybe that ere simpleton s set the 
 brush ablaze for fun. Maybe one o Luke s wads has done it. 
 Anyhow, we ll be up with him soon, and we can find out." 
 
 The sun was now sinking fast to use the incorrect-expression. 
 As the train was continually descending, it was shortening its 
 daylight by a double process, and in a few minutes after the little 
 colloquy described, it had become almost dusky. Still, it was 
 light enough to see a couple of hundred yards further on, a 
 stream which ran directly across their path. It was an old ac 
 quaintance, the party having often passed it miles behind as a 
 mountain brook, and having been beholden to its clear current for 
 many a refreshing draught. It was growing more ambitious as 
 it neared the plains, and although it had learned to be less noisy, 
 it was much deeper, and now boasted a width of some twenty 
 yards. On its furthest bank from our travellers stood a little 
 grove of cottonwood trees, gracefully distributed in a curve of 
 the stream ; and beneath could now be discerned a group con- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 9 
 
 sisting of five figures, two of which, however, alone were 
 human. 
 
 The most conspicuous form was that of a young man full six 
 feet high, who stood in advance of the others," leaning upon his 
 rifle. He was attired, as were indeed most of the company, in 
 a leathern or buckskin hunting shirt, and he wore Indian leg 
 gings and moccasins as the best protection against the prickly 
 pear of the plains. 
 
 Luke Armstrong might have seen some five-and-twenty sum 
 mers, and as he stood bareheaded," with his brown curling locks 
 fluttering in the breeze, and a smile of welcome wreathing his 
 handsome bronzed features, he looked the very ideal of manly 
 strength and good humor. 
 
 A few paces behind was another youth, apparently fast asleep. 
 His limbs were stretched carelessly upon the ground, while his 
 head was pillowed on the back of a huge black dog, who lay pa 
 tiently enough, although his sagacious eyes and a scarcely per 
 ceptible movement of his bushy tail showed plainly his interest 
 in the approaching party. 
 
 The head of the sleeper was covered with a thick shock of 
 coarse red hair, and the cap which had fallen on his side was 
 decorated with three or four feathers of great length and gaudy 
 colors. His dress was similar to that of Luke, except that it was 
 fantastically ornamented with beads, feathers, and bits of fur, in 
 a manner usually considered more consonant with a barbarian 
 than a civilized taste. 
 
 At a short distance a couple of Mexican mustangs, secured by 
 lariats, were nibbling the bright green herbage which carpeted 
 the borders of the stream ; and their saddles and bridles cast 
 upon the ground completed the inanimate portion of the picture. 
 
 ""Well, Luke, lad, what fortune f cried Seth Armstrong, as 
 his mule paused in splashing passage of the rivulet to bury its 
 nose greedily in its cooling current. 
 
 " Why, as to grass and water, father, you see ; and as to game, 
 look there!" 
 
 He pointed as he spoke to a fine elk, which swung from the 
 lower branch of a neighboring tree, and at whose foot there lay 
 a considerable pile of feathered spoil. 
 
 We might have had two," continued Luke, regretfully. " He 
 would be hunting squirrels and Calumet eagles for the sake of 
 then- tails, instead of for good hullsome meat to keep the pot 
 bilin ." 
 
 "Darn the simpleton!" said Dick Railes, riding up. "He s 
 allers spilin sport. If I was you, Luke, I d leave him with the 
 
10 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 train another time. There s plenty d be glad to chum with ye, 
 on yer huntin days, without yer taking up with Silly Ike." 
 
 " No, no," replied Luke, good-naturedly, " don t be too hard 
 on poor Ichabod. He s ready enough, generally, to do his share 
 o the work ; and if he has a taste for gimcracks, he s no worse 
 than lots o gals Dick Railes would be the last to speak a harsh 
 word of." 
 
 " That s so," said Jabez Fitch, with some malice. " Kitty 
 Armstrong s the only gal I ever see that didn t care for 
 ribbons and finery, and the only one Dick Railes can t git along 
 with." 
 
 " Who told you how he gits along ?" growled Dick in high 
 dudgeon, but evidently discomfited by the stroke. 
 
 " One thing I can tell ye, boys," said Seth Armstrong, " and 
 none on ye knows it better than Richard ; and that is, ef we re 
 all here now safe and sound, we have to thank Silly Ike for it. 
 Them ere pesky Pawneee and Sioux would have belted our 
 scalps, sure, more n once, but for him. Darn me if I hadn t 
 rather cross the plains with a half-wit than a hull regiment of 
 Uncle Sam s blue bottles." 
 
 " I do think you re light, father," said Luke. " It s queer that 
 them red devils who won t respect a helpless woman, or even a 
 child in arms for that matter, daren t so much as lift a finger 
 agin a witling that hain t got so much sense as either." 
 
 The party had in truth found reason to put the matter to a 
 severe test. On one occasion in particular, during the first ten 
 days of their journey from Liberty, rendered somewhat too bold 
 by impunity, nearly the whole number had incautiously sepa 
 rated themselves from their train, leaving only Ichabod and two 
 others with the females in charge of the cattle and wagons. 
 Thus defenceless, they were surprised by a band of some fifty 
 Sioux, all well mounted and in their war-paint, who surrounded 
 the train with frightful cries. Fortunately, several of their num 
 ber understood enough English to converse intelligibly, and 
 they speedily discovered the misfortune of poor Ichabod, who 
 showed not the slightest trace of fear. By what persuasion or 
 argument the dusky warriors arrived at their determination his 
 companions never knew ; but they were well satisfied when, af 
 ter an animated discussion in their own tongue, the Indians 
 galloped off as swiftly as they 1ml first approached, not, how 
 ever, without a considerable exhibition of admiration and rever 
 ence towards Ichabod, received by him with great gravity and 
 equanimity. 
 
 " And I ll tell ye another thing bout Silly Ike," cried the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 11 
 
 latter personage himself, suddenly raising his head, and show 
 ing that, with characteristic cunning, he had been listening to 
 the conversation. His black pillow accepted the movement as 
 giving leave of absence, for, with a short, glad bark, he jumped 
 up and ran to greet his various friends. 
 
 "I ll tell ye another thing bout Silly Ike," he repeated, sit 
 ting up cross-legged, and waprging his red locks spitefully at 
 Dick Railes. "He knows darned well who treats him right 
 and who don t. He keeps a memory longer n from here to Fort 
 Leaven worth, Silly Ike does. He kin talk Yankee, and he kin 
 talk Chiny, and he kin talk Turkey, and he kin talk Injun, he 
 kin. He saved your scalps twice, and he kin do it agin. You re, 
 all darned smart, and there s only one on ye kin understand me, 
 and that s Lion ; he knows what I say, every word on t ; don t 
 ye, Lion ?" 
 
 The dog came up and rubbed himself affectionately against 
 his master s shoulder. 
 
 " That ain t what I was goin to say, though," proceeded 
 the latter, " and what it was is this. You re all on ye bound 
 for Californy, to scratch and dig, and worry and burrow your 
 souls out, and all for what ? All for one thing. Most on ye d 
 sell your souls for it, I ll swear. Dick Railes would anyhow. 
 Well, now, what s the pint ? Just this : Ike kin give ye more 
 gold than ud make that ere mountain over agin. Ike s got 
 more n ud make all the eagles and double eagles Uncle Sam ever 
 kined at the mint in Philadelphy. Virgin gold, though, all 
 rich and yaller " 
 
 " Come, Ike," said Seth Armstrong, interrupting him kindly, 
 and knowing by experience that on this subject the poor sim 
 pleton s haranguing was likely to prove exhaustless. " Come, 
 Ike, boy, it s most sundown, and we ve got to make camp, you 
 know, and unyoke the critters and fix up a corral, and git sup 
 per, and lots o things. Ye can tell us about the gold when 
 we re smokin our pipes, bime bye, can t ye ?" 
 
 " I will for you, Uncle Seth," answered Ichabod, quietly. 
 " But remember, I don t mean to give it to any on em. They 
 ain t fit for it. Twould kind o upset em ; they re too weak- 
 minded ; they d be for spendin of it all in a minute, they 
 would." 
 
 " Come on, Ike, we ve had a good rest," cried Luke; "let s 
 help to rouse out the teams." 
 
 Darkness was now coming on apace, and the travellers were 
 actively engaged in making their preparations for the night. 
 Indeed, as they had had many days of heavy work, Seth Arm- 
 
12 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 strong proposed to pause for eight-and-forty hqurs or therea 
 bouts, to give man and beast an opportunity to recruit. For 
 such a purpose few spots could have been discovered more fa 
 vorable than that on which they now found themselves. There 
 was abundant grazing for the cattle, plenty of water, and, al 
 though the site of their camp was heavily timbered, there were 
 few trees and little brush for a long distance on either side to 
 furnish cover for any possible lurking enemies. This last con 
 sideration, no less important than the others, determined the 
 question of a more than usually protracted sojourn. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF the four wagons described as forming the train, one was ex 
 clusively devoted to carrying the provisions of the party, and 
 was placed when travelling first in the line. The second was 
 filled with farming tools, extra gear for the teams, and such 
 supply of grain or other forage as could, from time to time, be 
 obtained to make up for incidental scarcity on the march. For 
 there were occasional wastes to traverse whereon the burning 
 sun had shrivelled every blade of grass and absorbed every drop 
 of moisture ; places, to cross which in safety, the wayfarer must 
 provide food and water, not only for himself but for his cattle. 
 The last wagon was used for the conveyance of such personal 
 luggage as each of the party was permitted to take, and con 
 tained besides various articles of household furniture from the 
 farmhouse of the Armstrongs on the banks of the Ohio. It had 
 been a sore question with poor Mrs. Armstrong, which of these 
 household gods to cherish and which to turn her back upon ; 
 which of the old familiar things to keep familiar still, and which 
 to abandon forever. Give her her way, indeed, and she would 
 have brought the old farmhouse itself, carefully packed in sec 
 tions ; ay, and the old red barn, and the hen-house, and the 
 pig-pen, and all the living things which inhabited them. But 
 here Seth Armstrong was inexorable. He was sensible of yield 
 ing to a certain weakness in undertaking this hazardous journey 
 at all ; and he was, at all events, determined to assert his dig 
 nity and recompense his self-respect in the carrying out of 
 details. 
 
 The expedition had its origin simply in this wise : Luke Arm- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 13 
 
 strong, like many other young men, and quite in a natural way, 
 had taken the " California fever." All reasoning and entreaty 
 to the contrary, go to the land of gold he would. Xow, when 
 his mother found his resolution inflexible, she at once resolved 
 to carry out the only device whereby a separation from her first 
 born might be avoided. She determined on the transportation 
 of the whole family to the Pacific shore ; and, as in all her en 
 terprises, when she set to work with a will, she succeeded. 
 Xot without difficulty, however, for Seth Armstrong was more 
 strongly attached to his home than many of his countrymen are 
 prone to be. He had left a farm in Xew England five-and- 
 twenty years before ; a farm where his people had dwelt and 
 died for many generations. But the soil was flinty and ungen 
 erous on the banks of the Connecticut, and it was bounteous 
 and virgin on those of the Ohio. It had been a hard struggle 
 for bare subsistence in the former case, and life became easy 
 and comfortable in the latter. So Seth Armstrong had struck 
 down new roots, and had thriven and flourished apace until he 
 was turned of fifty years of age. His family never had much 
 money, perhaps, but they had always abundance to eat, to drink, 
 and to wear. Seth was contented with his lot, and so was his 
 wife, and so was their blue-eyed daughter Kitty, and so, until 
 Captain Suiter s lucky discovery, had been his son Luke. Be 
 that as it might, they were now all of them infected with the 
 gold fever. 
 
 Seth, with many sighs, had, as he called it, pulled up 
 stakes," shipped his goods down the river to St. Louis, made 
 up his party with a great deal of shrewdness and sagacity, and 
 in the middle of the continent, with his Lares and Penates 
 such as were left of them here he was. But he had obstinate 
 ly refused to "tote" any articles excepting such as he could be 
 convinced were absolutely necessary, and hence had arisen many 
 a momentous conflict of opinion between himself and "mother." 
 In these encounters, as has been suggested, Seth came off vic 
 torious in a general way ; and if exceptions existed in trifling 
 particulars, they were to be found in the third wagon of the 
 train, which we now propose to describe. 
 
 Xot to be paradoxical, it was a nondescript sort of a vehicle. 
 It had been used on the journey as a residence, serving as kitch 
 en for the entire party, sitting-room for the females, and, divid 
 ed by a thick canvas partition, as a chamber for the Armstrong 
 family at night ; the others either finding room in the remain 
 ing wagons, or sleeping, by preference, in the open air. But 
 these were not the sole uses of the vehicle in question ; for ii 
 
14 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 had not only been applied to these necessary purposes, but had 
 seen service on the march as a pontoon, and on one occasion, 
 even more simply, as a boat. The truth was that Seth Arm 
 strong, foreseeing a variety of exigencies wherein such a con 
 trivance would be useful, had, with Luke s aid, built this re 
 markable wagon himself. It was entirely of home manufacture, 
 with the exception perhaps of the springs, which were those of 
 an ordinary heavy van, and from which the body could be read 
 ily detached. In the rear was a flight of steps similar to, al 
 though somewhat higher than those of a common omnibus, 
 and a window of half-a-dozen squares admitted light over the 
 door. Towards the foremost part of the roof, which was of 
 stout canvas, and upwards of seven feet high from the floor, a 
 small stove-pipe emerged, and conducted smoke from the fire 
 below. The whole structure might have been sixteen feet in 
 length, by seven in width. 
 
 While the men were attending to the cattle and preparing 
 their camp-fire to cook their game, for preparations of meat 
 were usually made in the open air, a scene of no less activity 
 was progressing in Castle Armstrong ; for such was the name 
 conferred by the travellers on the edifice just described. The 
 brilliant light of the moon and stars sufficed for all practical 
 purposes out of doors, even without the help of the fire. Not 
 so, however, within, where the artificial aid of a pair of candles 
 was necessary to carry out the operations in progress. A fire 
 had been lighted in the stove directly after the halt, and was 
 now blazing briskly enough to set a large kettle of water singing 
 aloud which was suspended over it. A comely, cherry-lipped 
 girl, with sparkling blue eyes, and a striking resemblance to 
 Luke Armstrong, was stirring a mixture intended to make 
 " hoe-cake " 011 a dresser, which worked with a hinge, in the 
 fore part of the vehicle, while a middle-aged, but not unprepos 
 sessing woman, whom it needs no second glance to identify as 
 the mother of the younger one, was getting "spiders" and grid 
 irons, and other indescribable utensils, ready for the evening 
 meal. At the other end of the apartment, and her features some 
 what obscured, as the candles stood on a table close by Kitty 
 Armstrong, was the tall figure of another girl, stooping to get 
 something out from one of the drawers which were fitted under 
 each of the berths. Such was the picture presented to Luke 
 Armstrong as, after unyoking and settling the oxen, he clam 
 bered up to the seat, and thrust his good-humored face into the 
 wagon. 
 
 "Good evening, mother 1" cried he. "We ve got such a 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 15 
 
 beautiful doe! And the fires are lit, and Bridget and Jabe are 
 cutting the steaks, and the Doctor and Dick Railes are squab 
 bling about the distance to Salt Lake, and father s found an old 
 corral for the critters ! I hope you re most ready with the hoe- 
 cake, for we ve all got such famous appetites !" 
 
 " All right, Sonny," responded the matron. We ain t usually 
 much behind the men folks, specially at cookin time. Father 
 says we re goin to rest here a spell." 
 
 " Yes, we re through the Great Pass, and a right smart bit on 
 our way. There ain t much more chance of stumblin agen the 
 redskins, and the cattle need a day or two to pick up." 
 
 " I m so glad," exulted Kitty Armstrong. " I m sick and tired 
 of this joggle joggle, which makes you feel jest like crossing 
 Lake Michigan. Now, you Luke," she continued, coming up 
 and kissing his brown cheek, " where s my present ?" 
 
 " Choose." 
 
 " No, I won t choose hands, for you always change em. Any 
 how, Mary Anne gets the prettiest. Let s see I" 
 
 "No, no, honor bright. Look, I won t stir after you pick, 
 cept to give it to you." 
 
 Well, then, left." 
 
 " Here you are then Kitty, left." 
 
 Luke handed his sister a band or circlet of curious shape, but 
 evidently intended for the head. It consisted of some sort of 
 soft skin, adorned with porcupine quills, and enriched at the 
 centre by a noble plume from the eagle, known among the In- 
 flians as the Calumet. 
 
 " Why, Luke !" cried the girl in surprise, not unmingled with 
 alarm. "" Where did you find it ?" 
 
 " In the mountains this morning. I thought Ike had tomfool 
 ery enough stuck about him, and twould better suit you. I 
 think it s a chief s." 
 
 "Then there are Indians near us, after all?" 
 
 "How d ye make that out, silly? The loser may be dead or 
 hundreds of miles away." 
 
 I hope he is the last any how. But what have you got for 
 Mary Anne?" 
 
 "Nuthin much," said Luke, a flush warming his frank brow, 
 " only a bunch of little mountain posies. Won t you take em, 
 Mary Anne ?" 
 
 The tall girl came forward at the invitation, and extended her 
 hand. She was dark not of Luke s sun-bronzed hue, but with 
 a complexion of clear olive, through which the blood could be 
 traced as if the skin were that of the purest blonde. Like Kitty, 
 
16 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 she wore a plain stuff gown, happily unextended by crinoline ; 
 and her head carried only its own ample ornament. But, un 
 like Kitty, her manner was distinguished, and her carriage, 
 without suggesting the slightest affectation, was almost fit for a 
 queen. Her hand, too, which was stretched to take the prof 
 fered nosegay, was tapering and delicate. Whoever or what 
 ever Mary Anne might be, she was one of those whom no 
 humbleness of dress or situation can make common ; no disen 
 chanting adjuncts in the way of domestic surroundings can 
 altogether deprive of dignity. 
 
 " Thank you very much, Luke," she said in a low, musical 
 voice. "They can scarcely be sweeter than the last ones were." 
 
 "I have to take what I can find, Mary Anne," said Luke, 
 unconsciously tuning his voice into the same key. " Flowers are 
 scarce on the dry prairie, but these came from the mountains." 
 
 " And yet their scent is like magnolia blossoms," she went on. 
 i They remind me of the South." 
 
 "Put them in your hair, Mary Anne," said Luke ; "we re to 
 have a spree to-night a kind of a blow-out to celebrate our safe 
 crossin of the mountains ; so you girls can make yourselves as 
 pretty as you please." 
 
 "Well, then, be off, Luke," exclaimed his mother, "and don t 
 be a henderin of em, for they ve lots of chores to do, and 
 father 11 be hollerin for supper." 
 
 Luke reluctantly descended from his perch, and joined the 
 active party outside. By this time a large fire w^as blazing mer 
 rily at a convenient distance from the banks of the stream, the 
 cattle were comfortably settled for the night, buffalo robes 
 spread upon the ground, and preparations for a feast in active 
 progress. Bridget, a stout Irish lass, long the faithful follower 
 of the Armstrong family, was busily getting steaks from the elk, 
 and preparing a generous number of the birds for a "stew" in 
 a huge iron pot. Some of the men were still engaged at various 
 necessary labors, while others, having finished their share of the 
 work, were stretched on skins before the fire. Not that its heat 
 was much needed, but the habit of forming a circle around the 
 blazing logs was strong, and all readily fell into it. This circle, 
 indeed, constituted a sort of evening parliament whereat the 
 discoveries and adventures of the day, and the projects and 
 chances of the morrow, were regularly debated and determined. 
 
 It has been remarked that Seth Armstrong had made up his 
 party with not a little sagacity. The primary objects were of 
 course security and efficiency ; that is, numbers sufficient to de 
 ter attack or resist it, and yet not too many to endanger quarrels 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 17 
 
 or divided counsels ; and discreet selection, with a view to avoid 
 the incumbrance of indolent, sickly, or otherwise objectionable 
 companions. Seth was no great expert himself in frontier work, 
 albeit a tolerable woodsman, a stanch husbandman, and a steady 
 shot. He had, however, a great deal of self-reliance, and liked 
 to cherish it. When he determined to cross the continent, he 
 had first provided himself with a large map, which was as ac 
 curate as a sketch of a partly unexplored country on a scale of 
 fifty miles to the inch is likely to be. Such as it was, he had 
 given it careful and protracted study, measured the distances his 
 teams were likely to accomplish in various hypothetical periods, 
 considered the relative positions of well-known constellations 
 with reference to then* line of march at such epochs, and, in 
 general, so fortified himself as to feel sure that he would not con 
 vey his charge to the Russian possessions or the city of Mexico. 
 Having made this progress, Seth made it his business to seek 
 out some one who had been on the plains before, and, whatever 
 his other knowledge or deficiencies, should have experience at all 
 events in this. He had no great difficulty in finding such an 
 assistant in the long Kentuckian called Dick Railes, a personage 
 whom it would not" have been difficult to persuade to undertake 
 a journey to any part of the habitable, or for that matter, unin 
 habitable globe, but who, if he had a choice at that time for one 
 thing over another, preferred to try his luck in the gold diggings 
 of California. Dick had been as far as the Rocky Mountains as 
 long ago as -40, he said ; and onct he d been across to the high 
 est peak away to the northward, when the Pathfinder set up the 
 proud banner of our universal nation on that uncomfortable and 
 hitherto inaccessible acclivity. Dick had, however, sundry little 
 weaknesses and eccentricities of temper ; and his knowledge was, 
 moreover, of a merely popular character, highly useful no doubt, 
 but not precisely of that exhaustive description which one likes 
 to depend upon exclusively when life, fortune, and worldly 
 goods are at issue. This is perhaps not exactly the form wherein 
 Seth would have set forth what he felt to be a deficiency in the 
 material of his party ; still it expresses substantially his view of 
 the case. He, therefore, considered himself very fortunate when 
 he stumbled upon a man of science, who was not only capable of 
 taking observations with a theodolite or a sextant, but who also 
 was seeking a party with whom to cross the plains. This was 
 one Doctor Landale, a hard headed Scotchman of forty, who had 
 been bred a surgeon, had followed his profession zealously for a 
 dozen years, and had taken a fancy to turn civil engineer at six- 
 and-thirty. Whether this caprice was consequent upon a deter- 
 
1 8 MARIAN KOOKE ; OK, 
 
 mination to visit new countries, where he might wisely have two 
 st-iuga to his bow, did not appear ; be that as it may, honest 
 Soth satisfied himself after his own fashion of the doctor s capacicy, 
 most especially with reference to exact science ; and the sight of 
 a transit instrument, a theodolite, a dumpy level (Troughton and 
 Simms ), together with that of a formidable get of draughting in 
 struments, quite took his confidence by storm. Furthermore, 
 the doctor agreed to pay a certain sum towards the expenses of 
 transport and provision, which sum being rather in excess of 
 what he got from others of the party who had no special at 
 tainments to enhance the mercantile value of their society, sat 
 isfied the thrifty yeoman remarkably well. 
 
 Besides those already mentioned, there were two young 
 men, farmers sons, and friends of Luke from Ohio ; a quaint 
 and good-humoured looking person, who described himself as 
 having lately " kept store" at Biddeford, Maine ; an enormously 
 powerful backwoodsman, who "belonged" in one of the west 
 ern counties of Illinois ; a couple of sturdy Irishmen, who 
 "worked their passage " by special agreement with Seth Arm 
 strong ; and, lastly, a slight young man from Massachusetts, 
 called Hugh Gifford. 
 
 When Luke descended from the wagon he found the party 
 in high spirits, and interested in a not unusual species of dis 
 cussion between Dr. Landale and Dick Railes. 
 
 " Spose now, doctor, you was to lose your th oderlite and 
 sextant and the fixins, and was to git stuck in the middle of the 
 pararie without em, then whar would you be ? I could find 
 my way by the sun, and the trees, and the different kinds o 
 sile, and the lay of the land ; but whar would you be ?" 
 
 " I d just find my road without either of the tools you men 
 tion, and without either of yours, for that matter, although 
 the sun is a very good guide. Why, man, a couple of poles 
 and a lighted brand would give us the meridian any night we 
 could see the north star ; and it s easy enough to keep a dead 
 reckoning with such steady travellers as Seth Armstrong s 
 oxen." 
 
 " Wall, if you could git along so well without em, whar s 
 the use o the gimcracks, so much frettin and worryin to carry 
 em safe, and you bilin over half the time about their gittin 
 out of justment, and local attraction disturbin the needle, and 
 what not ? I take it a straight eye and a clear head is as good 
 measures for lines and distances as all the science things you 
 kin scare up. I don t see no use in em cept to scare off the In- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 19 
 
 juns, p raps, who allus thinks a round thing with a hole int s 
 bound to go oft*." 
 
 " If you were squatting on a quarter section, Master 
 Railes, with pushing neighbors on either side, or- coming on a 
 savage coast in winter, when a mile or so might make the differ 
 ence between death and safety, you d want something more 
 mathematical, I m thinking, than clear heads and straight eyes 
 to demonstrate your position." 
 
 " As to the quarter sections, they run em off down our way 
 without no spy-glasses ; jest a Jacob-staff and a compass, and 
 what they call a Gunter s chain ; eighty on em on a side, and 
 then blaze a tree. They don t use no spy-glasses like your n, 
 nor no triangulations." 
 
 "None that you see, perhaps. To simplify the work, as 
 they think, they may divide the square mile as you say with 
 nothing more than the field-compass and chain ; but the lines 
 of the townships, at least, are located more accurately, or the 
 sum of errors would lead to hopeless confusion. The system 
 you quote is a bungling one at best, and could only answer in 
 a new country, where land is abundant and claimants few." 
 
 " And as to savage coasts," continued the Kentuckian, pur 
 suing the thread of his former reply, " I don t know nuthin 
 about em, and I don t want to know nuthin . Pararies and 
 Injuns is savage enough for me. I don t want no water round 
 that ain t fresh, I don t. What it s made for I can t see, cept 
 it is to give the folks in the Atlantic States an excuse to tax 
 the hull country for building ships and forts that ain t wanted." 
 
 " Why, Dick," cried Luke Armstrong, laughing, " you 
 wouldn t leave the country without a navy, would you ? Or 
 the coasts and sea-ports without defences?" 
 
 "What good does the navy or the forts do us out here?" 
 queried Mr. Railes, obstinately. " We don t own no ships to 
 be purtected ; we ain t afraid of nobody else s ships bombardin 
 our towns. We air an agricultooral people, we air ; and we 
 air a goin on to open up the boundless west, conquerin and 
 to conquer until the hull continent clear to the Pacific is filled 
 with states as fine and as flourishin as old Kentucky. Take 
 kear o number one, that s my idee ; we don t want no ships to 
 do that." 
 
 " Hooray 1" shouted Ichabod, midway in a series of wild 
 gambols with the dog, Lion. "Hooray for Uncle Sam! 
 Hooray for the universal Yankee nation ! Hooray for the 
 Merikun eagle ! We ll all jest sail in and take the hull con 
 tinent, and drive out the Britishers, and the greasers, and an- 
 
20 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 nex Canady, and gobble up Cuby, and clean aout the hull lot 
 on em. We ll live on milk and honey, and elk meat and hoe- 
 cake, and never do any work ; and every man shall have ten 
 farms afore he s had time to cultivate one ; and we ll all go to 
 Congress and make new laws every day ; and we ll have a new 
 President once a week, and Ike will be the first one, and Lion 
 the second 1 Hooray!" 
 
 And Ike commenced an active pantomime, whereof the 
 principal feature consisted in enveloping himself in a buffalo 
 robe and pretending to be a bear, to the great joy but affected 
 fury of Lion. 
 
 "Two on one*s too many," said Luke, with his good-natured 
 laugh. " The Doctor can t argue with Ike and you both, Dick. 
 He ll hevto give in." 
 
 "Dick s more n half right," growled Nahum Pelter, the 
 gentleman from Illinois, preceding his opinion with an appall 
 ing extrusion of tobacco juice. " We don t want no ships 
 cept on the great lakes. We must have em thar to keep the 
 Britishers in order." 
 
 "The only good I could ever see in ships," proceeded Dick 
 Railes, thus heavily reinforced, "is to tote cotton and terbacker; 
 and furrin ships might as well do that as any others. Labor s 
 cheaper with them, and, naterally, they can kerry the prodoose 
 for less money." 
 
 "And sposin there was a war with the nation ownin the 
 ships?" put Jabez Fitch, with the air of a man having a thirst 
 for useful information. 
 
 "Then," answered Dick, confidently, "then we d jest hive 
 our stuff till the fightin was over. We could git along better 
 without their ships than they could git along without our cotton 
 and terbacker." 
 
 " Arter all, Dick Railes," said Seth Armstrong, joining in the 
 discussion, " arter all, you can t be in right clown airnest in 
 what you say. If we hadn t had no ships and no commerce, 
 we mightn t have had the population or the money to set up all 
 these here great Western States at all. Where would have 
 been the wealth of New England ef it hadn t been for her trade 
 with the East and West Indies ? And where would have been 
 the honor of the nation ef we hadn t had war ships ready when 
 we fit agin impressment and the right of search in 14? What s 
 the difference where the ships is built, or where they go, so 
 long as they re owned by and fightin for the hull country?" 
 
 "The difference is," said Mr. Railes, with a dogmatic evasion 
 of the issue, "the difference is that the South and West is self- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 21 
 
 of the issue, "the difference is that the South and West is self- 
 supportin , and the North and East ain t." 
 
 "Look a here," exclaimed Nalmm Pelter, ejecting his cus 
 tomary avant courier "look a here ! We kin live on this ere 
 pararie without any help from the Yankee States or rotten old 
 Europe either. We kin find elk, and antelope, and buffalo, and 
 bar enough to eat, and their skins will keep us warm. We kin 
 git corn almost for nothin , for one man s sowing 1 !! feed ten. 
 If you poke round here long enough, I ll find ye coal, and lead, 
 and sulphur, and nitre, and iron ; let alone red cinnabar, cop 
 per, or, for the matter o that, what we re all huntin for, gold. 
 Now, if we ve got all we want, and other folks come along and 
 want to trade with us, it stands to reason that to do t is for 
 their advantage, and not for our n." 
 
 " That s so," quoth Dick Railes, approvingly. 
 
 " You can t find no gold," cried Ichabod. " Nobody knows 
 where the gold is but Ike. He knows where there s mountains 
 of it more n ever was found in Indy or Peroo ; enough to 
 make ye all so blamed rich ye d cook yer elk in gold pots, and 
 wear crowns from now to never. Ike knows where it is, only 
 twould kind a spile ye and make ye wild to let ye have it, so he ll 
 keep it for himself." 
 
 "What you say, Pelter," said Seth, "sounds reasonable 
 enough, but I m afeard it s one-sided, arter all. What do you 
 think about it, Mr. GifFord ?" he continued, to the young man 
 from Massachusetts, who had hitherto listened, without taking 
 part in the discussion. 
 
 " I T answered the latter. " Why, Mr. Armstrong, I should 
 say that the West can t do without the ships, nor the East with 
 out the prairies." 
 
 " A politic conclusion, Mr. Gifford," said Dr. Landale, "and 
 one which does credit to your tact, if it be not altogether con 
 vincing to either disputant. 
 
 "Why, as to that, who agrees or disagrees with two dispu 
 tants never satisfies either. However, I expressed my belief. 
 You have been long enough with us now to know that there 
 are great differences of opinion among the Americans." 
 
 " To be sure, to be sure," replied the Doctor. Large country, 
 mixed people miscellaneous educations tot homines, tot senten- 
 tice." 
 
 "What s that?" asked Mr. Pelter, in an undertone, of Dick 
 Railes. 
 
 " Something about the Th odolite," explained the latter. 
 
 "Now, then, gentlemen, supper supper!" cried Seth Arm- 
 
22 MARIAN KOOKE; OR, 
 
 strong. "Here s mother and the gals bringin the tea and the 
 hoe-cakes cooked, and Bridget s got steaks enough cut for a 
 regiment." 
 
 "Supper with all my heart," said the Doctor. " I d much 
 rather discuss elk steaks than abstract questions, however inter 
 esting or instructively set forth." 
 
 "Amen," said Luke. "Besides, this is a night of jollity, to 
 celebrate gettin safe through the mountains. Come, Dick, 
 extra whiskey to-night, you know." 
 
 "That suits me," responded Mr. Railes, complacently. 
 
 "And won t hurt none on us for once," remarked Seth. " I 
 ain t one o these kind o men who d keep the boys from a 
 cheerful drop now and agin." 
 
 " Whiskey for Ike, " chimed in that personage ; whiskey for 
 Ike, and a drop for Lion. Whatever Ike gits elk or teal, hoe- 
 cake or whiskey Lion has some too." 
 
 "Now, boys, here s the tea comin ," continued Seth. " Take 
 tea with supper, and keep your whiskey for your pipes arter- 
 wards. Who has the fust watch to-night, Luke?" 
 
 "Mr. Gifford and Ike." 
 
 " That s well. They ain t so like to need sleep, p raps, as 
 the rest. Now, then, mother, we re all sharp set enough for 
 two. Set the steaks a brilin , Bridget, and git out the teacups." 
 
 These latter consisted of tins, which served for all drinkables 
 alike, and were soon in use, together with plates of the same 
 durable material. The supper was abundant and savory, and 
 high good humor prevailed among the party. Lion was not 
 forgotten by his zealous friend, who, after giving the honest 
 creature his fill, produced a violin, on which he played with 
 considerable skill and facility. Then there were songs about 
 Old Virginny, and Carolina, and Tennessee, and the Ohio 
 River, and yaller gals, and old homes, ad libitum. Afterwards 
 there were some rude but jovial and hearty essays at dancing, 
 and when the dancers were too weary to trip it longer they re 
 clined on their buffalo robes, and took to story-telling. So 
 that it was very late when the festivities at last came to a close, 
 and the moon went to rest, and left the stars to shine down in 
 unobstructed splendor upon the little camp, which now became 
 as placid and still as it had lately been full of life and merriment. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A LONG journey by land has many features in common with a 
 long passage by sea. There are the same likes and dislikes, the 
 same jealousies and repinings, the same horror of particular faces 
 and expressions which one gets to loathe in the most uncharita 
 ble manner, to be requited, perchance, by being loathed in 
 return. There are, too, the same speedy detections of sympathy 
 by kindred natures ; the same binding together of tastes, and 
 amusements, and caprices, so that nothing is more frequent on 
 sea or shore than to find a set of people split into little cliques 
 and factions, each as complete in itself and repellent of the 
 others as if the different members were of opposite and hostile 
 nationalities. The land passage has the advantage of the water 
 in that it presents more variety of scenery, and, generally speak 
 ing, entails more physical exertion ; circumstances less condu 
 cive to ennui than the dreary monotone and listless apathy of the 
 ocean are .apt to be. It has not, however, the same opportunities 
 which state-rooms and cabins afford, either for solitary commun 
 ing or relief from enforced companionship. 
 
 When the party of Seth Armstrong first set forth from St. 
 Louis there were, as was quite natural, a great many proffers of 
 attention and minor gallantry to the young girl called Mary 
 Anne from the men, most of whom were young, and, of the 
 four women of the party, only herself and Kitty Armstrong 
 being eligible. Such advances the girl had received with sim 
 ple courtesy, speaking kindly to all without hauteur or reserve, 
 but yet managing, with a tact rather remarkable at nineteen, to 
 prevent either from considering himself peculiarly favored by 
 encouragement. Leading questions, such as most Americans 
 below a certain grade of intelligence and education are by no 
 means too delicate in withholding, she contrived, without giving 
 offence, to avoid. Conversation which tended to elicit any ex 
 position of her past life she would ingeniously divert, or, as a 
 last resort, would find refuge in silence. Thus it happened 
 that, by the time the caravan had reached the mountains, while 
 the whole party knew all about the Armstrongs; were well 
 versed in the life and adventures of Dick Railes and Jabe Fitch ; 
 had been favored with an autobiography in detail of Mr. 
 Is ahum Pelter ; were conversant with the business speculations 
 and vicissitudes of the gentleman from Biddeford ; had even 
 
24 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 become familiar with the mingled web of physic and mensura 
 tion, wherein the reminiscences of the cautious Scotchman, Dr. 
 Landale, were interwoven, they yet knew nothing at all about 
 the young girl called Mary Anne. 
 
 What was most singular was that Seth Armstrong knew 
 almost as little about her as any one else. 
 
 " Miss Mary Anne is, I presume, your second daughter ?" 
 queried the Doctor, on the second day of the journey. 
 
 " Miss Mary Anne? My darter? Wall, no, I expect she s 
 that is, I dunno wall, I calculate she s Mary Anne." 
 
 With which explanation the Doctor, perforce, remained sat 
 isfied ; for an introductory "hem" wherewith he prefaced an 
 other threatened interrogatory so alarmed the worthy farmer 
 that, unused to diplomatic evasions, he hastily beat a retreat 
 under pretence of "seem to the tire of that ere hinderrnost 
 wagon." 
 
 No one had been more successful than the Doctor ; so that 
 Mary Anne continued, so far as the knowledge of the company 
 was concerned, to be Mary Anne ; " only this, and nothing 
 more." 
 
 The truth was that Mr. Armstrong s acquaintance with the 
 young woman was scarcely a day older than that of any mem 
 ber of the party ; and when he hesitated or prevaricated re 
 specting her surname, it was for a reason no more occult than 
 that he simply did not know it. 
 
 On the day before the one fixed for setting out, she came to 
 the obscure hotel which was the last rendezvous of his party, 
 and asked to see him alone. 
 
 " I wish to go across the plains," she said, "to California. 
 I have money can pay for the trouble and expense I may 
 cause. You are going you have a wife and daughter ; let me 
 go with you." 
 
 u Why," he hesitated, "it s very sudden the last minute 
 like. Hain t ye got no friends ? I mean no men-folks ?" 
 
 " No !" the girl answered ; "none." She went on, wringing 
 her hands with a kind of terror, and looking over her shoulder 
 as if she expected to be interrupted. " You must take me. I 
 must leave this place at once. It is death to me to stay here 
 longer." 
 
 The farmer looked at her hands. There were two or three 
 handsome diamonds upon them. Then he looked at her attire. 
 She was in mourning, her dress of a rich dark material, more 
 shapely and stylish, he thought, than any his Kitty had ever 
 worn. Altogether she looked a singular person to be wishing 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 25 
 
 to cross the plains. Why didn t she go down to Orleans and 
 take the steamer, and cross the Isthmus? She read his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Don t hesitate; you musn t, indeed you musirt. I ll pay 
 well believe me and in advance, too. I tell you I must 
 leave Missouri leave the neighborhood of the Mississippi. I ll 
 give very, very little* trouble ; and I ll help your wife and 
 daughter. I can be very useful; and-^-and see here!" 
 
 Her trembling lingers had sought and opened a reticule, and 
 she drew forth a large purple silk purse. It was filled with 
 golden eagles. 
 
 "It s curus," thought Seth Armstrong; "dreadful curus." 
 T&en aloud and suddenly, "Ye hain t done nuthiif you re 
 ashamed on, and hev to run away to escape the consequences, 
 have ye*? cos " 
 
 "No, no, no!" cried she. " I have never done a 
 man or woman! Never! so help me heaven, never ! But- 
 
 She put her face close to Seth s, and whispered a sentence in 
 his ear. 
 
 It s impossible!" he exclaimed; and then again, after a 
 pause, " It can t be." 
 
 " As I am a woman it is true." 
 
 Another pause longer than before. The farmer put his face 
 in his two hands, cogitated awhile, and then spoke. 
 
 "Ill take ye." 
 
 " You will ! Oh, thanks, thanks ! I ll give you " 
 
 " I don t want none o your money. If you ve a mind to 
 help mother and Kitty, you may." 
 
 And so it was that Mary Anne had joined the party. She 
 told Seth her Christian name no other and by it he intro 
 duced her to his helpmate. What further explanations he 
 vouchsafed that exacting lady need not here be recited ; enough 
 that they were sufficient to obtain her acquiescence in the ar 
 rangement he had made. She offered no objections, and but 
 one recommendation, namely, that the young lady should take 
 off them ere duds, and put on others more suitable for the jour 
 ney ; so that the prompt adoption of her suggestion made matters 
 quite amicable all round. 
 
 Of all the young men who surrounded her, the one who 
 at the outset had treated Mary Anne with the greatest distance 
 was Hugh Gilford. He was not disrespectful certainly, or even 
 indifferent towards her ; for when they casually met he omitted 
 no courtesy due to a lady whose position was thoroughly de 
 nned and understood. But beyond this he made no step. He 
 2 
 
26 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 contented himself with a grave, commonplace civility, and there 
 paused. Perhaps he admired her rather striking appearance, 
 and that with something of an artist s eye. But no look, no 
 tone, no lingering glance even, which might have been supposed 
 unseen, betrayed such a feeling. Luke Armstrong, who made 
 not the slightest effort to hide his own honest admiration of the 
 girl, expressed surprise not unmingled* with indignation at 
 Gifford s insensibility. " There s a gal," he thought, "who 
 steps like a fawn, and talks like a runnin brook, and who s got 
 a shape and an eye enough to set a man a-fire, and that there 
 young Yankee looks at her for all the world as if she was cut 
 out of a block of ice." 
 
 It is one of the many strange perversities of our common 
 nature to seek to make revelations to those who never ask us 
 questions. Had Gifford approached her as the others had, he 
 would have been received in like manner, except, indeed, that 
 his superior education and breeding would have doubtless 
 gained him a gentler spiriting. But the very reserve which 
 tinged his manner, and which would have interposed an in 
 superable barrier to the confidence of a woman of coarser nature, 
 put Mary Anne at ease with him. Indeed, she felt better 
 acquainted with Gifford before he had spoken a hundred words 
 to her, than weeks of daily intercourse caused her to feel with 
 the others. 
 
 Little by little, as time wore on, they began to talk, and to 
 pick up, at first in an odd desultory way, some knowledge 
 each of the other. Sometimes the occasion would be the sud 
 den coming upon some glorious view, when she would involun 
 tarily glance quickly about to catch his eye, and then as swiftly 
 look away again. Sometimes a curious ilower or some strange 
 mineral would be discovered, and would draw together as such 
 things will those who, alone of the party save Dr. Landale, 
 could hazard conjecture as to its classification or species. Some 
 times the Doctor, who kept a chart and a log, marking the 
 former and making his entries in the latter as the courses and 
 distances for each day were computed, would challenge them 
 to inspect his work, and thus generate discussion. But most 
 frequently these confidences were interchanged on long starry 
 evenings, when it happened .that Gifford was on watch and the 
 rest were quiet in sleep. It was the custom of the party to 
 keep watch and watch as on shipboard a measure highly ne 
 cessary where Indians as well as wild animals abound ; and 
 Ichabod had been early detailed with Gifford. The poor fellow s 
 misfortune did not affect his usefulness in this or in many other 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 27 
 
 respects ; unless he had been, as sometimes happened, over- 
 fatigued ; the mind would then foil to control the body, and he 
 would sink into heavy slumbers. However, this watch was 
 numerically stronger than the others, since it included Lion ; 
 and, as the dog never slept when his master did, there was no 
 loss of vigilance involved. Mary Anne had kindled in the 
 simple mind of Kitty Armstrong some little taste for astronomy ; 
 and the two would emerge from the Castle when all was silent 
 to tell over and watch the constellations. Kitty would soon 
 weary, however, even with the most interesting of teachers, and 
 she would often fall asleep by the camp-fire. Occasionally, 
 Seth Armstrong, anxious for the safety of his flock, would turn 
 out from his comfortable berth and take a survey of the state 
 of things; but as he liked Kitty to "get all the learniu she 
 could," and saw no harm "so long as the gals was together," 
 he never objected to these midnight gatherings. 
 
 It was on such an occasion, and on a night like that which 
 followed the merriment described in the last chapter, that 
 Hugh Gifford told Mary Anne something of his early life. 
 
 They had been speaking of the motives which had led the 
 little company to brave the toils and dangers of their present 
 journey. 
 
 The father would rather be with his family, the mother will 
 not be separated from her son ; the son alone avows his real 
 object, which is, after all, the object of all,- gold. They have 
 nothing else to care for, nothing else to hope for. It is what 
 the children have heard of all their lives as the sole end and 
 goal of existence. The yeoman wants it, the backwoodsman 
 wants it, the trader wants it, the very half-wit here wants it, as 
 his poor childish talk, continually dwelling on the subject, 
 proves." 
 
 " And do not you, too, want it ?" asked Mary Anne gravely. 
 
 "I? More than all the others. What am I without it? 
 Nothing. What, in this land, can I be with it ? Everything." 
 
 " I am sony." 
 
 "Sorry?" 
 
 "I should have hoped you had some nobler thought for your 
 future ; some purer ambition, some higher aspiration." 
 
 " Why go to California, but for gold?" 
 
 " Ah, but only as a means to an end. Xot for its own sordid 
 sake, but to enable you to do good. To relieve undeserved 
 suffering by making some forlorn ones happy. To help obscure 
 merit onward and upward in its struggle to rise above the world, 
 which might otherwise scorn and trample upon it. Is there not 
 
28 
 
 OR, 
 
 more pleasure in .this than in mere wealth for its own sake?" 
 
 Perhaps. I think I should like to do good. But one must 
 first have the means. It is idle to speculate on the possible 
 good a man might do while he continues without them." 
 
 "You have pardon me you have suffered much from the 
 want of money perhaps c ?" 
 
 " Yes and no. Others have been poorer than I ; plenty, no 
 doubt, more deserving. But I doubt that many have felt poverty 
 more keenly ; have craved so much for wealth, not caring a 
 straw for the luxury it would buy,, but to escape the scorn of 
 the vulgar and ignoble whose presence I could not escape ; the 
 low and mean, who hated me because they thought me educated 
 without being rich, and who sneered at the idea of a pauper 
 being proud." 
 
 " But you came from Massachusetts, the State which spends 
 so much money for free schools ; the State which of all others 
 should hold education and brains in the highest esteem ; the 
 State where money as compared with intelligence should carry 
 lowest honor." 
 
 " It may be so in theory ; I only know what it is in practice. 
 I only know that from the schools themselves where the rich 
 men s sons lord it in pitying scorn over their poorer mates to 
 the churches and courts, and marts of trade, gold is the measure 
 of each man s standing, reputation, influence. Is this unnatural? 
 It is such a measure for the simplest of reasons, because there is 
 no other." 
 
 "I have read much of social life in New England, and what 
 I have read scarcely consists with what you say. Has not your 
 case been a peculiar one ? Have you not begn if you will let 
 me say so have you not been too sensitive ?" 
 
 "Possibly! You shall judge. I thank Heaven that for a 
 time, at least, I have left New England behind me. There may 
 be society there more elevated a moral atmosphere more 
 genial than I have any knowledge of. My own experience 
 stamps the first as narrow, selfish and conceited the second as 
 inconceivably grovelling and sordid. I will tell you something 
 of that experience, although I fear it has little to interest you. 
 I will tell you because you may find in it something to palliate 
 views and feelings which may strike you, perhaps, as warped 
 and cynical." 
 
 " No ! I only think you are angry now, because no doubt 
 you have been badly treated. You must know I am rather 
 prejudiced. I ha,ve for years regarded Ne\v England as a sort 
 of haven of justice for all kinds and conditions of men ; a place 
 
THE QUEST FOTC FORTUNE. 29 
 
 where none could go without being valued, trusted, and 
 rewarded for what they are ; and that, without regard to the 
 smiles or frowns of all the world beside." 
 
 " New England and its people have great merits, no doubt. 
 There are numbers, without question, who can justly and grace 
 fully sound her praises from the depths of their own knowledge, 
 from the sincerity of their own gratitude. I cannot. True, mine 
 may be a rare, an exceptional case ; but such as it is, you shall 
 hear its history." 
 
 He rose as he spoke, and taking his rifle made one of those 
 swift circuits of the sleeping camp which it was part of the duty 
 of those on watch now and again to perform. In a few 
 moments he returned. 
 
 I have so rarely put confidence in any one," he said rather 
 diffidently, as he resumed his seat by the girl s side, "that it 
 conies awkwardly enough to relate my own poor adventures. 
 You will make large allowance, I am sure, for the want of grace 
 or lluency in the narrative." 
 
 Mary Anne bowed in assent, and as she did so, one or two 
 of the burning logs of the camp fire fell in and the flames shot 
 up with a ruddier glow ; and if Hugh Gifford had been looking 
 as closely as most men would have looked at the lovely lace 
 beside him, he might have seen, or fancied, a warmer interest than 
 that mere assent implied. He went on with his story : 
 
 " My father was an Englishman, who left his native land early 
 in life. Why he did so, and why in doing so he chose America 
 for a home, I never knew. When he died, I was still to young 
 to have been told of such things ; and afterwards, if any about 
 knew of them, none took the trouble to en^ghten me. My 
 lather was unfortunate, very. Perhaps I ought to say that his 
 own weaknesses were the active causes of his misfortunes ; but 
 I do not like to say that, for none knew what he may have 
 suffered in Ins youth, and miserable detractors said it too often, 
 who were unworthy to tie his shoes. He was a gentleman. I 
 know. A gentleman by birth, by breeding, by education. If 
 this fact had happily been unknown to my early associates, my 
 life might have been -the pleasanter. 
 
 My father married, too, in this country. The marriage was 
 not a happy one Over this I would also draw a veil, so far as 
 well I may. An Englishman s idea of the duty of a wife, and 
 an American woman s of that of a husband might easily clash, 
 as those experienced in both perfectly well know. Still they 
 might have agreed and been happy, had they been left to 
 themselves. She was a pure-minded and conscientious woman, 
 
30 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 and, albeit he gave her much cause for complaint, she- "would 
 have gained an influence which might, have softened and con 
 trolled his foibles and laid the basis for a happy future. She 
 was very young at the time of their marriage, and her character 
 had scarcely had time to mature. When it might have done so, 
 with results all-important to the whole lives of both my parents 
 and that of their child, my mother s brothers interfered, and 
 sowed the seeds of incurable dissension between herself and her 
 husband. They took advantage of my father s temporary absence 
 i an absence unfortunately connected with his besetting weak 
 ness to poison her mind against him. They persuaded her to 
 return a letter reversed, and otherwise unanswered, which he 
 had sent her. The expedient- succeeded, and my father and 
 mother, in this world at least, never met again. 
 
 " These men, the brothers, thought they were doing their 
 sister a service. As to my father, they were utterly incapable 
 of understanding or appreciating him. They were men in busi 
 ness, not exactly tradesmen, but a step or tw T o above it; and 
 with true New England feeling they conceived that their regu 
 lar attention to daily routine, and their smug companionship 
 with other common-place money-grubbers like themselves, en 
 dowed them with a worldly status far above that of my father, 
 who was poor, irregular in his habits, and a gentleman. 
 While they thought they were doing their sister a service, they 
 were not sorry for an opportunity to humiliate a man they had 
 never quite understood, but had always somewhat feared. He 
 possessed accomplishments which they at once envied and 
 disliked. He had .personal courage and artistic tastes, which 
 they pretended to despise or to consider affected ; but which, in 
 reality, they knew to be the badges and signs of a superior 
 nature to their own, the marks of blood which no prosperity 
 could have emphasized, any more than any misfortune or even 
 vice could altogether obliterate." 
 
 "I know the kind of man you mean," said Mary Anne, 
 softly. 
 
 "These men were vindictive, too, as well as short-sighted 
 and cowardly. When my father married, although not rich, he 
 was affluent as compared with them. They were young in the 
 world, needy, almost friendless, almost homeless. lie took 
 them by the hand, aided them to the utmost of his power, en 
 couraged, advanced, stood by them. They were of the true 
 reptile breed, and they never forgave him. They got on and 
 prospered, as the little world went in which they moved, and at 
 the same time my father had been going downward. His faults 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 31 
 
 were patent enough, but they-were not the men to school him 
 on them. They attempted to do so, however, and they never 
 pardoned the rebuke which they had thus provoked. 
 
 " Therefore, when they had contrived to bring about a rup 
 ture between my father and mother ; when they had managed 
 to put asunder those whom God had joined together; they went 
 about with busy lies and innuendoes and prevarications, to the 
 end that public opinion might trample my father still deeper 
 into the mire, and that my mother, well plied with their accounts 
 of his misconduct during the term of their separation, should 
 learn to regard as final and insuperable the barrier they had 
 erected between herself and her husband. It became so ; the 
 efforts of a few kindlier hearts, who remembered the brightness 
 nnd promise of the early days of their marriage, for they were 
 both very handsome and attractive people, never surmounted it. 
 
 "But New England is very observant and sharp-tongued 
 whenever, from whatever cause, any suspension occurs of ordi 
 nary marital relations. If man and wife must perforce separate, 
 they had best keep out of the territory of the Pilgrims. My 
 mother was too proud to explain, to remonstrate, or to propi 
 tiate, and she was neither rich enough nor strong enough to 
 brave the world s opinion. Her position grew more equivocal 
 and more difficult as time wore on. Then her brothers, who 
 had young families growing up, were thriving in their callings, 
 and were full of social ambition, treated her with more and 
 more distance and coldness. Finally, the slender thread snapped 
 altogether, and they never met at all. Thus my poor mother 
 was deserted by the kindred who had brought about her great 
 est misfortune in life. She lingered on for a few years and died. 
 Sonic people called her mortal illness by one name, and some 
 by another; but she died of a broken heart." 
 
 "And your father?" 
 
 " He, too, died ; it was a year before her, and the circum 
 stances were very painful. His death, no doubt, accelerated her 
 own. Meanwhile, I had been sent to various schools. I was 
 ten years old at the time of the separation, and for some time 
 after was left in my mother s unmolested charge. She did all 
 she could for me, nay, more than with her slender means she 
 was justified in doing ; but, as I said before, she was conscien 
 tious, and would do more rather than less than her duty. After 
 my eleventh birthday there was some painful litigation, and it 
 resulted in my going to my father ; but neither he nor uiy 
 mother lived until my twelfth." 
 
 "You were, then, left an orphan?" 
 
32 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Yes ; one of my mother s brothers, the one who had per 
 haps most heart of the three, sent me to a boarding-school, and 
 afterwards to another and another. I was miserable in all ; yet 
 I know not that he could have done better for me. The boys 
 always found out by some inexplicable, but never-lacking in 
 stinct, that there was something wrong in my family matters. 
 And they were worthy soils of their New England sires, for 
 they made me feel it more bitterly than if it had arisen through 
 some crime of my own. They also discovered, by more ob 
 vious means, that I was very poor a sin even worse than the 
 other. The first reproach might readily have been condoned, 
 had the conditions of the second been reversed, but the two to 
 gether were inexpiable. They shunned me, pointed at me be 
 tween their malignant whispers, wrote bitter taunts in fly 
 leaves of my school books which fell into their hands. I don t 
 know that they ever analyzed their opinions, but if they did they 
 resolved them down to the firm basis that a boy whose parents 
 lived apart, and who at the same time had no money, ought 
 not, as a matter of propriety, to be allowed to live ; and, God 
 knows, if they entertained such a conviction, I shared it with 
 them. . 
 
 "I had few companions, and hardly ever joined in the usual 
 boyish sports. I would not obtrude myself, and I was rarely 
 invited. Those of my schoolmates who were better off by far 
 the larger number seemed to despise me, and, at all events, 
 they avoided me as if I were a Pariah. The very few who were 
 even humbler than myself, or younger, or more ignorant, usually 
 discovered that I was the son of an Englishman, and cherished a 
 prejudice on that account. I believe they thought my father 
 had some mysterious connection with Greville s wickedness, or 
 had had a hand in the preparation of the Stamp Act. Nearly 
 all these boys were mean and acquisitive ; they were shop 
 keepers and money-grubbers in embryo. They swapped knives, 
 gambled for marbles, and were continually over-reaching each 
 other in juvenile speculations, thus actively preparing for the 
 business of life. They had all the greed, the narrowness, the 
 sectarian pride, and exclusiveness of their progenitors, in 
 little ; you will not wonder that I liked them no better than 
 they liked me. 
 
 " I was the son of an Englishman, and few transplanted 
 trees will thrive. From my earliest youth I found, irrespective 
 of human beings and their peculiarities, much to displease me 
 and rouse my aversion in surrounding objects and in natural 
 vicissitudes. I disliked the burning heat of the summers, and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 33 
 
 the piercing, dismal cold of the winters. I disliked the square, 
 white-painted, wooden houses which covered .the hillsides and 
 villages, with the treeless wastes which surrounded, and the 
 mathematically straight roads which led to them. I disliked 
 the unmeaning, fragile meeting-houses, with their monotonous 
 spires, their canting preachers, and the innumerable and inde 
 scribable sectarians, their congregations. I yearned for the soft, 
 moist-tempered clime of the olden home, with its winding green 
 lanes, its masses of comfortable foliage, its stout -built little cot 
 tages all covered with thatch and running vines, its dear crum 
 bling old churches, all reverend and gray with time, and rich 
 with stores of ivy which had taken so long to grow. Was 
 there necessarily an inseparable bond between unlimited free 
 dom and unlimited ugliness ? Must forest trees always be 
 destroyed in republics, and where universal suffrage is must the 
 streets of cities be like chess-boards ?" 
 
 u You speak of the accidental peculiarities of a new country, 
 not of those of a republic. What you craved conies as the work 
 ot time, and not of kings. The republics of Greece and Rome 
 left temples and high places glorious and venerable enough." 
 
 Yes ; but I was a boy then, and naturally associated politi 
 cal conditions with their repellent- accompaniments; and still, 
 now that I am a man, I find that mental peculiarities present 
 many analogies to physical ones. I find now, as I found then, 
 that the processes which sweep away nobility, national religion, 
 class privileges, whatever their advantage, bring no substitutes 
 as yet for the incentives they displace. It may be untrue that 
 extension of suffrage makes the popular choice of little value, 
 but I know that abrogation of the things I name has practically 
 left no spur for ambition save the hope of wealth. Wherever 
 I turned in my boyhood I saw nothing else. I saw that if I 
 would hold any position in the world, wield any power, be suc 
 cessful in love anything I must first of all get money." 
 
 " Be successful in love "?" repeated Mary Anne. 
 
 " Yes. I am coining to the end of my sad, and I fear dull, 
 tale. As you have seen, my childhood was lonely and loveless ; 
 my youth was sadlier still, for, as I grew older, I felt even more 
 keenly the slurs that were cast upon my station and my origin. 
 Books were almost my only companions. To this, when I had 
 reached the age of sixteen, there came one particular exception. I 
 had been placed in a country attorney s office to read law. A small 
 sum left by my poor father sufficed to pay for my schooling, and 
 to give me this little start in the world scarcely more. I was, 
 therefore, happily spared what would have been inexpressibly 
 
34 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 odious the being under pecuniary obligation to my uncle. My 
 solicitude was probably misplaced ; for I have since reflected 
 that, had this small sum not existed, he would have thrust me 
 forth long before to shift for myself. In this attorney s office I 
 found a young man, one of the few generous natures I have 
 ever encountered. He was the son of a well-to-do farmer, of 
 Lenox, in Berkshire county. In our vacation he invited me to 
 visit his father s house. I accepted, and there for the first time 
 met his sister. She was very beautiful, and her name was Vir 
 ginia," 
 
 " Was she fair or dark? " 
 
 " Fair, very fair. With hair of gold and skin of pearl. She 
 had one charm rare in a New England girl a low, musical 
 voice ; and another not so rare, a sweetly-winning smile. I 
 won t weary you with a conventional love story. We found 
 much to like in each other; for her, none could help being 
 attracted by her, and I suppose I was fascinated into taking 
 great pains to conceal my faults. My visit was repeated again 
 and again, and at last, with her acquiescence, I asked Mr. Chester 
 to sanction our engagement. He listened with kindness, and 
 I thought regarded my suit with favor. When I had concluded, 
 however, he seemed embarrassed, and after a pause tsaid : 
 
 ; " I like ye very much, Mr. Gilford, and so does John, arid so, 
 I expect, does Virginia ; but you see there s been a good deal 
 o talk your folks, you know, was that is, you know your 
 father was 
 
 " My father was a gentleman, Mr. Chester. 
 
 " I don t know anything about that ; but how much money did 
 he leave ye? 
 
 11 I was forced to confess that, at the end of my probation in 
 the lawyer s office, I should not have more than a couple of 
 hundred dollars left. Mr Chester s countenance fell. He 
 went on : 
 
 " I woudn t a cared so much bout your folks, you know ; 
 though it s a pity and your father, you know not but that I ve 
 heerd he was a nice man only folks will talk but if he hain t 
 left ye no money, what d ye calculate to git married on ? 
 
 " I explained that it was my hope, after being admitted to the 
 bar, to obtain an income through the practice of my profession. 
 
 " Ah, that s dreadful uncertain, ain t it? When I put John 
 in Squire Tarbox s office he told me right out that a young man 
 was nt likely to git more the fust five year than he d git by 
 goin huckleberry in , aad John s arrangements was made 
 accordingly. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 35 
 
 " This was a dark prospect, and I knew what the farmer said 
 was true. I was not or rather had not been without the 
 usual dreams of boyhood, wherein we see ourselves achieving 
 wonders altogether out of the common way. But I knew that 
 even if uncommon obstacles did not lie in my path which, how 
 ever, they always did the average chances at the New England 
 country bar had not been too sombrely painted. I resolved to 
 go to Boston. There a wider field presented itself, and prefer 
 ment might come faster. - Mr. Chester seemed pleased with my 
 resolution and encouraged it. 
 
 If ye go to Boston ye may git better chances certainly ; and 
 I ll tell ye Vhat I ll do. YouVe got a year longer to read 
 before you re admitted ? Well, if you come to me in three years 
 time, and show me three thousand dollars that s jest the amount 
 of a mo gage lyhr on this n ere farm all your own money,mind 
 I dunno as I ll oppose things between you and. Virginia. But 
 if this is agreed, I won t have nothiir gin out about engagements 
 in the mean time. 
 
 " Upon this basis our bargain was struck. Within the year, I 
 passed, and went to Boston. I struggled hard, read early and 
 late, tasked my energies and my ingenuity to the last degree to 
 fight upward. But it was all in vain. No one seemed to wi-h 
 to employ me. I had no friends, no influence. My uncles, who 
 might have assisted me, kept aloof. They even . went further, 
 and. as I have since heard, secretly disparaged my capacity 
 and my character. Their vengeance on my father was not yet 
 appeased. The three years passed and I was poorer than ever. 
 Just then the news came of the discovery of the gold in Cali 
 fornia, and I at once determined to make my way thither. I 
 went into Berkshire, explained my position and my new deter 
 mination, and, with some difficulty, arranged with Mr. Chester 
 for a probation of two years more." 
 
 " And does she Virginia love you ?" 
 
 " She has often told me so." 
 
 " You will correspond ?" 
 
 " I am to find letters from her on our arrival." 
 
 Such was the story of Hugh Gifforcl. and such was the manner 
 in which it was communicated to Maiy Anne. She accepted it 
 as the record of a highly sensitive nature grown morbid through 
 the stress of a false position and thwarted sensibilities. His 
 yearnings for the life and scenery of the old worn-out land across 
 the sea were the reflexes of much reading ; growths sown in 
 discontent and stimulated by the want of sympathy with those 
 around him. His strong desire for gold was, to her, something 
 
36 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR. 
 
 repugnant and unnatural, and doubtless it lowered him somewhat 
 in her esteem. On the other hand, there was that in his iso 
 lation, his delicacy, and his apparent need of sympathy, which 
 constantly attracted her. Whether or not she had gone so far 
 as to allow her feelings to become . seriously interested in the 
 young man we need not pause to inquire ; but it is certain that 
 the announcement of his engagement gave Mary Anne a sudden 
 shock, an unexpected pang. Hugh Gilford was one of the last 
 men of whom you would think to hear it said that he was en 
 gaged to be married ; and yet you would have been puzzled, as 
 Mary Anne was, to explain the reason why. After a while you 
 might come to the conclusion, as she did, that there was so 
 much self-restraint, so much reticence in his character, as to 
 make it improbable that he would ever go so far with any woman 
 as to say that he loved her. This sort of man is very generally 
 misunderstood, and almost always misleads those who seek to 
 fathom him. He is like a mill pond, which the higher and closer 
 the dam the more sweeping and abundant is the flood it pours 
 forth when the barrier is once overleaped. 
 
 Whatever the girl s sentiments might have bocome, whatever 
 seeds might have found lodgment in her breast capable of quick 
 ening into blossoms, this name of Virginia had been a spell, if 
 not to freeze and destroy, at least to thrust them away far from 
 the light into her heart s innermost recesses. If any observer 
 could have suspected her feelings before, they should never 
 have grounds for suspicion hereafter. Every avenue was guard 
 ed henceforth with trusty sentinels of maidenly reserve. Mary 
 Anne and Gilford were good friends for the future, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 In the capacity of friends then, they had many a discussion 
 and, perhaps, some useful interchange of thought. It has been 
 seen that Mary Anne s opinions of New England had been as 
 sailed, not to say outraged, by the tale which she had heard. 
 Ever since she had learned to read, New England, and especially 
 Massachusetts, had been cherished in her convictions as the 
 happiest and justest of communities; the Utopia where, if ever 
 social and political justice had existed on earth, they could 
 be sought and found. In New England was labor respected, 
 intellect cherished, virtue canonized, gray hairs reverenced. In 
 New England was truth discovered, thought unshackled, merit 
 sought out with diligence and crowned with honor. In New 
 England was the place of sanctuary, the refuge of the oppressed, 
 the cradle of liberty ! 
 
 To her, Boston was more than Mecca to a true believer, and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 37 
 
 Faneuil Hall greater than the Holy Temple. And was this 
 hallowed country, this vaunted intellectual and moral paradise, 
 this exemplar among the nations, no more than the home of a 
 vulgar and base-minded plutocracy? The lair of a crew of 
 idolaters setting up a worship more ignoble and more sordid than 
 that of the veriest slaves who ever crawled to thrust then* necks 
 under the foot of a tyrant ? They were in fine condition truly, 
 these republicans, to despise the subjects of kings ! There 
 might be something at least of dignity in such a potentate 
 ancient lineage, the association of a magical name with heroic 
 deeds of the past, long-time consent, and reverence of ancestors ; 
 but what could there be about this wretched parvenu, this mon 
 arch of yellow earth, that the children of the Puritans should 
 fall down and worship him ! 
 
 Alas, alas I that the purest and most aspiring should be little 
 abler than the meanest to shake off burthens, to shiver the yoke 
 of oppressors, without taking on of themselves yokes and bur 
 thens of different but no nobler species, in the room of those 
 they have bled and died to break and to destroy ! 
 
 After all, what right had Hugh Gifford to speak thus of his 
 home, of the land which gave him birth ? His views were un 
 just, distorted, seen with a jaundiced eye ; for by his own con 
 fession he was disappointed, nay, disgusted with his lot. Her 
 own estimate of New England might be the truer one yet ; and 
 still had he not lived there all the days of his life, and she % not 
 one ? Was he hot better fitted to form a judgment, to express a 
 censure ? Perhaps; but then again she remembered how lov 
 ingly he had spoken of Old England of her green fields and 
 hoaiy ruins, her placid streams and happy rural homes of the 
 order and comfort of her society, where all were by the law 
 equally protected, whether living in haughty castles or in those 
 lowly, comfortable cottages. What did he know of the Old 
 England more than she knew of the Xew ? He had never been 
 in the one any more than she had been in the other. And she 
 she could tell a bitterer tale of wrong and oppression than had 
 ever fallen to his lot ; had greater cause to magnify the beauty of 
 a distant picture by comparison with the poverty or discomfort 
 of that which is near. Evidently they had the same disposition, 
 how different soever their natures otherwise might be the dis 
 position which comforts and gilds so much of life in this iron 
 world of ours, to idealize the unknown. 
 
38 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THERE was that about Mary Anne to more than justify even 
 the extravagant admiration of Luke Armstrong. She was a 
 woman, indeed, who would have attracted more attention in a 
 London ball-room than on a western prairie ; since where nature 
 is most unchecked and luxuriant we look for physical types to 
 correspond as matters of course. You might have thought, in 
 regarding her, of Diana and Juno ; but you would have been 
 sure to feel, a moment after, that there was too much womanli 
 ness about the girl to vindicate her comparison with cither. 
 There was an ease and freedom about her carriage which, for 
 some inexplicable reason, is uncommon w r ith American women : 
 for, although the European organization, being transplanted, does 
 unquestionably acquire, sooner or later, certain aboriginal charac 
 teristics, the particular ones of grace and dignity in movement 
 and bearing, so marked in the American savage, are not repro 
 duced in his civilized successor. 
 
 Perhaps Mary Anne was the gainer in grace through being 
 untrammelled with unsightly crinoline ; yet, as this was an im 
 munity she enjoyed in common with the Armstrongs, mother 
 and daughter, as also with the unsophisticated Bridget, neither 
 of whom walked or stood like her, it was clearly nature and not 
 art which was to be credited for the advantage. Her limbs, not 
 being confined in an iron cage then, moved with freedom, and 
 answered the purpose for which they were made, without any 
 suggestion of indelicacy, such as the admirers and promoters of 
 iron cages are fond of detecting in their absence. The girl was 
 unconventional in another respect ; for her massive black locks 
 were neither frizzled nor padded, nor strained backwards with 
 that Chinese arid eye-torturing effect sometime popular with the 
 experts of fashion. Her forehead was high, but the hair grew 
 low, so low as to be almost a defect, and was parted straight 
 across the brows. The eyebrows and lashes were, like the hair, 
 of a jetty black ; the latter would have seemed, when the eyes 
 were closed, superfluously lengthy and sweeping ; but when they 
 opened, the eyes were found large enough to justify such abun 
 dant curtains. The nose was straight, the lips perfect, and the 
 teeth dazzlingly white. If the face had a fault, it was that the 
 chin was a trifle too large ; it expressed, perhaps, too much will 
 to be in strict harmony with the rest of the features. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 39 
 
 As we have seen, she wore a gown of plain worsted stuff, 
 which fitted closely to a figure whose comeliness left nothing to 
 desire. The hands and leet, without being remarkably small, 
 were beautifully shaped ; and although the latter might have ap 
 peared to better advantage than in their deerskin moccasins with 
 sole of elk, which were Vound best for general purposes on the 
 prairie, and the former had become somewhat browned by the 
 sun. their natural symmetry could not be altogether concealed. 
 
 The inner nature* of this young woman was well expressed in 
 her physical development. So far as enthusiasm, ardency, 
 strength of the inclinations, warmth of the attachments may go, 
 she was a true child of the South. With less heart she might 
 have been cruel, and might still be revengeful : with less intel 
 lect she might have been passionate and voluptuous. But hap 
 pily the elements were tolerably well balanced, and whatever 
 might lie below the surface, there was enough above it to make 
 Mary Anne dangerously attractive. 
 
 It was not surprising, then, that Luke Armstrong should be 
 attracted ; but it certainly seemed remarkable that Hugh Gilford 
 was not. So much so, in truth, to Luke himself, that he lost all 
 sense of jealousy, knowing as he did that the pair were much to 
 gether, when he thought of it. 
 
 Two beings could scarcely have been more opposite than the 
 southern girl and the young New Euglander. He was slight, 
 not tall, but deep-chested and strongly built, with short, light 
 hair, tending to curl, Saxon-looking eyes and complexion, and a 
 rather firmly set mouth and chin. He presented few, if any. of 
 the national traits, which require, as a rule, more than one gener 
 ation to bring forth, and his speech had none of the twang com 
 mon in his section. This deficiency, by no means regarded as 
 meet for congratulation, was imputed by Dick Railes. Jabe Fitch, 
 and their fellows, to what they termed u too much scholarin . " 
 
 If there had been nothing approaching to flirtation, however, 
 bet^ een these young people, there grew up a great deal of 
 friendly and sympathetic intercourse; and although the news 
 of Hugh s engagement might have been unwelcome to her, 
 there was nothing in Mary Anne s subsequent manner which 
 could be perceptibly traced to such a feeling. She was not 
 quite as ready afterwards, perhaps, to speak of her own child 
 hood, albeit she had promised to do so in the way of reciprocity 
 when Hugh had described his own ; but she would not break 
 her word, and, after being once or twice reminded, she pro 
 ceeded to fulfil it. 
 
 My story is very brief," she said, "and has little, I fear, to 
 
40 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 interest, because, until within the twelvemonth- passed, it has 
 contained so little of pain. The first sights I can remember are 
 those of warm colors, loving faces, and rich scenery, of boun- 
 teousness and affluence both within and without. The first 
 sounds are those of voices melodious with affection, of brilliant 
 music tastefully played, of the songs of birds, and the pleasant 
 murmurs of brooks which ran through our plantation to swell the 
 Mississippi. The first odors are those of roses, of orange- 
 blossoms, and magnolias. Those were dear days, and I was 
 very very happy." 
 
 "How can you be drawn toward our bleak, sterile New Eng 
 land, if your happiness sprang from associations such as these?" 
 
 "These are mere gratifications of the senses, are they not? 
 They may be pleasant in reminding us of those we loved, who 
 were with us when surrounded by them. New England I have 
 honored for something which, with all its blessings and delights, 
 was not to be found in my early home. As a child I did not 
 miss it, and these sights, and sounds, and odors, are always 
 with me when I think of those who were inexpressibly dear. 
 My father almost idolized -me. There was nothing that money 
 could buy, nothing that anxious affection could desire, which was 
 wanting to minister to my health, my enjoyments, my educa 
 tion." 
 
 "Ah, you had always wealth, then?" said Hugh, thoughtfully. 
 
 "Always. I thought to be very unhappy now, but one of the 
 comforts the consolations seems to me to be without it." 
 
 The young man shook his head incredulously. 
 
 "It is quite natural you should not think so ; perhaps you may 
 hereafter. We had a plantation near the great river, and here 
 we passed the summers ; summers full of light and joy ; with 
 pleasant friends and choicest books ; with charming drives and 
 lovely views. There could not well be a happier life than mine 
 was then, and I remember my fondest wish was that it should 
 remain so always. I was not sent to school like the daughters 
 of neighboring planters, so I did not see many of them ; and, in 
 deed, most of our friends came from a distance ; but I had pri 
 vate teachers, for my father washed me to be accomplished, and 
 would spare neither money nor pains to that end. In the winters 
 we went to New Orleans, my father and a sister of his, to whom 
 we were both much attached, and I. We always took the same 
 servants, and our house was always ready for us in town. There 
 we had the opera I was passionately fond of the opera, and 
 races, and parties, and sometimes balls, though my father was 
 particular where I went, and on such occasions insisted on his 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 41 
 
 sister as well as himself being one of the party. This, of course, 
 was when I grew up I mean five years ago I am one-and- 
 twenty now." 
 
 "These people we are with must be strangely offensive I 
 mean very distasteful to you." 
 
 "No; they are very good and kind. It is not their fault that 
 they have never been in society, or spent money on accomplish 
 ments, or learned to speak quite correctly. They are a little 
 brusque sometimes, but I know they mean no harm, and so it 
 does not give me pain. I have been used to ignorant people 
 with good hearts all my life, and never learned to despise them. 
 Besides, they have given me a sanctuary a refuge " 
 
 "A refuge?" 
 
 "Yes; I shall come to that soon. As I have said, I was very 
 happy. My teachers were carefully selected, and I had none of 
 the misfortunes in the shape of malignant or ill-taught nurses or 
 others having control of my infancy, which, as I have read, often 
 warp the nature of children, and inflict irreparable injury. I had 
 a happy childhood, and the best of fathers." 
 
 "And your mother?" 
 
 A flush came up into the giiTs face, but the camp fire was not 
 bright enough at the moment for Hugh Giffbrd to see it. 
 
 "I never remember seeing her; she died when I was very 
 very young, and those about me never spoke of her." 
 
 "She died abroad, perhaps?" 
 
 "No, not abroad; but it was long after her death before I was 
 old enough to understand such things, and by that time those 
 about me had, I suppose, forgotten it." 
 
 "And your father did he never speak of her?" 
 
 "Sometimes, when we were alone together; but I had rather 
 not speak more of her just now, please." 
 
 "Pray forgive me ; had I thought the subject was painful " 
 
 "No, no $ it is not, at least it should not be. Besides, I have 
 no right to reserve my confidence after you have given me 
 yours." 
 
 Nay. I exact no such literal recompense. I questioned be 
 cause I surmised that your own, like my dear mother, might have 
 been unhappy." 
 
 " Alas, I fear she was, very, very unhappy." 
 
 " But let us speak no more of that ; go on about yourself." 
 
 " You will understand that life was so blight and beautiful all 
 around me, that my thoughts never dwelt upon things that were 
 sad. You have seen song-birds carolling and frolicking among 
 the flowers when everything about them is bathed in warm, 
 
42 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 genial sunshine when their needs and their pleasures are lavishly 
 supplied without labor or care; when their thoughts are farthest 
 from the damp, dusky night, and they make no provision for 
 the pinching winter? The night must come in its due course, 
 the winter must be felt in its season, but they, the gay and 
 thoughtless ones, have no heed for the one or the other. So was 
 it with me through all my early life. My father s care prepared 
 me for everything except to meet adversity." 
 
 " He hoped to shield you always from it." 
 
 "Doubtless ; and for me, I never dreamed that such hopes are 
 never realized. Perhaps, too, his views had more than usually 
 exists to justify them. We were rich ; and it was probable that we 
 should always so remain." 
 
 " There was much to warrant hope in that." 
 
 "Ah, you think so much of money; and yet, after all, what 
 did it do for me ?" 
 
 "Everything, I should say, from your story so far, or next to 
 everything. Does not all the happiness which surrounded you, 
 the luxury which lapped your childhood, the pleasures which 
 gilded your youth, the travel which enlarged, the tuition which 
 instructed your understanding, did not these all depend upon the 
 possession of wealth ?" 
 
 " They did ; and yet perchance I had been happier if the wealth 
 had never been if I had been bora as poor as I now am, and am 
 likely to be for the future." 
 
 Hugh looked at her with his incredulous smile. "How easy 
 it is to talk of the nothingness of riches, of the luxury of honest 
 poverty ! How much we hear of it in our pulpits ; how much 
 we read of it in our newspapers ! Turn where we will, we are 
 confronted with endless babble of the dignity of labor, of honest 
 toil, of hard-handed industry ! And what is the sum and sub 
 stance of all ? A bubble a most illusory, transparent, and empty 
 bubble ! Why, the preachers and the scribblers who teach this 
 doctrine are the most grasping and avaricious of all ! What do 
 they care for, think of, pray for, whether rising, sitting, walking, 
 or sleeping ? Gold ! golcl nothing but gold ! 
 
 "Gold," murmured Ike, as he lay half asleep, his red head 
 pillowed as usual on Lion s curly back; "Gold," he repeated, 
 "they re all arter it! Hoosier from the backwoods, pedlar from 
 the town, chaps from Old England, chaps from New England, 
 farmer to buy new steers, farmer s wife to buy new chiny. All 
 artcr the gold! nothing but gold!" 
 
 "And yet," said Mary Anne, gently, "and yet it brought me 
 the first suffering of my life, it brought me its greatest crisis of 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 43 
 
 danger and pain ; and when I pray, it is always that wealth, or 
 the love of it, may not make my life for the future altogether 
 wretched." 
 
 "Riddles," said Hugh, or fantasies. The gold is ieal, tan 
 gible, solid." 
 
 "Solid gold," echoed the half-wit; "Ike knows where tis; 
 acres of it, oceans of it, mountains of it! But he won t tell; oh, 
 no ! Twoukl kind o hurt ye and set ye back to git too rich 
 all in a minute I So we ll keep it for ourselves. Lion and me Lion 
 and me." He smoothed and patted the dog s head as if sealing 
 the compact, and Lion looked at his master with a wise, trustful 
 acquiescence in his watchful eyes, as Ike turned heavily over and 
 fell asleep again. 
 
 Xot riddles not fantasies, " continued Mary Anne, but hard, 
 pitiless, realities. It was because we were rich, and because the 
 fame of it went abroad, that the first bitter hours I had ever known 
 came upon me. When I was eighteen, there came on a visit to 
 our country home a gentleman we had met the winter before in 
 New Orlea ns. He was young, rich, gifted, it was said, and be 
 longed to one of the proudest families in Louisiana. My father 
 liked him much, and rather courted his society; urged him, 
 indeed, to pay us this visit with an object that I only afterwards 
 divined. That object you can readily guess." 
 
 " He wished him to become your suitor?" 
 
 "He did; and in truth there was much about him to at 
 tract any woman, especially one so young and inexperienced as 
 I was. My father was wise, too ; he imposed upon me no com 
 mand, scarce even a wish, but I could not help seeing that it was 
 agreeable to him that Mr. Du Solle and I should be much 
 together riding, walking, playing, the various pursuits and 
 amusements of a country life." 
 
 "Mr. Du Solle was handsome ?" 
 
 " He was thought so ; to me he always seemed too dark; he 
 had a Spanish face with glittering teeth; handsome when he 
 smiled, but forbidding and harsh if he frowned. He was agree 
 able enough, however, and evidently took pains to make himself 
 liked. Still, I felt sure from the moment I saw his and my 
 father s aim, I felt sure that I could never love him, and I think 
 he knew it too. But matters went on, as they will in such cases, 
 and it came to be generally bruited about the neighborhood that 
 we were engaged. I often reproach myself with this now. I was 
 cowardly ; had I faced my father s anger and his indignation, had 
 I told him betimes that I could never love that man, the terrible 
 consequences might have been spared. " 
 
44 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "Terrible?" 
 
 "Most terrible, as you will hear. The time came at last when 
 Mr. Du Solle declared himself. He asked me to become his 
 wife. I was forced to be candid then, and I told him the truth. 
 He pleaded, remonstrated, wept. I would change, perhaps. 
 I felt certain that I never should, but was touched by the evident 
 sincerity of his feelings. He acknowledged that the reputation 
 of my father s great wealth had at first attracted him, but pro 
 tested that he now loved me for myself alone. Alas ! for man s 
 duplicity and falsehood I believed him. I could not promise 
 to love him, but I yielded to his passionate entreaty, and agreed 
 to delay a week before giving him a final dismissal. 
 
 "In that week he made a horrible discovery. By what means 
 I knew not then know not even now. I did not even know 
 the nature of the discovery itself, so religiously had the truth 
 been kept from me, until another event more awful still had oc 
 curred as its consequence. One day the third after our inter 
 view I had been riding, attended only by a negro servant, for 
 it had been agreed Mr. Du Solle was not to be my escort during 
 the week of probation. I alighted at the portico fronting the 
 main hall of the house, when, with a face like midnight, he sud 
 denly confronted me. 
 
 " So ! he hissed, rather than said, so you are a party you, 
 with your amiable father to this exquisite conspiracy! 
 
 " Sir, I stammered, outraged and astonished, what con 
 spiracy mean you how dare you ? 
 
 " Oh, spare your pretended amazement, he cried, furious with 
 anger. It is likely that eighteen years should pass, and you, 
 forsooth, be still in ignorance. 
 
 He went on for some moments pouring forth heated abuse of 
 which I cannot now remember a word, but which redoubled my 
 agitation and surprise. 
 
 " Sir, I gasped at last, this is incredible, infamous. Let me 
 pass ; let me go to my father ! 
 
 " Your father! shouted Du Solle, your father! Infamous, 
 dishonored as he is. Let him come to me ! let him answer for 
 his attempt to disgrace me ! The villain ! To seek to entrap 
 me, unawares ; to link my name, my blood, with the daughter of 
 his 
 
 "I heard no more, and no more was said, for my father vras 
 by my side. He struck Du Solle with dreadful rapidity several 
 heavy blows with his fists, and then kicked him down the steps 
 under my horse s feet. What followed I know not, for I fainted. 
 
 "Let mo make as brief as may be the horrible sequel. They 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 45 
 
 fought the next day a protracted and barbarous duel and my 
 father was brought home a corpse. 
 
 Even while I was yet in my agony over this cold clay, my 
 nurse, a mulatto woman, who dearly loved me from my birth, 
 poured into my terror-stricken ears the secret whose disclosure 
 had led to this catastrophe. She showed .me ample proofs of 
 what she would never, never have revealed, as with bitter tears 
 and lamentations she explained, but for a circumstance which 
 made such a step inevitable. J/y j at her had left no icill. His 
 relatives were coming in haste to claim the estate ; and hear it, 
 
 GOD of Heaven ! so far from inheriting my father s wealth I 
 must fly, fly, if I would not, by remaining, add to its sum in my 
 own unhappy person. 
 
 "I did fly. with speed, with secresy, and at night. I had help 
 at first, for every hand on the plantation would have aided me ; 
 but after leaving it there were two days and a half of travel 
 before reaching St. Louis, and I was in constant dread of the 
 telegraph. However, I got to St. Louis in safety. 
 
 "Thus you see that, in my case at least, wealth was not alto 
 gether a blessing, since it had wrought me the greatest possible 
 curse, the most irreparable affliction. You see, too, that how 
 ever they may appear so, the motives are not all alike that impel 
 us to this Western pilgrimage ; for you go for the sake of Gold, 
 
 1 for Liberty!" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUR travellers had crossed the great chain of the Rocky Moun 
 tains upon a line between what is now known as Pike s Peak 
 and the pass called by the early Spanish explorers Sangre de 
 Christo. The little stream whereon they had encamped was in 
 fact one of the mountain sources of the Rio Grande del Norte, 
 a river which, although it has its rise westward of the great 
 chain, finds its way through the pass bearing the same name 
 with itself, and ultimately flows into the Gulf of Mexico, form 
 ing the boundary between the latter country and Texas. The 
 next water they would cross in their progress westward would 
 doubtless be an affluent of the Colorado, which empties into 
 the Gulf of California, and the party could then fairly consider 
 itself on the Pacific slope. 
 
46 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 The general aim had been to make a course as near due 
 west as possible, and their present latitude differed but little 
 from that of St. Louis, their point of departure. In this policy 
 Seth Armstrong had been materially aided by the observations 
 of Dr. Landalc, who, notwithstanding tho scarce concealed con 
 tempt of Dick Railes, was constant in determining their daily 
 position by means of his instruments. The fact that Indians 
 and trappers could find their way without such assistance 
 seemed to the backwoodsman quite conclusive evidence against 
 its utility, but as he could make converts of neither the Doctor 
 nor Seth Armstrong, his conservative objections to science were 
 unheeded. His daily jest that "the Doctor was goin to shoot 
 the sun agin," had little effect, therefore, save upon the sympa 
 thizing intelligence of Nahum Pelter, who, whenever he heard, 
 received it as a criticism of the first water and pungency. 
 Whereupon Luke, whose nature it was to try, as he said, to 
 "make things run easy," would observe deprecatingly that 
 " Dick was a stubborn cuss about the th odolite." 
 
 " Humph," grunted the Doctor. " All ignorance is stubborn, 
 I take it. If Master Railes were made to go through the first 
 four books of Euclid if he once got an idea that the circle 
 means anything beyond the shape of the sun or the end of his 
 powder-horn, he d be pliable enough." 
 
 " He don t like book learnin , he d never take to it." 
 
 " Of course not ; so for him a theodolite will be a gimcrack, 
 and a sextant will be shooting the sun till the end of the chapter." 
 
 "Well, I don t s pose common folks know much more in the 
 old country than they know here." 
 
 " Except to hold their tongues less about most things else. 
 And then- betters are not always so very wise either. There are 
 plenty in England as stupid as your people here, who think when 
 there s a famine over sea which comes of too many mouths, or 
 poor crops, or laziness, or all three, that it s all the fault of that 
 rotten old monarchy and the wicked aristocracy. _ There are 
 plenty there wholl swear by-and-by, when you get into trouble 
 from slavery and too many voting immigrants, that it s all the 
 fault of your republican institutions institutions which, in nine 
 essentials out of ten, are precisely the same as their own. We re 
 all shooting the sun to people who don t know what we re 
 doing." 
 
 "Yes," argued poor Luke, somewhat bewildered, "but we 
 try to remedy that by spreading education so s to teach folks to 
 know what you re doing." 
 
 "Ay, there s good in what you do some good. But there s 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. * 
 
 a deal of harm, too. It doesn t do a republican boy any good 
 in the long run to cram him with lies about monarchies, or vice 
 vena; only the world isn t wise enough yet to find it out. 
 
 11 1 expect ourn s about the best system there is goin ," said 
 Luke, taking refuge in the most current generality he could 
 think of. 
 
 " No doubt it is for you, and it s lucky you think so." 
 
 Such a concession was quite satisfactory to Luke, who would go 
 on his way rejoicing. The Doctor, however, was more waiy in 
 being entrapped into discussion with such stern patriots as Dick 
 Railes or Nahum Pelter, to whom his blunt tenets were not short 
 of flat blasphemy, to be argued to the death in all the stump 
 eloquence they had ever heard of or could master. Still the 
 little circle had become attached and harmonious with the 
 cement of then common cares and hopes ; and perhaps there 
 were none but would separate from each of the others with 
 regret. 
 
 The morning after the halt broke bright and clear, although 
 the sun was tardy in showing himself above the steeps behind 
 them. Long before he did so the camp was a scene of bustling 
 activity ; for, although the halt was nominally for rest and re 
 freshment, there was much to do in the way of comfort and 
 cleanliness, which for the past few weeks had been perforce 
 neglected. Thus, Castle Armstrong was to be cleared out, the 
 remaining packages of provisions to be overhauled and aired, 
 clothes to be washed, rifles and other arms to be cleaned, and a 
 score of minor needs and duties to be attended to during the 
 respite from the march. Half the small stores originally stowed 
 in the provision wagon had now been consumed, and yet when 
 those which were left came to be spread about the ground during 
 the process of scrubbing, it seemed as if it were impossible to get 
 them in again. But Mrs. Armstrong was the possessor of mar 
 vellous ingenuity, and, had her spouse permitted her to bring all 
 she wished with the expedition double the quantity really 
 brought no doubt she would have managed to pack it in the 
 wagons. 
 
 "There was that ere Ike," she complained mournfully to 
 Kitty, as she rigorously supervised the hidden operations of 
 Bridget, in the wagon, whence issued profusion of steam and 
 soapsuds. " There was that ere Ike, and that big heathen. Lion, 
 father would bring them, and yet he d leave behind a most all 
 my chiny. Not but that the poor critter s well enough, and 
 done chores round the form ever since he was a little tow-headed 
 boy, and allus earned his salt, if he is silly, poor thing ; and 
 
48 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 p raps he wouldn t a taken to other folks after all these years, or 
 they might a been harsh with him ; but that ere pesky Lion 
 why, he ll eat more meat in a day than I kin in a week !" 
 
 "But, mother clear, you know Lion lives entirely on the scraps 
 and bones nobody else can touch ; and he s a great protection to 
 the camp ; and he pulled me out of the water once, when my hoop 
 went flyin over the bank, and I went flyin after it ; and you 
 know, mother, poor Ike never could git along without Lion." 
 
 " I know, I know," admitted Mrs. Armstrong, melting quite 
 visibly, "but I might a had my chiny !" 
 
 "And you know, mother, the chiny could nt have walked, 
 or ridden a horse, or taken care of itself like Ike or Lion I" 
 
 " No, nor Ike and Lion would nt a sold in Californy for more n 
 ten times what they cost down to Xenia." 
 
 " And did brave Lion really save your life ?" asked Mary Anne, 
 with interest. 
 
 " I don t know that I can quite say that," answered Kitty, in 
 genuously, " for it might be I shouldn t have been drowned with 
 out him. All I knew was,that I went plump into the river where it 
 was very deep, and I went down- down ever so far, until I was 
 quite sure I should never come up again. Then all at once I 
 seemed to touch bottom, it was all soil and oozy ; and I thought 
 for a little I d like to stay there, and stay I might for all I could 
 help myself. Then I thought I ought to try and cry out, and I 
 did try, but there seemed to be no noise only a bubbling and 
 I felt I must die, for all my breath was gone. Just then a great 
 black thing came bump, bump, against me, for I could see a little 
 in the water the difference between dark and light, anyhow 
 and I felt myself bein dragged up, up, just as fast as before I 
 went down, and we came up to the top of the water with a great 
 jump, and I saw the green trees and the blue sky, and Ike, Avith 
 his red hair all on end, standin close by in a punt, and Lion with 
 his great head next to mine, and then I fainted." 
 
 " Then he really did save you 1 ?" 
 
 " He ought to have the credit of it, anyhoAv ; only as Ike was 
 close to us in a hay-field, and came right off when he heard the 
 splash, and would have saved me, I take it, anyhow, I like to 
 think they both had a hand in it." 
 
 "Poor Ichabod is clear- witted enough sometimes." 
 
 " Bless you, yes ; about most everything, cept believin he s 
 so dreadful rich, you know. Pie always thought that long before 
 we set out to go to California." 
 
 "And you could trust him that is, with the house ; for exam 
 ple, should you wish to go abroad ?" 
 
THE QUEST FOE FOETrST.. 49 
 
 " Oh, yes ; and be safer than with some, for he d neither pilfer 
 nor yet drink whiskey. Jest look at him now. He s got Lion 
 for a romp in the river ; but he knows we re usin it. so you see 
 he goes down stream. I b lievc Lion knows enough for that, as 
 well as Ike, and there s many a Christian would know less." 
 
 During this little colloquy the two young women had, uncon 
 sciously, been serving as a target for the admiring glances of 
 Luke Armstrong and Dick Railes, the former being absorbed in 
 the contemplation of Mary x\nne, and the latter no less interested 
 in the animated Kitty. Dick was cleaning his rifle, or pretend 
 ing to do so, and Luke performing the like office for a fowling- 
 piece. Their attention, however, was suddenly distracted, as 
 Kitty concluded her eulogy, by a quick exclamation from her 
 companion, promptly repeated by the speaker. 
 
 "Why!" cried Kitty. "what s the matter with the dog?" 
 
 Lion had been actively engaged in bringing out sticks and other 
 missiles, which Ike would cast for him into the water : but he 
 had hastily loosed his hold of a huge branch he had been striving 
 to drag from the bottom, and sprung up the bank on the opposite 
 side of the stream. The dog was large too large and too long- 
 limited to be a Newfoundland, although he was popularly reputed 
 to be of that breed ; and, as his huge fuamestood out against the 
 sky, he looked of even gigantic proportions. 
 
 "Lion!" called Ike from his side of the stream. " "What s got 
 into the critter? Here. Lion, Lion!" 
 
 The dog did not turn, but, keeping his nose toward the moun 
 tains, gave a long, low whine. 
 
 "He s pintin at something!" exclaimed Luke. 
 
 "It s a bar!" said Dick Railes, quietly loading his rifle. 
 
 "Ye don t s prose there can be Injuns round, arter all?" asked 
 Seth, in an undertone, as he came up anxiously. 
 
 "I don t b lieve it; unless they might be a few scatterin 
 Utahs, and they wouldn t attack so many as we be." 
 
 "Dear me, lather!" cried Mrs. Armstrong, looking with dis 
 may on her scattered treasures, "if the savages come now, what 
 will become of all the tea and sugar?" 
 
 "Don t be afeard, ma am," said Dick; "the red skins don t 
 kear a pine shavin for them doin s ; whiskey, and backy, and 
 scalps, is what they travel fur!" 
 
 "Father!" questioned Kitty, fearfully, "do you see how Lion 
 keeps on? What do you think* s the trouble with him ?* 
 
 "Why, nothin , Kitty, nothin ," replied Seth, cheerily; "least 
 ways nothin to hurt. An antelope, p raps, in the cover yonder, 
 3 
 
50 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 or a coyote* in the brush on the hillside, or a little brown bar, 
 maybe ; but sartin nothm to hurt." 
 
 Kitty looked pale, and mother, little reassured, made for the 
 Castle, to hurry her handmaid, Bridget, who was peering open- 
 mouthed from the wagon, and telling Mary Anne, who, with a 
 quick presentiment, had made her way inside to help in a swift 
 repacking: "Shure the baste was goin on as if he had the divil 
 (savin your presence) foreninst him." 
 
 "Yc d better git your shootin irons ready, boys," said Na- 
 hum Pelter, coming up and joining the group who were dis 
 cussing ; " it mought be a grizzly, ye know, and I ll allow them 
 bars is dreadful cantankerous if they re hungry and git riled." 
 
 "If it prove to be Indians " began the doctor. 
 
 "Injuns!" laughed the frontiersman derisively; "ye won t 
 ketch no Injuns comin down on ye in a bee* line with the wind, 
 so that a dog with a dull nose like that kin tell ye on t a week 
 beforehand. No ; if it ain t game, nor yit no wild critter, it ll 
 be more white folks travcllin. like ourselves." 
 
 "Anyhow," said Luke Armstrong, "man or beast, we d best 
 be ready for cm. Forewarned is forearmed, they say, and 
 p raps we owe Lion another good turn." 
 
 "Ay, ay," echoed the rest; "loadup s the best word now, 
 and find out what sin the wind arterwards." 
 
 Most of the party had taken advantage of the halt to clean 
 or otherwise overhaul their firearms, so that they were now in 
 good condition for service. For the next few moments little 
 was heard but the snap of locks and rattle of ramrods thrusting 
 home the bullets. 
 
 " Better git the women-folks all into the wagon, Luke," said 
 Seth, breaking the silence. " Two or three on ye, git the cat 
 tle into the corral Fust thing we know there ll be a stampede, 
 maybe. Stop the dog s whinnyin , can t ye, Ike?" he contin 
 ued, calling, though in a suppressed voice, to the latter. 
 
 Ike turned, and, without speaking, signed that the dog had 
 made some discovery on the further side of the creek. 
 
 " Yes, yes, we know ; .but fetch him in ; he can t tell us no 
 more, and as like s not 11 pint us out to some one who don t yit 
 know where we are." 
 
 The dog still stood on the rise of the bank, looming against 
 the sky, and had repeated at intervals his warning whine. All 
 at once he changed this note, however, and gave vent to a 
 hoarse, threatening growl. 
 
 * The wild dog or wolf of the prairies. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 51 
 
 "Fetch him in, Ike, fetch him in, quick, can t ye?" cried 
 Luke, impatiently. 
 
 "Ye d better, said Nahum Pelt er, ominously, "or maybe 
 the stranger 11 git acquainted with him in a way ye won t like." 
 
 " What on airth is it, father?" queried Mrs. Armstrong, ner 
 vously, from her Castle. "Tell us the wust, whatever it is, and 
 we ll stand by to help." 
 
 " We hain t seen ne er a hide nor a hair," answered her hus 
 band ; "but you can stand by, of course, if it s any comfort to ye. 
 The two pieces are locked in the box that fits under my berth, 
 and the bullets and powder, and the key is hangiii on a nail to 
 the left hand side o 1 the winder ; only load kearful, and don t use 
 too much powder." 
 
 It had been agreed that, in the event of attack, the females 
 should form a sort of reserve, loading weapons for the others, or 
 using those in the wagon, according to the nature of the emer 
 gency. In pursuance of this plan they had undergone not a 
 little preliminary practice, and were considered by the men at all 
 events fit to be trusted with arms, however they might use them 
 to advantage in a moment of peril. "That gal, Mary Anne," 
 said the experienced Pelter, when revolving this scheme with 
 the others, "that gal, Mary Anne, : 11 stand fire ; but whether the 
 old woman and her darter will, ye can t tell till ye see em tried." 
 
 While the various preparations were progressing, Ichabod had 
 been striving to induce the excited Lion to descend from his 
 coigne of vantage, and return to his side ; but the dog only re 
 plied to these requests by a deprecating shake of his tail, as if to 
 say that Ike in his position was incapable of forming a just esti 
 mate of the exigencies of the case, and kept his ground. Now 
 there is no doubt that Ike had greater confidence in Lion s sa 
 gacity than he had in that of any other individual of the party ; 
 he would unhesitatingly have deferred to his judgment in any 
 affair wherein conflicting evidence brought about a diversity of 
 opinions ; but the gestures and exhortations of the party grew 
 many and wrathful, and Ike, fearful of the consequences to his 
 favorite, proceeded to wade across the stream to bring him in. 
 The current was swift and -deep, but there was a strong curve 
 fifty yards below, where its bed widened and a bar formed 
 which nearly met the side opposite that whence it sprung. 
 Here the wagons had crossed, and here, by wading through 
 about three feet of water, and taking a jump over a shor L , space 
 which intervened between the shoals, Ike managed to ford the 
 stream. He soon reached the spot where Lion 3till kept up 
 his growl, and seizing him by the collar dragged the unwilling 
 
52 MARIAN EOOKE; OR, 
 
 animal down the bank. Any other than Ike might have found 
 this operation attended with some peril ; but the dog, although 
 sorely discontented, submitted to be led across the stream, and 
 finally made fast with the end of a lariat to one of the wheels 
 of the Castle. 
 
 "Poor old Lion," repeated Ike, while going through this un 
 gracious task, Poor old Lion ! Tells em all about who s comin , 
 so they can git ready for bars or Injuns, and jest gits roped up 
 for his pains! Knows more o what s goin on than any on em 
 long Pelter, or Dick Railes, or Jabe Fitch, or any out o the hull 
 lot ; and they jest strut round all cock-a-hoop with their rifles and 
 bowies, while poor old Lion s corded up like a break-jail! Never 
 mind, Lion, Ike 11 bring ye a good elk-bone, and ye can enjoy 
 yourself if ye are corralled. " And suiting the action to the word, 
 he Bought out a great bone from some secret preserve, and 
 straightway, presented the peace-offering to the captive ; but Lion 
 gave a single grateful wag of his tail, and then, without touching the 
 bone, concentrated his attention on the slope he had just quitted. 
 
 "If it turns out to be a grizzly," observed Nahum Pelter, sen- 
 tentiously, "and he pokes his snout over the rise, three on us had 
 better fire, and the others hold their loads." 
 
 "Right," said Seth; " he might take the creek in a hurry, 
 specially if not much hurt. Nahum, s poseyou, and Mr. Gifford, 
 and Jabe fire; you re all steady shots, and can reload as quick as 
 any, and the rest on us kin stand by for squalls." 
 
 This plan being settled, two of the men were detailed to cross 
 the stream, move down some distance, and "feel" in a manner 
 the enemy s flank on the right, the water being so deep above 
 that nothing could pass it without swimming. These scouts 
 having received their instructions, were just on the point of 
 starting, when a savage cry from Lion again fixed all eyes on 
 the bank opposite. The tall figure of a man, by his dress and 
 hue a genuine denizen of the forest, had suddenly appeared upon 
 its summit. Quick as light the three rifles flew up to the shoulder, 
 and were levelled. 
 
 "Hold!" cried Seth Armstrong. "Don t shoot! We might 
 have a hull tribe about our ears afore the last o the echoes!" 
 
 "Fact," assented Mr. Pelter, reluctantly dropping his piece. 
 "Better find how many there be in the flock, afore shooting the 
 single bird." 
 
 "Ay, ay; don t fire. Shame to fire on a single man, may 
 be a friend; have a palaver fust," broke confusedly from the 
 various members of the group, as the hostile weapons were 
 lowered, and Ike persuaded Lion into a temporary silence. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 53 
 
 The Indian, for such he was, had remained motionless and im 
 passive on the hillock ; nor, while lie saw the threatening muzzles 
 of the rifles, did he change his attitude or his expression. He 
 was of imposing stature, and, from the elevation of the ground 
 where he stood, seemed to tower to a greater than human height. 
 Indeed, what with his swarthy complexion, his air of command, 
 and the suddenness of his appearance, there required no great effort 
 of the imagination to conceive him the very genius of war, at 
 whose beck might spring forth thousands of myrmidons to slay 
 and to destroy. 
 
 "\Vhen he saw, however, the rifles of the white men dropped 
 from then- shoulders, the Indian, with a gesture full of grace, 
 took a crimson blanket from a sort of knapsack worn at his back, 
 and holding it up with both hands at the two corners, shook it 
 forth to the breeze, at the sani6 time sweeping it downwards from 
 above his head, as if to spread it on the ground.* 
 
 "The critter s friendly enough, exclaimed Dick Railes; "he 
 wants to have a povr-wow." 
 
 "He ain t no Pawnee, nor yit no Ottoe, nor yit no Utah; he 
 ain t like e er an Injun we ve seen so fur," remarked Nahum 
 Pelter. 
 
 "Whatever he is, he means us no harm," said Hugh Gifford. 
 "He clearly proposes a parley." 
 
 " There may be a lot more hard by," observed Seth, dubiously. 
 
 "Surely, if he has companions, and they intended mischief, an 
 ambuscade, or a night attack, would be more promising than a 
 demonstration like this." said Hugh. "Besides, as our friend 
 here says, why come down on us with the wind f 
 
 Thus reassured, Seth Armstrong laid down his rifle, and, ad 
 vancing to the brink of the rivulet, with amicable signs beck 
 oned the stranger to enter the camp. The latter shook his head 
 courteously, and indicated that Seth s companions should likewise 
 dispense with their arms. A consultation followed, which resulted 
 in the men removing their rifles to a point at some little distance in 
 their rear ; Seth, however, taking the precaution to see that the two 
 guns were properly loaded and ready in the Castle. Upon these 
 concessions, the red man signified his willingness to confer with 
 the party, and, having descended the bank and forded the 
 stream, he advanced with dignity among them. 
 
 * A signal originating in the habit of spreading a robe or skin as a rest for gnests to 
 whom they wished to show distinguished courtesy: long practised as a eijjn of amity 
 among most of the tribes westward of the Mississippi. 
 
54 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE stranger looked of an uncertain age, for, while his face 
 showed many marks of thought and exposure, his step was elas 
 tic as that of a youth. The features were prominent and aqui 
 line, with the copper hue and high cheek bones common to his 
 race. There was, however, so much intelligence in the face 
 so much shrewdness and perception mingled with a cer 
 tain courtly reserve that the first impression of the observer 
 would certainly have been to count it as that of a civilized man. 
 The second, indeed, would have made him doubt ; for he would 
 now perceive that inscrutable tawn in the swift flashing eye 
 which always suggests the barbaric. Unlike those of most of the 
 savages of the plains, his countenance seemed free from grease 
 or paint ; his head, however, was shaven, except the invariable 
 scalp-lock, and from the ornamental circlet which surrounded it 
 there sprung, behind, a towering eagle s plume. 
 
 He wore a hunting shirt of buckskin not unlike those of the 
 white men, and leggings of the highly dressed skin of the ante 
 lope. The sides of the latter, like the belt and head-dress, were 
 decorated with porcupine quills and beads. From the belt were 
 suspended ba^gs made of more delicately prepared skins, contain 
 ing ammunition, and a formidable-looking hunting knife. The 
 feet were protected by moccasins of deer-skin with thick elk 
 soles, and the crimson blanket, before referred to, hung from 
 the shoulders. 
 
 "My brothers do well," said the Indian, as he advanced into 
 the expectant circle, " My brothers do well to be ready with their 
 rifles, for there are many Ilicarees and Ottoes on the war path, 
 and the horse thieves are always watching their trail." He 
 spoke in English, with a guttural but not unmusical accent, and 
 with a wave of the hand, as if to spare his new friends the 
 making apology for their somewhat hasty demonstration. 
 
 " You are not, then, of either of those tribes T 9 said Hugh 
 Gifford, to whom Armstrong had signed to act as spokesman. 
 
 "Of no tribe which my brothers have seen. We are too 
 few to spread far over the land like the Sioux and Blackfeet, 
 and my brother s track lay too far to the south. There are 
 nearly as many leagues between Washashaco and the wigwams 
 of his people as stretch from here to the great Lake of Bitter 
 Waters." 
 
THi: QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 55 
 
 "Arc you alone?" 
 
 There must have been a shade of anxiety in Gilford s man 
 ner which caused the slightest possible trace of amusement in 
 that of the Indian, as he replied, " Not alone ; but the braves 
 of Washashaco are fewer than those of my brother." 
 
 " Will you bring your braves to our camp that they may 
 also smoke a pipe with us 7" 
 
 " They are a day s journey distant. They are watching the 
 
 beavers, who arc very cunning. Washash.aco watches here. 
 
 By-and-by we shall return to our homes laden with much spoil." 
 
 "" But this is the countiy of the Utahs ; have you no fear of 
 
 their enmity?" 
 
 A haughty smile passed over the chief s swarthy countenance. 
 " The Utahs are women. Shall we, who make dogs of the 
 Pawnees and running hares of the Ottoes, swerve from our 
 path for the Utahs ? Besides, these Indians fight only with 
 tomahawks and poisoned arrows ; our great Father has taken 
 our lauds, it is true, but he has given us arms which are very 
 long. The French and Yengeese traders from the big Lakes 
 take rich skins from the red men, and give them short guns fit 
 only for fire\vood ; the people of my brother take most of our 
 hunting grounds, but they give us long rifles, the better to 
 hunt on those that are left." 
 
 His hearers looked instinctively for the Indian s arms. 
 
 Washashaco s hands are empty. He knew his white bro 
 thers would not love him better for seeing his rifle. He there 
 fore left it with his horse in the thicket." 
 
 "Let him bring his horse and his arms into our camp. Let 
 him partake of our meat and smoke of our pipe, that he may 
 rest and refresh himself before he goes further on his way." 
 
 The Indian bowed with simple courtesy. " Wafthashaco will 
 do so," he said, and turning on his heel he recrossed the stream 
 to carry the invitation of GifFord into effect. 
 
 Hasty and many were the suggestions and observations 
 which followed his departure. 
 
 " Caii we trust him, d ye think ?" asked Seth, anxiously. 
 
 "I see his camp fire afore," said Dick Railes, "but thought it 
 mouglit be Luke s or some of Ike s doin s." 
 
 There may be others," surmised the Doctor, u on the other 
 sides of us. To conceal their number and make sure of ours, 
 this one may have come singly to lull us iuto security while the 
 rest hem us securely in." 
 
 u Ye d better git out the th odolite, Doctor," suggested Dick 
 with irony, ; and find out how many there be." 
 
56 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 "The man strikes me as honest," said Gilford, replying to 
 Seth/" but be that as it may, to give him a meal and an ounce 
 of tobacco can do no harm. If he means mischief he can work 
 it as well without as with them." 
 
 " And then ag in there s a good many of us," mused Seth. 
 "Injuns don t admire so many long range rifles; and we re 
 twelve able-bodied men, to say nuthin of Ike and Lion." 
 
 " Twont do to set too much store on numbers," warned Dick 
 Railes, who had considerable doubts as to the fighting capacity 
 of the Eastern men , or the "Yanks," as he styled them, and, 
 if the truth must be told, more contempt for that of Hugh Gilford 
 than for those of any of the others ; for was he not a book worm, 
 a scholard, a lawyer, all inconsistent with any probable success 
 in arms? ".Numbers is sometimes more hurt than good. 
 They stirs up panic, numbers does ; they lose their grip when 
 fightin time comes ; ye can t be sure of e er a man that hain t 
 smelt powder." 
 
 "Come, come, Dick, don t skear us to death aforehand. I 
 guess the funkiest of us ud rather fight than lose a scalp with 
 out it, and -that s about what it comes to if we re attacked." 
 
 " There s more danger of their starvin ye to death," remarked 
 Jabe Fitch, " at least so I ve heerd. If ye meet em when 
 they ve been a long time without game, as they ll often be on 
 the plains, they ll jest belt your grab anyway, if they don t 
 your scalps ; and we ve a long way to travel yit." 
 
 " That s like Jabe, that is," laughed Dick. " He kears more 
 for his belly than he does for his scalp, any day!" 
 
 "And why shouldn t I?" put Jabe, stoutly. "Ye can live 
 without the one, and it s sartin ye can t without the other." 
 
 " All things considered," said the doctor, " it may be as well 
 to look sharp for both. But I agree with Gifford in thinking 
 there s no harm in this man. The signs are much at fault if 
 he s a bad specimen of his race." 
 
 "Signs don t go far with Injuns," said the censorious Dick. 
 "They re wussthan the oldsarpint himself in notlettin on what 
 they mean to do." 
 
 "Anyhow," pursued Seth, "we ll be ready whatever hap 
 pens. We ll hev a. double watch all the time, and keep an 
 extra eye on the cattle, and be ready to move at any minute. 
 If the wust comes to the wust, we ain t the only ones who ve ever- 
 crossed the plains, nor the only ones who ve had to fight their 
 way through." 
 
 " Fight 1" chimed in Nahum Pelter, with his deep bass voice; 
 " there won t be no fight !" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 57 
 
 "Why won t there?" 
 
 "There won t be no fight not with that man or his war 
 riors leastways, not if he says there won t." 
 
 "And why not, I asked ye ?" pressed Seth. 
 
 " Because he won t lie he s a Delaware ! * 
 
 A Delaware!" exclaimed Hugh Gilford, "and in these 
 western wilds !" 
 
 "Ay; Uncle Sam gave em hunting grounds out in West 
 Kansas. They d changed and changed as the years rolled on, 
 and the country got thicker settled, and the Injuns couldn t live 
 near the whites, so at last they ve got em clear into Kansas, 
 what there is left of "em." 
 
 " And you think this is one of the tribe ?" 
 
 I m sure on t ; I knowed at first he weren t neither Paw 
 nee, nor Creek, nor Sioux, nor Ottoe ; but I didn t see the 
 signs that told me what he was. I ve known Delawares since 
 I was knee high, and I never heerd o their breaking their 
 words." 
 
 But what, think you, is the cause of his being so far from 
 his hunting-grounds?" 
 
 " That is puzzlin ; it can t be for huntin , it s no use to come 
 so fur ; it can t be for tradin , there s nothin to trade, and no 
 body to trade with. I take it there s only one thing else, and 
 that is that he s on the war path." 
 
 " But you don t think he means harm to ourselves ; and who 
 else is there to fight ?" 
 
 " True enough, who?" repeated Seth. " He s the first red 
 skin we ve seen for a fortnit." 
 
 " The country mought swarm with em," answered the Eli- 
 noisian, " and we not see one. There d be two hostile parties, 
 rnaybe. each trying to circumvent the other, travellin only at 
 night, lurkin* in the valleys and gulches by day, or dodgin and 
 crawlin on their bellies among the brush, weeks and weeks 
 afore a war cry s heard or a scalp took. We not seem em s 
 no sure thing they ain t thar." 
 
 " It seems prudent, Mr. Armstrong," said Gilford, " to ac 
 cept this Indian s presence as the evidence of others besides 
 his own party being near. It may be as well to take it for 
 granted, and to act as if we were sure of it." 
 
 "Them s my idees," corroborated Mr. Pelter. "But here 
 comes the chief back again. P raps he ll let on what he s up to 
 himself most likely, if no one asks him bout it." 
 
 The warrior now returned, this tune bestriding a powerful 
 mare, and carrying a formidable rifle. Luke Armstrong took 
 3* 
 
58 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 charge of the former, notwithstanding her owner s courteous 
 deprecation of the service, and Lion was soon reconciled to the 
 unfamiliar presence on seeing its amicable relations with his 
 friends. Washashaco readily partook of the refreshment of 
 fered him, and the "whole party, with a mingling of curiosity, 
 policy, and a large proportion of genuine kindness, vied with 
 each other in offering him attentions. Mrs. Armstrong was, 
 perhaps, an exception, for nothing could induce her to regard 
 an Indian otherwise than with aversion and distrust. " They 
 ain t Christians," she declared ; . l and it s agin Scripture to put 
 your faith in the heathen. Lion knew the Evil One was about 
 somewheres. Jest as like s not he ll cut all our throats in the 
 night, and lug off our scalps afore breakfast. " 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Armstrong," argued Mary Anne, "I ve always 
 heard that the Delawares were a noble race, and most wander 
 ing tribes, they say, will always respect your confidence, if they 
 have broken bread and eaten salt with you." 
 
 " They tell that about the Arabs, I know," conceded the good 
 lady ; "but they re half Christians ; they ain t like these ere 
 painted devils, who go round liowlin and scalpin folks." 
 
 " You ve no call to be the least afeerd, Miss Kitty," said Dick 
 Kailes, who always availed of any excuse to get near that 
 blooming damsel ; " he s quite safe, and we re goin to keep 
 double watch to-night." 
 
 "Law, Richard, I m not afraid," replied Kitty, saucily ; "and 
 if twelve men are not enough for one Indian, I m sure four 
 women would be." 
 
 " And what do you think of this chieftain ?" Mary Anne asked 
 of Hugh Gilford. 
 
 "Think ? Why, that it would be more dangerous to appear 
 to doubt than to trust him." 
 
 Washashaco said nothing of his objects, or those of his braves, 
 during the day ; and although the principal and most responsi 
 ble members of the party were naturally anxious on the subject, 
 they yet prudently forbore to question him. The Indian s eye 
 roved unceasingly over their camp, their equipage, their cattle, 
 and their arms ; but otherwise he expressed neither curiosity 
 nor surprise. Once, indeed, when Seth opened the rearward 
 entrance to Castle Armstrong, and showed him its singular in 
 terior, he uttered a characteristic " Ugh ;" but this might have 
 been elicited by satisfaction with the very obvious disgust of 
 Mrs. Armstrong at the procedure, rather than by admiration of 
 what he saw besides. During the day he preserved his silence, 
 but at night, when all were assembled around the camp fire, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 59 
 
 and the females had retired, he expressed a desire to address 
 his friends on a topic of common interest. The night was 
 cooler than usual, and the wind hurtled mournfully through the 
 cottonwoods and willows which stood on the banks of the 
 stream. The camp fire was, therefore, made large and ruddy, 
 and it cast a far-reaching glow over the picturesque scene which 
 surrounded it. Pipes and whiskey had been produced ; but al 
 though the Indian used the tobacco freely, he declined to touch 
 the stimulant which has been the curse of so many of his race. 
 The men mostly lay stretched on their robes and blankets in va 
 rious attitudes of careless ease, for four of their number were 
 circling the camp in vigilant patrol, and they were free to 
 smoke in quiet. Seth Armstrong sat on one side, with Doctor 
 Landale and Hugh Gilford supporting him on either hand ; the 
 Indian seeming to regard the two, in their capacities of medi 
 cine-man and spokesman, as somewhat elevated above the rest 
 of the party. Washashaco, in dignified isolation, sat apart a 
 short distance upon his crimson blanket. Not far off were Icha- 
 bod and Lion, both grave and attentive watchers r.f the proceed 
 ings. What with the long beards and gleaming eyes, the pic 
 turesque costumes, the bits of bright color thrown out here and 
 there by the dancing flames, and the intense solitude of the 
 scene far around it, the group would have appeared to a specta 
 tor, to use the hackneyism, well worthy a painter s pencil. 
 
 There had been a long pause, purposely unbroken by his 
 hosts, when the chief rose to his feet and spoke : 
 
 "My brothers have heard of the tribe of the Delawares. 
 They were once very many and very strong. They are now 
 very few, but still strong, and will be so until the last of the 
 Lenni Lenape shall join his fathers in the happy hunting- 
 grounds. Their braves were once counted by tens of thou 
 sands, and there are now only a few poor hundreds ; but the 
 hundreds who remain are mighty warriors, and their deeds are 
 not less brave than the deeds of those who have gone before. 
 
 My brothers have heard how their fathers deprived the Del 
 awares of their lands ; it is an old story, and it cannot be pleas 
 ant to my brothers ears. It cannot be pleasant to be told that 
 their fathers did wrong, therefore I will not repeat it. I will 
 only say that the Delawares came from the banks of the 
 Ohio as then- fathers came from those of the Susquehanna; 
 and that they came from the banks of the Mississippi as they 
 came from the banks of the Ohio. The remnant of my 
 tribe are now far from the mighty river, where they were 
 told they should live for ever. They are now in the .west- 
 
60 MARIAN KQOKE ; OR, 
 
 ern plains of Kansas. If the Delawares were as numerous as 
 they were when they first left the valley of the Susquehanna, 
 they would be pushed on, and pushed on, until they were pushed 
 at sunset into the great lake of bitter waters. But they are few, 
 and their last warriors will be dead and forgotten before they can 
 be driven to the great mountains. 
 
 " Old men say that one wrong brings on another ; and it is 
 so with red men as well as white ones. The white men thrust 
 the Delawares from their hunting-grounds, and the Delawares 
 have been forced to thrust the Pawnees and Sioux from theirs. 
 The Pawnees did not like to see the Delawares come into the 
 land that had always been theirs. This was to be expected. 
 They fight all the time ; but the Delawares are better warriors, 
 and kill far more braves than they lose. Still, they lose many, 
 and grow fewer and fewer every year. This is a pity ; but they 
 cannot now, even if they would, return to the lands they have 
 left behind. They will, therefore, remain, and die fighting. 
 
 " Three moons ago, a strong band of Pawnees made an 
 attack upon one of our villages. It was at night, and most 
 of the young men were absent hunting. The Pawnees burned 
 the village, and killed some old women. They also drove off 
 some cattle. They were pursued, and divided into several 
 parties. Washashaco, and the braves -under his command, 
 chased the party which was led by their principal chief. After 
 a little, the Pawnees discovered your train, and resolved to 
 attack it. They did not do so because you were then near the 
 Forts, and they were afraid. They followed, determined to 
 surprise you after you should cross the mountains, and so be 
 far distant from the soldiers of your great father. I and my 
 braves have followed them cautiously, knowing every step they 
 have taken. They think the Delawares have returned to their 
 camp. Four days ago they were short of food, and they stop 
 ped to hunt. I hastened on, and gained some distance, leaving 
 rny braves to watch their course. The Pawnees will soon attack 
 the camp of my brothers ; but Washashaco and his young men 
 will help them to fight." 
 
 The address of the chief had been thus far received in un 
 broken silence; but when it arrived at this startling pero 
 ration, a hum of anxiety and exclamation ran round the circle. 
 Seth raised his hand, imposing continued silence ; and Gilford 
 rose. 
 
 " We have listened," he said, " with interest and attention, and 
 we hope we shall be good friends both with Washashaco and his 
 warriors. But why is it since the Delawares have been injured 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 61 
 
 by the white men why is it that they should offer to assist white 
 men against their enemies ?" 
 
 "Because," answered the chief, gravely, " because the Del- 
 awares are at peace with the white men, and at war with their 
 red enemies ; because the Delawares and my brothers together 
 can fight the Pawnees, but would not be strong enough to fight 
 them singly, for they are many ; and because, though there are 
 some Delawares who do not like white men. there are no Dela 
 wares but who hate Pawnees. Is my brother answered?" 
 
 Gilford bowed assent, and continued, "What, then, is the 
 number of the Pawnees ?" 
 
 "When we first struck then* trail," said Washashaco, "they 
 counted over three score ; but some have left them by the way. * 
 
 "Three score!" exclaimed Xahuni Pelter, with a dismayed 
 whistle ; "that s five to one, I reckon." 
 
 My big brother forgets the braves of Washashaco. 
 
 And how many are they ?" 
 
 " There are nine besides Washashaco." 
 
 "Chief!" said Seth, anxiously, "how do ye know where the 
 Pawnees air now ? How do JQ know but they might come upon 
 us at any moment; p raps this very night ? 
 
 " Because, had they been near enough to strike, the Delawares 
 would have been here to warn their chief long before the sun 
 went to sleep." 
 
 "But were your people to approach this neighborhood," said 
 Gifford, " how are they to discover you ? Our sentinels are 
 wary, and should the Delawares approach the camp, may mis 
 take them for enemies." 
 
 "3Iy braves are not geese," replied the warrior, "and they 
 know that my white brothers are here. When they arrive they 
 will be half a day s journey in advance of the Pawnees, for they 
 are well mounted, and know where to come. They will seek 
 Washashaco in a spot where he has lately been. They will find 
 that he is in safety and close at hand. Had any accident befallen 
 him. they would know that, too. Should they come by night 
 or by day, AVashashaco will know it ; and they will not enter 
 your camp until they are invited by their white brothers." 
 
 The party were fain to rest content with these assurances, 
 although it became evident^ to the boldest that their situation 
 was a critical one. If the cliict s statements and opinions could 
 be implicitly relied upon, the chance for protecting their lives and 
 property was by no means too good ; while, if he were playing 
 them false, it must "be with a design whose fruition was likely to 
 be yet more fatal to their security. The latter theory, however, 
 
62 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 none were ready to maintain ; the opinion, that it would be well 
 to keep a close watch upon Washashaco, constituting its strongest 
 expression. As for the chief himself, having paid what he came 
 to say, he had folded himself in his blanket, and quietly gone to 
 sleep by the camp fire. Most of the others were wakeful, 
 naturally enough, and remained a long time in anxious and 
 thoughtful counsel. Ike and Lion lay down trustingly together 
 next to the red man, and dropped into their customary slum 
 bers ; but it was long before their comrades desisted from their 
 whispered consultations, and the small hours were creeping on 
 ere the little camp was once more buried, in repose. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE sweet air of the morning was just stealing over the earth 
 when Mary Anne left her couc\i ; and the rosy fingers of Aurora 
 had not quite swept away the deep and tender blue which still 
 lingered in the west. The girl stole down to the tiny beach of 
 yellow sand which margined the rippling stream to get water 
 for her morning ablutions. She glanced as she went toward the 
 camp fire ; it was burning yet, or rather smouldering in its tum 
 bling debris of white ashes, and the robe-wrapped figures hud 
 dled about it were motionless in slumber. By the ford lower 
 down the stream, she saw a figure leaning statue-like against a 
 tree. His rifle was clasped in the arms folded across his chest, 
 while the breech rested on the ground. The head of the senti 
 nel drooped forward heavily, and he, too, seemed fast asleep. 
 It was very, very still, but, as always happens, it seemed more 
 silent because there were certain sounds to remind one of the 
 absence of others. Such were the deep breathing of the sleep 
 ers, the gentle swirling of the stream, and the confused trilling 
 of some early birds. 
 
 The girl completed her toilet .undisturbed. She arranged 
 some details of her dress, and bound into a simple knot the 
 great masses of black hair which had previously fallen below her 
 waist. Close by was a smooth pjol, caused by an accidental 
 eddy, and darkened by a little shrubbery beside it. Into this, 
 with a natural impulse, she looked, as she adjusted her tresses, 
 as if to mark the final effect, 
 
 " But that Miss Armstrong is so free from vanity," said a low 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 63 
 
 voice behind her, " one might think her in danger of the fate of 
 Narcissus." 
 
 She was called Miss Armstrong by the party, just as the young 
 lady to whom that designation belonged was universally known 
 as Kitty ; and Hugh Gifford, finding she did not object, so 
 styled her. She looked up with a quick blush. 
 
 " Mr. Gifford is not often lavish of even implied compliments ; 
 but, since he has grown classical and speaks of fate, he shouldn t 
 forget that of Action." 
 
 ; Indeed, I only came as the coiffure approached its conclu 
 sion an offence not punishable, I hope, even in the eyes of the 
 most severe of Dianas. What a lovely morning! and how 
 calm and peaceful everything appears. Thank Heaven, we are 
 aU safe thus far!" 
 
 " You think we are in danger, then ?" 
 
 " You know nothing of what passed last night?" 
 
 " I do. Kitty and I were uneasy after the arrival of the In 
 dian. We yielded to the natural propensity of our sex, and list 
 ened from the wagon. Poor child I She was in mortal ter 
 ror." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 " I ? I accustomed myself to the idea that danger was in 
 evitable in crossing the plains. I ran some risks to enable my 
 self to do so. I have lately endured a great, a desolating af 
 fliction. Perhaps, therefore, I am not so appalled at the chance 
 of peril." 
 
 ; I really apprehend that chance is serious. The men will 
 fight well, if need be, without doubt. But I fear we may be 
 assailed by overwhelming numbers." 
 
 " Why not fly, push on as last as possible, and so escape?" 
 
 "Impossible. These heavy. wagons could never keep ahead 
 of the horses of our pursuers ; and to abandon them is to risk 
 starvation. Besides, the chief would be dissatisfied by such an 
 attempt, even if he did not essay forcibly to oppose it." 
 
 " Why should he do so ?" 
 
 " He thinks of nothing but glory. Why should he be here ? 
 Why acquaint us with the designs of our enemies ? Simply 
 because he hopes to win a triumph over them, and carry back 
 their scalps to the lodges of his people. He would not regard 
 with favor any policy on our part which would render an en 
 counter less probable." 
 
 " But is he sanguine of success 1" 
 
 "He counts upon it as certain." 
 
 " And what if it should be otherwise ?" 
 
64 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " You mean should we be overcome ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " The men would probably all be killed ; the women carried 
 into captivity." 
 
 " That I for one would not be. Still you do not think our 
 case really desperate ?" 
 
 "By no means. We have .many advantages of position. 
 This stream covers us pretty effectually on nearly three sides. 
 We can barricade the fourth so as to obtain all the advantage 
 of a fortified position. As to provisions and water, we are 
 abundantly supplied ; so that, if the enemy attempt a siege, we 
 need not dread it. Meantime, there is always a hope that some 
 other and more numerous party of our own race may chance 
 this way and reinforce us." 
 
 He spoke lightly, but there was a gravity in his eye, and the 
 habitual compression of the lips was slightly increased. Mary 
 Anne went on as though answering what she saw in his 
 thoughts rather than what fell from his mouth. 
 
 " I don t know that I should fear to die*" she said, musingly, 
 " or much regret it. True, I had hoped to be of some small 
 use in the world. What they taught me might be useless for 
 myself, considering what my future station is likely to be. But 
 all these busy ones thronging to the land of gold they must . 
 have children, and I could teach them, and so be not altogether 
 a useless clod a cumberer of the earth !" 
 
 She had spoken of this scheme before, and Hugh, seeing it 
 was a somewhat cherished one, had applauded it as an honora 
 ble and useful career for her to adopt. But he had thought 
 before, and he thought now, as he gazed on the girl s striking 
 face, and remembered her many attractions, that, in a land 
 where women arc few, such an one would find plenty to dis 
 suade her from the arduous toils of a school teacher. 
 
 " What is life," continued Mary Anne, with more bitterness 
 than was usual with her, "what is life, when one has nothing 
 to make life dear? The home, the cherished scenes, the faith 
 ful friends, and more, far more than all, the adored father 
 gone, all gone, and for ever. Why should I wish to live, 
 without father, without home, without friends ?" 
 
 "Do not say without friends/ interrupted Gifford, gently. 
 " I am sure this worthy family are your good friends, and Kitty 
 dearly loves you. Do not say without friends ; for I I if you 
 will let me call myself so, I will always be a friend to you." 
 
 "You will?" 
 
 "I will." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 65 
 
 "You promise it, then ?" 
 
 "Faithfully." 
 
 " I shall remember, and perhaps call upon you some time to 
 remember." 
 
 " Now, and always. And for now, since it is one of a friend s 
 offices to tell truths, let me offer you one. A woman with 
 youth and beauty I do not flatter, recollect, for I am only a 
 friend with youth and beauty such as yours should despair of 
 nothing. The loss of friends, indeed, she may deplore, for it is 
 irreparable. But there is nothing else, no other loss but it can 
 be supplied, and more. Youth, health, loveliness they can 
 compass anything !" 
 
 "Anything?" 
 
 "Why not? They can procure fortune." 
 
 "Dross!" 
 
 " Ah ! you have never wanted it. Fame " 
 
 " That is more valuable." 
 
 - Love " 
 
 "Love!" she exclaimed, as the color rose in her pure olive 
 cheek -Love ! Xo I They cannot procure love !" 
 
 " Believe me, they can. More surely than all else beside." 
 
 "Are you sure of it?" she asked, archly, and turning her 
 lustrous black eyes full on his face, " With your particular ex 
 perience, do you feel so sure?" 
 
 Gifibrd colored in turn. " You know exceptions are admit 
 ted to prove general rules. But my argument is that you have 
 everything to hope a bright, a cherished, a courted future ! 
 Contrast your case with mine. I see nothing before me but a 
 long, miserable struggle with poverty, before which I may sue 
 cunab at last." 
 
 "You have also youth; you have talents, ambition." 
 
 " The first and last, perhaps ; but, unlike you, I have no happy 
 past to recur to, to show me that life may sometimes be bright 
 and beautiful. The vista behind is grim, cheerless, and deso 
 late, and I have no right to assume that it .will be different with 
 me in the future. My life has been all bitterness. I have par 
 taken unwillingly of the bitter cup of the Puritans, vrho settled 
 in the rocky land that bore me. The draught has been flavored 
 with all of asceticism, intolerance, hardship, they ever knew or 
 I most loathe, without the enthusiasm which enabled them to 
 drain, it to the dregs, or the perversity which enabled them to 
 call it nectar. I have no friends whom I can esteem ; there are 
 none who love me." 
 
 " None who love you 1 You forget Virginia !" 
 
66 MARIAN ROOKE ; OK, 
 
 4 
 
 She was quite right ; more than once in this conversation had 
 Hugh forgotten Virginia ; but the reproach, while he felt it to 
 be just, nettled him at the moment, and he said, hastily : 
 
 "\Vere I to tell her as much as I have now told you, she 
 would think me as crazy as poor Ike there ; and so I should be 
 to tell it with the hope of sympathy. 
 
 " Then why " The girl reddened, stammered, and paused. 
 It was doubtful whether she felt more of relief or annoyance 
 when the cheery call of Kitty Armstrong came to her aid by 
 summoning her to the inside of the castle. However, she ilew 
 to respond to it, and left Gilford standing absorbed in thought 
 upon the strand. 
 
 Looking up, he saw in the act of crossing from the opposite 
 bank the tall figure of the chieftain, who had evidently fore 
 stalled his hosts, early as their rising had been. 
 
 "Washashaco is up before the sun," said Gilford, as he sa 
 luted him. " Has he seen anything of interest this morning?" 
 
 There was the slightest smile of polite irony on the Indian s 
 face, as he replied : 
 
 " I saw the White Fawn talking with my brother, and I saw 
 her run away into the moving wigwam." 
 
 " Has the chief any tidings of his braves ?" 
 
 k fc N one. i he Pawnees are bad hunters as well as bad warriors, 
 and they have found no deer. Or they have fallen in with an 
 other party of their tribe, and will come in greater numbers." 
 
 " Should they do so, our chance to resist them will be but small." 
 
 " They are clogs. Great in feasting ; great when their young 
 men drag at their heels the skin of the polecat ; great in be 
 coming hogs when they get at the white man s lire-water ; but 
 small on the war-path, and like children when they encounter 
 the Dekr.vares." 
 
 " The Delawares are valiant, and their white friends will 
 fight hard ; but can they hope to do wonders ? Can they make 
 one rifle equal to ten ?" 
 
 " Is my brother afraid?" 
 
 A hot flush rose to Gilford s brow, but he restrained his an 
 ger, and answered gently, " He has not yet been in battle, and 
 perhaps makes the danger greater than it is. Most of his peo 
 ple think they can conquer against five times their number of 
 Indians." 
 
 " The white men have better guns, and the red men have 
 more cunning. But this place can be made strong, like the 
 forts of the soldiers at Leavenworth. Very few can hold it 
 against very many." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. G7 
 
 The sleepers by this time were awake and stirring, and Icha- 
 bod, having approached the spot where the chief and GhTord 
 stood, thought this a favorable moment to join in their deliber 
 ations. 
 
 Ike kin hold it alone," he remarked, gravely ; ; Ike and 
 Lion. We ki:i hold it agin all the red-skins twixt here and the 
 Mississippi. There ain t ne er an Injun tid dare fire a gun if 
 they knew Ike was anywheres round. He can do all the 
 fightin and all the gold-findin , he kin ; only he won t tell ye 
 bout the gold, cause it s bad for ye. Small good in gittin 
 things for nuthin . Lion works for his dinner, and gits a good 
 appetite." 
 
 lie was a strange figure enough, with his shock of red hair ; 
 his cap of bearskin, with its extravagantly long plumes ; his 
 hunting-shirt, with its grotesque ornaments of beads and feath 
 ers, and bits of fur ; his assured speech, and his ungainly ac 
 tion. But the Indian regarded him with a countenance as im 
 movable as stone. 
 
 P raps yc d like some gold, chief? P raps you\l like to 
 cook your elk in a gold pot. and wear a crown from now to 
 never. Ike knows where it is more n they ever found in 
 Mexico, or Golcondy, or Peroo ! More n they ever piled inter 
 the mint at Philadclfy ! Acres of it mountains of it so ye 
 kin have yer wigwams, and yer canoes, and ycr tomahawks, 
 and yer huntin knives, all of bright, pure, beautiful, yaller 
 gold." 
 
 " My brother is laughing," said Washashaco, sententiously. 
 
 " D ye know what we re goin to do } AYe re goin to sail 
 in bime by. and jest take the hull continent, and drive out the 
 Britishers, and the Rooshians, and the red-skins, and the greas 
 ers, and annex Canady, and gobble up Cuby, and clean out the 
 hull lot of eni I That s what we re goin to do. And every 
 man shall have two farms, and live on milk, and honey, and 
 elk-meat, and hoe-cake, and never do any work cept when he 
 goes to Congress ! And Ike s to be the President one week, 
 turn about, and Lion another ! Hooray 1 for Ike the Fust, and 
 the Murikun eagle I Hooray !" 
 
 And he began his strange performance of capering and leap 
 ing about, and covering himself with his buffalo robe, at which 
 Lion, as usual, assumed that he was a bear, and attacked him 
 furiously accordingly. The Indian looked at him steadfastly 
 for a space, and then a light crept over his bronzed and haughty 
 features 
 
 i; My brother is possessed of the Great Spirit," he said, rev- 
 
68 MARIAN KOOKE ; OR, 
 
 erently, c and no red man would do him harm ; but they might 
 not always respect his friends." 
 
 The camp was now all bustle and activity. The females 
 were preparing the morning meal, and the men were hard at 
 work moving the wagons into a position which would cause 
 them, so far as they could extend, to describe a chord of the 
 arc formed by the little stream. On the right, with its back to 
 the river, was the corral where the cattle were placed 5 a situa 
 tion more secure than that on the left, where lay the ford. It 
 was believed that no enemy would risk an attack on the water 
 side, thus giving the greatest possible advantages to the de 
 fence, and it therefore seemed prudent to strengthen the open 
 or land approach as much as possible. The soil was extremely 
 hard and stony, and the attempt to throw up a breastwork of 
 earth would, it was judged, be impracticable, or, if practicable, 
 involve too much exhausting labor ; and it was expedient to 
 keep their small number as fresh and unexhausted as safety 
 would permit. 
 
 On a small knoll which separated the corral from the space 
 forming the immediate camp, stood a copse of timber, almost 
 the only wood of any moment in sight. There was, it is true, 
 a thin fringe of cpttonwoods scattered along the banks of the 
 rivulet ; but they were few and sparse, and afforded little cover. 
 The copse in question, however, chiefly consisting of hard, 
 gnarly mahogany of the scrub description found in this region, 
 was so close and thick as to afford considerable protection. 
 Here, after careful consultation, Castle Armstrong was now 
 planted, to serve as a refuge for the women, and, indeed, as a 
 kind of citadel to the fortress. 
 
 Seth Armstrong, having slept on the intelligence received the 
 night before, was possessed, in the morning, with the idea that 
 the intervention of poor Ichabod might be made as useful in the 
 event of an .attack from the Pawnees as it had been on a pre 
 vious occasion ; but Washashaco, now apprised of the latter 
 incident, and having seen the hero of it, shook his head, on its 
 being suggested that such * a result might again be hoped for. 
 The Pawnees, he represented, would in all probability attempt 
 a surprise ; in such a case, how should they know or care that 
 any one possessed of the Great Spirit had made the party con 
 traband of war ? In such a tone, if not in such precise terms, 
 he opposed any reliance on Ike s mediation. The truth was, 
 the warrior desired no other result than that the issue should 
 be squarely fought out to what he regarded as its legitimate 
 conclusion, and used every argument his eloquence could sug 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORnTSE. 69 
 
 gest against flight, diplomacy, strategy, or any other ignoble 
 substitute for battle. 
 
 Preparations for hostilities were, therefore, pushed with the 
 utmost speed ; preparations intelligible enough to all the assem 
 bly save poor Mrs. Armstrong, who looked on them with a 
 dubiousness which, as they progressed, gave place to terror. 
 Her appeals to the two young women failing to elicit satisfac 
 tory replies, she had recourse to Luke. " What on airth is the 
 matter, Luke ? I knew that drefful heathen was come for no 
 good; but do they really expect we shall git attackted? Oh, 
 Lord! oh, Lord! nothinj never did come but harm from havin 
 to do with the Evil One ! What will they do with us if they 
 take us all prisoners ? And these ere poor gals, too ! Alter 
 all, it s lucky I didn t bring my chiny 1" 
 
 Luke reassured his mother as well as he could ; there was by 
 no means a certainty of their being attacked only a chance ; 
 but it was well to be ready for anything. The chief was very 
 friendly, and had come to warn and not to harm them ; more 
 over, he had others of his tribe near at hand, who, in case of 
 need, would fly to their assistance. These assurances were re 
 ceived with obstinate incredulity ; so Mary Anne, who had been 
 followed everywhere during the explanation by Luke s admiring 
 eyes, relieved herself and him by coming to his support. 
 
 Meanwhile, sturdy Doctor Landale was getting ready lint and 
 bandages with the same equanimity that marked his daily obser 
 vations. "You d better learn how to apply a tourniquet," he 
 remarked to Hugh Gifford, "in case I happen to get hit. These 
 Western men have remedies of their own for most simple hurts, 
 but they ve nothing to substitute for that. V And Hugh did learn 
 it as well as was possible in the hour which elapsed before break 
 fast. When that hour arrived, the dispositions for defending the 
 camp were tolerably complete. Washashaco, truly, had some 
 suggestions to make, but it would answer, he said, if they were 
 carried into effect after the meal. The sentries were now called 
 in, to be replaced as quickly as possible by others. 
 
 "All here," said Seth Armstrong, "all here, and, thank God, 
 all safe!" as the different members of the little company came 
 flocking in toward the kettles. The worthy man paused a little, 
 meaning to say a word or two in more formal recognition of the 
 mercies they enjoyed, and a strange murmur arose among the 
 assemblage. " All here," somebody repeated. " Not all, I 
 reckon, unless twelve s the same as thirteen!" And, "Who 
 is it, who is if?" ran from one to the other, as each looked 
 at and . counted his neighbors. It was one of the young 
 
70 
 
 MARIAN ROOKE 
 
 Irishmen, one of the laborers whom Seth had engaged at St. 
 Louis. 
 
 "Why," cried Luke, " Dennis was placed sentry at two o clock 
 at the ford!" 
 
 "So he Avas," exclaimed Gilford, "and he was there, safe 
 enough, at daybreak, for I saw him. I do believe," he continued, 
 as his thoughts flew back over the time, "I do believe the fellow 
 was asleep, though!" 
 
 "Asleep I" repeated Seth; "then like enough he s asleep still. 
 That won t do!" 
 
 " Do," cried Dick Railes, " I should think not ; if men s goiii 
 to sleep on watch, with, the country swarmin with red-skins, 
 we ll git shot off like so many woodchucks !" 
 
 " Come," said Gifford, rising, "let s hear what he s got to say; 
 perhaps the poor fellow s unwell." 
 
 "Ay, ay," echoed Seth, kindly, "we ll go and see what he 
 says for himself." 
 
 The men started for the ford ; only a short twenty rods to go. 
 The sentinel was still there ; still leaning against the tree, with 
 his arms folded across his breast, and the clasped riile resting on 
 the ground. 
 
 "Dennis!" cried Luke, as they approached. There was no 
 reply, and the party quickened their steps until they stood by the 
 man s side. He was lashed to the tree by a cord passing around 
 the waist ; a knife was buried to the hilt in his side, and the man 
 was dead stone dead. 
 
 All gazed for a moment in silent horror; then a shout went 
 up: 
 
 " Washashaco ! The Chief! The Indian ! Where is he r 
 
 But the Delaware had vanished, and was nowhere to be found. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE day was passed by the wayfarers in gloom and anxiety. 
 It was evident that they were surrounded by unseen enemies, and 
 where the stroke would fall next none could tell. The sudden dis 
 appearance of the Delaware naturally led to the belief that he 
 was knowing to the assassination of the unfortunate sentry, if, 
 indeed, he was not himself the actual murderer. But, if so, why 
 should he have come into their midst to warn them of corning 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 71 
 
 danger ? And if such a course had been adopted with the sinister 
 design alone of learning their numbers and means of defence, 
 why, after obtaining that knowledge, should he have returned, 
 thus incurring the risk of being set face to face with the corpse of 
 Dennis, and being charged with his murder ? The latter objec 
 tion was most conclusive to Hugh Gifford, as opposed to the 
 hypothesis of the Indian s guilt ; for he remembered his con 
 versation with him in the morning, which took place within easy 
 hail of the spot where Dennis stood, and when there was each 
 moment the greatest probability of the deed being detected. Cer 
 tainly it seemed strange that AVashashaco should have made lu s 
 way across the ford in the morning unchallenged by Dennis, who 
 stood close by it ; but might not the deed have been wrought as 
 probably before the chief set out as afterwards, and might not 
 the apathy of the sentry be thus accounted for ? On the other 
 hand, if Washashaco were innocent, why should he throw a cloud 
 over his conduct, by absconding without a word of explanation 
 at the critical moment of discovery ? 
 
 These were doubts and fears not easy to be resolved, and the 
 more they were canvassed the more threatening the prospect 
 appeared for the future. Upon one point all were agreed, which 
 was that they must henceforth practise redoubled vigilance, and 
 leave no precaution unemployed which might avert the further 
 reduction of their scanty numbers. To this end they determined 
 that it would be imprudent to send out scouts, and that, should they 
 remain unmolested throughout the day, the most intelligent and 
 wary of the party should serve that night as sentinels. For it 
 was remarkable that no one could be found who had heard the 
 slightest noise during the night before. Not a growl from 
 Lion, usually so watchful, not the rustle of a leaf had served 
 as a warning sign* or had betrayed the stealthy foot of the assassin. 
 They must, therefore, watch to-night with increased wariness if 
 they would not share the fate of their luckless companion. 
 
 " As to gittin shot in a fair fight," growled Nahuni Pelter in 
 his deep bass voice, "every man expects it, I reckon, and jest 
 travels on his chances. But this here skewerin of ye onawares 
 in the dark rakes me down altogether. It ain t my style, that 
 ain t. I don t s pose the poor Paddy was good for much," he 
 continued, chewing ponderously, and ejecting regretful spirts of 
 tobacco-juice. " I don t s pose the poor cuss had much grit in 
 him for a bush fight ; but I m sorry for him, I am ; and a riiie less 
 is a rifle less when we come to the scratch." 
 
 Dr. Landale, who was gliding about sounding the spirit and 
 temper of the men just as he would feel their pulses, questioned 
 
72 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Pelter as to how he thought, in the event of a fight, the men 
 would behave. 
 
 " Think they ll fight ? Wall, I reckon all the Westerners will. 
 They re born fighters, they are. I don t feel so stiff about the 
 Yanks ; there s two kinds o Yanks, wooden nutmeg Yanks, and 
 book-learnin ones ; I don t think there s much fight in neither 
 of em. Still they may do well enough behind the wagons ; and 
 ef they don t run at the fust fire they ll be apt to be darned ob 
 stinate arterwards. But the Western boys there, Luke and Dick 
 
 in pettikilar, they ll fight like h , they will. And I calkilate 
 
 I m good for about ten Injins, I am : that s so." 
 
 With which comfortable assurance the giant launched forth a 
 fresh cataract of saliva, and stalked away to prepare his arma 
 ment. Hugh Gifford was more generous in his estimate of 
 Nahum s prowess. 
 
 " These Western country men of yours brag so consumedly," 
 observed the doctor, "that by all accepted rules of probability 
 and precedent they should prove feeble if not cowardly in action." 
 
 " I firmly believe they will do all that men can do," answered 
 Hugh. " if not all that they promise. This inflated talk is a mere 
 matter of habit, and no true test of the nature of the man. Brag 
 garts are often brave men on this side the water, as, I fancy, cox 
 combs often are on the other. But I believe there are no people 
 about whom old-fashioned saws and accepted axioms are more 
 frequently falsified than the Americans." 
 
 "Humph," grumbled the doctor; "that means, I suppose, 
 that they are of stuff so different from ordinary mortals that they 
 are not to be judged by the laws which history and experience 
 have established a modern chosen people made to order, who 
 are to have new codes for social organization, new philosophies 
 for intellectual development, because the humdrum affairs which 
 have taken some thousands of years to grow are not good enough 
 for their purpose, eh ?" 
 
 " No," said Hugh, smiling, " only that the conditions which 
 surround them intellectual and physical are so very different 
 from those of any people of whom we have any authentic record, 
 that we must not expect their progress or achievements to pre 
 cisely square with those of any people whose histories we pos 
 sess." 
 
 "We re like to hev a hard time on t, gentlemen," said Seth, 
 coming up. " I did hope to git across all safe and sound when 
 we d come so far as the mountains ; but we ve had an uncommon 
 easy journey, and I suppose it weren t in the nature of things 
 that the path should be allers smooth. This poor lad who s gone 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. id 
 
 may be s only a day before all the rest on us; but we must try 
 and do our dooty like men. I shouldn t kear so much." he 
 added in a lower tone, "if it weren t for the women folks. It; 
 hurts me pooty bad to see mother goiiv on as she is now and 
 them two poor gals ain t fit either to die or to fall into the hands 
 of them devils of Injuns. Howsumever, please God, they shan t 
 if we can help it." 
 
 Amen." said Hugh and the doctor, while Seth passed on, 
 busy as he was in planning and arranging to make the strong 
 hold as secure as possible. The others stood for a moment in 
 silence, when the doctor spoke : ; The good man doesn t see 
 that the presence of the women makes his camp twice as strong 
 as it would otherwise be. What think you ?" 
 
 5*1? I am sure cf it." 
 
 " I suppose," continued the doctor, u that there s no great 
 chance of availing ourselves of poor Ichabod s misfortune?" 
 I fear not ; for whether he plays us true or false, the chief s 
 argument on that subject seems unanswerable. The Pawnees 
 will, without doubt, attempt a surprise, and, in that case, it mat 
 ters little whether he be with us or not, except that he knows 
 how to pull a trigger. But come, we should do our share toward 
 the fortifications." 
 
 The two men then followed Seth to the line of the wagons, 
 which were now connected, after a fashion, by a hasty abattis 
 made of such rough brush and bits of timber as the men had 
 been able to collect, and strengthened by ox chains interlaced 
 through them. Dick Railes and Xahum Pelter, while approv 
 ing this arrangement, did not fail to warn the others that the 
 Indians, should they attempt an assault, would certainly try to 
 set tin s barricade on fire as a preliminary, but all hoped that, with 
 the aid of their revolvers, they could make an approach too haz 
 ardous for them to face its risks. All the extra guns and pistols 
 were carefully o::amined, loaded, and placed in Castle Armstrong, 
 while the females including Mrs. Armstrong, who was now 
 aroused to the necessity of exertion were actively engaged in 
 rehearsing and making sure of their accomplishment of rapid 
 loading. To guard against the dangers of fire, all the pails and 
 other utensils they possessed were now filled with water at the 
 river, and placed at convenient points under the wagons. 
 
 In such labors the day wore on, and the sun again disappeared 
 in the west, yet still there were no signs of an enemy. Every 
 one appeared, however, to feel that the coming night was the 
 most critical period of their fate, and a thrill of anxiety ran 
 through the little party when the time arrived for placing the 
 4 
 
74 MARIAN EOOKE ; OR, 
 
 sentries. Somewhat to the surprise of the western men, and yet 
 to the obvious satisfaction of most of the company, Hugh Giflord 
 insisted upon being placed at the perilous station by the ford, 
 where poor Dennis had lost his lifo the night before. " The place 
 is important," he said. " I feel no need of sleep, and my mind 
 will be the easier for being there." It was finally agreed that 
 Luke and Dr. Landale should hold the post until two o clock, and 
 that they should then be relieved by Gilford and Ike Seth Arm 
 strong insisting that at that particular place, at least, there should 
 be two sentries for the night. There were three others posted 
 along the line of the w^agons, and as Seth inwardly resolved that 
 some one in addition should remain awake in the Castle, he felt 
 tolerably secure against surprise. 
 
 In accordance with these arrangements, Hugh determined to 
 force himself, if possible, to sleep in the early part of the night, 
 in order that he might bo thoroughly wakeful at the dangerous 
 period of his watch. Whether he saw a design shaping itself in 
 the speaking face of Mary Anne when she heard that he and Ike 
 wero to be on watch after two or no is doubtful ; but it is certain 
 that, after the band had shared their unusually quiet and thought 
 ful supper, he found his way to where the girl was standing by the 
 Castle, looking sorrowfully upon the ground. He laid Ms hand 
 upon her arm. 
 
 " You will not leave the Castle to-night, Miss Armstrong." 
 
 " You are sure I meant to do so, then ? But why not?" 
 
 " There is danger in it real danger to which you must not 
 be exposed." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "It is my duty some one must do n> I as well as others. 
 But on you there is no such demand." 
 
 "I have no fear." 
 
 "But I have on your account and I beg you not to come." 
 
 "You particularly wish me not to come?" 
 
 "Yes I request I beg it." 
 , " Then I will not. Only " g 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 " Promise me one thing." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Nay, but promise." 
 
 " Well then, I promise." 
 
 "That you will run no needless risks that you will take care 
 of yourself." 
 
 " I am sure to do that," said Hugh, smiling. 
 
 "Ah, you are jesting you are not sincere. Remember the 
 
TIIE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 75 
 
 promise should be as grave, as fully meant to be implicitly kept 
 as mine. 
 
 " Indeed it shall be, then." 
 
 " Good night then and and Heaven guard you!" 
 
 The voice was tremulous, and Hugh turned quickly in some 
 surprise to look at Mary Anne s face; yet even had she stood still 
 he would scarce have seen it, for the dusk was gathering fast : 
 but she had fled away and joined Mrs. Armstrong and Kitty in 
 the Castle. So Hugh returned to the camp fire, and wrapping 
 himself in a buffalo skin, lay down to sleep. His mind was 
 ranging rapidly over many and opposite themes, and he found 
 it no easy task to forget his consciousness ; but with perseverance 
 he at last succeeded, and fell into a gentle slumber. 
 
 At the appointed hour he was awakened by Luke : 
 
 "I wouldn t rouse ye, Mr. Gilford, but I suppose we must be 
 strict now in obeying orders." 
 
 " Quite right. All has been quiet, I suppose ?" 
 
 "Not a critter stirring; not so much as a night hawk or an 
 owl. The doctor s been niakin what he calls astral observa 
 tions." 
 
 " Where are Ike and Lion?" 
 
 " Oh, they ve been up this half-hour watchin the doctor. I 
 think Ike s got an idea that he ought to keep about so that if the 
 Injuns come he could pack em off as he did afore." 
 
 Hugh shook his head. "They won t come in a way to leave 
 time for parley. That chance before was one in a thousand. 
 We re no right to count on such luck twice." 
 
 "No, I reckon not. I do wish some more of our folks would 
 happen by. That would be the best luck that could befall us now. 
 It makes my heart sick, Mr. Gifford, when I think of mother and 
 those two gurls, and that we mayn t be strong enough to defend 
 em." 
 
 " We mustn t think of that we icill be strong enough." 
 
 " S/ie dropped this out of her bosom by the wagon this even 
 ing, and as I was going to be where poor Dennis met his death, 
 I thought it might serve as a sort of talisman like, and that she 
 wouldn t miss it until to-morrow morning, so I put it here over 
 my heart." 
 
 As he spoke, Luke held in his hand a small, morocco-bound 
 volume. Gifford took it mechanically and looked at it by the 
 light of the fire. It was a Testament, and as he turned it over 
 it opened at the fly-leaf, and he saw there written, in small but 
 distinct characters, the name 
 
7G MAJRIAN EOOKE; OR, 
 
 And as he returned the volume, by the same light of the fire 
 he looked into Luke Armstrong s honest eyes, and then Gilford 
 saw for the first time that Luke loved her. 
 
 "Strange," he thought, as he went to his watch, "passing 
 strange. And yet,. why strange? Is it remarkable that a fine, 
 honest, young fellow, strong, comely, well-principled, should fall in 
 love with a beautiful girl a poor girl, too, with nothing but her own 
 exertions to depend upon for subsistence ? Is it strange that Luke 
 should love, ay, or marry her 1 Is it not rather natural ? True, 
 there may be something incongruous between their manners, 
 their educations ; but in a new country where the strong arm and 
 the manly spirit are the main stays for protection and sustenance, 
 what matter ?" 
 
 So reasoned Hugh as he stood in the starlight, glancing up and 
 down the stream, now looking before him, now behind, ever 
 vigilant as feeling the deep responsibility of his trust. 
 
 "What matter?" he mused, his thoughts running into a fre 
 quent channel ; "what matter for culture, reflection, intellectual 
 graces ? In a country like this it is the capacity for rude toil, the 
 power which accumulates and retains material things alone which 
 is desirable, for it alone gains leadership or distinction. What 
 matter ? That a woman fall of refinement and rich in feminine 
 delicacy, highly educated, keenly appreciative, should love and 
 wed a rustic, hard-handed ploughman 1 A mere boor ! No, no, 
 that is unjust ; Luke is not so bad as that ; a good fellow with 
 a sound heart and plenty of common sense, if not much book- 
 learning ; and, perhaps, after all she may fancy him ; stranger 
 things have been." 
 
 Here Hugh began to think that somehow it did matter, not 
 withstanding his subtle arguments to the contrary. He fell to 
 envying Luke. 
 
 "Something to love something to love! What a hope, 
 what a daily pleasure, Avhat a nightly consolation !" His eye fell 
 on Ike and Lion sitting together at a little, distance. The man s 
 arm was thrown caressingly round the dog s neck, and he seemed 
 to be whispering to the creature, as, indeed, lie often did. 
 "There; what a comfort does that poor fellow hourly enjoy in 
 the affection even of a dumb beast, while I " 
 
 Here his conscience gave the dreamer a sudden twinge ; for 
 was he not also blessed blessed with the love of Virginia ? 
 
 A cool night breeze came hurtling and sighing through the 
 melancholy trees, and seemed to answer the question sadly 
 enough. At the same moment Gifibrd heard a muffled cry, like 
 the distant shriek of an owl. Some signal, perhaps, " he thought, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 77 
 
 nnd he grasped his rifle more tightly and peered more anxiously 
 into the obscure around him. 
 
 A log came floating gently down the river, and slid into the 
 shadow of the bank beneath the spot where he stood. The next 
 instant a figure rose as if from under his feet, and, as swiftly, 
 Gilford s rifle wa-s at its breast. 
 
 My brother will not shoot," said the calm, deep voice of 
 Washashaco, " he will not fire upon the friend who trusts him." 
 
 The young man hesitated : i% One of our number has been 
 treacherously slain when Washashaco was our guest ; when we 
 discovered the crime, Washashaco had lied away, and could no 
 longer be found." 
 
 "He knew that his white brothers might doubt him," re 
 turned the chief, quietly ; " but when he saw that the Pawnees 
 were at hand, it was needful that he should at once find and talk 
 to his braves. There is little time to tell stories on the war-path." 
 
 " You say that the Pawnees arc at hand f 
 
 " One of their scouts made his way hither unperceived by 
 the Delawares. He crept on the ground like a snake, and sur 
 prised the white man who stood here last night. Something . 
 frightened him, and he crawled away, taking neither his scalp 
 nor hLs rifle." 
 
 " When knew you that this deed had been done ?" 
 
 i; Washashaco saw that the man was missing when his brothers 
 assembled to eat. He passed quickly this way, and found 
 him dead : then he crossed the river, and struck the trail of the 
 Indian who had slain him : at noon he came up with him in 
 the mountains and took his scalp. Behold!" 
 
 Giiiord turned with disgust from the ghastly trophy. "And 
 where are my brother s young men the braves of his tribe ?" 
 
 " One is close at hand, th.e others a few miles away." 
 
 " And the Pawnees ?" 
 
 " About as far, but in another direction. My braves thought 
 they would remain for another day to rest, but the one who has 
 come thinks otherwise ; he thinks they will be here to-morrow. 
 Washashaco, therefore, sent him at sunset to bring up his war 
 riors at once." 
 
 is How numerous are the enemy f 
 
 "They are very many. My brothers will have to fi^ht hard. But 
 they can depend upon the Delaware?. I go to lead them hither." 
 
 Gilford paused and reflected. He was in doubt as to the 
 wisest course for him to pursue. Ought he not, now that the 
 chief was in their power, to insist on his remaining in the camp, 
 at least until the imminence of the danger was past, or until 
 
78 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 further investigation could be made as to the murder of the 
 sentry ? 
 
 Will it not be better for Washashaco to remain with his 
 white brothers ? They will then be satisfied of his friendship, 
 and that he had no hand in the killing of their friend. He can 
 light here with his brothers, if they are attacked, as well as 
 elsewhere. Will he not remain f 
 
 " The Delawares will not fight well without their chief, 
 Washashaco must go to lead them." 
 
 Hugh again hesitated. " His brothers thought it unfriendly 
 of Washashaco to leave them without farewell at the moment 
 they had lost one of their number." lie stopped, not knowing 
 exactly how to suggest a doubt without giving offence. 
 
 " Washashaco s ears are open." 
 
 " I may be blamed for not urging him to remain until they 
 can see him to shake hands with him in the morning." 
 
 The Indian looked intently on the speaker with his dark, 
 glittering eyes : " My brother doubts the good faith of Washa 
 shaco ?" 
 
 " I do not ; but others, perhaps " 
 
 " Listen," said the red man sternly. "I go to bring my 
 braves to the help of my white brothers. I will not remain in 
 their camp. I will shake hands with you in sign of faith with 
 all. A chief of the Delawares cannot lie. I have spoken." 
 
 He stretched forth his hand, as he concluded, with an air of 
 command so princely, that Gifford could not repress a thrill of 
 secret admiration. During the colloquy, too, the dog Lion had 
 approached, and, recognizing Washashaco, gave every indica 
 tion of pleasure and confidence. The Indian looked down and 
 smiled. 
 
 "Be it so," said Gifford, with decision, and grasping the 
 proffered hand ; " I will tell my friends that the Delaware chief 
 will not fail them in their hour of need." 
 
 " Let them be watchful as the lynx, for the Pawnees are many 
 and cunning. The battle may be long and fierce, but the vic 
 tory will be the more glorious. I go." 
 
 " Farewell, then, brave warrior. The battle has many 
 chances, and we may meet no more." 
 
 " The Delawares are taught to carry their lives in their hands, 
 and they know that their time on the earth is short," said Wash 
 ashaco, solemnly. " The Great Spirit has ordered that my peo 
 ple shall disappear one by one from their old homes, and that 
 the children of the white man shall take their places. A few 
 years, more or less, matter little to Washashaco or his braves, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 79 
 
 and, if they die gloriously, they care not when their hour may 
 come. They may die ; but they -will remain faithful to the 
 mighty memories of their race. The children of the Lenni Le- 
 nape will not give their fathers cause to blush in the happy 
 hunting-grounds. To the last, the narne of the Delaware, 
 driven from his lands, broken in numbers, fading away, like a 
 mist, though he is, shah 1 be respected and terrible among all the 
 tribes of the red men 1 Their footsteps are far from their ancient 
 home, and their bones will whiten the prairie a long way from 
 the graves of then* fathers ; but their spirits will dwell in the 
 land for ever I They will roam at will through the forests aud 
 the plains, they will lie on the banks of their own loved rivers, 
 and listen to the sound of the mighty cataract ! And they will 
 wander freely over the hunting-grounds, which once were theirs, 
 long after the last red man has been taken from the earth, and the 
 memory even of the race which succeeds him shall be forgotten !" 
 The chieftain was silent, and ere the last deep tones of his 
 voice had ceased to vibrate, he had folded his blanket about him, 
 and his tall form had glided, swiftly away into the darkness. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE sun was some hours high, and the h ttle band were await 
 ing, in sullen expectancy, the onset of the savages, which now 
 seemed inevitable. For since daybreak they had seen, at several 
 points among the hills behind them, curling puffs of smoke, 
 which not only told that the Indians were near, but, what was 
 still more ominous, that their numbers made concealment need 
 less. 
 
 The sun was some hours high, yet he gave only an Imperfect 
 light. It was one of those heavy, vaporous atmospheres which, 
 when we feel they carry no moisture, seem so inexplicable ; an 
 atmosphere often seen on deserts where no water is, or in climates 
 which have dry seasons long protracted. The sun s rays, strug 
 gling through the murky air, gave a sickly, yellow light, and 
 the luminary himself looked a dull, red ball. 
 
 The mountains east of the camp appeared shadowy and dim; 
 the clear outlines and tangible colors, seen by the party on the 
 hopeful eve when they descended to the banks of the stream, 
 were no longer visible. No more sunny slopes and reaching 
 
80 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 vistas ; no more purple and blue and gold ; nothing but huge, 
 indistinct masses, suffused with a dreary monotone of grayish red. 
 
 The plains on the west looked arid and obscure. They were 
 desolate enough to the eye at the best of times, but the vast 
 stretch now appeared inexpressibly sombre ; and the long waves 
 of soil, and the scanty shrubs which crested them, were all tinged 
 alike with the pervading muddy hue. 
 
 "ISTahum thinks there must be an awful sight of em," half 
 whispered Seth Armstrong to GhTord, as they stood on the small 
 eminence which overlooked then* line of defence. His grizzled 
 face was lined with anxiety, and his voice came a little thick as 
 he spoke. 
 
 " Few or many, we must fight them," replied Hugh with a 
 white light in his eye, which always came there in moments of 
 resolution. "We ve done all that men can do in the way of 
 preparation, and we must look to our own right arms and 
 God s help for the rest." 
 
 "His will be done," said Seth solemnly. "I would ha* 
 liked to git across in peace, but if so be that we must fight for t, 
 why. fight let it be." 
 
 " They don t seem to vally us no more n so many beavers," 
 observed Nahum Pelter, sauntering up to the group on the hil 
 lock. The man was chewing more rapidly than usual, but this 
 was the only mark he showed of sharing any uncommon interest. 
 "I shouldn t wonder if there was a hundred of the red devils." 
 
 "Pray Heaven not," exclaimed the doctor fervently, "or 
 we ve had our last supper." 
 
 " Time enough to cry when we re hurt. Ten good men, with 
 plenty o grit and a, little luck, have whipped a hundred red skins 
 afore now. Shoot low, shoot steady, never throw away a shot, 
 and allers have some loads in reserve ; them s the pints we want 
 to look to." 
 
 "And so we will," cried Luke cheerfully. "Who knows? 
 If the Indians get a sharp repulse at the beginnin of a fight, 
 I ve heard they ll often give it up and leave. Let s hope it 11 be 
 so now." 
 
 "They ain t like to quit," said Dick Railes, "onlessthey 
 think that by hangin on, others may come up and take a hand, 
 and so add to the chances agin em. They know darned well 
 how onlikely it is for us to git help while the scrimmage s goin 
 on." " . 
 
 " You forget the Delawares," remarked Gifford. 
 
 "There s the pint. Accordin to what the chief said to you, 
 he didn t think the Pawnees would be here for a hull day j and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 81 
 
 look at cm ! Xow, if his men don t come up soon, it looks to 
 me as though we d hev to tight without em. 1 
 
 "Depend upon it, he knows the danger, and will strain every 
 nerve to forestall it. But look ! They will give us little time, 
 I fear!" 
 
 All eyes were turned in the direction indicated, and as speed 
 ily saw how grave was the cause for the speaker s apprehen 
 sion. A large body of Indians appeared on horseback in their 
 rear, and were slowly winding down the defile taken by their 
 own train iii descending the foot hills. They made no attempt 
 at concealment, and rode in irregular order, as if perfectly at 
 ease, and confident of carrying out their designs. At the dis 
 tance, nothing more could be discerned than that they were 
 about twenty-five in number, and that, although some carried 
 fire-arms, the majority seemed only provided with lances and 
 bows and arrows. 
 
 A feeling of relief came over the hearts and faces of the 
 white men, as each thus descried, and drew his conclusions from 
 these details of the approaching array. 
 
 "Come," said Seth, drawing a long breath, "cornel If 
 these be all we ve got to handle, we mayn t have sech a bad 
 lookout as we thought for." 
 
 Nahum Pelter shook his head. " There never was Injun yet 
 who showed his hand like that without hidin somethin he 
 didn t show. They ve jest divided their gang, that s what it is, 
 and they re goin to lose us in all round, same as they do the 
 buiftlo 1" 
 
 An exclamation burst from the doctor as Pelter finished, which 
 drew attention from the east to the west. 
 
 Look! look there!" 
 
 Far away on the plain there appeared a knot of horsemen 
 seemingly on the verge of the horizon. There might have been 
 six or eight of them, and so far there was no great occasion for 
 alarm; but presently others were seen to the right -and left, as 
 if they were beating the plain for game. In another moment 
 still more bei ame visible on the outskirts of the others ; and now 
 there was no part of the semi-circle behind the line of the 
 wagons, but was dotted with dark, threatening figures. All 
 were mounted, and all were converging as to a common centre, 
 straight down upon the little camp. 
 
 There are seventy of em if there s one," said the doctor 
 with a groan. 
 
 "To your posts, men!" shouted Seth, hoarsely; "we ve no 
 time to waste!" 
 4* 
 
82 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 The dispositions which had been agreed upon required some 
 modification, owing to the probably complicated nature of the 
 expected attack. It had been thought that a very small portion 
 of the scanty force would suffice to hold the ford, and it had 
 been determined to place the men likely to be most efficient, 
 along the front line, where they would have ample cover, and 
 could use their rifles to the best advantage. This arrangement 
 was so far hastily altered as to put Nahum Pelter in charge at 
 that now critical point with three others, including poor Ike and 
 his constant companion. It was thought, and justly, that the 
 dog, sagacious and amenable as he was, might do good service- 
 in the event of a rush being made by the enemy in numbers at 
 the crossing. This little band was provided with double sets of 
 rifles, besides revolvers and long knives ; and Nahum had, in 
 addition, a large ducking gun, which, to use his own expression, 
 he had " rammed full of slugs " for close quarters. 
 
 On the left of the front, Dick Railes was placed in charge, 
 supported by the doctor and two others, Luke holding the cen 
 tre, and Seth himself, with Hugh Gifiord, being stationed at the 
 Castle. The party was thus detailed over a line of some forty 
 yards in length, the river covering their rear with tolerable effi 
 cacy, save at the weak point so well guarded by Pelter. 
 
 It was fortunate for the little band that the ground on the op 
 posite bank of the stream was low and flat for a long distance 
 toward the hills, and that it swelled upwards on their own side, 
 forming a knoll in about the centre of the camp, depressing 
 again as it ran to the line of wagons. The result of these acci 
 dents was that no raking fire upon the men holding the main 
 line could be opened in the rear from the opposite bank ; while 
 it enabled them to gain time by reconnoitring, and, if need be, 
 opposing an approach in that direction, from behind the friendly 
 shelter of the ridge, without entirely drawing off their attention 
 from enemies in front. The position was certainly a very strong 
 one ; whether it were sufficiently so to enable the garrison to 
 hold it against vastly superior numbers, remained to be seen. 
 The Indians on the plain had now approached to within a dis 
 tance of about four hundred yards, while those descending the 
 defile had apparently come to a halt, since their column had for 
 several minutes remained without emerging from one of its 
 turnings which concealed it from view. Those on the plain now 
 dismounted, and it could be seen that their dress was somewhat 
 similar to that of the chief of the Delawares. They were, 
 however, of inferior height and presence, and their countenances 
 were hideously daubed with paint. Most of this party bore 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 83 
 
 short rifles, as well as knives and tomahawks carried in their 
 belts, while the rest, in addition to the latter weapons, had for 
 midable-looking spears. 
 
 One of the party now advanced a few yards before the others, 
 and, with amicable gestures, unrolled the long skin which h" 
 hud carried at his back, and performed the manoeuvre employed by 
 Washashaco, as an indication of friendly intentions. Upon this 
 demonstration, although having small hopes of its sincerity, 
 Seth and Gilford ascended the knoll and made friendly gestures 
 in response, which were in turn reciprocated by the savage. At 
 this point of the proceedings, the Indians slowly and cautiously 
 drew somewhat nearer, and their leader made signs, proposing 
 that his party should enter their camp, and pay the white men 
 a visit. To this thel titter signified a courteous refusal, which 
 was not altogether well received. The Indians soon commenced 
 a violent discussion among themselves, which terminated in their 
 chief, with some difficulty, intimating to the whites that his 
 band had missed one of their number, whom they supposed to 
 be in the travellers camp, and that unless he were given up 
 they intended to come and search for him. To this Seth and 
 Gilford could only reply that the missing man was not there, 
 and again decline the proffered visit. The warrior then sug 
 gested, by way of satisfying his braves, that the white men 
 should all come and show themselves on the eminence where 
 their spokesman stood* and thus prove to the Indians that their 
 lost comrade was not among them. This transparent artifice 
 poor Seth, in his earnest desire to avert a collision, failed to see 
 through, and he called to the others to join him on the ridge, 
 which most of them were in the act of doing, when the bass 
 shout of Nahum Pelter was heard behind : 
 
 >; Be ye all mad l ? Do ye all want to git shot down in a 
 bunch like wild pigeons ? Down ! down I every man while he 
 can!" 
 
 The warning did not come too soon ; for, whether fearful their 
 trick would be understood, or. from some other reason, that 
 they might get no other opportunity, the savages paused no 
 longer. The sharp crack of a dozen rifles was heard, and al 
 though they did small damage beyond a flesh wound in the 
 thigh for Jabez Fitch, and the perforation of Seth s fur cap, 
 they were well meant enough to clear the knoll in a trice, and 
 drive the whites to their post, intent on sharp hostilities. At 
 the same instant, the report of Pelter s rifle rang through the 
 air, followed in quick succession by three other shots. The 
 whole front line now opened on then* assailants in a volley, and 
 
84 MAKIAN KOOKE ; OR 
 
 the Indians, with demoniac shouts, rushed forward to the as 
 sault. 
 
 Keeping up a running fire as they advanced, the enemy 
 readied a point within twenty yards of the wagons with a loss 
 of only two or three of their number ; but at this critical mo 
 ment the garrison delivered their reserved fire with deadly effect, 
 nearly as many savages falling as there had been shots. The 
 advance wavered, and finally retreated in confusion, bearing off 
 their fallen companions. 
 
 An exulting cheer went up from the little band as they swiftly 
 reloaded their weapons and exchanged congratulations. None 
 were hurt at this first onset, and they accepted the immunity as 
 a happy augury. 
 
 u Well done, boys !" cried Pelter, his huge form appearing 
 on the ridge from the ford. " We ve peppered three on em, 
 sartain, down on our side, and they dursen t take to the water ! 
 Keep on as well as you re doin , and we ll beat em off yet." 
 
 "No one is hurt?" asked Mary Anne, looking anxiously 
 from the wagon. 
 
 " None, thank Heaven," replied Hugh; " but pray do not 
 show yourself thus ; you will attract their attention, and draw 
 their fire on the castle." 
 
 " We have four guns," said the girl, " and are ready to use 
 them." 
 
 "Not yet, not yet; things are not so desperate yet as to 
 make it needful or wise for you to expose yourselves. Pray 
 retire." 
 
 Even as he spoke a bullet struck the top of the wagon, and, 
 tearing away a shred of canvas in its course, sped on across 
 the river. A cry burst from Luke, who saw the incident from 
 his post. 
 
 "Back! back!" he shouted, "and lie down in the . wagon ! 
 There s men enough left to be killed without women helpin 
 em. See ! the red devils are comin on again I Make her go 
 in, Mr. Gifford, do !" 
 
 " I will go in," said the girl, steadily, but very pale. "I will 
 go in, but only because I can do as much within as without." 
 Indeed, she and Kitty had cut slits in the canvas on the side 
 towards the enemy, and now prepared to swell the next volley 
 as the foe came on, by pointing through these apertures the 
 arms they possessed. 
 
 Small time was given for preparation, for the Indians were 
 rushing forward with as much show of resolution as before. 
 This time they advanced in much looser order, spreading them- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 85 
 
 selves further apart than at first, and leaping and whooping to 
 distract the aim of the whites. The latter, however, prudently 
 withheld their fire until the enemy was even nearer than at first, 
 and then poured in a double volley with much more destructive 
 effect. Again the assailants retreated, and again were congrat 
 ulations exchanged. 
 
 But matters were looking graver at the ford. Despite the 
 cover of the group of cottonwoods, one of Nahum Pelter s 
 handful had been hit, and although the wound was not fatal, it 
 was serious enough to keep the sufferer from being of further 
 use in the fray. IJe was carried back to a safe place by Ike, 
 and the doctor summoned in haste to his assistance. Thus the 
 defence was at once weakened by two rifles, a fact of which the 
 red men were speedily aware. 
 
 They did not attempt for the present a third general advance, 
 but contented themselves by keeping up a heavy, though desul 
 tory fire, hoping by chance to disable others, and make the re 
 mainder an easy prey when they should resolve on a final charge. 
 This policy the white men met in turn, by keeping securely 
 behind then* cover, and wasting no ammunition in reply. An 
 hour thus wore on, the little band lying grim and resolute on 
 their arms, the Indians actively circling about them striving to 
 spy out some vulnerable spot, or to catch a chance at some ex 
 posed one of their otherwise invisible foes. Tired at last of 
 these unproductive tactics, a new manoeuvre was resolved upon, 
 and to their other dangers the beleaguered band were now 
 threatened with those of fire. 
 
 A shower of burning arrows were thrown among the brush 
 which has been described as forming an abattis, and connecting 
 the wagons while it masked the movements of those behind. 
 Should this be consumed, not only would they be deprived of 
 their best cover, but openings would be made whereby the 
 enemy might make their way into the camp. The water which 
 had been prudently made ready to meet this emergency was 
 now used with good effect ; but those who used it were neces 
 sarily more exposed than before to the fire of the Indians, and 
 the man Fitch, who had been slightly hurt earlier in the day, 
 now fell mortally wounded by a bullet through the body. 
 
 At this heavy cost the flames were extinguished ; but it was 
 clear that the assailants could repeat their incendiary efforts 
 whenever they chose, and even should they be defeated at a 
 similar expense, on each occasion, it was easy to reckon the 
 small space that lay between the devoted party and extermina 
 tion. 
 
86 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR 
 
 The Indians were apparently satisfied with this prospect, and 
 willing to rest awhile from their labors. Their fire slackened, 
 they no longer threw burning arrows, and the white men thus 
 found time for hasty consultation. It was long past noon now, 
 and the hope which had buoyed many of their hearts during 
 the unequal strife had begun to fail them. 
 
 "Where," asked Seth, drawing a powder-blackened hand 
 across his brow, which looked ten years older since yesterday, 
 " where, think ye, are the Delawarcs ?" 
 
 Hugh shook his head without reply. He was, indeed, miser 
 ably disappointed ; for, irrespective of the pressing need of his 
 services and those of his warriors, the young man had placed 
 implicit faith in Washashaco ; and he grieved as much as a man 
 could grieve, surrounded by so much that was exciting and en 
 grossing, over the chief s defection. 
 
 Pelter crept over to say a word, but it was not now a word 
 of encouragement ; and Luke came over and grasped his father s 
 horny hand with a sad look at the wagon, more expressive than 
 words; the doctor came, too, with set teeth and a bandage 
 about his head. They had lost four out of their scanty number, 
 besides one or two with slight wounds. All saw, what none 
 cared in words to express, that there was nothing before them 
 but to die like men. 
 
 On came the Indians once again, and again the now desperate 
 band rushed to their posts for a last struggle. Again the blaz 
 ing missiles were hurled into the brush, and the flames this 
 time mounted higher than before. Again were desperate efforts 
 made to extinguish them ; but the fire had more heart this time, 
 and so had the assailants. With yells and screeches and appall 
 ing whoops, they swarmed on, not heeding now those who 
 dropped among their number. The. last shot of the whites was 
 expended, and still their foes swept on. The blaze now caught 
 one of the wagons, and at this place a gap had been made, 
 larger than any other. Through this gap poured the exulting 
 savages, but the two first fell by the rifles of Pelter and Ike, 
 who sprang up the ridge to help beat back the assault. 
 
 At this terrible moment Seth Armstrong was hit by a chance 
 bullet, and his right arm fell powerless by his side ; but, nothing 
 daunted, he seized an axe, and stood bareheaded, with his gray hair 
 streaming in the wind, in front of the wagon where the females 
 were, prepared to defend it to the last. But Hugh Gilford sprang 
 toward the breach as if, though but for a moment, to contest its 
 passage. As he did so a terrific war-whoop sounded from the 
 ford. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 87 
 
 "Hurrah !" shouted Nahum Pelter, as he bounded down from 
 the slope, " hurrah ! ? Tis the war-cry of the Delawares ! Stand 
 firm, boys 1 We ll lick em yet." 
 
 As he spoke, the giant threw himself headlong into the gap, 
 whirling his long rifle, and dashing the Indians right and left 
 to the earth at every whirl. It really seemed that he could hold 
 the pass single-handed against the surging mass who opposed 
 him. For three minutes, in truth, he did so ; and those three 
 minutes doubtless saved the lives of the rest of the party, but 
 they cost the gallant frontiersman his own ; for he fell at last like 
 some noble tree, surrounded by the dead and wounded of his foes. 
 
 During this struggle Ike had pressed bravely forward to the 
 aid of his comraue. but, before the latter had fallen, the poor sim 
 pleton was struck in the breast by a tomahawk hurled by a savage 
 who had managed to pierce the line below the larger breach. 
 As he fell, the dog Lion sprang with a fierce howl at the throat 
 of his assailant, and bore him also to the earth ; but a second red 
 man was close at the heels of the first, and he raised his hatchet 
 to brain the noble beast from behind. Whether incited by the 
 imploring look in Ike s eyes as he lay on the ground or not. 
 Gilford was fortunately in time to anticipate this stroke ; and, 
 clubbing his rifle, he dealt the Indian a blow on the temple, 
 which stretched him lifeless by Ike s side. 
 
 Having succeeded in overwhelming then huge opponent, the 
 Pawnees now leaped in numbers over his body into the camp, 
 but they met other and fresher foes than they counted upon; 
 for Washashaco with liis braves had crossed the stream above 
 the ford, and now rushed down the hill, uttering the terrible 
 war-whoop of the Delawares. This onset, so sudden, so unex 
 pected as it was, appeared to fill the Pawnees with terror. Six 
 or eight were shot down at once, almost without lifting a hand, 
 and the next instant the Delawares were upon and among them, 
 striking and destroying without mercy. 
 
 The females now handed freshly-loaded weapons to their 
 friends, and a volley from Luke, Dick Railes, and the Doctor, dis 
 charged into the crowd on the plain outside, completed the dis 
 comfiture of the attacking party. They fled in all directions, 
 leaving then- dead and wounded" to the mercy of the conquerors, 
 while they sought to reach their horses on the open beyond. 
 The yells and shots of their pursuers, however, produced a stam 
 pede among the horses, and doubled the confusion of the rout. 
 The Delawares followed up their advantage relentlessly, and, in 
 half an hour, of the numbers who commenced the attack, scarcely 
 a tithe were living and unhurt. 
 
88 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 Washashaco, returning from the pursuit, found bis friefids 
 mourning over their dead. He paused by the body of Nahum 
 Velter. 
 
 "He was a great warrior," said the chieftain, solemnly, "and 
 died as a warrior should. My brothers can now go forward in 
 safety," he continued, pointing to the plain, where the last of the 
 broken enemy could be seen flying before the victorious Del- 
 awares. "My brothers can go on their journey in peace ; there 
 arc now no red men to stop their path from this place to the Great 
 Lake of Bitter Waters!" 
 
 END OP THE FIRST BOOK. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 89 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE time has arrived when some brief explanation may be fit 
 ting, both as regards what has already been given of this nar 
 rative and what may hereafter be related. There is a piece of 
 information which, although it may not be strictly due to the 
 reader, is yet likely to be in some degree satisfactory, as clearing 
 up doubts and solving the manner of treating the characters of 
 certain individuals of our story, which otherwise might appear 
 to be needlessly clouded and incomplete. When the author first 
 determined on his work, his design was to set forth with tracing 
 the adventures of its principal personages from the time when he 
 first encountered and knew them in the wilds of California ; but 
 he afterwards thought such a narrative would be better rounded 
 and more interesting if the reader were made acquainted 
 with the eventful journey across the plains on which those char 
 acters first met, and whence the mutual influence of diverse 
 natures might be supposed to have begun. Thus it fell out, 
 then, that what he has called the First Book was taken down 
 chiefly from the lips of Hugh Gifford, a circumstance which will 
 explain the absence of any particular elaboration touching that 
 gentleman s own peculiarities; and also, perhaps, account for 
 some indications of reticence .in describing the motives or 
 thoughts of others. So flu* as these omissions are concerned, 
 they might possibly have been fatal to the intelligibility of his 
 story had not the author been able to elicit from feminine 
 sources such links and fragments as connected the gaps, and 
 enabled him to construct a tolerably comprehensive whole. 
 Human beings are rarely good judges of their own moral or 
 aesthetic development, but those among them who are the best, 
 are seldom apt to be free in imparting its history. Hugh was 
 
90 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 more like William the Silent than Michel de Montaigne, and 
 although he would readily tell you what he had done, or even at 
 times what he meant to do, he was grudging as to what he had 
 thought and felt. But Marian well, we shall see and judge her 
 for ourselves, for it was many weeks that AVC lived within sight 
 of her almost ideal beauty, within sound of her musical voice, in 
 the same family, indeed, all of us digging and straining for yel 
 low earth, in the lovely country that nestled about Armstrong s 
 Bar. 
 
 Beautiful land of California ! Beautiful in thy soaring moun 
 tains, beautiful in thy laughing plains, in thy lakes and valleys, 
 thy brimming rivers and thy sublime cataracts ! Noble and yet 
 mysterious land where with all the vastncss and solitude of 
 primeval wilds there were found long reaches of velvety turf, 
 shaded by giant trees, and as free from underbrush as an English 
 park ; reaches where one- could gallop for miles and miles and 
 yet see no sign of a living thing ; where after some long and 
 easy ascent, perchance, the trees grew thicker and the air 
 grew darker, till of a sudden, bursting on the eye with a flood of 
 light, there stretched below a landscape of such surpassing and 
 cultivated loveliness that the gazer could scarce believe such is 
 the force of prejudice and association that it had not been for 
 ages the abode of man, smoothed, softened, and redeemed from 
 natural savagery by works of art and of agriculture. But as he 
 gazed on ho saw that it was not so. No line of smoke, no roof- 
 tree, could his narrowest scrutiny detect in the spacious panorama 
 before him. No broken column relieved with its sculptured 
 whiteness the unvaried green of the foliage. No fragment of 
 some springing dome intercepted the endless waves of the tree- 
 tops. No cattle or sheep browsed over the boundless meadows 
 so loaded with luxuriant vegetation, as if for their needs. No 
 figures more mournful deiiciency than any other no figures 
 of human beings with crooks in hand and bits of bright color 
 about their dress, to catch the eye with a comforting assurance 
 that life and sympathy were there ! Nature alone nature at 
 once grand in her own majesty and made delicate and various 
 by the constant suggestion of refined inhabitants, but of whom 
 the closest eye could find no trace. It seemed as if capricious 
 genii had swept by night through some Arcadian vale, rich in 
 the labor of classic hands, stored with piles and piles of priceless 
 architecture temples, arches, lanes and borne them, like Alad 
 din s palace, carefully away, leaving nature s work and nature s 
 work alone behind. 
 
 Such was California at least, such parts of it as I best knew. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 91 
 
 California, which, with her delicious atmosphere, her sunny skies, 
 her teeming fertility, has tangible attractions besides those of ail 
 her pomp of scenery and her feverish glare of gold, to draw 
 earth s discontented wanderers to her soil, and, if they be wi -e, 
 to keep them there. For me there is no need to call up associa 
 tions connected with discoveries of the precious ore, to think of 
 California as essentially a land of romance. The air alone so 
 different from that of the harsh, easterly exposures of the Atlantic 
 coast makes the pulse quicken even in memory, and the heart 
 beat with retrospective gratitude for its inspiriting beneficence. 
 Where the body is healed and comforted, the spirit is likewise 
 apt to be, and the recollection of life is most prosaic which is 
 passed in ungenial climes. Physical discomfort the constant 
 struggle against unfavorable external conditions is a sad draw 
 back on poetic memories as well as poetic feeling ; and although 
 the Norsemen had bards as well as the Greeks, there is not much 
 difference of opinion as to the relative inspiration of their muse. 
 The misery which is taught in song may come of the east wind, 
 but its love and its melody, its perfume and its hope, must be 
 inspired by the balmy breath of the south and the west. Yes, 
 California was to me a land of romance ^ and not less so that I 
 met there for the first time those friends of ours with whom 
 the reader is already somewhat acquainted. 
 
 It was a soft evening in the spring of 1851 that, having wan 
 dered in many directions with many objects, chance or fate drew 
 me near the spot where these friends had made their camp and 
 set up their tents. All the afternoon I had been walking, trot 
 ting, or cantering my horse through such park-like glades as I 
 have essayed to describe. The last stopping-place had been 
 twenty miles behind, but the day was fine, and the track not 
 difBcult to follow, since one had merely to keep within easy dis 
 tance of a stream which flowed on the left, and on whoso banks 
 the settlement, which was the goal of my journey, was to be 
 found. There had been, however, an abrupt rise in the rolling 
 country, and for some miles the tall trees, always ascending be 
 fore, told me I was gaining a considerable elevation. This led 
 me to swerve more to the right, to keep clear of the river, whose 
 banks must now be high and precipitous ; and, thus inclining, the 
 forest grew denser, until the tall redwoods seemed almost dis 
 posed to dispute my further passage. It was getting towards 
 evening, too, and although hostile Indians were said to be tew 
 in that region, yet an occasional grizzly was stumbled upon, and 
 was pretty certain to prove a very dangerous customer. Just as 
 this disagreeable thought flashed across my mind, the deep bay 
 
92 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 of a dog rang forth in the thicket beyond, and put to flight ah 
 fear of any such terrible neighbor ; for it was not the bark of an 
 Indian s cur, or the dismal whine of the coyote, and I knew at 
 once that white men must be near. A few moments longer, and 
 my conviction was verified, although the faces I saw would 
 scarcely have passed for Caucasian in an Atlantic city. There 
 were two of them bronzed to more than a mahogany color, and, 
 at the first glance, neither in expression nor manner did the 
 strangers seem veiy prepossessing. They were seated on a log 
 in a small natural clearing, and a mountain brook was babbling 
 along beside them ; two men in leathern hunting-shirts and leg 
 gings of what appeared to be of the same material. The elder- 
 had little else in the way of dress or trappings, save a broad 
 knife stuck in his girdle ; he had a white line scored across one 
 cheek, as I afterwards" learned, by a rifle bullet. The younger 
 man was more curiously arrayed, for his dress was plentifully 
 bedecked with gaily colored feathers and beads, interspersed 
 here and there by pieces, of bright scarlet cloth. The two had 
 a tin ewer or pan on the log between them, which they weiv 
 shaking back and forth, watching it the while with eager in 
 terest. 
 
 " Down, Lion, down !" cried one of the men, just before my 
 horse emerged into the open. " There ain t no Injuns near 
 abouts, I tell ye, and as to the bars, they re a gettin too all-fired 
 smart to travel so close to the settlement. Down, I tell ye !" 
 
 " Lion knows more nor you or me, Dick Railes," exclaimed 
 his companion. "If he says red-skin, it s red-skin. If he says 
 bar, it s bar. He don t say neither bar nor rcd-sjkin now, 
 though, seein he knows it s a white man ! J) 
 
 As he spoke, the dog burst into the area, .baying furiously, 
 for the intruder was close at hand. My horse was a trifle rest 
 ive under this ungracious welcome, and I hastened to establish 
 more friendly relations. 
 
 "It is a white man, my friends," I cried, "and one who 
 means no one harm ; so, perhaps, you ll call off this trusty sen 
 tinel of yours, whom my horse seems to think a grizzly in dis 
 guise." 
 
 But Lion barked no longer. The sound of my voice, and the 
 fact that his companions knew of my presence, were quite suffi 
 cient for the sagacious creature, who now lay down close to the 
 log in silence, only questioning my every movement with his 
 bright, penetrating eyes. 
 
 " More on em !" said the elder man, in a discontented tone. 
 " That s three since Sunday. Honey and bees is nuthin to t. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 03 
 
 You air a stranger, you air, sir. You re welcome sure enough, 
 so fur s hung beef and hoe-cake goes, and a shakedown for that 
 matter. But there s poor diggins round here. That s so. May 
 be," he continued, his face brightening with a look of sudden 
 hope and reassurance, "May be, ye don t reckon to stay round 
 here ? Like as not, you re goin on to Yankee Jim s, or Shut- 
 tail Canon ?" 
 
 I shook my head. " I was going to ask you to show me the 
 way to Armstrong s Bar." 
 
 My interlocutor groaned. "You re sure ye hadn t rather 
 keep on to Yankee Jim s? It s drefful poor pickin hereabouts. 
 nave a chaw, stranger?" 
 
 " Not now, thank you. Then you don t know the way to 
 Armstrong s ?" 
 
 " Know it? Why, I know it backwards, and every inch fif 
 teen miles up and down both sides of the river. Ye hain t 
 heard how fast they re scratchin out the coarse gold up at the 
 Canon, have ye ?" 
 
 I explained that I did not come for the immediate purpose of 
 digging, but to see the country ; and that my object was to pro 
 ceed at once to Armstrong s Bar. The first part of my state 
 ment seemed to afford my companion great relief and satisfaction. 
 
 " Don t mean to dig, eh ? Well, it is hard work, and harder 
 down our way than most anywheres else. As for the Bar, I 
 kin take ye there, and I will. Not that the boys like strangers 
 pooty well. They re kinder sot agen em. There was an editor 
 there last month from Marysville ; a curus kind of a chap, but 
 I guess he means well. His name was Zelotes Pangburn, it 
 wor ; and the boys treated him as slick as they knew how ; but 
 he turned agen cm." 
 
 "Hooray!" shouted the other so suddenly that the dog 
 leaped up with a quick bark of sympathy. "Hooray! here s 
 the shiny arter all ! Ike s found it more n there is anywhere 
 on the Bar ! Hooray I" and he held up in the palm of his hand 
 a little heap of glittering dust. 
 
 "Shut up, can t ye?" growled Dick Railes ; "ye ll have the 
 hull of Calif orny on the Bar, with your boastin and howlin ." 
 
 " And s pose I did," cried Ike, "there s more n enough for 
 all on em! and when there ain t, Ike 11 find more still 
 mountains of it." 
 
 " I tell ye what, Ike," proceeded his comrade, " s pose you 
 and Lion travel on ahead, and tell Miss Armstrong and Kitty 
 this ere man s comin on to the Bar ; they ll want to scare up 
 suinthin for supper." 
 
94 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Ike was nothing loath to accede to this arrangement, and he 
 set forth, as they assured me, by a short cut, which would bring 
 him to the settlement much sooner than my horse would carry 
 me. This cut led toward the left and down the clhTs, Arm 
 strong s Bar being directly on the banks of the stream, a couple 
 of miles further on. Dick and myself proceeded by a more 
 circuitous route, having to pass around the base of a series of 
 lofty hills. 
 
 u He s only a poor nateral," observed Mr. Railes, in a depre 
 cating tone, as he took in a gigantic slice of his favorite weed, 
 " only a poor nateral. But the folks thinks a heap of him, and 
 he kin fight like sin, he kin." 
 
 "Fight?" 
 
 " Fight. He and that there big dog o his n jest put four red 
 skins through their dickies atween em, out there on the plains. 
 That s so, I was along and seen it ; and it wor the hardest day s 
 fight I ever see. Most o the boys on the Bar was in it, they 
 wor ; and there was more that never came out of it." 
 
 " You had a rough time of it?" 
 
 " Rough ? you can bet high we had. Twas just touch and 
 go whether any on us ever came out alive. I never think on t 
 but I feel my scalp half off, and put up my hand to see if it s thar." 
 
 "And your friends at the Bar were in this struggle, you 
 say?" 
 
 "Most all on em ; old Seth, and Luke, and his wife and gals, 
 and the Scotch doctor we ve got there, and Hugh Gilford, and 
 Ike, and Lion you ve seen them and a heap more ; let alone 
 them we buried where they fell. There was a chap named Pel- 
 ter, as good a hunter and as true a shot as ever dropped a buck 
 or hit a dollar. He saved the hull party, he did ; for he stood 
 like a rock, and blocked the hole where the Injuns was tryin to 
 pour in, till the Delawares came to help us." 
 
 " So that most of the party escaped?" 
 
 "Yes. Some on em hurt bad, though. Uncle Seth had his 
 arm broke, and poor Ike was hit in the chest with a hatchet. 
 It stunned him like, and the big dog had the redskin that hove 
 ., it by the throat quicker n greased hghtnin ; but it wor all day 
 with Lion, it wor, if it hadn t been for Gilford ; for he jest 
 cooked another devil who was arter splittin the critter s head 
 open. A minute more and the Delawares were among us. 
 Painters and screech-owls ! I can hear em a hollerin now 1 
 Louder than thunder, and sharper than a steam-engine ! But 
 it wor the pootiest music we ever heerd for all that ; for we 
 knew it was friends, and it meant we were saved." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 95 
 
 " And you ; were you unhurt- ? 
 
 " Not quite ; I wor tickled up in the ribs some, and got this 
 wipe across the check nuthin to speak of. So you see, 
 stranger," continued 31 r. Railes, spirting a parenthetical obla 
 tion far ahead ; " so you see, arter goiu through sech lively old 
 times in company, the folks up at the Bar kind o froze together ; 
 and though they hadn t thought of it afore, only meanin to 
 hitch hosses to cross the plains, they agreed to try and stick to 
 the same diggins, and run with the same machine as long as they 
 could. That s why I m down on Zelotes Paugbura." 
 
 " He interfered with this association, then ?" 
 
 " Xot that you d say he exactly interfered. But he went and 
 stuck a lot of stuff in his paper, down to Marysville, bout what 
 fat diggins and slick folks there was up to Armstrong s Bar, and 
 how complete and pooty it was, and this set others a chatterin* 
 down at Frisco and other places, and we ve just been bothered 
 with strangers ever since." 
 
 " Well, you understand I don t come to dig or to give trouble, 
 and " 
 
 " Oh, no offence ; I was only explainin to ye, ye know, bout 
 Zel. ; we re all glad to see folks who d on t come to make trouble 
 interferin with claims. Alter all, we don t do much more n 
 make a good liviif ; for grub, and boots, and tools is so all-fired 
 high, anyhow, and teainin makes em c6*me so much higher, it 
 don t leave much room to dicker on ; but we re happy and com 
 fortable together, and, if we was let alone, there ain t none of 
 the party d vote for a change." 
 
 It was nearly dusk now, and as my tired horse stepped slowly 
 along, Dick Railes walked by my side, beguiling the way with 
 his rambling accounts of the people at Armstrong s Bar, their 
 likes and dislikes, their adventures on the plains after the en 
 counter with the savages which adventures were, as usual after 
 any highly perilous and exciting one, dull and commonplace in 
 comparison the exploits of Lion and the eccentricities of his 
 master, the troubles the party had overcome in getting cover 
 over then* heads when they first came on the Bar, and so forth 
 until, when the stars began to wink through the thickening 
 obscure, and we .wound slowly down the hill side into the little 
 settlement, I knew nearly as much of its habits and its history 
 as my informant himself. 
 
 It was a charming spot, whose beauties not even the deepen 
 ing shadows could altogether conceal. The washings were at 
 some little distance in a bend of the stream, and hidden by inter 
 vening slopes ; so that there was none of that hideous tearing 
 
96 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 up of the earth, that rifting and scoring of nature s bosom, 
 which afterwards gave such vast tracts in California so ghastly 
 an appearance ; the appearance of a place which has been sub 
 jected to a terrific bombardment ; where descending shells have 
 sunk into the soil, and, bursting, thrown it in all manner of con 
 fused heaps and shapeless clods around ; where cannon-balls, 
 flying at a tangent to the surface, have struck inequalities and 
 laid open huge furrows of many yards in length ; where the 
 ground has been turned up from so great. a depth that the mould 
 which alone can bear green things is covered over and buried 
 by yellow, sun-burned masses of clay and piles of sterile gravel ; 
 where man, having accomplished all the desolation possible, has 
 fled and left the place a solitude. There are three things, in 
 deed, in whose pursuit our race make similar sacrilegious assaults 
 leave similar scars upon mother earth three passions, whose 
 traces may be easily confounded, those for war, travel, and gold. 
 Intrenchments and rifle-pits for defence and attack, excava 
 tions and embankments for lines of railway, and tearing up the 
 soil for the coveted metal, produce appearances which may be 
 readily mistaken one for the other. But there was no sign of 
 any such violence to be seen as yet at Armstrong s Bar. 
 
 They came there for gold, it is true, and if it were to be had 
 they would have it. Those who thought, when first leaving the 
 East, that they would till the soil, embark in trade, mend bod 
 ies, cure souls, or what not, fell to pure gold-getting at last, in 
 its simplest form, when they came on the ground. But their 
 toils were happily pursued out of sight of their dwellings, and 
 rare blessing in the earlier Californian days women s hands 
 were with them to beautify as well as women s eyes to keep 
 holy ; so that there were no outward marks of plutocracy about 
 the little nest of homes. It was a very odd-looking nest cer 
 tainly ; something like a cross, perhaps, between a straggling 
 Yankee village and a Bedouin encampment ; the two or three 
 edifices, half tent and half shanty ; but the turf was green and 
 virgin all around, the neighborhood was scrupulously clean, and 
 there was a dear, sweet odor of climbing vines in the air, which 
 seemed to sanctify the place like incense, because it reminded 
 one of home. There was, at least, no sign of gold-digging 
 about the place, and that of itself was an attraction. 
 
 These were advantages dimly seen and imperfectly appreci 
 ated, it is true, on the evening when I came to Armstrong s 
 Bar ; but. I learned to know and cherish them afterwards, and 
 so describe them rather from later than earlier impressions. My 
 welcome was a cordial one, however ; more so than I had any 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 97 
 
 right to expect. But Dick Railes, propitiated, no doubt, by my 
 evident interest in his narrative, and by the more material inci 
 dent of my not coming to prospect for gold, evidently did his 
 best to launch me comfortably into the good opinion of the tiny 
 society; and although, as usual, those whom I subsequently 
 came to know best were at first most distant, I had passed 
 many an evening less agreeably than my first proved to be at 
 Armstrong s Bar. 
 
 Seth Armstrong had managed to erect a highly respectable 
 domicile, all things considered. There were, probably, no such 
 things as clap-boards, or planking, or shingles, within many a 
 mile, and a saw-mill was yet unheard of in that region. But 
 the frame of the building was of stout redwood, with the bark 
 still covering the trees and saplings which served as timbers and 
 joists, and the roof of heavy canvas was steep enough to give 
 fair promise of dry shelter below. A chimney had been man 
 aged of adobe, the sunburnt brick used by the Mexicans, half- 
 breeds, native Californians, or whatever else or more properly 
 the singular population could be called, which the Anglo-Saxons 
 found in languid possession when they came to occupy the new 
 appanage of the great republic, There was, therefore, a very 
 comfortable fireplace, and a bright blaze on the hearth not un 
 welcome to see, for the night was growing chilly. The house 
 was of one story only, but there was a ceiling of canvas some 
 ten feet from the ground, besides the cover afforded by the roof 
 proper, and there were two windows, with real sashes and glass, 
 opposite the door. The space within, which measured some 
 forty by twenty feet, was divided into four rooms, the largest 
 being in the centre, and forming the main apartment, while one 
 end was partitioned off apparently for the females of the fam 
 ily, and the other for the men. Each of these had serviceable 
 doors leading into the central hall, which latter was well pro 
 vided with settles, tables, dressers, and such necessaries as were 
 requisite to comfort, albeit it was idle to make any pretensions 
 to elegance. From the middle of the ceiling, and about three 
 feet below it, hung a hoop, to which were attached several bits 
 of lighted candle, and which constituted a chandelier of a prim 
 itive shape and style, indeed, but having its own advantages of 
 convenience as well as of safety, which, in an establishment so 
 largely constructed of cotton, was not to be despised. Several 
 barrels stood in the corners, and along the walls were hung from 
 the wood forming the frame of the house various hams, and other 
 articles of provender, of a dried and generally imperishable 
 character. On one side there were also secured a rough set of 
 5 
 
98 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 shelves, on the lower of which were arrayed a few dishes and 
 metallic utensils for cooking, and on the upper about a dozen 
 well-worn volumes. Floor to this unique saloon there was 
 none, except of beaten clay, which, indeed, was nearly as hard 
 ened, with much use, as if it had been laid in the adobe itself. 
 
 With all its homeliness, there was an air of neatness in the 
 room. There were curtains of simple calico to the windows, 
 and on the little seats in front of them were bunches of wild 
 flowers. Then, again, the floor, if only of clay, was free from 
 litter, and the tables and dressers were as clean as hands cculd 
 make them. Over the mantelpiece appeared a species of rude 
 trophy, with a couple of rifles and a fowling-piece crossed, a 
 bowic knife, with a pair of pistols and a belt, pouch, and pow 
 der-flask ; the whole crowned with a stag s horns, which made 
 a picturesque apex to the mass. Underneath the arms were two 
 or three pairs of spurs, on either side of an old-fashioned mir 
 ror, a piece of furniture rather long for its width, and being one 
 of the very few of her household treasures which poor Mrs. 
 Armstrong had been able to bring in safety across the plains. 
 
 The roof of the edifice projected some ten feet beyond its 
 facade, forming a kind of piazza, useful for shade and shelter ; 
 and it was here that I was deserted by my guide, after I had 
 complied with his suggestion to dismount. 
 
 " I ll jest take off the saddle, and put the critter in the comd" 
 observed Mr. Railes, "while you walk in and see the folks. 
 Taint supper-time yet, but the gals 11 be on hand, and glad to 
 see ye." 
 
 The speaker was gone before I could remonstrate, and I felt 
 somewhat embarrassed about thrusting myself thus unintro- 
 duced and unasked into a house which, although humble enough, 
 was evidently not a hostelry, and whose accommodation must 
 clearly be of a limited description. I, therefore, paused in a 
 momentary perplexity, which was relieved by the opening of 
 the door. A flicker of red light from within fell on a face and 
 figure which I had 110 difficulty in recognizing as those of the 
 "pooty gal who lived with the Armstrongs," who had been 
 mentioned as w T e came by my communicative companion. 
 
 " You are the gentleman Ike and Lion saw on the road ?" 
 asked a full, soft contralto. "You are very welcome. Mr. 
 Armstrong is up at the Bend, but will soon be at home for the 
 night. Pray walk in." 
 
 Yfhich I did, nothing loath. I see her now, with her lithe yet 
 rounded figure, and her plain stuff gown ; her brow so low and 
 sweet, and the wonderful long lashes, which swept over eyes 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 99 
 
 more wonderful still ; her straight Greek profile, her wealth of 
 massive black hair, her radiant teeth, her almost babyish mouth. 
 I could go into rhapsodies now alter all these years, and after 
 Marian Kooke has become but we must not anticipate ; neither 
 must we for I hate double dealing of every kind neither must 
 we mislead the reader regarding the relater s connection with 
 the more important matters of this history. Therefore, let this 
 opportunity be embraced to explain that, although there exist 
 reasons why he should here and there verify them by referring 
 to his personal knowledge and experience, his individuality has 
 little concern with them otherwise, and will not be obtruded more 
 than may ba strictly conducive to clearness and authenticity. 
 
 Two other women were in the room, Mrs. Armstrong, who 
 greeted the stranger with homely kindness, and pretty Kitty, 
 who received him with shy cordiality. Presently the door open 
 ed again, and my avant couriers were added to the assemblage. 
 The dog walked straight up to my side, and looked steadily in 
 my face with an expression of deliberate inquiry ; and on my 
 responding with some customary indications of amity, he gave 
 three slow and ponderous wags of his tail, and went and dropped 
 heavily in a corner. 
 
 " He never forgits any one he s seed afore," remarked Ike, 
 gravely, " nor he couldn t if he tried. He knows all them as 
 lives 011 the Bar, and all them as ever came to it, and all them 
 as he don t know ain t wuth knowin ." 
 
 Xo one venturing to combat this proposition, its enunciator 
 seated himself near his dog, and commenced a process of an or 
 namental character, intended to enrich some portion of his 
 costume. 
 
 ** He s allers quiet and good-tempered," said the old lady, in 
 an undertone, ;i cept when he talks about the plaguy gold, and 
 then he only wants to talk a bit too much. He used to be wuss 
 than he is, but I think it made him kind o brighter, bavin* the 
 dreadful time with the Injuns on the plains. Ike fit, and fit well, 
 but he got hurt bad, and was some time gittin over it." 
 
 " You seem to have had a narrow escape." 
 
 " If there was e er a time the Lord visibly interfered, "answer 
 ed Mrs. Armstrong, piously, i; itwas on that day. Our folks did 
 their best, but they was well nigh spent, and we women did our 
 best not that / should have had strength to do anything if it 
 hadn t been for the pluck of that eere young lady, Mary Anne, 
 there, who s got more grit than any gal I ever see in all my 
 born days, and kept Kitty and me up a cheerin us. and settin us 
 the example of loadin and thin just as reglar s if she d been a 
 sodger." 
 
100 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " The gentleman will think me quite an Amazon," said the 
 young lady referred to, laughing. 
 
 "So ye are, I reckon. You amazed me enough, and the In- 
 juris enough, and more too, that time, I m thinkin . But twould 
 all have been no use if it hadn t been for that chief I hated the 
 sight of afore, and thought no better than a murderer ! Jest 
 stoowin how folks takes themselves in in this world, and how 
 slow we oughterbe a sittin in judgment on our fellow critters." 
 
 "You know, ma," said Kitty Armstrong, coming into the 
 light with her golden hair, and bright, bashful face, " you know 
 ma, that Mr. GifFord said all the time that the chief would be 
 true to us, and felt sure he d git us out of trouble at last." 
 
 " I know, I know. But then you see the frontier boys thought 
 Mr. Gifibrd knew too much bout books to know much bout 
 Injuns ; and they was afeard he wouldn t like to fight much 
 hisself when the time came, so that kind o shook and wavered 
 me in puttin much trust in his idees." 
 
 " And he did fight arter all !" 
 
 "Like a lion ! and saved that poor critter s life in the corner 
 inter the bargain. Folks learn a good deal they never expect 
 to when they come to cross the plains." 
 
 The huge dog hero rose and stalked majestically to the door, 
 where, turning his head on one side, he listened for a time with 
 profound attention ; after which, apparently satisfied, he slowly 
 marched back, and resumed his position in the corner. Kitty 
 answered my inquiring look. 
 
 "He heard us mention Mr. Gifford s name, and I s pose that 
 reminded him twas about time for him and the rest to be in to 
 supper. He always knows when it s time for em to come in." 
 
 "He knows everythink, he does," asserted Ike, with energy. 
 " The time to eat, and the time to drink, when to git up, and 
 when to lie down. He knows things that pison, and he ll Avarn 
 ye on em if you watch him. He knows friends from foes 
 sooner than any man does, and none on em can pull the wool 
 over his eyesr He d tell ye where all the gold is, only he thinks 
 twould be bad for ye to grow too rich aU of a suddint ; don t 
 ye, Lion ? 
 
 The dog looked gravely at his master, and gave three thumps 
 on the floor Avith his great tail. 
 
 " Ye see he knows every Avord ye say to him. What s more, 
 he knows Avhat ye say to each other, only he don t kear much 
 bout your noticin it, for fear t would make ye cautious, and he 
 likes to keep posted in all that s goin on. Don t ye, Lion?" 
 
 Lion gave the same response as before, but he no longer 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 101 
 
 awaited further questioning, but rose promptly, and again went 
 to the door, and listened ; and this tune his rcconnoissance was 
 more satisfactory, for he quickly leaped up and opened the door 
 with the greatest ease, pushing up the latch with his paw, and 
 giving a bark of welcome. Immediately after, four men entered 
 the little cabin. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 "HERE we are, mother," cried Seth Armstrong, cheerily. 
 "Here we are, richer by five eagles than we was in the mornin . 
 Taint much, to be sure, with flour at fifty dollars a barrel, and 
 salt pork a dollar a pound, and boots at two ounces ! But it s 
 gittin on, and kcepin our head above water, which is more than 
 many poor critters are doin just at present. Servant, sir, didn t 
 see you afore ; come to stay a night with us ? Thate right, 
 We ll tiy and make you as comfortable as we kin, though the 
 coyotes do haowl some and the shake-down ain t jest like the 
 Astor House. Kitty, I hope there s something to give the gen 
 tleman for supper." 
 
 " There s six of us men," remarked Luke, with a good-humor- 
 ed essay at introduction, " six in all, by good rights, though Ike, 
 there, allers reckpns seven That s the old man, and this is me, 
 and this here s Dr. Landale ; he s a Britisher, he is, but he s a 
 good kind of a man for all that, and ain t stuck up none. 
 And that man play in with the dog, that s Hugh Gifibrd. 
 As to mother and the gals, you ve made acquaintance your 
 selves." 
 
 " Glad to know you, sir," quoth the doctor, " only I hope you 
 didn t come to the Bar on the recommendation of that busy 
 body, Pangburn. He s sent so many with the idea that we were 
 shovelling out gold by the ton as to cause some disappointment 
 We re just paying our way, that s all ; with a good chance every 
 day of striking a lead that may bring us to fortune." 
 
 "Fortune!" echoed a grave voice from the corner. "Xot 
 with one at such ill terms with the goddess as me, I fear." 
 
 You 1 Xonsense !" said the Scotchman. "If she were re 
 solved to make a dead set against you, you d have left your 
 bones among the Pawnees. You Americans are always so im 
 patient. You must build a house, a ship, a reputation, a fortune 
 
102 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 in a clay; you do sometimes, and what is the consequence? 
 Your house totters at the push of a child ; your ship goes to bits 
 in the first gale ; your reputations are bright and shining as soap 
 bubbles, and as lasting ; and your riches take wings and fly away 
 before you learn how, to spend them." 
 
 <""Our n"y o;i^, v said Luke, as he seated himself at a table, and 
 prepared to weigh the glittering dust, which he poured from a 
 b^ielkfcfcni bag. \ 5. Leastways, not afore we git to divide more n 
 -eight dollars and a/half a day." 
 
 " I don t b lievein hasty got fortin no more than you, doctor," 
 observed Seth, approvingly, "only I don t know as Merikins are 
 wuss than other folks in such things. If they re lively and spry, 
 it s cause they re in a new country, and they hcv to keep even 
 or go behindhand. We air like a young colt, we air ; when we 
 git older we ll git stiddier." 
 
 "Three ounces and a half and an eighth," announced Luke 
 from his -scales. "Nigher to six eagles than to five, father." 
 
 "That s above the average above the average. If we keep 
 on, p raps w r e ll ketch up to what Mr. Pangburn said we got, arter 
 all." 
 
 " Why," I inquired, "did he overstate your profits?" 
 
 "Overstate? Well, I reckon he did, some. He said that we 
 was takin out fifty dollars a day to the man, and that the 
 wildest dreams of Golcondy and the Ind would soon be outstrip 
 ped by the wealth of S. Armstrong." 
 
 " But what could be his object?" 
 
 "You see, sir," growled the doctor, "he was just exerting one 
 of the pet privileges of his countrymen. Once understand that, 
 and they ll never deceive you. Swallow all things, but not for 
 getting the grains of salt. As a mountain is to a molehill, so is 
 fifty dollars to the answer. A very simple sum in proportion, 
 and of universal application." 
 
 "You mustn t let Doctor Landale excite your national preju 
 dices, sir," uttered the sweet contralto I had first heard. "He 
 has his privileges as well as our poor countrymen, and we re all 
 afraid to offend him. You know he keeps the key of the medi 
 cine chest, and can always punish those who vex him. Besides, 
 if he abuses us to-day he will praise us to-morrow. Why, twas 
 only yesterday morning he was extolling the republic as warmly 
 as the veriest Yankee in the land; and to a Yankee too." 
 
 " Miss Rooke omits to explain the animus," retorted the doc 
 tor, "which was that my natural pugnacity was aroused by talk 
 of an opposite character." 
 
 "Which means that you won t let Mr. Gifford criticize the 
 
I 
 
 THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 103 
 
 faults of his countrymen, a practice to which you have put in a 
 claim to a monopoly." 
 
 "It s a Briton s birthright to grumble," urged the doctor, "as 
 it is a Yankee s to brag; and it seems contrary to nature that 
 either should seek, as Dick Kailes would call it, to i swap their 
 privileges. " 
 
 -I guess the doctor s coutraiy enough," laughed Luke. "We 
 all thought as much when he insisted on layin out the street 
 here, and locatin all the corner posts, science like, with his in 
 struments, just cause Dick laughed at the th odolite." 
 
 "And why shouldn t the Bar be properly laid out ? This may 
 be the site of a prosperous city. Here in a few years there may 
 be thousands of people, huge squares, flourishing trade. This 
 spot may become famous among the merchants of the earth, who 
 shall ilock hither with then* silks and spices and precious stuffs, 
 to exchange for the treasure and produce yielded by the soil. 
 Armstrong s Bar may be the centre of a powerful nation, the 
 seat of a great dynasty, the home of learning, the cradle of 
 genius, the temple of the arts. It may become a Tyre, a Car 
 thage, a Venice " 
 
 "Doctor, Doctor! Ain t that awful like Zel. Pangburn?" 
 
 "Well, perhaps. But the difference is, that I am only specu 
 lating on what may possibly be, while Ue is always lying about 
 that which actually is." 
 
 " I m thinkin there s about as much romance hi one as t other," 
 said the practical Luke. "There ain t depth of water here to 
 allow much trade. To be sure, there s rails. .But folks ain t 
 goin to settle much on rails alone when there s big rivers enough 
 to have ships and rails too. I guess Sacramenty and Frisky 11 
 have to take the rag off the Bar ; to say nuthin of Stockton and 
 Beneshy and Murysville." 
 
 " Who lives will see," said the doctor, sententiously. " Mean 
 while, let us have our supper." 
 
 The meal was soon smoking on the board ; rustic enough, but 
 wholesome, abundant, and clean. Moreover, to be served by 
 such fair hands was a novelty in those days, and as such, would 
 have given zest to a far inferior repast. The tea was hot and 
 strong, the bacon tolerable, the bread well made, and, although 
 there were neither butter nor vegetables, we were used to those 
 deficiencies in the mines. Every one talked and bantered and 
 argued but Hugh GhTord ; and truth impels the confession that 
 that gentleman did not strike me on this occasion as the most 
 agreeable member of the little circle. When he looked at me 
 at all which was not often there was something like suspicion 
 
104 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 % 
 
 in his eyes ; and when he spoke to me which was less frequent 
 still it was with a distance almost amounting to hauteur. How 
 ever, the ladies were affable, and the other men hospitable, so 
 that I was put at my ease on the whole, in spite of Mr. Gifford s 
 constraint ; and the doctor was disposed to makeup for the lack 
 of conversational powers or of good humor exhibited by the New 
 Englander. 
 
 " D ye stay long hereabouts f the former asked, as the meal 
 drew near a conclusion. 
 
 "A I don t quite know haven t made up my mind ; but 
 w^ould like to see as much of the country as I can ; the scenery, 
 I mean, and all that sort of thing." 
 
 I hesitated because I felt a little guilty. It was evident that 
 the party were not anxious to be disturbed in their new home. 
 Nor was there any certainty that they would or need be. When 
 I first met Dick Kailes I had seen that he, at least, was preju 
 diced against new comers, more especially of a gold-seeking 
 character. There was no reason why I should enter into the 
 explanation that I was there in a sort of half-engineer, half- 
 lawyer capacity, with a view to determine the bounds and metes 
 of an old Spanish-Mexican grant, which, but for the discovery of 
 the gold, might never have been heard of, but which I had 
 good grounds to think extended over what was called Arm 
 strong s Bar. There was no reason, I repeat, to prematurely 
 volunteer such an explanation ; but, as I answered the doctor s 
 question, I looked up and saw Hugh Gifford s calm, inquiring 
 eyes fixed upon me in a manner which made me feel as if I had 
 been guilty of a crime. 
 
 "There is lovely scenery to be found here, sir," responded the 
 doctor, in a more earnest tone than usual, " scenery which is 
 different, indeed, from ours, but which sometimes makes me feel 
 as I used to feel at home in Scotland. There is, it is true, no 
 Bay of San Francisco hereabouts ; no Yo-Semite cataract, no 
 Monte Diabolo ; little of the grandeur you fm d along the coast 
 range or in the great sweep of the Sierra Nevadas ; but I can 
 show you valleys as picturesque, lakes as secluded and peaceful, 
 rivers as winding and pleasant-banked, and brooks as frolic 
 some as, I ll dare swear, you ve ever seen elsewhere." 
 
 " You ll find the doctor an enthusiast about nature, sir," said 
 the contralto; "he finds something to like in the hills and 
 trees and flowers of this new country, if not always in its newer 
 inhabitants." 
 
 " The hills and trees and flowers are not Yankees," grumbled 
 the Scotchman, " at least, not yet ; when they bestow a few of the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 105 
 
 outlandish names on spots in this vicinity, they re so prodigal of 
 in those more thickly settled, I dare say my admiration may cool. 
 It s hard to keep up any enthusiasm about a Jackass Gulch, or 
 to cherish any sweet imaginings about a Murderer s Bar. The 
 place they call Dead Mule Canon is said to be one of_the most 
 lovely ravines in California ; and I can bear witness to the 
 beauty of Wake-up Lake; but who can preserve abiding inter 
 est in spots degraded by such diabolical nomenclature l ? Why. 
 the poor natives and half-breeds should put thesis rascals to the 
 blush were there any shame in them, by the contrast between 
 then* own melodious and appropriate names, and the ruffianly 
 substitutes of the new-comers." 
 
 I heartily coincided in the justice of the doctor s stricture, but 
 hinted that the solecisms he complained of were committed by 
 the ignorant and thoughtless Western men, uneducated and 
 little used to pick their expressions the pioneers and vanguard 
 of our civilization, who would be closely followed by others with 
 more delicate ears, and respecters of euphony, who would banish 
 and replace by others more suitable the barbarous appellatives 
 of their predecessors. But the doctor demurred even to this 
 reasonable probability ; he doubted it he knew what it was to 
 give a dog a bad name and he believed Jackass Gulch would 
 be Jackass Gulch to the end of the chapter. 
 
 The evening 1 passed with no greater jars than such mild con 
 troversies, and I found myself so much absorbed, partly by the 
 presence of the gentler sex, and partly by interest in people so 
 different from most of those with whom I had lately been in con 
 tact, that a circumstance quite slipped from my memory, which 
 otherwise might have gained for me a more assured welcome at 
 the outset. It was only when Dick Railes brought in my sad 
 dle bags, at a late hour, saying, he " s posedTdliketo have em 
 ni^h me when I turned in," that the circumstance recurred to my 
 mind. The postmaster of the settlement I had left in the 
 morning had confided to my care a package of letters, apparent 
 ly some twenty in number, for Armstrong s Bar and they were 
 to be given to Seth Armstrong. It was not unusual, in the 
 absence of any regular postal arrangements, to avail in this 
 manner of private carriage, and to intrust the delivery of the 
 missives to the oldest or best known settler of the neighbor 
 hood where they were addressed. 
 
 i; A thousand pardons," I exclaimed, " for keeping back what 
 some of you may be, anxiously expecting ; but you have made 
 my evening so agreeable as to drive all other thoughts from my 
 mind." 
 
 5* 
 
106 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 The package was promptly given to Seth, who, after reading 
 the superscription with grave and evidently satisfied deliberation, 
 broke the seals and counted over the letters : "S. Armstrong, 
 Mr. Seth Armstrong, Seth Armstrong, Esquire ; that s me. 
 Mrs. Colonel Seth Armstrong, postmarked Woods County, Ohio ; 
 mother, that s you. Phineas Pitcher, care of Colonel Armstrong, 
 Armstrong s Bar; Daniel Spike, ditto; Eliphalet Pike, the same; 
 Patrick Mike, ditto ; Mr. Ebenezer Skinner (late of Biddeford, 
 Maine), the same ; these belongs to the boys clown to the Bend. 
 Eleanor Doolittle that s wrong, that d oughter gone to Yan 
 kee Jim s. Senor Diego y Santiago de Aiamedn, postmarked 
 Mariposa ; that s the greaser we hired to take keer of the crit 
 ters, and who went off on Kitty s gray mustang. What s this 
 Massachusetts per Golden City San Francisco Hugh Gif- 
 ford, Esquire." 
 
 The young man held out his hand to receive his letter, and I 
 saw a sombre shadow flit across his face as he did so. There 
 was certainly none of the anxious yet pleased alacrity in his 
 manner which people commonly exhibit on receiving letters, 
 three thousand miles from home. He went to his corner, and 
 his face* grew no brighter as he looked at the handwriting on 
 the missive ; but the others were too much engrossed with their 
 own or their friends letters to notice his disquietude. Yet no; 
 there were eyes besides mine fixed upon him. For as I turned 
 away lest my gaze, as it had once or twice before to-night, 
 should attract his attention, it fell upon the countenance of 
 Marian Rooke. She was studying Hugh Gilford s. Her lips 
 were slightly parted, and the color was coming arid going on her 
 olive cheek as with one who watches for some critical contin 
 gency. She sat opposite to him at some distance, and had in 
 her lap some sort of woman s work ; her hands had left it, and 
 one, wandering up to her brow, had pushed back the mass of 
 black hair, making the forehead look wider than before ; while 
 her elbow rested on a table by her side. I looked but for a 
 moment or two, feeling some compunction at penetrating a mys 
 tery wherein I had no concern. But in those two moments 
 were crowded, thus inadvertently, all manner of traces of what 
 had gone before, all manner of prophecies of what was to come 
 hereafter. I had already been told something of the common 
 vicissitudes of these people something of the history of their 
 mere outer lives; I had suddenly gone beyond this, and had 
 stepped within the portal of the history of then. hearts. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 107 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I SHALL make no further apology than has been already made 
 or implied, for either extinguishing my personality when it be 
 comes necessary that I should be, in a manner, a spiritual rather 
 than a corporeal witness of the scenes which are to follow, or re 
 appearing when such personality should bo remembered in the 
 few wherein I was a positive actor. The reader will be satisfied, 
 I trust, with the assurance that my sources of information may 
 be in all cases implicitly relied upon; and that in every instance 
 when I was not absolutely present in propria jMrsona, I spared 
 no pains to obtain both personal and circumstantial testimony as 
 to what occurred. So far as my present agency was concerned, 
 I was merely a dcus ex machina that is to say, a Mercury to 
 the extent of bringing letters to Armstrong s Bar, which paved 
 the way to my becoming more intimate there afterwards but I 
 must overcome this absurd tendency to anticipate. 
 
 The scene which appeared so full of significance to the ob 
 server was one which could be but of rare occurence. Mails 
 were not frequent, and letters for small and remote settlements 
 were often long in reaching their destination in the early mining 
 days. Xot more than twice or thrice before had letters arrived 
 for the dwellers on Armstrong s Bar. Not more than twice or 
 thrice, then, could such a cause have risked the betrayal of a 
 secret like that the observer gaw, or thought he saw, on this oc 
 casion. Those who were most interested in such a secret if it 
 existed spoke of the letter next morning in a way which might 
 well make it appear imaginary. 
 
 It was early morning, and they were walking on the luxuriant 
 virgin turf which carpeted the banks of the stream. A beauti 
 ful dewy morning, with spangles everywhere on the ground and 
 no clouds in the sky, except some long, gorgeously-colored 
 strips, which latticed the rising sun. The gold-seekers were 
 not yet at their daily toil, and Marian and Gifibrd often rose and 
 walked thus early, before the others were even stirring. 
 
 " So you have had a letter?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " From Virginia ?" 
 
 " From Virginia." 
 
 "She is well, I hope?" 
 
108 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 "She writes as if she were." 
 
 li And your friend, her brother, and the rest of the family?" 
 
 " Quite well, she says." 
 
 " She is anxious about you, of course?" 
 
 " She is anxious about my prospects." 
 
 "Prospects?" 
 
 " Yes ; of making money, to be sure." 
 
 " And is that all she is anxious about ?" 
 
 " What else is there she should care for ?" 
 
 " What else ? Why, your health ; your thoughts ; the state 
 of your mind ; the books you have read, whether by nature or 
 man ; the people you have met ; the views you have seen ; your 
 recollections of the dear days which have gone by ; your hopes 
 for the future. Should she care for none of these ?" 
 
 " She has been taught as I have that ah 1 these things are sub 
 ordinate to the chief one. If I have health or strength, luck or 
 cunning, such as enable me to gain gold, the rest is as nothing." 
 
 " I think you must wrong her ; a true woman cannot be so 
 mercenary." 
 
 "No one was ever called a bigot among an assemblage of 
 roundheads. The talk of the people about her, their eveiy aspi 
 ration, their thoughts when they lie down and when they get 
 up, by their firesides, in the market, in the very house of prayer 
 itself, is of money, nothing but money. If her father falls 
 asleep after dinner, he mumbles about stocks and prices ; if a 
 neighbor dies, he speculates 011 the cost of the funeral ; the very 
 atmosphere is weighed down with covetous whisperings and the 
 echoes of hard bargains. I do not blame her." 
 
 They were strolling on as they talked, and he broke little bits 
 of twigs from the bushes, and cast them idly into the stream. 
 
 " Then she knows that my life has been darkened by poverty. 
 That there are many not more industrious and not more clever, 
 perhaps who are far 011 the road to success, while I am still a 
 beggar. She knows that such little talent as I have can never 
 buy me distinction or honor in this country, unless I can back 
 its feeble stress with gold. She knows that my father was an 
 unfortunate gentleman, and lived to be patronized by his shoe 
 maker, and to receive half scornful nods from his tailor." 
 
 " That made him none the worse." 
 
 " But more unhappy. The proudest spirit breaks at last when 
 thrust into the dust by fortune, to be trampled on for ever by 
 the vulgar and the mean, as he was. Curse them ! These men 
 can see the difference in the blood of their cattle and pigs they 
 know the distinctions between the cart-horse and the racer 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 109 
 
 they acknowledge gradations in the quality and value of unrea 
 soning beasts, but deny them to the nobler beings their Maker has 
 created in His image I And this they call democracy !" 
 
 " Perhaps they go too far the other way in older countries. 
 Perhaps they are too ready to set men over each other, and ex 
 act honors for them which should only be paid to Him alone." 
 
 "Perhaps. But what is the idolatry they substitute here? 
 A very Mammon s. The naked worship of the golden calf. 
 They give plenty of religious liberty otherwise. You may 
 worship as you list, or let it alone altogether ; but dare to scorn 
 or hold in contempt this money-god dare to refuse your hom 
 age to his priests, never minding how they got their benefices 
 dare to dissent from the thirty-nine articles in the prayer-book 
 of Plutus, and although the tortures of the Inquisition or the 
 fires of Smithfield may not be revived for your body, as for un 
 happy heretics, your social punishment and disabilities will 
 hardly be less. Being in Rome, you must do as Romans do ; 
 you must conform or starve.* 
 
 The girl gazed thoughtfully in the stream for a moment, and 
 answered : 
 
 " Your peculiar experience makes you unjust, I think. There 
 are many poor men whose names will live in the nation s histo 
 ry ; men who never had wealth or strove for it, and whom their 
 countrymen yet delighted to honor. I see no harm in your try 
 ing honestly to amass a fortune ; it is necessary to your happiness 
 you are sensitive, and fret under the ills, real and imaginary, 
 which want of it entails ; it may hereafter enable you to do 
 good ; why should you not, then, struggle to obtain it ?" 
 
 "Why not, indeed?" 
 
 And yet, considered singly and abstractedly, what an igno 
 ble incentive to exertion." 
 
 "Ignoble?" 
 
 " I call it so. That is, for any one capable of anything higher 
 or nobler, and having in view the elevation of those whom he 
 loves and who love him. Now, if I were a man, and had a 
 Virginia " 
 
 "WeH!" 
 
 i That is, supposing Virginia to be the Virginia she would 
 have to be* for me to love her, I should feel degraded in her 
 eyes even by the avowal the confession that money was the 
 principal object of my ambition. As an accessory to comfort 
 and convenience it might be well enough, and not to be de 
 spised. But I should not believe I truly loved nay. more, I 
 doubt if any one ever truly loved when the thought of the be- 
 
110 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 loved object did not awaken a loftier ambition, if there were 
 need of any at all. I should feel that to accomplish some noble 
 action to attach my name to some deed or cause which shou d 
 enlighten or confer a benefit on mankind to aid the oppressed, 
 or to teach truth when truth was unpopular, and its advocates 
 had to contend against the powerful, the scornful, and the un 
 willing ; I should feel that to do these, or any of these, was of 
 more worth as a trophy to lay at the feet of the loved one than 
 all the gold that lies buried in the hills of California!" 
 
 The girl turned and stood still in her earnestness as she spoke ; 
 her tall figure dilating, her breast heaving, and her great black 
 eyes flashing with enthusiasm. 
 
 Something like a flush of shame mounted to Gilford s brow as 
 he replied : 
 
 "And if your idol cared not for these offerings held them 
 cheap to the more material if less romantic one *?" 
 
 " It should be mine to lift her to a higher sphere to elevate 
 her nature to a height which is possible for every human soul 
 when rightly directed and adequately inspired to a height 
 where her desires would cease to be grovelling, her aspirations 
 incapable of being mean." 
 
 They walked on again, and the young man ceased to break 
 twigs and cast them into the stream. The girl resumed half 
 musingly : 
 
 " For why is love given in this dark world, but that its light 
 may enable us to help each other upward and onward in the 
 sublimest path ; but that the devotion of one soul to another 
 may endow it with the clearest, the most unerring perception as 
 to the manner in which the beloved spirit may be developed to 
 the highest excellence to the grandest expansion of which it is 
 capable ; and, knowing the means, should continually stimulate 
 the chosen one to their adoption *?" 
 
 " I fear Virginia would scarcely comprehend such thoughts as 
 these." 
 
 " Then you should teach her." 
 
 Once more they wandered in silence, presently broken by Hugh : 
 
 " Perhaps one day you will teach her for me you know we 
 are always to be friends." 
 
 " Always. But does Virginia say nothing more ?" 
 
 " Not so much as Marian has said this morning." 
 
 " Marian ! It was Miss Rooke last night." 
 
 " Ah, there was a stranger ; and as Mrs. Armstrong persists 
 in changing your name into one she thinks more euphonious, it 
 was needless to advertise the discrepancy." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. Ill 
 
 " Good Mrs. Armstrong ; she always would have it l Mary 
 Anne, and it was too unimportant to correct her. The name was 
 familiar to her. and I suppose her ear would recognize no dis 
 tinction were I to have done so. The strange gentleman seemed 
 interested in our little circle." 
 
 " He seemed inquisitive enough." 
 
 " Was he disagreeably so ? I did not notice it. He struck 
 me as educated and well bred." 
 
 " Do you think him attractive handsome ?" 
 
 " I scarcely scrutinized him closely enough to answer as to 
 the latter," said Marian, laughing, "but I did think him rather 
 attractive." 
 
 Gilford s brow clouded slightly. " He is a gentleman, or 
 something like one, and you have been thrust among rude peo 
 ple of late." 
 
 " But very, veiy kind ones, all. The Armstrongs have been 
 like parents to me, and what could be more courteous, nay, 
 chivalrous, in the way of demeanor to a poor lorn damsel than 
 that of Luke 1" 
 
 Again the cloud. " Luke is at no pains to conceal his admi 
 ration." 
 
 " Admiration ! Luke ! "Why, he feels toward me something 
 as he does toward dear Kitty the. regard of a brother." 
 
 " And brothers in his rank of life ^are always bringing their 
 sisters fragrant wild flowers, and curious bits of minerals, and 
 strange fragments of golden dust and ore-bearing quartz ; and 
 finding lovely mountain views for them, and solemn, glassy 
 lakes among the hills; and training vines which bear sweet- 
 scented blossoms over their chamber windows I" 
 
 Xo, no; these are for all of us; and, besides, you forget 
 that I am the stranger within their gates. " 
 
 " Not always to remain so, perchance." 
 
 "To remain," said Marian, putting the most obvious con 
 struction upon an ambiguous speech, " until midsummer, at 
 furthest. My friends here are very good, but I have work to 
 do for myself. When we first came 1 was ignorant as to the 
 nature and extent of the settlement ; but it is clear now that I 
 must go to one of the towns. There are no children to teach 
 in the mines. They are to be sought among the families of 
 traders in thexcities." 
 
 " You will go forth alone ?" 
 
 " Why not? It is my duty should be my pleasure and I 
 must earn my bread." 
 
 " You are not fit for such a life. You have not been trained 
 
OR, 
 
 to it. You will find its drudgery irksome, if not insupport 
 able." 
 
 "I do not fear.it. I believe we are so constituted that we 
 can accomplish almost anything, however foreign or repugnant 
 at first sight it may appear anything which is undertaken with 
 a firm heart and a resolute purpose. I am grateful to these 
 worthy people, but, except for their love and kindness, do not 
 mean to be under obligations to them. I shall go in July." 
 
 " And I, I think, before that." 
 
 "Your 
 
 " I am impatient feverish. The beggarly gains to be gleaned 
 on the Bar may answer for the others not for me. Nor is 
 there any necessity they should. The newspapers may contain 
 exaggerations, but it is certain that great discoveries are being 
 made all over the country. The gold-lists of the mail-steamers 
 tell a story not invented by the scribblers. What others do, I 
 can do." 
 
 "There is a chance at any moment of striking vast deposits 
 here as well as elsewhere." 
 
 " A chance, yes. But we have been here several months, and 
 the yield has been most niggardly less than the average at any 
 of the surface-diggings we have accounts of. It was thought, 
 from the situation of the river, and its having its rise so close by 
 in the mountains, that this spot would prove one of the most 
 productive ; but it has turned out the reverse. The Armstrongs 
 seem disposed to remain, but that need not control my course. 
 Our arrangement of partnership is terminable any week, and 
 that which satisfies them does not satisfy me." 
 
 " The rolling stone " 
 
 "Is just the one which does gather moss in gold countries. 
 It is vain to waste time in places where careful search is unre- 
 munerative. 1 believe the true policy to be that of moving 
 from point to point with all convenient speed, so that, each fail 
 ing successively, another experiment may at once be tried. Ul 
 timately the lucky discovery must be made, and fortune be the 
 result." 
 
 "And, with fortune, happiness?" 
 
 " Alas f who knows ?" 
 
QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 113 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE party were at breakfast, when a growl from Lion, fol 
 lowed by the swift patter of a horse s hoofs, told that a stranger 
 was approaching. " Somebody from the Bend, may be," sug 
 gested Seth Armstrong, " come over for their letters. But his 
 helpmate, looking out of window, negatived this supposition. 
 You could tell miners, indeed, from afar off, their almost invari 
 able dress being such as was worn by our friends at Armstrong s 
 Bar. A red flannel shirt, belt, trousers thrust in strong, coarse 
 boots rising above the knee, and a wide-brimmed, felt sombrero, 
 constituted their uniform, which was recognizable from a greater 
 distance than was commanded on the winding road from the 
 windows of the cabin. 
 
 u Taint no miner," said Luke, as he thrust his curly head into 
 the aperture next to his mother s ; " taint no miner, in a dress coat 
 and a stove-pipe hat ! Darn my skin," he exclaimed with sud 
 den interest, " if it ain t that Pangburn come back agin!" 
 
 "Show!" said Seth, "I thought we d seed the last of him 
 for a spell ; them lies o liis n in the Mounting Clarion ought to 
 have kept him off the Bar a month o Sundays." 
 
 How little," quoth the doctor, "do you appreciate the Pang- 
 burn turn of mind ; or you might know that nothing short of a- 
 pestilence would keep him away from a place where he wasn t 
 wanted." 
 
 "S poshY we set Lion on him," suggested Mr. Railes, "and 
 then he daresn t git off his hossl" 
 
 "No, no," said Seth, promptly, "that won t do; give the 
 critter a fan* show now he is here ; only, doctor, praps if you or 
 Mr. Gifford was jest to hint that we felt a little riled about the 
 way he advertised the Bar, it might make him kearful another 
 time." 
 
 "Never fear, Uncle Seth," said the doctor, " but that we will 
 administer proper admonition. Not but that the hide of an alli 
 gator is less likely to be proof against such pursuasions than 
 that of Zelotes ; yet, as a- matter of duty, we will try the ex 
 periment." 
 
 The subject of these complimentary allusions was now at the 
 door, and Ike being sent to take charge of his horse, he speedily 
 made his way into the apartment. 
 
114 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Mr. Pangburn was about six feet in height, and was arrayed 
 in a seedy black dress coat and trousers, the latter stuck into a 
 pair of huge Wellington boots, ornamented with red morocco 
 tops. He wore a high shirt collar, extremely grimy, and en 
 circled by a faded pink and yellow muslin cravat. On his head 
 was a tall black beaver hat, and on his hands enormous buckskin 
 gloves. His hah*, beard, face, eyes, and teeth, seemed all of one 
 color, namely a dirty whitish brown ; and the latter projected in 
 a manner highly suggestive of the species called the rodentia. 
 Of beard, indeed, there was little, except on the end of the 
 chin, where it focalized in a pointed, bristly tuft. Mr. Pang 
 burn s inability to quite cover his teeth with his lips gave a not 
 otherwise prepossessing countenance a sardonic expression fear 
 ful to behold ; and his habit of shutting one eye in conversation 
 as he launched forth his sentences, completed the more salient 
 attractions of his physiognomy. Such was the remarkable figure 
 which now made its way into the little house of the Arm 
 strongs. 
 
 " How air you, Kernul Armstrong, and ladies, and how air 
 you, boys and strangers! Glad to see ye. Here s twenty 
 copies of the last Clarion, nuff to go all round the settlement, 
 never mind about pay, jest as good for an advertisement. Thank 
 you, mum, don t kear if I do, hain t liquored since I left the 
 Cascades. Just so ; much oblcegcd, and news there ain t none, 
 for the last steamer had to put into Acapulco short of coal, where 
 the capting, in a fit of delirium tremens, jumped overboard and 
 cut his throat. That s all sence Toosday, xcept Sacramenty s 
 burnt down Sunday night, fire lightin in Bella Union, gam 
 blers got fightin , spilt the ile, spirit lamps, run through carpet 
 roof into prayer-meetin below, hull town built up agin next 
 mornin with cotton-duck; Kernul, I m a lookin at yer!" 
 
 This speech, delivered in a high key and precisely as the 
 speaker would have addressed a public meeting, was emphasized 
 with innumerable winks, and succeeded by what appeared to be 
 a highly sarcastic leer, which, commencing with the Kernul, 
 swept around until it included the entire company 
 
 "Mr. Pangburn," commenced Dr. Landale, w 
 becoming the approaching accents of reproof, " I 
 puted to name to you that we, who live on the 
 quite satisfied with the account you gave of us and it last month, 
 in your enterprising journal, and " 
 
 " Knew you weren t, knew you weren t," interrupted Mr. 
 Pangburn, derisively ; "knew darned well you d have your 
 dander up about that. Couldn t help it three new placers, rich 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 115 
 
 diggins . broke out on Coyote Creek and Kettletas Run public 
 attention to be directed to twenty other place?, so s to keep the 
 rush from them Armstrong s Bar one of the twenty ; two slugs 
 and hundred copies of the Clarion business you knd"w in- 
 "crease the circulation." 
 
 Do you mean to say you publish false statements to the 
 effect that gold is plenty where it is scarce, to distract the atten 
 tion from those where miners could really find it ?" 
 
 False statements !" echoed Zelotes, grinning with irony. 
 " The Mounting Clarion is true, sir, as the needle to the pole, 
 to them immutable principles of public weal and commercial 
 rectitood, whereon it fust took its proud stand, and mocked the 
 embattled world! That s so. A story, sir, may kinder git the 
 color, as the diggers say, without bcin stuck together out of 
 hull cloth. I allowed I had a high opinion of Armstrong s Bar; 
 my sentiments is unchanged and unalterable. Folks oughtn t 
 to* find fault with the lofty sperits chained to the oar of journal 
 ism enligbtenin and a rushin forrard the ungrateful masses, 
 until they know the hull truth until they re kind o sot face to 
 face with the paower behind the throne !" 
 
 "^Vell, sir," said the Doctor, impatiently, "being in that 
 juxtaposition, I now tell you that what you* published, besides 
 being untrue in point of iact, was seriously prejudicial, both to 
 the interest and the convenience of this little community." 
 
 "Pettikilarise, pettikilarisc; state the items, state the items !" 
 
 "You declared that the diggins on the Bar were turning out 
 among the richest in the country ; and, in confirmation of this 
 singular fable, you added that the settlers were taking out at 
 the rate of fifty dollars a day to the man." 
 
 "Jest so, jest so, replied Mr. Pangburn, running his fingers 
 through his lank hair ; " them air the facts." 
 
 "Then how can you justify them ?" 
 
 "Justify em ? I glory in em. Measured by a narrer prin 
 ciple of temporary expediency, they may seem vain and illoosive 
 to the short-sighted and rash ; they may illicit condemnation 
 from the hasty and censorious ; but what care I ? 
 
 Truth crushed to airth will rise again, 
 The eternal years of God are her n ; 
 But error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
 And dies aniid her worshipper n. 
 
 That ere is the proud predicament of yours respectfully, Z. 
 Pangburn." 
 
 " Your argument may be forcible, sir ; but I fail to see its 
 application to the practice of spreading false intelligence." 
 
116 MARIAN ROOKE 5 OR, 
 
 "You ain t heerd me out. Hear, and then condemn me if 
 you kin. I said my opinions was unchanged, and I adhere to 
 my primary assertion. I stick to it like death to a dead nigger. 
 I said the Bar was a pooty place, and it is a pooty place. I said 
 there was rich diggin s on the Bar, and I b lieve that there air. 
 What I said about the exact amounts that was took out, I allow 
 savored of hyperbole. It was a festive vision of the happy 
 futur , perhaps, rather than a cold recital of the livin present. 
 But I m ready to back my opinions, I am, even on that pint. I 
 b lieve in em, and I m ready to stand or perish with em. What 
 I propose, Kcrnul and gentlemen, is a jint-stock company yes ;" 
 and the speaker, rising with his theme, glared about with a 
 smile of fiendish sarcasm, "yes!" lifting his voice to a nasal 
 yell. " A jint-stock company to unkiver and develop the hid 
 den treasures of Armstrong s Bar!" 
 
 "Hooray!" screamed Ike, from the corner, quite excited 
 by this oratorical outburst, while Lion chimed in with a greivous 
 howl. 
 
 "Iknow d," pursued the orator, availing himself of the general 
 stupefaction which succeeded these demonstrations, and his own 
 proposal to enforce its advantages; U I know cl when the 
 Mounting Clarion spread its glad tidin s upon the air the tiOin s 
 my honorable friend here lusts his dander at that its editor 
 would be blamed, and its sources of information scouted as un- 
 Avorthy of credick ; and I was prepared to tote round the load 
 of temporary ignerminy which them tidin s would cost and in 
 volve. But Pangburn looked to the future like true nobility, 
 and found his blazon in posterity. That s so. He saw that 
 when he should come on the Bar, as he has come among ye this 
 day, and after explainin the motives Avhich actooated his course, 
 should offer to ratify his sentiments, touchin the riches of the 
 location, by puttin down his own dimes, and goin in with ye on 
 the jint-stock principle, that yer prejudices agen him would van 
 ish like a vapor wreath that dims the summer moon that he 
 would no longer be regarded among ye as Pangburn yer tra- 
 doocer, but as Pangburn yer benefactor ! True, I give the Bar 
 a good name when aperiently it didn t deserve it. Why ? It 
 answered my purpose in two ways. It directed the squatter 
 interest on to the spot, and when it come, it was disappointed. 
 Now it s got a bad name, and when the gold is found, if all the 
 papers from Oregon to Mariposy was to blow their .horns they 
 couldn t undo the work of the Mounting Clarion ! That airY 
 my statesmanship, that is, and after I ve chucked in a few o them 
 buckwheats, I ll explain to ye at hull length whar I think the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 117 
 
 gold is a hidin and how I come to think so. And if I ain t as 
 much mistaken as the man who lost his shirt, fortin awaits us ; 
 fortin on a big scale, the hull hog and no discount; and then 
 Hail Columby and the Atlantic States, happy return of Z. Pang- 
 burn to love and Utiky !" 
 
 The speaker here concluded his harangue, and after once again 
 showing his teeth to the company, in a manner at once threaten 
 ing and scornful, he employed them with characteristic vigor 
 upon the viands before him. 
 
 It is true that most of his hearers were disposed to regard 
 Mr. Pangburn s views with a suspicious rather than a sanguine 
 eye. But it must be remembered that this was a time when 
 glowing anticipations, such as his, were often more than realized. 
 Many Avere the instances in those early days of men landing pen 
 niless at San Francisco, and becoming within three months the 
 possessors of thousands. Many were the cases of people who 
 never in their lives possessed a hundred dollars, until they scraped 
 together all possible resources to buy their passage-tickets, accu 
 mulating even in less time what to them were princely fortunes. 
 There were not wanting examples where diggings, like those at 
 Armstrong s Bar, had been abandoned as unprofitable, and sub 
 sequent adventurers, more lucky than the first, had stumbled on 
 the treasure and grown rich upon the wealth which their prede 
 cessors had left undiscovered. It was by no means incredible, 
 then, that such an example might be repeated on this very spot 
 or in its immediate vicinity ; and although a man s discretion as 
 well as his candor might be doubted when, by inducing many 
 to come where few had explored before, he augmented the 
 chances of a discovery which it vras his professed interest to avoid; 
 yet he might be knowing to circumstances which made discovery 
 next to impossible, and might easily be forgiven for seeking to 
 give the settlers so strong an evidence that they were unlikely 
 to effect it as would lead them to put a just value on his own 
 agency, which could supply the clue. 
 
 It was not, therefore, remarkable that those who had so sharply 
 stigmatized their flowery visitant an hour before, and who even 
 now accorded him but a grudging confidence, were yet not un 
 willing to consider his proposals and to investigate his grounds 
 for auguring success. There could be small harm in hearing 
 what he had to say, even if nothing came of it. They would, 
 in such a case, be no worse oF than at present, and there was. a 
 chance, on the other hand, of the happiest results. It was soon 
 agreed, therefore, between Seth, the Doctor, and Gifford, who 
 retired as a Committee of Consultation pending the devastating 
 
118 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR 
 
 onslaught of Zelotes upon their provender, that that worthy 
 should have full opportunity to make good his words, and if he 
 would, to share in the profit he anticipated. Th<jy all came 
 there for gold ; and, provided they got it, there would have been 
 little objection, on most parts, to Mephistopheles himself as a 
 stockholder in the company. 
 
 "The long and short of the matter is," observed the Doctor, 
 " that the fellow is an unprincipled rascal ; but if he is cunning 
 enough to teach us something we don t know, we needn t stand 
 in our own light." 
 
 " I hardly know what to think on t," said Seth, thoughtfully ; 
 " I don t sec why a chap who s only been on the Bar once afore 
 is like to know more bout it than men who ve been diggin 
 round goin on six months." 
 
 "After all," suggested Hugh, "what harm can he do? 
 What we make now can scarcely excite his cupidity, that he 
 should wish to share it on the same terms hard labor and small 
 profit. Let him point out his wonderful secret. If he trifles 
 with us, we can warn him off the Bar, and so be rid of him al 
 together." 
 
 With this understanding the conference ended, and it was 
 forthwith announced to Mr. Pangburn that the party were will 
 ing to tolerate his presence and to listen to his explanations. 
 That gentleman, however, having stimulated the curiosity and 
 raised the expectation of his hosts to the highest possible pitch, 
 was now disposed to secure his own interests in the pending bar 
 gain. Ho represented, with a show of reason which could not 
 be gainsaid, that, if by his instructions the yield of gold should 
 increase largely on the Bar, it was but fair that he should share 
 in the advantage thereof ; and as the others were collectively 
 indebted to him in such a case for their augmented emolument, 
 they should be willing to allow him a liberal percentage. There 
 were two other parties in the immediate neighborhood who man 
 aged their affairs much in the same way with that pursued at 
 Seth Armstrong s : that is to say, the bands worked in concert, 
 and divided regularly all that they gained. Over these bando 
 Armstrong s party had, of course, no control ; for although the 
 spot had received the name of the first comer, by common con 
 sent, he had no legal or prospective sway over their actions. A 
 friendly feeling existed, especially as some of the men had been 
 of the party in crossing the plains ; but beyond this, and with the 
 exception of coming thither for supplies and occasional letters, 
 there was no particular intercourse with, nor were, these men in 
 any sense amenable to, those at the immediate Bar. Mr. Pang- 
 
TIIE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 119 
 
 burn was, of course, perfectly aware that, failing negotiations 
 with the latter, he could easily open fresh ones with the others, 
 and he calculated that this knowledge would have its cfTect in 
 producing an acquiescent disposition on the part of his present 
 hosts. Ah 1 he wanted, he assured them, was what was fair. He 
 always looked out for number one, he did, but he didn t go in 
 for no chizzlin . He allowed he ought to git pooty fan* pay for 
 his time, and the "Mounting Clarion" might suffer some when 
 he was away. TJiose fellers over to the Bend would give half 
 the profits to anybody who d put them on such a lay, they would. 
 But he went fur for friendship, he did. He always stuck by his 
 friends through thick and thin ; and he liked Mr. Armstrong 
 and the others very much. Mr. A. was an Amurikin of the sort 
 he liked ; he was his kind, he was. Give him a man that was 
 not passion s slave, and he would wear him in his heart of hearts, 
 as he did Seth ; also the Doctor and Mr. GifFord, either of whom 
 he would be pleased to have contribute to the " Clarion." Did 
 they see the pome in the last number u Ilaowl on, ye base and 
 hireling crew " ? They d find it was kind of gritty ; being an 
 effusion of his own, suggested by hearing the coyotes bullyraggin 
 round the " Clarion" office at night, and remindin him of the 
 legislator* at Sacramenty last winter, when they refused to vote 
 for Pangburn for State printer. Somethin in that way would 
 be always acceptable, specially as they were likely to be pard s 
 when this ere bargain was struck and brought to a conclusion 
 In the mean tune, he reckoned that about twenty-five per cent, 
 on the excess of what they might git through his advice, over 
 and above the former average, would make eni square. 
 
 The others demurred to this proposition. Mr. Pangburn 
 might know a lead that they were ignorant of ; but they were 
 likely, at any day, at any hour, to strike it. Gold-digging and 
 washing were very hard work, and their plan was share and 
 share alike. The democratic principle was surely most applica 
 ble to a species of labor where, without merit or demerit on the 
 part of any individual, without either industry or indolence, he 
 might get nothing by a day s work, and kis neighbor a hundred 
 dollars* or more. They always divided even, at the Bend, at 
 Yankee Jim s, and at every other place they knew of. It didn t 
 work well to change the rule, and they had better not try it. 
 Besides, Mr. Paugburn would frequently be obliged to leave 
 them, and thus the company would lose the advantage of his 
 services, a consideration not to be forgotten in estimating their 
 general value. Thus far the Doctor as spokesman for the Bar. 
 
 Zelotes had heerd his honorable friend with minglin emo- 
 
120 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 tions. He was surprised to hear the help he was about to be 
 stow, comin , as he was, to lead em on to fortin and to fame, 
 should be so far disparaged as to be only counted as the ordi 
 nary toil of an ordinary man. As for the Bend and Yankee 
 Jim s, they was the Bend and Yankee Jim s. What he was a 
 contemplating of now was to serve his friends at Armstrong s 
 Bar. When they allowed they didn t want the arm or voice of 
 Pangburn, it - /ould be time enough to think of other folks who 
 might. He thanked em from the recesses of his inmost soul 
 for their solicitood touchin the interests of freedom s banner, the 
 " Mounting Clarion." It was nateral that they, sons of liberty 
 as they was, should feel anxious about the prospects of her fa 
 vorite organ ; and when he told them that he had arranged that 
 those prospects should be attended to in his absence, he knew 
 they could be happy. When he mentioned the name of Eli S. 
 Barlow as that of the distinguished scholar he had engaged to 
 supplement the labors of Pangburn, and ile the machine in his 
 absence, they would feel satisfied that all was well. He was the 
 partner of their toils, their feelings, and their fame, he was ; 
 and twenty per cent, on the gross receipts was what he would 
 take, and ne er a cent less. 
 
 An agreement was finally effected upon the last-named basis ; 
 a prudential clause being inserted, that under no circumstances 
 was the division to be made when it would leave to the original 
 settlers a daily stipend inferior to the average they had been re 
 ceiving. This precaution would, at all events, prevent any in 
 jury to established rights from resulting as a consequence of the 
 innovation ; while it placed the new comer in a position which 
 would oblige him to increase the general wealth, or, as an alter 
 native, to entirely waste his time. Such was the treaty which, 
 being pronounced to be fair to all parties, now received the gen 
 eral acquiesence and solemn ratification. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MR. PANGBURN was a person by no means without sagacity. 
 Acuteness of a certain kind constituted, indeed, the leading char 
 acteristic of his mind. Of education, in the usual sense of the 
 term, he had little or none He had been sent to a district school 
 for the winter months during several years of his boyhood ; those 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 121 
 
 of the summer having been engrossed by hard work on his 
 uncle s farm. But the snowy intervals, which were supposed by 
 that thrifty yeoman to be devoted to learning, were, on the con 
 trary, chiefly employed in speculations of a mercantile character, 
 whereby his schoolfellows were the sufferers, and in the manu 
 facture of sleds, shipping and other marketable commodities, to 
 the fashioning of which Zelotes brought much zeal, and no little 
 ingenuity. To do him justice, he was never indolent ; and al 
 though what he called hooking Jack" caused him to grow up 
 awfully deficient in even the simpler branches of a country boy s 
 education, more especially in spelling and grammar, he had at 
 eighteen already amassed a small capital, and knew more of the 
 little world about him than any of his by no means artless con 
 temporaries. 
 
 To get at the key-note of Mr. Pangburn s nature, you had only 
 to keep one thing steadily in view, which was, that the acquisi 
 tion of money was never for an instant absent from his mind. 
 Wherever he went, with whomsoever he talked, this important 
 matter was always uppermost there, and no larger subject, no 
 higher thought, was by any chance permitted to thrust it aside. 
 If he ever thought of the ocean, it was with regret that it should 
 be so unnecessarily extensive, and that the utmost ingenuity or 
 industry of man could only be expected to wrest from it a cer 
 tain limited quantity of "made land." If his reflections ever 
 touched upon the sun, moon, and stars, they were mingled with 
 regret that physical obstacles prevented those luminaries from 
 being chopped up into quarter sections, or staked off in claims. 
 He had, it is true, at his tongue s end, plenty of the current 
 slang about matters as spacious as liberty, national glory, the 
 freedom of the press, and the destiny of his country ; but he 
 meant no more by them than is meant by the perpetual beating 
 of the gong during a Chinese play ; they were the conventional 
 and duly expected accompaniments of the drama of his daily 
 life, his exits and his entrances, his dialogue and his "business." 
 They had no true relation to either, but the audience expected 
 them as a matter of course, and as a matter of course the audi 
 ence got them. 
 
 Now, although Mr. Pangburn may not appear from this de 
 scription to have been eminently fitted for the character of a 
 public instructor, it is certain that the " Mountain Clarion." as 
 blown by him, was heard afar off, and often with considerable 
 effect. He was too cunning not to be aware of his own defi 
 ciencies, where they \\ciO likely to affect his pocket; and al 
 though he could not conveniently spell himself, he always man- 
 6 
 
122 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 aged to have a sub-editor and a compositor who could. Gener 
 ally speaking, one person united the two offices, although, since 
 the advent of Eii S. Barlow, this economical expedient had been 
 disused. The " Clarion " had been blowing only a few months 
 at the time when our history commenced ; but it had, as I have 
 said, not been unheard. Zelotes perceived, with early intuition, 
 that, where a population was increasing with such unexampled 
 rapidity, where gold was being ravished from the earth in such 
 unheard of profusion, there must speedily arise conflicts of in 
 terests and struggles of parties which would cause a printed ad 
 vocate to become valuable. He possessed himself of one of the 
 first printing-presses which had been brought into the country, 
 a battered and ancient engine which had doubled Cape Horn, 
 after seeing the life and death of more than one country news 
 paper in little New England towns. But it was a wonder when 
 it first appeared among the diggings, and its sway and name 
 grew great in mouths of wisest censure. 
 
 Mr. Pangburn employed his Organ, as he somewhat incor 
 rectly termed the " Clarion," with great assiduity for the further 
 ance of what was stereotyped over the leading article as " The 
 Interests and Prospects of this Great, Free, and Prosperous 
 Community," and in his own breast as the Interests and Pros 
 pects of his cherished pocket. When he could get black mail 
 from claim-owners, town-projectors, or political aspirants, he 
 took it, and the " Clarion " burst into a glad song of praise, and 
 warbled in cadences of unmingled eulogy. When he was dis 
 appointed, through the obstinacy or stupidity of such specula 
 tors, the " Clarion " gave vent to solemn denunciation, or, in the 
 way of variety, ran up and down the gamut of coarse vitupera 
 tion. The Organ, however, was costly, wages and material be 
 ing enormously high ; the subscribers, beino- chiefly of a migra 
 tory character, were often oblivious of their obligations; and, 
 finally, there were considerations of a personal nature which 
 made it wise for the proprietor to absent himself as much as 
 possible from the office. He had therefore taken to riding 
 through the country with a view to augment his subscription 
 list, to solicit advertisements, and, as he averred, "to take a 
 hand in wherever he see a chance to make somethink." 
 
 In this speculative frame he had first visited Armstrong s Bar ; 
 and having to this extent outlined his pursuits and character, I 
 may proceed to describe the immediate motives which led Mr. 
 Pangburn to believe that he could make this quiet spot the scene 
 of a fresh golden triumph. Although utterly without philosoph 
 ical lore of a profound character, no man was quicker than this 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 123 
 
 man in grasping the theory of physical phenomena, which he 
 could make subsidiary to money-getting. He knew, as he often 
 declared, as well as any one, that water would run down hill. 
 To the careful consideration of so simple a commonplace as this, 
 with the cognate incidents which it, like the water, always car 
 ries in its bosom, many a great fortune has since been due. 
 "Whenever Mr. Pangburn struck running water in this land of 
 gold, he immediately began to examine and peer about the ad 
 jacent country, in order to satisfy himself as to whether it had 
 always been flowing in its present channel. There was no par 
 ticular novelty in this idea. Dr. Landale had thought of it when 
 he first came on the .Bar. But the difference was that the Doc 
 tor, with all his scientific knowledge, had failed to hit on a fact 
 that Zelotes, with nothing but his insatiate thirst for gold, had 
 detected. The little river which ran by the door of our adven 
 turers had indeed long, long before forsaken the old track 
 through which it had struggled to get toward the sea. The 
 neighboring country was greatly diversified, and scored here and 
 there with rifts, and gullies, and deep ravines. By one of those 
 accidents of heavy freshet, or volcanic .eruption, or crumbling 
 soil, which ofttimes produce such mutations, the bed of the 
 stream had been changed. 
 
 Between Armstrong s Bar and the place which has been allud 
 ed to as * ; the Bend," the inequalities of the surface were most 
 nigged and bold ; and this was the case for a mile or more 
 towards the interior. The curve of the stream between the two 
 settlements was elliptical in shape, and very long ; to that degree 
 that, while the distance between them by water could not have 
 been less than six or seven miles, it was less than a third of that 
 space across the country. Xow the water had found its way 
 long ages before from one point to the other in nearly a straight 
 line ; and only had recourse to its present devious path when, 
 through the unknown cause referred to, it could adopt no other. 
 The old bed, then, lay between the Bar and the Bend, and de 
 flected towards the present one about a mile below the former ; 
 and this was what the astute Mr. Pangburn had discovered. 
 
 The cabin of the Armstrong s was almost immediately on the 
 bank of the river, and not more than a mile, perhaps, from its 
 ancient channel. But such was the broken character of the 
 intervening country, that no horse could traverse it, and a man 
 would find it extremely difficult. To get to the place, then, 
 from the Bar, it was necessary to go down the stream for about 
 a mile, and then make one s way up again, in a direction far to- 
 the right of that which has just been described. This, after 
 
124 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 profound cogitation, Mr. Pangburn had done. He had gone in 
 the saddle as far as he could penetrate. He had then dismounted, 
 encouraged by the signs he found about him, and made his way 
 onwards after securing his horse to a tree. His path was by no 
 means an easy one, for it crossed at almost every turn with 
 thickets and thorns, and huge fragments of rock, and impene 
 trable chaparral. Still, he was more and more sanguine of the 
 correctness of his supposition as he got further. Finally, he 
 came to a dark, narrow gorge, which seemed absolutely impass 
 able, and which could neither be avoided, nor taken in flank. 
 The soil under his feet was gravelly and uneven, and he slipped 
 at almost every step, but he had struggled manfully on until this 
 last obstacle became manifestly insuperable. At that moment, 
 his eyes getting used to the twilight, the heart of Zelotes leaped 
 to his mouth and his skinny frame thrilled with joy.; for therein 
 front of him, piercing the gloom of the deep ravine, and in spite 
 of the intervening brush, he saw on the ground a tender sparkle, 
 which made his spirit exult as it never exulted before. It was a 
 fragment tiny indeed, but still a fragment of virgin gold. 
 
 When the editor of the "Clarion" left the ravine, his saddle 
 bags were stuffed with earth he had scraped from its bottom. 
 And the first result of the careful washing of that earth at the 
 earliest favorable opportunity was a good ounce and a half of the 
 precious metal. The second, as we have seen, was that of lead 
 ing him to return very soon to the Bar, and to make that pro 
 posal to its denizens which has been already described. 
 
 It is improbable that our discoverer would have brought him 
 self to admit others to share his counsels and his profits but for 
 a necessity which could not be avoided. He had with great la 
 bor and pains brought away enough of the precious soil on which 
 to try a. conclusive experiment. This had involved time as well 
 as labor, which were to be added to the chances of detection 
 when any wayfarer might step in to anticipate or divide his gains. 
 To turn his discovery to the best advantage, it would be neces 
 sary to convey water to the spot ; not in slender driblets, but . 
 in a copious and a continuous stream. Such a supply could only 
 be obtained from the river, and must be brought thence by some 
 mechanical contrivance. There were no quartz mills in those 
 days, and although mercury was often used to separate gold 
 from dross, the method most in vogue was the simplest; that is 
 to say, the method of placing the auriferous soil in any hollow 
 vessel and adding water; after which, by shaking, stirring, or 
 rocking, the greater specific gravity of the gold would cause it 
 to drop to the bottom, and the remainder of the mixture being 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 125 
 
 poured away, its most valuable ingredient would remain as a 
 precipitate. Water must be earned from the river ; and to carry 
 out this necessity the aid of those on the Bar became indispen 
 sable. 
 
 Having unfolded thus much to his new friends, who listened 
 with the gravest interest and attention, and having exhibited 
 the gold he had procured in the canon by way of confirmation, 
 Mr. Pangburn properly observed that the first thing to be done 
 was to devise means for the transport of the first essential to 
 success the water of the river. This opportunity for the exer 
 cise of his abilities as engineer of the company, put the Doctor 
 in high spirits. 
 
 " What s the difference in level?" he inquired, briskly.. 
 
 "I climno. How should I ? I reckon, tho , it must be higher* 
 n this, else what would the water run here for ?" 
 
 " That doesn t follow. It would be very unfortunate if it did. 
 The stream might have been been diverted by an obstacle, which 
 had no necessary connection with the land it ran over aj tcricards. 
 Its true that the tendency of a disused channel is to fill up, as 
 it is that of one in use to deepen ; but we can determine noth 
 ing until we know the real difference of level." 
 
 "Well, how are ye goin to git at it?" 
 
 Easily enough, with a little time and patience; it will take 
 more to build an aqueduct." 
 
 "We call that a flume, we do." 
 
 " Call it what you like, it s the same thing. But before we go 
 to the expense of such a work, we d best test the place a little 
 further." 
 
 All agreed as to the expediency of such a precaution, Mr. 
 Pangburn being so satisfied with the prospect as to make no ob 
 jection. A party was accordingly sent olf under his guardian 
 ship, and, after three hours absence, returned with a consider 
 able quantity of the soil, taken out as he directed. The result 
 showed that his sagacity was not at fault ; for, from a quantity 
 of earth about three times as great as he had first practised upon, 
 they succeeded in obtaining nearly five ounces of gold-dust. In 
 the mean time the Doctor had contrived to manufacture a couple 
 of rods with sliding disks, and his theodolite being in tolerable 
 adjustment, had commenced, with the help of Luke Armstrong 
 and myself, to run a line of levels from the river to the new 
 placer. It was evening when this labor was concluded, but the 
 result was tolerably satisfactory ; the surface of the water having 
 been found to be some fifteen feet higher than that of the 
 ground whence the earth had been taken. A consultation was 
 
126 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 held that night after supper, and it was resolved to transfer the 
 scene of their daily toils to these newer and richer diggings. 
 If, after a week, appearances continued encouraging, the com 
 pany would go to the great expense of bringing boards IVorn 
 the nearest saw-mill for the construction of a Hume. For hewn 
 timber they must rely on their own exertions ; and as Dick 
 Hailes promised to see to that part of the work, just coniidence 
 was reposed that it would be thoroughly performed. It was 
 considered that the water would necessarily fall very much as 
 the dry season advanced, and this suggested the building of a 
 sort of reservoir which should be supplied by force-pumps ; an 
 expedient which would enable water to be delivered at the new 
 diggings, even when the stream should fall, if possible, to be as 
 low as the level of the canon itself. 
 
 At the end of the week the party had taken out nearly sixty 
 ounces of gold, a result which was voted to warrant the expense 
 and labor of the flume. Accordingly the materials were con 
 tracted for ; a proceeding of itself attended with some difficulty, 
 since the experience of the last season had put the miners on 
 their guard about providing for water in the dry solstice, and 
 these structures were being put up all over the country, causing 
 a great scarcity of the timber whereof alone they could be made. 
 The combination of pluck, science, steadiness, and cunning, 
 which was now at work on Armstrong s Bar was well calculated 
 to overcome .this or much greater impediments to success. In a 
 fortnight more the flume was built and in operation. 
 
 The fame of these operations, of course, was bruited abroad, and 
 although the " Mounting Clarion " week after w r eek continued to 
 declare in the most unblushing manner that the diggers on the Bar 
 were not making their salt, and that what had been discovered 
 there had proved to be only inferior and scanty surface stuff, it could 
 not deter some greedy adventurers, who would see for them 
 selves, and who put no faith in " Clarions," from settling in the 
 neighborhood. The original company, 011 the other hand, had 
 staked out claims as extensive as the laws then allowed ; and 
 they possessed a vast advantage in their flume, which had cost 
 the labor and capital of many to complete. Some time passed 
 before another was attempted, and in the interval the gains of 
 the company were steadily increasing. It became evident, even 
 to the least sanguine, that a few months of such prosperity as 
 they now enjoyed would make them all rich. Some who came 
 to California wandered from point to point, setting up then* tents 
 now in one place, now in another, and departing from each as 
 penniless as when they arrived. Some had tried a dozen ex- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 127 
 
 periments before finding what they called a paying location ; and 
 some unlucky ones never found such a location at all. The 
 party at Armstrong s Bar were more fortooate. They had paid 
 their way even in the worst of times ; they had not been lined 
 to abandon the spot of then- first election by glittering tables of 
 others more prolific ; and they seemed to be reaping the reward 
 of their fidelity, hi wealth which was now pouring into their 
 coffers with swift and bewildering reality. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " A HUNDRED pounds of pure gold I It looks pooty, don t 
 
 itr 
 
 The speaker was Mr. Pangburn, and it was a Saturday night, 
 about two months after that gentleman s association with the 
 party at Armstrong s Bar. It was their custom on Saturday 
 nights to add up the gains of the past week, and then to place 
 them with the general store for safe-keeping. In the absence of 
 an iron safe, a deep hole had been sunk in a corner of the cabin, 
 which, with the aid of adobe, some flat stones, and a heavy 
 wooden lid, or cover, provided with hinges and a ring, consti 
 tuted a sort of treasure-vault. In this receptacle there reposed, 
 during the rest of the week, a strong iron-bound box, secured 
 by two padlocks, about two feet in length by one in height and 
 breadth. On Saturday nights this box, being unearthed, was 
 put where it now stood, on the table in the middle of the room, 
 to receive the fruits of the week s toil, and the admiring saluta 
 tions of its collective owners. There it stood, wide open, with 
 various little bags of nuggets, and some curious specimens of 
 crystals and quartz-bearing gold, arranged about its sides ; but 
 in the middle was a smaller box of tin, also furnished with a 
 padlock, and also open ; and in this inner sanctuary was the pile 
 which feasted the loving eyes of Mr. Pangburn. 
 
 Gold was there in all shapes and many sizes ; molten lumps 
 which showed the action of fire, and rounded lumps which told 
 of that of water. Large pieces of the size of a pigeon s egg, 
 and tiny spangles scarcely bigger than the point of a pin. 
 Queer-shaped bits, here and there, which fascinated the eye by 
 grotesque resemblance to people s heads and legs ; regular bits 
 now and again, like coins and ornaments, which you would 
 
128 MARIAN EOOKE ; OR 
 
 scarcely believe had not been fashioned by human handa 
 Variety, too, in color as well as in form, was there. Warm- 
 looking gold, with the reddish tinge of copper ; pale-looking, 
 delicate gold, having some admixture of silver, with various in 
 termediate shades between. A good deal of the precious earth 
 was in the box ; ancl it lay in little irregular heaps, with moun 
 tains and valleys, and bright yellow plains and dark purple ra 
 vines breaking and diversifying its surface. The light fell from 
 the chandelier, which was made of a hoop, and which. hung from 
 the roof, and the company were seated close to the table, with 
 all their eyes riveted on the glittering heap in its centre. 
 
 Mr. Paugburn had insinuated himself rather nearer than 
 either of the others, and was toying at the treasure with his 
 great coarse fingers, as if the sense of touch as well as that of 
 Sight gave him an exquisite pleasure ; and, while he enjoyed 
 himself with so undissembled a satisfaction, the Doctor, who sat 
 opposite, seemed to be watching his hands with a flinty suspi 
 cion in his hard Scotch face that he was scarcely at pains to con 
 ceal. Perhaps he might have thought Mr. Pangburn capable of 
 putting pitch upon his fingers, in anticipation of such an oppor 
 tunity ; and yet the surmise would have been unreasonable, since 
 it was not difficult, if any one were so disposed, to-overreach the 
 others in the daily routine of work, by adroit processes of with 
 holding and concealing ; and, to do him justice, no one had ever 
 seen a trace of such a disposition on the part of Mr. Pangburn. 
 
 "It s dreadful pooty stuff, ain t it 1" repeated he, .gloating 
 over it with his hyena-like grin. " Twice as much as there is 
 there d put up a hull stone-front block in Utiky." 
 
 "And would that be so desirable an investment ?" queried 
 the Doctor. 
 
 "It would that. You d only put down bout half cost, bor 
 row the rest on bond and mortgage at six per cent., git fifteen 
 for the rent o the stores, hev Tricopherous Hall or somethin 
 overhead for nigger singers and temperance meetin s, fifty dol 
 lars a night, and church on Sundays ; rum on storage down cel 
 lar double your money in five year." 
 
 "Oh," said the Doctor, apparently satisfied, "and that s your 
 idea of laying out your pile, when you make it ?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Zelotes, "that s my idee. I might hev an 
 organ," he added, thoughtfully ; " when a man s onct had an or 
 gan he don t kind o like to give up his holt 011 the public mind ; 
 it might be in Syracuse and it might be in Schenectady ; but the 
 stone-front block in Utiky d be my first idee. What s your n?" 
 
 " A cottage on the Clyde," half-sighed, half-mused the Doc- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 129 
 
 tor, a softer light coming over his hard features, "with many 
 friends, and few patients; with plenty of instruments, and time 
 to use them ; with a pretty view, and enough to feel easy, with 
 out. being rich." 
 
 " That wouldn t bring ye in no twelve per cent. ? 
 
 * Xo ; but it would bring in something of more worth con 
 tent." 
 
 A sarcastic smile played across the lineaments of Mr. Pang- 
 burn. " We don t kear nuthin bout content, we don t, until 
 there ain t nuthin else to git. Our motto is uppards and on- 
 nards. We air like Alexander, we air, and would shed tears as 
 fast as the Arabian trees if there weren t no more worlds to con 
 quer. The stream with a more sure resistless tendency seeks 
 not the ocean than a Yank the next gitable dollar." 
 
 " I believe you," quoth the Doctor. - ; Well, Seth, you ve 
 heard two aspirations ; let s hear yours let s hear the ambition 
 of the oldest of us of him who gave a name to the settlement." 
 
 " Why," said Uncle Seth, " I never tho t on t, honest, until 
 jest lately, when we got to take out so much dust. I ve allers 
 had to work, and I allers expect to ; and I don t raally much 
 calculate ever to git on without it as it is. I don t want to move 
 no more, I don t. I ve moved twict ; first from the Bay State 
 to the Buckeye, and then from the Buckeye out here. I don t 
 go back over them plains agin, not if I know myself intimately." 
 
 k Then your ambition is simply to stay and be as you are ?" 
 
 Well, as to ambition, it s a big word, and I don t jest get 
 the hang, on t all in a minute. If it means things I d like to do, 
 why," looking up, and passing a horny hand through his griz 
 zled hair " p raps a wood roof d be slicker n a cotton one and 
 a nice barn with stalls is a sight better n a corral. I did use to 
 think." continued Seth, as the thought of an old memory, a 
 youthful, half-forgotten aspiration, played over his lace ;t l did 
 use to think that if I was awful lucky, I d like to spend my old 
 age on the Blueberry Hill Farm at Old Saybrook ; .where my 
 gran father s bones is, my father havin bad luck, and bein 
 obleeged to sell it when I was a-little shaver. It s a costly farm, 
 that is, and to own it would be the only thing to tempt me ever 
 to pull up stakes agin. But I was allers content with what 
 Providence seed fit to send, and I ain t goin to take to gruru- 
 blin now. It s well for all on us, pears to me, that, let alone 
 havin a roof, we ve got any scalps to put under em ; and I m 
 willin for one to rest and be thankful." 
 
 " It ud be more Christianer to jest think of totin my chiny 
 over here," muttered Mrs. Armstrong, shaking her knitting- 
 6* 
 
130 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 needles and staring over her spectacles from the chimney corner, 
 " since wishin s fiyin round ; let alone six bureaus full o linen 
 fixin s and patchwork-comforters to reach from here to the 
 caiion. But I never see a thing in trousers yet but was mean 
 and riley on patchwork and chiuy." 
 
 " Stone-front block, cottage on a somethink, and rest and be 
 thankful on a wood roof instead of a cotton one," said Mr. 
 Pangburn, briskly, and stirring up the gold with his forefinger, 
 and then tasting it as if it were undergoing some culinary pro 
 cess. " What do you say, Mr. Gifford?" 
 
 "I?" said Hugh, carelessly; "why, I scarcely know. You 
 say there are a hundred pounds weight there scarcely twenty 
 thousand dollars ; if I had, let us suppose, live times that 
 amount, I dare say I should go and travel in Europe." 
 
 "Five times!" exclaimed Pangburn, aghast; "a hundred 
 thousand dollars ! Why, you don t mean to say ye d go and spend 
 all that money among foreigners out o yer own country ?" 
 
 "I didn t say I should spend it all," replied Hugh ; then observ 
 ing the horror of his interlocutor, he added, "although I dare 
 say I might European travelling is, I hear, very expensive." 
 
 "Well," observed Mr. Pangburn, derisively, "when ye git 
 it ye can go and travel it aout ; / give you leave. What s your 
 notion o spendin your money, Dick Railes ? P raps you d like 
 to go a scatterin of your substance on stony places, eh 1 ?" 
 
 "Not I," returned that worthy. "That ain t my style, that 
 ain t. I don t want to scatter nuthin unless it s shot if I kin get 
 a good double barr l, and not then if I can t hev a good smell 
 dog in t the bargain. I d like a good house and a good horse, 
 and play-day bout half the time, and" peering over toward 
 the corner where Kitty sat blushing over her knitting ; a pooty 
 gal to help me enjoy it." 
 
 "That s you," nodded Mr. Pangburn, approvingly, " symper- 
 thizin allers with a taste for loveliness ; only ye know, Dick, the 
 more play the less dimes, a proverb never, stale in thrifty minds. 
 It s also hard to resoom toil arter too much relaxation. When 
 engaged in editorial duty on the Mounting Clarion, no one 
 ever know d me to unbend the bow, a circumstance which, be 
 sides servin the public and keepin active the intellectual facul 
 ties, also enabled me to bind Barlow to my will when he came 
 to take charge ; he see I never spared myself, and so prepared 
 never to git spared hisself when his turn come to the bellows. 
 The genius of our country is to keep a pitclim in ; whereby the 
 grass don t grow under her feet afore she hits somethink." 
 
 The company having duly admired this brief dissertation on 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. l. jl 
 
 * 
 
 industry, the Doctor proposed that Luke, who had remained 
 silent, should impart his views as to the enjoyment of his pros 
 pective wealth. 
 
 " Allers rememberin ," cautioned Zelotes, "that twenty thou 
 sand dollars in two months is equal to forty thousand in four 
 months, and sixty thousand in six; lettin alone contingent 
 finds, and allowin that nuthin busts, up to the canon." 
 
 " It seems like countin our chickens afore they re hatched," 
 said Luke, in response, "to talk about bein rich yet awhile; 
 but I think if I was to have my time, I d like to git some books, 
 and read and study for a year or two." 
 
 " Study!" echoed Zelotes, contemptuously. "What on airth 
 d ye want to study for? You ve been to grammar-school, 
 ain t ye?" 
 
 "Three winters," answered modest Luke; "summers I had 
 to work on the farm, like most folks down our way, and all I 
 learned won t hurt me much. I think a man ought to try and 
 improve himself when he gits a fair show, and don t have to 
 work alljjthe time." 
 
 Wall," said the Editor. " my plan always was to do workin 
 and readin the same time ; workiii for the big licks, and readin 
 for fillin up the chinks, and then ye don t lose nuthin 1" 
 
 " That may do for common things rithmetic and geography, 
 and such ; but if a man wants to make himself knowledgeable, 
 so s to fit himself to be with folks who are better educated than 
 he s been used to, he s got to buckle down to it." 
 
 "You git money enough," chuckled Mr. Pangburn, "and 
 you ll find yourself fit enough for any society they kin scare up. 
 This ere yaller stuif teaches folks what s what, a darned sight 
 quicker 11 any books that ever was writ ; and what s more, there 
 ain t nobody nowheres but what kin understand it." 
 
 "I don t vote for puttin too much store on money, I don t," 
 remarked Seth, mildly. "It s a very good thing to have, that s a 
 fact, and our folks have felt the want of it. We ve worked 
 hard for our liviu so fur, and no mistake ; but I allow I d rather 
 hear a son of mine had a good name among his neighbors and 
 no more money, than to hear him called a rascal, and be ten 
 times as^rich as his father was." 
 
 "That s you, Seth!" exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong, from her 
 corner. "I m with ye there, chiny or no chiny. And as to 
 that critter," she continued, in an undertone, and peering specu 
 latively at Pangburn over her spectacles, " I think he a sell his 
 father, if he s got one, for thirty pieces, quicker n a wink." 
 
 " Repootation," proceeded that critter, gravely, "is a fig, oft 
 
132 MARIAN EOOKE; OR, 
 
 got without merit and lost without deservin . But eagles is 
 eagles, and passes current all the world over." 
 
 " Anyhow," continued Luke, "it s a free country, and I take 
 it we kin all spend our earnin s in- our own way." 
 
 " That is so," acquiesced Pangburn, " and we don t hev to 
 pay it all away in taxes neither, like them ere downtrodden 
 people in the old world. What the poor man gits the poor man 
 keeps, and the sweat of honest labor ain t used to ile the hinges 
 of luxurious pomp." 
 
 " Hail Columby !" bawled Ike, from his divan on the floor, 
 where he was extended with his four-footed companion. " Hail 
 Columby ! and long live everybody but Ike and Lion ! The 
 only ones who know how to git the money; the only ones 
 that knows how to spend it when it is got and the only ones 
 whose idees on the pint ain t asked for to teach the folks wisdom. 
 Guess when the gold gives out on the canon ye won t be so 
 smart ; like enough then ye 11 come and ask us to show ye some 
 thing, and perhaps then we won t do it. Talk of gold ! All 
 ye ve got in that there cake-basket is 110 more to what Ike kin 
 show ye than a minner to a whale, nor a huckleberry to a pum- 
 kin!" 
 
 " Well, and why don t ye then, Ike?" said Luke soothingly. 
 u Why don t ye show us ?" 
 
 " Why don t mother, here, teach ye how to knit, or Lion to 
 sniff out where the bones is ? Cause it ain t fit for ye, and 
 cause ye couldn t learn it, and cause it wouldn t do ye good if 
 ye could," w^as Ike s, as usual, unsatisfactory reply. But, for all 
 his ailing wits, poor Ike worked as hard, and as fairly earned 
 his share as any one on the Bar. With his own free consent it 
 had been agreed that Seth should take charge of this share, de 
 ducting what each regularly paid toward the expenses of the 
 household. The Doctor, who had watched his case with interest, 
 was of opinion that the change of scene from his old home on 
 the Ohio, together with regular and healthful occupation, might 
 effect a change for the better in his mental condition ; but 
 although there was now and then an apparently lucid interval, 
 it was always soon interrupted by a relapse into his usual con 
 dition. It was a case, indeed, which some great and unexpected 
 shock was more likely to restore than any monotonous routine 
 of life, and such could only be brought about by fate or acci 
 dent, and could not be improvised at will. 
 
 Whatever might be the varying hopes or ambitions of the 
 members of our little band, there was no want of energy or in 
 genuity in the pursuit of the common object. Day followed 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 133 
 
 day, and week succeeded week, and there was no sickness, no 
 interruption, save on the Sabbath, to the lucrative toil. All 
 worked as it this was the sole chance to overtake fortune, and 
 they were determined the fickle goddess should not escape them. 
 Occasionally Mr. Pangburn would absent himself for a day or 
 two s attention to the afiairs of the ;i Mountain Clarion," but 
 the zeal and vigor with which he resumed his post at the work 
 on his return were universally allowed to compensate for such 
 defections of his time. He had the ait, too, of making himself 
 generally useful in a manner which gradually gained on the 
 popular esteem. He it was who brought pipes and tobacco, 
 and replenished the failing supply of whiskey. He who brought 
 calicoes for the females, yarns for Mrs. Armstrong, even needles 
 and pins, at times when those little articles were scarce and 
 most needed. Occasionally, newspapers from the Atlantic 
 States, and even an odd volume or two, would gladden the Sun 
 days at the Bar with intelligence and food for reflection, which 
 were much in request. Even the Doctor was in course of time 
 propitiated by offerings of small nicknacks in the way of sta 
 tionery, and other trifles difficult to get in the mines, but quite 
 necessary to his peace and comfort. Notwithstanding the un- 
 couthness of his person, and the unfavorable impression he had 
 first made on many of the company, Mr. Paugburn was certainly 
 improving upon acquaintance; and when it was remembered 
 that he was, in a great measure, the author of the prosperity 
 which they now enjoyed, it was not surprising that the settlers 
 on the Bar grew in time to regard him very much in the light 
 of a public benefactor. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I AM afraid Hugh Gifford was not a model hero. It has al 
 ready been hinted that he did not impress me on our first 
 acquaintance as a very prepossessing personage. I may as well 
 go further, and say that it took a long time to find out the good 
 that was really in liini ; and that it would not surprise me to 
 know that the reader were very ready to appreciate the circum 
 stance. He was in truth one of those people whom hard fortune 
 and unfavorable surroundings lead into the habit of continually 
 turning the wor^t side of their character outwards. Believing 
 
134 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 himself to have been ill-used, whether by accident or fate; too 
 proud to go through the world making complaints ; having a 
 finely balanced mind, and a very sensitive nervous organization ; 
 despising, whether jdstly or not, most of those with whom he 
 was brought in contact ; habitually taking refuge in books, be 
 cause debarred from congenial and appropriate society ; believ 
 ing from his earliest youth that there was something incongruous 
 and oppressive in the social structure and political tenets which 
 encircled him ; feeling that he possessed talents which in a less 
 depressing atmosphere would enable him to do good for mankind 
 and satisfy his own self-respect, it was natural that with such 
 qualities and with such disabilities he should have become re 
 served and suspicious; it was natural that he should have be 
 come very, very proud ; . and it was natural that he should be, 
 at first at least, very much disliked by nearly all whom chance 
 threw in his way. 
 
 It is not easy to defend such a character ; but it would be 
 most unjust to condemn it. A man who, by his coldness and 
 reticence, habitually prohibits attempts at sympathetic inter 
 course, soon gains more clisesteem than he deserves. We are 
 .apt to resent such a want of appreciation of ourselves by attrib 
 uting to the offender bad qualities, of which he has given no 
 other evidence, and of which lie may really be innocent. He 
 becomes exceedingly unpopular ; and it is not an adequate recom 
 pense that such men, disliked by society, should always be the 
 favorites of philosophers, and, almost as invariably, the favorites 
 of clever women. Such men have much to suffer ; and what 
 ever the origin of their peculiarities whether they have sprung 
 from the unmerited persecutions of fortune, or have their source 
 in mere morbid egotism the world is ever slow to do them 
 justice ever ready to listen to their censure. She loves not 
 those who do not seek her in spirit and in truth ; she is bitterly 
 hostile to those who affect to despise her. 
 
 There was something interwoven in the texture of Hugh s 
 intellect from which he could no more escape than from the 
 blood in his veins. A feeling of distaste for the ways of the peo 
 ple by whom his boyhood and youth had been surrounded; a 
 dislike of their dress, their speech, their physiognomy, their re 
 ligious observances, their social practices ; a loathing for the col- 
 orlessness of life, as life had to be lived among them ; a hatred 
 for square houses, and straight roads, and naked fields, and the 
 other too numerous signs oi dreary asceticism, of provincial in 
 tolerance. These were the outward and visible signs of a social 
 condition which seemed to his nature most repellent, and, as the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 135 
 
 producer of general happiness, a blank delusion. No servants 
 or other blind teachers had ever infused prejudices into his mind. 
 Had they made such efforts, they would have made them in an 
 opposite direction : they would have striven to persuade him 
 that America was the choicest country, in every respect, in the 
 universe ; that Xew England was the choicest part of America ; 
 and that Massachusetts was the choicest part of New England. 
 They would have taught him that her laws, her schools, her 
 temples, her people, were more glorious than those of Imperial 
 Rome, or of Academic Greece. They would have insisted that 
 no system of government could compare with one which placed 
 its power in the hands of the ignorant many, and judiciously 
 relegated to inert obscurity the thinking few : all these things 
 they would have reported, and he would probably not have be 
 lieved them ; but no such experiment had, in point of tact, ever 
 been made. His mind, such as it was, grew up and expanded, 
 and took in such knowledge as it craved and could lay hold of, 
 and arrived at its own conclusions. 
 
 He saw and felt early that to make any figure in the world he 
 must first get money. That to get it he must meet and grapple 
 with cunning and unscrupulous men, and perhaps become as 
 cunning and unscrupulous as they. AVhere there was only one 
 object of ambition, and the means universally regarded as indif 
 ferent, provided the end were attained, it seemed clear that no 
 one could reach that end and hope to preserve clean hands and 
 an unsullied conscience. The case was simplicity itself. It was 
 running a race in a narrow, filthy avenue with crowds of dirty 
 competitors, and mountains of mud and slime to struggle 
 through ; yet there was nothing else to be done there was no 
 cleaner road, no selecter companions : it was this or nothing. 
 The conclusion was revolting enough, but really there was no 
 help for it. 
 
 Having made up his mind to this, Hugh Gifford went his way, 
 always secretly despising himself. He was unfortunate, truly, 
 in meeting no*loftier natures than he did natures which might 
 have taught him where his errors lay in a kindly spirit might 
 have revealed to him glimpses of that knowledge which surely 
 comes to each and all of us sometimes, the fulness of which is 
 as the eternal day. He was unfortunate in the women toward 
 whom he had ever been attracted even in that lonely, helpless 
 sort of way that men turn toward utterly uncongenial, incom 
 patible women, in the absence of any more eligible or loveable 
 vainly groping after the help and consolation which seems so 
 long in coming. The last and gravest it might almost be said 
 
136 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 the only attraction of this kind had been no more productive 
 than any other. He fancied he loved Virginia Chester, and no 
 doubt he did admire her as much as any other ever could or 
 would ; bat that he loved her as he was capable of loving was 
 untrue ; and he was tormented, even when most resolute in 
 thinking of the prospective consummation of duty and inclina 
 tion their marriage by a dismal consciousness of the fact. 
 
 Now, whatever might be its permanent effect upon his char 
 acter, his meeting and association with Marian Roqke made Gif- 
 ford much less comfortable less at ease with himself less con 
 tent to pursue the path he had inwardly traced out than he had 
 been before. She saw, with that singular prescience which 
 women of her stamp possess, and which is unerring as it is in 
 explicable, that the young man had latent qualities of a far 
 higher and nobler nature than those which appeared on the sur 
 face of his character qualities which needed appreciation, cul 
 ture, encouragement, it is true, but which were not the less gen 
 uine and not the less worthy of all that could bo bestowed to 
 draw them forth. How far Marian was actuated by a warmer 
 than a mere speculative interest in the matter we may fairly 
 leave for the present out of the discussion , suffice that her self 
 respect was of too high a standard to permit such a sentiment to 
 become apparent, either to Hugh or others. True, they were 
 often together, and seemed to take pleasure in each other s soci 
 ety ; but it was known that Gilford was already engaged, and 
 there was that about Marian which prevented people from in 
 dulging either in word or thought of the fleering sort, so com 
 mon when young men and maidens talk much together. There 
 was an exception to the general view in the breast of Luke 
 Armstrong ; but of that hereafter. 
 
 Sometimes by hints, sometimes by suggestions, sometimes by 
 soaring pictures of what was her own ideal of life and its du 
 ties, sometimes by processes of questioning and inference too 
 subtle to be more than shadowed by mere words, whenever the 
 girl was with Gifford this awakening or developing influence 
 was slowly but surely at work. Oftentimes it would be uncon 
 sciously to both, but it never ceased. There would be occa 
 sions when Marian would feel that she had gone too far ; that 
 their relative situations did not warrant her seeking to reverse 
 his convictions, or to change the current of his resolutions. 
 There would be occasions when >o.e would hold half angry com 
 mune with himself, and determine that it was foolish, vain, im 
 possible to overthrow the teachings of his whole experience, and 
 to set up new objects of ambition. But neither of these occa- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 137 
 
 sions were productive of any tangible results ; for that which 
 was going on was chiefly involuntary, and in obedience to im 
 mutable laws. The earth would go round the sun, and not the 
 sun round the earth, Papal decisions to the contrary notwith 
 standing. 
 
 I do not mean to convey the idea that through this regener 
 ating influence Hugh Gilford was metamorphosed, of a sudden, 
 from a warped, self-contained egotist, to a great-souled, high- 
 minded man ; that would have been too miraculous for real life, 
 and we have to do with no other. The process, indeed, was a 
 slow one, and, like the incoming tide, showed a long series of 
 advances and retrocessions. When I began to know .the man 
 I mean when I penetrated the first crust of his reserve, and to 
 catch glimpses of his real character I doubted whether the 
 good or the bad most predominated. It was a singular trait 
 with him, at that time, to deal with people much in their own 
 coin. I have known him to get the better of unprincipled 
 sharpers to turn the tables upon them when they laid their 
 deepest schemes to circumvent him, and positively to fleece 
 them in turn. This surely was not right. It was what he 
 could never have done had Marian Kooke stood near, watching 
 his course with her calm, earnest eyes. But, on the other hand, 
 if Hugh had to deal with a man of honor with a person of 
 plain, guileless integrity there could be no juster judge, no 
 more trustworthy friend. If he alone had had to deal with him, 
 I doubt not Hugh would have even got the better of Mr. Pang- 
 burn ; albeit it had been a marvellous encounter, and opinions 
 might well waver as to its issue. But had he to deal with Seth 
 Armstrong, or with his son Luke, you might adventure worlds 
 that if there were an advantage Hugh would cast it against 
 himself. 
 
 It followed that tricky and dishonest people and there were 
 abundance of such in those early Californian days were apt, on 
 coining into contact with our hero, to hail him as one of their 
 own order ; and that upright, simple, and straightforward peo 
 ple of whom there were unhappily but few would put in a 
 similar claim. JCach class was equally sincere equally right and 
 equally wrong; but a comparison of their relative numbers 
 would augur unfavorably for Hugh s reputation. 
 
 There were two of the company at Armstrong s Bar whose 
 attachment to Gilford was utterly independent of his merits or 
 defects. Had he been an angel from heaven they could have 
 clung to him no closer ; had he been a fiend incarnate they 
 would have loved him no less. These were Ichabod and Lion. 
 
138 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 . The memory of the moment when, by a happy accident, the 
 life of the latter had been saved by Hugh s interposition, seemed 
 ever fresh in the breasts alike of the animal and his master. 
 Neither had the human wit to know why they should dislike, 
 but both appeared to have gratitude enough to love a benefac 
 tor. The others of the party grew to understand and like him 
 better as time wore on. Those especially who did not fancy 
 Hugh before their great trial and deliverance on the plains, were 
 mollified by the courage and steadiness he had shown on that 
 occasion. Dick Railes and his followers were of those con 
 verts : but none of them were or could be fit associates for 
 Hugh ; and their intercourse was limited to a common friendli 
 ness, such as came naturally with their common toil. Leaving 
 Marian out of the question, none could be called his intimates 
 save these two alone. 
 
 So, therefore, it was, that, whether engaged in the rude, 
 rough labor of digging and washing for gold whether strolling 
 with Marian at early morning or in the dusky evening on the 
 banks of the stream whether exploring in the fastnesses and 
 recesses of the mountains and forests for fresh sources of wealth, 
 fresh signs of auriferous deposit whether sitting on the brink 
 of a lovely little lake they had found perched clear away up 
 among the hills whether waking or sleeping, Hugh was all but 
 invariably attended by a body-guard in the persons of the poor 
 simpleton and his faithful dog. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 / , 
 
 " So you ll not leave the Armstrongs after all. You won t go 
 on a solitary ramble to hunt for fresh gold-fields, but will stay 
 and make your fortune on the Bar ?" 
 
 Thus said Marian, as they sat together one quiet Sunday morn 
 ing by the shore of the lake which was perched up among the 
 hills. They sat on a little cushion of velvet tarf which crowned a 
 tiny promontory jutting into the lake. A few feet belo\v them 
 lay the placid water, smooth as glass. Above were the tall 
 branches of a great redwood, which neither waved nor whisper 
 ed in the motionless air. All around lay an amphitheatre of low 
 hills, their outlines broken here and there by spreading foliage ; 
 whilst masses of dark-gray rock, some imbedded in the earth.; 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 139 
 
 pome lying apparently loose on its surface, relieved the preen, 
 and told the curious eye a story of not very remote volcanic com 
 motion. At a short distance, on the edge of the water, crouched 
 Ike, sedulously engaged in the difficult problem of making a little 
 vessel lie had carved of redwood, sail without wind ; and Lion 
 lay by, watching the endeavor with incredulous apathy. It was 
 a very lazy day, with a soft, lulling atmosphere, not common in 
 regions where the air is so elastic. There were lumps of white 
 cloud hanging over head and looking like gigantic powder-puffs, 
 wh ose images were reflected in the mirror below, distinct and 
 * M\ as the originals. 
 
 "Who knows ]" replied Hugh tossing a bit of stick toward 
 T,ion, and managing to land it on his back ; the dog turned 
 uickly, and, seeing who was his assailant, gave a slow wag of 
 his tail and resumed his languid observation of Ike. k Who 
 knows? Tilings look promising enough so far, but we have no 
 assurance of lasting success. The yield may drop as quickly as 
 it rose. This gold-digging is very like a rocket : very brilliant 
 one moment, very dull the next. All we can do is to make the 
 most of it while it lasts. We had a dazzling week of it, to be 
 surc nearly a thousand dollars a man ; and the coming week 
 may see us fall to our old average of fifty. Still, I grant the 
 prospect is a good one." 
 
 I am so glad," said Marian, " that you resisted that man s 
 attempt to get the party to work on Sundays. Others do it, no 
 doubt ; but it would seem so dreary and barbarous far away in 
 these unpeopled wilds as we are, and a hundred miles from any 
 church to have no day of rest, nothing to remind one of the 
 sweet Sabbath of childhood." 
 
 The miners on the Bar had resolved at the outset to do no 
 labor on Sundays ; and had found their account, as people 
 usually will, by accomplishing quite as much in the six days as 
 any of their neighbors did in seven. It was rare in those 
 times for any of the diggers to respect the Lord s day any more 
 tli an another. Their feverish thirst for gold would have made 
 them work by night, if nature and starlight would have allowed 
 it. When the Sundays first began to be distinguished in the 
 various diggings, it was rather, as in Catholic countries, as a day 
 of festivity than one of prayer ; gambling being the favorite diver 
 sion, with its usual concomitants of drinking and blasphemous 
 revelry, 
 
 I don t know that they get more more gold," answered 
 Hugh, thoughtfully ; u but the men are more healthy and happy, 
 for a day to bathe and tidy their clothes, and write then- letters. 
 
140 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 There are sad scenes, we hear, in the larger places on Sundays. 
 But we have gained as well as lost something by our isolation. 
 Not but that we have a very good set ; but the best of men will 
 drink or gamble, or go a little wrong, so far from the restraints 
 of home, and leading so strange so unusual a life." 
 
 "You will make your fortune on the Bar," continued the 
 girl, pursuing her former train of thought, " and return home, 
 rich. But you must not stay at home. That would be only to 
 become settled and confirmed in ways and thoughts which are 
 not best for your future. You must travel ; travel and study. 
 There are many strange things you should know of many you 
 should see, which you have no great knowledge of now." . 
 
 "True," said the young man, humbly, "too many." 
 
 "Don t say too many, for that implies a hopelessness which 
 doesn t belong to cight-and-twenty, good health, a fortune in 
 prospective, and a beautiful wife to encourage you." 
 
 "Equally in prospective!" 
 
 " You will travel chiefly in Europe, for there almost all 
 things are to be learned. You must spend your time mostly in 
 England and France, for in those countries there is more to learn 
 than in the whole of Europe beside. You must study their 
 manners, their arts, their laws, and their governments not 
 superficially, but so as to have a substantial, if not a particular 
 knowledge of them all. You must especially note the differences 
 which exist between all these things and similar or analogous 
 ones in your own country. You must be able to judge for your 
 self how far we in America are really in advance, and how 
 far we are behind the progress and civilization of other nations ; 
 for the people of all countries are apt to be conceited, and to 
 suppose, from the continued boasting they hear all around them, 
 that their own is superior to every other. You, perhaps, are 
 somewhat different ; you seem to think that in our country at 
 least in your part of it we are not so well off as others in some 
 important respects. It will be well, therefore, that you should 
 see for yourself the condition of the population in other lands, 
 so that you may form a really just comparison. After some 
 years devoted to this kind of study and investigation, you will 
 return home." 
 
 "I fear," said Hugh, smiling, "that supposing all these 
 castles to be built of anything more substantial than air sup 
 posing them to be resolved into solid realities that if I found 
 myself in Europe with a sufficient income, reasonably assured 
 I should falsity your sketch." 
 
 "Ah, you mean you could remain 1 ?" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 141 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " And I thought so and that is precisely what you would 
 have no right to do." 
 
 " No right ? Not if I made my fortune by my ownhonest toil?" 
 
 "Xo." 
 
 "I think you combat your own theories there. You say that 
 self-culture is our first and highest duty, but you would refuse 
 the right to stay where such culture could be practised with the 
 best advantage. Surely if the sight of all that is most ennobling 
 and artistic in the works of the most cultivated of our species 
 the monuments of architecture, of sculpture, of painting if 
 the survey of what remains of the greatest achievements of our 
 race, ranging far back into the history of the past if the con 
 templation, on the spot, of the results which have arisen from 
 the successes and the failures- of dynasties if these are not the 
 objects whose study is most conducive to self-improvement, 
 what things are more so ?" 
 
 "There are none, I suppose." 
 
 But yet you would censure me for wishing to remain among 
 them r 
 
 "Xo ; not if you were justified in living for yourself alone. 
 But what human being is so justified ? How, least of all can, any 
 one be justified in a country like this, where there is such vast 
 work to be done, and so few to do it ? Of what avail is your 
 culture to be, if it is only to conduce to your own selfish gratifi 
 cation ? How can any of us regard such opportunities of im 
 provement opportunities given us like talents to use for the ben 
 efit of all around us if, like talents, they are to be wrapped up 
 and put away in a napkin ? No ; you will see all you can, learn 
 all you cnn, think all you can, and you will then return to give 
 your country the benefit of what you have acquired." 
 
 " Virginia could not sympathize with all this," said GhTord, 
 sadly. 
 
 " You ought to teach her, then. If you have the fortune, or 
 the wit to see and use noble means for raising, or aiding, or free 
 ing your fellow-beings, that happiness, the purest and most sub 
 lime of which humanity is capable, should be shared by her whom 
 you swear to love, to cherish, and to protect." 
 
 "I would gladly do my duty; but natures souls are so 
 very, very different. Could you teach Ike, there, to fancy 
 Wordsworth, or Mr. Pangburn to appreciate the beauties of Ten 
 nyson ? She is good, and gentle, and true ; but I do not think 
 she would understand such tastes as you describe, were I to 
 strive ever so hard to teach them." 
 
142 MARIAN ROOKE; OK, 
 
 " Women are, nine times out of ten, more capable than your 
 sex are disposed to believe. At least, you can try the experi- 
 ent, and should you fail, you will not have yourself to blame. 
 As for me " 
 
 Marian paused, for the sun behind now caused some long 
 shadows to darken the water before them, and she perceived 
 that the company was more numerous than she had thought. A 
 few paces off, and slowly descending the slope, were Luke Arm 
 strong and Mr. Pangbnrn. 
 
 " Ye crags and peaks, I m with ye once agin I" declaimed the 
 latter. " I d no idee there Avas such a pooty place on the Bar! 
 Here, p raps, "the sedgy Injun once paddled his dusky canoe 
 here he barbecued his venison, and frizzled his taters, and had no 
 man to make him afraid ! No offence, I hope, none intended, 
 public property, hey ? And the hull company invited to a syl 
 van shade, sacred to love and water-paower !" 
 
 " I wouldn t have disturbed you, Mary Anne," said Luke, and 
 there was a faint touch of reproach in his manner, " or you, Mr. 
 Gifford, but there s letters jest come for both of ye, and I tho t 
 you d like to have em." 
 
 " Thank you very much, Luke," answered the girl ; " you are 
 always kind." 
 
 "Mr. Pangburn said he d like to take a walk," continued Luke, 
 half apologetically, " and so he come along." 
 
 " Ilopin ," added that gentleman, sarcastically, "that his room 
 ain t better than his company." 
 
 "The place is free to all, I suppose," said Hugh Gifford, cold 
 ly ; "there are no monopolies here." 
 
 "No more they ought to be. What s the use of havin a free 
 country if ye ain t free to go where you like in it ? The beauty 
 of Californy, when I fust come to it, was that there weren t a 
 fence the hull length and breadth of the land, cept corrals to stow 
 the cattle in." 
 
 " This is for you, Mary Anne, and it looks as if it had a 
 European postmark. And this is for you, Mr. Gifford." 
 
 " Any intelligence of interest bein understood to be bespoke 
 for the Mounting Clarion," suggested Zclotes. 
 
 " I doubt whether mine will be of any service," said Marian, 
 smiling, " since my correspondent is neither much interested in 
 public affairs nor very communicative ; but, with your leave, I ll 
 see what he says." 
 
 She walked quietly away as she finished ; and Gifford, after re 
 ceiving his own missive and thanking its bearer, as deliberately 
 went in the same direction, and was seen to join and walk by 
 
THE QUEST FOB FORTUNE. 143 
 
 Marian s side ; whereupon Lion gravely arose, and, with meas 
 ured steps, followed in their track ; and Ike, quite as a matter 
 of course, having withdrawn his vessel from the glassy water, 
 proceeded to follow the dog. The two thus left behind, looked 
 for a moment at the retreating figures and then at each other. 
 
 " That ere s kind o sociable, ain t it?" commented Mr. Pang- 
 burn, grinning after the pah* like a rat of an ironical turn. 
 "Two s company and more isn t, eh ? For I don t count that 
 ere silly cuss nothink. Let on now, will ye, how long s young 
 Bosting been sweet on the gal ?" 
 
 "Sweet on her!" echoed Luke, half angrily ; "he ain t he 
 can t be." 
 
 " It looks tarnation like it. Why can t he be ?" 
 
 "Because it s impossible." 
 
 " Six o one and half-a-dozen o the other. Handsome gal 
 eyes like lightniir lips like coral pooty bust clipper-built all 
 over. Young man silent and gloomy stuck up, rather no 
 other gals round cept that pooty sister o yourn and she en 
 gaged to that ere backwoodsman and might do better; pears to 
 me natural these folks should be sweet." 
 
 " I tell you it s out of the question. She s too good ; and I 
 don t think, for that matter, that he s the man to do a real mean 
 thing." 
 
 " Nuthin mean bout bein sweet, is there ? That ain t what 
 / call it. I never see a pooty gal yit who was too good to be 
 cottoned up to." 
 
 " You don t understand," said the other, impatiently ; "Hugh 
 GhTord isn t his own man ; he s engaged engaged to be mar 
 ried to a young lady at home his home in Massachusetts." 
 
 " Thunder ! Why didn t ye tell me that afore ?" 
 
 " Tell you ! Why should I ?" 
 
 " What s a young feller like you up to, that lets a chap who s 
 spoke for lug a gal like that right away from under his nose ? 
 Where s yer spunk ? If I weren t in somethin like the same 
 box as his n not," he added in the way of parenthesis, and gaz 
 ing speculatively on Marian s form, now disappearing beyond 
 the opposite slope, " but what I could wriggle aout if I tried 
 hard referrin to a young lady in Utiky I d try it on merself." 
 
 The blood mounted to Luke s brow, and he bit his lips to keep 
 himself from an angry retort. Rough and uneducated as he was, 
 he had delicacy and perception enough, independently of his 
 o\vn particular ieelings, to be outraged by the incongruous asso 
 ciation, even in idle words, of such a woman as Marian and the 
 satyr-like creature beside him. 
 
144 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "You see," he explained, finally, "she s not a gurl to flirt 
 with any one in a common way ; she knows too much. Her 
 and him have read a good many of the same books for he s 
 got a sight o book learnin and they like to talk together 
 about em. Seein every one knows he s engaged, and allers 
 treated her so distant and respectful, it ain t nobody s business, I 
 s pose." 
 
 " And what does your sister Kitty and Miss Armstrong 
 what do they think about sech goin s on 1" 
 
 " Think? Why, they think the same s the rest on us, I take 
 it, and mind their own business." And Luke began to walk 
 slowly homewards. Mr. Pangbum was not unobservant of the 
 flush on his companion s face and the tremor in his voice during 
 this little discussion. But, partly to satisfy his curiosity, and 
 partly from a love of small mischief, in which he sometimes in 
 dulged, he essayed to resolve his doubts into certainty. He 
 walked along in a reflective manner for a while, and then said : 
 " Gals is allers kind o risky when they re much with young fel 
 lers who talk bout books, and poetry, and sech things. There 
 was a gal named Amandy Tomkins clrowndcd herself in a well 
 up our way, in Utiky, cause a married man a dreadful talky, 
 moony kind of a cuss come round her in this same fashion, 
 pretendin to be single, and blowin oft" steam bout pomes and 
 sympathetic souls, and all this ere entanglin sawder they go in 
 for, when they know regular courtin ain t down in the bill." 
 
 " You don t mean," said Luke, turning quite pale and coming 
 to a halt, " You don t mean that Mary Anne s the gurl, even if 
 Hugh Giflbrd was the man, to " 
 
 " I don t mean nuthin ," replied Mr. Pangburn, reassuringly, 
 for he saw rather an ominous look in Luke s eye, " I don t mean 
 nuthin that s wrong. Only, if I was the gal s father, or brother, 
 or was interested in her in any way, I d think prevention was 
 better than cure, that s all. She s an awful nice gal," he contin 
 ued, by way of additional mollification, " and I think she jest 
 takes the rag off any she critter in the diggin s." 
 
 Luke made no reply, but walked on,- buried in abstraction. 
 The conversation had kindled thoughts which were most painful 
 to him. Even against the warnings of his more sensible self, 
 he had suffered the dangerous beauty of Marian to gain a seri 
 ous influence over his heart. He knew full well his own defi 
 ciencies, for he was as free from conceit as he was honest and 
 simple-minded ; but he had sometimes, especially since they 
 were growing richer, indulged in the dream that, after all, poor 
 and homeless as was Marian, and living as they were in a soci- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 145 
 
 ety where deficiencies of culture would be least perceived or 
 least missed the dream tHat she might overlook all that, and ac 
 cept the protection of his name and stalwart arm. He had not 
 liked her manifest partiality for Gifford s society ; but, partly 
 from diffidence and partly from good nature, he had never more 
 than faintly indicated such a thing. Besides, he knew of Hugh s 
 engagement ; and, moreover, his nature was not narrow enough 
 to be lightly jealous. But now new thoughts had entered his 
 mind thoughts of apprehension and dismay thoughts which 
 led him to consider whether it was not a duty, somehow, to put 
 Marian on her guard, even if apprehension should prove to be 
 groundless. Even the wisest may sometimes be misled, and 
 perhaps both the young girl and Hugh were going idly astray. 
 merely for the want of some friendly and judicious warning. 
 That such a warning would be given, if given at all. in the in 
 terest of his own even to himself scarce half-avowed hopes, 
 Luke was well aware ; but he was too unsophisticated to think 
 of hesitating in what he once believed to be a duty, simply be 
 cause of the risk of misconstruction. 
 
 Whether Mr. Pangburn had contemplated such a result as the 
 product of his invidious suggestions ; whether he was impelled 
 by curiosity, mere idle malice, or real dislike of the cool and dis 
 tant manner therewith Gifford always had treated him ; or 
 whether he was merely animated by the wish to pursue his 
 studies in human nature, certain it is that his words had pro 
 duced considerable effect upon the mind of Luke Armstrong ; 
 sufficient, at all events, to hasten an explanation which that 
 young man had often longingly contemplated, but which ap 
 peared to have required some extraordinary stimulus before it 
 could be brought about. 
 
 While this scene was passing between Luke and Zelotes, the 
 letters which had arrived furnished occasion for an important 
 explanation between Marian and Gifford. She had often said 
 that her stay on the Bar would only last until midsummer a 
 period which she had fixed as likely to bring information which 
 would seriously affect her whole future prospects. When 
 Marian first sought the protection of Seth Armstrong, her para 
 mount impulse was to fly to find safety wherever it might be ; 
 and her idea of sustaining herself as a teacher or governess oc 
 curred very naturally afterwards. But at that time, in the absence 
 of families, and in the heat and hurry of the race for lucre, 
 there seemed little or no demand for such services as she could 
 afford, and such attempts as she had made by advertising in the 
 San Francisco newspapers had hitherto proved unavailing. On 
 
146 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 this the Armstrongs had pressed Marian to remain permanently 
 among them, and she had so fir consented as to agree to stay 
 until midsummer a consent, however, which was based on a 
 step which she had previously resolved to take. In the hurry 
 of her flight she had scarcely thought of a person to whom her 
 thoughts were now directed as to one who might naturally be 
 her counsel and guide : this was a very old friend of her father s, 
 a man somewhat his senior, long settled as a lawyer at New 
 Orleans This gentleman usually spent the summer at the 
 North, and, knowing the address of his agent at New York, 
 Marian had now written to him describing her situation, and 
 soliciting his help to put her in a way to earn her bread some 
 where in the Northern States. To this letter Luke had now 
 handed her a reply. It was from the agent in question, and 
 stated that Mr. Rivingstone had sailed for Europe some months 
 before, to be absent for two years ; but that the letter of Miss 
 Rooke had been forwarded, and would be certain to reach him 
 in due course. Such was the explanation which Marian now 
 made to Giftbrd, adding thereto a statement of her resolution 
 not to outstay the time originally fixed for her departure, but to 
 set out at furthest by the middle of July to seek employment at 
 San Francisco. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 GOLD-GETTING was the vital action of the drama, the bright 
 finale to every dream of the little world at Armstrong s Bar; 
 but, like the drama and the dream of the Midsummer Night, it 
 included several actions, and linked together many and conflict 
 ing aspirations. All worked regularly and zealously enough for 
 the common end; but their days were not all of quietness, nor 
 were all their paths of peace. There were at intervals dire con 
 flicts touching matters of polity and society between Dr. Lan- 
 dalc and Mr. Pangburn two opposing stars who could not be 
 in the same sphere without many a perturbation and ominous 
 collision. In such encounters the Doctor must be adjudged to 
 have had the best of it so far as scientific, statistical, and juris- 
 prudential knowledge were concerned ; but even such consider 
 able advantages did not always, in the general esteem, secure a 
 conclusive victory against the soaring eloquence and blistering 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 147 
 
 sarcasm of his opponent. The latter, as might occasionally have 
 been gathered from his ordinary discourse, had been enabled by 
 somo dramatic experience to make up after a fashion his general 
 cloudiness on other subjects of polite letters. By some mys 
 terious chance in his erratic career he had been for a short time 
 a theatrical critic or reporter for a western newspaper ; and hav 
 ing naturally a retentive memory, and an imagination readily 
 impressed by the swelling diction of the class of plays most 
 favored of occidental taste, he frequently drew upon this resource 
 to eke out his own flowery periods. This, indeed, with a certain 
 rough facility in catching fragments of popular verse, and in 
 using the extraordinary slang so current with the inferior press 
 the hackneyed commonplaces about political subjects which 
 rest upon the ear, and not upon the sense his familiarity witli 
 a certain oratorical class-book known as "The American 
 Speaker," together with his close acquaintance with the world 
 as he had seen it, constituted the sum total of the weapons in 
 Mr. Pangburivs intellectual armory ; but it could not fairly be 
 denied that he used them with adroitness and effect. The Doc 
 tor, who, like many of his countrymen, exhibited an odd union 
 of crabbedness and good-nature, often found his adversary so 
 interesting as a psychological study as to quite disarm his ani 
 mosity a result which Zelotes very promptly and very naturally 
 would attribute to his own controversial superiority. 
 
 "I kerry too many guns," he asserted, with his derisive leer ; 
 ; I kerry too many guns for any o these ere Britishers to stand 
 afore. I jest pint em, I do, and tech em off, loaded to the 
 muzzle with the principles of our glorious constitution rammed 
 daown with the pole of liberty ; and afore the smoke hists. the 
 bloated advocates of tyranny has left, and kin be heerd of from 
 up a tree. Sic semper aristcrcrats ! is the sentiments of Z. Pang- 
 burn, and the more they hcv to do with him the sicker they ll 
 be." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense," growled the Doctor. " You Yankees 
 will never learn that your constitution owes all that is good in 
 it, and your country too, to the mother-land. As to the rebel 
 lion, it was an English rebellion against an un-English princi- 
 ciple. Because George the Third and his ministers violated the 
 principle of their own country no taxation without represent 
 ation and your ancestors fought for and vindicated that prin 
 ciple, you think your constitution and your government, both 
 copied from the old models, are antagonistic to the English 
 ones. Trash, sir, which every Yankee schoolboy ought to see 
 through, and would, if you didn t fence them in and shut out 
 
148 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 the light by mountains of twaddle about tyranny and liberty, 
 and rotten old despotisms, and the like. Let them read Chat 
 ham s speeches, or even Burgoyne s, for that matter, when he 
 came to seek laurels in the forum he had lost in the field, and 
 learn a bit of sense on the other side." 
 
 " There ain t no sense," retorted Zelotes, " nor yit no justice 
 to be got out o the minions of despots ; and, as to our consti 
 tution, it was made up bran new and slick to order by T. Jeffer 
 son and A. Hamilton. If there s been any hookin of idees, it s 
 been on your side, cause a selfish and corrupt aristocracy got 
 skeered by the fierce haowls of a daown-troddcn people. We 
 air a curus people, and our idees is all of hum manutactur . We 
 air strong and vigorous, and we call no man master. We are 
 young, but peert ; and we don t go hautboying about for other 
 folks notions, when we kin git em, as easy as rollin off a log, 
 out o the mint and coinage of our brains." 
 
 " There s nothing in your laws, your government; or your 
 constitution," said the Doctor, stubbornly, "which is worth a 
 fig for the happiness of mankind that Englishmen did not make 
 perfect, assert, fight for, and die for, before Jefferson or Hamil 
 ton were born. And as for your youth, if there s any merit in 
 it, you are as old a nation as the English, if not as old in Amer 
 ica as they are in England. Crossing the ocean doesn t make a 
 man younger, neither does it a people." * 
 
 " It makes him spryer and cuter," contended Mr. Pangburn, 
 l and shows him a heap o tilings he never heerd of, and giner- 
 ally enlarges the field of his intellectooal vision. It teaches him 
 to shake off them ere degradin superstitions and worm-eaten 
 customs of the old world, which priests and lords air tryin to 
 keep a goin , so s to save their hides and plunder, long arter the 
 spirit of the age has called with a loud voice that it was time 
 they went under. It teaches him that all mankind are equal by 
 nateral right, and that distinctions that makes em different is 
 the unilateral humbug of them that wants to set themselves up 
 above their feller critters. It teaches him that we air the Ark 
 of Safety, the Hum of Freedom, and the Haven of the Op- 
 pressed. 
 
 " There s good here, certainly," went on the Doctor, " as 
 well as bad. But the good is nearly all English, and the bad 
 you ve invented among yourselves. There s no particular merit 
 in developing the resources of a vast rich country resources 
 
 The Doctor had, apparently, read Mr. Lander s "Imaginary Conversations." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 149 
 
 which would almost develop themselves ; and you ve no right 
 to credit for greatness of national character until the nation has 
 been exposed to and has resisted temptation ; until she s made 
 sacrifices for the sake of right and a pure reputation, which 
 prove the capacity and hi^h-mindedness of her people. For all 
 your good cause, the military strength of England would have 
 overwhelmed you, had she not been set upon at the same time 
 by nearly every nation in Christendom. The matter was well 
 managed, but you wouldn t have carried the point single-handed. 
 America had then, as she has had always, prodigious good luck, 
 and her sons have gone about the world ever since praising 
 themselves for a result for which they ought to give at least 
 equal credit to Fortune." 
 
 " We don t give no credick to nobody," demurred Zelotes, 
 " nor nuthin else, where we don t git nuthin in return. We 
 air the architecks of our own fortin , we air, and we don t want 
 nobody to teach us how to build. And as to other nations, we 
 kin lick youv n and them too, and we ain t over pettikilar when 
 we begin. We ve done it twice, and we kin do it agin." 
 
 " You d better not try it," quoth the Doctor, waxing wroth ; " at 
 least not when we re not fighting half the world beside. But I 
 dare say you Yankees will be shrewd enough to pick your time." 
 
 " We do everythink on business principles," exclaimed Mr 
 Pangburn, winking and grinning with sardonic joy at the oth 
 er s anger. If we kin bring both arms ageu your one, we ll do 
 it, sure enough ; but then it is our praoud boast that we kin lick 
 ye with one hand all the same. The Stars and Stripes is good 
 agen the world, they air ; and they kiver twenty-five millions of 
 freemen." 
 
 " And how many slaves ? How many stripes cover them ? 
 If your system were far better, far more enlightening than it is, 
 those poor creatures wrongs would suffice to darken it." 
 
 "Darken it ? Darken that air banner 7 Do the spots darken 
 the sun ? Does a shootin star spile the glory of the skies ? 
 Does a black sheep set back a hull flock any ? I reckon not. 
 Who fetched the niggers here ? Xo Yankee or Yankee gov- 
 k eminent, was it ? Think on my chains ? How came they on 
 me? Beware my vengeance! Kin it more than kill? 
 * And is not that enough T Xo, not enough ; it cannot take 
 away the grace of life, the comeliness of look which virtue gives ; 
 it cannot lay its hand on these no more than it kin shoot agen 
 the sun! "* 
 
 Excerpt from Sheridan Knowles s "William Tell." 
 
i--U HAITIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 U I don t see the force of the argu " 
 
 " When Freedom from her mounting height 
 Unfurled her standard to the air, 
 She tore the azoor robe of night, 
 And set the stars of glory there. 
 
 "That s so !" 
 
 " But permit me to say " 
 
 " There s a fierce gray bird with a bendin beak, 
 W ith an angry, eye and a startlin shriek, 
 That nurses her brood where the cliff flowers blow 
 On the precipice top in perpetooal snow. 
 
 "That air a fact I" 
 
 "But slavery surely is " 
 
 " Stand ! the ground s yer own, mer braves ! 
 Will ye give it up to slaves ? 
 
 " a grievous wrong and an infamous disgrace. A stain 
 
 which, until wiped out, will always disgrace your flag " 
 
 " Nail to the mast that tattered flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 The lightnin and the gale ! " 
 
 At some such point as this the Doctor would usually give up 
 the argument, and the scene would conclude with a grand stump- 
 speech from the florid Pangburn, by this time in a high state of 
 patriotic fervor and poetic exaltation. It was not remarkable 
 that so ingenious a politician should always adopt the plan sug 
 gested in the foregoing colloquy ; that is to say, the plan of be 
 coming lofty and obscure, not to say inconsequential, on getting 
 into logical difficulties, or on being confronted with arguments he 
 was unable or unwilling to refute. "The man s mad," the Doc 
 tor confidently assured me, " stark staring mad, and not worth 
 talking to at all except in a professional way, to watch the pro 
 gress of the disease. Your half-educated Yankee is the most im 
 practicable of animals for believing in nothing he can t see, and 
 trusting in nothing he doesn t understand. Look at that man, 
 Ilailes ; I firmly believe he thought my theodolite was a toy, 
 until he saw we really got with it the difference t>f level between 
 the river and the canon. That was something tangible, and I 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 151 
 
 think you might now persuade him that the instrument could 
 throw a cannon ball to the moon. This Editor of ours, with his 
 Clarion and his Bedlamite spouting, is quite persuaded his coun 
 try could take the whole world in hand to-morrow, and parcel it 
 out like another Roman Empire. Luck and security, sir. will be 
 the ruin of your people if they don t have some big, bouncing 
 piece of misfortune to teach them common sense." 
 
 As I was of much the same way of thinking, the Doctor and I 
 did not quarrel, although I had the pleasure of assisting at seve 
 ral of his encounters with his eccentric opponent. It may be 
 well, before proceeding further, to explain how it was that I be 
 came personally interested in the diggings on Armstrong s Bar. 
 The original object of my coming has been before mentioned as 
 being that of determining the proper bounds and metes of a 
 large tract of land, claimed under an ancient Spanish deed, 
 whose holders had deputed me to act in then- behalf. The data 
 in my possession were such as to satisfy me very early respect 
 ing the extent of at least one boundary of the claim. *This was 
 on the river, and undoubtedly included the ground covered by 
 the little settlement as well as then* newly discovered gold-field 
 in the interior. In the existing state of the country, however, a 
 direct attempt to oust actual settlers was a critical and often an 
 unsuccessful affair, and there were certain moot points to be re 
 solved as to title, which would make such an attempt a very un 
 wise one in this instance. This being the case, I did, as I thought, 
 the safest thing for my principals, by first exhibiting the strength 
 of their claim to the Armstrong company, and subsequently en 
 tering into an agreement with them to forego any proceeding for 
 the space of one year, subject to renewal, and without prejudice 
 to the real or supposed rights of either party, on condition of re 
 ceiving a clear eighth of the gold they might gain from the soil. 
 It was not without some discussion that this conclusion was 
 reached, nor altogether without pugnacious and litigious propo 
 sitions on the part of Pangburn. But as it was clear that the 
 claimants I represented could put the company to great incon 
 venience and expense, if not force them to desist working on the 
 claim altogether, prudence overcame all other emotions, and the 
 arrangement proposed was quietly adopted. 
 
152 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 IT was a soft, balmy evening in Jane, a ribbon or two of fad 
 ing fire in the west showing where the sun had gone down, 
 while in his place the moon was riding up the firmament in ma 
 jestic yet chastened splendor. The day had been hot, and a 
 light breeze which rustled about and scattered the delicate odor 
 of blossoms whose parent vines clambered around the cabin, was 
 all the more grateful for the close air which it disturbed. The 
 same delicate odors which first told me that feminine cares 
 must have been busy here, still survived the burning heat of the 
 sun ; for the river was close by, and the fingers which had planted, 
 were careful to sustain with daily refreshment the thirsty stran 
 gers which otherwise would have drooped and withered. 
 
 Several of the party and the Doctor and Hugh*Gifford were 
 among them had been absent since early morning. They had 
 set forth at daybreak for the saw-mill, some thirty miles off, and 
 would return late at night. Work had gone on as usual in the 
 canon, and those who remained behind, having finished their 
 labor and partaken of their evening meal, were chatting and 
 smoking and reckoning the gains of the day. Pretty Kitty was 
 sitting at one end of the porch listening I fear hot unwillingly 
 to the uncouth worshippings of Dick Railes. Her mother 
 was sitting quietly within, reading her Bible, the usual occupa 
 tion of her leisure moments. Ichabod was employed in elaborat 
 ing some new ornament for his capricious head-gear, and Lion 
 lay near by gazing with solemn intentness on the last red coal 
 of the smouldering fire. 
 
 As for Marian, she stood at the door looking up as intently 
 at the radiant heavens, and wondering, as most of us so often 
 wonder, whether those mysterious and innumerable orbs could 
 be peopled by beings like ourselves. She was brought back to 
 earth by a low, pleading voice; a voice which, notwithstanding 
 its accent, was not without music ; a voice, however, which, 
 even had it been dissonant, might have grown melodious when 
 laden with the fulness of the heart whence it came. The words 
 were simple enough : 
 
 " You re not very busy, just now. Mary Anne?" 
 
 "Busy! No, indeed, as idle as indolence and this lovely 
 evening can make me." 
 
 " You wouldn t mind" and the voice was very low, almost 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 153 
 
 cautious " you wouldn t mind walking 1 a few steps with me on 
 the river-bank where where you often walk with Mr. Gif- 
 ford P 
 
 < Mind, Luke ? Thank you, I shah 1 be glad of a little stroll. 
 Indeed, I was only thinking of going there just now. It is a 
 favorite walk of mine." 
 
 I know it is." 
 
 They walked gently down the little lawn which trended to 
 the stream, and turned into the path long worn smooth by foot 
 steps along its bank. The water swam along in flecks and 
 patches of black and silver as the shadows fell or the moon 
 beams danced upon the tiny ripples. Higher and higher sailed 
 the nioon, and her light grew stronger until it seemed almost 
 like the light of day. Some-minutes passed of turning and re 
 turning for the slopes and the shrubbery made a promenade of 
 a hundred yards or so most convenient and Luke spoke never 
 a word. In truth, the poor fellow felt that he was somehow ap 
 proaching the most momentous crisis of his life, and even the 
 first accents wherein his thoughts should shape themselves into 
 expression became of exaggerated importance. He was natu 
 rally shy, too, and a nervous feeling of self-depreciation, a 
 keener than common sense of his deficiencies, crept over him 
 and added to his embarrassment. But he had watched sedu 
 lously for this opportunity watched for it with not arlittle of the 
 cool, steadfast perseverance of his countrymen and he must 
 not let it slip by unimproved. The words came at last, but they 
 were slow and hesitating : 
 
 "I jest wanted to say a few words to you, Maiy Anne." 
 
 "Yes, Luke." 
 
 I wonder if any woman is ever altogether unconscious of the 
 admiration she excites, that is, supposing her to be in daily con 
 tact with her admirer l ? It is doubtful ; but if ever a woman was 
 so unconscious, it was Marian now. Next her heart she carried 
 a little Testament, which had been some months before the 
 means of revealing Luke s secret to Hugh Gilford. Others 
 might now and then have guessed it, albeit for an untutored, 
 Luke was not a demonstrative man. But of all who crer thought 
 of such a tiling, Marian herself would have been the last. Still, 
 when a young man asks a young woman to a moonlight walk, 
 and, after a preface of solemn silence, begins to unfold his mind 
 in terms such as Luke set forth with, there are few over whom 
 would not flash a suspicion of what was to follow. Marian was 
 not of the few ; but she did not get her suspicion from what 
 she remembered of Luke s words and tones in the past ; it was 
 
154 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 begotten of what she recalled of Hugh Gifford s looks and tones 
 when they referred to Luke. As she thought of these, came 
 another remark, or rather a question, which seemed somewhat 
 irrelevant : 
 
 " Mary Anne, you re fond of sister Kitty, ain t you?" 
 
 " What a question ! Why, you know, Luke, she is my sister, 
 too. She has been always kind, and considerate, and aifectionate. 
 People who are left alone appreciate these things." 
 
 "Left alone?" 
 
 " Without friends relatives, I mean. You know I am quite 
 alone in the world." 
 
 " I knew you had no father or mother, Mary Anne," said 
 Luke, gently. 
 
 1 Neither father nor mother, sister nor brother ; so that I 
 think much of those who have made me half forget my loneli 
 ness. Of course I m fond of Kitty. But then she is a good 
 girl besides a good daughter, dutiful -and obedient a girl of a 
 frank, cordial nature, which would make me love her for herself, 
 even if she had not been so very kind to me." 
 
 " Then I s pose, Mary Anne, if you saw Kitty in any kind of 
 trouble, in any kind of clanger, you d try to help to save 
 her ?" 
 
 "To be sure I should." 
 
 "If you saw her wanderin along a bank all covered with 
 things that was bright and beautiful nice trees, and sparklin 
 brooks, and tumblin waterfalls, fall of singing birds and sweet 
 smelling flowers, a place where she seemed to be happy as the 
 day is long you d think it was kind o sinful to disturb her 
 there, wouldn t you ?" 
 
 " And so it would be," acquiesced the girl, half smiling at 
 Luke s unwonted poetry. 
 
 " But if you knew that over agen the bank always yawnin , 
 always threatening ready at any moment to swallow her up and 
 destroy her, whenever chance or temptation should git her to 
 make a single false step if you knew that right agen the bank 
 was a deep, black, horrid precipice, which, if she went over it, 
 would crush her, ruin her for ever, now and hereafter then 
 you d think you d oughter take the risk of givin her pain to 
 save the greater risk of her destruction, wouldn t you, Mary 
 Anne ?" 
 
 "I should. I suppose most of us are at some time or 
 another placed in a position where duty requires us to make 
 such a choice. But this is mere laughing, surely. Dear Kitty 
 can be in no such straits. You surely do not mean " 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 155 
 
 " I don t mean that Kitty is in any danger. \Y~hat I meant 
 was only in example-like allygurry what mother is so often 
 quoting from Scriptur , takin one person s case to tiy on to 
 another." 
 
 And which of our little company is in a plight so critical ?" 
 "I don t know for certain as any one is; but if I think 
 
 " If you think so, you would say, you ought to put them on 
 their guard T 
 
 That is jest what I Avould say." 
 
 And I quite agree with you." 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 Perfectly." 
 
 But it ain t always easy to do such a tiling. Even the 
 kindest folks are sometimes hurt if one seems to meddle too 
 much with their private affairs. It s hard to run the chance ot 
 hurtin anybody s feelin s." 
 
 Xo sensible person would be displeased at what must cer 
 tainly be seen to be kindly meant. It would be a duty to incur 
 such a risk as well as the other." 
 
 You think so ? 
 
 " Unquestionably." 
 
 " I don t want to shrink from doin a duty; and I think I ll 
 hey to do it." 
 
 "There is, then, a person here in the position you describe?" 
 
 "I said I only thought so, Mary Anne; and you said, if I 
 thought so, I d ought to put em on their guard." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "And I thought as much before; only I was glad to hear 
 you say so, because the person " 
 
 Stop a moment, Luke. It may be quite correct that you 
 should warn the person most interested, but it might not be al 
 together right that you should previously intrust the secret to 
 another ; you might be mistaken, and " 
 
 "That s jest what I thought, that s jest what I hoped, Mary 
 Anne ; and that s the reason why I spoke first about it to you. 
 Heaven knows if I was mistaken how happy twould make me !" 
 
 " But how can I tell ?" 
 
 " That s jest it, Mary Anne ; you are the only one who can 
 tell." 
 
 The only one who can tell!" 
 
 "Yes ; because this loved one wanderin on the bank, this un- 
 suspectin one who s yit in such dreadful peril as I think, 
 mind is " 
 
156 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Well, this person is " 
 
 "This person is ?/cw, Mary Anne." 
 
 "Me!" cried Marian, in astonishmen.. 
 
 It had been very, very difficult for Luke to get thus far. The 
 separate clauses of the little artifice, whereby he had led up to 
 the critical accusation, had cost him a world of doubt, bewilder 
 ment, and embarrassment. But having accomplished this deli 
 cate step having crossed his Rubicon he cast restraint to the 
 winds, and said what he had to say with all the blunt manliness 
 of which he was capable : 
 
 " I know there weren t a soul of us who crossed the plains fit 
 for you to associate with except Hugh Gifford ; I know he s 
 eddicated and refined, and full of book learnin , and that you 
 weren t brought up to mix with poor farmin folks like us. You 
 was always thoughtful, and too good to let any one see you 
 know d such a thing ; but it s true for all that. And I know 
 that Mr. Gifford s got a gift of talk, and, when he likes, he can 
 carry you away with him to Chiny, or to Europe, and put you 
 in all kinds of beautiful places, and hang em round with all 
 manner of enticin and lovely colors ! It was nateral you d like 
 his company, and that he d like yourn But don t be angry, 
 Mary Anne, if I say there might be danger both of you might 
 learn to like it too well, when it s remembered he s an engaged 
 man ! There might be danger both of you would forget this, 
 and both be sorry for it ever after ! Don t be hurt if I thought 
 this was a precipice you might fall into ; you have said yourself, 
 you know, that no one could be displeased at what must be seen 
 to be kindly meant !" 
 
 Marian was taken very much by surprise. Her bosom heaved, 
 and the rich color came and went in her face in a manner visi 
 ble even by the moonlight in a manner which, to some, would 
 have been conclusive evidence of deeper feeling than even the 
 speaker s words would seem to imply. She was taken by sur 
 prise, and, as people often do in such cases, she spoke, when a 
 pause occurred, in a mechanical sort of way, her thoughts the 
 while busy within, her voice somewhat changed, and her face 
 somewhat averted : 
 
 "Mr. Gifford and I are good friends no more. You mean 
 kindly, Luke, and I am not displeased. But it seems strange 
 that neither your mother nor your sister should ever have alluded 
 to a subject which, if it were so marked and obvious, women 
 are usually first to mention." 
 
 " Ah, they could not see with my eyes !" 
 
 * With your eyes, Luke 1" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 157 
 
 " No ; I can t keep back the words, if I choke in speaking 
 them. They couldn t see with my eyes, Mary Anne ; how 
 should they ? They were fond of you. and glad to see you 
 pleased and happy, and there an end. But I I loi cd you; 
 and where they had no thought of danger I could see a hundred. 
 I know, I m sure, you can t, with your self-respect and your 
 learnin , go to fall in love with a man that s engaged! Why, 
 he s the same as married ! Wuss, perhaps, for they say the first 
 bloom of love is what is most wicked to steal. P raps that s what 
 makes me feel as I do feel. Surely one woman s enough for one 
 man! We re not livin among the Mormons, and " 
 
 "Luke!" 
 
 " Forgive me 1 Think it unsaid, Mary Anne, for I know I 
 had no right to say it. For you ve told me, haven t you, that 
 Mr. Gifford and you are good friends and nothin more ! That s 
 all I want to know inore n I had a right to ask. See, Mary 
 Anne. I know I m dreadful low and mean, compared with 
 what you are ! I know I ain t worthy of you. But I couldn t 
 live nigh you. not within sound of your voice, without bein a 
 better man ; I m better for it even now. We re gettin richer, 
 you know, Mary Anne ; and we ll soon have a better house, and 
 p raps a piano and books, and you know you love this place I 
 And you have neither father nor mother, nor sister nor brother, 
 and you can hav em all here all, if you ll only say that you ll 
 let us love and cherish you." 
 
 "Luke," said Marian, in slow, measured, but sorrowful ac 
 cents, " Luke good, kind Luke, forget all that you have said 
 to me this night. As to Mr. Gifford, I thought you knew, as 
 your father and mother know, that I am going going, almost 
 directly, far away. It was never intended, you know, never 
 proposed, that I should stay here always ; only until other ar 
 rangements were made. Those other arrangements are made. 
 I depart, therefore, now almost immediately." 
 
 " If you knew how I d work if you knew how I d slave 
 to please you, to make you happy ; if you would only try I 
 know well you don t love me now, but oh ! don t, don t throw 
 away the chance of a happy life don t, I pray, I beseech you 
 without at least thinldn over it a little ; don t do what 11 make 
 me so, so very wretched !" 
 
 He turned his handsome, sunny face toward Marian as he 
 spoke, and she saw in the bright light how deep was the mean 
 ing of his words. The face was sunny no longer though, but 
 very pale, the mouth was set, and the eyes were brimming with 
 tears. 
 
 7* 
 
158 
 
 " I must hare been wrong," said Marian painfully, " wrong 
 not to have seen or guessed something of this before. Indeed, 
 indeed, Luke, what you propose can never be* If you would 
 have me feel kindly towards you if you would not drive me 
 away from this roof, prematurely, in sorrow and in pain, never 
 again speak to me of this subject. I feel grateful nay, more, I 
 feel affectionate towards you for all your kindness, for even the 
 service you thought to render me to-night ; but you must not 
 indeed you must not ask mOre. As to the differences you 
 speak of, they are nothing ; but of love, such love as you would 
 seek, I have none none to bestow. Won t you let things go 
 on in the same old way, Luke ?. Won t you let me think of you 
 still as a brother 1 ?" 
 
 He turned away from her as she ended, and the two walked 
 up and down the river path several times in silence. Marian 
 saw that Luke was struggling manfully with himself, and she 
 said no more until he found words to reply : 
 
 " lie is will be no more than a good friend to you?" 
 " No more ! He is no more no more can he ever be I" 
 She held forth her hand as she spoke, as if to close the con 
 versation with such a sign of friendship and of confidence ; and 
 Luke, bending low over her hand, for the first time kissed it ; 
 and he left, for the kiss he took, the first tears he had shed since 
 he was a little child. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE weeks were flying swiftly by, and every one brought its 
 share of the yellow earth all were striving for. Each Saturday 
 night, when they came together and unlocked and augmented 
 their treasure, the miners of Armstrong s Bar saw themselves 
 growing richer and richer, while their fears of the canon " giving 
 out" grew more and more remote and feeble. There was talk 
 now oi* building another flume, but stories were rife of diggings 
 like these running short in the most sudden and mysterious man 
 ner, and the prudent plan of letting well enough alone was 
 wisely adhered to. 
 
 It is a strange circumstance, which those who have been in 
 the golden lands will readily verify, that, although time seems 
 to fly so swiftly in them, it always appears long in the retrospect. 
 The excitement of unwonted gains, the novelty of the scenery, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 
 
 159 
 
 the perpetual bustle, the omnipresence of that rosy, alluring 
 figure of hope, make the hours glide fast no doubt; but why, 
 \vhen past, should they appear so long? Perhaps it is that the 
 wealth procured is" compared instinctively with the space con 
 sumed in its acquisition, and, reasoning from previous experi 
 ence, the mind extends that space to make it consistent with 
 the parallels suggested by memory. "When a man gets a thou 
 sand dollars in a week who never before earned more than that 
 sum in a year, he naturally feels that more than seven little days 
 must surely have gone by in getting it. 
 
 With our little party labor went on steadily, and no mischance 
 occurred to interrupt or diminish its income. There were aching 
 hearts on the Bar no doubt ; but then* pain did not spring from 
 the absence of gold, nor did it extend to the company at large. 
 On the contrary, matters seemed to the others eminently buoyant 
 and gay ; and never in particular did Mr. Pangburn appear to 
 better advantage. He laughed and joked and told grotesque 
 Yankee stories from morn till dewy eve. Nothing could exceed 
 t*he good spirits which our golden shower brought to the active 
 editor. He even made friends with Ike and Lion ; neither of 
 whom were swift in vouchsafing their confidence, and who had 
 regarded Zelotes with protracted suspicion. For my part I 
 must say, in all honesty, that I never saw any one bear pros 
 perity so well. Some are made crusty, presuming, unsocial by 
 the gifts of fortune; but the reverse was distinctly then* effect 
 upon the eccentric nature of Pangburn. 
 
 The sweet breath of Spring had come and gone, the brightly 
 beautiful June a month so charming here had been enjoyed, 
 and had likewise fled, and we were far into July. It was well 
 for us we were so near a stream, for the season, always dry. pro 
 mised this summer to be parching in the extreme. The rains 
 which had been so bountiful were sucked from the soil by the 
 thirsty sun ; the rivers slowly narrowed until there was scarcely 
 water even in the mountain springs to feed their sluggish course. 
 Our works, however, stood us in good stead ; our supply of the 
 precious fluid was exceptionally abundant ; and we could look 
 forward to the droughts of August and September without dis 
 may, for the doctor had invented and perfected an ingenious 
 system of force pumps, which promised to keep the flume run 
 ning when all other devices might haply fail. 
 
 Marian was subjected to a heavy cross fire of entreaties to 
 rescind her determination as the time fixed for her departure 
 drew near. Luke said no more, for he had passed his word ; 
 yet there was now and then a pleading look in his saddened blue 
 
160 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 eyes, which told quite as much as his tongue could have possibly 
 uttered. But his father, mother and sister were by no means 
 silent, for they plied the poor girl ceaselessly with objections to 
 her going, and affectionate persuasions that she should remain. 
 Such a thing was, however, quite out of the question. Marian 
 saw plainly that after making all allowance for any peculiar 
 animus in Luke s strictures touching her position with regard to 
 Gifford, there was a residum of justice and propriety about them 
 which made separation quite essential to her self-respect. The 
 situation had been a singular one, and, isolated as they were, it 
 was easy to suggest excuses for educated people who found 
 pleasure in each other s society ; but when once such a thing 
 was marked enough to excite comment, it was time to bring it 
 to a close. When the girl looked into her heart, too, and found 
 how painful this impending close was like to be, she was more 
 than ever persuaded of its strict necessity. Marian was impul 
 sive, truly, but her nature was eminently conscientious. She 
 had never yet, to her knowledge, wronged man or woman ; and 
 she would not begin by wronging Virginia Chester. 
 
 As to Gifford himself, he strove long and earnestly in his 
 quiet, stubborn way, against her departure. The idea of utter 
 separation a separation which was almost certain to be an 
 eternal one filled him with consternation and dismay. "With 
 out contemplating any wrong to his affianced bride, he was yet 
 bitterly averse to being parted from what was a continual temp 
 tation to commit it. He knew very well the force of this temp 
 tation ; but he pushed it away from his immediate thoughts, and 
 wished to glide on in the old course, that the coming months 
 might be similar to the ones just passed. It is .needless to say 
 that he was more selfish than Marian ; that is obvious enough ; 
 but his selfishness by no means went the length of dreaming to 
 entrap her affections, situated as they both were. He was too 
 manly for that ; but he thought they might continue in the way 
 they had been indefinitely, without any assignable limit, and 
 without the intervention of any disagreeable observation or ex 
 planation and seeing no reason for her going, excepting that 
 w T hich she advanced, namely, her resolve to be independent and 
 at work, he strove .against it by every argument in his power. 
 
 And so he might have continued to strive but for the altered 
 demeanor of Luke. The alteration was not so marked as to 
 excite any general comment ; but Gifford knew in his heart of 
 hearts that the kind-souled young rustic was Marian s secret 
 worshipper. When he found Luke s laugh was becoming less 
 frequent when he saw the broad smile which formerly lighted 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 1G1 
 
 Luke s face replaced by an expression of patient sorrow, Hugh 
 began to ask himself mental questions, and was not long in 
 guessing at something like the truth. Arrived at this, his wishes 
 experienced a radical change. He had no right to be jealous, 
 and he knew it. But he had a strange dread of the effect upon 
 Marian s generous nature, which the sight of poor Luke s sim 
 ple distress might bring about. Many a woman before her time 
 had been melted by pity to concessions which would never have 
 been wrought by love ; and Hugh, with all his faults, was not 
 coxcomb enough to suspect that there existed in himself an in 
 surmountable barrier to such a thing in the present instance. 
 
 After awhile, therefore, he ceased to oppose her departure ; 
 and even spoke of it more than once as a desirable and neces 
 sary step, in such a way as by no means to please Marian her 
 self. She was truly grieved at the idea of her absence inflicting 
 any pain upon Luke Armstrong ; but she was far from gratified 
 to be taught that it could be regarded with complacency by 
 Hugh Gifibrd. Such an inconsistency told a tale unfavorable to 
 her future peace, as she well knew ; but absence feels and con 
 quers much, and Marian was not yet old enough to have learned 
 to distrust its efficacy. She felt that it was high time she were 
 gone, and believed she was glad that the hour of departure was 
 so close at hand. 
 
 The weeks had flown by, and the treasure-chest had filled and 
 filled until it now contained a sum of more than eighty thousand 
 dollars ; and GhTord had for his share, as Marian reminded him, 
 more than the sum which John Chester had named as, in a 
 manner, the price of his bride. Each Saturday night the chest 
 had been opened, and its contents exhibited and augmented, 
 and it had been resolved that, as soon as they turned what Mr. 
 Pangburn called the lucky corner of a hundred thousand dollars, 
 their hoard should be taken down to San Francisco, there to be 
 deposited with some safe banking-house. Indeed, such a step 
 might have been most prudent before it had increased to its 
 present proportions. But this happened to be a period when 
 many bankers had stopped payment, and general distrust pre 
 vailed, even as to making what were called special deposits. 
 On the other hand, gold robberies had been very few in the 
 mines. It seemed a safer speculation to try and rifle the gener 
 ous earth than one s neighbors ; the former cost no terrors save 
 those of hard work, while the latter tempted the terribly sum 
 mary ones of Judge Lynch. 
 
 The Rothschilds had lately sent an accredited agent to the 
 city, whose fame was now reaching across the sea, and it was 
 
162 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 determined that the capital of Armstrong s Bar might safely be 
 intrusted to Mr. Davidson. 
 
 <; Another sech week as this," said Seth, one Saturday night, 
 " and we ll send the stuff down the river." 
 
 " And another sech a six months," exulted Mr. Pangburn, 
 " and we kin see a loomin up the stun front block in Utiky, 
 and the cottage on the what s-his-name, and book-learnin , and 
 the v yage to Europe, and the old farm at Saybrook, and all the 
 rest on t ; includin a wood roof instead of a cotting one, and 
 Miss Armstrong s chiny !" 
 
 " But I m aieard," continued Seth, " I m afeard about bein 
 too Bsmgmne. We air in luck, that s a fact ; but luck like our n 
 is dreadful apt to break off short, as suddint as it begun. This 
 week s been good, dreadful good ; but there s looks about the 
 canon which I ve heerd old miners tell on, when diggin s is 
 nigh to giv aout." 
 
 " Show 1" said Zelotes, uneasily. " D ye think so, now?" 
 
 ." Sartain ; there s looks ; but then agin, looks is jest as like 
 as not to be deceivin , and we came first to the river bank in 
 stead of the canon." 
 
 " It s run in my head all along," remarked Dick Railcs, " that 
 we d struck the likeliest part o the place at the fust go off; but 
 I didn t sec no call to talk blue when we was doin so well ; and 
 artcr the Doctor s pintin the th odolite up and down the gulch 
 sech a heap o times, I tho t it oughter fetch the gold there if 
 anything would." 
 
 u As to that," quoth the Doctor, " levelling rods may be bet 
 ter than divining ones, but they only teach us the way to the 
 gold, not the gold the way to us. I think myself that what we ve 
 taken so far has been in a sort of pocket, lower than the bed 
 runs elsewhere. It is quite likely, then, that the spot may be 
 the richest in the channel ; but we can only tell when we try." 
 
 These prognostications were agreeable to none, but they ap 
 peared especially disquieting to Mr. Pangburn. " Not," he 
 said, " but what it s easy enough to strike new leads ; but when 
 I ve put folks on a good thing, I like folks to find it a good 
 thing. Pangburn s pride, if not his honor, bein bound up in 
 the issoo, it siles his dander to hev it tech bottom. However," 
 he added, reassuringly, " there s been some cute things printed 
 lately in .the Frisky papers on all these pints, gulch, dry, sur 
 face diggin , and bar, and even bout griiidhi the staff out o 
 rotten-stun ; which latter seems a pecrt style o gold-mining. 
 Now I ve got to go down Monday or Tuesday to see bout the 
 Mounting Clarion, and stimerlate Eli S. some ; and I reckon 
 
THE QUEST FOE FORTUNE. 163 
 
 I ll jest keep on to Frisky and git posted on the new dodges ; 
 inasmuch as failin wages is leaden servitors to dull delay, like 
 wise Fortin" allers helps them as helps theirseives/ 
 
 YTith this sage maxim and prophetic corollary, the editor of 
 the Clarion betook himself to a seat in a, distant corner, where, 
 with a Hour barrel for a desk, he was in the habit of inditing 
 what he termed editorial articles for the flourishing periodical 
 he controlled. 
 
 The Monday came and saw Mr. Pangburn safe on his way, at 
 tended by the good wishes of all, or nearly all ; for if the truth 
 must be told, there were a few of the party who could not over 
 come, and could scarcely conceal then- aversion from the man. 
 He had, however, taken great pains of late to make himself 
 agreeable, and on the intervening Sunday before his departure he 
 had made a successful bid for popularity with the ladies, by de 
 vising and carrying out a scheme for a quiet pic-nic at the canon, 
 in order that they might see and admire the romantic scenery 
 which environed the spot whence so much wealth was flowing 
 into the general coffers. And each of the ladies had washed out 
 a small portion of the precious metal, which Zelotes had insisted 
 upon their keeping for themselves ; and he capped the climax of 
 his gallantry by riding clear back to the Bar, where Ike and 
 Lion had remained in charge, to fetch Mrs. Armstrong s knit 
 ting, which she had forgotten, and was always uncomfortable to 
 be long without. 
 
 Mr. Pangburn was gone then, bearing many good wishes, but 
 he would bring them back in a few days, so that his departure 
 caused little sorrow. Xot so as regarded the departure of 
 Marian, an event which was to take place on the Monday next 
 following. Bitter were the lamentations of Kitty, who was 
 thus to be deprived not only of a kind friend but of a teacher 
 who had been of inestimable service to her. Many were the re 
 monstrances of Mrs. Armstrong, who really loved Marian, and 
 who was persuaded that men in San Francisco added to the 
 usual criminal disregard of their sex to the claims of patchwork 
 and cliiny, the most shocking depravity that could be imagined, 
 and that, more particularly with reference to lovely and unpro 
 tected young women, they went about like roaring lions seeking 
 what they might devour. Seth for his part grieved more than 
 he cared to show over the coining separation. Since the girl 
 had appealed to liim at St. Louis for aid and protection, ho had 
 grown to feel more and more like a father toward her ; and to 
 part from her now seemed like the snapping of a natural tie. 
 Nothing could induce him to accept the money she strove to 
 
164 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 force upon him in recompense for her long sojourn with the fam 
 ily ; he pressed it back into her delicate hands, and holding 
 them and it together between his own horny palms, with a voice 
 not quite steady, and an eye not quite undimmed, he made 
 Marian promise to return should she not find a situation, or 
 should she for any reason hereafter require a home. 
 
 And Marian and Hugh wandered for the last time among their 
 favorite walks, up and down the path by the river, up to and all 
 around the lovely little lake that lay perched a&iong the hills. 
 Again they sat on the velvet turf, and again gazed into the pla 
 cid waters, and watched the shadows of the silent trees. And 
 once more did the girl breathe into her companion s unquiet and 
 feverish spirit something of her own ; so much more lofty, so 
 much more calm. It was well, perhaps, that all this was soon to 
 end, for from the habit of giving and receiving comfort, strength, 
 solace, grows something which, if not altogether love, becomes 
 a more indispensable necessity. 
 
 Strangely enough, during the first few days of that week the 
 yield of gold from the caiion grew smaller and smaller. For 
 many weeks before, the days had ranged from thirty to fifty 
 ounces and, during one week, had exceeded the latter average ; 
 but now the return sank by nearly one-half, and on the Friday 
 the miners brought home but ten ounces. On that evening 
 one of the three last Marian was to spend at the Bar Hugh had 
 spoken again in his discontented way about seeking his fortune 
 elsewhere. 
 
 "I shall be sorry to think of your leaving the Armstrongs," 
 said Marian, " now that I am going from among them." 
 
 " You cannot suppose that the attractions here are increased 
 by your departure," replied Gilford, looking sadly out upon the 
 river. 
 
 "Nay, I wasn t thinking of myself, but of you. I don t think 
 you quite fit to go among strangers." 
 
 " Fit ? I ? who am naturally one of the most solitary of hu 
 man beings ?" 
 
 "You are solitary when among others, perhaps ; but there are 
 few human beings, for all that, who need others more than you 
 need them." 
 
 " Your riddle, Marian ?" 
 
 " Why, what is the whole story of your life as you have told 
 it me, but the history of an unsatisfied craving for sympathy? 
 You think yourself in love with solitude, only because your soul 
 is out of tune with those around you ; and you people the soli 
 tude with spirits more harmonious. Is it not so f 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 165 
 
 u And will ever be, I fear," he answered gloomily. 
 
 " You must make your future, Gilford," said Marian, earnestly, 
 " and you will not do so by indulging in idle repinings ; you can 
 not by such change your barren, whitewashed meeting-house 
 into Westminster Abbey a change which is a type, in a man 
 ner, of what were needed to satisfy you ; nor can you meta 
 morphose those who surround you into idealized creatures who 
 should minister to your intellectual requirements. But you can 
 unlock the gates and overleap the barriers which separate you 
 from these and more than these. You must exert, and that right 
 resolutely, Will, Industry, Self-Denial ; they will infallibly lead 
 you to Strength. Usefulness, and Power." 
 
 Xot without money. Marian. We reason ever from opposite 
 poles, I fear. You have looked upon a social condition alone, 
 where all who have any right to be ambitious are provided with 
 wealth, as a matter of course, to begin with ; I upon another, 
 where all may be as ambitious as they will, but for whom the 
 only goal the sole qualification, without which you are nothing, 
 with which you are everything is wealth to end with." 
 
 " Get the gold to begin with, then, and press onward to some 
 thing nobler !" 
 
 " A man is unfit for anything nobler who gets wealth by the 
 means he must employ to get it, and after the time the getting 
 it has cost ; a gold-grubber among gold-grubbers, what is he fit 
 for after? Is there any Lethean cup whereof he may quaff and 
 forget the sordid paths he has pursued, the foul companions he 
 has consorted withal ? Can he even forego the habits which, 
 mean and despicable as they generally are, must absolutely be 
 acquired and practised, the armor offensive and defensive, with 
 out which he were at the mercy of the desperate throng with 
 whom he must needs do battle ?" 
 
 The picture is dark," said Marian with a sigh, " darker, I 
 think, than it need be ; it must be possible to pursue such paths, 
 to herd with such companions even, and yet keep the hands 
 clean and the soul pure. The harder the task, the nobler the 
 achievement." . 
 
 " Mortals can only do what mortals may," returned Hugh ; " yet 
 I know well, if I haply grow to be a better and purer man than my 
 early and bitter experience would fain have made me, to whom 
 the merit will be justly due. But I would speak of yourself, 
 Marian a subject on wL ch we may agree no better, but whic 
 is surely of more immediate interest. You are going to this 
 new-born city to San Francisco to seek employment ?" 
 
 11 Surely !" 
 
166 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " But you have no friends there, no single acquaintance even, 
 
 to attest to your accomplishments, to vouch for your character 1" 
 
 1 " No ; these arc things which should speak for themselves." 
 
 " How can they in advance? People seeking governesses, 
 or teachers, always ask evidence of capacity, references." 
 
 " As to capacity, I can play, sing, speak French and Italian, 
 or sketch a little, and my employers can use their own eyes and 
 ears to test my performances. References, truly, I have none, 
 and I must endeavor to make my way without them." 
 
 "You will be exposed to unpleasantness, to insult, perhaps, 
 with no one to befriend, no one to protect you 1" 
 
 " Was I so exposed when I crossed the plains ? Did I lack 
 friends or protectors there ?" 
 
 " Ah, that was different. Different in circumstances, re 
 straints, common danger, family safeguards. You are going 
 into a new world now." 
 
 1 I have no fears. They are our countrymen in San Fran 
 cisco ; I do not fear them not, at least, in a State like this. 
 Besides, I may not remain there long. In a few weeks letters 
 may reach me from Europe ; and I may go at once to the Aj- 
 lantic coast." 
 
 " And we you and I will never see each other again !" 
 
 A slight shiver, came over Marian at the words, but she tried 
 to smile. 
 
 What a gloomy prophecy ! Why should we not ? The world 
 is wide, to be sure, but we are both travellers, both wayfarers. 
 Who shall say when we may not cross each other once more ?" 
 
 " Marian," said the young man gravely, and with an icy em 
 phasis that was meant to cover a lire which threatened to burst 
 forth below, " Marian, you will promise, if you resolve to leave 
 California, to write me to that effect before you are to sail ?" 
 
 " Write to you," repeated she in some embarrassment ; then 
 with a sudden thought " it will not be necessary ; I shall write, 
 you know, to Kitty, to Mrs. Armstrong." 
 
 " To me !" he persisted imploringly. 
 
 " It would seem unusual," hesitated Marian, " cause remark, 
 perhaps, and " 
 
 "Your letter need not be directed here ; it is not so much to 
 ask. Besides, I may be far away from this : I shall let you 
 know if / depart. Won t you do as much for me ?" 
 
 " Enough ; I will do as you wish ; only such things some 
 times work mischief through misconception and accident, I 
 mean ; and you in your turn must promise that, should I write, 
 you will destroy my letter." 
 
THE QUEST FOB FORTCJNE. 167 
 
 " Willingly, gladly." 
 
 And with such words, ending in such a pledge, the two wan 
 dered on their way. each feeling, unbeknown to the other, what 
 neither could rightly express ; fcach yielding, in those last few 
 days, to the inclination to be much with the other, and to in 
 dulge in trains of thought which constantly tempted to such ex 
 pression. It was well,"indeed, that all this was so. soon to end. 
 Poor Luke often thought so, for although he was quite incapable 
 of watching their movements, he could not help noticing that 
 Marian and Hugh were often absent, and at the same time. He 
 thought, as most of us have thought, how hard it was that there 
 should be such cross purposes in the world : he consoled him 
 self, as most of us have done, with the reflection that his imme 
 diate cause of suffering would soon pass away. A grievous sol 
 ace, when such a cause has become to the suffering soul the 
 only source of joy. 
 
 Saturday night had come again. A hot stifling night, with 
 a thick air pushed sluggishly about now and then by puffs of a 
 sirocco-like wind. The last Saturday night Marian was to be 
 there, a circumstance which clearly had its effect on the spirits of 
 the party, for they were sometimes jocular and sometimes de 
 pressed. It seemed to be generally agreed that the occasion 
 should be honored as a sort of complimentary festival at leave- 
 taking ; but the cheer had an air as of funeral baked meats, the 
 old-fashioned provender which served as a recompense to those 
 who came to share the gloom of a house of mourning ; and it 
 prompted melancholy retrospects rather than happy auguries. 
 
 Mr. Pangburn had not yet returned, which was not remarka 
 ble, since he had expressed his determination to go down to San 
 Francisco. Moreover, he might have had trouble with Eli S. 
 Barlow, as he had signified his dissatisfaction with late numbers 
 of the ;> Mountain Clarion," and intimated a suspicion that his dep 
 uty had been enjoying "a- leetle tech of the horrors ;" which it 
 appeared was the sole gratification which that otherwise exem 
 plary litterateur occasionally allowed himself. 
 
 "Things don t look quite so bright as they did a week ago," 
 said Seth, as he stretched his limbs wearily, and wiped the per 
 spiration from his wrinkled brow. 
 
 " The gold has fell off a sight," observed Dick Railes, by way 
 of reply. 
 
 "I weren t thinking of that." said Seth, " at least not then. 
 We must take the good with the bad, so fur s that goes. If the 
 week hain t paid as well as some did two months back, it s paid a 
 heap more n many a week did afore we dreamt of gittin a speck 
 on t in the canon." 
 
THE QUEST FOB FORTUNE. 
 
 "That air Pangburn," pursued Dick, reflectively, " is sharp- 
 er n a steel trap, he is. He allowed the color d be thar, and it 
 was thar. He reckoned it would kind o whittle down, and it 
 kind o whittled down. 
 
 " It s the creature s instinct," grumbled the Doctor, with ac 
 rimony; "he finds gold as bears find honey, or as hogs find 
 trufiies. There s no more merit in it than belongs to a hound 
 for his nose." 
 
 " He is s rewd," continued Dick, who appeared to be in a eu 
 logistic mood, " he is s rewd, Pangburn is. Thar s nigh on to 
 a hundred thousand witnesses in that air box which will allow that 
 Pangburn is s rewd." 
 
 ."I m suro he s dreadful good-natered," remarked Mrs. Arm 
 strong, blinking over her spectacles from the corner, "not for- 
 gettin him a totin this very knittin over to the pic-nic, it 
 having slipped everybody s mind with, the excitement of that 
 cheerful gatherin . Likewise," continued the matron, glar 
 ing with ferocious meaning at Father, " he s the only man I 
 ever see with idees wuth a ball o yarn, touchin patchwork and 
 chiny !" 
 
 " He brought us some very pooty calico last time he come up," 
 ventured Kitty, feeling called on to SAvell the chorus in praise of 
 the absent one, "and some awful nice books !" 
 
 " Do say very nice, Kitty, dear," whispered Marian, whereat 
 Kitty colored penitentially, having been often told before. 
 
 " Whichever way you look at it," added Seth, in a manner 
 suggesting that he had viewed the subject in every possible light, 
 " whichever way you look at it, it can t be denied but we air be- 
 hoven to Pangburn for our present fortin ." 
 
 "And we should render unto Ca3sar the things which are 
 Caesar s." said the Doctor. " Agreed. Far be 4 it from me to 
 derogate from his well-earned laurels. I only meant to imply 
 that it was through the gift of nature, rather than by toilsome 
 acquisition, that he gained them so readily. So all hail, Pang- 
 burn, with all my heart !" 
 
 " This is the last countin you ll see, Mary Anne," said Seth, 
 sorrowfully, "onless, which we all much hope, ye see fit to come 
 back home among us once agin." 
 
 " Miss Rooke will soon yearn for country life," said the Doc 
 tor ; "she will soon tire of the feverish town, which, from all ac 
 counts, is more like an infant Pandemonium than anything else, 
 and come back to the peace and quiet of the Bar." 
 
 " I have warned her what she lias to expect," said Gifford ; 
 " but, like most ladies, she must see for herself. She will at 
 
MAKIAN ROOKE; OR, 1G9 
 
 least find more of the comforts of civilization there, if few of its 
 other blessings. This is hardly an establishment which presents 
 attractions to any except such enforced gold-seekers as can hope 
 for no better." 
 
 "We re goin to better of it soon," remarked Luke, humbly, 
 " and put up stables where the corral is, and storehouses in place 
 of the huts where the Irishmen lived." 
 
 " Arter two or three months more," added Seth, prudently, 
 " arter two or three months more, when we was also thinkin of 
 puttin up a wooden roof instead of a cotting one, with other 
 modern improvements. But come, boys, fly round and git up . 
 the chist. We must jest stow away what we ve got, if it ain t 
 such a mighty week s work. Hist out the chist, boys, and 
 Mother, fetch us out the keys." 
 
 In their accustomed corner, over the trap-door, lay Lion and 
 Ike, both of whom, having been fast alseep, seemed to think it 
 highly unnecessary and absurd that they should be disturbed. 
 However, they consented to give way, and the door having been 
 raised, Luke and Dick Railes lifted the treasure-box from its 
 place. It was set on the table as usual, and Mrs. Armstrong 
 having brought the keys and the gains of the past week from a 
 chest of drawers in the inner room, her husband unlocked the 
 heavy padlock and opened the trunk. There lay the tin box, in 
 the middle, with the various little bags of nuggets and the curi 
 ous specimens of crystals and gold-bearing quartz arranged about 
 its sides. 
 
 Seth now proceeded to unlock the inner sanctuary, the tin 
 box wherein the precious dust, the fruit of their accumulated 
 months of labor, was every week deposited. There were six 
 little bags of buckskin, each containing from ten to five-aud- 
 twenty ounces, which were now to be added to the capital store. 
 But as the old man opened the box his jaw dropped, his eyes di 
 lated, and he staggered back as if he had been shot. 
 
 "Thunder and Eghtnin !" exclaimed Luke, " what s the mat 
 ter, father ?" 
 
 " The gold ! the gold !" gasped Seth, hoarsely ; "where is 
 the gold ?" 
 
 All rushed to the table, and every eye was riveted on the con 
 tents of the box. It was filled with pebbles from the river-side 
 of many a shape and hue, but none yellow, none gold. 
 
 " The Devil !" 
 
 " We ve been robbed !" 
 
 " Where is it ?" 
 
 Shouted simultaneously the Doctor, Dick, and Luke Arm- 
 8 
 
170 THE QLT5ST FOR FORTUNE. 
 
 strong. The latter, with nervous haste, tore open bag after bag 
 which had contained the nuggets. Every one had been riile ., 
 and the contents replaced like those of the box by worthless 
 stones. Eagerly did Luke empty every bag, peer into every 
 corner to find some trace or fragment of the missing treasure. 
 All, all was gone ! There was not even a sparkle, save from a 
 few pieces of quartz which had evidently been thought too bulky 
 to carry away. 
 
 " The box! the box !" cried the Doctor ; " empty the box !" 
 Luke did so, and with such haste and trepidation, that the 
 mocking pebbles rolled in every direction over the floor. 
 " Nothing," said Luke, in despair, " nothing here." 
 " Yes there is !" exclaimed Dick ; " look there !" 
 A paper had been lying on the very bottom of the box, and 
 now fluttered to the ground. The Doctor stooped and snatched 
 it up. As he opened it, writing was seen on the inside. 
 
 "Read it, Doctor, read it!" cried all, impatient for some clue, 
 now they knew the extent of their misfortune. In a hoarse 
 growl, and with many an interpolated execration, the Doctor did 
 so. The paper was directed on the outside to " Kernui Seth 
 Armstrong and Co.," and ran as follows : 
 i i FELLER CITIZENS, 
 
 " By the time you git this I shah 1 proberly be on the 
 boundin biller. In our great and glorious country events fol- 
 lers each other in quick sucksession, and, wafted by favorin gales, 
 I shall natcrally strike New York immegiately after. 
 
 "In takin leave of scenes so charmin which fond remem 
 brance my heart is warmin , I find it difficult to express the anx 
 ious hopes I cherish for your individooal and collective welfare. 
 But all may be simmered down into one fervent aspiration, That 
 you may be happy yit ! 
 
 " There is a tide in the affairs of men, feller citizens, which, 
 taken at the flood, leads on to fortin ! and I ve concluded to 
 take this ere tide and Sail in ! And as some on ye might think 
 it kind o prematoor that I take so much of my sheer to once, I 
 hereby make over all the rest of my undivided interest in the 
 Bar to you, Kurnel, for the benefit of the Co. 
 
 "I hope Nobody won t feel Riled. Who steals my puss 
 steals trash. Tis Somethin nothink. Twas mine, tis his n; 
 and altho the gold on the Bar haint been slave to thousands, 
 Cash Circoolates rapidly in this Happy Land, so nothing exten- 
 ooate or Set down Ought in malice. As to your repootations, 
 you can leave em with confidence in the hands of Pangburn, 
 which not enricheth him, and makes you Poor Indeed. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 171 
 
 " I think the canon s about gin aout. And it would be small 
 business in nie to be a sharin your toils, your feelin s, and your 
 fame, when there ain t Nothink else to divide. But time Flies, 
 and the Etarnal Ages rolls on. My Bark is by the shore, and 
 sails on Wednesday at Twelve o clock percisely. No Berth se 
 cured until paid for. 
 
 " Farewell for ever ! And yit, No. We shall meet agin, 
 when the Mern ry of these Scenes will be but as a Parson Bell, 
 a Dream too sweet to last, when you shall Forgit the feverish 
 thirst for gold in Karmer pursoots, and When the name of Pang- 
 burn shall be proudly enrolled among the Merchant Princes of 
 his country. 
 
 "With affectionate complements to the ladies, 
 "I am, 
 
 " Feller Citizens, 
 
 " Your n, While This Mashine is To him. 
 " Z. PANGBUEN. 
 
 " P.S. I have ordered a copy of the Mountain Clarion to 
 be sent to each of yer for 6 months, Postpaid. 
 
 "P.S. No. 2. I have entirely giv up the idee of the stun- 
 front block in Utiky." 
 
 It was too true, and all was gone. Pursuit was idle, for the 
 steamship taken by the plunderer had sailed on the Wednesday 
 before. The dreams which had counted on this treasure as the 
 foundation of fortune were all in a moment dissipated. The 
 fruit of six months labor had been swept away, and the party at 
 Armstrong s Bar were once again as poor as when they nrst 
 had recourse to the Cafion. 
 
 EXD OF THE SECOND BOOK. 
 
172 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 BOOK THE THIED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHEN the expectant voyager, whose prow has so many days 
 been pointing northward, first makes the promised land of gold, 
 his eye ranges vainly along the continuous wall of frowning 
 cliffs in search of a hospitable opening, the gateway to that 
 haven where his bark shall find shelter and himself rest. He 
 sees far away to the eastward the soaring peaks of the Sierra 
 Nevada; he sees, masking their base, the rugged contour of the 
 Coast Range ; he sees, still nearer, the ramparted bulwark 
 which yet affords no passage. He sees much that is weird and 
 uncommon in the prospect to stimulate his imagination and 
 pique his curiosity. The mountains have a height, a graceful 
 ness of outline, and yet a grandeur unmatched by the prosaic 
 Atlantic shore. The sea itself grows ruddy near the land, and 
 the atmosphere has a positive golden tint seldom seen on the 
 colder coast of the east. These phenomena, natural though they 
 be, scarcely seem so to the gaze of the new-come adventurer. 
 They seem, on the contrary, to be magical touches given to 
 natural objects by unseen genii, to the end that visible nature 
 may be in sympathy with the strange, romantic vicissitudes of 
 the golden land ; vicissitudes which mock all the experience of 
 men elsewhere, and which, therefore, should fittingly be en 
 circled by coloring and physical detail equally unprecedented. 
 
 The adventurer sees all these things and marvels. If he be 
 sanguine, he accepts them as happy auguries, and his breast swells 
 with hope ; if superstitious, he may view them as adjuncts in a 
 vast scheme of Satanic temptation, and his bosom may thrill 
 with fear; but in either case those sentiments will be greatly 
 leavened with impatience ; he is on the coast of California in 
 deed, but he has not yet seen the Golden Gate. 
 
 Far onward to the north-west, trend the lofty unbroken wall 
 and the rugged hills of the Coast Range. Peak after peak of the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 173 
 
 Sierras appears and vanishes in succession as the vessel rushes 
 on. The sea grows ruddier, and the air more golden. The 
 coast grows more distinct, until the eye discerns the point where 
 wall and water meet. But there seems no space between wide 
 enough to pitch even a tent upon ; there is nothing but a sombre 
 precipice springing abruptly out of the sea to a height of several 
 hundred feet, with scarce an aperture, a nook, or a plateau to 
 break the uniformity or to temper the inhospitable aspect of the 
 panorama. Suddenly, almost indeed with the quickness of light 
 ning, the cliff opens like a pair of flats in a gigantic theatre ; 
 opens with a rift as clean, as straight, and as perpendicular. 
 The flats recede until they are near a mile apart, although the 
 space appears but a span, and then stand like two towering sen 
 tinels guarding the pass thus rent asunder. They are the por 
 tals of the Golden Gate, and beyond them is the Bay of San 
 Francisco. 
 
 Thus, at the very entrance of El Dorado, things come upon 
 the beholder in the character of surprises. He is prepared at 
 the outset to abandon all precedents, and to expect the unex 
 pected as a matter of ordinary routine. He is prepared to 
 enter upon a new life, neither whose pleasures nor whose pains 
 are suggested by the experience of the old. He is framed to 
 forget all commonplace sequences, and to begin afresh in an 
 atmosphere of paradoxes. 
 
 This entrance seems a very speck a mere needle s eye to 
 the vast and otherwise unbroken extent of the coast-wall. It 
 is easy to see how earlier navigators ran by without discovering 
 what is so comparatively minute and yet so signally important ; 
 for through this needle s eye, ships of the hugest tonnage may 
 pass, and the combined navies of the world could float in safety 
 on the magnificent bay within. 
 
 To the right that is to say, bearing away to the southward 
 on passing through the Golden Gate lies the city of San Fran 
 cisco. This is now a stately metropolis, whose chief constituents 
 are solid granite, marble, and other scarcely less perishable 
 masonry. A month is a year in California, and a year a decade, 
 when compared with the histories of other places ; so that the 
 changes wrought since 1850 may be reckoned as equivalent to 
 those of a century and a half elsewhere. At that time a large 
 proportion of the inhabitants were living under canvas. There 
 were tents on the hills and tents in the valleys; so many were 
 there, that, in conjunction with the countless shipping in the 
 harbor, it was difficult to escape the idea that an army had dis 
 embarked, of which those vessels were the transports. A small 
 
174 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR 
 
 town existed here prior to the discovery of gold in the upper 
 country ; a town chiefly built of adobe, disposed in one-storied 
 dwellings, and devoted to a small trade in hides and tallow. 
 There was also some attempt at military fortification on the 
 point called the Presidio, and some religious buildings of more 
 pretension at the Mission Dolores. But the slothful occupancy 
 of the half-blooded race then in possession was next to none at 
 all ; and their edifices conveyed just such a notion. 
 
 When the Americans first came pouring into the place, they 
 pitched innumerable tents ; and the tremendous northwest gales 
 soon blew them away. Then they built wooden houses for a 
 time ; and almost as speedily they were reduced to ashes. Fi 
 nally they brought stone, iron, and brick sixteen thousand miles 
 around Cape Horn, and built a town which promises to be more 
 durable. These changes were progressive, like the means they 
 adopted for winning the precious metal from the earth ; first 
 merely scratching up the particles wherever they could be seen 
 to shine ; secondly, the using of fluids, as water and quicksilver, 
 to eliminate the gold from the dross ; and finally, the crushing 
 of solid rocks in powerful quartz mills, that Nature, even with 
 such guards, should be coerced to yield up her treasure. 
 
 Into thi* great Bay of San Francisco are discharged the vol 
 umes of several large streams which, rising in the mountains and 
 swelled by many an auriferous affluent, find here the outlet they 
 have long sought for to the sea. The greatest of these, the 
 Sacramento, boasts also of the largest interior towns of the State 
 to grace its banks ; a just distinction it would appear, since on 
 these banks the original discoveries of the gold were made. 
 Like all rivers in California, the Sacramento is very unequal at 
 different seasons. Low and placid in the dry season, it becomes 
 an angiy freshet oftentimes in the wet. Not that there is just 
 apprehension of a frequent recurrence of the great floods which 
 devastated the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin in 
 December and January, 1861-2, and which destroyed the works 
 of men to the value of millions of dollars ; on the contrary, 
 ! there appeared upon those occasions to be conclusive testimony 
 in the ages of trees swept from the banks of those streams, as 
 well as in other corroborative incidents, that no such catastrophe 
 had occurred for several centuries before. But the Sacramento 
 often overflows its banks in a more moderate way ; and it did so 
 on one particular night a few months after the events which were 
 described in the last chapters had transpired at Armstrong s Bar. 
 
 It was a wild night, pitch dark, with rain falling in torrents, 
 and a thick sulphurous smell in the atmosphere, as if it were 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 175 
 
 loaded with electricity which could find no other means for man 
 ifesting itself to the senses. The river was roaring on its course, 
 sometimes expanding into a lake whose shores would scarcely 
 have been visible by daylight ; sometimes plunging swiftly 
 through a narrow defile where the banks were too lofty to be 
 submerged. Down the stream a long black mass, dotted and 
 splashed with glaring lights, was flying with a speed which could 
 not well have been exceeded had its track been ever so bright 
 and certain, instead of so dark and doubtful. This was the 
 steamer li Capital," on her way from Sacramento to San Fran 
 cisco. How she contrived to steam in that way and yet meet no 
 mishap, it would be impossible to explain. It would have been 
 equally hard to account for the apparently irreconcilable quali 
 ties of her commander. He was one of those singular persons, 
 peculiar, I fancy, to America, who unite the capacity to be in a 
 continual state of delirium tremens with another, to perform their 
 various duties often difficult and onerous ones in a most thor 
 ough and efficient manner. No one had ever known old Cap 
 tain Brace-bridge to be sober ; but no one, on the other hand, 
 ever knew him to neglect his duty, to be absent on an emer 
 gency, however unexpected, or to have any disaster happen to 
 his boat or machinery. It really seemed as if he must keep up 
 a dual existence, one intelligence being riveted with sleepless 
 watchfulness on the movements of the " Capital," and the other 
 devoted, with unremitting industry, to "liquoring " with almost 
 every passenger that fleet vessel conveyed. The Captain was 
 short, wiiy, and active ; indeed, although sixty years of age, he 
 was, as he declared, " as spry as a catamount." He had bushy 
 gray hair, and a keen, albeit rather watery eye of the same color ; 
 a hard, red face, and an habitually incoherent manner of speak 
 ing on all occasions save with respect to his steamer. 
 
 Such was the person who had just succeeded in inveigling Dr. 
 Landale to his cabin to "try something," in conformity with 
 about his tenth invitation to that effect since tea-tune. As to 
 Hugh Gifford, he had positively declined, to the obvious wonder 
 of the Captain, to take any more than a glass of the champagne 
 wherewith the evening s felicities had commenced ; and he was 
 now left alone, or nearly so, in the large saloon, which, running 
 almost the whole length of the vessel, served as sitting-room, 
 diuing-hall, and promenade all in one. They had left Sacramento 
 that afternoon, so that there had been little opportunity to make 
 acquaintance with fellow-passengers ; but the Doctor had stum 
 bled upon an Englishman, an old friend, in that city, who hap 
 pened also to be a boon companion of Captain Bracebridge, and 
 
176 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 who had insisted on introducing them. With this exception, 
 neither Hugh nor the Doctor knew any one on board. 
 
 It was not then surprising, especially as, being twelve o clock, 
 he was rather sleepy, that Gifford as he sat resolving to retire to 
 his state-room and to forget in sleep, if possible, the moody 
 thoughts that mingled obscurely in his brain ; it was not surpris 
 ing that he did not recognize or even notice a strange-looking 
 person who was now approaching him. This was a lank, sinewy 
 man with hollow cheeks, a sallow complexion, long, straggling 
 black hair put behind his ears, a hawk-like profile and a particu- - 
 larly fierce expression, who had been hovering about the group 
 before the Captain and the Doctor had gone to tiy something. 
 He now proceeded to make his concentric rings narrower, re 
 garding Gifford all the time with an implacable regard quite 
 formidable to behold. He came closer still, and seeing that 
 Gifford was still staring at vacancy, the stranger put an enormous 
 cowhide boot under the other s chair and kicked forth a vast 
 spittoon, which he manoeuvred into a position immediately in 
 his front ; he then dragged up a second chair, and straddling 
 across it with the back toward his face, he proceeded to drop 
 into the vessel previously adjusted a huge quid of tobacco. 
 This done, and still scowling horribly, he produced a savage- 
 looking clasp-knife, and cut a similar delectable morsel to replace 
 the one rejected. These preparations finally attracted the atten 
 tion of Gifford, who now looked at the man s face with a look of 
 inquiry not unmixed with amusement, but which the man re 
 ceived without changing his expression or indeed moving a 
 muscle of his iron countenance. Having glared in silence for 
 full a minute, he spoke at last in a voice which seemed pumped 
 up from the very bottom of his chest : 
 
 "Be you a miner 1 ?" 
 
 " Well," said Hugh smiling, " I suppose I am." 
 
 " I ve mined too," continued the man sternly, " some. But 
 I m more n a miner. I m a Pike, I am." 
 
 "A Piker , 
 
 "A Pike and nothin shorter. I was raised on hog and ,, 
 hominy, I was. I m a hull team, I am. Likewise," he added 
 after a short pause, and as if he had been in danger of making 
 an important omission, "with a little yaller dog under the 
 wagon." 
 
 "I see," responded Hugh, scarcely knowing what to say, and 
 yet perceiving, from the impressive manner of his interlo 
 cutor, that some reply was expected. 
 
 " P raps," continued the latter, holding his head on one side, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 177 
 
 and looking at Gifford with one eye, after the manner of an in 
 quiring parrot, "p raps you ve never heern tell of Layfayette 
 eloper?" 
 
 The other admitted that he never had. 
 
 " Wall," resumed the stranger, with an air of unabated de 
 fiance, " that air pack," pointing to a shapeless bundle not far 
 off, enveloped in a pair of dingy red blankets secured by a 
 strap, " that ah- pack is his n." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Likewise this here buck -bag is his n, and this here plug of 
 tobacco, and this here deck o keards, not forgettin this here 
 artful little tickler," producing a fearful bowie-knife, and strik 
 ing it into the table, where it stood quivering, " which are also 
 the property of Layfayette Sloper." 
 
 " I understand, said Hugh, beginning to appreciate his com 
 panion s circumlocutory method of imparting information. You, 
 then, are " 
 
 "Not to put too fine a pint on to t," said the other severely, 
 " Layfayette Sloper sits afore ye." 
 
 Hugh said something in the way of congratulation, and added 
 that he thought of going to bed. 
 
 "Bed!" echoed Lafayette with a frown; "what in h 
 
 d ye want to go to bed for ? We ll expostoolate a piece fust, 
 I guess. Wharbouts hev you bin a minin 1" 
 
 "At a place called Armstrong s Bar." 
 
 " I reckoned as much ; I ciphered you come from the Bar and 
 no whar s else." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 " I heerd that there Britisher you re a travellin with blowin 
 about it to th old Cap ; I know d he was a Britisher by his 
 curus lingo, and I set store on his words because I thought a 
 .spell of cornin ont the Bar myself." 
 
 " How was that, pray ?" 
 
 " It bein the fashion," explained Sloper, " for Pikes and hull 
 teams, let alone little yaller clogs under the wagon, to keep their 
 eyes skun, I d bin prospectin for a slicker place than Wild Cat 
 Canon ; Wild Cat havm* been my previous location, and a pooty 
 petikilarly gol darned bad one at that ; so I pulled up stakes and 
 was a hesitatin as to whar they should he druv next when I see 
 this." The speaker here drew forth an extremely dirty frag 
 ment of newspaper, and invited Hugh s attention to a paragraph 
 by pointing with a still dirtier long yellow claw. " I see this, I 
 did, and I allowed thar was the place whar them stakes ought 
 to be druv." 
 8* 
 
178 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 The fragment was a portion of a San Francisco daily, some 
 months old, and the paragraph which was indicated ran thus : 
 
 " Among the passengers by the Sonora, on Wednesday, was 
 our distinguished fellow-citizen and brother of the quill, Colonel 
 Hon. Zelotes Pangburn, of the Mountain Clarion. The 
 talent, perseverance, and indomitable will of this enterprising 
 pioneer, have been illustrated by many works of internal im 
 provement, more especially those at Armstrong s Bar, where, 
 it is said, he amassed a large fortune in a remarkably short space 
 of time. The Colonel is a high-toned gentleman, and will do 
 credit to our State on the other side. On dit that he proceeds 
 to Washington to claim at the hands of Government that reward 
 to which his long and unflinching devotion to his party justly 
 entitles him. Attila K. Scalpgitter may well tremble when he 
 learns that this squints toward the Custom House, and we tell 
 him boldly and fearlessly that it does" 
 
 " So you thought of emulating Mr. Pangburn, did you?" 
 Hugh asked, as he returned the paper, " and of also amassing a 
 fortune in a remarkably short space of time ?" 
 
 " Well, I did that," answered Sloper, " likewise of goin 
 better and emoolating that there Scalpgitter out o the Custom 
 House. If I understand one thing better n another," he con 
 tinued reflectively, "it s revenoo." 
 
 * But has Mr. Scalpgitter behaved ill or in any manner de 
 served removal ?" 
 
 "He don t soot the people," said Lafayette, harshly, "and 
 that s enough. He s jest chawed up all his popularity, and he 
 ain t cute enough to lay in a fresh stock. One thing I heerd 
 tell he did would have smashed up his political futur in Pike 
 whatever it does in Frisky." 
 
 "And what may that have been ?" 
 
 " He put up a rail fence round his desk in the Custom House, 
 he did, so that the citizens couldn t git close up to t and look at 
 the papers and see what he was writin of. No seen stuck-up 
 ways as them goes down with our folks." 
 
 " But if the man didn t want his private papers overlooked, 
 or " 
 
 "He was a servant of the people," interrupted Mr. Sloper acri 
 moniously, " and his papers was public papers, or they hadn t no 
 call to be be thar. If he wanted to hev private papers he d oughter 
 resigned and took to drink, or any other private pastime 
 which sooted his voos. Fences was made for cattle and not for 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 179 
 
 human critters ; and to have gone and built a corral like that to 
 keep out the citizens up to Pike, would hev jest skeared up the 
 dod rottest row Scalpgitter or any other gitter ever heern tell 
 of from the lips of sages. He d hev had to make tracks, he 
 would ; and them tracks would hev had to be as spry and ily as 
 greased lightnin . But," he added, waving his hand as in dis 
 missal of the offensive subject, " whar s your pile 1" 
 
 " My pile ?" 
 
 1 The Hon. Kurnel Pangburn havin toted off his pile, I in 
 quire whar s your n ?" 
 
 At this, Gifford narrated briefly to his attentive listener the 
 circumstances which preceded and attended Mr. Pangburn s de 
 parture. The processes whereby the ingenious editor had ob 
 tained the confidence of the community, and the subsequent use 
 he had made of it in abstracting the common capital, appeared to 
 afTord Mr. Sloper the most lively satisfaction. For, although 
 nothing could induce him to smile, there was a delighted twinkle 
 in his cavernous eyes, and a rolling of his quid from side to side 
 of his mouth, which were indicative of the most superlative 
 pleasure it was in his nature to experience. 
 
 " And so he belted the hull pile ?" he queried, as Gifford con 
 cluded, amid these unconcealed expressions of sympathy and 
 
 joy- 
 
 Every penny of it." 
 
 "Darn my sister s cat, then, if he ain t a screamer! a real 
 contoomacious, highfalootin, ring-tailed top-sawyer, that s what 
 he is ! And what was all the rest on ye up to while the Kurnel 
 was playin this nice little game ?" 
 
 " Doing ? Taking him for an honest man, I suppose." 
 
 ; Ye don t want no more pardners, do ye ?" 
 
 Why," replied Gifford, laughing, " I fear the same oppor 
 tunities are unlikely to recur. The yield has been much less, on 
 the average, since our loss ; but we have also been much more 
 vigilant. We resolved, too, that whenever we got up to a cer 
 tain small sum, for the future, it should be at once removed to a 
 place of greater safety." 
 
 " That s what you and the Britisher is up to now?" 
 
 " Well, we are taking down a little dust not much ; but we 
 have other business which takes us to the city." 
 
 Lafayette eyed his companion for some time, in his morose 
 way, and then asked : 
 
 "Do ye sport some 1 ?" 
 
 " Sport ?" repeated Hugh. 
 
 ** Be you a bucker agen Pharaoh ? Air you a gay gambollier ? 
 
180 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Hev you never fit the tiger ? Hev you never tried to captur 
 the eagle-bird by chance ?" 
 
 Gifford was forced to confess his inexperience in these fascinat 
 ing mysteries. 
 
 " I ain t no professed sport," continued Sloper, with some 
 contempt, " although I kerry them keards. But I ve had my 
 experience I ve seed the elephant, and I know his way. J 
 begun feelin of him on Spanish monte and roulette ; and I 
 finished off with Pharaoh and Draw-Poker ; and I allow that 
 Pharaoh and Draw-Poker was too many for me. They jest 
 over-sized my pile and raked down ; which was exactly the 
 reason, stranger, that I didn t fetch up to Armstrong s Bar." 
 
 Hugh felt a gratitude to those potent agencies which he did 
 not feel called upon to express, but said he had always heard 
 that it was eminently imprudent to attempt such games against 
 professional players. 
 
 "Geri rally speaking," said Sloper, "it are; but banks is 
 bust sometimes, and I might be a buster as well as any other 
 man." 
 
 " But how," asked Gifford, "did these misfortunes interfere 
 to prevent you from coming to the Barf 
 
 "Why, I know d you was a jint-stock, cause it said as much 
 in Kurnel Pangburn s paper, the i Mounting Clarion ; and 
 there was accaounts most every week of folks gittin draw d on 
 for comin there and prospectin without leave of the company ; 
 and havin bucked away most all my pile, I d never a dime to 
 buy in ; that s how. But I kin jest tell ye one thing, stranger, 
 and I don t kear if you put it in when ye write to your friends, 
 and that is, I m bound to git even, I am. That s what I m 
 goin to Frisky for. They ve beat me in the diggins, but I ll 
 clean em in the taown, as sure as I come from Pike Caounty. 
 I haint got more n two slugs to go in with, but if I don t make 
 my everlastin fortin out on em, my name ain t Sloper nor yit 
 Layfayette. I m goin down to that thar burg, stranger, to real 
 ize ; and gol darn my preternatooral pictur if I don t realize or 
 die!" 
 
 With these sentiments, delivered with an air of unspeakable 
 ferocity, Mr. Sloper replaced his bowie knife, and gloomily de 
 manded that Gifford should descend with him to the bar, and 
 liquor a demand which, as it seemed to be enforced by a tacit 
 alternative of immediate death, was prudently complied with. 
 So they went down by gangways which were streaming with 
 water, and all groaning and shivering with the force of the 
 wind and the strain of the engine, and passed by the great 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 
 
 181 
 
 throbbing engine in its lurid home, with the black figures of 
 tenders and coal-passers, looking like ministering fiends in the 
 crimson glare, and thus into the bar. 
 
 When they got there it became obvious enough why the up 
 per portions of the boat were comparatively deserted ; for the 
 room was crowded, almost to suffocation, with miners, and tra 
 ders, and lawyers, and "sports" four classes which predomina 
 ted over all others at this season in California, and were mis 
 chievous, as a rule, in the inverse order of their enumeration. 
 
 There were a good many people who looked like Mr. Sloper, 
 that is, with hawk faces, deep-set eyes, and hair behind ears, 
 high sombreros, red flannel shirts, and long cowhide boots. There 
 were a good many who looked like Mr. Pangburn ; that is, with 
 very greedy faces, goatees on their chins, beaver hats, and black 
 suits from head to foot. The "sports" were distinguished by 
 the superior richness and cut of their garments, and by wearing 
 a profusion of (real) jewelry ; they were more distinguished 
 still by a sobriety quite remarkable among so many hard drink 
 ers ; it was incompatible with successful business to get drunk. 
 Through the uproarious crowd Gifford and Ms new acquaintance 
 elbowed their way to the spot where an urbane gentleman, with 
 glossy black curls, immaculate linen, and a diamond breastpin, 
 which could not have cost less than five hundred dollars, was dis 
 pensing drinks" to the vociferous and eager customers, who 
 kept him. nothing loath, in a continual state of activity. 
 
 Mr. Sloper took a rum-and-brandy punch, strong, and Gifford, 
 to be consistent with what he had taken earlier, took a glass of 
 champagne, for that attractive effervescent could be had at the 
 bar for the same price with other, even the most common bever 
 ages, no more no less ; twenty-five cents being the charge for a 
 glass, let the liquor be what it might. 
 
 In this choice retreat there roared a very cataract of sound. 
 There was the constant monotonous rush of the vessel through 
 the water for an undertone ; above this the intermittent heaves 
 and throes of the machinery ; and higher still the crash and jin 
 gle of an hundred shouting voices in half a dozen different lan 
 guages ; for England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Chi 
 na had representatives there, as well as Yankee land. Then 
 there was the clinking of dollars from a couple of rnonte tables to 
 add to that of the glasses at the bar ; for gambling was openly 
 practised on board steamers as well as elsewhere at this period ; 
 and. to crown all. a vocal concert was in progress in one corner, 
 an agonizing stave being just then in favor, the refrain of which 
 appeared to be : 
 
182 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " Blow on, blow on, we love the h-a-o-wling 
 Of winds that waft us o er the sea !" etc., ad lib. 
 
 The noise, the smoke, and the unsavory peculiarities of many 
 of his neighbors led Hugh to beat a retreat as soon as he felt he 
 could do so without giving mortal offence to Mr. Sloper, and so 
 subject himself to the chance of being " ripped" by that stern 
 patriot, whom he left at last engaged in a discussion with a long 
 Kentuckian on some technical point in " Draw-Poker." 
 
 Hugh went to his state-room, an apartment shared with the 
 Doctor, and found that that gentleman was still detained in the 
 hospitable toils of Captain Bracebridge. He would have locked 
 the door as fearing another attack from Lafayette, who might not 
 unreasonably be expected to become heated with drink and elo 
 quence below ; but he must needs leave free ingress for his com 
 panion ; so he prepared to stretch himself on his narrow pallet 
 without that precaution. 
 
 Before doing so, however, Hugh drew forth, smoothed, and 
 read over two letters which he had received during the week just 
 passed. The one which had come the greatest distance bore a 
 Massachusetts postmark, and its contents were these : 
 
 "East Canaan, Mass., July 20th, 1851. 
 
 " DEAR HUGH, 
 
 " It seems ever so long since you went away, especially 
 when we think that people make fortunes so quick in California. 
 And I hope you will make yours right away, and come home, 
 for Pa seems a little set against your being so dreadful careless, 
 as he says you must have been to lose all that beautiful money 
 you had saved up. He thinks he knows some of the Pangburns, 
 and says they are all smart, and sure to turn out rich. Pamelia 
 Staples has married very well off, and his name is Cuticle S. Flip, 
 with quite a large practice, and I admire to see the chaise they 
 come to church in on Sundays, though he is sometimes called out 
 during service. Pa frets about the mortgage, and I wouldn t 
 say it to any one but you I think he drinks some because the 
 Pennifeathers have a new roof to their barn, and sold their first 
 hay at eighteen-fifty, he only getting eighteen-twenty-five. I for 
 got to say that Isabel Tarbox you remember a black-eyed girl (not 
 a very nice complexion) you thought pretty ? Well, she is mar 
 ried down at Boston, Pa says, to a very good thing in fish. 
 People here seem to speak rather coldly about you, I don t know 
 why, which is very wicked of them. But they act as though 
 folks who are away must always be doing something wrong, and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 183 
 
 deserve to be systemically run down, unless they come back 
 quick with a great deal of money. This aggravates me pretty 
 badly, but perhaps, dear Hugh, it was a little careless to lose all 
 that money, and when I see the Cuticle Flips with that change 
 able silk and real ostriches in a horse and chaise, sometimes am 
 foolish enough to repine at the hardness of fortune. Which re 
 minds me of our minister s new house, and what he said about 
 you when we called there. The house is beautiful, being an ex 
 act model of the Parthenon, furnished with the most lovely rose 
 wood piano, and everything Turkey in the chambers, and Brus 
 sels in the parlors. It is already known as the Pride of Canaan, 
 presented by his affectionate parishioners to Rev. Pastile F. Bau 
 bee. I wouldn t think of writing what he said about you. but I 
 have suspected Pa some of putting Mr. Baubee up to it, know 
 ing his words always fall with Weight, and besides, I do not like 
 to keep any secrets from you during the present understanding. 
 What he said was that, considering your antecedents and youth 
 ful atmosphere the old leaven brought by your Pa from a sinful 
 and unenlightened soil and the physiological consequences 
 which the Calm Eye of science could predict of such conditions, 
 that you were likely to turn out illy. That in a general way 
 he feared you was a brand whom it wouldn t pay to try and pluck 
 from the burning. And this idea that you won t pay seems to be 
 running in Pa s head ever since. So I do trust, dear Hugh, anx 
 ious as I am to reconcile our hopes with filial devotion, that you 
 will ere long, by some means or other, make up for the past, and 
 silence calumny by ample provision for the future. I am quite 
 sure that there s nothing for silencing the world like being inde 
 pendent of it, and folks in Canaan now appear to be quite agreed 
 on the subject of substantial property. I told brother John what Mr. 
 Baubee said about you, and he said, l Les abscns sont toujours 
 torts, and that he was an old jackass ; but it is right to add that 
 I don t think this fairly represents current opinion in Canaan. 
 We are to have a visitor next week young Mr. Gaycow, who 
 speculated heavily last fall for a rise in groceries ; he had a 
 store, you know, at Canaan Centre, and since then has made a 
 great deal of money in tacks, and has bought a factory with very 
 efficient water power at Persepolis, N. Y. Well, he is coming 
 home to buy property, and Pa would insist on his staying with 
 us during his sojourn, which is therefore agreed, and I am to 
 have a new changeable silk, purple in one light, and gold in an 
 other, like Mrs. Flip s. Ah, Hugh, I hope "it will not be faded 
 by the time you get back. But it s quite true they don t wear 
 as well as black. Pray, dear Hugh, take care of your precious 
 
184 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 health, and the gold you may be fortunate enough to dig here 
 after, for the sake of 
 
 " Your affectionate but anxious, 
 
 "VIRGINIA." 
 
 " N.B. We hear a good deal of * specimens. If you were 
 to send some nice, rich ones, directed to Pa, I think it would have 
 a good effect. V." 
 
 Hugh s other letter was much briefer, and ran as follows : 
 
 " San Francisco, Oct. 2Qth, 1851. 
 "Mr FRIEND, 
 
 " Although I think it had been better otherwise, I must 
 yet keep my promise, and tell you that I am to sail by the * Gold 
 en Age next Wednesday, for New York. 
 
 " M. R." 
 
 Gifford read these missives and re-read them, and then com 
 pared the writings in a mechanical sort of way ; and then he 
 heaved a great sigh, and put them away again in the pocket 
 whence they came. Then he lay down in his berth for a while, 
 and dreamed strange dreams, wherein Marian came and smiled 
 sweetly upon him, and Mr. Sloper came and danced madly up 
 and down with Cuticle S. Flip. From these uneasy slumbers 
 he was roused now and again by bacchanalian shouts and the 
 harsh yell of the people who loved the h-a-o-wling of winds 
 that blew them o er the sea. And then the Doctor came in very 
 late and rather unsteady, and not quite so decorous generally 
 as was his wont ; whence ensued some discussion of the relative 
 merits as boon companions of the Captain and Sloper. Finally, 
 not even the incessant Babel of noises, and not even the jerks 
 and thumps, which gave the idea that the steamer was crashing 
 through a submarine forest, could keep Hngh awake longer, 
 and he fell into a heavy sleep. When he awoke, the sun was 
 pouring a flood of yellow light through the state-room, and he 
 looked forth from the window, and saw for the first time the 
 far-famed golden city. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 185 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 To meet a man dressed in broadcloth and fine linen, laying 
 down the law to listening potentates of trade, and who on in 
 spection is remembered as an Irish cab driver in the city of Xew 
 York to find in another, who handcarts your luggage to the 
 hotel, a man of Cambridge who sweetens brokerage with Greek 
 quotations to recognize in the voluble auctioneer on a corner, 
 the former occupant of a not obscure pulpit to see half the 
 business population of a commercial town thronging to gam 
 bling tables in open day to read names on election papers posted 
 as candidates for high offices, which belong to people who ran 
 away defaulters and disgraced from their homes in the East all 
 these, and many more kindred peculiarities may be admitted to 
 be well calculated to strike a new-comer with interest and aston 
 ishment. With these and many more such extraordinary things 
 were all of us familiar who were in San Francisco in 1850. 
 
 Since then the city has crept up and covered many a slope 
 which at that time was bare. Since then the tents of Happy 
 Valley have been superseded by solid masonry. Since then 
 what was most suggestive of a huge gipsy encampment has 
 become suggestive of the early vigor of Carthage or of Tyre. 
 Gambling has ceased in the high places, and the gamblers 
 are no longer the magnates of the land. Women are in a 
 greater ratio than as one to fifty of the population a propor 
 tion which then unfortunately existed ; and such a thing as a 
 baby is not followed about the town as a natural curiosity. I 
 suppose a sudden fusilade of pistol-shots is a more uncommon 
 and startling thing there now than it was then ; albeit we were 
 lately told of a wonderful desperado who managed to kill five 
 assailants who set upon him in the comfortable old-fashioned way 
 in the public streets ; an incident which appeared to revive in 
 the newspapers of the place quite touching and sentimental re- 
 minicences. 
 
 Those merry days are gone when excitable gentlemen used to 
 waylay and shoot each other down at corners, or when as they 
 were said to have done at Yallecitos the playful fellows would 
 rush out from gambling houses at midnight and fire promiscuous 
 volleys up and down the streets, from mere speculative motives 
 to see what they might hit. The times when you could go up to 
 
186 MARIAN KOOKE ; OR, 
 
 the Plaza of an evening, feeling certain if your spirits were lan 
 guid of having them quickened and refreshed by the spectacle of 
 a rattling "knock-down and drag-out fight," which would even 
 be among the tamest and most ordinary episodes of nightly 
 amusements, have doubtless vanished ; those small hours when 
 governors, and senators, and great lawyers, and leading bankers 
 mingled graciously with blacklegs, pugilists, and "fancy men," 
 and staked then* salaries, their retainers, and their depositors for 
 tunes, if not their own, upon the chances of faro, have gone, I 
 suppose, to return no more. 
 
 The promising epoch when Irish ward politicians the dregs 
 of the dregs of the great Atlantic towns with Australian ticket- 
 of-leave men and a sprinkling of Western border ruffians, dom 
 inated San Francisco, and fostered social conditions against 
 which decent men, in self-defence, at last took the law in their 
 own hands by organizing the Vigilance Committee, has been re 
 placed by another less variant to civilization. This committee, 
 w^hich was a sort of Wittenagemote or mass meeting of Judge 
 Lynches, was one of those unlawful organizations for a good 
 end which the intriguing, the turbulent, and the debauched al 
 ways denounce most bitterly on the score of their technical ille 
 gality, for the excellent reason that their own excesses could 
 never have been checked by any better authorized machinery 
 that existed. The Vigilance Committee, like other agencies 
 which could be named, was distinctly unconstitutional and as 
 distinctly necessary, not for the purgation alone, but for the ab 
 solute existence of the community. It put an end to gross 
 abuses by radical measures, indicated the way to prepare for a 
 healthy future, did its work thoroughly, and then, unlike some 
 other revolutionary committees we all wot of, by its own volun 
 tary act and motion disappeared. 
 
 But in 1850 all those choice and eccentric spirits, who were 
 destined to be so cruelly interfered with, exported, suspended, 
 or restrained, were in high feather, and exerted full sway in the 
 land of gold. So far were they from being ashamed of them 
 selves, that, with a pride which often goeth before a fall, they 
 vaunted and glorified their misdeeds before the common gaze ; 
 which, as many of them were in official stations, they could 
 more readily do. It is evident from the reaction which they 
 provoked that the social elements were by no means all bad. 
 On the contrary, they included much that was honorable, high- 
 minded, enterprising, and progressive. San Francisco was a 
 sample pattern, in which were woven and interwoven threads 
 of gold and of dross a specimen which exhibited in little all 
 
THE QL EST FOR FORTUNE. 187 
 
 that is brightest and best, and all that is basest and worst in 
 American society. But it is only fair to say that nearly all the 
 latter constituents were, as they usually are, palpably and imme 
 diately of European origin. It seems to be in the nature of 
 things that these inevitable immigrants, much as they always 
 hate the Old World, should be as troublesome in their changed 
 situation as if they equally hated the New. 
 
 California, I have said, was a land of surprises ; and it was a 
 curious study to see how anomalies in character unexpected 
 and unaccountable warps one way or the other seemed to be 
 produced or reacted by strange things, physical and material. 
 It was curious to see blood relations, one of whom came sud 
 denly into the possession of wealth beyond his wildest dreams, 
 refuse the other money to buy food or shelter ; curious, in an 
 other similar case, to see the lucky adventurer insist upon shar 
 ing dollar for dollar with his less fortunate brother. It was in 
 structive to see starchy, east-iron men, who had been deacons 
 of New England churches may be, plunging frantically into the 
 most reckless dissipation in San Francisco ; instructive to see 
 those artful persons, who used to dodge circumspectly up tortu 
 ous alleys where drink is sold on the sly in Puritanic Boston, 
 fearful lest any critical eye should track their devious steps, now 
 drinking, and swaggering, and cursing, full in the public view, 
 amid the blaze of lull noon ; instructive to see scholars turned 
 cartmen, divines turned hawkers, gamblers made judges, and 
 ploughmen transformed into millionaires. 
 
 But Hugh Gifford thought little of .these things, however he 
 might ordinarily have appreciated their teachings. He was in 
 the same town with Marian ; breathing the same air, seeing the 
 same sights, treading the same streets which she might daily 
 tread ; and all that he saw and heard was as nothing for its own 
 sake, and only interesting as associated with tliis absorbing 
 thought. Was he in love with her then, and had his heart al 
 together turned traitor to Virginia ? He did not think so ; at 
 least not always, although there were certainly times when his 
 brow would knit and his breast grow cold as he read, in almost 
 every line of her letters, how the glorification of lucre, and the 
 pitiful standards of those who surrounded the girl, had grown 
 into and debased a soul which might naturally have been a gen 
 erous one. But at such times, and on the heels of such reflec 
 tions, he would ask himself what right, of all others, he had to 
 contemn Virginia for the love of money. Was it not the master 
 passion, the engrossing desire of his own soul to make himself, 
 by some means or another, rich ? Did he not come to Califor- 
 
188 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 nia with that passion, that desire, paramount as the end-all, if 
 not altogether the be-all, of his aspirations ? How unworthy, 
 then, to blame Virginia for at most sympathizing with what she 
 knew to occupy so large a place in his thoughts. It must be 
 unworthy, it must be unjust ; and yet why did he find himself 
 continually indulging in such covert censure ? He often asked 
 himself the question. But it did not occur to him, introspect 
 ive as was his nature, that the reason lay in the fact that he had 
 changed and she had not 
 
 And Marian, who had wrought this change in all honor and 
 purity of intention, so far as wishing the young man to set up 
 for himself higher standards, to aim at a loftier ambition ; Ma 
 rian, who had earnestly hoped to be instrumental in forwarding 
 Virginia s happiness through elevating the character of her affi 
 anced, had unwittingly done more than she had proposed ; more 
 than would have sufficed, had she gained a premonitory glimpse 
 of it, to have made her flee away from Armstrong s Bar long 
 before she did so. For Marian s self-respect, unconventional 
 though she might be, was of that nice and delicate character 
 which shrinks from the bare suspicion of a taint, which cannot 
 continue w^hat it is, and yet permit its owner, by any possibil 
 ity, to find a pleasure through another s pain. No ; she had no 
 mistrust, not the faintest, that she was doing any wrong to Vir 
 ginia by the alienation of GifFord s feelings. There were two 
 strong bars against the passage of such a suspicion ; the one 
 was her own remarkable freedom from personal vanity, the other 
 the self-contained and reserved nature of Gifford himself. 
 
 For my part familiar as I am and have been with all the cir 
 cumstances I am afraid that, with the usual perversity of hu 
 manity, Gifford fell in love with Marian 011 the same night that 
 he saw poor Luke put her little Testament over against his 
 heart. I do not like Hugh any the better for the thought ; and 
 yet why should we be uncharitable, if love really is, as they say, 
 so despotic that the feelings of those he rules are absolutely in 
 voluntary ? But acts may be controlled, I am informed, if feel 
 ings cannot be ; and it was just their acts that both Hugh and 
 Marian, each unbeknown to the other, had been stoutly control 
 ling. 
 
 Marian left the Bar on the Monday which followed that dole 
 ful Saturday night when the robbery was discovered which made 
 her friends all poor again. After the first outburst of indigna 
 tion and disappointment, the miners had come to the only sen 
 sible determination which seemed open to them ; that is to say, 
 to go quietly to work and retrieve their loss. As has been seen, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 189 
 
 pursuit was useless ; so for the present, at least, the ingenious 
 Pangburn was left to the undisturbed enjoyment of his ill-gotten 
 gains. To prove a case in the Atlantic States would have in 
 volved great expense and difficulty, even supposing the culprit 
 were apprehended there. But if he had eschewed Utica, as he 
 declared his intention of doing, who should tell in what Troy, 
 Athens, Thebes, Rome, or Paradise Centre, the erring steps of 
 the despoiler were to be traced ? 
 
 Even the method of the burglary remained a mystery ; for 
 although poor Ichabod confessed the device whereby he had 
 been induced to quit the cabin for a space long enough to carry 
 it out, no one except the perpetrator could explain its details : 
 which, moreover, were held to be of little consequence since the 
 deed was done, unless to teach the propriety of greater caution 
 for the future. 
 
 Marian went to the town, and a few days afterward I followed 
 her thither. Urgent business obliged my presence in San Fran 
 cisco, but, in truth, I had grown weary of mining ; and in leav 
 ing had made arrangements to provide a substitute who should 
 supply my place upon the same terms. It was my hope to have 
 been of some service to Marian in finding her a position as gov 
 erness or teacher, such as I knew she desired to procure. But 
 on arriving I learned that the service was unnecessary ; she had 
 already obtained a situation in a French family, where her know 
 ledge of the language was of peculiar advantage. There were 
 three children, all girls, to supervise ; the mother being an in 
 valid, and the father, a quiet, sagacious Lyonnaise of fifty, the 
 only one of the family who spoke English. The conditions of 
 demand and supply in the San Franciscan market for competent 
 governesses who could speak French were fortunately such as 
 to preclude the necessity for references ; and as the engagement 
 was only from month to month to enable Marian to depart 
 when she might hear from her European correspondent all par 
 ties were well satisfied. 
 
 Marian had kept her word as to acquainting Hugh with the 
 time of her departure, and he could not resist coming to bid her 
 farewell. There were, as we have seen, other excuses for his 
 coming : gold to be brought down to bank, purchases to be 
 made for the colony reasons enough for the journey ; but it 
 is certain some one else would have been the Doctor s companion 
 had it not been for the all-important one. Not but Gifford was 
 rather partial to the former s society, and. since Marian s depart 
 ure, sought it more frequently than that of any one else : but it 
 was not necessary to come to San Francisco in order to enjoy it. 
 
1 90 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 It was on a Sunday morning that they arrived, but the shops 
 were open, the gamblers in full blast, and few, indeed, if any, of 
 the signs could be seen usual in Christian communities as mark 
 ing the day of rest. His companion went at once to procure 
 some drugs and chemicals he required, and Hugh made his way 
 to the residence of M. Bellot ; rather a distinguished mansion in 
 the upper part of the town, with some attempt at flowers and 
 shrubbery about it. As the site of San Francisco then consisted 
 almost exclusively of shifting sandhills, these surroundings of 
 themselves gave the house an air of distinction ; and when Hugh 
 passed through the gate and ascended the steps leading to the 
 hall-door, the perfume of some creeping shrubs, being like oth 
 ers at Armstrong s Bar, reminded him so forcibly of Marian that 
 his breath came short, and his hand shook a little as he rang for 
 admittance. The bell for knockers were as rare in San Fran 
 cisco as in most American towns sounded sharply through the 
 house, and gave a presage of emptiness which, so far as the vis 
 itor s hopes were concerned, was destined to be fulfilled. Miss 
 Rooke had gone with the three demoiselles to Oakland, in Con- 
 tracosta. M. Bellot had a brother there, and all the family ex 
 cept Madame had gone on Saturday to be present at a sort of 
 fete which was partly complimentary to Miss Rooke, who was so 
 soon to depart to their great regret ; and they were expected to 
 return to-morrow. With this unwelcome intelligence Hugh 
 turned away, and, woefully disappointed, retraced his steps into 
 the heart of the city. 
 
 He wandered listlessly down into the open space which the 
 first new-comers among the Anglo-Americans had essayed to 
 change from " The Plaza " into " Portsmouth Square," but a 
 notable instance of the refusal of an ancient cognomen to give place 
 to a new and foreign one unsuccessfully. For people would 
 call the spot "The Plaza " in 1850, and although it then was, as 
 it may still be, known on the city maps as " Portsmouth Square," 
 it got the name nowhere else. This " Plaza," then, formerly en 
 closed by one-storied houses of adobe, several of which, in the 
 days we write of, still remained, was now enriched by buildings 
 of a remarkable and unique style of architecture. The materi 
 als were chiefly pine boards and cotton canvas, the dimensions 
 very large, and the general exterior effect, save in the matter cf 
 size, not over imposing. The facades consisted almost entirely 
 of doors surmounted by painted signs, such as "El Dorado," 
 " Bella Union," &c., being the names whereby the respective 
 proprietors wished their establishments to be known. Inside of 
 these establishments was seen one vast hall, the area being usu- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 191 
 
 ally left unpartitionecl. But although there was little color or re 
 lief for the eye in the signs and flags which alone broke the mo 
 notonous white of their outsides, the interiors of these strange 
 edifices were far different, and by no means open to such a re 
 proach. Here were enormous mirrors covering the walls on all 
 sides, only alternating now and then with huge oil paintings of 
 high colors and equivocal subjects. Cut-glass chandeliers which, 
 at night, gave the light of day, shimmered and glittered in ev 
 ery direction. On one side ran a long counter or bar, where 
 numbers of attendants were constantly engaged ; while behind 
 them were piled glasses, and decanters, and bottles, and pitch 
 ers of all imaginable shapes and hues. These sparkling objects, 
 reflected by mirrors behind them, added to the general brilliancy 
 of the scene, while hundreds of figures moving restlessly about, 
 many of them wearing the then predominant red flannel shirt as 
 an outer garment, with slouched hats and long boots, with here 
 and there the gaudy Mexican serape, gave an effect truly sur 
 prising to an eye accustomed only to the more common sights 
 of modern civilization. 
 
 For the rest, the hall was filled with gaming-tables ; tables of 
 all shapes and sizes for all sorts of games ; tables for faro, tables 
 for monte, tables for roulette, tables for vingt-et-un, tables for 
 rouge-et-noir ; tables where the dealers were Americans, Eng 
 lishmen. Mexicans. Frenchmen, Jews, and women few, hap 
 pily, of the latter indiscriminately mixed, all cool and industri 
 ous, and all well patronized. 
 
 Into such a pandemonium did Hugh Giffbrd find his way, 
 staring at the sights, confused by the sounds, and instinctively 
 comparing each with the sober-looking people and the quiet 
 church bells, wherewith the Sabbath morning was associated in 
 all his past memories. What an extraordinary society what 
 extraordinary habits had the gold discovery all of a sudden 
 conjured up, as dragon s teeth brought from the earth armed men 
 
 Every moment men came trooping in, evidently fresh from 
 the mines, their faces worn with toil and exposure, their gar 
 ments dirt-stained and often in fragments, and who went straight 
 to the faro table, staked their bag of precious dust on the turn 
 of a single card, lost or won with the same imperturbability, and 
 stalked out again. It was not customary at this time to ex 
 amine the contents of such bags ; that would have taken too 
 much time, and hurt the business by suggesting a suspicion per 
 haps of the integrity of the owner. * The card was turned, and. 
 if the bank lost, the dust was promptly weighed, and its equiva 
 lent handed over hi kind or in gold coin ; "if the bank won, the 
 
192 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 bag was callously, and; generally without inspection, cast in 
 among the rouleux and loose treasure of the concern, which 
 were contained in a box within easy reach of the dealer. Many 
 sat at the tables from morning till night, now winning, now los 
 ing, but in either case unwilling or unable to tear themselves a way 
 from the fascination. These people were commonly very taci 
 turn ; indeed, any audible expression of feeling respecting the 
 play was unusual ; so that, with the exception of an occasional 
 Spanish oath and the unceasing chink of coin and shuffling of 
 cards, the vicinage of the tables was comparatively quiet. 
 
 Not so, however, the bar, where there was an endless roar of 
 shoutings, cursings, and boisterous recognitions. Men were con 
 tinually meeting for the first time since separating in " the States," 
 and signalizing the occasion as if from the deck of a ship. Po 
 litical talk, friendly talk, gambling talk, and drunken talk unit 
 ed in the charming medley, and swelled its discordant climax to 
 the very echo. Among those who were the loudest, the biggest, 
 and perhaps the tipsiest of the most conspicuous group in the sa 
 loon, Gifford remarked a red man, with a round face and golden 
 hair which stuck in shreds and patches to his perspiring forehead. 
 He wore a white hat, which was pushed far back, and a huge 
 diamond sun in his bosom, almost as wide as a dollar. His 
 clothes consisted of a suit of a vast pattern in green and black 
 checks, and he had a large red silk pocket handkerchief which he 
 occasionally filliped in playful manner into the faces of his more 
 distant interlocutors at the bar. This gentleman was declaim 
 ing in a heated key, and appeared to be regarded with great de 
 ference and admiration, not only by the bar-keepers, but by the 
 crowd around him. 
 
 While Hugh was regarding this group and trying to catch the 
 signification of some of the words of wisdom which were falling 
 from its vociferous centre, he felt his hat slightly tipped over his 
 eyes from behind, and, turning to see who had adopted this del 
 icate, but not unusual, method of salutation, found at his elbow 
 Mr. Sloper. 
 
 " I ll liquor with you this time," said the latter, as if pursuing 
 a previous conversation. " I ve been a buckin , and I hain t got 
 no more change n the law allows." 
 
 " Cleaned out, eh f said Hugh, recognizing the force of the 
 invitation, as they made their w r ay to the bar. 
 
 "Can t say I m exactly cleaned out, since I ve got one thou 
 sand nine hundred and seventy-six cigars," returned Lafayette ; 
 " five I guv away, and nineteen I smoked last night. Try one ; 
 they ah* A.I, and no discount." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FOBTUKE. 193 
 
 * "I wasn t aware," said Hugh, accepting the offer, "that you 
 dealt in the article." 
 
 "No more I didn t till arter you turned in last night. Then 
 I run agin a cuss who had three thousand cigars, and ne er a red 
 besides^ bein played out chasin the eagle board the boat. I 
 had three hundred dollars, and his Havanas was worth more 
 rather than less. So we jest went in for a little plain poker to 
 pass away time. We played till daylight and was jest even. 
 We took a hand for the very last, and he drawed a good un. 
 He bet a clean thousand o them weeds, and I see em and went 
 two slugs better $ he seed em and went a thousand better n me. 
 I called, and he laid down three aces and two kings ; I slung 
 four dooses atop on em, and raked down the pile." 
 
 " So that you re now so much the richer ? 
 
 " Xe er a time. I sold a thousand for one hundred and fifty 
 to this ere chap who keeps the den ; and I ve lost four hundred 
 and more in his darned old Pharaoh bank since breakfast; that s 
 so." 
 
 Well," said Hugh, doubtfully, "don t you think it about 
 time to knock off?" 
 
 "Not in these boots, I don t. I m playin for even now. and 
 even I m a goin to be. A squeeze more bitters in that ere cock 
 tail, young man. I hain t had drinks enough yit." continued Mr. 
 Sloper, sternly, "to feel riled. I ve got to git my dander up, 
 and then you ll see the har fly. D ye know that man ye was 
 looking at jest now?" 
 
 Xo." 
 
 "Xo!" repeated the other, turning his profile toward Hugh, 
 and fixing one keen eye reprovingly upon him. * Don t know 
 that aii* man! Why, he s a Californian Instertooshun, he is. 
 He s one of the gol-darndest, hull-hoggest, out-and-out screamers 
 that ever drunk whiskey 1 Why, he s the man that killed Hank 
 Swett for takin the copper off his parlee and the last card in, at 
 old Deaf Dan s bank, up to Stockton! I ll tell ye what," 
 said Sloper, with fierce resolution, " I ll put ye through!" 
 
 "Don t!" said Hugh, at a hazard. 
 
 "Yes, I will Why," he added, seizing Hugh s shoulder, 
 and gripping it hard as if to nerve him to bear what was to 
 follow, that ere h-a-o-wling oriator is Judge Skewer!" 
 
 "Judge Skewer !" 
 
 "Achilles McGaw O Rafferty Skewer," said Lafayette, leaning 
 back a little to watch the effect of his announcement. " Guess 
 ye know who he is now, don t ye ?" 
 
 " I confess I " 
 
 9 
 
194 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "Say no more," cried Sloper, authoritatively. "I ll put ye 
 through !" And he darted off with the apparent design to 
 carry his mysterious threat into effect. As quickly, however, he 
 returned, and whispering hurriedly, "Don t say anythink to him 
 bout Hank Swett; he s easy het, and p raps he might knife ye, 
 ye know !" disappeared again. 
 
 "I say," exclaimed Hugh, in some dismay; "don t! Hold 
 on ! I d rather not, whatever it is !" But expostulation was use 
 less, for Sloper was already achieving his purpose. 
 
 Presently he was seen wriggling and plunging through the 
 crowd, and to force his way toward the man with the white hat 
 and the golden hair. That person was just in the act of tak 
 ing his fifth drink without stirring from the spot, and his back 
 was turned for the moment to Mr. Sloper. The latter now 
 seized the drinker firmly round the waist, from behind, and 
 dragged him backwards through the crowd to where Gifford was 
 standing. 
 
 " Quit !" roared the Judge. " Who is t ? Let up, or I ll open 
 daylight inter yer !" 
 
 But his assailant whispered a cabalistic word in his ear, and 
 he continued, in the same breath, while he was released and 
 faced about : 
 
 " Why, Lafe ! You here 1 What in fetched you down 
 
 from up country ?" 
 
 Lafe made a significant gesture. 
 
 "Broke, ah- ye? Quiere Oro? Well, now, if you want a 
 hundred " 
 
 "No, I don t, Judge. I kin kerry sail so fur, and when I 
 can t I ll let ye know. I jest wanted t interdoose ye to a friend 
 o mine. Judge Skewer, Cap en Giffurd; Cap en Giffurd, 
 Judge Skewer." 
 
 "How air you?" inquired the Judge, with great interest. 
 "How do you find yourself now ? Take somethink ? We re 
 all a takin somethink. Come, Lafe, replenish, and let the nowin 
 bowl go round!" 
 
 With this the Judge finished his glass at a gulp, and imme 
 diately ordered another, insisting that his companions should do 
 the like. While these refreshments were in preparation, he 
 caught sight of a large bowl, or ewer, filled with broken frag 
 ments of ice, with which he now began slyly to pelt the party 
 he had just quitted, watching the results of his shots in the 
 opposite mirror. 
 
 "The boys is havin a lively time here to-day," continued 
 Judge Skewer, juicily, "Not but that the festive scene s pooty 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 195 
 
 reg lar ; only there s more o the old stiff drinkers round than 
 usual. Where did you say you come from, Cap en Gifford ?" 
 
 Hugh hadn t said, but he now admitted that he hailed from 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 " DrefFul sot up State, ain t it? Good many nice boys, tho . 
 come from there ; too darned pooritanical for em to home, I 
 reckon. We don t hev nuthin o that kind here. Gents, I m 
 lookin at yer !" 
 
 "Ah* you a runnin , Judge ?" queried Sloper, mysteriously. 
 
 li I am that. And I m a goin to keep on till I run all these 
 ere scallywags off the track. I ain t a goin to be bought off this 
 time with no ten thousand and a sheer in Jim Docket s bank. 
 I tell yer," he continued, confidentially, "I m a goin to stick to 
 my friends from the word Go ! Kin you stump-speak some, 
 Cap en ?" 
 
 Hugh didn t know, he -had never tried ; but as he had some- 
 tunes addressed juries, he thought he might. 
 
 " You air the bone and sinoo, you young men ah ," said the 
 Judge, pressing Gifford s hand with great feeling and urbanity, 
 " you air the bone and sinoo, who yer country looks to keep her 
 eeud up, and cement her power. I ll bet somethink on you, I 
 will 1 and I m goin to make a lofty pile I Where d you say 
 you d been a minin of, Cap en ?" 
 
 Hugh mentioned the name of Armstrong s Bar. 
 
 " Armstrong s Bar ! I ve heerd on t as a place risin fast in 
 wealth and consequence. Fill up, Lafe. You re kinder shirkin 
 yer rum, you air ! Fourteen drops for you, Cap en ? Why, 
 that wouldn t drown a fly ! What I was goin to let on, gen 
 tlemen, was that we air expectin a time ! " 
 
 " A reg lar time ?" suggested Mr. Sloper, sippinghis whiskey. 
 
 "Better a darned sight better. You d oughter f heerd that 
 Tom Flyer has jest arrived from York, and was tearin about last 
 night as blue as a razor ! and Yankee Bullyman, and Sydney 
 Bob, and Belcher Gay, and some more o the sports ; they feel 
 like givin him a turn ; and he s got a strong gang with him, 
 Tom has, and I reckon he s the wuss man to tackle in the world, 
 lettin bowies and sixshooters alone ; so if these here Ducks and 
 his crowd fall together we air expectin a time 1" 
 
 " I hain t seen a real square old scrimmage," said Lafayette 
 sorrowfully, " for more n three months. Not, candidways. since 
 them curus capers to Beneshy, when Pony Lazarous sliced off 
 Johnny Fargo s nose." 
 
 ;i Ah !" said the Judge sympathetically. " them was gay old 
 times. N othin but champagne cocktails and Pharaoh and free 
 
196 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 fights, from night till morn and morn till dooey eve ! But," he 
 continued reassuringly, " I do actooally b lieve we shall have a 
 time with these ere roughs nigh as good s any o the old-fash 
 ioned ones. How much dust did you say you fetched down from 
 the Bar, Cap en ?" 
 
 Hugh s reply was drowned in the sudden and unexpected rush 
 of the Judge s late boon companions, who, impatient at his pro 
 tracted absence, now burst into the circle with mingling yells, 
 the moat intelligible purport of which seemed to be that there 
 was too much talkin between drinks, and that they see him fire 
 that last hunk of ice. 
 
 " Hold on now, gents, hold on," cried the Judge with digni 
 ty, and stilling the uproar with a Demosthenean wave of the 
 hand, " allow me. Permit me to introdoose -Sheriff Mayhem, 
 Cap en Gifford ; brandy straight for me, what s your n, Sheriff? 
 This here is our Surrogate, Malachi Gallus, Major Gifford ; gin 
 cocktail. Charley, with a very little sugar. Mr. McCracken, per 
 mit me to introdoose Mr. McCracken, the great pool player, 
 Kurnel Gifford. Two more brandies, Charles. I beg your par- 
 ding, I m sure. This is the honored Chief of our Fire Depart 
 ment and former vanquisher of the Lancashire Chicken and 
 the Lily of the Valley ; Mr. Samson Adder, this is my esteem 
 ed friend, General Gifford. Air you all ready ? If so, fire !" 
 
 Messrs. Mayhem, Gallus, McCracken, and Adder, all smelling 
 horribly of spirits, shook Gifford s hand in succession with tre 
 mendous energy, and being supplied with fresh glasses of their 
 favorite stimulants, tossed them off with a hasty formula that 
 sounded very like " Success to crime." 
 
 "General Gifford s one of my boys," announced Judge Skew 
 er, who by this time had passed his arm affectionately round 
 Hugh s neck, "and bein a stranger to this ere praowd taown 
 unbeknown, as I may say, to these halls of dazzlin light, I m a 
 goin to show him the elephant. My intellectooal feller citizen 
 Lafayette Sloper is, I believe, well known among ye. We air 
 expectin .a time, and until it comes, all I kin say is, drink hearty 
 and vote for Skewer !" 
 
 This sentiment was received with much applause, and those 
 unqualified endorsements which were forthcoming as often as the 
 Judge paid for the drinks ; but excitement was greatly augment 
 ed when Mr. Sloper returned from the door, whither he had gone 
 for a moment, and, with as gratified an expression as his satur 
 nine features were capable of, said : 
 
 " The Ducks air a comin !" 
 
 " Ye don t say so ! Where d ye s pose Tom s party air ? 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 107 
 
 Now there ll be fun, and no mistake I" broke delightedly from 
 different members of the group, as a fresh drink was proposed 
 in honor of the bearer of the happy tidings. 
 
 "But, Lafe," suggested the Judge anxiously, "there s no 
 tellin for sure that Tom and the York boys 11 happen along jest 
 at the right minute. Wouldn t it pay to kind o slip round taown 
 and let em know where these Ducks is?" 
 
 " Taint no use," replied Lafe; "the trap s all sot. They 
 know jest as well as we do where the Ducks hang aout. 
 You see now, there ll be the allfiredest, tearinest, sweet- 
 scented little riot in bout ten minutes, ever skeared up this side 
 o h ." 
 
 "If you think so," remarked Gilford, " don t you think we 
 had better go away ?" 
 
 "Go away!" echoed the Judge, wkh stupefied amazement. 
 " Go away 1 What fur ? 
 
 " What for ? Why, to%be safe out of the row to escape the 
 tumult, to be sure." 
 
 " Escape the toomult ! Why, my dear unsophisticated gene 
 ral, to see the toomult was jest what we come here for!" 
 
 "/come here to see a toomult" affirmed Mr. Sloper, sternly, 
 "and a toomult I ll have; or blood; and I don t kear a darn 
 which." 
 
 "Meanin , naterally," said the Judge, "a good knock-down 
 and drag-aout tight. That s your idee, ain t it, Lafe?" 
 
 " That was my meanin ," acquiesced Lafe, with acerbity, for 
 the^ notion of quitting any spot likely to be the scene of a row 
 was to him, perhaps, of almost all others, the most senseless and 
 distasteful. 
 
 "If I know merself intimately," continued Judge Skewer, 
 judicially, " and. this court thinks it does, nobody of this ere 
 party leaves until we see things through." 
 
 "There s too much talkiif agin," observed the Sheriff with a 
 menacing air, " between drinks. I don t feel good yit, I don t. 
 I don t take kindly to my rum when there s sech a heap o cacklin , 
 I don t. Charles, we air a repeatin !" 
 
 At this point a great hubbub arose near the doors, and pres 
 ently the crowd rolled back and opened a way to the bar for 
 the choice spirits termed by Sloper the "Ducks." They con 
 sisted, to speak plainly, of the very elite of the reckless and tur 
 bulent fighting men, or more commonly, " shoulder strikers." to 
 be found in. California. In the wild and lawless society which 
 then existed, this class of ruffians were highly important and in 
 fluential. Almost any one who became prominent, either as a 
 
198 . . MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 political candidate, a tavern or saloon keeper, a proprietor of 
 gambling rooms, or the like, found it necessary to propitiate, if 
 not to directly subsidize, this crew, under pain of defeat, failure, 
 or even personal molestation. Wherever they went, then, they 
 were received with affected if not real cordiality and joy ; and 
 their capacity at once for pommelling and robbing stood them 
 in as good stead as did ever similar repute the moss troopers or 
 black mailers of old. 
 
 Just at present their reign seemed likely to be disputed, and 
 their prestige to be impaired by fresh arrivals from the Atlantic 
 States. A deputation of notable prize-fighters, headed by a ce 
 lebrity famous for winning a recent desperate battle against a 
 hitherto invincible opponent, had landed from the last steamer, 
 and, after reconnoitring their ground, had coolly announced a 
 determination to " clean out " and supplant the autocrats now 
 holding undivided sway. This was barely a day or two before, 
 and furnished reason for the profound interest in forthcoming 
 events expressed by Skewer. Sloper & Co. Certainly no regime 
 could be worse than that of the desperadoes in power. Several 
 among them had been transported from Great Britain for divers 
 felonies, and their general moral tone was far below the average 
 of even their questionable kidney. On the other hand, the new 
 comers, although indubitably of the "fancy," were men who 
 had never been charged with crime ; and although there might 
 not have been much to choose between the factions so far as their 
 disposition towards fighting and riotous living were concerned, 
 the strangers had beyond question the cleanest hands, and in 
 view of their records were most likely to keep them so. It is 
 hardly necessary to add, for the information of those familiar 
 with the material of the dangerous classes in America, that the 
 horde in possession were chiefly foreigners, and that the arrivals 
 were almost all native-born. 
 
 The party which now swaggered into the hall were for the 
 most part very expensively dressed, their brawny shoulders being 
 cased in glossy broadcloth, and their inflamed, bull-dog-looking 
 faces surmounted by irreproachable castors. They all had ex 
 aggerated cerebellums, heavy jaw-bones, flinty brows, and defiant 
 expressions. There appeared to be a dozen or fifteen of them, 
 and as the crowd parted with respectful deference to allow their 
 passage to the bar, they evidently accepted the homage as rightly 
 due to the importance and dignity of their social position. They 
 were talking and gesticulating with great excitement and energy, 
 and they ordered champagne, several bottles of which were 
 promptly opened for their use. Gilford remarked, however, 
 
THE QUEST FOK FORTUNE. 109 
 
 that none of their number even offered to pay for it, and men 
 tioned the omission in an undertone to Sloper. 
 
 u If they was to ask one o them thar Ducks for pay." ex 
 plained the worthy, " the house d jest come down in about ten 
 minutes. They air on the fightin lay, they air, and they travel 
 on their shape." 
 
 " But," urged Hugh, " surely there must be some law, some 
 authority to protect people in the possession of their property ?" 
 
 " If any judge was to go back on them thar Ducks he d jest 
 git voted out of office so quick twould make his head swim." 
 
 "We must allow, then, that this is a very bad state of so 
 ciety." 
 
 "1 reckon ye d better not bile over on our glorious inster- 
 tooshuns," retorted Laihyette, turning one eye with extreme 
 suspicion on his interlocutor. " If that thar Britisher you re 
 travellin with has inocoolated ye with the pison out o that rot 
 ten old hum o his n, you d best not show it where the Ducks is. 
 The Ducks is awful sot agin praoud old aristocracies ; that s so ; 
 and they strike out awful bitter when they git riled." 
 
 Hugh promised to keep their propensities under consideration, 
 as in all prudence became him, explaining, meanwhile, to the 
 incredulous Sloper that his criticism bore only a local and tem 
 porary application, which, although perhaps it might be offen 
 sive to the Ducks, need not necessarily be so to any other pa 
 triot whatever. Pending this elucidation a tremendous howl 
 without, followed by a hasty scrambling together of their gold 
 and dust on the part of the " ; bankers" nearest the doors, gave 
 signal that some fresh incident was about to transpire. 
 
 " It s the York boys," cried Judge Skewer, rubbing his hands 
 in ecstasy ; ; it s Tom and the York boys. I know d they d come. 
 Let s take a drink for the very last, and then, gents, stand by for 
 squalls. Gineral Gifford, you jest freeze close to me, for bein 
 in. allers, with both gangs, I don t jine either too pop lar till I 
 see Avhich licks 1" 
 
 " Hooray I" roared Mayhem, Gallus, McCracken, and Adder, 
 in unison. " Hooray for them as licks I" 
 
 With a roar of sound like so many wild animals suddenly let 
 loose from their cages, the redoubted Flyer and his followers 
 came tearing, screeching, bellowing into the hall. Nearly all 
 were in red flannel snirts, a distinctive uniform, as it appeared, 
 in token of a democratic uprising against the hierarchy of the 
 Ducks. There was a perfect Babel of oaths, execrations, ques 
 tions, replies, and giving of the lie ; but where fifty voices were 
 speaking together, and at their utmost tension, it was idle even 
 
200 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 to try to get at the purport of their speech. There was a bran 
 dishing of gigantic fists, a scattering on all sides of the affrighted 
 throng who were not immediately of the hostile parties ; but al 
 though every one knew mischief was coming, none knew the 
 precise why or wherefore. Short was the parley, for, with the 
 rapidity of lightning, a towering figure of the "York boys" 
 threw himself right into the very centre of the group of Ducks. 
 Three of them went down almost instantly under this man s 
 sledge-hammer blows ; but they were soon up again, and then 
 the fight began in downright earnest. Every one of the two 
 parties was immediately hotly engaged. Over went the tables 
 in every direction, and coin, and bags, and iyory checks, and 
 boxes, rolling and tumbling about the floor, with their frantic 
 owners sprawling and grasping after them, added to the hideous 
 confusion. 
 
 Meanwhile Judge Skewer was fairly dancing with glee, and 
 the others of his company, as if the din were insufficient, roared 
 themseles quite purple with shouts which accompanied and set 
 off the row, as melodramatic action is illustrated by a " hurry" 
 in the orchestra. By this time, too, Mr. Sloper was standing on 
 the bar, and, not content with tossing wine-glasses and such tri 
 fles into the struggling mass, he finally, in a fit of enthusiasm, 
 launched the huge bowl at his feet, and which was filled with 
 broken ice, into the very midst of the combatants. A pistol- 
 shot from some unknown hand instantly rewarded this sally, 
 which, although it missed him, appeared to goad Lafayette to 
 madness ; for bottles, tumblers, all the articles on the shelves, 
 and at last even the stools behind the bar, were promptly em 
 ployed by him as projectiles. At the sound of fire-arms, Judge 
 Skewer, with extreme alacrity, got over the counter and packed 
 himself snugly beneath it, inviting his companions to do the 
 same. But Messrs. Mayhem and Adder had already decamped 
 for some other place of safety ; while Messrs. Gallus and 
 McCracken had become personally engaged in the combat. 
 , As for Gifford, he made a rush for the door, whence he es- 
 | caped, leaving the day still undecided ; the last object he remem 
 bered seeing in his retreat being the lank form of Mr. Sloper 
 standing on the counter, and, with a countenance perfectly im 
 movable, hurling champagne-bottles into the middle of the fray. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 201 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HUGH thought he had never seen Marian look so lovely as she 
 did the next morning when he called after her return from Con- 
 tracosta. Beautiful in his eyes she had ever been ; but the coarse 
 garb arid the commonplace surroundings which were inevitable 
 on the prairies or in the mines, if they could not destroy, were ill 
 calculated to set off her beauty. Hugh saw her now for the first 
 time under circumstances similar at least in some respects to 
 those among which she had been born and bred. The picture 
 was in something like its proper frame, and was no longer left to 
 depend exclusively on the delicacy of its outlines and the rich 
 ness of its coloring. 
 
 She wore a dress of some Chinese fabric, a pale lemon in hue, 
 and over this a black net shawl. Her magnificent black hair was 
 gathered in low. heavy folds to a simple knot behind, with no 
 meretricious convolutions to disturb the harmony of her pure 
 Greek profile. The olive cheek was tinged with a rosy flush, set 
 ting off to most bewitching advantage the inky, long eyelashes, 
 and the beautiful eyes they protected ; and the same cause that 
 flushed the cheek had set the bust heaving in a manner that no 
 less fair proportions could have counterfeited. The lips, always 
 so like coral, were as charming as ever ; the nose as delicate and 
 as suggestive of high breeding. The step too, so light, so fawn- 
 like as it always was, did not even fall upon Gifford s sense, eager 
 as he was to hear it, so that indeed she had to speak before he 
 knew of her presence. 
 
 Hugh had been shown into a back drawing-room rather richly 
 furnished in the French taste r and opening by windows which 
 descended to the floor upon a vine-shaded piazza without. 
 Through these vines far away, melting and fading into sky at the 
 horizon, stretched the blue Pacific. : I think most of us regret 
 that gloriously placid ocean who have left it. as we deem, to see 
 it no more. The contrast with the angry, boisterous Atlantic is 
 so very strong, the breezes which ruffle its smooth surface are for 
 the most part so gentle yet so refreshing, as compared with the 
 east winds and dismal fogs we have known too much of near 
 home, that we sigh to think the change was but for a time, and 
 that we have returned perforce to the old inhospitalities. But 
 Hugh s thoughts were not fixed on such contrasts as these. He 
 
202 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 was thinking in how short, how very short a time eight and 
 forty hours perchance Marian would be sailing away on this 
 glittering element, sailing away from all those friends with whom 
 she had crossed the plains, sailing away from him, Hugh, on 
 whose life she had wrought so great a change, sailing away to 
 return no more forever! 
 
 Alas for human hopes, and human faith ! Who of us shall 
 say that, we will do this or that which shall dare to echo the 
 boast of the impious conqueror when speaking of his purposes, 
 "Jc dis c cst moi qui propose et c est moiaussiqui cKspose," in the teeth 
 of bitter experience, and knowing how inevitably we have each 
 our petty Moscows as a crown and end of our best digested 
 plans, our most cherished hopes ! What schemes, what lofty re 
 solves, what unalterable determinations have melted, dissolved, 
 vanished like wreaths of vapor, before even a tinier assault than 
 lay in those musical words which broke at once Hugh s trance 
 and the surrounding silence : 
 ^" Won t you speak to me, Hugh T 9 
 
 A bright smile broke over the young man s face, and the blood 
 ran up to the roots of his hair like a girl s. 
 
 " Marian!" he exclaimed, and then rather awkwardly stopped. 
 
 " You hardly seem pleased to see me," continued she, "and 
 yet it is more than three months since you have done so." 
 
 " Three years !" said Hugh, half unconsciously. 
 
 "Not quite so long," said Marian, laughing; "but that is 
 meant for a compliment, I suppose. You were not used to pay 
 me compliments." 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Won t you sit down ? You were looking at the view, I see. 
 It is pretty, but nothing to compare with what you get from the 
 other side of the Bay." 
 
 "All!" 
 
 " It is quite lovely there. I ve often been since I came to the 
 city ; and yesterday I went with the children for the last 
 time." 
 
 " For the last time 1" Hugh repeated mechanically. 
 
 " Surely. Don t you remember I sail Wednesday? How dis 
 trait you are !" 
 
 " Distrait f 
 
 " You ve uttered nothing but monosyllables, and so far from 
 seeming glad to see me, you " 
 
 " Marian !" 
 
 She stopped, and neither spoke for at least a minute. The 
 truth is, Hugh was wrestling with all his might to suppress what 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 203 
 
 he feared each moment would escape him. This impassiveness, 
 justly complained of, was the veriest mask that could be imagin 
 ed, for the man s whole nature was stirred, and his heart was 
 rocking and swaying in a storm which he feared every instant 
 would bring it to shipwreck. How strange it is that men, ay, 
 and women too, although not so often, will so generally misun 
 derstand this sort of nature will believe that this cold, reserved, 
 self-contained exterior is the true exponent of that which lies be 
 low or within ! From the moment those lustrous eyes of 
 Marian s were fixed upon him, Hugh felt he was more and more 
 in danger of ceasing to be master of himself. That which re 
 strained him from throwing himself headlong at the girl s feet, 
 and then and there pouring forth the wildest, the most over 
 whelming tale of passion, seemed so delicate, so fragile, that he 
 marvelled then and afterwards that he did not throw down or over 
 leap it. When they had been constantly together there had been 
 far less risk of such an explosion. But the cruel void, the un 
 speakable vacuum Marian s departure had left behind he had now 
 felt in all its bitterness, and his soul yearned to prevent its per 
 manency. The shock of seeing her again was striking chords 
 in his breast of exquisite melody transcendent harmony ; was 
 bringing back lovely scenery, delicious perfumes ; all that 
 seems most delightful in life, all that ever reconciles to its woes 
 and cares, came back in a flood of intoxicating memory, as of 
 things which he had regarded as passed away, dead forever, and 
 yet they were here and alive again. And Virginia ? 
 
 Yes, Marian was right, in that sense, in thinking as she wrote 
 " it had been better otherwise." When she fulfilled her promise, 
 however, she was only reckoning on her own strength, and 
 thought nothing of any possible strain upon Hugh s. As for 
 him, he kept on looking at the ocean, and then at the floor, and 
 then, irresistibly impelled, at Marian again, and then fell thinking 
 of honor and firmness, and Europe and Armstrong s Bar. and of 
 how he ought to have undergone some process of purification be 
 fore coming from the presence of Judge Skewer and Mr. Sloper 
 into that of Marian ; and then, all of a sudden, awoke to the 
 consciousness that he was expected to say something. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Rooke, that is, Marian, you were very kind to 
 write ; and we are all very sorry to think you are going to leave 
 California," he said, at last, in a measured, business-like tone ; 
 t; and as it was necessary two of us should come down to the 
 Bay on another account the coincidence was fortunate. Dr. 
 Landale came down with me, and is also quite anxious to see 
 you. He would have called this morning, but " 
 
204 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Here he caught Marian s eyes ; a look which turned the dis 
 simulating drift of his sentence, and ended it in truth as it were 
 with the force of destiny. 
 
 but that I devised a plan to induce him to wait till the 
 afternoon," he finished desperately. 
 
 Marian laughed quite unsuspectingly. " I shall be very glad 
 to see him. The Doctor is sometimes rough, but he is so 
 straightforward, and, as I think, so trustworthy, that one can 
 not help respecting him. And how are all the others at the 
 Bar ? I hacl a letter or two from dear Kitty short, though 
 and the last some weeks ago. Are they all well ?" 
 
 "Yes all well. Living the same life seeing the same sights 
 hoping the same hopes as when you left us." 
 
 "And you have been fortunate?" 
 
 " In gold-hunting, you mean 1 ? Not so much so as before. I 
 don t know whether the charm lay in you or in Mr. Pangburn, 
 but we have never done worse than in these last three months." 
 
 " So that you are becoming discontented again." 
 
 "Becoming? I am always discontented, I fear. You know, 
 of course, I have nothing to do but to grind on to the end of the 
 chapter. There is no chance for me in life no hope but that 
 gold is its stepping-stone. So for gold I must e en still work." 
 
 They had seated themselves on a Chinese sofa, placed con 
 veniently on the piazza, and Marian had pulled off her gloves 
 for she had been walking in the garden, it seems, and was 
 propping them up mechanically in her lap, one against the other, 
 as if they had fingers in them. 
 
 " You have tjoubtless frequently heard from Miss Chester 
 from Virginia ?" 
 
 " Oh yes," muttered Hugh, a slight shiver running in 
 voluntarily through his frame; "several times since I saw 
 you." 
 
 " She is well and happy, I hope?" 
 
 " Here is her last letter," said Hugh, half offering it to Marian, 
 as if thus best to answer her question. "It contains nothing 
 which is indelicate for another a friend to read." he added, 
 seeing a slight movement of rejection. 
 
 "I would rather not read it, please," said Marian, gently, but 
 quite positively. 
 
 " Then I will read it or parts of it to you." And he did 
 so, calmly and dispassionately, as if it were a paragraph from a 
 newspaper. There might have been just a trace of irony here 
 and there in passages which were least equivocal as to the para 
 mount thoughts in the writer s mind, but only a trace. A shadow 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 205 
 
 came over Marian s brow as she listened, and when Hugh 
 ended she looked somewhat pained. 
 
 "She has false lights bad counsellors," she said, perceiving 
 that Gifford looked for some criticism ; " but you must undo all 
 that. You will teach her higher views nobler aims and re 
 deem her from the bad effects of this village gossip which sur 
 rounds her." 
 
 " And when am I to begin this work of reformation V 
 
 "Begin? Now ; at any, at all times. In your letters ; you 
 write to her, do you not ?" 
 
 " Yes. Regularly, almost, since we came to the country ; 
 and you see with what effect." 
 
 Ah, but have you striven to make a change to divert her 
 mind into new channels?" 
 
 " Have I a right to censure her for our common weakness 
 if it is one ? To criticise the mote without seeking to cast out 
 the beam ? Why, it is on this point that we are most in sym 
 pathy. The similarity shows how well we are adapted for each 
 other." 
 
 "This bitterness is misplaced on such a subject," said Marian, 
 earnestly. u If I did not know you better, I should think you 
 heartless. Your duty is plainly to elevate and improve, not to 
 cavil or sneer at weaknesses wherein you admit you have your 
 self a share. What I Are we placed here to deal in such a spirit 
 with characters whose growth is clearly, and for a wise purpose, 
 entrusted to our care characters which it is given us to nurture 
 and foster even as if they were those of little children ? Do you 
 think so poorly of yourself that you do not feel strong enough 
 capable enough to undertake such an obvious care, such a man 
 ifest duty ?" 
 
 "Marian," answered Hugh, humbly and sadly, " it is easy for 
 the prosperous to condemn the short-comings of the needy, and 
 the world will never go backwards for the want of censure from 
 those who have never felt the temptation to the crime they con 
 temn. There is something wrong about me radically wrong, I 
 fear ; and to be at fault in this one thing may be only one symp 
 tom of a pervading disease. I loathe the society in which I am 
 placed not the Armstrongs, or the others at the Bar, but the 
 circles at large wherein my life has been passed in the years gone 
 by must be passed, I suppose, for those to come. This may be 
 another sign of the same malady. What then ? There have been 
 discontented egotists before my time ; like them I shall live, die, 
 and be forgotten." 
 
 " You are wronging yourself now," said Marian, " this is also 
 
206 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 mere bitterness, like the rest ; and what has it to do with Vir 
 ginia ?" 
 
 "Only that I am asking chanty; the charity a man seeks from 
 those who can have never felt the ills which led to his fall. I can 
 feel although you may not quite think it the felicity that may 
 lie in teaching, guarding, training to nobler life and higher beau 
 ty, a certain favored being. I know how the doting mother can 
 make for herself a paradise in merely hanging over the footsteps 
 of her tottering child. I can feel that without this relation 
 that of parent and offspring such happiness may be as great, 
 such solicitude may be as tender. It is not hard to picture a man 
 and a woman in such a light. She is young, lovely, and most 
 engaging ; but, through the accident of fortune, unenlightened, 
 ignorant, perhaps even misdirected ; and yet her character is full 
 of the germs of nobleness and generosity, her intellect is stored 
 with undeveloped ability. The man, with better opportunities, 
 with more enlarged experience, devotes himself to the task of im 
 proving this charming being of leading her to the utmost heights 
 of excellence which she is capable of attaining. How noble, how 
 glorious such an undertaking ! What happiness to watch, while 
 tending, each shoot of perception, each bud of maturing intelli 
 gence I What rapture to find each year, each month, each day 
 bringing forth its fruit of grateful symmetry and increasing ex 
 cellence to cheer and reward his exertions I What bliss to be 
 hold at last a creature beautiful and perfect in soul as in body, 
 and to feel that such an ideal work has been partly due to his 
 own self-paying labors his own happy toils ! Think of the joy 
 that Phidias or such as he have felt in the mere cold, speechless 
 marble whence they have hewn their marvellous conceptions 
 and then compare it with his ecstasy who, as it were, has created 
 intelligence instead of matter a soul instead of a body !" 
 
 " Such a task, such a labor," exclaimed Marian with enthusi 
 asm, "should be yours with Virginia." 
 
 " You forget," said Hugh, with averted face, " that to such a 
 labor one thing is indispensable." 
 
 " Which is " 
 
 " That it should be one of love," said Hugh, in a very low 
 voice. 
 
 " Good heavens ! you don t surely mean " 
 
 " You do not understand me ?" 
 
 " I hope I do not. I would not think of you as capricious or 
 wilful ; as forgetting good feeling, justice, honor. And yet " 
 
 " And yet you would think all these were I to confess that I 
 do not love Virginia Chester ?" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 207 
 
 " Indeed, I had rather believe that you were exaggerating or 
 misstating, or misconceiving your true feelings ; that you had been 
 distressed by unpleasing foibles, perhaps, annoyed by traits 
 which were rather reflected from others than natural to Virginia 
 herself ; and so that you were led to speak hastily and thought 
 lessly ; but that you wronged yourself and her in speaking so, 
 and that in your heart of hearts you truly loved Virginia still." 
 
 Gifford turned and looked straight in Marian s eyes. 
 
 " Would you, Marian, would you indeed rather believe so ?" 
 
 Could he himself have stood such a question and such a test ! 
 I doubt it. Was it the truth which came in response from Ma 
 rian s lips- ? I doubt it. But what moralist can tell the nice dis 
 tinctions between right and wrong in such a case ? I cannot an 
 swer, and can only tell what Marian did and what she said ; ex 
 cept I will aver that if she spoke falsely then, she never did be 
 fore. There was a little rising in her throat, bravely choked, 
 and she looked unfalteringly in Gifford s face and said : 
 
 " For your honor s sake I would indeed, Hugh Gilford." 
 
 There was a long pause again, and Hugh looked far out on the 
 smiling blue sea and heaved a great sigh. And Marian occupied 
 herself some time in smoothing her gloves out very assiduously 
 on her knee. It was she who broke the silence and changed the 
 subject in the dexterous fashion women have : 
 
 " And they are all well, you say, and going on in the same old 
 way ?" 
 
 " Yes ; just the same." 
 
 "I wish to send them some things ^-some little keepsakes; 
 you ll take them for me, will you not 1 ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, unquestionably." 
 
 "Two dresses, and one or two little tobacco-boxes and trinkets, 
 and some books for Luke, and a collar for Lion," proceeded 
 Marian, as if it were needful to give an inventory of her con 
 signment. 
 
 " Books for Luke ?" 
 
 "I promised them. He is ambitious, poor Luke, and, very 
 worthily, wishes to improve himself." 
 
 " He is ambitious, I think," said Hugh, pointedly. 
 
 Marian colored. Could he suspect, she thought, the mournful 
 scene before her departure ? If he did, what matter? Only Marian 
 somehow did not like to believe Hugh knew of Luke s attach 
 ment or the revelation of it. 
 
 "I saw him have a book of yours once," continued Hugh, "a 
 little Testament." 
 
 "He has it now," said Marian, simply. Luke had indeed 
 
208 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 begged the volume of her just after his rejection, and she had 
 not the heart to refuse it. She would not have chosen to men 
 tion the fact, but since he had made the allusion, she saw that 
 Hugh would think her disingenuous if she withheld it, and he 
 were afterwards by chance to see the book in Luke s possession. 
 " He asked me for it before I left the Bar, and I gave it him." 
 
 " And I," said Hugh, not without pique, " I am the only one 
 to be left without a keepsake !" 
 
 " You are too hasty," replied Marian, laughing, "in coming 
 to such a conclusion. You ll wait, . please, until you get your 
 package before being quite so certain." 
 
 " With that hint I surely will, and fancy myself, as Lear says 
 
 of poor Cordelia, t though last not least in your dear " 
 
 "Nay," interrupted Marian, with a quick impulse suppressing 
 the coming word, "I have no such wealth as the unhappy old 
 king had to distribute." 
 
 "And so will escape an ungrateful return ?" 
 "And have no need, I know, to purchase any return save the 
 one which will be mine without guerdon to be kindly remem 
 bered." 
 
 " Only kindly, Marian V> 
 
 " Perhaps I might have said, affectionately. " 
 "You might, indeed." 
 
 "I know well," continued Marian, thoughtfully, "how very 
 fortunate I was, alone and helpless, with none to speak in my 
 behalf, and appearances, perhaps, rather against me how very 
 fortunate to chance among such kind friends as the Armstrongs 
 proved to be. I can never forget good Uncle Seth s trusting, 
 fatherly confidence shown from the very first or worthy Mrs. 
 Armstrong s quaint, bustling kindness ; or dear Kitty s simple- 
 hearted love, fond and clinging as a sister s." 
 "And Luke?" 
 
 "He has a heart of gold, Hugh. Rustic and untutored as he 
 is, I don t think there breathes an honester spirit a more guile 
 less nature. But all were good to me ; even blunt, rough Dick, 
 who always wanted me for a confidante in his addresses to 
 Kitty. And as to poor Ichabod and his inseparable companion, 
 I have felt as if leaving them for ever in this manner were like 
 leaving part of one s self behind." 
 
 They were both looking seaward, and, as they gazed on the 
 glittering expanse, the boom of a gun rolled solemnly in to the 
 land, and the next moment a long, t black steamship glided 
 swiftly into sight, making straight for the Heads, the portals of 
 the Golden Gate. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 209 
 
 " Marian," cried Gifford suddenly, " why go at all ? we were 
 all very happy together at the Bar, and none of us are sure to 
 be so elsewhere. None could have ever been more discontented 
 than I had been in my previous life, but there at least when 
 you were there I was nearer to happiness than ever before. 
 You have blamed me for restlessness in wishing to quit it ; and 
 yet you do so for less reason. As to independence, none can be 
 more truly independent than those who, like you, give far more 
 than they take. Think of the many happy hours you have 
 passed there, Marian. Think of the old walk by the river, and 
 the dear little lake perched up among the hills ; think of the 
 many kind souls who loved and valued you so highly, and whom 
 you were always in return teaching and improving ; think of the 
 seclusion, the placid content, the unbroken peace we all enjoyed 
 shut out from the jars, the clamorings, the heartburnings of the 
 world Ah, Marian, will you find better friends, will you find 
 securer shelter than in that little nest of ours, all homely as it 
 is ? Will you find solace, when care and pain perchance shall 
 come and seek you amid strangers, in the thought that you have 
 thus needlessly been tempted to fly away and abandon it? 
 Marian, dear Marian, give up this wild scheme of wandering 
 forth alone over the earth; give it up, and gladden all our 
 hearts by going back home with me to the Bar !" 
 
 Marian s color came and went as he spoke, her lips parted 
 eagerly, and the white teeth behind them seemed clenched as if 
 in resistance to an impulse which strove hard for mastery. Why 
 was it that this man whom she had sought to purify and exalt 
 should now be urging her to that which conscience taught her 
 to be wrong ? And yet how was it that she should censure him 
 thus when he must be ignorant of her strongest motives for re 
 sistance? Alas! she was far better than Hugh, for he had 
 yielded in a burst of wild impulsive selfishness to the same tempt 
 ation that she in her purity was proof against. 
 
 "No, Hugh," she answered quietly and steadily, " no, that 
 cannot be; do not urge it. It pains me much, very much. 
 Pray speak of it no more." 
 
 "And we who remain," he exclaimed almost angrily, " our 
 pain, you think nothing of that !" 
 
 She turned her eyes full upon him with a mournful expression 
 that made Gifford hate himself for the temper of his speech, and 
 yearn to go down on his knees again for pardon s sake, as he 
 had yearned to do before for adoration s. 
 
 " You do not think that, Hugh, although you say it ; you will 
 be sorry for it when I am gone." 
 
210 MARIAN KOOKE; OR, 
 
 He caught up the delicate little hand which lay on her lap toy 
 ing nervously with its glove, and he had never even approached 
 the doing such a thing before he pressed upon it one single, 
 passionate kiss. She drew it gently away with something of 
 surprise, and, as she did so, their eyes met, and Marian shivered 
 from head to foot as if sickened with a sudden chill. For at 
 that instant she became possessed of a secret such as Hugh him 
 self discovered on the night he saw Luke with Marian s Testa 
 ment. 
 
 " You must leave me now," she said, with a half bewildered, 
 half frightened air. We shall meet again before I sail. That 
 is, perhaps you will call once again to get the parcels, you 
 know. I I doivt like sending you away, but there is a great 
 deal to do and " 
 
 " I go, Marian," said Hugh, relieving her evident embarrass- 
 ment ; " only don t let me go thinking I have oifended you." 
 
 " Oh, no, no," she replied ; " the time is too short for any of 
 fences to be given or taken." 
 
 And that was all. I have been wrong, thought Hugh," unea 
 sily, as he went down the steps, very wrong, and hasty as a spoilt 
 child. And yet, he murmured to himself, I should have thought 
 she would have shown more feeling. Wise judges these men 
 often are ! Could he at that moment have looked into poor 
 Marian s little chamber, he would have seen her stretched on the 
 bed, weeping her heart out in a passion of desperate, sickening 
 tears. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " THIS is not precisely a model city," said Gifford, when the 
 Doctor and he compared notes as to their discoveries and expe 
 riences. 
 
 "It is a very charming spectacle," quoth the Doctor, com- 
 plaisantly, " of our dear democracy run mad. I must confess 
 they have been entirely consistent here, and have by no means 
 done things by halves. It is a picture in little of the great re 
 public, with a slight exaggeration in details necessary to bring 
 out the whole force of the subject. It is a thorough-going at 
 tempt to demonstrate the possibility of making a pyramid stand 
 upon its apex with a heaven-kissing base ; and to tell you the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 211 
 
 truth, I for one would rather be anywhere else when the experi 
 ment is just, at its poising acme, for, whoever is hurt, those be 
 low are sure to be." 
 
 The gold discovery." returned Hugh, willing to find an ex 
 cuse for a state of things which yet was as repulsive to himself 
 as to his companion, * brought quickly to the place not only 
 manv of the most enterprising, but a great number of the most 
 lawless of our eastern population. It seems the inevitable late 
 of new countries. Virginia and the Carolinas were largely pop 
 ulated, you know, by thieves and cut-throats, and. more lately, 
 so have been your settlements in Australia. To be sure, in these 
 cases, expatriation was involuntary, but the result appears to be 
 a common one. Men who have forfeited social position at home 
 are very naturally led to flock to a country where social distinc 
 tions are as yet unknown." 
 
 "Ay, but," argued the Doctor, "it s just that of which I 
 complain. There are people of education here, people of breed 
 ing and character 5 men who have all the knowledge, if they had 
 only the will, to bring matters to a more creditable pass, to put 
 down the disgraceful scenes we see ail around us, to make the 
 community, in a word, a respectable one. There are such peo 
 ple, and with such a capacity ; but here, as in the Atlantic States, 
 tlu if won t exert it. They lie down supinely, and allow the very 
 scum of the earth to ride over them rough-shod suffer them to 
 make their city a bye-word and a jeer for the civilized world 
 just because they think of nothing but making money, and are 
 too lazy or too cowardly to apply the necessary remedies." 
 
 There has been so little time," extenuated Hugh : u we can t 
 fairly blame men for not acting before they ve had time to turn 
 round." 
 
 " Perhaps not. And there is, moreover, the blissful consola 
 tion that it can t last. In a very large city like Xew York, the 
 Irish mob pugilists, dramsellers. and gamblers may have their 
 way for a longer space, because their abuses are not so glaringly 
 conspicuous, and there are some little unhappily very little 
 but still some preorganized social adjustments which they cannot 
 utterly defy and overthrow. But here they are first on the 
 ground here they come in with the conqueror ; and hence 
 they re safe to run so rampant that a struggle is inevitable, 
 wherein either they or all other classes in the community must 
 succumb. This is the true goal of sans culottcism, and the only 
 pity is that when the example comes, the rest of the country 
 won t profit by it." 
 
 " Twill come on a larger scale in good time," said GLfford, 
 
212 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 thoughtfully ; " we are fast getting to the extremest limit of 
 practical democracy, and I believe all historical precedents war 
 rant the theory that, once having reached that limit, the scale 
 must begin to gravitate the other way. But you must admit 
 that, whatever the evils you find in our system universal or 
 manhood suffrage, election of judges, licentiousness of the press, 
 the elevation of ignorant or depraved men to power you must 
 allow that the most injurious effects are largely due to immigrants 
 from your own islands. There is nothing in the American sys 
 tem, so far as it touches those matters, which need have been al 
 tered or amended for years to come, had it been applicable to 
 Americans alone. You predict a social convulsion in this very 
 little city ; such a necessity would be obviated, or would never 
 have existed, if the adventurers consisted exclusively of natives 
 of the country. The turbulent, the vicious, the Red Republi 
 cans, the proposers and fomenters of fire and sword for eveiy 
 European country which lives under a monarchy, are almost to a 
 man foreigners, and generally subjects of the very countries 
 whose institutions they are so anxious to subvert." 
 
 " Ay, they want to make all the other foxes cut off their tails, 
 and so they may in good time ; but only to go through the nat 
 ural process that you Americans will first set the example of do 
 ing that of persuading them to grow again." 
 
 " Perhaps so ; for it seems that there is a predestined round 
 of national vicissitudes which, sooner or later, none are to es 
 cape. But, in the mean time, I honestly believe that with all 
 her defects there is much in America which is truly excellent, 
 encouraging, and instructive to mankind." 
 
 " And so do I," said the Doctor heartily; " and so will most 
 men, east or west, who are not more anxious to serve party than 
 to serve truth. But so long as our English conservatives swear 
 that the republic is all bad, and our English radicals vow that it 
 is all good whilst amid their eternal racket no more reasonable 
 voices can be heard it will be very hard for untravelled men to 
 get at a really fair notion of the facts. And what complicates 
 the matter more is, that your own parties on this side are always 
 playing into the hands of the parties on the other that hate them 
 best."^ 
 
 "There is nothing left in such a dilemma," observed Hugh, 
 " but to neutralize the mischief-makers and promote good will 
 by the constant encouragement of education and intelligence." 
 
 " Just so," assented the Doctor, " and to bear witness to facts 
 as you see them in both countries without reserve, and espe 
 cially as against the interested or partisan propagation of false- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 213 
 
 hoods. To speak the truth at all times without fear or favor, 
 and stick to it." 
 
 "Amen," said Hugh, as they strolled into the Plaza. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE day, which had opened so bright and fairy -like, became 
 dark and lowering as it grew older. The ah , which had been 
 so clear and elastic, became dense and oppressive. The color 
 ing, all blue and gold, which Hugh and Marian had admired so 
 much in the morning, was replaced by gray and lead. Great 
 black clouds came rolling and overlapping each other in from 
 the sea, and heavy drops, like skirmishers musketry, heralded 
 the approach of the storm. Sudden and violent gusts of wind, 
 which would often lay low many a tent on the neighboring hill 
 sides, tore through the streets, ripping off signs, and threatening 
 to prostrate the fragile edifices to which they were attached. 
 The rainy season was beginning," and this was but a specimen 
 of many a gay and laughing morning it would bring, to be fol 
 lowed by a morose and scowling noon, "and a desperately tem 
 pestuous night. By-and-by the water would pour down in 
 literal floods, penetrating every roof, making impassable every 
 street, transforming the town almost into a lake. These cata 
 racts would descend the live-long night without cessation, and 
 the stranger would be astonished, on looking forth in the morn 
 ing, to see again the smiling, treacherous blue, the bay without 
 a ripple, and the air without a sigh. 
 
 The Doctor and Gifford had sought shelter in one of the pal 
 aces of pleasure on the square, where, as might have been ex 
 pected, they soon fell hi with Judge Skewer and Mr. Sloper. 
 The latter had a huge black patch over one eye, which by no 
 means contributed to the prepossessing effect of his appearance, 
 and the Judge had a generally swollen air, which led Hugh to 
 think he must have kept on drinking ever since he last saw him, 
 an impression not far from the truth. 
 
 " The Yorkers has licked," he exclaimed, exultingly, to Hugh, 
 " and the Sydney Ducks ain t nowhere. Two on em had their 
 ribs stove in, and Belcher Gay s got one eye aout and the other 
 in the water-bucket. I ve put Tom on my committee. Major, 
 and as soon as he finds time to git sober he s goin in for Skewer 
 
214 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 and Liberty. Lafe s a nice-lookin article, ain t he 1 He fired 
 one bottle too many, that s the hull on t, and some cuss fired it 
 back and belted him over the head." 
 
 " And I ve got my eye on him," added Lafe, turning his head 
 on one side, and fixing it on the Doctor with awful malevolence ; 
 " and the pieces inter which he will be redooced when I git a 
 right fair chance to whittle air exceedin small." 
 
 " But really," said Giffbrd, with a faint idea that the provoca 
 tion giren by Mr. Sloper might be presumed to justify that ap 
 peal to the law of retaliation which had evidently been resorted 
 to, " you might have expected an attack, standing on the coun 
 ter as you did, and pelting both sets of combatants, and " 
 
 " When there air a Time," interrupted Mr. Sloper, with grave 
 superiority, " them kind o chicken fixins is counted in, and 
 there ain t no back action." 
 
 "The Public," expounded the Judge, with Eldonian deliber 
 ation, " bein in a free country, reserves the right to sail in and 
 add to the pervadin hilarity in- a gineral way, knives and shoot 
 ers bein barred. A princerple," he added, perceiving that his 
 ruling was accepted with some doubt by a portion of his audi 
 ence, " which has its origin in the idee that sech folks purchases 
 immoonity by voluntary contributions to the great sum of hu 
 man enj yment." 
 
 " And aidin in the pUrsoot of happiness the industrious por 
 tion of the risin generation," said Mr. Sloper. 
 
 "Meanwhile," continued Judge Skewer, "this court doesn t 
 recolleck the distinguished feller citizen it sees afore it. Major 
 GhTord, I ll permit you to interdoose. Vamos. Purceed." 
 
 " Oh," said Hugh, "I beg pardon, I m sure. This, Judge, is 
 my friend and co-laborer, Doctor Landale. Doctor Landale, 
 Judge Skewer. Mr. Lafayette Sloper, Doctor Landale ; a dis 
 tinguished physician, engineer, and naturalist." 
 
 "I m tickled to know ye," condescended Mr. Sloper, changing 
 his eye on the Doctor, " although ye air what some folks thinks 
 a leetle orcriateral, bein a Britisher ; but I m tickled to know 
 ye." 
 
 " A Britisher !" echoed the Judge, pausing in the muscular 
 process of hand-shaking, and holding the Doctor at arm s 
 length ; "a Britisher !" he repeated, scrutinizing him with the 
 curiosity and interest he would have bestowed on some strange 
 phenomenon. " Not a Duck, and yit not naturalized ?" he con 
 tinued, doubtfully. 
 
 The Doctor explained that he had . never been in Australia, 
 and was unfortunately equally far, for the present, from being 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 215 
 
 an American citizen ; whereupon the Judge drew a large pocket- 
 handkerchief, wiped his shining red face, took off his hat. pushed 
 back his racist golden hair, and proceeded in an exalted key : 
 
 " Ah* you from that onhappy and down-trodden land ? Be 
 you the subjick of a remorseless tyrant ? Hev you been a goin 
 up and down the airth grindin and stornpin on the poor, or hev 
 you been one o the poor, and got ground and stomped on your 
 self?" 
 
 The Doctor blandly described his social position at home as 
 having been equally removed from either category ; but could 
 not resist adding that, from what he had learned, "more people 
 had been " stomped " on in the place they were in of late, than 
 he had ever heard of as being subjected to the process in his na 
 tive land. 
 
 " Ah !" said the Judge, with compassion, " that s cause them 
 bloated minions of a tyrant s power keep things so drefful dark. 
 They re afeard an outraged and long-sufferin people will rise in 
 their wrath and hurl em in the dust. It s quite nateral. You 
 hain t got no free and independent press like our n, hev ye, 
 now r*--. 
 
 " Why," admitted the Doctor, " not precisely like yours, per 
 haps ; but it s progressing fast, and I think may fairly be said 
 in some respects to rival it. Our newspapers are as large as 
 yours, they are fast getting as cheap, and will soon, therefore, 
 become as personal." 
 
 " The more cheap and the more personal they git to be," re 
 turned the Judge, ; - the better the chance for the sufferin masses. 
 What s wanted is that the misdeeds of them that sit in high 
 places should be dug aout, and held up to the light in all their 
 hidjus deformity. And when the people s quit respectin their 
 rulers, they ll naterally take more to respectin theirselves ; bein 
 the true aim of good government, and the hull duty of man." 
 
 With this parenthetical protest against the institutions of 
 Britain, Judge Skewer immediately became extremely cordial to 
 her representative, and insisted upon his joining him in a glass 
 of champagne then and there, which the Doctor, willing to 
 change the subject, readily agreed to. 
 
 " I m aware," said the Judge, assuming an ah* of great famil 
 iarity with English domestic habits, as the party made then* way 
 to the bar, that your folks don t drink nuthin but beer, and 
 that ere thick muck ye call porter ; but bein , as we ah*, the de 
 scendants of a common mother, p raps we can jine for once in 
 the same milk." 
 This sentiment commanding general acquiescence, the spark- 
 
216 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ling beverage was soon forthcoming and disposed of, whereupon 
 the Judge with great alacrity ordered another bottle, which, in 
 spite of their remonstrances, he almost forced his guests to con 
 sume. " I m cock o the walk," he affirmed ; "this here s my 
 dunghill, and I kin do all the crowin ;" a metaphor whereby he 
 meant to convey that no one else should offer to pay for the wine 
 previously or thereafter to be drunk in the place. 
 
 " The Gin ral," exclaimed Judge Skewer, as he warmed with 
 the second bottle, and, having promoted Hugh successively 
 through the intermediate grades, gazed at him with affectionate 
 enthusiasm, " The Gin ral s one o my boys, he is ; and to-night 
 it s my intention to hist the rag, and show him and our distin 
 guished British feller-citizen here, a boundin , riotous old ele 
 phant, and nothin shorter." 
 
 The company was augmented at this point by the arrival of 
 Messrs. Gallus and McCracken, the former with his arm in a 
 sling, and the latter with a bandage about his head, and the 
 Judge at once became highly interested in the recital of their 
 exploits and the condition of their wounds. Mr. Sloper went a 
 little distance from the group to where a large earthen vase 
 stood on the counter, from which he extracted a mass of fine-cut 
 tobacco, which he stuffed into, his mouth. Catching Hugh s 
 eye while engaged in this operation, he beckoned him to ap 
 proach, and on that gentleman s complying, Lafayette whispered 
 in his ear: 
 
 " I hain t got no bet on the Britisher, and he kin do as he 
 likes ; but don t you git to playin keards with the Judge to 
 night, that s all." 
 
 "I! Why? asked Hugh, who, without any idea of doing 
 so, was curious as to the reason for the prohibition. 
 
 " Why ? Cause if ye do, the chances are he ll skin ye alive ; 
 and if he happened to lose, jest as like s not he d knife "ye ; and 
 whar would ye be either way ? I tell ye, so s ye can watch how 
 the critter works, and draw out when there s a good chance. 
 The Judge is a smashin good feller, but keards is his lay. He s 
 smarter on em than greased lightnin ; likewise he is a two- 
 edged sword, cuttin both friend and foe. So don t blame me 
 if ye run agin him." 
 
 " I never play," said Hugh ; " but thank you all the same." 
 
 " Folks air up to all kinds o capers they never do," replied 
 Sloper, philosophically, "when they git enough champagne into 
 em. My idee is, to wind up the evenin s amusements at Steve 
 Whipple s. You hev there a square game, a nice supper, and 
 fewer of the roughs than at these here open institutions." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 217 
 
 "In other words, a hell conducted on aristocratic principles ?" 
 
 Mr. Sloper frowned. " There ain t nuthin aristocratic bout it 
 onless it s givin credick to likely buckers when they run aout o 
 tin. The "pint is, that up to Steve s they turn for too much 
 money for free fightin to pay. Consequently it s wuth his while 
 to allow somethin to the shoulder-hittin boys to stay away." 
 
 An animated discussion here arose from an attempt on the part 
 of the Doctor to make his escape, having, as he alleged, impor 
 tant letters to write and further purchases to effect of necessaries 
 to take back to the Bar. But the Judge was in that state of 
 mind that he had become extremely obstinate, and he coolly de 
 clared that if either the General or his British fellow-citizen 
 wanted to leave, they would have to fight him, Skewer, as an in 
 dispensable precedent ; and that, so far at least as that night was 
 concerned, it was his intention to live and die with them. In 
 vain did the Doctor plead his engagements, backed by the cor- 
 I oborating testimony of Gifford. You air in a minority, gen 
 tlemen," said the Judge, appealing to Sloper, Gallus, and 
 M Cracken ; ; and in this here free country minorities has no 
 rights the majorities are bound to respeck." 
 
 " But at least," urged the Doctor, %t the majority will allow us 
 to go and get our dinners ?" 
 
 " The majority," pronounced the immovable Skewer, " will 
 dine along with ye ; and from this decision there is no appeal." 
 
 The ram was falling in torrents, and there really seemed noth 
 ing better for it than to accept the Judge s proposal that the 
 party should dine together at a celebrated French restaurant hard 
 by ; a conclusion to which Hugh and the Doctor soon came. 
 Nor did they find cause, in a gastronomical sense, to regret 
 their acquiescence, since the cuisine and the wines were found to 
 be altogether superior to any they had seen in California. The 
 market of San Francisco is now famous for its variety and abun 
 dance ; and even in the day we write of, its fish and game, 
 served by French cooks and washed down by French wines, were 
 conceded even by fastidious travellers to be exceptionally meri 
 torious for so new and so savage a country. Once at table, the 
 Judge made great efforts to be agreeable, and if he did not in 
 the very fullest sense succeed, it is but fair to acknowledge that 
 he was often highly amusing. He gave a graphic account of the 
 first discoveries of the gold ; showed by what curious vagaries 
 of fortune all those who were first on the ground, and who might 
 have rivalled or surpassed Rotchschild in the vastness of then- 
 possessions, had been swindled or cajoled out of then- property, 
 or had been so dazzled by its sudden acquisition that then- heads 
 10 
 
218 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 gave way, and they took to systematic gambling or drinking, or, 
 more frequently, to both, and so ended in utter ruin. He told 
 wondrous stories of people who never before had a second coat, 
 arriving here and becoming millionaires in a month ; of others 
 who brought capital carefully hoarded by fathers and uncles and 
 employers at home, and sent out to found a business under the au 
 spices of the steady ones who were never known before to take 
 a glass of wine, to win or lose sixpence at play, or to look 
 askance at a pretty girl ; and how in six months the capital was 
 all in the faro banks, and the steady ones hopelessly engulfed in 
 the lowest depths of dissipation. He described the extraordinary 
 adventures of Johnny Byng, who "tapped" all the great banks 
 of Sacramento in one night, and came down and was himself tap 
 ped at Whipple s in another ; of how, on being again staked by 
 an old partner, he had gone up into the interior, and returned in 
 six weeks with three hundred thousand dollars ; and how Dock 
 et s bank had agreed to let him stake two hundred thousand ef 
 it on a single card ; and how Johnny lost ; but took his other 
 hundred thousand safely home, settled down on a farm in 
 New Jersey, and never gambled more. Then he declared that 
 John C. Fremont was the richest landowner in the world ; and 
 on some faint mention of the names of Westminster and Buc- 
 cleuch from the Doctor, swore that the Mariposa property alone 
 was worth more than double the possessions of both those fortu 
 nate noblemen put together. The question of property suggest 
 ed the histories of all manner of lucky tinkers and tailors and 
 what not who had come here miserably poor, and who, by 
 marrying their washerwomen or being "agents" for somebody, 
 had grown to be stupendously rich. It appeared remarkable how 
 often these two rather curious methods of rising in the world had 
 been adopted by wily adventurers as young Ambition s ladders. 
 But when washing was twenty-four dollars a dozen, and real 
 estate went up cent-per-cent in a month, the modus operandi may 
 be easily imagined. The Judge was quite right when he cited, 
 in illustration of the mutability of fortune, the cases of Yankee 
 snips and pedlers, who used to " cut and make trousers for ten 
 shillings a pair, trimmings in," or go about pot-men ding, and 
 who to-day swelled in Montgomery Street, the lords of hundred- 
 vara* lots, and snivelled through their now supercilious noses 
 about "my property." 
 
 When GhTord heard about these cases, and many more like 
 them, he groaned in spirit. Of what use was his education, his 
 
 * VAKA. The unit of land measurement, being a fraction less than a yard, established 
 by the original settlers of Spanish origin. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 219 
 
 thought, his reading, his refinement, if tinkers and tailors grasped 
 the prizes which all these acquisitions would not enable him to 
 win ? Indeed, why should men be educated at ah 1 , since it was 
 clearly unnecessary to gold- winning, and only made them un 
 happy when they found that those who had it not so often out 
 stripped them in the race hi spite of the deficiency ? Why edu 
 cate at ah 1 in a country where money is the only god, the sole 
 object of pursuit, the goal of every aspiration ? California was, 
 socially speaking, the mere focalization of the entire country ; 
 and the more tinkers and tailors made fortunes, and the more 
 gentlemen or educated men lost or failed to win them, the sooner 
 would the great democratic ideal be attained. Such were Hugh s 
 thoughts and inferences ; but the Doctor, who always seemed 
 judicially inclined when the current of deduction appeared to be 
 running all one way, struck in at a favorable moment, and affirm 
 ed that the contrasts between desert and success capacity and 
 luck were quite as sharply defined in Australia as in California; 
 and that for that matter money-worship was gaining proselytes 
 very swiftly in Old England herself. So that although he did 
 not expect to see the day when, as he had heard was sometimes 
 the case in the- States, a careful investigation and inventory of a 
 man s real and personal property were necessary preliminaries to 
 his being pronounced eligible for admission to certain social 
 coteries, he thought it quite possible the next generation might. 
 
 "Well." inquired Judge Skewer, " ain t that about right arter 
 all ? If you kin keep on improvin and improvin and follerin 
 our glorious example, and thus accordin to the laws of nater a 
 puttin down all distinctions between man and his brother man 
 cept money, which seems to be a kind o Providential exception, 
 don t it stand to reason that bime bye ye ll git to the same proud 
 altitood, and measure men by their dollars as ye now measure 
 sodgers by then inches ? Seems to me there aint no way aout 
 on t, and that that ere idee will jest hev to superstruct the Uni 
 versal Platform." 
 
 The Doctor readily subscribed to this probability, and although 
 there might have been some differences between the Judge and 
 himself as to its advantages, their discussion was happily avoided, 
 and the banquet proceeded in the utmost harmony. " Consider- 
 in ," observed Mr. Sloper, "as your friend is a Britisher, we 
 seem to hitch bosses pooty clever ; and it would be an awful 
 good spekerlation for that ere little island to send over a few 
 thousand cute chaps every year, with their eye teeth cut same 
 as his n, so s to pick up right idees bout our glorious instertoo- 
 shuns." 
 
220 MARIAN KOOKE; OK, 
 
 Messrs. Gallus and McCracken had, in the meanwhile, aug 
 mented the advantage of their superior natural capacities by eat 
 ing in vigorous silence, so that they had far outstripped their 
 companions in the demolition of rather more than their share of 
 the viands. Copious draughts of fiery whiskey, which they de 
 clared to be infinitely preferable to " that sour French swill," had 
 washed down their food, and had been followed in turn by gigan 
 tic plugs of tobacco, which almost answered the purpose of gags ; 
 since if either of them were addressed it was observed that some 
 time elapsed, and much preliminary extrusion of saliva interven 
 ed, before he was in a safe condition to reply. These gentle 
 men now began to rasp their feet uneasily on the floor, to wink 
 significantly at each other, and to otherwise express discontent 
 with their present monotonous surroundings ; and the Judge at 
 last satisfied their yearning souls by suddenly rising, announcing 
 that this court was now adjourned, and that it was time to think 
 about chasing the eagle. "Steve s?" interrogated Sloper. 
 " Steve s," responded the Judge ; and having paid the bill, which 
 he insisted upon doing, and silenced remonstrance by swearing 
 that he d draw on any man who tried to quit the crowd, the 
 whole party made swift march through the rain, until they 
 reached the doorway of the renowned " Steve," then the prince 
 of the " sporting" fraternity in the golden city. 
 
 The establishment to which our friends now sought admittance 
 was perhaps the most sumptuously furnished which could have 
 been found in that day on the Pacific coast. Rooms and stair 
 cases were covered by the richest carpetings, into which the feet 
 sank noiselessly, and which, to the eye, were mossy banks of 
 flowers. The walls were hung in the costliest manner in various 
 delicate tints set oif by slender threads of gold ; and there were 
 paintings upon them which, if of smaller size, were of far higher 
 grade than those in the garish saloons of the square. The ceil 
 ings were elegantly frescoed, and there depended from them 
 tasteful chandeliers whose lights were softened by ground glass 
 shades of a curious and unique pattern. The furniture was either 
 of rosewood or of solid, unpolished black walnut, and the side 
 boards of some of the rooms blazed with utensils not of silver 
 alone but of the more precious metal. In the apartment next 
 adjoining that which guests first entered, a supper table was laid 
 whose appointments the most fastidious must have approved. 
 The linen, the plate, the glass, were unexceptionable. The 
 flowers which formed centres for the principal groups were ex 
 quisite in colors and in perfume. The wines, whether of the 
 sorts standing in the coolers or otherwise disposed, gave every 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 221 
 
 sign of excellence ; and such of the viands as were served cold, 
 such as game, fowls, galantines, and the like, intrinsically, as well 
 as in respect of garniture, afforded similar evidences of their 
 quality. In effect there was nothing which money could buy 
 which was not lavishly bestowed to add to the fascinations of 
 the scene. Nor was it difficult to obtain admission for the free 
 enjoyment of these pleasures. Whatever afforded presumptive 
 evidence that the applicant was not absolutely without cash seem 
 ed to be sufficient to insure his welcome, provided he were 
 known or introduced by some one who was. On the present 
 occasion, the decorous black who officiated as Cerberus in a small 
 hall between the street and an inner door, recognized Judge 
 Skewer with a respectful grin, and passed his companions with 
 out inquiry or comment ; and, after ascending a broad and easy 
 staircase, they found themselves in what appeared to be the prin 
 cipal hall of play. 
 
 The door to this apartment which opened on the passage was 
 ajar, and no one mounting the stairs would have supposed from 
 the silence that some twenty persons were in it. Such, however, 
 was the tact. A long green table ran about half the length of 
 one side of the room, and around it sat a group of men almost as 
 speechless as if they constituted a meeting of Friends. A very 
 handsome hale-faced man, with snowy fingers and diamond rings, 
 sat behind the table and dealt cards from a silver box. Before 
 him were ranged the thirteen cards of a single suit, firmly pasted 
 to the cloth ; and on these cards were piles of round checks or 
 chips made of bone or ivory of different colors and sizes, and 
 which represented various sums, from a dollar to five hundred. 
 There were also gold coins here and there, the bank freely ac 
 cepting bets in actual money as well as hi its representations. 
 Moreover there were one or two pieces of paper lying on or be 
 tween certain cards ; these were checks on local banks staked by 
 persons whose responsibility was known or approved by the 
 banker. On his right was a handsome box in which were dis 
 posed com, checks, and a great many additional packs of cards. 
 Xext this again were symmetrical piles of the " chips," which 
 were sold to any intending player, and redeemed at his pleasure 
 when he chose to desist. Beside the banker there sat an assist 
 ant whose duty it was to overlook the game and see that no mis 
 takes, intentional or other, should occur to the disadvantage of the 
 concern. Sometimes the banker would name the cards when he 
 turned them as they alternately lost and won ; but there was 
 scarcely any other sound, save the slight noise made by the fall 
 ing cards, to break a silence which was almost oppressive. 
 
222 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 The pervading stillness had its effect upon even the boister 
 ous spirit of Judge Skewer, and it was quite in a whisper that 
 he said to the Doctor as they advanced into the room, " Don t 
 hev nuthin o this kind on your benighted sile, I reckon !" and 
 with a considerable affectation of courtliness that he bowed to 
 one or two of the company, who were sufficiently interested in 
 the new comers to raise their eyes. Most of them were ab 
 sorbed transfixed their whole souls speaking through their 
 eyes, which were glued to some particular bit of pasteboard on 
 the table before them. These men were of a better class than 
 most of those in the public resorts. Well dressed, chiefly 
 some with reverend white hair, many who had all the outer ap 
 pearance of gentlemen these were of the merchants, lawyers, 
 and bankers of the rising city. It was noticeable that the per 
 son who was dealing was gentlemanly, almost distinguished in 
 his bearing ; and Doctor Landale, with his old-world experience, 
 thought he had never seen one of his profession whose manners 
 so little betrayed his calling. Notwithstanding his being so act 
 ively engaged, this man had a ready word and a courteous 
 smile for his fresh customers. 
 
 " Good evening, Judge your servant, Marshall quite well, 
 Mr. McCracken ? most happy, I m sure Ace loses, Jack wins 
 friends, too, most welcome a split ten -Antony, chairs for 
 the gentlemen I pay the deuce chips, Judge ? Oh yes, 
 plenty of room fifty and the coppered bet are seventy-five 
 thank you, sir Ace loses again a bad ace and a dead king." 
 
 The Doctor and Hugh followed the example of their conduc 
 tor, and bought a few of the tempting symbols. A man was 
 really ashamed, as they both thought, to go into a place like 
 that and not pay a trifle towards its enormous cost ; it was to 
 such a delicate sentiment as this that the bank was monthly in 
 debted for solid thousands. Meanwhile the Judge planted him 
 self on the left hand and next to the dealer, whom he accosted 
 as "Leonidas," and Messrs. Gallus and McCracken having sand 
 wiched themselves into eligible positions, the game proceeded 
 with increased spirit and interest. Presently Leonidas made 
 some sotto voce statement to his neighbor. 
 
 " Show !" admired Skewer. 
 
 " Fact," affirmed the dealer. 
 
 "How long?" 
 
 " Forty-eight hours at four o clock to-day nothing on the 
 queen and five makes fifty-three." 
 
 " That s an awful long sittin . (I m goin on that queen agin 
 if I bust.) And how do they propel respectin grub and rum C 
 
THE QUEST FOR FOBTUNE. 223 
 
 " Why, Antony and Pomp keep them going. The pot cop 
 pered for all, gentlemen ? All right, now I understand it. 
 There s a regular express between Francois in the kitchen and 
 Number Five, Judge, and that s the way of it. All down 1 
 Four loses, five wins." 
 
 From such words as the preceding it became apparent to any 
 one who, like GhTord and the Doctor, took notice of them, that 
 a remarkable seance was in progress at the room called by the 
 dealer Number Five ; and, as successive hints revealed the de 
 tails, they became cognizant of the interesting fact that General 
 Snagge, Governor Bragge, and Judge Quagge had been gambling 
 together at poker there, since some time the day before yester 
 day ; during which interval a hundred thousand dollars had 
 changed hands, and six dozen of champagne been emptied. 
 
 Having mastered this piece of intelligence, our two Mends 
 were both highly edified by the rapidity with which their modest 
 little capitals of twenty-five dollars each were melting away in 
 the chances of the game. Presently Hugh had but five left and 
 the Doctor eight. 
 
 " Confidence," said Leonidas blandly, ; confidence wins the 
 game. Might as well bet a hundred as one, and double each 
 time you lose. Must win at last. Nine and seven, I see, sir ; 
 and a nine loses, seven wins is a stand-off." 
 
 "The nine s a case," said Judge Skewer, "and I m a goin to 
 back it with all my bones." 
 
 Here Mr. Sloper, who for some reason had detached himself 
 from the party on entering the house, stalked into the apart 
 ment. 
 
 ; I like to git posted," he explained in an undertone as he 
 squeezed himself into a seat next to Hugh, "as to what folks is a 
 doiii of bout the premises ; and there s the gol-darndest, three- 
 storied, ground-and-lofty poker fight ^rogressin in the sky par 
 lor as I ever heerd tell on ; likewise I ve riz a stake by a small 
 dicker in cigars." 
 
 "Back the nine, Lafe," suggested the Judge. " Only one on 
 em in, and I ve jest dumped my hull pile on it." 
 
 "That bein the case," responded Mr. Sloper, "I reckon I ll 
 hev to copper. It runs agin my style to bet agen the bank when 
 it s turnin for a hull pile." 
 
 As the speaker put a little Chinese or Japanese coin on his 
 stake, which implied that he backed the card to lose, a dark man 
 who had a considerable sum also on the nine, did the same thing 
 just an instant before the dealer turned. 
 
 "Five loses Jack wins. All down? Six loses, queen wins." 
 
224 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Cuss that queen," anathematized the Judge ; " I left her jest 
 at the wrong time." 
 
 " Ace loses, deuce wins. Nine loses, queen wins." 
 
 " Two hunderd on the deal," lamented Skewer. " That comes 
 o you copperin my bet, Lafe. Don t do it agin, now, or I ll git 
 sassy." 
 
 "This takes the five and seven," said the dark man, laying 
 down a hunderd dollars on a corner of the five. 
 
 " Very good, sir. Two turns more in, gentlemen, or three. 
 Five loses, seven wins ; a stand-off, Mr. Du Solle. All ready ? 
 Why, Antony, where are you going with that brandy ?" 
 
 "Judge Quagge, sir, he sick o de dam wishy-washy, sody- 
 mead wine. He say de General and de Gubenor make him ner 
 vous wid it, so s to shaken him grip." 
 
 " Give him my compliments Mr. Darrell s compliments and 
 tell him to try a little absinthe. Four loses, ace wins. Nothing 
 like absinthe after a heavy siege. Eight loses, seven wins. 
 You re beating us heavily this deal, Mr. Du Solle." 
 
 The dark man smiled but said nothing, and Mr. Sloper promptly 
 coppered the seven, thinking that next time it was likely to lose. 
 
 "No use buckin agen luck," groaned Judge Skewer ; - how 
 do you stand, Marshal T 
 
 "Two hundred in." 
 
 " Jest lend us a hunderd, then, and I ll see if I can t fetch up 
 on the next box. You re bitter water to-night, Lonny, you are." 
 
 " The fortune of war, Judge. We can t always win, you know. 
 The bank s out heavily on the week." 
 
 " Is that so ? What does Steve say to that ?" 
 
 " What does he care ?" said Leonidas, carelessly ; " with five 
 hundred thousand ahead since the first of May." 
 
 " Five hunderd thousand ahead ! Seems to me if I had that 
 I d jest shet pan and slope for hum !" 
 
 "Home s a fool to this place ; and he d rather run the bank 
 and lose than knock off altogether. New deal, gentlemen. 
 All ready now for a lively turn. What 11 you take, Judge ? 
 Come, gentlemen, give your orders. Pomp, take the gentle 
 men s orders." 
 
 " Yis, sar!" 
 
 u Nine champagnes, four brandy and water, three whiskey rieat, 
 two sherries, two soda cocktails, two midnight warblers, one iced 
 water ! And a box of cigars !" 
 
 "Yis, sar." 
 
 " Give me some more chips, Lonny. I ll make a break this 
 time, or spill my heart s best blood !" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 225 
 
 "All right. Judge. Twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, and a 
 hundred." 
 
 A tremendous yell here rang through the upper part of the 
 house, followed by cries of apparent remonstrance and expostula 
 tion. 
 
 " What the devil s that ?" cried half-a-dozen voices. 
 
 " Don t be alarmed, gentlemen," said Leonidas, with his per 
 petual suave smile. "Nothing broke, I dare say. Watch the 
 game, Augustus. Now, Antony, what is it ?" 
 
 "Judge Quagge, sir, him have jest little tech of the man wid 
 the poker arter him ; and Gineral Snagge and Governor Bragge 
 and Massa Steven they are jest a sittin on him little while, till he 
 stop him shakin !" 
 
 " Oh, that s all, is it ? Shouldn t have taken the brandy. 
 This is my bitters, gentlemen," said the dealer, showing his hand 
 some teeth and tapping the tumbler of iced water beside him. 
 " Here we go again ! All ready and nobody left behind." 
 
 " Don t see what a man should hev the horrors fur," grumbled 
 Sloper, morosely, " with only forty- eight hours trainin . There s 
 them down our way that case-hardened they don t see snakes 
 under a week 1 I reckon / could travel four days, and I ain t 
 much accaount." 
 
 " Ah," said Judge Skewer, pathetically, " it s these ere new 
 ways as knocks the bottom out. Xater can t be expected to 
 wrastle with this outlandish French muck like as when she had 
 old Rye to lean agen. I kin drink champagne, I kin, and I like 
 it ; but I don t feel merself the man I was when I ante d on 
 whiskey straight and didn t go nuthin better." 
 
 " King wins, five loses. Come down, gentlemen. Eight 
 loses, tray wins. Tray loses, eight wins ; a repeater backwards. 
 King wins, five loses again ; the cards are bewitched. You re 
 winning fast enough this tune, Judge I" 
 
 " On y a hunderd, so fur. There s your money back, Malachi, 
 and darned lucky you air to git it. Gin rally speakin I take 
 thirty days for them debts. That man s goin in heavy," con 
 tinued the Judge, in an undertone to GhTord. " See ! He s got 
 five hunderd on the king to win a third time a bad bet, / call 
 it, but then you can t tell nuthin about old Pharaoh. There he 
 goes, by thunder!" 
 
 " King loses, ten wins. Five hundred again, Mr. Du Solle ?" 
 
 The dark man had not spoken before, nor did he move a mus 
 cle when he lost his late heavy bet; but he replied briefly to the 
 dealer s question : 
 
 "A thousand, if you ll take the bet." 
 
226 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 Leonidas hesitated. "Two hundred, cold, is the rule, you 
 know, sir ; and we ve exceeded it several times ; however, we ll 
 take the bet for once. Shall I give you more checks, sir 1" 
 
 u I ve no more money. Just hand me that pen." The 
 speaker tore a leaf from a small book which he took from his 
 breast, hastilly filled up a check, and threw it carelessly across 
 the table, saying, " That will do, I suppose." 
 
 "Thanks, yes," replied Leonidas, just running his eye over 
 the writing, "perfectly well, Mr. Du Solle." 
 
 A fourth time that name ! And Hugh, absorbed in the unu 
 sual scene, or interested in his own or the Doctor s vicissitudes, 
 had taken no heed ; but, as the dealer tossed the slip of paper 
 he had glanced at on the top of others lying in his box, Hugh s 
 eye involuntarily followed it and read there : " Burgoyne and^Co. 
 Pay to Bearer One Thousand Dollars. Pierre Du Solle." At 
 the same moment Leonidas handed over two large ivory circles, 
 each representing five hundred dollars, and which the dark man 
 immediately placed on the king. 
 
 "All ready, gentlemen? All down?" 
 
 " Hold yer bosses, Lonny!" exclaimed Judge Skewer ; " I m 
 a goin to copper that king 1" 
 
 "Me, too," echoed Sloper, Gallus, and McCracken; but 
 their aggregate stakes were much less than the dark man s sin 
 gle one. 
 
 "All down? Ace loses, deuce wins. King loses, queen 
 wins." 
 
 Mr. Du Solle rose quietly and lit a cigar. " Will you take 
 two thousand on the next case king ? Either to win or lose ?" 
 
 "Well, sir, you know two hundred, cold, is the rule," re 
 peated Leonidas, smiling with even more than his usual urban 
 ity ; " but since you are a heavy loser, sir, we will transcend 
 it for once." 
 
 Again a check was filled up and handed over ; and again 
 the ceremony of passing over in return the ivory symbols. This 
 time, however, the recipient waited until three of his favorite 
 kings had been dealt oft before placing his stake 5 and this time 
 he backed the king to lose. 
 
 "I m goin a hundred on that king !" proclaimed Skewer 
 with alacrity, and "Me too!" again echoed Sloper, and Gallus 
 and McCracken. 
 
 "All right, gentlemen," quoth the affable Leonidas, and all 
 down. Pomp, give me a cigar. Ten loses, nine wins ; and a 
 queer nine it s been to-night. Queen loses, ace wins. Keep 
 your eyes open, Augustus, Six loses, king wins !" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 227 
 
 Mr. Du Solle again rose, but this time he sauntered coolly to 
 wards the door. 
 
 " No more checks, sir*?" asked the dealer. 
 
 "None, thank you. Ten thousand is enough for one night," 
 and he disappeared. 
 
 "I say, Lonny," said the Judge, softly, "you kind o cooked 
 him." 
 
 " Nonsense," returned Lonny ; " he won twice the sum here 
 yesterday. " 
 
 " Git aout ! Did he, though ?" 
 
 " Fact. But I didn t deal. You see there s a difference in 
 men s luck when " 
 
 He was interrupted by the outburst of an uproar above ten 
 times more hideous than before ; but the sounds were not con 
 fined to shoutings and stragglings like the last. For suddenly 
 there came the sharp report of a pistol-shot ; then another, 
 another, and another, until the listeners had counted five. 
 
 " Sit still, gentlemen, sit still," cried the imperturbable Leoni- 
 das ; " nothing but a bit of fun above, I dare say. Quick, 
 Pomp, and let us know what s up. Watch the game, Augus 
 tus. Here s Antony ! What is it, Antony ?" 
 
 " Nuffin, Massa Lonny, least, nuffin much. You see, Massa, 
 Judge Quagge and Gub nor Bragge hab a little difficulty and 
 draw d. And Gineral Snagge comin between to keep em 
 peaceable, they both jest sot to, and went to firm into the 
 Gineral!" 
 
 "Good Heavens!" cried Gilford and the Doctor, rising 
 aghast. 
 
 Is he dead ?" exclaimed the others, one or two making for 
 the door. 
 
 ; Guess he m hurt a good deal, ge-mmen, cause he didn t fire 
 back ; but he ain t dead." And the negro rushed out with what 
 he had been sent to fetch, nearly knocking down another just 
 running in. 
 
 "Quick now, Pomp, what s the word] Is the General 
 killed ?" 
 
 " Oh no, Massa. On y knocked him ear off wid one shot, 
 and anoder shoot him troo de libber. Him all right in a week, 
 I reckon." 
 
 " Nuthin but a one-horse fight, arter all," said Sloper, vin 
 dictively; 
 
 " Do go o,n with the game, can t ye, Lonny?" asked Skewer, 
 with impatience. 
 
 the game !" cried the Doctor, starting oft to the relief 
 
228 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 of the sufferer, closely followed by Gifford, who was not sorry to 
 avail himself of the chance, since it had arisen, to escape from 
 the clutches of his extraordinary companions. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARIAN had more reasons than one to fortify her resolution to 
 leave California. It is probable that had she found, on first 
 arriving in the country, so congenial and refined a home as had 
 been hers in the quiet French family with whom she now resided, 
 she would have esteemed it a rare good fortune, and would gladly 
 have accepted its permanent protection. But several events had 
 since fallen out to modify her views, and which promised, indeed, 
 altogether to change her intended future. The letter she had 
 last received from her father s friend in Europe-contained expres 
 sions which were as potent in determining her actions as per 
 emptory commands would have been from that father himself. 
 " It is necessary," he wrote, "for the sake of my dear friend s 
 memory as well as for that of his daughter, that she and I should 
 meet at an early day, that matters should be disclosed which are 
 unsuitable to a correspondence, and that investigations should be 
 made of a nature requiring both your concurrence and my own to 
 render them complete and satisfactory. I should do less than 
 my duty did I not urge immediate attention to these points as 
 sacredly due to yourself and to the character of your dead father." 
 The letter concluded with a repeated desire that Marian should 
 meet the writer at New York within a given date, and enclosed 
 a letter of credit, which under any circumstances would afford 
 her ample means. 
 
 There needed, then, no conscientious scruples respecting her 
 relations with Gifford to urge her departure; since she would 
 equally have felt bound to depart had none such existed. But 
 there was, besides, a third reason for such a step, which had 
 scarcely less weight than either of the others ; and it need 
 scarcely be said that this was the presence of the man whom 
 Hugh had chanced to meet at the gaming house. There was 
 nothing singular in the circumstance that Du Solle should have 
 bent his steps to California. Many men of his stamp found their 
 way there in the early days, and find their way there perhaps 
 still. He had, moreover, a load on his breast-^a dark stain 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 229 
 
 on his conscience which not unnaturally might urge him to 
 travel, to hurry from place to lace, that he might escape in fresh 
 distractions the constant thought of that ineffaceable deed within. 
 Marian had no idea that there was any sinister connection between 
 her presence in San Francisco and this man s arrival there. But 
 she knew of his coming had seen him indeed in the streets 
 and she felt she could not breathe the same air with that inhaled 
 by the slayer of her father. 
 
 When Gifford saw her therefore on the following day, the last 
 day, as he thought, they might ever meet for converse such as 
 then they had, alone and undisturbed, he scarcely required her 
 renewed explanation as to the necessity for her going to Xew 
 York, to understand her conviction that the necessity existed for 
 her quitting San Francisco. He had felt instinctively, when 
 reading his name on the check, that there was no doubt as to the 
 man s identity ; and the repugnance with which such a presence 
 inspired himself, remembering as he did every detail of Marian s 
 sad story, readily supplied a measure for estimating its effect 
 upon her. He well knew that with such a nature as Marian s, 
 every day, almost every hour, must be a separate pain when thus 
 living in the same place, running the constant risk of encounter 
 in its contracted limits with one whose relation to her in each of 
 its wretched features had been that of Pierre Du Solle. And the 
 more he thought of it, the more he himself seemed to dislike the 
 idea of her remaining. Go back to the Bar she could or would 
 not. She felt that, even before he had been irresistibly tempted 
 to propose it ; and that was the only alternative left since she 
 could not remain where she was. 
 
 This was to be their last meeting, then. For although Hugh 
 was to see Marian on board the steamship, yet the family, who 
 were full of kindness, would also be there, and so, for that matter, 
 would the Doctor ; and thus this was practically their last meet 
 ing. It was a very, very sad one. Heaven knows there are ills 
 and pains and trials enough for its own wise purposes in this 
 strange world of ours ; but I know of no trial more sharp, no 
 pain more acute, no ill more hopeless than that of two beings 
 who might make each other very, very happy, and who feel in 
 their innermost souls that they could increase each for the other 
 its highest capacity for good works, and who yet, for duty s 
 sake, for conscience sake, for justice sake, must say that bitter 
 good bye to each other for ever; must take up their weary 
 crosses to struggle on in this gloomy pilgrimage by paths which 
 shall never meet again. 
 
 The meeting was a very sad one, and we will not linger over 
 
230 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 its details. But there was no talk of love in it. That ground 
 was banned, tabooed, forbidden. There was no talk of love ; 
 but there was a strange, sorrowful undertone accompanying 
 everything that was said, and whispering of yearnings crushed, 
 of hopes never to be fulfilled, of a life to come full of weariness, 
 and blackness, and despair. To be sure there were bits and 
 flashes of gaiety, like those threads of gold Spanish women delight 
 in having shot here and there through their sombre dresses ; but 
 the undertone of sorrow, the background of gloom was ever 
 present,, and the threads only made it look the blacker. 
 
 Marian had her package ready ; the package of little offerings 
 which Gifford was to take home to the Bar, and not to open 
 until he got there. And she had many fond and loving mes 
 sages to send to her kind friends the Armstrongs ; nor was any 
 one forgotten, indeed, of all the little circle. They were to re 
 member that, after all, she and they might be together once 
 more. For, might not Mr. Armstrong get rich enough to buy 
 the^old homestead at Saybrook 1 ? And was not that within a 
 very short distance by rail from New York ? And might they 
 not then see as much of each other as ever ? She, Marian, hoped 
 so. Nay, she even felt sure of it. But she did not express, 
 even if she felt, any such aspiration, any such certainty as to 
 meeting Hugh again. It was wiser not to wish such a thing, 
 wiser even if wished not to say it. 
 
 I must affirm, without intending to enter into the vexed ques 
 tion touching the relative moral or intellectual inferiority of the 
 sexes, that, so far as this man and this woman were concerned, 
 she was the better and the stronger. She knew, or felt certain 
 now, that Hugh loved her ; but nothing could make her let him 
 see that she knew it. If he knew that she loved him which 
 he did not know he would, I fear, have been neither so mag 
 nanimous nor so brave ; he would not have resisted temptation so 
 courageously, he would not have respected the rights of another 
 so religiously. He had many good qualities, had Hugh ; ay, and 
 nobler ones than the world has given him credit for before or per 
 haps since ; but I seek to describe him as he was, and not to depict 
 as a perfect monster a creature not without faults. To which it 
 may be urged that my account of Marian is in consistent with such 
 a profession ; but I do not fear that any man who has seen much of 
 the world will challenge my accuracy when I say that perfection, if 
 impossible, is more possible with the opposite sex than his own. 
 
 For my part, I have no hesitancy in declaring that, consider 
 ing all the hard and unsympathizing character of his boyish sur 
 roundings considering his original nature, so sensitive, so re- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 231 
 
 served and so proud ; considering the oblique warp which injus 
 tice and harsh treatment had begotten, received among people 
 who disliked him because they did not understand him, or be 
 cause he was different from themselves, or because they disliked 
 or did not understand his parents, or because he or they were 
 poor I say, regarding all these things, Hugh Gifford became in 
 time a better man than might have been expected. Neither do 
 I shrink from expressing my belief that much that was sweet, and 
 straightforward, and true in Marian s character owed its develop 
 ment, if not its existence, to the happy, generous abundance 
 and trusting fondness which hedged around her childhood. 
 There are many things in every-day life which appear mysteri 
 ous and complex, but which analysis resolves into very simple 
 elements. If the two had been changed in childhood, Marian 
 might have been a sort of Jane Eyre ; and Hugh would have 
 grown up a gay and reckless cavalier, perhaps ; so perhaps it is 
 just as well that they were not. 
 
 I called on Marian that afternoon to say my adieux for we 
 had always been and always will be the best of friends and on 
 iny way to the door I met Hugh ; and he looked like a very sul 
 len, and morose, and miserable man ; and Marian, although her 
 eyes were a little red, looked like a saint ; and this, it struck 
 me, very fairly represented their two characters at the then stage 
 of their experience at the point which each had then attained 
 in their pilgrimage through the world. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IT was not the easiest thing imaginable to find a lodging at 
 this time in San Francisco. Much of the population, as has 
 already been observed, lived under canvas. Many slept on board 
 the innumerable old ships in the harbor ; some slept under the 
 old boats on the shore. When the hours grew small, and even 
 the insatiable gamblers and their streams of hallucinated custom 
 ers became at last wearied and exhausted, there was a claimant 
 for every betting-board, for every billiard-table, and for 
 every counter. Buildings were going up, it is true, with great 
 rapidity ; but population was pouring in with a rapidity greater 
 still ; so that every tent, shed, shop, and warehouse had its con 
 trivances for dormitories, its complement of sleepers. There 
 
232 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 were hotels too ; but they were, to speak mildly, of indifferent 
 character, and moreover, they were incredibly dear ; therefore 
 Hugh Gifford and Dr. Landale did not patronize the Oriental or the 
 Tehama House ; they took the advice of Mr. Sloper, who recom 
 mended an attic in a new three-storied warehouse on Sacramento 
 Street, and where, if furniture and attendance were of the scan 
 tiest, the price was moderate and the situation convenient. 
 
 Into this rather exceptionally lofty apartment the Doctor and 
 Hugh had conveyed their various purchases ; consisting of drugs, 
 dry goods, seeds, agricultural implements, powder and shot, and 
 other useful articles which they were to take with them on their 
 return to Armstrong s Bar. Here also was Marian s package ; 
 and here the two came to sleep on the night before the day of 
 her departure. The Doctor had proposed returning to Sacra 
 mento en route for home that afternoon, but willingly deferred to 
 Gifford s wishes and the representation that the Armstrongs 
 would be so much the better pleased to know that they had seen 
 their protegee safely on her voyage. 
 
 The companions were both weary of the perpetual and monot 
 onous sights and sounds of dissipation and debauchery of which 
 two days sufficed to furnish a repletion, and had conversed to a 
 late hour on the evils and drawbacks of the infant civilization 
 which the gold discovery was forcing into so swift and abnor 
 mal a growth. They had discussed, and agreed, and argued 
 about old societies and new societies, and the comparative ad 
 vantages and disadvantages of republican or monarchical systems 
 as applied to both, and the probable future of California, and 
 that of the whole country, and the general effect upon national 
 policy of that peculiar hatred of England which the immigrant 
 Irish and their descendants, and English and Scotch co-mates in 
 exile as well, were at such pains to keep alive and to disseminate, 
 and divers cognate subjects, until their eyelids could no longer 
 wag. / 
 
 These matters, although of an eminently suggestive, were by 
 no means of a lightsome or inspiriting character, and when Hugh 
 fell asleep it was no great wonder that his mind rambled into 
 regions more picturesque and fanciful. He dreamed that he had 
 become enormously rich, but that old Mr. Chester, through 
 some extraordinary concatenation, refused to let Virginia marry 
 him because he was so poor ; and how he travelled across the sea 
 to the Old World his waking dreams in boyhood used to dwell 
 so much upon ; and how many a gray old cathedral, many an 
 historic castle, crumbling, yet majestic, how many a Gothic bra 
 ver of the centuries, and many a lovely, winding, copse-embow- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 233 
 
 ered road, had filled up his unsatisfied longings, had supplied the 
 something to imagination, the color to the blank, ugly common 
 place of existence which a life passed . among steeples made of 
 white boards, and mansions like shoe boxes, and treeless wastes 
 which fear of Indians had denuded and idiotic tastelessness had 
 left so, and intercrossing roads like chess boards, and a host of 
 other antithetical disagreeables had left empty and sterile. Then, 
 from these merely physical contrasts, his mind passed to spirit 
 ual ones. He dreamed that he had become a much better and 
 nobler man than he ever yet had been. That, casting selfishness 
 and indolence and morbid egotism behind him, he was pressing 
 forward with earth s brightest and best, doing battle in the very 
 van, for human rights, for human progress, for immutable truth, 
 for celestial justice which was to bed one on earth. And out of 
 that idea of something celestial was evolved a most lovely and 
 roseate halo at the end of a glorious perspective, to be reached 
 through stress of glorious deeds ; and in that halo stood Marian, 
 smiling and beckoning him to her arms, as the crown and re 
 ward of his labors. 
 
 But to reach her, much must still be accomplished. The path 
 was beset with difficulties, there were many stalwart opponents 
 to overcome, many a barrier to overthrow or to overleap. Yet 
 what would not Hugh do and dare with such a prize as his ulti 
 mate reward ? On he rushed, now smiting down an adversary, 
 now rolling in the dust himself; sometimes discomfited but 
 always recovering, straining on through all and in spite of all 
 towards his goal. At last he saw it close at hand, but before he 
 could quite attain the shrine, before he could clasp Marian s snowy 
 hand and claim it as his own, he must encounter one adversary 
 more terrible than all the others, a gigantic dark-faced Being, 
 whose features were those of the murderer-gamester. Du Solle. 
 This horrible figure wielded a huge battle-axe, witli which he 
 carved vast circles through the ah* within its radius. It would 
 seem that nothing could come within that radius and live. Yet 
 must the attempt be made. With desperate resolution did Hugh 
 spring within the enchanted circle ; but as he did so, uplifting 
 sword and shield to guard his head, his foot slipped in a viscous 
 puddle which seemed of human gore. As he fell, he saw Marian s 
 smile of inviting tenderness change to a scowl of gloomy con 
 tempt. As he fell, he saw the huge battle-axe of the arch-enemy 
 descending with lightning rapidity. It was rushing down with 
 a hurtling roar. Another instant it would crush did crush him 
 with an irresistible force, and he felt his own blood running 
 into and blinding his eyes ! By a despairing effort he dashed 
 
234 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 aside the gore and stared before him ; immediately opposite, with 
 his head thrust through a shattered panel of the chamber door, 
 were the imperturbable features of Mr. Sloper, and on the pillow 
 beside him was that gentleman s sombrero, which had been launch 
 ed with such accuracy as to strike Hugh between the eyes and so 
 recall him to consciousness. 
 
 "Air you two goin to git fried or biled this mornin T .inquired 
 Lafayette. "Or," he added, sarcastically, " hev ye an itch for 
 gittin griddled u ? There ain t much time for ch ice, the hull town 
 bein afire, and the next buildin in a light blaze !" 
 
 To rush to the window and dash it open, and thus to verify 
 the truth of Mr. Sloper s assertion, was the work of an instant. 
 It took scarcely another for Hugh to rouse the Doctor, to un 
 lock the door, and to hurry on such of his garments as he had 
 doffed for the night. 
 
 " I couldn t make ye hear by hollerin, " observed Mr. Sloper, 
 quietly taking a chew of tobacco, "nor yit bust the lock off by 
 kickin ; so I did the next best thing and smashed in the panel 
 with a harmer. Reckon ye d have got roasted in ten minutes 
 more!" 
 
 " Good Heavens I" cried the Doctor, dividing his time be 
 tween a hasty toilette, the collection of his medicines, and rapid 
 reconnoitring from the windows. "How is it? How did it 
 happen ?" 
 
 " Old Nick knows," returned Lafayette, "and he won t tell. 
 Arter the big mucchants hev sold off all their truck and got the 
 dust, some folks think they kind o git up this sort of thing as a 
 clear in out sale ; so s to send accaounts to consignors that their 
 goods is stepped aout. But ye d best scratch gravel if ye don t 
 want your har frizzled!" 
 
 Here the speaker discovered that there were some boxes, well 
 nailed and secured, stored at one end of the room, and with 
 great skill and celerity he broke one of them open with his 
 "harmer." An exclamation followed by the knocking off of 
 the neck of a bottle at once revealed the nature of the contents 
 foreign spirits wherewith Mr. Sloper instantly made intimate 
 acquaintance. Not content with this, he straightway began to 
 drop the boxes out of window, to which employment he appear 
 ed to be stimulated by the outcries and remonstrances from the 
 now swarming crowd below. That the bottles would almost 
 certainly break and the contents be wasted in the process gave 
 Lafayette no apparant concern. He seemed to consider the oc 
 casion a sort of repetition of "a Time," and one on which his 
 singular passion for uproar and grotesque confusion might safe- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 235 
 
 ly be indulged. Having thrown out all the boxes, he now pro 
 ceeded to hurl out the beds, followed by the chairs and tables of 
 the room, until a general roar of execration from below and the 
 exhaustion of material induced him to desist. 
 
 "By hokey !" he suddenly exclaimed at this stage of his pro 
 ceedings, " I snum, I forgot to tell ye that thar s a kag full o 
 pound canisters o gunpowder down close to the door, and like 
 enough we d better vacate, quicker !" 
 
 This startling intelligence was followed by a retreat more rapid 
 than dignified, "Hugh clinging fast to Marian s package as the 
 Doctor did to his drugs. They had scarcely quitted the build 
 ing before it was enveloped in flames ; and although the " kag" 
 of gunpowder which was a receptable of the size of a pipe 
 had been rolled down the street and into the dock at its foot, the 
 danger of staying much longer in the building would scarcely 
 have been greater had it remained. For the fire spread with 
 appalling swiftness. It sprang from the windows whence Sloper 
 had cast the boxes almost as soon as they reached the street ; and 
 in five minutes more it was leaping and running and greedily 
 licking at every scrap of wood- work, so that the mass looked like 
 a fiery cage. 
 
 Nearly the whole town was indeed, as Sloper said, in flames. 
 Almost entirely built as it was of the lightest and most inflam 
 mable materials, a long and unusually dry season had prepared it 
 for destruction in a manner which the first few days of rain had 
 done little to neutralize. Plouses of pine boards, houses of can 
 vas, houses said to be of iron, but which looked like shirred 
 zinc, were swept away, licked up, rolled up, like so much paste 
 board or parchment, as the devouring element flew ruthlessly on. 
 As usual, a high wind lent fury to the flames, and as men rushed 
 hither and thither in all the mad excitement and confusion which 
 great danger and swift destruction so often engender, there were 
 vague rumors passing from lip to lip of human beings further 
 "up town," who had perished miserably, roasted in their beds. 
 The fire was sweeping towards the bay ; and as it came crushing 
 and devastating on, there passed before it a fringe of carts, boxes 
 and chattels of numberless descriptions, which the owners or 
 others had rescued from destruction, and which still retreated be 
 fore the victorious enemy as he marched nearer and nearer to 
 the bay. Before him, all was a glittering, fleeing, smoke-swathed 
 crush ; behind, a mere barren, blackened char. Presently the 
 streets themselves they were all made of planks in those days 
 were caught by the flames, and further arid further the fringe 
 of people and their goods were forced towards the water. A lit- 
 
236 MAKIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 tie more and the fringe would be overtaken and consumed. All 
 manner of efforts were made to stop the progress of the cue 
 tearing down, blowing up, drenching him with the waters of 
 the sea but in vain. March in triumph he would to the very 
 edge and border of the bay. Then the people and their proper 
 ty were driven to a new expedient ; they removed each and all 
 their goods and their persons to the long wharves, produced 
 from the principal streets, and stretching at right angles to the 
 : shore forth into the harbor ; they carried all to these havens of 
 safety, and then with axes they cut the wharves away and isola 
 ted themselves from the main land. 
 
 On one of these wharves stood- the Doctor surrounded by 
 claret boxes, cooking-stoves, wheelbarrows, crates of crockery, 
 and almost every conceivable article of furniture, clothing, and 
 general household gear. He had been deserted by his two com 
 panions, for Hugh had flown like the wind to assure himself of the 
 safety of Marian, and Mr. Sloper was making himself more busy 
 than he ever was before in his life in numberless mysterious ope 
 rations connected with salvage, waifs and strays, and other dis 
 interested supervision of Bother people s goods. In a few min 
 utes more, the conflagration had extended so that scarcely any 
 thing of the shore could be seen. There were vast columns of 
 rolling and eddying smoke ; black, brown, and blue, mixed here 
 and there with white vapor ; at intervals a fierce, reddening 
 glare told where the fire raged hottest ; at intervals a dull explo 
 sion told where the engineers were blowing up buildings to stop 
 the progress of the flames ; yet there was little to see or hear, 
 towards the land, save the repetition of these same sights and 
 sounds. But in the bay there were now swift motion and excite 
 ment ; for the ships began to be warped or tugged from their 
 dangerous berths at the wharves, and two or three of them were 
 already on fire. Then those adjacent commenced frantic efforts 
 to escape from their dangerous neighbors, and the air rang with 
 shouts and imprecations from the imperilled craft, each struggling 
 to avoid the others. 
 
 Small time had the Doctor to admire either the picturesque- 
 ness or the horrors of the scene, for soon two or three poor fej- 
 lows with mangled limbs, dragged from the fire where they had 
 been striving to save life or property, and who in so doing had 
 Been crushed by falling beams, were brought in boats to the 
 wharf; and, at once volunteering his aid, he was quickly too much 
 engrossed for any cares beside the merciful ones of his calling. 
 
 Meanwhile Hugh had flown through the town, many times 
 thwarted in the direction he strove to take by the flames, but sue- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 237 
 
 ceeding at last in reaching the house of M. Bellot. Happily it 
 was a considerable distance to windward of the spot where the 
 conflagration had originated, and there was no anxiety on the 
 part of the inmates as to their own safety. But Marian could 
 not well conceal the joy with which she saw Gifford alive and 
 well; for the calamity had befallen with even greater than com 
 mon rapidity, and she had already heard that persons had per 
 ished in the flames, and well knew that Hugh s lodging was 
 directly in the track over which the wind would carry them. 
 There was, however, no tune for sentiment, since M. Bellot had 
 ascertained from the officials that the steamship would sail with 
 out regard to the fire ; and that, indeed, as a change of wind 
 might endanger her own berth and make it necessary to drop 
 into the stream before the hour fixed for sailing, it would be well 
 for passengers to go on board directly. Marian s luggage had 
 already ben despatched, and after much embracing of the weep 
 ing family, and innumerable kisses of the children, who were in 
 consolable because not allowed to see their governess to the 
 ship, herself, M. Bellot, and Gifford entered the carriage which 
 was waiting at the door and drove at once to the " Golden Age." 
 
 The great black steamer was heaving and throbbing convul 
 sively ; for steam was up, and the fierce blasts of white vapor were 
 driving through her pipes with a hoarse, warning cry, which rose 
 above the crumbling roar of the conflagration. Through two 
 gangways running from the wharf, up and down her steep 
 sides, a restless mass of human beings were crowding, jostling 
 and struggling as if their lives depended on getting that very 
 instant on or off the ship. There were crowds of successful mi 
 ners, of ingenious agents, of promoted tailors, of artful adventur 
 ers who had married great washerwomen, of cabmen become 
 millionaires, of scholars playing porter and carrying trunks and 
 bags as they forced their way up the critical incline, of lucky 
 gamblers, of magnificent nigger singers, of gorgeously peremp 
 tory ladies of the town, some going, some here to bid adieu to 
 others who were going, but all crowding, jostling, struggling as 
 if it were their last day to live, or as if they composed an Amer 
 ican assemblage of the olden time on its way to dinner. 
 
 Through such a mass of seething humanity did Hugh and M. 
 Bellot almost cany Marian up the gangway, feeling when they 
 got to the top much as warriors must feel who have carried an 
 enemy s rampart at the point of the bayonet. Once there, the 
 task was somewhat easier, although by no means finished. 
 They had next to find Marian s state-room, which she was to 
 share with a lady, a relative of the captain s wife, who acconipa- 
 
238 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 nied him on the passage. While Hugh devoted himself to this 
 search, the Frenchman, with his usual promptness aud good-na 
 ture, ran to see that her effects were not lost in the confusion, 
 but placed in the state-room, where she could have easy access to 
 them. And thus, amid the clanging of bells, the rush of steam, 
 the Babel of voices, and, covering all and pervading all, the 
 smoke and horror of the great fire, Marian and Gifford were to 
 say good-bye. 
 
 It was perhaps as well that such an adieu should be surrounded 
 by so noisy, engrossing, and terrible a scene, for mutual fears 
 for mutual safety had softened him and weakened her to a degree 
 that might otherwise have been dangerous ; dangerous, to Hugh s 
 honor, dangerous to Marian s self-respect. He saw her safely 
 into the little room which was for some weeks to be her home ; 
 saw that it looked comfortable and seemed well situated, opening 
 into what was termed the ladies saloon. He saw, too, that 
 Marian was very pale, and remembered long after how much she 
 seemed affected by the excitement and confusion. He went to 
 fetch her a glass of iced-water, and by the time he returned M. 
 Bellot was busy directing his porter how to place Marian s boxes 
 so as to take least room, and be in the most convenient spots. 
 That done, a fiercer shriek than ever arose from the impatient 
 demon who, weaiy of being confined, was to force the ship on 
 her way ; whereupon a sort of alarm-bell was rung, and then a 
 cry ran through the vessel, up and down the decks, up and down 
 the saloons, was screamed through all the passages and echoed 
 into all the state-rooms, to the purport that all save passengers 
 must now go on shore. M. Bellot had said farewell in his own 
 kindly and fatherly way, and tried to press upon Marian more 
 money than she had earned or would accept, and undertaken the 
 transport of all manner of apocryphal kisses by way of final adieux 
 to the children and their mamma, and he now briskly started for 
 the gangway, inviting Hugh to follow. The latter had been 
 hurriedly saying something to Marian about writing, but she 
 would not promise now perhaps she would write to him after 
 a time but she would not promise. " Don t lose what I placed 
 for you in the packet," she said to him at the last. And "Not 
 while I live," he answered, and then there came another great, 
 warning screech from the steam whistle. 
 
 "Farewell, Marian !" 
 
 " Farewell! a hundred tunes ! And and don t go backward, 
 Hugh !" 
 
 " Not while I can see you in memory as I see you now," he 
 said, thickly ; and, as he spoke, he pressed on her finger and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 239 
 
 into her hand a ring and a brooch -of very plain workmanship, 
 but made of the first gold which Hugh himself had dug on Arm 
 strong s Bar. 
 
 " Our Father will guide you, Hugh," whispered Marian, the 
 tears flocking into her eyes. With an impulse he could not resist, 
 GhTord clasped her in his arms and kissed not her lips or her 
 cheek, but that lovely brow of hers. 
 
 " Tis only once, * he muttered, " only once the first the 
 last. May our Father protect and guard you, now and for ever, 
 darling Marian !" And he rushed from the room. He was the 
 last to dash down the plank as the lines were manned to with 
 draw it, and so to sever the ship from the shore. In another 
 moment the sable monster was dropped into the stream. 
 
 As Hugh sprang on the wharf he found himself in a group 
 whereof Judge Skewer, Mr. Gallus, and Mr. McCracken were 
 members, they, together with Mr. Collector Scalpgitter, two edi 
 tors, two aldermen, and the keeper of a fashionable groggery, 
 having been drinking champagne with the captain in his cabin. 
 His friends would have detained him, but Gilford escaped them 
 almost rudely, for he was resolved to make with all speed to the 
 wharf where he knew he should find the Doctor ; from its ex 
 tremity he could get a last sight of the steamship- wave a last 
 farewell to Marian. He had greater difficulty than before, for 
 now the air was filled not only with smoke, but with cinders ; and 
 part of the ground he crossed had actually been traversed by the 
 fire. The sky above was all of an angry glow, and the sun, 
 which now required no eagle s eye to gaze upon it, looked a mere 
 copper ball. The explosions still continued, for the fury of the 
 fire was at its height. He found that even some of the wharves 
 which had been cut away had been ignited by falling brands ; so 
 that it required ceaseless care on the parts of those who had taken 
 refuge on them to save themselves and the goods on the wharves 
 from common destruction. Still these places of refuge were safer 
 than any others, and accordingly some of them were packed 
 close with people. Not so that on which was the Doctor ; it had 
 been one of the earliest endangered, and therefore one of the first 
 saved from the flames, and, as access could only thereafter be 
 had to it by boats, very few persons except the original refugees 
 had repaired thither. Hugh managed to find a man who, for a 
 couple of dollars, would take the trouble of a dozen strokes of 
 the oar and land him on the wharf; and as he walked swiftly 
 toward the seaward end, on which were some low sheds or store 
 houses, he saw the same boatman take up the Judge and his com 
 panions, Avho were evidently resolved to follow in his wake and 
 find shelter in the same place. 
 
240 MARIA* ROOKE; OR, 
 
 He quickly gained the end of the structure, without pausing to 
 look into the buildings, or to notice more than that they, as well 
 as the platform they stood on, were crammed and overflowing 
 with boxes, bales, packages, merchandise of every description, and 
 that almost every one he met was covered with soot and filth 
 from head to foot. Amid the tumult and destruction of a scene 
 the like of which he had never known or even pictured to him 
 self before, he had but one thought of Marian ; and if he 
 thought of the surrounding horror, even for a moment, it was in 
 her connection, as that the angel of peace was sailing far away, 
 in whose absence the confusion must needs become worse con 
 founded. 
 
 Hugh gained the end of the wharf, and there, with his back to 
 the burning city, he once more, and for the last time, saw her. 
 She was in the gallery below the hurricane deck, and, there be 
 ing comparatively few near the spot, her figure was not lost in a 
 surrounding throng. She stood there in her pale lemon dress, 
 with her net shawl, and her massive black hair, looking just as 
 she did the day before yesterday, when Hugh first saw her after 
 he had come down from the mines. The coral lips were parted 
 with an anxious look, as her eyes ranged over the desolation be 
 yond ; but as the vessel forged onwards, she presently descried 
 Hugh, and a Sweet smile took its place. A sweet smile, but a 
 very sad one such as comes over the faces of tender 
 hearted women who are striving to make others happy when they 
 are most unhappy themselves. 
 
 The great crimson wheels turn round faster, faster, and fast 
 er ; the puffs of thick white steam cease to spring from the pipes ; 
 the red-ribbed, star-dotted ensigns fly up to the peak and the 
 fore; a jet of smoke and a flash, as in mockery of the conflagra 
 tion left behind, a hollow boom echoing slowly around the bay 
 and the steamship is flying towards, has entered, passed 
 through the Golden Gate, the vision has vanished, and Hugh is 
 left alone. 
 
 How long he sat there he did not know. It seemed to him 
 as if the night must be near before he stirred, but the sulphur 
 ous pall which covered alike the earth and the sky made it im 
 possible to tell. He walked towards the storehouses at last, and 
 presently he came upon Mr. Sloper, who looked like a large 
 chimney sweep, sitting in a sumptuous brocaded arm-chair, and 
 digging sardines out of a box with his bowie-knife. By his side was 
 a broken case of brandy, and what he would have called a " kag " 
 of biscuit or crackers. Judge Skewer and his friends were also 
 here partaking of these dainties with the greatest avidity. 
 
THE .QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 241 
 
 " Come and git sumthin to eat," invited Sloper, with unusual 
 cordiality. " I called ye bout fourteen times afore, but ye seemed 
 to be sot on staring at Alcatraz Island." 
 
 " Smashed on a gal in a yaller dress," amended Judge 
 Skewer; that ere is the Gineral s complaint. I seed her on 
 the boat, and if I d a been the Gineral I d a fit hard afore I d let 
 her slope." 
 
 " Any way," pursued Lafayette, " Island or gal, don t let it 
 spile your appetite. These here air minners or shiners, and they re 
 jist soddered up in their own ile. And, if ye like em better, 
 we ve laid in can chickens, lobsters and oysters to last a month 
 o Sundays." 
 
 And if ye don t cotton to this ere rot," added the Judge, 
 quaffing a generous horn of brandy, "there s claret, champagne, 
 forty-rod rum, and old rye in Liberty Hall there !" 
 
 " Liberty Hall?" said Gifford, in the way of inquiry. 
 
 "Nuthin shorter," replied Lafayette, proudly/ "It s a hard 
 day s work, but I done it. Come and Aspect." 
 
 He led the way, and the party entered the largest of the sheds, 
 over the door of which now appeared a rude sign inscribed with 
 the legend : 
 
 L. SLOPER & Co., 
 
 COMMISSION MERCHANTS. 
 
 In this building were heaped barrels, cases of spirits, teas, 
 sugars, and groceries of eveiy description. There were also 
 boxes of silks, bandas, and Chinese shawls, as could been seen by 
 the labels. There were fine laces and codfish, jewelry and pre 
 served meats, ladies gloves and pickled salmon. Near the door 
 stood a child s rocking-horse and a barber s chair. On one side 
 were two huge oil paintings of Venuses or something worse, and 
 opposite to these a cheval-glass. In one corner stood a gentle 
 man richly dressed, with a remarkably urbane, albeit somewhat 
 flassy expression, whom Hugh remembered to have seen doing 
 uty in the window of a fashionable tailor of Montgomery Street 
 the day before. There were saddles and bridles in profusion, 
 and, in divers mysterious wheels and green and red cloths, 
 could be recognized some of the tools of the gambling fraternity. 
 
 "It took me aheap o labor," observed Mr. Sloper, survey 
 ing the field after the manner in which Napoleon might have 
 contemplated that of Austerlitz, " specially the hullsale parcels. 
 But I fetch t em at last." 
 
 " Ah !" exclaimed Hugh, a sudden light coming upon him and 
 
242 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 showing how selfishly he had passed the day while some had 
 thus devoted themselves to saving the property of others ; " Ah ! 
 I see ; and very handsome conduct of you, I m sure, to run such 
 risks, and take such pains to rescue the poor people s property. 
 They ought to feel exceedingly grateful to you!" 
 
 " Otro tiempo; no entiende," suggested the Judge, with a puz 
 zled air. 
 
 "Say that agin," freely translated Mr. Sloper ; and Hugh re 
 peated the substance of what he had said, whereat such a burst 
 of volcanic laughter flew from the company that he thought he 
 must have made some odd mistake, especially as the laughter ran 
 into another peal, and tjien another, until the rickety building 
 shook again. 
 
 "Look a thai* !" finally commanded Mr. Sloper, sternly. 
 " What is it, let me put it to ye, that ye see thar ?" 
 
 Gifford looked as ordered at the end of one of the innumera 
 ble boxes, and read the cabalistic legend again of " L. Sloper & 
 Co." He looked at others ; and every one bore the same in 
 scription. 
 
 Now." continued Lafayette, " Avhat d ye say to that ?" 
 "Well, really, I don t know what to say. 
 " Very well, then, I ll tell ye. Them as had them goods air 
 now, many on em, makin out their accaounts to send hum to 
 the owners, the consignors ; in them accaounts not only these 
 here goods air sot down as burnt up, but, likewise, all they ve 
 sold and got the money fur in the last six months. Which bein 
 the case, in the interest of the absent owners, L. Sloper becomes 
 an auctioneer and a commission merchant. Jest as quick as the 
 fire gits put aout, the goods goes under the banner, and Sloper 
 and Company belts the proceeds !" 
 
 With this elucidation, the details of which it may be added 
 were subsequently religiously earned out, Mr. Sloper excused 
 himself for a few moments, and, in company with Judge Skewer, , 
 retired to an inner apartment. The Doctor now emerged from 
 another of the buildings, gaining some respite at last in the 
 care of the poor creatures he had been attending, other sur 
 gical aid having arrived from the City Hospital. Hugh will 
 ingly acceded to his companion s proposal to depart from the 
 unfortunate town as soon as possible; he had no longer any 
 motive for wishing to stay. They learned, however, that their 
 departure must necessarily be postponed until the following day, 
 for the Sacramento boat had been so injured by the fire that she 
 was taken off the line for a week at least, and passengers must 
 wait for her sister craft, now on the upward trip. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 243 
 
 While they were regretting this casualty, Mr. Sloper and the 
 Judge once more presented themselves, but in for different guise 
 from that in which they had disappeared. They had both been 
 begrimed with smoke, and daubed and battered to the last de 
 gree by the vicissitudes of the day, but they now appeared as 
 spruce and dainty as the tailor s block in the warehouse. Each 
 was arrayed in a new suit of clothes of what seemed costly ma 
 terial, with hats and gloves to match, of the choicest quality. 
 Mr. Sloper s red shirt, old trousers, and miner s boots, had, like 
 the ancient checked suit and white hat of the Judge, been offered 
 up to Neptune, and by this time were spinning gaily away with 
 the tide in the wake of the vanished steamer. While Hugh was 
 gazing in surprise at these metamorphoses, Lafayette led him 
 apart, and turning his head on one side and riveting his eye with 
 stern meaning, after his custom when about to be signally 
 impressive, he put five eagles in his companion s hand, and 
 said : 
 
 " ; Them air your n." 
 
 "Mine?" echoed Gifford.. 
 
 " Your n. I don t never go back on no pal, I don t. I don t 
 bet nuthin on the Britisher, and he kin skin his own skunks, he 
 kin. But them s your brads, them air." 
 
 " But how came they so?" 
 
 i; When you quit the table arter Quagge and his gang got 
 jawin , ye left ten chips behind ye. That s so. I jest messed 
 em up with my pile, and when I knocked off which was when 
 the fire broke aout I had jest five times as much as when you 
 left the ranch." 
 
 " But I don t want it. I didn t win it. I ll take ten, because 
 I left them, but for the rest, I d rather -" 
 
 "If you don t belt them brads, pooty darned quick," inter 
 rupted Mr. Sloper, with a highly ferocious and determined air, 
 " all I kin say is that you and me 11 differ." 
 
 Thus admonished, Hugh prudently pocketed the gold, and 
 Lafayette walked away quite satisfied. The night was now fast 
 advancing, and after procuring some little refreshment, neither the 
 Doctor nor Gifford were sorry to stretch themselves in a loft 
 over the warehouse of L. Sloper and Co., and to try and re 
 cover in sleep from the toils and excitements of the day. Hugh 
 was not so successful as his heart-whole senior, for although he 
 fell asleep without difficulty, he awoke shortly after midnight, and 
 all his subsequent attempts to lose his consciousness completely 
 failed. He looked forth from a tiny window which opened 
 on the town ; the fire was still burning, although exhausted in 
 
244 MARIAN KOOKE; OR, 
 
 many places, and what had looked like mountains of blazing 
 light were now mere chasms, pits, of inky desolation. The smoke 
 and cinders were everywhere blackening the sky, shrouding the 
 earth, and even hiding the sea. Faint crashes could still be 
 heard in the distance, and now and again fresh showers of red 
 sparks would leap high into the air, showing where a new ex 
 plosion had occurred or another roof-tree had fallen. 
 
 Hugh saw lights also through chinks in the partition on the 
 further side of the room, and he peered through to ascertain 
 their cause. There he saw the Judge and Sloper, and Gallus and 
 McCracken, and Belcher Gay and half-a-dozen others whom he 
 did not know, enthusiastically engaged in a game of faro. They 
 had their cloth, their silver box, their chips, their gold coin, and 
 the Judge was dealing and the others were drinking and betting 
 against his bank as merrily as Nero might have done had faro 
 been known to old Rome. 
 
 Hugh sighed at the spectacle, and turned for relief toward the 
 sea. He thought and thought rightly that perhaps another 
 heart, another eye, might be turned toward his own in the gloomy 
 night, in the contemplation of which he might forget the sordid 
 Bacchanals close by. And Marian was indeed thinking of him 
 at that moment, and praying with all her heart for his happiness 
 and for his good ; which finished, she had strained her eyes in 
 striving to catch, far northwards, a parting glimpse of the land be 
 hind but she saw only a lurid cloud. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HUGH GIFFORD had resumed his old life at Armstrong s Bar 
 his old life in things external, but a new and critical one for 
 things within. A struggle was going on in his soul the end of 
 which no one, not himself, could tell. The love, the best love of 
 which this man was capable, was a thing of slow growth. When 
 he first saw Marian Rooke he had admired, indeed, but he had 
 not loved her ; nor would he have done so had his feelings been 
 altogether free. For although by nature exceedingly susceptible 
 to beautiful things, his early life had taught him an instinctive 
 caution not only as to showing, but as to yielding even secretly 
 to, such emotions. His mind oscillated between a sort of enthu 
 siastic worship for every lovely thing he saw, and a suspicious 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 245 
 
 dread lest such an opening of his heart might tempt the entrance 
 of something which should bring pain. Suspicion as to sincer 
 ity, suspicion as to fidelity, of course had their share in produc 
 ing such a mental warp ; but when suspicion was once disarmed, 
 when doubt was once cleared away, the natural, vmwarped dis 
 position of the man had full sway. It may be thought strange 
 that Hugh should have been most free from the caution and sus 
 picion which were his blemishes, precisely at those times when 
 he was meditating, consciously or unconsciously; treason to Vir 
 ginia Chester. But a great passion which purges the bosom of 
 many an unworthiness beside, has no compunction for the crime 
 by which alone it itself can exist. Hugh Avas capable as these 
 doubters, scoffers, satirists, men looked upon with general distrust, 
 fear, or aversion almost invariably are of the most tenacious, 
 unflinching and devoted adherence to any sentiment, any idea 
 which once gained possession of his soul. The idea or the sen 
 timent, slow to take root or find entrance, wn sin that proportion 
 ineradicable or inexpugnable. Long ago he would have died at 
 the stake sooner than recant his faith. He would have clung to 
 the fortunes of the Stuarts long after their cause was unutterably 
 hopeless, and have died a persistent, unvarying Jacobite. With 
 a large amount of that sagacity which is swift to perceive when 
 anything is inconsistent with common sense, he would yet have 
 clung to a faith or a standard when hope of prevalence was ut 
 terly opposed to its plainest teachings. Thus it was that when 
 any faint hope of winning Marian through any possible concur 
 rence of events was put out of the question by her departure 
 when the chance which was slender at the best of times was re 
 duced to the veriest of minimums by so final a separation Gif- 
 ford began to hug his illicit passion to his bosom, to cherish it 
 day by day, to live in it, by it, through it, like as it were a re 
 ligion, and to put Ms goddess on a higher pedestal than she had 
 ever occupied before. He resumed his old life at Armstrong s 
 Bar ; but the Bar was not the same place, nor was he the same 
 man as before the departure of Marian. 
 
 His visit to San Francisco had not tended to raise his self-es 
 teem. He had seen a great many vulgar and dishonest men all 
 openly and unreservedly proclaiming their devotion to one thing 
 gold getting. But in what, he asked himself, was he better than 
 any of them ? Was not he also striving to get gold ? Had he 
 not habitually set this desire or necessity above all others in his 
 own estimation 1 What was the difference between himself and 
 Sloper, or Judge Skewer, or any of the gamblers, unless it lay in 
 the fact that they seemed to get the money they were striving 
 
246 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 for and he did not? What advantage did he reap from his 
 classics, his mathematics, his law, his knowledge of belles-let 
 tres, which had cost such pains to acquire, and of which he had 
 formerly been so proud 1 ? Alas, they could not help him to a sin 
 gle ounce of the yellow earth all were so desperately struggling 
 for ; indeed, he remembered that although his acquaintances in 
 the Golden City had appeared willing, good-naturedly, to overlook 
 his obvious educational impediments, it was clear that they con 
 sidered them such, and were secretly of opinion that they were 
 likely to be sevious practical obstacles in the way of his success. 
 Such humiliating reflections were not likely to be modified by 
 the experience of the Bar. A man there was a man, and noth 
 ing more. The only one of the company who could be said to 
 have been of more value than another for the general weal was 
 Dr. Landale. He, indeed, by dint of the theodolite once des 
 pised of Dick Railes, now reverenced to that degree that he would 
 have put himself under its tripod as it were a car of Juggernaut 
 had discovered what had made the company richer for a 
 time, and had received his due meed of honor and consideration. 
 But with this exception, the democracy was complete. Each 
 had his share and no more. Hugh, Luke, Dick Railes, even 
 poor Ike, stood upon the same platform ; and when Hugh had 
 spoken of Luke s ambition, in significant allusion to his supposed 
 admiration for Marian, he had forgotten that, so far as worldly 
 circumstances went, he himself could claim no precedence. If 
 Luke were unworthy, on such a score, of Marian s consideration, 
 he, Hugh, was no less so. Having thought thus far, he fell 
 back upon his old remedy the only panacea after all for his par 
 ticular griefs and woes the only ally whose aid would enable 
 him to mount into his fitting social position the sole stepping- 
 stone whereby he could ascend so as to be seen and respected of 
 the world Gold. 
 
 Gold ! He would have it, he must have it. What had he 
 come to California for ? To crawl about with these wretched dig 
 gers, earning barely enough to keep soul and body together, like 
 laborers on a railway ? To live without society, without litera 
 ture, without appreciation or mingling with those of kindred 
 sympathies, of similar culture for now that Marian was gone, 
 this deficiency was felt in all its force was this to be the end, 
 the reward of his aspirations and his pilgrimage ? No ; it should 
 not, must not be. He must have gold, ay, and plenty of it, as the 
 indispensable prerequisite to any of his schemes, his plans of use 
 fulness or honor for future life. But how to set about it ! 
 Were not all there equally anxious to .grow rich with himself? 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 247 
 
 Or, if their desires were not quite so impatient and feverish as his 
 own, would they not at least work as hard and as willingly as 
 he to cany them out ? What royal road could he devise to get 
 more swiftly to the wished-for goal? What device could he 
 employ, like Aladdin s lamp or Fortunatus purse, to outstrip 
 competition, to supersede that duller, yet as certain talisman, 
 hard, patient, determined labor ? 
 
 ;i l would grow rich," he moaned, "before youth has passed 
 away ; before the capacity for enjoyment has faded ; before the 
 time when love can no longer be inspired or friendship made ; 
 before travel will have ceased to amuse or novelty to excite ; be 
 fore the passions and sympathies are deadened or stiffened, and 
 life has become a mere routine of monotonous repetition ; before 
 the time has gone by when I shall care to show the miserable, 
 soulless grubs I was born and bred among, how I loathe their 
 lives, their practices, their sordid examples ; before the time 
 when the spirit shall have flown to denounce and hold up to the 
 world s contempt their Pharisaical lives, their knavish trickeries, 
 their dastardly hatred of all that is superior to their own con 
 temptible standards.. But how to set about it 1" 
 
 How, indeed ! For the bright promise of the younger days 
 of the canon had been but imperfectly fulfilled as time wore on. 
 Mr. Pangb urn had been guided by a diabolical instinct when, 
 rat -like, he had quitted the falling house, adding to the self-pre 
 serving, a provident, forethought which had cost his companions 
 all their accumulations. The yield now was small, not so little 
 as it had been just before the abandonment of the surface wash 
 ings on the river, but not comparable to what it had been at their 
 best of seasons. In a word, it was such as would have obliged 
 the party to labor for a term of years before they could reason 
 ably expect to save even modest competencies. To be sure, there 
 was always the chance of another windfall like the discovery of 
 the canon ; but, on the other hand, there was an equal chance, 
 to say the least, of the diggings becoming exhausted altogether. 
 
 This was not a very bright look-out for Hugh s soaring calcu 
 lations ; and he became, as time wore on, his heart oppressed 
 with unsatisfied longings, more and more moody, and more and 
 more desponding. It was strange he never thought at this time 
 that through poverty, and not through wealth, any chance of 
 winning Marian was most likely to lie. That is to say. that 
 while in the event of his becoming rich he could not in honor 
 avoid his engagement to Virginia, if he remained poor, her father 
 was all but certain to do his utmost to emancipate him from it. 
 Instead of thinking of such a contingency, Hugh would often 
 
248 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 muse on the ease with which he might follow Marian, go where 
 she might, even to the uttermost ends of the earth, if this great 
 unbuilt castle in Spain of his, this unearned fortune, could by 
 fairy, or any other means, once be realized. 
 
 When Marian had made up the package of gifts for him to 
 bring to the Bar, she had not had that conversation with Hugh 
 which had towards its conclusion, as it were by a lightning flash, 
 revealed to her what she had not hitherto suspected as to his feel 
 ings. Perhaps if she had, she would have rearranged its con 
 tents. Her gift to him was, to say the least, in view of the cir 
 cumstances, an indiscreet one. But the girl, with all her self-re 
 spect, was apt, as we have seen, to be somewhat unconventional. 
 The little box which contained this gift was carefully sealed, and 
 addressed to " Hugh Gifford, Esq. ;" and that gentleman having 
 distributed, like another Santa Glaus, the remaining contents of 
 his satchel, had kept his box without opening it for two days after 
 the Doctor and he had returned to the Bar. He did not open it 
 until the Sunday which next ensued, and which enabled him to 
 stray away alone to one of the haunts Marian and he had often 
 frequented ; he went up to the placid lake among the hills, there, 
 in that melancholy, yet grateful retirement, to examine and gloat 
 over his treasure. 
 
 It was Marian s picture. A very small miniature taken a year 
 or two back, and although, as was natural, not looking quite so 
 developed as the original, yet a striking likeness. It was in a 
 frame evidently very much older than itself, a frame of very old- 
 fashioned make, set around with alternating diamonds and pearls, 
 and having a cover like a locket, which fastened with a spring. 
 The likeness was remarkable. There were the lips just parted, 
 as Marian s often were, the nose slightly aquiline and so deli 
 cately chiselled, the low dreamy brow, the wealth of glossy raven 
 hair, and more than all there were the large, melting, un 
 speakably lustrous eyes, eyes with their outline and meaning so 
 distinct, so absolutely real, notwithstanding the heavy shade 
 which the longest of lashes necessarily cast over them. Unequiv 
 ocally, it was Marian s picture. 
 
 So that Hugh was the only one at the Bar who still saw 
 Marian every day ; but he was not the only one who thought of 
 her. She had left a void in the life of all, although it was a 
 greater void with some than with others. Thus, the old people 
 mourned over her loss quite as if it were that of a child, and Kitty 
 could not have cried more for that of a sister ; but the one to 
 whom the bereavement came hardest was poor Luke. He it was 
 who sat wistfully in the long evenings looking at Marian s vacant 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 249 
 
 chair ; he it was who carved a curious rustic bench and placed it 
 on the brink -of the little lake among the hills where she used to 
 love to sit ; he who built bowers at either end of the favorite 
 walk by the river, and trained wild roses and jessamine to grow 
 over them. It might have seemed too marked had these things 
 been done when Marian was living and moving among them ; 
 but nobody noticed now in any such sense what were, in effect, 
 only so many little monuments to her memory. 
 
 Gifford saw these things, and saw them without being jealous. 
 It appeared to him right enough that since Marian was lost to 
 them as well as to him and for ever, that sorrow should be ex 
 hibited in as unreserved a form as any who felt it might choose to 
 show. One day it was Sunday he wandered up to the old 
 place and found Luke sitting on the bench he had fashioned, 
 and. as Luke quietly made room for him, he sat down by his 
 side. 
 
 "It doesn t seem like the same spot now," he said, after a 
 pause, and as if answering the thoughts of his companion. 
 
 "No more like it," answered Luke, seriously, "than the little 
 duck-pond over behind grandfather s barn at Old Saybrook 
 that was where I was born, Mr. Gifford, and memory s sharp 
 bout tilings we see when we was little not so dull, neither," 
 he added, with a sigh, " bout some things when we git 
 older/ 
 
 "Luke," said Hugh, after another pause, and with a swift im 
 pulse, "now she s gone gone, and we are. none of us, I sup 
 pose, ever to see her again it doesn t so much matter to speak 
 plainly about it. You you were very fond of Miss Rooke of 
 Marian, weren t you *?" 
 
 " Yes," replied Luke, simply. 
 
 " All here were, to be sure," continued Hugh, accepting the 
 reply in a general sense ; " but you felt something more toward 
 her than the rest, did you not ?" 
 
 " I don t know what the rest felt," said Luke, "but I loved 
 her with all my heart and with all my soul." 
 
 And no one who looked in his honest blue eyes could have 
 doubted it. 
 
 "And would you," Hugh went on with a strange sort of 
 curiosity, "that is, supposing no obstacles to have existed 
 would you have married her, Luke?" 
 
 "No," was the decided reply. 
 
 " No ? You love her so deeply and would not, if you could, 
 marry her ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 11* 
 
250 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because," and the worthy fellow s voice trembled as he 
 spoke, "because she did not love me" 
 
 "Still, people get to love others in time, when they do not at 
 first, perhaps. Some natures require, as it were, to grow into a 
 love and dependency on others. By perseverance constancy 
 you might perhaps have " 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Gifford ! why should I seek to fidget and worry a 
 nater like hers jest for a selfish purpose ? What difference does 
 it make, and what account am I, compared to her? I didn t 
 love for my sake, Mr. Gifford, but for liers" 
 
 "that is noble." 
 
 " Only just and right, I call it. I did tell Mary Anne I loved 
 her, and I pleaded rather hard too hard, it seemed to me after 
 wards. But it was a sharp trial at the time, and allers after I 
 forgot my own pain in bein sorry for her." 
 
 " Sorry for her ?" 
 
 " Because she had to suffer in the same way, and bein a 
 higher and purer nater than mine, I knew she must suffer 
 more." 
 
 " But how mean you in the same way?" 
 
 " I mean that Mary Anne, too, loved as I did ; and *as I did, 
 hopelessly." 
 
 "No!" half shouted Hugh, "she is heart- free, heart- 
 whole!" 
 
 "Free she may be, but heart-whole, no ; no more than I be, 
 Mr. Gifford." 
 
 " You must be in error, Luke," said Hugh, more calmly. 
 " Miss Rooke had no affair of that sort only had one in her life, 
 and that irrevocably broken off. You must be in error." 
 
 A strange light came into Luke s eyes. Such a strange ex 
 pression like what is sometimes seen in the face of one who 
 has been weeping, but over whose mind some humorous con 
 ceit has floated unbidden, and sheds its reflection through the 
 face. 
 
 "No," he said, firmly, "I m not in error. I m ignorant 
 enough, Lord knows, Mr. Gifford, and I might naterally make 
 mistakes bout a great many things, but not bout t/iat. No, 
 Mary Anne Rooke loves, as I said, and loves hopelessly ; and 
 that s what made me feel so sorry for her, till, as I said, the pity 
 kind of overpowered and smothered the love." 
 
 "But even if it were true which I must still doubt would 
 you then regret this hopeless love ? Surely, with your feelings, 
 you would not wish her to marry another?" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 251 
 
 " That s jest where you re wrong, Mr. Gifford. Heaven is my 
 witness, how glad I d be if it were an honorable love and made 
 her happy. But it isn t, can t be, is quite out of the question ; 
 so of course I don t wish it." 
 
 " You speak in enigmas, Luke, " said Hugh, a little impa 
 tiently ; "I wish you could think it right to speak plainly." 
 
 Luke looked at the other long and earnestly. " It s strange," 
 he murmured, half to himself, "very strange and yet it s jest 
 like her." Then aloud, " You ve no idea, Mr. Gifford, what I 
 mean ?" 
 
 " None whatever except that you must have deceived your 
 self in some odd way." 
 
 Luke shook his head again ; and there remained in his face 
 the only self-confident expression which perhaps had ever shown, 
 itself there. 
 
 " As you said, Mr. Gifford," he replied, slowly, " now that 
 she s gone gone, and we, none of us, are ever to see her again 
 p raps it don t make so much difference, and then it s bein so 
 impossible and all ; and you you ve no ideal" 
 
 "None whatever not the least I repeat." 
 
 " Then, Mary Anne was very much in love and hopelessly, 
 m ind with some one here on the Bar; had been before she or 
 that some one came on the Bar ; will be, long after she and that 
 some one are gone from the Bar." 
 
 ; - And that some one?" 
 
 " And that some one is you, yourself, Mr. Gifford !" 
 
 " Good heavens!" 
 
 I knew ye didn t think it, and I was glad, for both your 
 sakes, ye didn t. But it was you, just the same, for all that." 
 
 The color gave a" deeper bronze to Gifford s cheek, and his 
 breath came a nd went swiftly as he muttered : 
 
 "You are wrong wrong ! Your own love has deceived, 
 blinded you." 
 
 " No never ! Never, except for three minutes, once when I 
 talked with her in the path there by the river. Never before, 
 never since." 
 
 " And how do you know this ?" 
 
 "And how do I know!" and Luke almost laughed aloud 
 " how do I know that the sun shines or the moon, or that the 
 water tumbles over the caterack, or that she is beautiful, or 
 that I am not good enough to love her ? Because I KNOW it 
 Because, if there were ten thousand people on the Bar, and each 
 swore it wasn t so, I d still know that it was." 
 
 " Surely, she " 
 
252 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Never spoke of or hinted such a thing ? No. I spoke to her, 
 thinkin , which I was hasty in perhaps, that others might see 
 and talk of your bein a good deal together ; but, tho she thank 
 ed me, she didn t admit I was right in my guess." 
 
 "You spoke to her ?" 
 
 " Yes ; it was kindly meant, if it does look selfish. It was be 
 cause I knew that for you two ever to be anything to each other 
 w.as impossible, and so " 
 
 "Impossible! And why?" 
 
 "Why ? Mr. Gifford, wasn t you, and ain t you engaged to 
 another woman ? And was it right for Mary Anne s honor any 
 more than it was for your n, that sech things should be said, or 
 even thought ? I didn t think so, and I spoke." 
 
 " Right quite right. I forgot, Luke ; you were quite right, 
 I don t doubt. People often forget, or never think," he went 
 on musingly, " what construction others may put upon their 
 conduct." 
 
 " That was jest it." 
 
 "And as Miss Rooke and I had many subjects of common in 
 terest to both, we, perhaps, were not considerate enough about 
 people making allowances. But, about this other surmise of 
 yours, Luke about Miss Rooke s feelings towards myself you 
 have misinterpreted this common interest and believed some 
 thing deeper, and " 
 
 Let us not argue that, Mr. Gifford, please That s a thing I 
 know ; so I can t weigh chances or doubts touchin it. Mary 
 Anne loves you loves you as-^-as I loved her." 
 
 The poor fellow stopped, and Hugh respected his silence. In 
 deed he had so much cause to wish for commune with himself as 
 to be glad of the time for reflection. Here was a revelation, 
 coming from this simple, single-minded source too, whose truth 
 he thought himself a very mole not to have before suspected, 
 a revelation, which seemed to be at one moment the most blissful 
 ever heard from mortal lips, at the next to be almost utterly in 
 different. That he loved Marian as he never yet had loved 
 woman, Hugh was now too well aware ; but was his love made 
 a whit more prosperous by a knowledge that it had been return 
 ed 1 If Marian were able to act as she had acted, to tear herself 
 away from a presence which was so dear to her, simply from a 
 conviction of duty, was she likely to be any less resolute merely 
 because Hugh knew more of the state of her heart than was 
 proper for her to divulge 1 Manifestly not. So far as his own 
 feelings were concerned, Hugh found it difficult, in reviewing 
 his conduct, to escape the persuasion that Marian must be aware 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTCNE. 253 
 
 of them. If so, it was with a double knowledge that she had 
 acted as she had. It was with a determination that the honor 
 of both should receive no blemish, that she had taken and 
 acted upon her resolution. She had done to Virginia Chester as 
 she wouM have been done by, and if Hugh were by her side at 
 this moment, armed with all the passionate eloquence that his 
 new discovery would endow him withal, he believed her strong 
 enough to persevere in the right path, and to resist him still. 
 > There was no particular gain, then, in this revelation ; it only 
 increased the measure of Hugh s regret and despondency. He 
 wandered over the dear old haunts again and again, and all he 
 could arrive at was the thought ever recurring, sometimes in one 
 shape, sometimes another, but, substantially, the same thought 
 still, that if he were only rich, somehow all difficulties could be 
 smoothed, and every one made happy without any one being 
 wronged. 
 
 In his wanderings he was almost always attended by his old 
 companions, Ichabod and Lion. Hugh liked their company 
 chiefly, perhaps, because they seldom spoke, but there was a 
 strong tie between them for a better reason. It is said that peo 
 ple that is to say, people of mean, low natures never forgive 
 those who have done them favors. I am very sure that this is 
 not the case with dogs ; those, at least, of the nobler breeds may 
 be better described as never forgetting rather than never forgiv 
 ing their benefactors. Such, at any rate, was the case with Lion: 
 he recognized Ike as his playfellow and his master, to the extent 
 that they were never separated ; but he regarded Hugh, so far 
 as a dog could cherish such a sentiment, with a species of grate 
 ful reverence, of steadfast, immovable attachment, which, by a 
 natural sympathy, he also shared with Ike himself. The dark 
 ened mind of the imbecile, darkened in spite of its occasional 
 flashes of keen perception or shrewd cunning, was yet capable 
 of the most intense feeling of gratitude. The strongest desire 
 that he had ever felt was that of doing Gifford some signal service 
 in return for the inestimable one of saving his favorite s life, and 
 this desire was hardly ever absent from his thoughts. Many a 
 strange colloquy had he had with Lion on this important subject 
 when no one else was by ; many a time had he impressed upon Ms 
 canine understanding the necessity which existed for some re 
 compense being devised in requital for the great boon which had 
 been conferred upon him. At such times the creature would 
 listen with a grave and attentive air, and appear altogether to 
 appreciate and concur in the arguments presented ; and, whether 
 he understood them or not, I am quite sure that he would have 
 
254 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 shrunk from no sacrifice or personal risk which, upon occasion, 
 their acceptance might entail. 
 
 While all the others on the Bar saw Hugh s depression, and 
 accounted for it in various ways, Ike ,did the same with his own 
 lights, and after his own fashion. He knew that Marian, and Gif- 
 ford had been a great deal together, for he had often enough 
 been of the party ; but he did not connect her departure with the 
 existing gloom for two reasons: one was that, although he would 
 have seen something to laugh at and have a joke about in tfye 
 flirtations of Kitty Armstrong and Dick Railes, such an idea 
 never for an instant occurred to him in connection with Marian 
 and Hugh. He regarded the former indeed as a superior, 
 almost as an angelic being, and had an instinctive perception of 
 the impropriety of coupling her name with the jests and gibes 
 about love which seemed natural enough with those of creatures 
 of coarser clay. These are of the perceptions which, in our fel 
 low beings whom we call weak-minded, are often the strongest 
 and most clearly defined. 
 
 But Ike believed that he knew the real secret at the bottom of 
 Hugh s disquietude; and he addressed himself one day to obtain 
 a satisfactory acknowledgment of the accuracy of his opinion. 
 They had been, as usual, hard at work in the canon, and the two 
 had withdrawn, as was often their wont, to eat their frugal mid 
 day meal under a waterproof tent hard by. The day had been 
 very wet, the rain pouring almost constantly in sullen, leaden 
 showers, and scarcely a gleam of sunshine or a patch of blue sky, 
 which now and again would cheer their weary toil in the 
 long days of the rainy season, had on this morning been seen. 
 There were two or three tents for shelter when the torrents were 
 too heavy and unceasing for work ; but the miners had long boots 
 coming to the thigh, and oilskin coats, and generally speaking 
 they toiled steadily on, rain or shine. 
 
 "Pears to me," said Ike, addressing Lion, who lay with his 
 great curly black hide streaming with moisture outside the tent, 
 " pears to me everybody s gittin down-hearted and lonesome 
 cept you and me. P raps," he continued, cutting off a piece of 
 dried beef and presenting to the animal, who took it with great 
 gentleness and deliberation, "p raps it s bekase you and me air 
 the only ones who have everythink we want. We ain t down 
 hearted, for we don t hanker for what we can t git. We ain t 
 lonesum, for we allers have enough company." 
 
 "Yes," said Hugh, half consciously acquiescing, "you two 
 are happy enough, no doubt. The happiest on the Bar are those 
 whom the rest are always pitying." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 255 
 
 " I don t want no pity," said Ike, scornfully ; "pity em back, 
 and see how they like it. Allers a grtimblin and cussin , come 
 low water or high. Heavy yield, no thanks ; little yield, all 
 growl. Ike s a poor shoat, that s so. He s a dirned fool, 
 Dick says. Praps that s so. But he s the only one o the crowd 
 who don t rile over what he hain t got, and yet could git what 
 all the rest hanker arter." 
 
 "You mustn t mind Dick," said Hugh, gently ; "he says 
 much he don t mean, you know, Ike. He s a good fellow at 
 bottom." 
 
 "Ay, maybe there s wuss than Dick; and then Kitty likes 
 him. so he wouldn t be drefful bad." 
 
 No ; surely that s a mark in his favor. But you see, Ike, it s 
 natural when people work hard that they should look for some 
 reward." 
 
 " They don t git more for grumblin over it." 
 
 " No, perhaps not. But it s some relief, you know, to com 
 plain." 
 
 " Injuns don t think so ; and they know a heap better n most 
 of us. Better n most anyone, ceptin Lion. Injuns know a 
 sight o things they don t tell on, that s more," added Ike, reflec 
 tively. 
 
 " You ve seen many of em I mean since we ve been here?" 
 
 " Only two or three. There s lots, they say, towards the 
 rising sun. And none of our folks dares to go to the 
 north-east for fear o their precious scalps. They don t fight 
 open, not even like them ere devils o Pawnees ; but lie in the 
 chaparral and pick folks off when they go by. They re like 
 Ike for one thing." 
 
 " And what s that, pray ?" 
 
 "Not carin a darn for the gold." 
 
 " Oh, they don t value it, eh ?" 
 
 "Not yet. Uncle Seth says they will, plaguey quick, when 
 they know how much fire-water, and blankets, and powder and 
 shot, it ll fetch. But they ll stop bein Injuns soon when they 
 get to know that much." 
 
 " Poor people, they don t last long after contact with the white 
 man." 
 
 " But they know what Ike knows they know what all peo 
 ple know where to find things they don t want. Ike don t 
 care for gold; and he kin tell where s there s acres and moun 
 tains of it. That s allers the way; nobody kin find it as wants 
 it, and everyone kin hev it who don t." 
 
 The boast had been repeated too often for Hugh to regard it 
 
256 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 as any more than one of Ike s harmless and frequent fantasies, 
 and he well knew that if questioned as to why he did not use his 
 exceptional knowledge, the old reply, that it would be bad" for 
 the others to share in its benefit, would be his only one ; so Hugh 
 remained silent. 
 
 "Now you, Mr. Gifford," said Ike, turning sharply upon him, 
 and narrowly scanning his face " you can t find any gold ; 
 more n the poor scratching you git here now, I mean ?" 
 
 " No, Ike, I suppose I can t." 
 
 "Then you kear for it, that s all." 
 
 "Well," confessed Hugh, with a sigh, " I fear I do, Ike." 
 
 " Do ye now, really, very much f put Ike, with curiosity. 
 
 " Yes really very much." 
 
 "Ever so much?" persisted Ike, coming close, and peering 
 into the -other s face, as if trying to elicit some mysterious, 
 occult secret. 
 
 "Yes, ever so much." 
 
 " I wish ye d tell me why." 
 
 1 Why ? Why ? " repeated Hugh, forgetting, in the thoughts 
 which the inquiry suggested, the mental deficiency of the ques 
 tioner. " How can you ask why ? Because it would make me 
 a different man ! Because it would change into refined and ele 
 vated surroundings the coarse and sordid ones which must now, 
 perforce, content me ! Because it would enable me to achieve 
 something, and show the world of what stuff I am made ! Be 
 cause it would enable me to avenge myself on the narrow- 
 minded wretches who have scorned and trampled on me because 
 I was poor ! Because it would enable me to apply the touchstone, 
 that I might thus distinguish between false love and true ! And 
 because, if the test showed what I think it would, it would 
 enable me oh, happiness I to to " 
 
 "To what?" urged Ike, eagerly. 
 
 " To do and be all that I most wish for on earth," said Hugh, 
 recollecting himself in time to employ a generality instead of 
 the particular declaration which had hovered on his lips. 
 
 "It s curus," mused Ike, " that what some folks want so much, 
 other folks don t kear shucks for." 
 
 "Yes," answered Hugh, abstractedly, and thinking how he 
 had been led unawares into a mere wild and purposeless decla 
 ration of his wishes. 
 
 "P raps, arter all, we may strike a lead agin, as rich as the 
 first go off wos on the canon." 
 
 "Perhaps." 
 
 " There s nuthin for t but to keep on tryin ." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 257 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " Then agin," remarked Ike, digressing into a new train of 
 reflection, " you know a heap more n most any on em on the 
 Bar. I don t know nuthin and don t make nuthin , being short 
 o school learnin , let alone other things ; but folks that know so 
 much ought to git on faster n them that don t know anythink." 
 
 Hugh colored. "Why, you see, Ike," he replied, again ex 
 plaining, "I have had some education, it s true, but I ve never 
 had anything of a start in life to make that education of any 
 avail. I was bred to a profession, but a man should be able to 
 live four or five years without its aid, who is to depend on its 
 practice for the future. I had no such help. My parents could 
 give me education, but they could give me nothing more. So 
 that in some sense I was rather the worse than the better for it, 
 seeing it pointed out pleasures, opened the way to habits, gen 
 erated hopes, which I had no means of carrying out or ful 
 filling." 
 
 "Then," said Ike, calmly, " you re wuss off with the eddica- 
 tion than ye would have bin without it. So I allers thought." 
 
 " Perhaps not altogether so. But it doesn t make a man hap 
 pier who is absolutely hopeless of rising in life." 
 
 " You want to rise in life," repeated Ike, in an argumentative 
 sort of tone, " but yit you can t earn no more with your hands 
 than Dick Railes!" 
 
 "No," said Hugh, sadly, "perhaps not so much." 
 
 "And you can t rise in life without gold ?" 
 
 "No," said Hugh, decisively ; " certainly not." 
 
 The sun here flickered forth a little through the drenching 
 showers, and the colloquists joined their fellow laborers at their 
 tedious labor in the now niggardly canon. Hugh thought he 
 had been holding what appeared to be a curiously-connected 
 conversation, seeing that poor Ike had been his companion ; but, 
 beyond a passing wonder, the matter soon slipped from his 
 memory. It was far otherwise with Ike himself. He, had in 
 his own way obtained the particular knowledge he had set him 
 self to find out ; and the discovery, so far as its main essential 
 was concerned, had sunk deeply into his heart. 
 
258 MARIAN ROOKE: OK, 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " THERE ain t much show," said Uncle Seth, as h6 sat smoking 
 his pipe in the chimney-corner, one raw January evening, "for 
 the old homestead at Saybrook this year. We kin lay by some- 
 think in bank, and hev a wood instead of a cotting roof, may 
 be ; but gold is too scass for to think of gittin rich by railroad 
 this ?ere season." 
 
 " All along o that ere pesky Pangburn," snapped Mrs. Arm 
 strong, her eyes quivering over her spectacles, " which was the 
 palaveringest mortal I ever see. I ask ye now, who could tell 
 he didn t care anything about chiny, or never took an interest in 
 patchwork, by what he said no, not from fust to last f 
 
 " He is a fust-rate business man," chuckled Dick Railes, who 
 had always felt a lurking dread that Pangburn s merits as a con 
 noisseur in these articles of vertu might seduce the good dame 
 into an attempt to supersede his own pretensions with pretty 
 Kitty " a fust-rate business man is Pangburn ; and knows 
 drenul well which way to make folks look when he s arter the 
 sugar." 
 
 " Anyhow," growled the Doctor, " he just kept us from making 
 improvements which might have made us all rich by this time. 
 However, it s worth some sacrifice to have had one really good 
 chance to study that sort of animal." 
 
 "I reckon studyin of em don t make em hook less," ob 
 served Mrs. Armstrong, sagely ; " and, opinion bein asked, I d 
 elect their bein studied where folks had stronger bolts, or more 
 to lose." 
 
 " After all, ma," chirruped Kitty, " we re much better off 
 than some poor people ; and surely it might have been much 
 worse." 
 
 " Allowin ," affirmed her mother, " f r instance, that we d set 
 tled among the Mandans, where the red varmints has that taste 
 for chiny and patchwork that they wear all they kin git on their 
 miserable painted bodies. It might a ben wuss to be skinned by 
 a Mandan instead of a Pangburn ; but for ch ice, give me 
 nuther." 
 
 "Up, away no th east ards," said Uncle Seth, puffing away 
 patiently, " there s bin awful work among the red-skins. When 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 259 
 
 there warn t many whites, they was peaceable enough ; but now 
 the miners air increasin and multiplyin , and kind o pushiii into 
 their huntin -grounds, they re gittin awful savage There was 
 seven miners killed on the Coltsfoot range away to the no th o 
 Gunpowder Crik a week ago Sunday." 
 
 "That s whar Pangburn ought to a gone," said Mr. Railes. 
 " If you could on y a made a pint thereaway, Doctor, with the 
 th odolite, and persuaded the critter thar was rich diggins thar, 
 he d a come to a righteous end by this." 
 
 "I wouldn t wish no white man sech a fate, Dick," said Uncle 
 Seth. charitably ; "we ve ben too near it ourselves to wish e er 
 a feller bein to share in t. As for the dust, he won t be no 
 better nor we no wuss for it, in the long run." 
 
 " When I kin dig taters out of a hill." remarked Mrs. Arm 
 strong, " furthest be it from me to grudge fryin em with the pork. 
 But the hard lines was rather tucked on to us jest about then. 
 You kin dig gold, and you can dig taters, but you can t dig up 
 gals like our Mary Anne not every day." This was said with a 
 sorrowing glance towards Luke ; for the mother s instinct taking 
 alarm at his long-continued, patient sorrow, had not been de 
 ceived at last in divining the cause. 
 
 "Ay," said Seth gravely ; "both our treasures were took 
 from us to onct ; and it did seem rather stiff comin together like. 
 I take it, if we d had a ch ice, few on us would a differed as to 
 which to lose. But these things is ordered for us, and we don t 
 order em for ourselves. " 
 
 " I wish an order d come for an ounce to the pan," said Dick 
 Railes, sotto voce, " like as was in the old times. Seems to me if 
 things keeps on, we ll hev to go to hoein corn agin for a livin , 
 with a little huntin and fishin thrown in." 
 
 " There s gold enough in the country," continued Seth, " only 
 p raps we ain t so fortunate as some folks who change then* loca 
 tion oftener. For my part I allers allowed I d rather stick to one 
 spot, bein naterally sot agen movin , and some struck in years. 
 AWve staid here very stiddy, that s a fact ; and when we fust 
 come, we could pick and choose. Its harder doin that now ; 
 for to the suth ard and west ard there s the settlers comin in 
 thicker and thicker every day ; and to the north ard and east ard 
 there s the redskins who air on the war-path, and no mistake. 
 So now I don t see nuthin better than to squat where we air, and 
 worry of it out." 
 
 " There s as much gold here as anywhere," said the Doctor, 
 lighting his pipe with a red-wood shaving ; "but it s harder to 
 get at, and will take machinery such as we haven t got. Quick- 
 
200 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 silver will separate gold from earth, but it won t extract it from 
 quartz. That must be pulverized before it will relax its hold. 
 We ve been skimming the surface, that s all ; and we shall keep 
 on skimming till we either find a new placer, or get a quartz 
 mill." 
 
 " Couldn t we make one f asked Dick. 
 
 "Make one !" 
 
 ; " Make one as we did the flume," explained the backwoods- 
 \ man, who had a secret conviction that strong arms and broad 
 axes were equal to the manufacture of almost any, however com 
 plicated, machinery. 
 
 " Do you know what such a thing is t How would you set 
 about it ?" 
 
 " Why," said Dick, somewhat abashed, " couldn t ye kind o 
 work in the th odolite ?" 
 
 This was the resource for any mysterious or recondite needs, 
 when the strong arms and broad axes required auxiliary aid. It 
 was remarkable that, just as Dick had at first regarded the instru 
 ment as a mere bauble, a child s plaything, he now firmly be 
 lieved it capable of conquering the most unheard-of difficulties. 
 It now inspired him with awe, just as before it filled him with 
 contempt. It had been a useless toy, and was now the thunder 
 bolt of Jove. 
 
 "Why, no," laughed the Doctor, "I fear it would scarcely 
 serve us there. Twill measure heights and distances, and survey 
 land, and lay off angles, and tell us even differences of levels, but 
 it won t answer the purpose of a machine-shop, nor build us a 
 steam-engine." 
 
 " I ve bin thinkin ," said Seth, u that we might kind o pros 
 pect more. None o these questions of title are likely to be riz, 
 leastways for some years to come, and we might give a little time 
 when the rains hold up to prospectin a piece, jest as well as spend 
 it all in poor work. Anyway, it ll only cost the time to try." 
 
 There had been a great deal of desultory prospecting before, 
 and it had generally proved very unproductive. But Uncle Seth 
 had an idea that, by proposing such experiments now and then, 
 he forestalled discontent, and kept the party in harmony together. 
 It had been arranged between Dick and Kitty, and, after some 
 demur and talking of it over, with the old folks, that they were 
 to be married in the coming spring, provided a certain sum 
 should then have been accumulated as going to Dick s share, thus 
 making it reasonably prudent for him to assume new responsibili 
 ties . According to Dick s version, they were to be married at early 
 summer, "whether or no" ; but although inwardly resolved on 
 
THE QUEST FOB FORTUNE. 261 
 
 not being debarred from happiness by pecuniary considerations, 
 Dick was still extremely anxious to get on, and he chafed under 
 the slow progress and niggardly yield which so long attended 
 then* efforts at the Bar. But the rainy season had kept more 
 than one impatient spirit in check there. Luke Armstrong pined 
 for a more active and adventurous life, and we have seen some 
 thing of Gifford s discontents and aspirations. As for the 
 Doctor, in addition to his share of the mining interests, and at 
 tending to such few trifling ailments as any of the company had 
 experienced, he was absorbed in making geological andjbotanical 
 collections to that degree that he had no time either to be un 
 happy or discontented. 
 
 There were a great many vicissitudes of fortune that season. 
 Stones were blown to the ear on every breeze of enormous for 
 tunes swiftly amassed, of incredible lumps of gold discovered, of 
 mountains all compact with the glittering metal, of ravines more 
 precious than the fabled valley of diamonds. The truth was, 
 that when any brilliant discovery was made, it was profusely ad 
 vertised and trumpeted, so that scarcely any one in California re 
 mained ignorant of it ; but of the thousands who made but a bare 
 subsistence, struggling on against the evils ol enormous prices for 
 every necessary, often almost without shelter, clothing, or even 
 food, report made no mention. So that the young men at Arm 
 strong s Bar very naturally contrasted their own measure not 
 with the latter, but with the former, standards of success ; a pro 
 ceeding common to all men in all generations, and it may be 
 supposed, always to remain so. But in spite of this, there were 
 a great number of real, substantial fortunes amassed, and no lack 
 of authentic details to cause the unlucky ones to envy and ad 
 mire. 
 
 As for Hugh, not a week passed but he was revolving some 
 scheme for changing his situation. But there were not a few 
 obstacles to such a step. First, there was Marian s desire that 
 he should remain with the Armstrongs ; it was very sweet and 
 grateful to Hugh to think he was obeying that desire. Then 
 he could not bear, somehow, melancholy as were then* associa 
 tions, to tear himself from the places she used to love, the spots 
 which she had hallowed by her presence. Added to this was 
 the circumstance, that it was a matter of no little inconvenience 
 at that date to wander forth in the rainy season with no fixed 
 abode or habitation. I remember sleeping on top of a pile of 
 trunks once, exposed through the livelong night to a drenching 
 rain, at a place called the ; Summit," on the Isthmus of Panama, 
 The " Summit," besides its negative charms of affording no 
 
262 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 shelter the few wretched adobe huts it contained having been 
 absolutely packed with travellers before my arrival struck me 
 as the most hideously desolate hole I had ever yet seen. Now, 
 I dare say to those who, being, if not comfortably, at least dryly, 
 housed, looked forth and saw me on my eyrie, the place ap 
 peared a veiy good one to stop in, notwithstanding they were 
 sleeping so close to one another on the floor that there was no 
 room for any living thing, except the fleas, to come between 
 them ; and Hugh had seen, even in his short travels, so many 
 poor fellows without a roof over their heads, that even the 
 "cotting" one of his present quarters was not to be despised. 
 At all events, the season which we call spring had almost come, 
 and he still lingered at the Bar. 
 
 When the rains began to cease, a marked change came over 
 the poor witling, Ike. It has been said before, that his mental 
 weakness had not the effect to impair his usefulness in a general 
 way, or to disqualify him for steadfast labor. On the contrary, 
 he was always at work with the earliest, and among the last to 
 pause. But latterly he seemed to take a different view of his 
 obligations. By degrees he began to avoid exertion, to go late 
 to the canon, to abandon the particular spot where he was post 
 ed, and go restlessly to others. After a time he stayed away 
 from work altogether, hanging about the house, however, and 
 chopping wood and bringing water, as had been his wont long 
 ago at the farm on the banks of the Ohio. When this had gone 
 on for a while, alternating with returns to his more regular hab 
 its, Seth took occasion, with great gentleness, to remonstrate 
 with him, whereat Ike plumply refused for some days to do any 
 labor at all. Being unmolested and unnoticed for a space, he 
 again resumed his toil with the others. But the interruptions 
 continued, and even became more frequent. Soon after, he add 
 ed a new vagary to his former ones, which at first caused some 
 alarm ; he absented himself for a whole day, and did not return 
 until far into the night, being let in with his four-legged com 
 panion, at twelve o clock, greatly to the relief of Mrs . Arm 
 strong, who had desired the whole party to turn out and scour 
 the country for him. An impression now arose in the little cir 
 cle that poor Ike was fast losing what slender wits he ever had, 
 and that he was in danger of becoming quite useless and incapa 
 ble. On this, Seth consulted the Doctor ; but the latter advised 
 that Ike should be left entirely to his own devices. In that case 
 the increased aberration might be but temporary ; but if too 
 much notice were taken, or any coercion attempted, it might not 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 263 
 
 only make him worse, but destroy all chance of his ultimate re 
 covery. 
 
 One day he seemed to have capped the climax of his eccentri 
 cities, for he departed before daybreak, taking with him not only 
 his inseparable companion, but also Dick Railes mustang mare, 
 the apple of his eye, from her shed in the coital. At first Dick 
 stormed and swore, for this was his one possession which he 
 could not bear to have in any manner interfered with ; but he 
 forgot his anger before the next morning, when neither man, 
 horse, nor dog had been seen or heard of. Such a thing had 
 never occurred before, and it threw the Bar into a great commo 
 tion. They hunted in all directions, as far as Yankee Jim s on 
 one side, and the Coyote Run on the other ; they even pene 
 trated a dozen miles toward the dreaded Indian country a di 
 rection they had ever been most sedulous in avoiding. A sec 
 ond night wore away in anxious expectancy, but still the truant 
 came not. Towards morning Seth had determined to raise the 
 country in every quarter, and, if possible, to have poor Ike 
 found ; for there now began to be a general fear that he had met 
 disaster, and that his body, mangled by Indians or grizzlies, was 
 all they could hope to find, if, indeed, it were not already dis 
 posed of by the latter. 
 
 But on the second morning, as the sun was just peeping over 
 the hills, poor Ike returned, having been absent eight-and-forty 
 hours ; and to Dick s great satisfaction he was accompanied not 
 only by Lion, but by the mare. The trio were in a woeful 
 plight, indeed. They were draggled with dirt, and wet from 
 head to foot. Ike was rather a singular figure at the best of 
 times, but now he was a sight to behold. If he had been plas 
 tered with glue, and then rolled in a dust heap, he could scarcely 
 have been more matted with adhering filth ; and Lion had evi 
 dently experienced precisely the same vicissitudes with his 
 master. As to the mare, she was not only exceedingly dirty, 
 and quite knocked-up, but very footsore, notwithstanding Ike 
 had led her for many miles during the latter part of his erratic 
 journey, himself scarcely able to drag one foot after another. 
 As usual Ike declined to give any account of his wanderiugs, 
 and his friends wisely avoided pestering him witli questions. He 
 ate and drank heartily, and then fell into a sound sleep which 
 lasted into the evening. Then he awoke, and soon after had a 
 violent chill, followed by sharp febrile symptoms. At this the 
 Doctor gave him quinine, and found it necessary to continue his 
 treatment for some days. In the mean time the mare was put 
 
2G4 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 out of his reach, and Lion, who seemed heartily glad to be at 
 home again, lay snoring under his cot. 
 
 Ike had started for his excursion on a Tuesday ; he returned 
 on the following Thursday, but it was not until Sunday that he 
 seemed to have entirely recovered from its effects. 
 
 It was one of those supremely lovely mornings that are so 
 bright, so gladdening to the heart, because they come after a 
 long, long series of days when the sun is scarcely ever seen, and 
 when the rain falls almost ceaselessly, as if the skies were never 
 again to clear. A fine haze was in the air, which made the land 
 scapes look like mezzotint, and the sky was of that tender Cali- 
 fornian blue, than which that of Italy may be more beautiful, 
 but which none who have seen the former will allow. The long- 
 continued moisture had swelled vegetation into its most luxu 
 riant growth, and a sparkle seemed to dance on every spray and 
 tree-top as if diamonds had been sprinkled there. It was a day 
 to be remembered for its own loveliness, but it was tenfold more 
 precious to Gifford, in that it reminded him so strongly of some 
 others like it when his walk up to the mountain farm had not 
 been so lonely as it this morning was. He sat there on Luke s 
 memorial bench, and bathed in the soft, delicious air, his thoughts 
 wandering back many a day into the past, far into the time 
 which now appeared so distant, when the company had started 
 from St. Louis ; to the time before they had faced the dangers 
 of the plains, and had turned into a veritable citadel the huge 
 old vehicle they christened Castle Armstrong. And Hugh could 
 not but remember how nervously anxious he had been for those 
 days to pass that he might be at his destined work of winning 
 a fortune. Alas I how many of us like him can recall such 
 memories, and long to change the present days for those the 
 unreturning ones 1 
 
 His reverie was broken by a light step, and Ichabod stood 
 before him. He wore something of his old look again ; his 
 dress, if fantastic, was, at least, clean, and as usual the stalwart 
 Lion was at his heels. 
 
 "Why, Ike," cried Gifford, " you look quite yourself again 
 as hearty and well as if you had never taken that wild-goose 
 chase of yours among the hills." 
 
 " What s a wild-goose chase? asked Ike, suspiciously, 
 " What? Why, a chase after a will-o -the-wisp a race with 
 out a goal a running after nothing, to be sure." 
 
 "And you think Ike has been running after nothing?" 
 "Not purposely," said Hugh, gently. "Ike had an object in 
 view, but was mistaken, perhaps, in the path he took to get at it." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE, 2G5 
 
 "That s the way with all the wise folks," returned Ike, sulk 
 ily, " everybody s mistaken but themselves. The beasts know 
 how to suckle their young, and the birds to make their nests, 
 and even the sparrers know how to find the berries ; but they re 
 all fools like Ike ! Bime by, when the wise folks kin find what 
 Ike kin, they ll be fools, I reckon, and Ike ll be a wise man." 
 
 "Come, come," said Hugh, in his soothing way, which he 
 seemed to keep for the simpleton, and use with no one else, 
 " none of us are wise always, Ike ; and if you accomplished the 
 object of your journey, so much the better." 
 
 Ike sat down on the bench by Gifford s side, and began with 
 great industry to rearrange the feathers in his hat, while his com 
 panion relapsed into reverie. Presently, however, he was roused 
 again by a touch on the shoulder, and, looking at Ike, he saw 
 that the latter was pointing mysteriously to the north-east. 
 
 " There s Injuns there away," he affirmed sententiously. 
 
 Hugh nodded. " We always knew that or supposed* it." 
 
 "There s Injuns there away," repeated the other, " but they 
 won t hurt Ike." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " No ;" and Ike resumed his work with the cherished feathers. 
 After an interval ne again broke .silence : 
 
 " They ve gone and hid Dick s mare!" 
 
 " Yes. She was tired and footsore, and they have given her 
 a holiday." 
 
 " They ve hid Dick s mare," reiterated the simpleton ; " but 
 there s bosses at Yankee Jim s that don t want no holiday." 
 
 "YesT 
 
 " Yes," and once more the process of redecoration went on. 
 
 " I m a fool," suddenly exclaimed Ike, interrupting Ms toils 
 
 with a great outburst of candor ; " but not about everythink. 
 
 Some folks ain t fools ; but then again they ain t cute about any- 
 
 think." 
 
 " Ay," conceded Hugh, with a lazy assent to the proposition, 
 " there are many who think themselves wise who don t know 
 more than Ike." 
 
 " There s many who think themselves wise who know a darned 
 sight less than Ike," corrected he decisively. " Now," he con 
 tinued, after a few moments of deep reflection, "you re" one 
 on em." 
 
 " I ?" said Hugh, smiling. 
 
 "I want you to promise me something," said Ike, mistily 
 changing the thread of his discourse, "afore I go any further." 
 
 "What is it, Ike ?" 
 12 
 
2G6 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "A promise to be kept as sacred as one to your sweetheart." 
 
 Gifford turned crimson at the allusion ; but Ike was too ab 
 sorbed in his own effort at concentration and continuity to notice 
 him. 
 
 " You ll make a sacred promise, with Lion as a witness," he 
 repeated. 
 
 "If you wish it," answered Hugh, " and it s nothing wrong, 
 I will." 
 
 "Wrong, wrong!" echoed Ike, impatiently ; "it s nobody s 
 business but mine and your n. I don t want ye to kill no one, 
 nor set the old ranch a-fire, nor yit hook the gold dust like old 
 Pangburn. I ain t travellin on anythink but what s right, I 
 guess." 
 
 " Well, well, Ike, I promise." 
 
 " Seein it s for your own good as Lion knows as well as me 
 ye might as well. It s only to promise what I tell ye no one 
 else shall ever know, cept I myself agree to their knowin of it." 
 
 " That s reasonable enough. I promise, faithfully." 
 
 "That s you. I like to hear ye say faithfully, for talkin 
 honest, Mr. Gifford, I don t feel quite sure how long my head 11 
 last, and it sounds as though you d carry out my iidea if I give 
 out." 
 
 Hugh looked at him with surprise. His words were perfectly 
 coherent now ; coherent as they had been on one other occasion 
 when he had made a great effort to explain and to understand. 
 Hugh had not sufficiently studied the pathology of such cases to 
 be aware how it often happens that the afflicted can compass 
 something very like sanity by a sovereign effort of the will; and 
 although reaction be certain to follow such an instance, that, 
 during the effort, the reasoning faculty is almost in a normal or 
 healthy condition. 
 
 " I ll do whatever you wish, Ike," said Gifford, " at least so far 
 as I can, believe me." 
 
 "Well, then," continued the simpleton, gravely, "I wish ye 
 to git up to-night arter the rest is asleep, and walk with me as 
 far as to Yankee Jim s ; there we ll git hosses, and at daybreak 
 we kin push on our way in the saddle." 
 
 Gifford hesitated. There was something so like folly in this 
 apparently aimless expedition that it seemed ridiculous to embark 
 in it. Qn the other hand, he had promised acquiescence, and 
 Ike s manner was so different from usual that he felt it would be 
 extremely awkward to employ one of the commonplace eva 
 sions generally adopted with such people. He was greatly 
 puzzled. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 267 
 
 "You re a tliinkin ," observed Ike, steadily, "that this era 
 fool s tryin to git you on a chase arter the wild goose he s be n 
 traveUin arter hisself. Don t think that, Mr. Giffbrd. Don t 
 think it this time. I hold ye to your word, mind ; and I agree 
 and stipperlate ye won t be sorry ye kept it." 
 
 "Be it so," exclaimed Hugh, after a little more reflection. 
 " It shall be exactly as you wish, Ike; I m sure you wouldn t 
 give me unnecessary anxiety or trouble. I will do as you de 
 sire. And now will you tell me, after that, Ike, what is tho 
 aim the object of this queer journey of yours 1 ?" 
 
 Ike shook his head. " I d rather ye trusted me clear through. 
 P raps," he added, ingenuously, " if I told ye the object ye 
 wouldn t go, arter all." 
 
 "That s not very encouraging," returned Gifford, laughing. 
 ( However, my word is passed, and I won t go behind it. At 
 twelve o clock, then, Ike?" 
 
 " At twelve." said Ike, " or as nigh it as the rest may happen 
 to be all sound. It wouldn t do for em to know I was stirrin 
 again, for they d try and stop me, maybe, specially the Doctor." 
 
 "With this curious illustration of the gleams of sagacity that 
 sometimes shot furtively athwart the dark texture of his mind, 
 Ike whistled to Lion, and stalked away into the depths of the 
 forest. 
 
 Much as he doubted his own wisdom in giving the promise, 
 Hugh never dreamed, nowthat it was given, of revoking or quali 
 fying it ; but he passed the day with some uneasiness as he reflect 
 ed upon the many possible dangers and troubles his compliance 
 might bring, not upon himself alone, but upon Ms irresponsible 
 companion. Should anything befall, who would hold him justi 
 fiable in assenting to the plans of one so notoriously imbecile, if 
 not absolutely idiotic ? Such was the thought that gave him 
 most concern. On the other hand, he found a feeling within his 
 breast which had almost the force of conviction, and which con 
 tinually urged a belief that, as Ike had declared, he would not be 
 sorry for keeping his word. 
 
 The day wore on, as many another quiet Sunday had worn on 
 before ; but Hugh s pleasure in its beauty, its softness, its cluster 
 ing associations, was marred, or merged into a longing curiosity 
 that the night might come and bring at least a beginning to the 
 solution of Ike s mystery. It came at last with a deep, solemn 
 starlight ; but, as chance would have it, the family were wakeful 
 that night, and it was quite twelve o clock before, as Hugh 
 judged,- all could safely be deemed unconscious. 
 
 He was just thinkmg of rising, as he lay on his narrow pallet, 
 
268 MARIAN ROOKE J OR, 
 
 when a hand passed lightly over his face, and he knew that Ike 
 was beside him. He rose noiselessly, and quickly finishing the 
 scanty operations of his toilette, Gifford thrust his revolver and 
 hunting-knife into his belt, and strapping on his knapsack, in 
 which he had provided a few biscuits and a flask of whiskey, the 
 two stole forth into the darkness. Lion was already outside the 
 door, waiting, apparently in accordance with a previous under 
 standing, until he should be joined by the others. 
 
 There was no moon* but the stars were bright, and the air 
 perfectly still, and the trio set forth on their march amid that un 
 earthly silence seldom observed, save in a new country, where 
 the sounds of humanity and its adjuncts are few and very far be 
 tween. Now and again this silence was interrupted by the dis 
 tant cry of a coyote, which made Lion sniff the air with a con 
 temptuous sort of curiosity, for he had more than once grappled 
 with and overcome these wolves of the prairie ; but, for the most 
 part, the silence was unbroken. 
 
 All night long they tramped on, keeping near the river for a 
 guide, with an occasional look upwards at the stars to make sure 
 of being in the right direction. The distance to Yankee Jim s 
 was upwards of twenty miles, a march which might have ex 
 hausted many who had not, like Hugh and Ike, lived so much 
 in the open air, and who had not, as they had, since starting to 
 cross the plains, spent so much time on their legs. As it was, 
 they were not sorry, at the same moment that they saw the first red 
 streak of day, to see the low roofs of two or three straggling huts 
 which constituted the settlement. 
 
 Here, as they were well known, after some little bargaining, 
 Hugh managed to hire a couple of respectable, rough Californian 
 ponies, much more surefooted and trustworthy for a long pull 
 than if they had been two hands higher, or two hundred weight 
 heavier than they were. Having made arrangements to keep 
 the animals for three days, Gifford and his companion turned 
 back, as if to retrace their steps to the Bar ; but before a mile 
 had been traversed in that direction, they wheeled sharply to the 
 1 left and made straight toward the north-east. 
 
 All that day, and far into the following night, with only an 
 occasional pause for frugal refreshment, the two horsemen wound, 
 and forced, and struggled their way qver hills, down valleys, 
 across brooklets and marshes, skirting woods, avoiding moun 
 tains, sometimes fighting through chaparral. But they always 
 made substantially for the north-east. 
 
 Near midnight they bivouacked in a wood by the side of a 
 little stream ; and their sleep was even sounder 1 than common, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 269 
 
 for their march had been most wearisome, and with the faithful 
 Lion for a sentinel, there was small danger of being surprised. 
 However, they saw no traces of Indians, although they were 
 now on the borders of the lands where they were said to be 
 numerous ; and, although Ike averred that in his previous wan 
 derings he had encountered them more than once, their track was 
 happily avoided on the present occasion. 
 
 Towards daylight they again resumed their journey, and reso 
 lute as Gifford had been in keeping his word, his heart half failed 
 him as he found that after all the great distance they had trav 
 elled for they must now be more than fifty miles from Arm 
 strong s Bar his companion insisted on proceeding still further. 
 The aspect of the country had now altogether changed. The 
 smooth, vernal character of the plain had given place to the 
 rugged wildness of a mountainous district, and each step appear 
 ed to be taking them higher. The luxuriant clambering vines 
 which thickened the chaparral of the lower country disappeared, 
 and were replaced by scrubby oaks, or hardy, jagged evergreens. 
 The redwoods grew scantier of foliage, and pointed upwards with 
 sharper pencils. The atmosphere grew more rarefied, while its 
 temperature fell. They were evidently some thousands of feet 
 above the level of th^ sea. Still the simpleton insisted that they 
 should continue to push on. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that during this strange journey Ike 
 had remained absolutely silent as to its object. On the contrary, 
 when they had left the settlement well behind them when they 
 had cut themselves adrift, as it were, from all other human knowl 
 edge or sympathy, he began to drop hints whence Gifford was not 
 slow to draw some enlightenment touching his hopes and pur 
 poses. But Ike was not far from wrong when he anticipated 
 that the knowledge thus suggested might, at the outset, have 
 led Hugh to abandon the enterprise. It was clear that, whatever 
 his weaknesses otherwise, his sagacity was not at fault when he 
 declined to be more communicative until that enterprise had been 
 seriously undertaken. 
 
 The sun was mounting fast in the heavens, and was several 
 hours high when Hugh began to think it was tune to take a 
 stand, and absolutely to refuse to go further. They had truly 
 escaped the Indians thus far, but who should say how long that 
 good fortune would last ? At any moment they were liable to 
 be captured, and, in the temper the savages were known to be, 
 it was ten to one then lives would prove the sacrifice of a mere 
 hare-brained, profitless act of temerity. Hugh pondered as to 
 how he could explain his views and his determination to Ike in 
 
270 MARIAN ROOKE ; OB, 
 
 a manner such as would avoid hurting his feelings and invite his 
 acquiescence. But, just as the words were on his lips, the latter, 
 who had always led the way, suddenly dismounted, and desired 
 Gilford to follow his example. 
 
 They were in a wide valley, enclosed on either hand by high 
 mountains, and they had been advancing up this valley for some 
 miles. As they advanced the valley narrowed, and at what ap 
 peared to be its end which they had now reached a wall 
 of gray basaltic rocks rose, frowning, to a great height, and bar 
 red their farther progress. This wall seemed quite impervious, 
 and when Ike fastened the horses with his lariat, and made pre 
 parations for proceeding on foot, Gifford glanced curiously about 
 on every side to see by what path he intended to make his 
 way. But Ike, beckoning him to follow, strode straight through 
 the bush as if for the base of the precipice, and Hugh and Lion 
 followed. 
 
 When he got close to the bottom of the rock, Ike turned to the 
 right, tracing its line for a space of two hundred yards and ; when 
 Hugh had accomplished this distance, he saw a singular rift or 
 cleavage, bearing inwards at a very oblique angle to the left, and 
 apparently as straight as if some sharp and tremendous instru 
 ment had split the mountain at a blow from top to base. Op 
 posite this passage was a confused maze of brush and tangle, 
 which seemed as impenetrable as the rock itself. Here the 
 guide paused, and called to his dog, who came up promptly at 
 the word. 
 
 "In ! in! Lion!" cried Ike, and Lion instantly dashed into a 
 small aperture which had escaped GhTord s eye. "It s jest as 
 well," explained Ike, ki to clear the way, seein it s a- likely good 
 place for snakes and sech cattle." In a moment more he was at 
 Lion s heels, and following him up the gorge. 
 
 As they went on the air became icily cold. Such, too, was 
 the height of the rocks and the extreme narrowness of the pass, 
 that before they had gone many steps it became almost dark, 
 and Gitford quite needed the assistance of his companions to find 
 his way. For a distance which seemed interminable, but which 
 in reality was about half a mile, Ike followed his four-footed 
 predecessor silently on. Neither made any pause, and it was evi 
 dent that the place was well known to both. 
 
 At last they emerged in a space which was very like the 
 apex of an inverted cone. Ranged around in an almost exact 
 circle, precipitous mountains towered majestically in the air to so 
 vast a height, that while their bases were sable, their peaks were 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 271 
 
 of the most delicate ethereal blue. The bottom of the ravine, 
 for an area of perhaps half a dozen acres, was covered with vol 
 canic stones, mingled with the emerald green of patches of herb 
 age, and the grizzly, moss-grown gray of venerable trees. Scat 
 tered about were many heavy slabs of stone, some of which were 
 blackened as by the action of fire. The lower steeps of the 
 mountain were masked by innumerable parallel evergreens, w r hich 
 made up in numbers what they lacked in denseness of foliage, 
 and which all pointed monotonously upwards. 
 
 When they arrived at the centre of this remarkable retreat, 
 Ike for the first time turned and looked Gilford full in the face 
 with an indescribable expression of triumph. The dog, Lion, too, 
 as if knowing that after his toilsome march all that was expected 
 of him was performed, lay quietly down, and surveyed the scene 
 with a look of complacent satisfaction. 
 
 "Well, Ike," said Hugh, after such a pause as he thought af 
 forded ample opportunity for explanation. "Well, Ike! here 
 we are, after all our trouble, and what next?" At which Ike 
 laughed aloud, as though one of the most mirth-exciting jokes 
 had been perpetrated of which he had ever been cognizant, and 
 Lion, pointing his nose in the air, attested his sympathy by giv 
 ing vent to a long, joyous howl. ; What next ?" repeated Hugh, 
 somewhat impatiently. 
 
 "What next!" echoed the simpleton, as he dragged up and 
 overturned a huge slab of stone which lay directly at his ques 
 tioner s feet. " What next ! Why, THIS !" 
 
 Gifford started back with a cry of astonishment and delight. 
 The ground beneath his feet was literally lined with gold. Some 
 fragments under the stone had been certainly placed there by Ike 
 in the way of a coup de theatre^ but the richness of the soil was quite 
 genuine enough to need no artificial setting off. He rushed 
 swiftly from place to place, turning over the stones, striking up 
 the soil here and there with his knife, lifting the great nuggets 
 Ike had accumulated to make sure of their reality, doing all he 
 could think of, in a word, to test the truth of the existence of the 
 treasures the place unquestionably contained. 
 
 The valley was an absolute pocket of the precious metal ; and 
 there lay there within easy reach of surface digging, the value of 
 a million of dollars in gold. 
 
 " All your n, all your n !" cried Ike, dancing now in quite a 
 paroxysm of joy. " All your n ! A present from me and Lion ! 
 You re rich now ! Ye kin do all ye want to in the world ! And 
 all all thanks to me and Lion !" and the poor fellow went into 
 
272 MARIAN ROOK; OR, 
 
 peals of idiotic laughter, and finally threw himself on the green 
 sward and burst into a hysterical passion of tears. 
 
 It was true. It was fulfilled suddenly, indeed, and not in the 
 way he expected or thought it would have been ; but the dream 
 and the hope of Hugh GifFord s life were accomplished at last, 
 and he was rich. 
 
 END OF THE THIRD BOOK. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 273 
 
 BOOK THE FOUETH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOT, smoky August ! With the golden grain bowing and tilt 
 ing in the breezeless ah , and the short-cropped grass, interlaced 
 with long lines of its own stolen hay giving forth perfume indeed, 
 but beginning sharply to complain of the want of moisture. With 
 the apples in the orchards blushing deeper and deeper, and the 
 long, long swells of distant greenwoods broken and flecked with 
 the crimson glories of the coming fall. * With the hazy languor 
 pervading everything which tells of fruition accomplished, and 
 basking, voluptuous rest for man and beast during the pause 
 which comes between the seasons. 
 
 When Hugh Gifford complained of New England of her 
 bitter climate, her straight, formal roads, her dull, commonplace 
 architecture, her barren scenery, he was very ungrateful for what 
 he himself had seen and enjoyed among the hills of Berkshire. 
 Scarcely a spot on the continent affords more lovely views, more 
 romantic vales, more charming little highland tarns, than the 
 neighborhood of Lenox and Stockbridge. Far less grand indeed 
 than the famous lake district of the mother country, it is scarcely 
 less picturesque and captivating. But poor Hugh, like most of 
 us, was swayed and tinged in his estimate of things without by 
 the condition of things within. The young life had been so 
 jaundiced and embittered, that it was not to be wondered at that 
 scenes the remotest from those among which it had been passed 
 were idealized always as the most beautiful. There is little ro 
 mance in the outer world when a cloud is on the. soul, and the 
 Yale of Cashmere itself must have been anything but paradise to 
 a captive. 
 
 Not but that Hugh s strictures and complaints of man and 
 nature in New England were just and sound enough ; they were 
 both ; but, like most censors, he only told part of the truth, so 
 12* 
 
274 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 that without being unfaithful as to the letter, he conveyed but a 
 partial picture as to the spirit. When he blamed the New 
 Englanders as sordid and grasping, he should also have borne 
 witness that they were wonderfully vigorous and industrious. 
 When he found just fault with the narrowness and prejudice of 
 their manners, he might fairly have acknowledged the general 
 uprightness and purity of their morals. When he pointed out 
 the evidences of their weakness, he ought also to have indicated 
 the sources of their strength. But few can afford to be truly just 
 when speaking of countries and peoples ; and it will always hap 
 pen that in the court which, on such subjects, regulates the world s 
 opinion, there will be a hundred advocates to a single judge. 
 
 There are compensations in seasons, as there are apt to be in 
 the characters of mankind ; and if the winters and springs of 
 Massachusetts are cruel and inhospitable if their very mention 
 reminds us, with a shiver, of Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower 
 noble but most uncomfortable reminiscences ! it should be 
 owned that her summers and autumns are proportionally invit 
 ing and delightful. There can be no season anywhere more de 
 licious than the balmy Indian summer ; and brief though it be, 
 nowhere are its choicest attractions more profusely bestowed than 
 in Massachusetts. 
 
 It was not time, properly, for the Indian summer ; but, as 
 often happens, something very like that season presented itself 
 towards the last of August by way of precursor. The red even 
 ing sun was streaming aslant the broad fields and sprinkling trees 
 of John Chester s farm at East Canaan a nice, large farm, with 
 a brown old wooden mansion, and a red old wooden barn, of 
 much greater size, overlooking it hard by. The land lay on 
 a wide slope, which inclined towards the south ; and a silvei riv 
 ulet, which was parallel to the high road, went trickling on its 
 way at its base. Facing this stream was the farm-house, with a 
 piazza on two sides, and windows coming to the floor in the sit 
 ting-room and parlor, which respectively flanked the entrance- 
 hall. The windows of the sitting-room were wide open, and 
 showed to any one passing without, the quaint, old-fashioned fur 
 niture, mingled here and there with some modern innovation, of 
 the apartment within. They showed, too, a young lady seated 
 in a rocking-chair, and an old gentleman seated in an easy-chair, 
 on either side of a table ; and that young lady seemed occupied 
 with a letter which she held in her hand, while the old gentleman 
 was equally absorbed with -a child s slate. 
 
 The girl was very beautiful. She has been before described 
 in these pages as being fair, very fair, with hair of gold and skin 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 275 
 
 of pearl, and as having one charm rare in a New England girl, 
 a low, musical voice, and another not so rare, a sweetly winning 
 smile. To read her letters, or perhaps to be told the substance 
 of her usual discourse, one might wonder how on earth Hugh 
 Gilford could have fallen in love, or fancied he had fallen in love, 
 with her; but to see and to hear her was far different. Then 
 the matter was simple enough. He had seen this lovely crea 
 ture, become intoxicated with her beauty, and straightway en 
 dowed her with ah 1 the preconceived attractions of an ideal 
 mistress he had, ever since boyhood, been busily creating and 
 putting together. 
 
 The man was ah 1 lines. Every muscle showed through his 
 hardy, weather-beaten face, and his stringy, mottled hands. His 
 hair was iron-gray, close clipped, and grew low on his wrinkled 
 forehead. The mouth was flat, but not ungarnished with humor 
 ous lines, and his deep-set eyes were of a light, twinkling blue. 
 His chin and lips were shaven, but a fringe of pepper-and-salt 
 beard, hard and bristly, ran round his face from ear to ear. He 
 was in his shirt-sleeves, and occasionally dried his beady brows 
 with a silk handkerchief 
 
 "It s more ntwo year and four months," observed this per 
 sonage, looking up incidentally from Ms calculations. He kept 
 his teeth very close together, apparently for fear of spilling some 
 thing. "And it was to be for two year," he added, conclu 
 sively. 
 
 "Yes, pa." 
 
 "Which, seein Gaycow s turned his money twice, let alone 
 clearin off the factory at Persepolis, and keepin the store a-goin 
 at Canaan Centre, seems a heap o time ; don t it, now?" 
 
 "Yes, pa." 
 
 " Folks has to fly round and be up to time now-a-days. They 
 don t allow me no four months, I notice, when the int rest on 
 the mo gage comes doo. When Deacon Pledge put the new 
 roof to our barn the fall arter the Pennefeathers sold their hay 
 at eighteen-fifly, I only gittin eighteen-twenty-five, I put it to 
 ye now, did he wait four months afore sendin in his little ac 
 count?" 
 
 "No, pa," 
 
 " That there changeable silk o your n ye had that the time 
 Gaycow come to board with us ; they didn t wait no four months 
 for that, nor nuthin, when they intermated they d like then* 
 pay? ; 
 
 "No, pa." 
 
 " And when we had to subscribe to send the Rev. Mr. Baubeo 
 
276 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 to Europe, to cure his browncheeters, he wanted it afore he 
 went, may be, and not arterwards?" 
 
 "But, pa, people can t measure time for engagements just as 
 if they were bills, you know." 
 
 " I dunno ; some folks does. Look at Gaycow ; he s a busi 
 ness man, he is. You know what he said the time of his 
 grandma s funeral"? It was a Saturday afternoon, ye know, 
 over to Stockbridge ; and Saturday bein an awful busy day, 
 Canaan folks sniggered some to think twould put him out ; but 
 he had the work all done, and the cash all balanced, and every 
 thing put through in good shape, and arrived jest as people was 
 sneerin he wouldn t come to his own father s mother s funeral, 
 and jest as the coffin was bein lugged out o the house. And 
 says he, Business fust and pleasure afterwards ; so from that 
 day, I says allers to myself, Gaycow s bound to be a rich man." 
 
 "I think it was a very unfeeling speech." 
 
 " Onfeelin 1 It didn t hurt nobody, did it ? It didn t set the 
 old lady back any, I reckon ; and it showed Gaycow never 
 wasted his time. He s a different man, I take it, from Hugh 
 Gifford." 
 
 "Yes," sighed Virginia, "very different." 
 
 " One on em," said Mr. Chester, ejecting something into a 
 box of sand near by, and afterwards speaking with more facility ; 
 "one on em s a business man, and the other ain t; that s all 
 there is about it." 
 
 " Hugh was bred to a profession, pa, and it takes longer to 
 get on in a profession than it does in trade. Besides, he s been 
 unfortunate." 
 
 "Unfortinnit! Yes, in never stickin to any thin . Purfes- 
 sion ! Well, look at our John. He s been at it the same time, 
 and look at him. He s stuck to it, and he s riz from pint to 
 pint, until at last he s goin to have a Murder. Only last week, 
 he writ me that this fall he d have a Murder." 
 
 John has a different temperament. It costs him no effort 
 whatever to stick, as you call it, to a single pursuit, he s so 
 steady-going and phlegmatic. Then he s always had an allow 
 ance, not much, to be sure, but always enough to keep him." 
 
 "Ah, well, it s easy onderratin of him ; and bime by, if he 
 turns out a Dan el Webster, or a Rufus Choate, ye 11 sing another 
 song. But settin him aside, jest think how many there is 
 who ve come home from Californy in a year with enough to set 
 em up slick and easy for life. Let s hear agen what tis he says 
 about it." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 277 
 
 Virginia turned the letter she held in her hand, and read from 
 its last page as follows : 
 
 " . . During most of my stay in California, then, I have cer 
 tainly been less fortunate than many others. You are already 
 aware of the losses our company sustained through the dishonesty 
 of one of their number. After that, the yield of gold from the 
 Bar became very small, and it has never been greater since than 
 to afford a very slender margin beyond what has been necessary 
 for bare subsistence. Unlike other gold diggings, ours has been 
 poor and unsatisfactory ; and after a trial of many months, I am 
 not disposed to work at Armstrong s Bar any further. The oc 
 cupation at best is uncongenial to me ; but when it is also almost 
 utterly unprofitable, the incentive to its pursuit is indeed small. 
 Notwithstanding this want of success, however, I am not with 
 out high hopes for the future in other fields. That good in the 
 world which it seems I am not to do here, I hope to do else 
 where. In a word, I am on the point of leaving California; and 
 trust in a few weeks, or perhaps in less, to be able to follow this 
 letter. It may be within a few days after it reaches you, that I 
 also may be with you ; when it is my anticipation to meet the 
 same sympathy and interest in my hopes and prospects which 
 have never been wanting heretofore." 
 
 The reader paused here, and read the last sentence a second 
 time ; and then paused again, and laid the letter on her lap. 
 
 " Now, that ain t what I call a business letter," criticised Mr. 
 Chester, with his teeth close together, for the impediment was 
 accumulating again. "Why don t he say right out how much 
 money he s got ? I don t kear a darn bout sympathy, nor yit 
 interest, nuther, cept the interest on my mo gage. I put it to ye 
 now, ain t a bargain a bargain ?" 
 
 " Yes, pa." 
 
 " Well, the bargain was, that in two years he was to accoo- 
 moolate a certain sum, pintin allers to the easin of my mo gage ; 
 sech a transaction to be follered by another, to which you bein 
 the princerpal, with my consent." 
 
 "Yes, pa." 
 
 " Well, now, Virginuy, it looks to me as if nuther on ye was 
 so set on carryin out that transaction as ye was two year ago." 
 
 "Does it, pa?" 
 
 " It looks to me," continued Mr. Chester, drawing his lines 
 closer and harder, and eyeing his daughter in a gimblety sort of 
 fashion, "as if nuther on ye d fret much if that ere transaction 
 was laid on the table." 
 
 "Yes, pa." 
 
278 MARIAN liOOKE; OR, 
 
 " It looks to me," he proceeded, expectorating boldly, and be 
 coming more confident and free of speech as a consequent, " as 
 if one side of a bargain bein broke, the other gits sot free, as a 
 matter of course." 
 
 Virginia said nothing, but kept looking at the letter in her 
 lap. 
 
 " Symperthies and prospecs," observed her father, philosophi 
 cally, after a reasonable pause for a reply, " air very good things 
 in their way, but they won t keep the pot a boilin , nor the mare 
 a goin . Talkin of which," he added, casually, "have you seen 
 that ere new span of Gaycow s 1" 
 
 No, Virginia hadn t. 
 
 "Talk to me o yer Cuticle Flips," said Mr. Chester, with en 
 thusiasm. "Why, they ain t nowhere. It s the pootiest turnout 
 I ever see, and if even the Baubee grays kin hold a candle to 
 that span, ye kin boot me, that s all !" 
 
 " I heard the horses were very handsome." 
 
 " And that ere new house front o his n," went on pa, rhap- 
 sodically ; " it mayn t be the Baubee Parthenon, but its a likelier 
 elevation, to my way o thinkin . I heer n tell it was moddled on 
 the Alhambry." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "What with the Canaan Varieties, and the Persepolis Fac 
 tory, he can t be a rakin in less than three thousand dollars a 
 year." 
 
 "Every one says he s growing rich." 
 
 "Puttin of it short, Virginny," concluded Mr. Chester, fixing 
 his lines at their sternest tension, and heavily augmenting the 
 contents of the sand-box "Puttin of it short, if John gits a 
 Murder, I think the least you kin do is to clear off that mo gage " 
 
 "If Hugh brings back money " began Virginia, faintly. 
 
 "Don t run away with that idee now, I warn ye. I never 
 know d a man yit who d made money who was ashamed to say 
 so. Why should they be ? Seein it makes em pop lar and re 
 spected, and gives em credick and importance with their feller 
 men ? I don t bet much on a young man goin on thirty who trav 
 els excloosive on his symperthies and prospecs. Travellin on 
 new roofs and mo gages; or, may be," with a keen concentra 
 tion of the facial lines on his daughter, " or, may be, travellin 
 on new spans and Alhambrys soots my style. There s allers 
 time for syinperthizin and prospectin arter folks gits ahead in 
 the world ; and it s a blamed bad sign if they take to t when 
 they re behindhand." 
 
 "We can t expect people to be all alike, pa. Hugh was 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 279 
 
 brought up very differently from many we know. He is a very 
 sensitive man and has been highly educated, and naturally writes 
 and feels as many wouldn t." 
 
 " Has his eddication pinted out any gold mines ? Has bein* 
 sensitive made him any cuter on the main chance ? This here 
 ain t no country for palaverin and splittin hairs, but for workiu 
 and makin money in. I tell ye what it is, Virginny, I m in the 
 best kind of a position to judge about these things. I married 
 poor ; not but I allers loved your mother as long as she lived, 
 poor thing ; but, pecooniarily speaking, that ere ill-judged trans 
 action has been pullin of me back all my life. Its been the 
 cause of mo gages and leaky roofs and poor hay, and a heap o 
 troubles besides. I ve bin a racin all my days to git even on 
 that fust mistake. I don t want to offer to coerce ye, far from 
 it ; but I put it to ye to choose atween abundance and stent, 
 comfort and onsartainty, Gifford and Gaycow. Fur be it from 
 me to offer to set ye agin your future happiness ; and if the 
 mo gage is made all right, I won t say boo, leastways unless I m 
 asked ; in which case, as a father, I still think I should say Gay- 
 cow." 
 
 With this statement Mr. Chester departed, in the belief 
 that a favorable period had arrived for leaving his daughter to 
 her own reflections. Perhaps his sagacity was not at fault when 
 he abstained from urging his wishes more strenuously. The ex 
 hibition of a strong will often provokes opposition where a mere 
 amiitble preference will enlist concurrence ; a probability which 
 many a parent, from the time of old Capulet downwards, has for 
 gotten, to his own detriment, but to which the Yankee farmer 
 was fully alive. He was not ignorant, too, that he had formi 
 dable allies lighting on his side ; allies whose aid was unremit 
 ting, and of a character which he had seldom known to fail. The 
 constant reference of all hopes and purposes to the most sordid 
 passions which find entrance in the human breast, on the part of 
 all who came in contact with her the feminine love of dress, and 
 the scarcely less potent love of the elegant and costly in furni 
 ture and equipage the bitter disappointment she felt at heart on 
 the score of Hugh s apparent failure all these were perpetually 
 at work to second her father s wish to break off the engagement. 
 There Avas also a further emotion in Virginia s breast, which had 
 ever been latent there, but which might have remained inactive 
 or ultimately have been altogether extinguished but for the 
 other verifying causes. This was a certain fear of Gifford. which 
 had its rise in a conviction of his ability to detect, and his readi 
 ness to condemn, various tastes and weaknesses whose hidul- 
 
280 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 gence it would quite mar the pleasure of her life to forego. She 
 knew as most women, even if they are not very intellectual, 
 arewift to know that his admiration for her beauty, at first BO 
 undisguised, would not always blind him to qualities which 
 lay behind it ; and she shrank from the discovery and its conse 
 quences. 
 
 There was none of this sort of apprehension mingled with her 
 thoughts of Gaycow. If she was fond of dress, he was fond of 
 dress. If she admired showy furniture and stylish equipages, 
 he admired them as well. If she derived ah extravagant gratifi 
 cation from exciting the envy and wonder of Canaan, it was a 
 passion wherein he could fully participate. If she could glory 
 in a turn-out that eclipsed the Baubee grays could exult in pal 
 ing the glow-worm of a Parthenon before the sun of an Alham- 
 bra were not these the objects of his choicest ambition ? 
 
 To do Virginia justice, there was, however, enough of her to 
 enable her to despise Gaycow ; but she thought it might perhaps 
 be better to despise than be despised. This may not be an un 
 natural illusion, even if the alternative is soundly put ; the mis 
 ery it has occasioned, and every day does occasion, many a 
 woman who reads these pages can attest. Virginia knew that 
 the faculties which enabled Mr. Gaycow to buy cheap and sell 
 dear ; to delude his customers into paying a larger profit than 
 his capital and industry fairly earned ; to save interest by putting 
 off payment, and to make it by insisting upon its addition to ac 
 counts owing to himself; to get the better, by one device of an 
 other, in short, of three-fourths of those with whom he came in 
 contact ; Virginia knew that these faculties, if not utterly and 
 comprehensively base, were still among the lowest and least 
 worthy which a man could possess. She knew that if they ena 
 bled him to heap up millions, he would still be by far the inferior 
 of Hugh Gifford, standing unfriended and without a dollar. 
 But, unhappily, she also knew that the world by which she was 
 surrounded Avould not agree with her in this estimate ; and to 
 captivate, subdue, outshine the world, to conquer its suffrage, 
 and taste to the full its pleasures, were objects too darling to be 
 entirely foregone. Her soul recoiled too with genuine disgust at 
 the prospect of a long career of poverty perhaps even want- 
 as the bride of a man whom the Canaanites were unlikely ever 
 to delight to honor ; a poor, paltry, gossiping village circle, per 
 haps ; "but was it not better to despise than to be despised ! 
 
 When she contemplated the prospect of Hugh s returning rich 
 and prosperous, such a contrast as this never suggested itself to 
 her mind. She only thought that young men who went away 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 281 
 
 from home poor, were expected to make and bring home their 
 fortunes as matters of course. There was something horribly 
 blank and dreary in the idea of a young man coming home poorer 
 than he went ! Canaan might stand much, but nothing so mad 
 as that. The opinion of the world may be worthless enough, 
 but since we are compelled to live in it, for comfort s sake, if 
 nothing else, we must really pay it some little deference. What 
 a sickening sensation it would be to be dusted by the triumphal 
 chariot of Gaycow ; to be smiled upon with cold commiseration 
 by the Pastile F. Baubees ; to be openly sneered at by the Pen- 
 nifeathers ; to be calmly cut by that Belle Tarbox who had mar 
 ried so excellent a Thing in fish ! Ugh ! it must not could not 
 be thought of. 
 
 Sometimes nobler thoughts would rise in Virginia s breast, and 
 she would say to herself, that if Hugh were unhappy, so much 
 the greater his need for consolation ; that if fortune proved faith 
 less to him, so much the more her cause to be faithful ; that, after 
 all, riches of any material sort might take wings to them 
 selves and fly away ; how, for example, would she like to be a 
 poor Mr. Gaycow ? but that a true and honest love had no wings 
 after they had once borne it to a lasting resting-place. Besides 
 and here the selfish element came in again Hugh was an in 
 tellectual man, and such men often made their mark and took 
 the world by storm in the long run, even when insignificant 
 enough and little heeded at the outset. Such a triumph she 
 thought was something like that of true love, in that it could not 
 be taken or tricked away by the caprices of fortune. 
 
 Such were Virginia s thoughts as she gazed forth on that 
 smoky August evening, as the sun went down in his blood-red 
 glory, and the yellow moon, like a disk of burnished gold, sailed 
 slowly up in the opposite sky. She had to think gravely, and to 
 decide quickly too ; for the same moon that looked pityingly 
 down upon her troubled counsels, looked down on the trackless 
 ocean as well, and lighted the ship which bore her betrothed as 
 it breasted the waves which rolled about his home. 
 
282 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " ANOTHER year !" 
 
 " Only, if you think it best, Virginia. I propose that you 
 shall have the option. For me, I am ready at any time now, 
 this week if you will to fulfil our engagement." 
 
 " But, you see, father thinks that -that under all the circum 
 stances it would be so imprudent, so " 
 
 " Precisely. And for that reason I propose the alternative." 
 
 " That would make six years, Hugh." 
 
 "I know. Too long, in all fairness, to keep any girl wait 
 ing ; I acknowledge that ; but the decision must rest with her 
 self. There is no obligation here, save on the man s part." 
 
 " I m sure I ve never changed, Hugh," her voice trembled a 
 little as she spoke, "but if I can- escape being thought undutiful 
 and rash " 
 
 " You had rather do so. That seems rational enough, and I 
 quite agree it would be wise to avoid such an imputation. It is 
 only reasonable, I repeat, that since my share of the contract ap 
 pears to have been only partially kept- I mean since I am . riot 
 ready to do what your papa stipulated for, and I agreed to that 
 you should have the choice of waiting still further, or or of 
 holding yourself entirely absolved." 
 
 Virginia looked at him. He looked older than when she saw 
 him last, by more than two years. His face was tanned and 
 roughened, too, so that the delicate cutting of the features, and 
 the rather feminine beauty of the complexion, had no longer the 
 attractions they used to have. Then, his clothes ! If he wished 
 to appear to advantage before his lady love, what persuaded Gif- 
 ford to wear that dark, rusty, suit which was so suspiciously like 
 the one she had last seen him wear ? She bit her lips with a 
 scarcely concealed vexation, and he followed her eyes with a 
 pained, and yet curious smile. 
 
 " Pray understand, Virginia, that in proposing our immediate 
 marriage, I consider myself quite in a position to support a wife ; 
 and that there does not seem to me the least reason to fear that 
 my position will become worse than it now is." 
 
 " I understand," she said. It was in a tone which implied 
 that she did not think it possible. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 283 
 
 "So that," continued Gifford, quietly, " there need be no ap 
 prehension on your part of burthening me, prematurely, with such 
 responsibilities. You may be sure there is no danger of that." 
 
 Virginia knew that she had not thought of the contingency in 
 precisely such a bearing. She knew that her sole reflections had 
 been of hardship to herself in foregoing competency of wedding 
 respectable poverty when she had expected easy abundance. 
 There was something wretchedly disgusting to her in this placid 
 contemplation of a mere honest, homely subsistence in place of 
 the style, the fashion, the elegance she had so often thought of, 
 yearned for, and anticipated ; and she heaved a deep, woeful 
 sigh. 
 
 " The chances are," said Hugh, " indeed, that my prospects 
 may be better rather than worse. Still I had rather you did 
 not look forward to any material change for some years to 
 come." 
 
 She made an impatient gesture. " Why should I look ibr 
 change at ah 1 ?" she exclaimed, with ill suppressed bitterness. " I 
 am only a plain farmer s daughter ; and a poor one at that. I 
 ought to content myself, I take it, to stay in the position I was 
 born in without looking to rise out of it." 
 
 "Most people," said Gifford, regarding her steadily, * in this 
 country strive to rise in the world. It may be right, or it may 
 be wrong. It may, or not, make them happier. But such is the 
 fact ; and there is nothing unusual or blamable in such an ambi 
 tion. But I infer, from what you say, that you don t care to 
 wait for another year is it so ?" 
 
 "I don t qiute know what to say," answered Virginia, hesita 
 ting. You see, father has run away with an idea that you 
 shouldn t have come home unless unless " 
 
 " Unless I had made a fortune ?" 
 
 u At least, without being better off than you went. And he s 
 more strict and exacting about such things than ever. And 
 John being away and mother gone, you know I being an 
 only child, and to leave him contrary to his -will, and quite 
 alone " 
 
 " True. It is natural and right that you should hesitate." 
 
 There was a mixture of truth and deceit of pathos and hy- 
 pocricy in what Virginia said that too often colors the argu 
 ments of poor, frail mortals. Her father knew ah 1 she did about 
 Giflord s position. He was more anxious than not to get her off 
 his hands, so that she went off handsomely. The rest of it was 
 genuine enough. Hugh put the best acceptation upon the 
 whole. 
 
284 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Let the matter be referred to your father, then," he said, 
 " and, with his aid and counsel, come to your decision." 
 
 If it be true that a man loves the meat in his youth he cannot 
 endure in his age, and that such fickleness involves no moral de 
 linquency, I cannot see the justice of the eternal censures level 
 led against changes in matters of the heart. It may be urged 
 that Hugh Gifford never really loved Virginia Chester, since all 
 the time that he was speaking with her, the image of Marian 
 Rooke was conjured up beside her, and constantly supplying the 
 means for invidious comparisons. But, whether he ever had or 
 not, he was firmly resolved that no chance for real happiness 
 should be lost to her through him, so far as it was clear that he 
 could supply it. There may be various opinions as to the course 
 he was pursuing ; some men, under all the circumstances, might 
 have behaved differently and better ; some might have behaved 
 differently and worse ; but, as always, we have to deal not with 
 wfcat he might have done, but with what Gifford actually did. 
 
 This was within a week of the time when Virginia had receiv 
 ed his letter, so that her father and herself had had ample time 
 to discuss the question in all its possible lights and bearings. 
 Gifiord had arrived at New York, and almost directly after made 
 his way to Canaan, and unfolded himself as has been related. -As 
 he walked slowly back to the village tavern where he had left 
 his slender luggage, he passed a very large and flaunting shop, 
 over which, in letters of gold, was suspended the following 
 legend : 
 
 ALPHONSO GATCOW AND Co., 
 
 W. I. GOODS, DRY GOODS, AND GENERAL PRODUCE. 
 
 In front of this shop stood a vehicle, or rather the skeleton of 
 a vehicle, tastefully painted in lake and gold, and weighing ap 
 parently about fifty or sixty pounds. To this vehicle were at 
 tached two prodigiously tall bay horses, well groomed and har 
 nessed, and in a high state of impatience. Hugh looked at the 
 establishment with some surprise, as being a somewhat unusual 
 turn-out for a quiet country neighborhood ; but he had not the 
 remotest idea how far it or its owner, the flashy shopkeeper 
 aforesaid, might have any effect upon his own matrimonial pros 
 pects. 
 
 The aid and counsel of Mr. Chester, who was ever of a prac- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 285 
 
 tical turn, were concise and pointed enough. He saw Virginia 
 immediately after herjiance s departure, and listened to her recital 
 of the conversation with interest and impatience. 
 
 "Wait another year!" he exclaimed, as this proposal was 
 touched upon. "Why, he ll want ye to wait till ye look like 
 the last of pea-time, and no one else 11 have ye." 
 
 Virginia smiled, and glanced at the old-fashioned mirror over 
 the mantel with an assurance that expressed a mind at ease on 
 that point, if upon no other. 
 
 I know I know." said her parent, answering the glance. 
 "I know you re dreadful handsome no pootier girl in Canaan, no, 
 not in Centre, East or West ; but looks is looks, and don t last 
 allers. However, that s neither here nor there. Here s the pint: 
 how much did he say he was wuth?" 
 
 "Why, pa, I didn t ask him that." 
 
 "Didn t ask him?" 
 
 " No, pa, how should I ?" 
 
 Pa gazed at his offspring curiously for a while, as though she 
 had suddenly become a highly interesting psychological study. 
 He was reflecting, perhaps, that for his part he should hardly have 
 asked Giflbrd anything else. Then a vision dawned upon him 
 as he rolled over his quid, and knotted and unkuotted his astute 
 countenance, that possibly there might be some indelicacy in a 
 young lady thus situated putting so leading a question, and that, 
 after all, it left the whole field of interesting inquiry open to his 
 own strictly appropriate investigation. 
 
 " He looks kind o seedy, don t he ?" he asked indirectly. 
 
 " I m afraid, poor fellow, he isn t too rich," sighed Virginia. 
 
 1 4 Poor fellow \ v echoed Mr. Chester. "Poor fellow ! Come 
 now, don t. It ain t so bad s all that comes to, is it ?" 
 
 " I don t know what you mean by as bad as that comes to," 
 cried Virginia, pettishly. " But it seems to me if he had any 
 thing to speak of, he wouldn t keep so still about it." 
 
 "It ain t the way in Canaan, that s a fact. But may be he 
 means to surprise ye." 
 
 "No. He says if we marry now, there ll be no material 
 change for the better he means anyhow for some years." 
 
 "But he wants ye to wait anuther fust?" 
 
 " He doesn t want me to, or not to ; but to do as I like, he 
 says, and as you think best." 
 
 Mr. Chester chewed on for some time in contemplative silence. 
 " I bin round to the tavern," he observed, at length, thought 
 fully, " and see his luggage. Things was so I couldn t look int 
 
286 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 the insides of all on em ; but the gen ral aspect is blamed 
 skeary." 
 
 " You shouldn t have done that, pa," said Virginia, coloring. 
 
 " It was quite permiscuous and onbeknown. Buyin a plug 
 of terbakker, may be, and happenin round the house afterwards. 
 Besides, they was all a lookin at it." 
 
 "All! Who?" 
 
 " Who ? Why, Jake Barker, and Jim Pennifeather, and Gay- 
 cow, and all on em ; bein one o clock and all hum to dinner. 
 East Canaan s dull jest now, and news is news." 
 
 "Did he did Alphonso know who it was that had come?" 
 
 "Bless ye, yes; and all about it; -and so does all Canaan. 
 And the hull place is watchin the thing to see how the cat ll 
 jump." 
 
 Virginia reddened more than before. "You mean to see 
 whether my engagement with Mr. Gilford is broken off or 
 not f 
 
 " Sartain. There s a gin ral feelin that if he s come back 
 empty-handed and it looks plaguey like it that it s darned 
 bad treatmemt ; and that there ain t a gal in Canaan d put up 
 with it ; leastways no gal not with your advantages. And old 
 Jake, bein" a fifty year friend, as I may say, went so fur as to 
 tell me that it was my dooty to put my foot down, and that if 
 Mr. Baubeewas to hum he d put a stop to the hull thing quicker I" 
 and Mr. Chester screwed his face up into a tight knot, spat 
 profusely into the sand-box, and looked inquiringly at his 
 daughter. 
 
 "It s no one s business what I choose to do in the matter, 
 pa," she replied, with some heat, " any more than it is to inves 
 tigate Mr. Gifford s luggage." 
 
 "Well, Canaan will be Canaan, ye know, Virginny, and the 
 folks feel as though they ought to be up to every think. If they 
 thought ye was no account, they wouldn t be so curus." 
 
 "Consoling, certainly. The more insignificant a person is, 
 the less they ll be pestered -with impertinent curiosity." 
 
 "Jest so. Talkin of beans," continued Mr. Chester, after a 
 short pause, "there was Alphonsy s new turn-out front o the 
 store, as large as life. And comin down Evergreen Avenoo 
 there was Amandy Stokes in that raspin gownd you call a Mur 
 ray Ann Tick. No sooner on Main Street, than down she sails 
 straight for the store. So I halted right round our corner, and 
 peeked a spell, and, sure enough, out come Gaycow and hists 
 her into the wagon, and away they went up the street as though 
 they was sent for !" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 287 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "I reckon," observed Mr. Chester, pleasantly, "they was 
 goin for a nice drive to Crab-apple Grove ; or may be to Spy 
 Pond." 
 
 Virginia was silent still. 
 
 "I heer n tell," continued her father, after another pause, "the 
 Splodge gals bein well posted on such truck, that ere Murray 
 Ann Tick cost more n four dollars a-yard." 
 
 "It couldn t 1" cried Virginia, breaking out violently ; "three- 
 and-a-half at the outside, and dear at that!" 
 
 Mr. Chester shook his head sorrowfully: " Hen Splodge s 
 been clerk to A. B. Cookey and Co. s, in Bosting, five year, goin 
 on six, Virginny. I reckon the gals is posted on them things, 
 if any one is. Besides," he added, reflectively, " Gaycow s 
 smart, he is, and I don t think, as things are goin , he d kear to 
 drive out anything at three-and-a-half." 
 
 "Nonsense, pa; he wouldn t think of such a thing. And 
 he wouldn t drive that homely girl out at all, if Hugh Gifford 
 wasn t here." 
 
 "Why," queried pa, ingenuously, "what s that got to do with 
 it ?" 
 
 " Never mind. What is it you want me to say ?" 
 
 "Say! What about 1 ?" 
 
 "Why, to Mr. Gifford, to be sure. He s coming this evening 
 to hear what you think, and we re to have an understanding, and 
 all that." 
 
 "And you don t know, honest, how much he s wuth?" 
 
 "Xo." 
 
 "When I fust heerd," said Mr. Chester, crossing his legs, and 
 going off calmly into extraneous reflections "when I fust 
 heerd that Pamelia Staples had married a Flip, I calkilated there 
 was one chance less in Canaan. When Bell Tarbox married 
 out o the town, it weren t, as you may say, treadin on no one s 
 toes, and I didn t have no call to grumble. But if Amaudy 
 Stokes was to marry a Gaycow ! Well, I wouldn t crowd the 
 mourners no further than to say, it would be tight papers ; but 
 there is sech a thing as kerryin a joke too fur." 
 
 "What do you wish me to say to Mr. Gifford?" 
 
 " I don t go strong for vanity, nor yit pomp ; but a stylish 
 gal in a Murray Ann Tick, behind two lofty pelters that kin go, 
 let s say, to the inside o three, is a soarin sight!" 
 
 " Think, * proceeded the speaker, finding his encomium elicit 
 ed no response, "think o them pelters drawin proudly up in 
 front of the Alhambry, driv along showy, and brought up all 
 
288 MARIAN KOOKE ; OR, 
 
 standin . A nigger appears, and bowin low, throws open the 
 palatial hall. Permiscuous and kind o careless, Gaycow de 
 scends; Gaycow, lord of every shoe-peg in Perscpolis ; master 
 of the hull variety trade in Canaan. He hands down the lady 
 of his ch ice. She alights, springy and easy, a rustlin , a shinin , 
 and a cracklin ! As she moves, delicate perfooms float upon 
 the air, and folks travellin along incloodin the hull female popu 
 lation of Canaan bile with envy ! Another minute and the 
 portals is closed, closed agin the vulgar herd: for only Canaan s 
 brightest and best is allowed in them dazzlin halls. Sech would 
 be the fate of her who weds Alphonsy ; sech the lot of a Mrs. 
 Gaycow!" 
 
 The picture was truly as absurd as it was attractive ; but Vir 
 ginia was by no means insensible to the advantages which it sug 
 gested rather than described. It could not be denied that the 
 young trader was daily gaining in wealth, and consequent popu 
 lar estimation. While Gifford appeared to have retrograded, the 
 happy speculator in shoe-pegs and varieties had steadily advanced. 
 His wife would be the richest woman in Canaan. She would be 
 known like Lady Clifford to all the country round. Of what 
 avail were the intellectual qualities, the unproductive talents of 
 Hugh, when weighed against the dollars of his rival ? 
 
 " With regard to Mr. Gifford, pa," she said, in a confused maze 
 of thought. 
 
 " Oh !" exclaimed Mr. Chester, as if to a sudden break in the 
 thread of the conversation, and drawing the lines of his face 
 closer and closer, as he narrowly eyed his daughter. " P raps 
 you d like me to talk to him a spell ?" 
 
 She knew instinctively what this meant. It was tantamount 
 with Gifford s high spirit, and her father s sordid one to a 
 conclusion likely to be a final one. If Mr. Chester did not eagerly 
 accept the proposal to release Virginia from her promise, he 
 would be sure to annex conditions to postponement, such as 
 would make it practically equivalent to the same thing. Was it 
 her good angel which now pleaded and struggled in Virginia s 
 bosom, urging her to say aloud : " No ; the one man I can love 
 and respect ; the other, never. The wealth of the last shall not 
 buy, nor the poverty of the first dismay me. I will marry where 
 my heart can go with my hand, and take the chance afterward 
 for fortune." 
 
 Whether or no, the struggle in her breast was a fierce one. 
 There was much in the girl of the poetic, much that was capable 
 of a higher development than she had yet been able to attain ; 
 and she felt that inward conviction which is so unerring, that such 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTL XE. 289 
 
 an expansion, such an elevation, would be possible were she mated 
 with one of these men, hopeless for ever with the other. There 
 was little doubt she could marry the trader if she chose. His ad 
 miration for her beautiful person had long been undisguised, and 
 was indeed a common topic of village tattle. Her known en 
 gagement had truly prevented him from making Virginia an 
 offer ; but it prevented nothing else. It had not precluded fre 
 quent visits since he first came to board in her father s house ; 
 profuse compliments, offers of gifts, which she had happily the 
 grace to decline, unmistakable glances at church, in the shop, or 
 in the highway. Moreover, old John Chester, if not as rich as 
 many, was known to be thrifty, and his son was a rising young 
 man ; and the family had that savor of respectability which, 
 even among the plutocratic descendants of the Puritans, long res 
 idence and a fair name will purchase some share of ; so that, all 
 things considered, it was not a bad match even for the rising 
 Gaycow. She could marry him if she chose, but in doing so 
 what did she resign ? 
 
 Virginia hesitated ; and the devil, as usual, was lying in wait 
 for his opportunity. For, as she looked through the open win 
 dow, across the piazza, through the warm, smoky, ah*, over the 
 tinkling rivulet, to the high-road on the other side, there dashed 
 by the sumptuous equipage so much extolled, and there lean 
 ing back in. his seat, with his air of flippant audacity, chatting 
 with the gorgeous Amanda, whose black eyes and glossy hair 
 were set off by her purple moire-antique drove the prosperous 
 Gaycow in all the bloom of youth and May of dollarhood. Nor, 
 as the vehicle spun gaily by, the handsome horses displaying 
 themselves so consciously as knowing how much they were look 
 ed at and admired, was the picture in all its details uncompleted ; 
 for, plodding slowly behind, his rusty black clothes well dusted 
 by the carriage which had passed him, came along the road 
 Hugh Gifford. His head was bowed as if in deep thought, and 
 he paid no regard to anything around him. Onward he trudged 
 hi the track of the now distant wheels, until a clump of trees in- 
 tervened, and he, too, disappeared. 
 
 " I suppose you had better speak with him," said Virginia, at 
 last, wearily. 
 
 "That s my idee," returned her father, unconscious of what 
 she had seen, but quite pleased and rather surprised by her un 
 qualified assent. " There s many things a man don t feel a call 
 to let on to a gal, he ll tell to her authorized gardcean. I don t 
 want ye to think, Virginny, that I want to coerce ye in any way. 
 
 13 
 
290 MARIAN EOOKE; OR, 
 
 The mo gage havin waited some time, kin wait a spell longer, I 
 s pose ; and if, as you say, he agrees to fix things in a year " 
 
 " I didn t say so," interrupted the girl, impatiently ; " he said 
 nothing definite nothing on the subject." 
 
 "Oh !" exclaimed Mr. Chester, with an air of great surprise, 
 as if he had been laboring under a complete misconception about 
 the matter. " He didn t say he d fix the mo gage in a year ! 
 Maybe, then, he ain t a calkilating to fix it at all f 
 
 " I don t know ; you can ask him, I suppose." 
 
 " Fur be it from me to offer to interfere with your feelings, 
 Virginny ;" and the fond father celebrated the progress of his 
 wishes with a fresh quid ; " but if that air bargain ain t a goin 
 to be kerried out, what with Gaycow admirin you to kill, and 
 John havin a Murder, and everythink I ll put it to ye, now ; air 
 folks any more likely to rush a thing through in one year, arter 
 they ve tried and broke down a tryin of it in, two ?" 
 
 U T don t know; perhaps not." 
 
 "And I don t know, neither," said Mr. Chester, ironically; 
 "but I ll ask, and then, p raps, I ll find out." 
 
 "Don t don t speak to him too much about that not at first, 
 pa !" said Virginia, painfully. 
 
 " Bout what r 
 
 "About money." 
 
 "Don t be afeard: I ll fetch it in kind o slantin , so s he ll 
 tell it all himself." 
 
 And he did ; at least he received that night from Gifford a 
 clear statement, to the effect that he was by no means prepared 
 to make the stipulated advance, and that he quite agreed wit.h 
 Mr. Chester in the opinion that such a defection on his part, 
 fairly included the waiving of his pretensions to the hand of Vir 
 ginia, should such a relinquishment be desired by the lady and 
 her family. On the other hand, Hugh expressed a sanguine be 
 lief that in another twelvemonth he would be able to compass 
 the difficulty, and his readiness to bind himself to such a com 
 pact at the option of the other contracting parties. To this lat 
 ter proposal Mr. Chester lent a willing ear. A bargain which 
 might bring profit, and could not possibly bring loss a contract 
 which imposed conditions on one side, leaving the other un 
 shackled was to him especially grateful, when to him was the 
 prospective profit, and to another the fettering conditions. 
 
 He understood, in a general way, that Gifford had been un 
 lucky, but that he did not despond ; that he held Virginia to no 
 promise, but was willing, in view of unfulfilled expectancies, for at 
 least a year longer to be himself so pledged. At the expiration 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 291 
 
 of that time the Chesters could decide whether they wonld hold 
 him to the engagement or set him free. It seemed a rather 
 one-sided arrangement, but was frankly offered, and Mr. Ches 
 ter was not the man to let any ultra-chivalrous compunctious 
 stand between himself and the light; therefore, so far as he 
 was concerned, it received his hearty approval and subscription. 
 
 Virginia, too, when this was formally proposed to her, although 
 she blushed a little, and her woman s instinct did not fail to teach 
 her there was something mean about it, saw many advantages of 
 simplicity and directness in the plan which commended it to 
 the baser portions of her nature with a force almost impossible 
 to resist. 
 
 The struggle was, practically, no other than what goes on with 
 most people every day : on one side, all that looks most flatter 
 ing to ease, vanity, selfishness, bedecking a road broad and sim 
 ple to follow ; on the other, whatever is most uninviting to such 
 passions, but also something which, difficult and tortuous 
 though it appear, an unerring consciousness for ever whispers 
 is the better, the nobler, the permanently enduring path wliich 
 surely will repay the bitter effort which shall now be made to 
 follow it. 
 
 If Virginia could have made her election aright, she would 
 have grown into a noble and beautiful woman. She was at a 
 tide which, taken at the flood, would have led her to no less glori 
 ous a fortune. But she was weak, and she temporized. She 
 thought the flood would return, at the least, three hundred and 
 sixty-five times a long stretch to look ahead ! and she could 
 judge meanwhile of the shoals and eddies and quicksands which 
 might make it unwise to trust it. 
 
 When the agreement had been made, Gifford appeared, 
 strangely enough, to think that it was not sufficiently binding 
 upon himself. He strove to impress upon Virginia that, while 
 he was always to be considered as firmly pledged, she was by no 
 means to let that consideration fetter her own wishes, should she 
 at any time wish the affair at an end. He also assured her and 
 with an earnestness which betrayed more feeling than he had yet 
 shown since his return that he felt sure of being within the year 
 in a position to satisfy all the conditions, provided she were un 
 changed and agreed. Was it the conviction that his own con 
 duct had not been so ingenuous as it should have been that in 
 fused this feeling into his manner, on the last evening he sat with 
 Virginia, before his departure from the village ? I know not. 
 I know that there were warm tears on her peach-like cheek, and 
 that he for the Jfrrst and last time kissed them away. I know 
 
292 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 that there were moments, when only the round harvest moon 
 looked down upon them, that both Hugh and Virginia were 
 each trembling on the brink of foregoing certain cherished 
 resolutions. But neither did so ; and the next day the village 
 gossips were disconsolate, and the old life went on uncheckered, 
 for the shabby-looking stranger had gone, and Canaan saw 
 bim no more. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 IT is, perhaps, needless to confess that all this while Hngh 
 Gifford was a very rich man. How far he was, or was not, jus 
 tified in the course he had thought fit to adopt, is a matter 
 wherein casuists are likely to differ. That Virginia gained a 
 right, when she plighted her troth, to a share in any advantages 
 her betrothed might subsequently acquire, may certainly be 
 maintained. That Gifford had a right, if possible, to test the 
 sincerity of her affection, and at least afford himself the satisfac 
 tion of knowing that her feelings were not solely swayed by in 
 terest, may perhaps be allowed. On the whole, scrupulous 
 judges may be disposed to declare that our hero s ruse deserved 
 censure. But I cannot forget that Hugh s early life, and the 
 grovelling spirits which surrounded it, had fostered the quality 
 of suspicion to a degree which was really foreign to his nature ; 
 and I feel constrained in passing judgment on any criminal to 
 take into consideration just such circumstances as these. It is 
 in vain that we seek to apply arbitrary standards to measure the 
 amount of right or wrong which attaches to different individuals 
 for the same act ; in vain, at least, so far as the effort is expected 
 to teach anything serviceable, excepting the divergence which 
 exists between human justice and the divine. I therefore leave 
 this portion of Hugh s life to such mercy as it may get, content 
 ing myself with describing facts and their fruits, rather than 
 with speculating as to motives and their morality. 
 
 In the place to which Ichabod had so mysteriously led him, 
 Gifford found a vast store of gold. It had been his immediate 
 desire to bring the company of Armstrong s Bar to participate 
 in the treasure ; but this Ike stoutly resisted, reminding Hugh 
 of his promise to reveal to no one the discovery which had been 
 made without the consent of the original discoverer. A com- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 293 
 
 promise was at last arranged, to the effect that after the two 
 should have obtained a certain sumplaced by Ike at a very 
 high figure the others were to be apprised of their good fortune, 
 and invited to share it. Without dwelling on details, it will 
 suffice to record that within three months the adventurers man 
 aged to extract, and a far more difficult task to convey to San 
 Francisco in safety, a sum of three hundred thousand dollars. 
 This sum, Ike insisted, was Gifford s. He would take his share 
 of what might afterwards be found, as one of the company ; but 
 the first cream of the placer he positively refused to touch. It 
 was his offering, so far as he had any rights in it, to Hugh ; and 
 nothing would satisfy him but its unreserved acceptance. The 
 former knew the obstinacy with which he had to deal too well 
 to combat it openly. He therefore resolved to lay aside a round 
 sum, which, come what might, would furnish the half-wit with 
 a comfortable life-long provision, and for the present to let the 
 subject drop. 
 
 It was part of Ike s scheme and he exhibited throughout a 
 degree of cunning which seemed to his companion quite aston 
 ishing not to return to Armstrong s Bar, or to communicate 
 with its inhabitants, until his own views were successfully earned 
 out. They could contrive to get food, he said, from other 
 points, by striking the trail leading to Downieville, eighteen 
 miles to the west ; they could find means to send back the 
 horses to their owners at Yankee Jim s, and could arrange for 
 needful supplies to come by the same route. Money would buy 
 all they wanted ; and it was better to take any amount of trouble 
 haul, pack, or even carry their supplies a distance of twenty 
 miles, rather than run the risk of having their treasure dis 
 covered and the spot overrun before they had gathered its 
 fruits. 
 
 To the first part of this scheme Gifford demurred, upon the 
 very obvious ground that, should their friends at the Bar hear 
 nothing of them, they would speedily institute researches, and 
 get up a hue and cry which might prove more fatal to then 1 pro 
 jects than anything else could possibly be. It was finally ar 
 ranged that a letter should be forwarded from a remote point, 
 which should assure the party of their safety and speedy return 
 from their expedition, which was described as an experimental 
 one for the sake of prospecting ; and this letter could be as, 
 indeed, it was followed up from time to time by others in a 
 manner to forestall anxiety and keep matters quiet at the Bar. 
 
 The other details were consummated as Ike proposed ; and 
 although the plan involved, as it turned out, all manner of pri- 
 
294 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 vations and difficulties, yet they managed to preserve health and 
 strength sufficient to carrf out the work, and that with a speed 
 which only those who have known what it is to dig from the 
 earth an enormous daily tribute of gold can quite appreciate. 
 
 Midsummer had not come, before, having safely lodged their 
 gold in the vaults of a banker, who, singular to relate, had never 
 yet stopped payment, Gifford and Ike returned to their won 
 dering friends ; and, having told as much of their adventures as 
 seemed prudent and had been mutually agreed upon, invited 
 them to emigrate to what they had christened "Lion s Dale " (a 
 name, by the way, which I am glad to see the valley still re 
 tains), and, in their turn, to amass fortunes. By this time the 
 scattered bands of Indians had begun to retreat as usual before 
 the advancing pressure of swarming whites, and there was little 
 fear now of an interference or danger which, when Ike first 
 made his discovery, had been so effectual in making it an ex 
 clusive one. 
 
 In the mean time, more settlers had gathered about the Bar, 
 and there were two new Humes in the course of construction. 
 Discoveries had been made in other places near by, although the 
 gold yield at Armstrong s continued scanty ; and the latter, be 
 ing very accessible and convenient to several lines of travel, was 
 growing in importance as an entrepot, irrespective of any value 
 or poverty attributed to its diggings. A post-office was regular 
 ly established there, and Uncle Seth was appointed postmaster. 
 The buildings were improved, and the long coveted wooden roof 
 over the principal structure took the place of the "cotting" one. 
 There was every indication that the place would become popu 
 lous, and the land, consequently, valuable. 
 
 Under these circumstance, it was resolved that Luke, Dick 
 Railes, and Ike, together with the Doctor, should form a party 
 for the new diggings, retaining the old home as a base of sup 
 plies, and leaving Uncle Seth and the "women folks" to keep 
 possession thereof; and this sensible arrangement had just been 
 carried into effect at the time Hugh Grfford sailed for New York. 
 As for Ike, Hugh would willingly have taken him with himself, 
 but Ike promptly rejected the proposal. He was very well as he 
 was, he said ; and certainly there did not appear to be any par 
 ticular advantage in his removal to the Atlantic States. Hugh 
 had, to be sure, an idea that the poor fellow s "mental condition 
 might possibly be improved by travel ; or, perchance, by medical 
 advice in the Old World if not in the New. But Dr. Landale 
 thought he saw signs of improvement, which might be checked 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 295 
 
 or reversed were Ike taken from his present haunts and pursuits, 
 and this opinion was accepted as conclusive. 
 
 Thus it was that Gifford sailed for home with his fortune, quite 
 alone. He had his gold with him, but otherwise he was solitary. 
 Long habit had reconciled him to the companionship of even 
 the most illiterate and unintellectual of the people at the 
 Bar. To separate, even from poor Lion, he now found gave 
 him a pain which he had rarely known in parting even from a 
 human being. His thoughts ranged back over the many event 
 ful scenes they had all seen and braved together. He remembered 
 with vividness a hundred pictures of the Plains ; Castle Arm 
 strong, with its quaint ulterior, the colors of the different cattle 
 who drew it, the very clothes various members of the party wore. 
 He recalled a score of different camp-fires where they had sat 
 and watched and smoked, and told stories and adventures, in 
 the fitful light of the spluttering green wood as it blazed and 
 sparkled on the gloom around. He thought of the first time he 
 saw the friendly chief, Washashaco, as he came up to the brow 
 of the slope and warned his white brethren of impending danger ; 
 of the confidence he had felt in the warrior from the outset, and 
 how that confidence had never been shaken until late in the long, 
 long day when the little band fought so overwhelming an array of 
 savages ; when poor Xahum Pelter had fallen, as it Avere, in the 
 very moment of safety and victory, and the swarthy chieftain, like 
 an avenging fury, followed by his red troop of whooping demons, 
 had bounded into their midst to turn the scale of battle. But 
 from all these memories, and many more which were akin to 
 them, Gifford s thoughts always came back to fix upon one ob 
 ject the green oasis in his dreary, dusty march of life the 
 music which had made tolerable the dull, monotonous clangor 
 of commonplace sounds and vulgar voices the poetry which, 
 from childhood, he had dreamed of and yearned for, but never 
 before in good faith believed to exist to the memory of 
 Marian. 
 
 And, as often as he came back to this thought, he found 
 another standing, as it were, by its side, and warning him, with 
 an emphasis he could not soften, of the great need there was 
 that he should regard his own honor as well as Marian s memory, 
 and do nothing that should cloud either in his treatment of 
 Virginia. 
 
 He was rich now, and there was no obstacle to their happy 
 union; why .then should he shudder at such a reflection? It 
 really seemed that the path of duty lay straight before him, and 
 that the path of duty should also be that of happiness ; but, alas ! 
 
296 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 it was not so. Loyal as Marian had ever been, she had most 
 unwittingly, partly by the effect of continual contrast, partly by 
 a certain way she had of suggesting analysis of character, led 
 Hugh to a sharp and painful perception of the unlovely faults of 
 Virginia s nature. At the same time, the latter had unfortunate 
 ly been yielding more and more to the influences which tended 
 to increase those faults, and the retrogression was only too obvi 
 ously reflected in her letters. 
 
 On the passage home, then, Gifford, in a blurred and bewil 
 dered sort of way, had sketched out for himself a plan of oper 
 ations which were intended, as we have seen, to test the reality 
 and the steadfastness of Virgina s affection. He determined to 
 afford her every possible opportunity to hold him to his engage 
 ment every possible incentive, save the single one of knowing 
 his altered circumstances. If she would not adhere to his for 
 tunes as a poor man, Hugh thought he might fairly escape from 
 the tie as a rich one. There was certainly no particular origi 
 nality about the idea ; but it was eminently practical, since scarce 
 ly any one in the world could possibly betray him, and it also 
 had the merit of extreme simplicity. Straightway, on his arrival, 
 he commenced to reduce it to practice ; and having thus wasted 
 no time in attending to what he could not avoid regarding as an 
 honorable obligation, he now thought, with a strange notion of 
 having earned some compensation floating in his mind, that he 
 had a right to try and find Marian. 
 
 Hugh had no inclination to seek out any of his relations. None 
 of them, as he well knew, would care a straw to see him unless he 
 came with a fortified assurance that he was well to do in the 
 world, and such information would be likely to defeat his plans, 
 to say nothing of the fact that its being essential to a welcome, 
 very naturally made him indifferent to those who would exact it. 
 And yet, although his kinsmen were otherwise hard and base- 
 minded men, in this particular respect they differed not from 
 most New Englanders around them. It is inevitable that an ex 
 aggerated value should attach to wealth where no other title or 
 passport to reverence and consideration is acknowledged. The 
 sordid tone which pervades much American society has its origin 
 not in the fact that people are born more selfish and grasping 
 there than elsewhere, but because they are taught from their 
 youth up that gold is the only good, and find that democracy has 
 done too much to establish the maxim. There is no way to 
 reason this evil out of existence, any more than to make water 
 run up hill, save by reversing political conditions or the laws of 
 gravity. The systems of man are for ever imperfect, and it is by 
 
TIIE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 207 
 
 no means certain that because there are evils in oligarchy a 
 sweeping plutocracy is altogether free of them. 
 
 One thing at least is certain, which is, that to dig their heads 
 like ostriche into bushes of brag, and to diligently ostracize those 
 who dare to tell them the truth, is not the way for my country 
 men to purge their system of its ills, and make what they would 
 have a model worthy of universal imitation. A nation is in as 
 bad a way as a man is when it cannot endure to be told of its 
 faults ; and because some people have exaggerated, or misrepre 
 sented those faults in times past, is no reason why they should be 
 stoutly maintained to be virtues for all time to come. But having 
 been abused for digression before now, as well as for unfair strict 
 ures on national manners, let me be wary and return to my 
 hero. 
 
 He turned his back, then, on Boston almost as soon as he 
 showed his face there. The best society, mutual admiration or 
 other, the guarded amusements, the secluded homes of the better 
 classes where was breathed a strange atmosphere, compounded 
 in equal portions the Puritan and the Sybarite, the hearty 
 greeting of condiscipuli, even at the neighbor Alma Mater he once 
 had loved all these were forbidden joys to one who, like Gifforcl, 
 had committed two capital sins ; he had gone away from their 
 midst, and he had come back poor. Rarely does Boston forgive 
 the first crime ; the second, never. 
 
 Hugh did, indeed, go to see his old friend and fellow student, 
 John Chester ; and John Chester proved an exception to the gen 
 eral rule, for he shook the wanderer warmly by the hand, and 
 was glad to see him, notwithstanding he came back poor, and 
 notwithstanding he himself had a Murder. Still, Hugh saw, or 
 fancied he saw, something a little stiff and frightened in John s 
 manner something a little furtive and watchful, as if somebody 
 might witness perchance this anomalous cordiality to one who 
 had gone away and come back poor ; something which seemed 
 to indicate that such cordiality besides being " outre" and un 
 usual, had also a customary penalty attached, which John would 
 like to evade. Perhaps Hugh was mistaken ; very reserved mon 
 are especially apt to notice little frigidities or acerbities of man 
 ner in others ; but he could not help thinking that if his ostensi 
 ble poverty were to continue until John got two or three more 
 Murders, he would be less welcome even than he was at 
 present. 
 
 John heard the statement of Gifford s arrangement v-ith his 
 sister with a puzzled air, and seemed twice or thrice to be upon 
 the point of saying something which again caution restrained. 
 13* 
 
298 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 The truth was, John felt heartily ashamed of the air of meanness 
 which appeared in the whole matter, and* thought his friend badly 
 treated ; but he did not quite like to say so. He feared Hugh 
 was of too speculative and discursive a turn to prosper, and con 
 ceived that any incentive which was likely to combat or neutral 
 ize such a predisposition would have a good effect. I am afraid, 
 too, that Boston was saturating John over-much with those views 
 of expediency and " getting ahead " in life, which in his more 
 callow years he had made bold to despise in his sagacious father. 
 It is a hard thing to live always at l^ome, and yet not feel and 
 think, not less than do, even as the Romans. 
 
 " What d ye mean to do?" he asked, incidentally, before they 
 parted. "Of course you have some plans for making money. 
 What are they ?" 
 
 "To tell the truth, I have not made up my mind," prevari 
 cated Hugh. 
 
 " Time you had, I should think. Folks here are terribly hard 
 on what they think an aimless or discursive sort of life. You 
 tried law in California ?" 
 
 "No ; the country was overrun with lawyers. Besides, after 
 all, you know, I was making a living in the mines." 
 
 " Come now," said John, with interest, " could you make fifty 
 dollars a week ?" 
 
 " Not all the time, perhaps ; during most of it, yes." 
 
 " Could you make forty dollars a week the year round 1 ?" 
 
 "I believe we averaged as well as that." 
 
 "Thunder ! What did you come away for f 
 
 " Why, John. I I was rather weary of mining ; it wasn t so 
 .very congenial, you may suppose ; and there are other things to 
 think of in the world besides making money, you know, John." 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! yes," admitted John, doubtfully ; "at least I used 
 to think so. But youthful dreams are one thing and the busi 
 ness of life is another. We re all business men here, Gifford." 
 
 " I suppose so ; and each thinks only of what will advance his 
 own business," said Hugh, with some bitterness. " They are 
 business men in Canaan, who only keep that eye open which 
 looks towards profit ; and this place is only a bigger Canaan. I 
 was walking down School Street just now, and I saw a man ap 
 proaching whom my poor father s brain and industry made rich ; 
 for he made others rich if he did not make himself so. Well, 
 this man s instinct or some gossiping tongue had taught him that 
 I had not been over successful, I suppose ; at any rate his eye of 
 profit couldn t see me, and he crossed over and passed by on the 
 other side." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 299 
 
 " Ah, you mean Scumble ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, he has got on immensely of late years. He s uncom 
 monly smart, Scumble is. You re quite right, he s a first-rate 
 business man." 
 
 Yes ; even John Chester was infected by the atmosphere he 
 breathed. He might have substantially the same nature still, 
 but it was so crusted over by the oxidization of the prevailing 
 gold- worship that but little of its old true metal could be seen 
 below. Gifford sighed as he thought that even this one true 
 friend, whose staunchness he had counted on, had become, if not 
 alienated, at least somewhat cooled towards him. There are 
 some places in the world whose absent ones are more wrong 
 than those of any other spot beside ; and Boston is not the least 
 conspicuous of them. Hugh had not the least idea that he had 
 committed any crime during his Pacific sojourn; but he was 
 convinced that, had he done so, and the noise of it been bruited, 
 the people he met could scarcely have regarded him with more 
 coldness and suspicion. He could not make it out ; at least he 
 only partly saw the truth. He was not yet quite experienced 
 enough to know that if his townsmen had been aware of the ex 
 istence of that gold heap of his, they would have roared them 
 selves hoarse with welcome have strewn flowers in his path 
 have chanted his praise from the very house-tops have converted 
 his doleful visit into. a gorgeous triumph. He guessed enough, 
 however, to supply him with a plentiful stock of bitterness, and 
 to rejoice when the old dome of the State House faded from his 
 view, and he could shake the dust of Boston from his feet. 
 
 It was agreed that John should write to Gifford, to a certain 
 address in New York, if anything -occurred at Canaan which 
 would be interesting to relate ; Hugh being, as he professed, 
 unsettled as to whither he should bend his steps, but intending 
 to arrange that all letters should safely follow wherever he might 
 determine to go. With this understanding our hero repaired at 
 once to New York, and betook himself to the task of discover 
 ing Marian. 
 
 His means for performing this task were of the simplest ; con 
 sisting, as they did, of nothing more than the name of Mr. Riv- 
 ingstone s agent. To find him was only the work of an hour 
 after arriving in the metropolis, but the information he could 
 afford was of the most meagre description. Miss Rooke had 
 been met by Mr. Rivingstone on her arrival from San Francisco ; 
 she had remained in town while he had gone South for a three 
 months tour; in the meantime his sister had joined Miss Rooke, 
 
300 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 and the two had awaited his return. He came back in June, 
 and the whole party had sailed directly afterwards for Europe. 
 Of their present address he knew nothing, and could only refer 
 to a banker in London. With this knowledge Hugh was per 
 force content, and, indeed, any other would have been of little 
 use, since he was resolved to get it for himself, and at closer 
 quarters ; nor was he long in putting his resolution into force, 
 for within a week he was again on shipboard, again breasting 
 old ocean s billows ; but this time in what was for him an un 
 tried direction, for he was leaving his native land behind him, 
 and his prow was turned eastward. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "THE question is, Who can he be?" 
 
 "Yes, mamma, and echo answers, Who? " 
 
 "He couldn t be, for example, an English nobleman in dis 
 guise ?" 
 
 "Not he. No man born at once rich and titled, ever has 
 those premature lines those souvenirs of- anxiety in his face. 
 The body may acquire ease, the bearing, grace, and no vestige 
 remain of what they supersede but not the countenance. The 
 jnk used there is indelible, and never washes out." 
 
 You conceive then that he is " 
 
 * Un nouveau riche? Quite so; but he may be a gentleman 
 for all that." 
 
 * A gentleman ! I should think so, indeed. Clinton would 
 scarcely write as he did about a man who was not. And yet the 
 puzzle is, that he writes precisely as if he knew nothing of Mr. 
 Gifford s antecedents." 
 
 " My brother is certainly never too ready to take people on 
 trust. An American, abroad, too! It s very odd." 
 
 " You would say now," pursued the elder lady, who was 
 doing something, with snowy fingers, to a maze of crimson silk, 
 "that fye could not be a retired trader?" 
 
 "Impossible, dear mamma. Consider the man s air his 
 manner of speaking. Besides rmore crucial test there s no 
 prest emblazoned on his carriage." 
 
 " True, true. And the carriage itself quite a miracle of 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 301 
 
 plainness. No ; I think you re right, Edith. But if not a suc 
 cessful merchant, it s clear he s no politician." 
 
 " Heavens, no ! Clinton would never have given letters to a 
 politician ; whatever his faults, my brother would never dream 
 of introducing a politician into the family of the Parapets 1" 
 
 " Unless sinning through ignorance, perhaps " 
 
 " Ignorance ! surely then- odious names are familiar enough. 
 TQ be sure, we don t read the detestable newspapers, their organs, 
 but the men do; and I m confident either papa or Clinton 
 would know if Mr. Gifford had been compromised in politics." 
 
 They were absurdly alike mother and daughter with tall 
 figures, delicate aquiline noses, brows exhibiting just a soupcon 
 of the supercilious, irreproachable complexions, dainty hands and 
 feet, and undeniably aristocratic bearings generally. There was 
 not the difference which is legitimate between five-and-twenty 
 and five-and-forty ; not because the daughter looked old, but 
 because the mother looked young two things which by com 
 mon consent are voted impossible in America, but which occa 
 sionally contrive to be true, notwithstanding. It is very odd, 
 by the way, how often exceptions will insist on crossing one s 
 path to give the lie to accepted theories. Perhaps when a man 
 has known many a skinny Englishwoman, and many a stout 
 American many a Briton who didn t drink beer, and many a 
 Yankee who didn t boast many a Bull who was cosmopolite, 
 and many a Jonathan who was not provincial many a German 
 who was airy and mercurial, and many a Frenchman who would 
 not eat frogs ; I say, when one can truly cite such an experi 
 ence, he may be permitted, perhaps, to disregard the general 
 rule, and, like an ingenious lawyer, to insist on urging a numer 
 ous family of exceptions. 
 
 At all events, these two ladies were of or among them. They 
 were unimpeachably well dressed, and, beyond all cavil, they 
 were well bred. They did not shriek like peacocks, nor load 
 themselves with diamonds at their breakfast table. Their speech 
 betrayed no nasal twang ; they did not " conclude," " calculate," 
 or " guess ;" they did not " admire" things to eat, call their ser 
 vants " helps," or commit any other kindred abomination. * The 
 worst that could be said of them was that, ignoring their own 
 utility as shining lights a grave remissness indeed in a com 
 munity most of whose members are for ever groping after 
 standards and seldom finding them they would insist on getting 
 perpetually under bushels, so that the world declared that light 
 there was none. 
 
 "Politics and the Parapets," continued the younger lady, 
 
302 MARIAN ROOKE J OR, 
 
 philosophically, "are like oil and vinegar; they never mingle 
 save at a great crisis, and only then on much persuasion. No 
 such occasion exists now, as brother Clinton well knows." 
 
 " There remain the professions," said Mrs. Parapet, following 
 the more particular thread of the discourse. * Our new acquaint 
 ance may be a lawyer, an officer, a physician, or even a clergy 
 man." 
 
 "Each and all incompatible with his movements. A man 
 whom nobody, except Clinton, knows, comes into a fashionable 
 square, buys a handsome house of brown stone, furnishes it in 
 exquisite taste ; sets up his carriage, is introduced by us into 
 our set, goes to two or three parties, makes the proper calls, 
 appears half a dozen times at the opera, and then when every 
 one expects him to settle quietly in his new home, and perhaps 
 set about selecting its mistress, he startsbfflike a madman or an 
 express agent, and is heard of one week at Niagara, the next at 
 St. Louis, the next at New Orleans, the fourth at Havana, the 
 fifth is at home again, and on papa calling at the beginning of 
 the sixth he is told that Mr. Gifford left for Montreal the night 
 before. These are eccentricities hardly consistent with the pur 
 suit of a profession. Besides, Clinton met him travelling quite 
 in a similar way ; he seems to have frisked through Europe very 
 much in the same odd fashion he adopts here." 
 
 "Perhaps," observed Mrs. Parapet, hunting vaguely about for 
 a suggestion, "perhaps he is the agent for some great European 
 company." 
 
 "No," replied her daughter, decisively, "there is not a trace 
 of anything commercial about him." 
 
 " The secret emissary of some foreign government, perhaps," 
 again hazarded the mother, ingeniously. 
 
 "There is something reserved and thoughtful in his manner; 
 but then, you know, he said he had only been in Europe for a 
 year. Besides, he s too young for a post of that sort." 
 
 "An author, possibly." 
 
 "An author with a carriage in this country ?" said Edith, scorn 
 fully. " Not in our generation, I fear. And who ever heard of 
 any scribbling Gilford? There has been none such since the 
 Reviewer." 
 
 " Well, my love, we are simply reduced to consider him a well 
 educated and rather clever young man, to whom somebody has 
 been good enough to leave a fortune. We are on sure ground 
 here, and if the foothold is narrow it is certain to be safe." 
 
 "Ah, mamma, but that s just it. Clinton wrote me that liis 
 friend, although in general very uncommunicative about his 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 303 
 
 former life, had yet told him that his family were poor only 
 able to educate him by making sacrifices and that he had not a 
 relative or connection on earth who would serve him to the ex 
 tent of a dollar, or whose help he would not despise if it were 
 offered.* 1 
 
 In that case, dear Edith, I confess myself completely at a 
 loss, and our mysterious acquaintance may be the Wandering 
 Jew for aught I can surmise to the contrary." 
 
 " He may have done something somewhere," said Miss Para 
 pet, thoughtfully, "to get all this money ; but your clever rascals 
 always have something flashy something you are called on to 
 illustrate with notes of admiration about them ; and he has 
 absolutely nothing of the kind." 
 
 " So that you give up the enigma, Edith, my love, with all 
 your cleverness, and confess yourself nonplussed as well as 
 mamma ?" 
 
 It was rather hard to make Gifford out. Not but that there 
 were plenty of gold-laden Californians in Xew York as well as 
 he ; but they were mostly of the tinker and tailor class, who 
 made no secret of their wealth, or the mode of its acquisition ; 
 and whose origin and calibre it required no confidence on their 
 part to explain. They were also well known to each other, so 
 that, if any particular tongue were silent, all the rest wagged 
 sufliciently to make its reticent master s affairs no mystery. As 
 we have seen, Gifford was an exception to this rule. There was 
 no longshoreman, cab-driver, jack-tar, tinker or tailor, faro- 
 banker, or wholesale swindler among the begemmed and gor 
 geous crew at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, who could tell whence 
 Gifford s resources were drawn, even if any of them might per 
 chance have known his face. Even if that prince of bold oper 
 ators, the redoubted Pangburn, himself had turned up, he could 
 only have explained how Hugh had lost a small fortune not 
 how he had found a large one. Indeed there were none living 
 excepting Ike* and Lion, both of whom were equally unlikely to 
 appear in Parapetian society, who could give the smallest light 
 on the subject. Thus that ram avis anywhere, the spectacle of a 
 man who, having come suddenly into the possession of money, has 
 yet some distant notion of how to spend it, was not likely to be 
 elucidated so far as the history of Gifford was concerned, unless 
 he himself chose to tell his own story. 
 
 " He s certainly handsome," remarked Mrs. Parapet as a pen 
 dant to a knot in her silken mystery. 
 
 " I call him distinguished looking rather than handsome ; 
 scarcely tall enough to be a fine man, but with a great number of 
 
304 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 good points. No man without decent blood in his veins has 
 precisely those points in America, or out of it." 
 
 "There are a -great many eligible girls just out," proceeded 
 the mamma ; he could hardly have come at a more promising 
 season. Of course none of the old families could think of a man 
 so utterly unknown. But there are plenty in the next grade 
 the ball and dinner-party set who are all before him where to 
 choose. There is Clara Vyse, the great counsellor s daugh 
 ter " 
 
 "Dear mamma, she s so dreadfully common! and she bridles 
 and squeaks like a peacock !" 
 
 " There s Julia Cranstoun, with a nice fortune and " 
 
 " The face of a cook, and the manners of a nursery govern 
 ess." 
 
 "Isabel Pinckney, I m sure, is a very good match." 
 
 " A scrawny creature like that, half deaf, and at least six-and- 
 thirty!" 
 
 " And Emily Bishop has both beauty and money." 
 
 " An incorrigible Yankee, who snivels like Mawworm, and 
 fills the room with an atmosphere of pork-and-beans and pump 
 kin pie!" 
 
 My dear Edith!" 
 
 "I beg your pardon, mamma, I m sure, for disparaging your 
 favorites, but you really seem to forget that Mr. Gifford is not 
 only a man of keen perception, but also one who is uncommonly 
 fastidious, and the specimens you select are curiously obnoxious 
 to criticism." 
 
 Mrs. Parapet raised her eyes for an instant, and then dropped 
 them again upon her crimson silk ; she had seen the faintest of 
 flushes on her daughter s aristocratic cheek ; rather an odd thing, 
 she thought, for a young lady whose fashionable imperturbability 
 was carried, in general, almost to excess. 
 
 " The old families are out of the question," she repeated, half 
 interrogatively, by way of experiment. 
 
 "Distinctly!" answered Edith, with emphasis. "But there 
 are some young women not altogether hideous, unpresentable, 
 and passecs among the new. And, since Mr. Gifford is in a man- 
 mer consigned to us, we may fairly wish him success in the least 
 objectionable category." 
 
 " C/iacun d son gout. The taste of men and women in such 
 matters I have commonly found to be at variance. Your own 
 would be thought unimpeachable, my love, in every respect save 
 that of female charms ; and even in those, Mr. Gifford and your- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 305 
 
 self may agree. Should he return in time for the Egremont 
 Ball, the point may be fairly put to the test." 
 
 " We go to the Egremonts, then ?" 
 
 " I think, upon the whole, yes. It doesn t involve visiting, 
 you know, and is perfectly understood as not to be taken advan 
 tage of. To be sure they can never be of our set by any possi 
 bility, so the risk is but slight. Their balls are showy, fashion 
 able, and amusing, if not of the best ton ; and if one meets a 
 rather promiscuous assemblage, tis only once a year, and you 
 never know them again. Your papa thinks it well to patronize 
 the Egremonts." 
 
 "To this extent no more?" 
 
 ; Precisely. And, as I observed, Mr. Gifford may, if he re 
 turns in time, give you the opportunity of comparing notes with 
 him on the particular question at issue. The Egremonts always 
 muster pretty girls in shoals." 
 
 "The daughters of Israel largely included." 
 
 " Que voulez vous ? A man who has a people and a vocation 
 cannot put both to the wall at his seasons of festivity. Every 
 thing considered, they are most inoffensive, and so long as they 
 continue as unobtrusive as they have hitherto been, I for one will 
 help them out once a year with all the pleasure imaginable." 
 
 This conversation took place in a veiy tasteful boudoir in a 
 very roomy mansion in the most exclusive, although not the most 
 modern, fashionable quarter of New York. The mansion was 
 not built of pretentious brown strone, now so generally used to 
 make showy facades, and too often facades only, for the houses 
 of the new rich in that remarkable city, but of solid, sombre old 
 gray granite, and dingy red bricks. It was not propped on either 
 side by a companion precisely like itself, as from a sometimes not 
 unreasonable precaution lest it should fall, but stood in its own 
 grounds, which were large enough to contain a whole block of 
 such parvenu fabrics, and was shaded by vast elms, which threw 
 their protecting arms far above even its own lofty gables. This 
 was the town-house of the Parapets, and had been such for many 
 a year before any who now bore the name had seen the light. 
 Here they came regularly at the last of October, and remained 
 until the following first of June. The interval was passed at a 
 still roomier and still older, and still more patrician-looking house 
 on the Hudson, near Haverstraw ; the exceptions to either so 
 journ being when any of the family were in Europe, or saw fit, 
 at cautious periods, to show themselves for a few days at New 
 port or Saratoga. 
 
 Enough has been said in the preceding colloquy to describe at 
 
306 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 least a part of Hugh Gifford s career during the first twelvemonth 
 of his newly-gained riches. He had passed a year in Europe, 
 had returned to his native country, had purchased and furnished 
 a house in New York, and set up an establishment, with the ap 
 parent design of settling regularly in that metropolis ; had no 
 sooner made these arrangements than he had dashed off on a 
 swift tour through the American States, .had returned, and at the 
 present time had once more left his new home and betaken him 
 self to Canada. 
 
 We shall have occasion anon to go further than to merely trace 
 the outline of these erratic movements, by filling in their explan 
 atory incentives and hoped-for objects ; but before doing so it 
 may not be amiss to describe the origin of our hero s association 
 with the polite society of the great island city, which will neces 
 sarily involve some further brief description of the family of the 
 Parapets. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THERE has always been a great deal of doubt in the outer, 
 more especially in the European world, as to the existence in 
 America of the family of the Parapets. Now it is one among 
 the many objects of this veritable history to set that doubt en 
 tirely at rest. That the Parapets do positively exist I most un 
 hesitatingly pledge myself ; and beg leave further to record the 
 conviction that the stress of events would very speedily have es 
 tablished the fact of their existence, even had my history failed 
 to do so. Nevertheless, such personal testimony as I am able to 
 afford will not, I trust, be regarded as supererogatory, since any 
 thing which throws light upon so important and so much mooted 
 a point may be presumed to have its uses. 
 
 In flying back over the continent from the marvellous land of 
 gold and I may mention, passim, that I so flew very soon after 
 Hugh Gifford became a rich man just as the sun is constrained 
 to gild first the highest peaks, I feel impelled to enlighten the 
 reader by touching upon the Parapets a simile which may or 
 may not be deemed to make up in appositeness what it lacks in 
 modesty, but which will be warmly appreciated by that family 
 themselves, however it may miss endorsement from the remain 
 der of mankind. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 30? 
 
 To begin, then, after the order indicated, it is necessary to il 
 lumine the highest pinnacle in the person of the head of ihe 
 house ; it is necessary to give some brief account of Mr. Dyce 
 Parapet. This gentlemen was and. refusing to take note of 
 time, still apparently is a comely, well-preserved, wholesome, 
 benevolent, and regular individual of sixty ; with smooth white 
 haii , smooth white hands, a clear skin, a starchy manner, and a 
 good digestion. There were a great number of Mr. Dyce Para 
 pets before the present one, going back for many a year before 
 the Revolution ; and they were physically the pictures of their 
 living representative, except it may be they were a trifle stouter 
 and taller. But after going back for a few generations you would 
 find other than physical differences between them. You would 
 find that they did not in those days think it well to shrink into 
 their shells like oysters to avoid the rough contact of the world 
 without ; did not think themselves in the exceptional position of 
 owing no duty whatever to their fellow beings in general, or to 
 their countrymen in particular ; in a word, there was no doubt 
 in their time as to whether or no the Dyce Parapets really existed ; 
 and this fact is suggestive of the most important divergence be 
 tween the family of yesterday and the family of to-day. 
 
 The Mr. Parapet of to-day had never been in trade, had nev 
 er been in any profession, had never been in the legislature, 
 either local or national ; in brief, had never been in anything ex 
 cepting the bosom of his family, and such limited and highly 
 exclusive social circles as, with cautiously adapted radii, swept 
 within the probability of noise or publicity. These circles were 
 constituted of people of similar aptitudes fordoing nothing, and 
 not being heard of; and, collectively speaking, they were re 
 markably, successful in carrying out their tastes. Hence, there 
 is the same apocryphal glamour thrown over them by society at 
 large as enshrouds the Parapets ; and as they are not much 
 more accessible to strangers than to their own country folk, 
 many an European tourist, after thoroughly travelling over, and 
 completely understanding everything else in America in the space 
 of six months, has yet departed with an unhappy persuasion that 
 these families were, like the Parapets, altogether mythical, and not 
 to be accepted by the intelligent observer as corporeal entities. 
 This was a general effect, highly pleasing and satisfactory -to the 
 families ; and so far as some of the tourists themselves are con 
 cerned. I confess that its production strikes me as by no means 
 an unmixed evil, much as I may deprecate it in a general way. 
 
 In suggesting indolence as a prevalent characteristic of the 
 class whereof the Parapets were a type, I only intend to convey 
 
308 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 that they eschewed effort, as connected with the public service 
 or in the channel of regular pursuits or professions; but they 
 were by no means indolent in respect of personal accomplish 
 ments or the acquisition of knowldge. Mr. Dyce Parapet him 
 self was a very well read as well as a very well bred man. He 
 had been substantially grounded in his youth in classic and po 
 lite letters, and the family had always preserved and augmented 
 an uncommonly fine library, to the advantages of which he was 
 far from insensible. He took pleasure at sixty in Homer and the 
 dramatists, and made Latin verses not to be despised. He read 
 with undeviating regularity all the best of the foreign reviews, 
 and the most scholarly books which money could bring from the 
 teeming press of Europe. He was well versed in history and 
 political economy, and nothing emanated from the great mod 
 ern lights in either field that he did not straightway grapple and 
 draw knowledge from it. But all these tastes and acquirements 
 were quite valueless to the community in which he lived. Mr. 
 Parapet had no more idea of the significancy lying in the phys 
 ical fact that all bodies which receive light give light, than he had 
 of making an auto-da-fe of himself for the general good of the 
 community. If he cherished any particular theory touching the 
 object of his existence, it resolved itself into a sort of negative 
 assumption that there was no niche, no particular sphere of use 
 fulness, open to him or such as him in his country as it now was ; 
 with which idea I have nothing to do, further than to record 
 that it was entertained, and furnished an excuse, if any there 
 was, for the aimless, drone-like, useless life which Mr. Parapet 
 and his compeers lived. 
 
 Mr. Parapet was very rich. When people have large estates, 
 which for years have been rising in value, and on which they 
 pay next to no taxes, they are very apt to become so. . He had 
 always been prudent, like most of his predecessors ; and, al 
 though by no means illiberal in his expenditure, and having an 
 expensive family, his- property had steadily increased until he 
 was perhaps one of the richest landowners in the State. But 
 for the untaxed protection afforded by that State he never dream 
 ed of making any return ; and if his attention had been forcibly 
 directed to the subject, he would doubtless have urged that such 
 contributions as were made to the public revenue, in the way of 
 customs duties on the articles consumed by his family, were an 
 adequate requital for the security conferred. And in justice it 
 may be acknowledged, that Mrs. Parapet and Miss Parapet were 
 unconscious patriots in the way of French millinery to an extent 
 that might partially justify the plea. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 309 
 
 Clinton, the only son and heir of this august house, having 
 passed his four years at Harvard University, had been sent, as 
 was customary with all young Parapets, to make the tour of 
 Europe, and incidentally it was supposed that he would extend 
 the range of his intellectual vision, and give the rounding touches 
 to his scholarship at a venerable seat of learning in Germany. 
 It was at Gottingen in truth that Hugh Gifford met this young 
 scion, about a twelvemonth after the strange fortune that brought 
 our hero wealth. Americans, like Englishmen, often make 
 friends of each other abroad, when hardly any thing short of 
 physical torture would induce them to speak at home. Hugh 
 was struck by the easy bearing and gentlemanly manners of his 
 countryman, so different from many among whom his own youth 
 had been passed, and took more pains than he was wont to give 
 himself on such a score, to cultivate Clinton s society. After 
 wards they made a trip to Paris, and saw much of the glittering 
 capital in company. Three or four years seniority, and more 
 than those years implied a certain rough knowledge of the world, 
 put Hugh in something of the position of a mentor, and he 
 often found himself half unconsciously giving forth the same sort 
 of schooling he himself had received from softer lips in the 
 wilds of the West. These utterances chiefly took the form of 
 speculation and advice as to future prospects. 
 
 "You have no fancy for the bar ?" he asked, at an early stage 
 of their acquaintance. 
 
 "None; or at least, what little I have is curbed by the knowl 
 edge that practice at it is quite out of the question." 
 
 "Of course it s very difficult to work up; I ve found that 
 out." 
 
 " I don t mean that. I could, of course, afford to wait. But 
 there are other and stronger objections." 
 
 "You think it too dry?" 
 
 " Oh no ; I could stand that. But what man who has a name 
 he feels bound to respect can enter a profession where the chief 
 prizes are accorded to such men as now hold them at New York ? 
 To be sure, there are people of high character and attainments 
 in it there, no doubt as high as any elsewhere, but they are ex 
 ceptions ; the general tone is such that success doesn t imply the 
 possession of qualities one would wish to have the reputation of; 
 that s all." 
 
 " It is better at Boston." 
 
 "Oh, I dare say; everything s better at Boston; and yet you 
 people who come away never want to get back to it !" 
 
310 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " That is for other reasons ; in my case at least. But if the 
 bar won t answer, I suppose you ll go into polities ?" 
 
 u My dear fellow ! what can you be thinking of? Go into 
 Congress, or the Assembly, to sit with McSwyne ; to deliberate 
 with Gagger, O Slasher, and Bowie ; to pair off with an Irish 
 grog-seller, or be put on committee with a lottery .sharper! 
 Why, the race of Parapets would rise in their graves and pro 
 rogue the house ! No ; no political life for me." 
 
 "But surely people of your name have sat in the national 
 councils? And, granting the evils you imply, the leaven to 
 rectify them must come from above, not from below." 
 
 "Oh yes, there have been Parapets in Congress, and in the 
 cabinet too, for that matter. But look, I pray you, at the com 
 pany they kept ; look at the names, sixty, fifty, even fi ve-and- 
 twenty years ago, and note the difference As to the leaven, 
 none is required. The people are satisfied, and if not they have 
 full power to be so. They can do without the Parapets, the 
 Parapets can do without them. Voila tout /" 
 
 " Ah, taxation is low now, and do what they may they cannot 
 spur you into rebellion ; but were a great war to come, you will 
 find the necessity for being heard and represented, unless you 
 propose to submit to spoliation. Have you ever thought of the 
 army. 1 ?" 
 
 " Ay, truly ; but there s nobody to fight. You see, there s 
 nothing on earth to do in America, but for- those who have 
 money to keep it, and for those who haven t to make it. And 
 it s lucky that, seeing there are so many ways to make it, the lat 
 ter class are saved the temptation to rob the former. As for the 
 army, cui lono ? You are sent into the swamps of Florida, or to 
 the extremity of the western frontier, to catch fever and ague, 
 and pick off the poor devils of red-skins. No great incentive 
 in that, and yet it s all our officers can do." 
 
 Not very inviting, I grant. Still there must surely be some 
 fields of usefulness ; perhaps you ve thought of turning author ?" 
 
 " I doubt my ability. But were it indisputable, I don t see 
 how it could be put to much use. It is too unremittingly labori 
 ous, too open to the criticism of fools, too uncertain in its results ; 
 in a word, its toils and rewards are too disproportionate to offer 
 attractions for me. I ve too little of th<3 sacred fire which makes 
 men ignore the balance or despise it, and should always be 
 measuring profit and loss." 
 
 "Well, then, after all, what do you mean to do? Since the 
 bar and the forum are too ignoble, the field too inactive or in- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTU1SE. 311 
 
 glorious, and the pen too unprofitable, if you will allow me to 
 ask, what are you to do ?" 
 
 "Do? Ah, well, what my grandfather and father have done 
 before me, and succeeded so admirably in doing Nothing. It 
 is a pursuit we have learned to accept as a sort of political 
 necessity ; we have been taught that in a successful republic, 
 from the inevitable nature of things, there is Nothing to Do for 
 the Parapets." 
 
 Now Gifford had been rather bitterly of opinion that there 
 was not much to be done by a poor gentleman in his country, 
 but that there should be no niche, not even an ornamental one, 
 for a rich gentleman, he felt bound to combat. So he set to 
 work with something very like zeal to persuade the young aris 
 tocrat that it was his duty to strive for the common weal, albeit 
 such labors might not advance his own; and that those who 
 were placed by fortune above the necessity of toiling for bread, 
 were clearly bound to employ their powers for the benefit of 
 those who were under it. He pointed out that in a new countiy, 
 where tho absence of shackling conventionalities and time- 
 honored formulas enabled new experiments to be safely made in 
 the science of human development, and the art of human hap 
 piness, it was a noble privilege to assist and to guide such experi 
 ments to their benevolent conclusions and fruition. No poor 
 man could devote himself to such humane pursuits with a pros 
 pect of achieving any considerable results. But any of inde 
 pendent means might surely do so, and thus gain the gratitude 
 of his species, and the blessings of his own conscience. Thus 
 argued Hugh, with earnestness and no little eloquence. 
 
 But his disciple was too substantially grounded in what might 
 be termed the Parapetian Philosophy., to be more than tempo 
 rarily affected by such suggestions. The Parapets had served 
 their country very faithfully, so long as there was any need, but 
 now there really was none. The people, had good schools, high 
 wages, cheap provisions, universal suffrage, and what could the 
 Parapets give them more ? Nothing whatever had the Parapets 
 kept to themselves except their money and then- lands, which 
 they really couldn t distribute unless they turned Socialists at 
 once, which was not in their way. What could the masses the 
 foundations want that the Parapets had not resigned to them ? 
 The press was theirs, the legislature was theirs, the pulpit was 
 theirs, the bar was theirs, even the arrangements on the lines of 
 travel had been made exclusively theirs. The Parapets had 
 even paid t fiat, regard to public opinion as to hide themselves 
 away from the public eye, that the public might not be offended 
 
312 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 by the spectacle of greater wealth or refinement than the public, 
 in a general sense, possessed. Clinton didn t really know what 
 they could do more, unless it might be to commit suicide, en 
 masse, and leave their property for public distribution, and their 
 memory to public gratitude ; in which case each would last about 
 the same time, so that it would be of no permanent service. In 
 a word, there was nothing to argue, nothing to fight, nothing to 
 teach, nothing to write, nothing from any possible point of view 
 for a Parapet but to be a Parapet, and do nothing. 
 
 "And after all," remarked their youthful representative, 
 " what a pretty fellow you are for a mentor ! Here have you 
 been by your own confession flying about Europe like a bil 
 liard-ball for a whole year first on one side, then on the other 
 one week in Vienna, the next in Madrid ; yesterday in Regent 
 Street, to-day lounging in the Boulevard des Italiens, and for 
 what ? You haven t even the excuse of study, such as I have at 
 Gottingen ; you re a time-killer, pure and simple, and you re 
 proach me for wasting it !" 
 
 "Unjust," quoth Hugh, "although very natural. Time is no 
 enemy of mine ; at least I have not intentionally ill-used it. 
 It s not my fault that I have perforce either killed or wasted 
 it." 
 
 "Ah, you mean you have had an object?" 
 
 1 Unquestionably. " 
 
 " Which is a secret, of course ?" 
 
 " For the moment only. I ll tell it you willingly when it is 
 accomplished; that is," he added, with a heavy sigh, "if it ever 
 is accomplished." 
 
 "Tut!" said young Parapet, carelessly, "everything in this 
 life is sure to be accomplished if we but stick to it long enough." 
 
 A strange sentiment from a Parapet from the scion of a 
 family, no member of which, within the memory of man, had 
 had any aim or object to accomplish whatever : yet it did not 
 strike Hugh as incongruous. There are men who, without ever 
 doing anything at all, give you the idea that they could do every 
 thing in the world if they liked ; and the Parapets were always 
 of the class. 
 
 Neither was the lack of tenacity a weakness in Gilford s 
 character. He had blood in his veins which led him to an in 
 stinctive conviction that what .he willed to do, he had strength 
 to compass. It was not through want of resolution, and assuredly 
 not through want of industry, that for so many months he had 
 failed in the chief thing, to effect which he had visited Europe. 
 Truly surprising is it how enterprises will miscarry from what 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 313 
 
 are apparently the simplest causes. Nothing, for example, 
 appears easier in these days of newspapers and telegrams than 
 to find any particular person whom you know to be travelling 
 openly and freely about the Continent. It would seem that with 
 a little trouble a few inquiries, two or three lines in the Times 
 perhaps you can discover the object of your search. Yet I 
 have known devices and experiments to be exhausted, to which 
 these are as nothing, and they have absolutely and unaccount 
 ably foiled. 
 
 Hugh could not exactly advertise Marian in the Times, but 
 there was scarcely any other conceivable expedient to which he 
 did not resort, and which did not ignominiously fail, during his 
 year in Europe. The London banker he had easily found 
 directly after his arrival; but he could furnish no more in the 
 way of details than could Mr. Rivingstone s agent at New York. 
 The party were on the Continent, he said ; they had circular 
 notes ; he did not know when they would return ; would, with 
 pleasure, take charge of any letters, but had no address to which 
 he could forward them, and really did not know when they 
 might be expected to reach the hands for which they were in 
 tended. 
 
 With this scanty intelligence Hugh left England at once, re 
 serving for the future his intended tour through the country 
 which from childhood had more deeply interested him than any 
 other. But in vain had he visited, in rapid succession, the chief 
 cities of France, Italy, Germany, and Spain ; no trace could be 
 discovered of the Rivingstones or of Marian. 
 
 "Did you ever hear of Mahomet and the mountain?" queried 
 Clinton, as they sat smoking one placid May evening in his 
 apartment in the Rue de Rivoli. The dusk was just coming on, 
 and hazier and hazier grew the distant view of the Arc de 
 Triomphe. Whatever Gifford was thinking of whether of his 
 lost love or the Barriere de 1 Etoile it is certain the question 
 had to be repeated before it was understood and answered. 
 
 " Well, and what then ?" 
 
 u Only you seem to have been scampering about trying to get 
 at something you have never reached ; and it struck me that 
 if you remained stationary in one place the something might 
 come to you." 
 
 " Ah !" 
 
 " Of course it requires more patience and all that. But then 
 it saves a deal of trouble." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Suppose now you were to settle youself down here in this 
 14 
 
314 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 very hotel. Sooner or later all the world comes to Paris. 
 Everyone who comes to Paris passes through the Rue de Rivoli. 
 Sit at this same window with an opera glass, therefore, and sooner 
 or later the mountain will come to you. Q. E. D." 
 
 " Clearly demonstrated, certainly. " 
 
 " My dear fellow, it s infallible. What you have done hitherto 
 has been, notwithstanding your disclaimer, sheer waste of time. 
 I ll wager that in a quarter of the space from this coigne of van 
 tage you ll succeed." 
 
 * At all events it is worth the trial," half mused Gifford. 
 
 " Worth the trial ! To be sure it is ; and as I never invented 
 anything before in my life, I m anxious to see this put to the test 
 You ll stay here then l ?" 
 
 Hugh reflected. He must, at all events, remain abroad for a 
 year. It was quite necessary to do so, for in America he 
 would constantly incur the risk of a miscarriage in his plan for 
 concealing the change in his fortunes from Virginia ; that is, 
 unless he were to conceal himself somewhere and adopt the ex 
 pedient of an incognito, neither of which he desired to do. On 
 his return he proposed to take the position which his wealth 
 might allow him to hold, and to carry out projects dim and 
 shadowy as yet in detail, but not the less resolved upon in their 
 general outline. He might as well remain at Paris for a time as 
 elsewhere. 
 
 " I will," he replied at length, " at least for the present, or 
 until I see good reason for flight. And although I ve great 
 doubts of the success of your scheme, yet should it turn out 
 luckily, you shall not be begrudged the fullest credit." 
 
 There followed a week of Parisian gay ety ; not, it may be said, 
 of dissoluteness, for it was a marked bond of sympathy between 
 them that neither of the young men was easily fascinated by the 
 more vulgar pleasures. That your friend is Diogenes may be no 
 great attraction ; but it is often the reverse of one if he be an 
 Alcibiades. Coda oveja con su parcga, saith the old Spanish 
 proverb, and the birds of a feather usually flock together in Paris 
 as freely as anywhere else, to say the least. 
 
 One morning there was a great deal of trumpeting and tramp 
 ling of hoofs in the great street below, and Hugh looking forth 
 saw what appeared to be a cortege of Chasseurs. What they es 
 corted had preceded the detachment now in view, which was ev 
 idently bringing up the rear. Behind them again was a closely 
 packed crowd of vehicles, which had been impeded by the pro 
 cession, and so accumulated together. 
 
 Toward these carriages, idly following Clinton s advice, our 
 
THE QUEST FOtt FORTUNE. 315 
 
 hero directed his opera glass. He looked long and earnestly, 
 and although the instrument hid his eyes, his companion, lolling 
 in an arm-chair close by, had no difficulty in seeing a great change 
 come over the expression of Hugh s face. 
 
 "By Jove I" cried Mr. Parapet, "the mountain has come to 
 Mahomet 1" 
 
 It had not. But if such a physical phenomenon had presented 
 in good earnest certainly if he had seen what the metaphor was 
 intended to illustrate Hugh s face would not have expressed 
 more interest and surprise ; for he saw in the showiest cabriolet 
 which adorned the gaudy throng, with a countenance fraught 
 with cunning, and flushed with gratified vanity, the prosperous 
 owner of the factory at Persepolis and the variety store of 
 Canaan ; while by his side, radiant in the delicate frippery of a 
 French bonnet, gorgeous hi the crumpling rotundities of a won 
 derful moire antique, sat the golden-haired idol of Hugh Gilford s 
 youthful imagination Virginia Chester. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THOSE most deeply skilled in the mysteries of the human in 
 telligence, tell us that actions are rarely undertaken at the stim 
 ulus of a single motive ; that there are commonly one or more 
 besides the ostensible one, which help to strengthen the aim and 
 buttress the resolution. True it is, that if we carefully examine 
 our experience, whether in the colossal affairs of national, or the 
 petty ones of individual life, we find an almost invariable diver 
 sity of opinion existing among mankind as to the incentives 
 which have dictated actions ; an evidence which is reasonably 
 conclusive in establishing that those incentives have been of a 
 mixed and complicated character. 
 
 Without pausing to do more than suggest a theory so open to 
 common investigation, I may say that Hugh Gifford s course gen 
 erally illustrated its inference. He came to Europe at the insti 
 gation of more motives than one, and he left it for at least as 
 many. A few days before seeing Virginia, as narrated in the 
 last chapter, he had written to Mr. Rivingstone s banker to ask 
 if he could yet afford any information as to the whereabouts of 
 that gentleman. This same evening there came two letters. The 
 first, from the banker, was the briefest, and to the effect that Mr. 
 
316 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Rivingstone and party had sailed for New York three weeks be 
 fore. The second was from John Chester, having been for 
 warded from Hugh s address at the same city, and contained an 
 account of the nuptials of his sister with Mr. Alphonso Gay cow. 
 
 "I feel sure," wrote John, after a blunt statement of the lead 
 ing facts he had to communicate, " that your regard for Virginia 
 is such, as not to allow a natural pain at this event to prevent 
 your rejoicing at her prospects of a comfortable and assured 
 future. G. has very handsomely cleared the mortgage on father s 
 farm, so that the old gentleman can now go on swimmingly. 
 The house has been repainted from top to bottom, and the new 
 one for the married pair is quite the envy of Canaan. The gro 
 cery business is really a very good one,and G. is a remarkably smart 
 man. He is much respected in Boston, where he often comes to 
 make purchases. I suppose you have about given up the idea of 
 ever settling here ; and people do get rather set and different 
 when they stay away long. Perhaps if you came back, and it 
 was perfectly understood you returned with the intention of staying 
 for good, many who are a little prejudiced might be induced to 
 modify. I am doing well, and have bought a likely piece of 
 woodland at Canaan Centre for twenty-seven dollars, sixty-two 
 and a half cents ($27 C2)<<) an acre, being sure to rise. The 
 heavy men at the bar seem disposed to give me a chance, being, 
 as they say, wide-awake, and always on hand. Virginia and her 
 husband take a bridal tour for a month or two in Europe. I 
 write as I promised, and suppose that this is what you meant me 
 to advise you of when you asked me to do so, and would be glad 
 if it were of a more agreeable character to yourself. I can t help 
 thinking, if you had stayed in Boston, things would have been 
 different. Some of our old friends at Cambridge inquire about 
 you occasionally ; but they clearly think it unfortunate that you 
 should have stayed away so long, unless it was to come back 
 under different circumstances, &c., &c. Wishing you all the 
 prosperity that can be had out of Boston, I am yours, &c., 
 JOHN CHESTER." 
 
 We have now seen that Hugh had reasons enough to take 
 him back to America, if not to Boston. Whether he had be 
 haved well or ill in essaying his experiment with Virginia, he had 
 essayed it ; and it would be idle to deny that the result was 
 gratifying to him. Kot all gratification truly ; for there are not 
 many more men than women in the world who are pleased to 
 know that, whatever the circumstances, another has been prefer 
 red to themselves. But this trifling drawback was as nothing to 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 317 
 
 the great swell of joy with which he anticipated the possibility 
 of a union with Marian. 
 
 Love for. nay, almost worship of Marian, had grown to be the 
 strongest passion Gifford had ever experienced. It was a pas 
 sion which the lapse of time, the obstacles of circumstances, the 
 accidents which prevented their meeting, only made the stronger. 
 There are plenty of people whom such things will cool and deter, 
 for all the dreams of poets and the theories of rhapsodists ; prob 
 ably the majority ; but Gifford was not among them. If Vir 
 ginia, believing him poor, had not wavered in her constancy 
 had still adhered to her engagement I think Hugh would have 
 married her, everything to the contrary notwithstanding ; but he 
 was now prepared to follow Marian to the ends of the earth, and 
 if he could, to win her there. 
 
 So, with letters to the Parapets, which Clinton insisted on his 
 taking, a year of European experience, and a heart full of hopes, 
 doubts, and divers jostling schemes of ambition, back came Hugh 
 from the Old World to the Xew ; where, in the first weeks of his 
 arrival, he disported himself as has already been described. 
 But, in a certain respect, he was no more fortunate on one side 
 the ocean than on the other, for he could not find Marian. 
 
 His purchase of a house in the great city was prompted by a 
 mingling of two purposes. If he was to be useful in any man 
 ner to his country, he first must become a resident of it. A local 
 habitation was an indispensable prerequisite to a name. But he 
 loved also to think he was making a home which might become 
 Marian s ; perhaps as strong a motive as the patriotic one. Fi 
 nally, Mr. Parapet, Sen., a shrewd judge in such matters, had 
 warmly recommended Mm to buy the property, if only as an in 
 vestment, upon the very sensible ground that he was quite sure 
 to double his money in from five to seven years by its sale, should 
 he determine not to retain it as a permanent residence. 
 
 Mr. Parapet introduced him, with much circumspection and 
 pomp, to several elderly gentleman, all starchy, well bred, and 
 in a high state of preservation, and all bearing names conveying 
 that general suggestion of representing apocryphal families which 
 his own did. And these gentlemen, after successively and reg 
 ularly mistaking Hugh for an Englishman, treated him with great 
 courtesy, invited him to dinner, and introduced him to their va 
 rious unexceptional wives and highly-accomplished daughters. 
 The young men were, generally speaking, either travelling like 
 Clinton Parapet, studying at some university, or otherwise absent 
 from the family hearth. There was nothing for them to do there, 
 no interest for them in local or national politics, no temptation to 
 
318 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 professional exertion of any kind, too much money to make la 
 bor of any sort obligatory ; so for the most part they followed 
 the Parapetian plan and did nothing ; preferring as a rule to do 
 it somewhere else, however, than under the paternal roof. 
 
 It was certainly a great advantage to Hugh Gilford to be 
 launched, in a social sense, by the Parapets. Their endorsement 
 was highly valuable, for the reason that although they had little 
 in common with the classes who did Anything, yet the latter were 
 accustomed to accept their imprint with the greatest reverence, 
 and to regard their judgments as without appeal. With such an 
 endorsement, the neophyte could wander at will through all the 
 various chambers and halls of the edifice, descending until he ar 
 rived at the very foundations ; and although the lower he went, 
 the less the occupants knew of the Parapets, and the more dim 
 and shadowy they appeared, there were no strata where not 
 withstanding some incredulity, and here and there a weak at 
 tempt at ridicule they were not looked up to, jand their altitude 
 acknowledged with more or less of awe. The worst of it was, 
 so far as social improvement is concerned so far as they might 
 have been valuable as standards in that respect if not in any 
 other that the Parapets held themselves so high that they could 
 only be clearly seen by those upon their own level, and so envel 
 oped themselves in exclusive clouds that they became almost as 
 useless socially as they were politically. 
 
 In this exalted atmosphere, Hugh saw and heard a great deal 
 that was, without doubt, vastly interesting and edifying. He 
 heard clever talk about books, pictures, statues ; about philoso 
 phy, history, and natural science ; appreciative discussions of 
 new inventions, of achievements in architecture and engineering ; 
 of the progress that was making in the useful arts of shipbuild 
 ing, telegraphing, meteorology ; of jurisprudence, and the mod 
 ern theories in trade and political economy ; and, finally, of the 
 public affairs of nearly every country in the world excepting 
 his own. 
 
 Our hero was not so minutely versed in the workings of the 
 system under which he had been born and bred as not to be sur 
 prised at the prevalence of this omission. He thought it curious 
 if by chance he made a remark about affairs at Washington, that 
 it should be received either in silence or with something like 
 well-bred contempt. He could not perceive why the domestic 
 politics of Cochin China or Timbuctoo should be so interesting 
 and appropriate as subjects for conversation, while those of the 
 United States were clearly, and, to say the least, mauvais ton. It 
 was truly remarkable, that, in so great and growing a community, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 319 
 
 the wealthiest citizens who had most leisure to serve it, and the 
 best educated who had most ability, should, voluntarily or other 
 wise not only take no part in its concerns, but positively avoid 
 then* discussion. 
 
 Happily it was Giffbrd s privilege to fall in with a gentleman 
 who was both able and willing to give him some enlightenment. 
 Indeed, it would have been hard to find any one more competent 
 to instruct on cognate subjects than Mr. Eldon Clyde ; and 
 although that gentleman was too polite to refer to them in Para- 
 petian circles, he hesitated not in more mundane spheres to im 
 part the light that was in him. 
 
 "Tell me," said this authority, on hearing a statement of 
 Hugh s difficulty, " why do you send to the bank, when they 
 are due, to draw your dividends ?" 
 
 Hugh did not think the question was put to elecit a reply, and 
 was silent, 
 
 " Why," pursued Mr. Clyde, " when the bell sounds, do you 
 go to get your dinner ? Why do you put on thin clothes when it 
 is hot or thick ones when it is cold ? Why, when your strong 
 box is empty, do you leave it unguarded ? and when it is full, 
 fasten it with locks and bolts ? Why do you refuse to cross the 
 street to get something you don t value, while you go miles for 
 something you do ?" 
 
 " Becaus*e," responded Gilford seeing that the truisms halted 
 for a general reply, " I suppose it is to my interest to do so." 
 
 "Precisely," said Mr. Clyde; "and when it is to the interest 
 of these people to busy themselves with national affairs they ll 
 do it, and not until then." 
 
 " But patriotism " 
 
 " A dream. So far as public service is concerned in ordinary 
 times, ; the baseless fabric of a vision. You don t get the best 
 goods hi a state without paying the best price for them, and why 
 should you get the best talents?" 
 
 " Members of the English Parliament are unpaid, and so are 
 not our Congressmen." 
 
 " Ah, but note the distinction. The one is elevated by the suf 
 frage of the most, the other by that of the least, cultivated por 
 tion of the community a difference which is all in all in mak 
 ing the seats covetable to the members of either and the event 
 in both cases demonstrates the truth of the theory. The Para 
 pets don t care a straw for mileage, but there, is nothing in the 
 shape of dignity or association which are given with it which 
 they do care for." 
 
 " But the inference is that our system is so framed as absolutely 
 
320 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 to dissuade the most capable from serving under it ; to deter the 
 men who could do the country most good from aiding it at all." 
 
 There is no escape from such an inference, for it is an un 
 deniably true one. I don t think the men in question free from 
 blame ; they should bestir themselves more in despite of obsta 
 cles, or rather of non-incentives, and so they probably would in 
 case of any great need -just because the need would create the 
 incentives. But men are men ; and the country being, on the 
 whole, so prosperous, the defects in machinery pass unheeded, 
 not because they don t exist, but because there is no strain on 
 those particular parts. The principle, nevertheless, which ex 
 cludes a class, however it may be in a minority, and puts all 
 power in the hands of another, however it may be in a majority, 
 would belie history if it did not come to grief some time." 
 
 " The class could make itself felt if it liked." 
 
 " By doing what is contrary to human nature giving every 
 thing, and taking nothing. Look, on the other hand, at the few 
 offices in our country which are held for life or good behavior ; 
 in them the nation is invariably well served." 
 
 " Time, perhaps, may work changes for the better." 
 
 " Oh, the bulk of the nation is well satisfied, and well it may 
 be. As to change, there will be none in effects until they arise 
 in causes. So long as taxes are so low, and the suffrage so ex 
 tended, what are termed the masses will rule, and the educated 
 and refined will be unrepresented." 
 
 " And revenge themselves by indifference V 
 
 " As you see. The matter lies in a nutshell." 
 
 Mr. Eldon Clyde would never have expressed himself as he 
 now did on the house-tops, and yet the public very often heard 
 from him. He controlled an influential newspaper, and was gen 
 erally reputed to be one of the few men of signal talent and in 
 tellectual grasp who interested themselves in politics. When he 
 wrote a leader, or a letter, it was extensively copied and quoted, 
 and usually carried weight. But neither letter nor leader ever 
 contained such sentiments as those he expressed to Hugh Gifford. 
 They were always skilfully constructed, with a keen apprecia 
 tion of the calibre of the intelligences they were intended to 
 affect. No ammunition was thrown away which would fall short 
 of its mark, or drop from it idly without being felt, seen, or 
 heeded. Mr. Clyde understood thoroughly the adaptation of means 
 to ends, and useless force was as abhorrent to his taste as accu 
 mulated adjectives and superfluous capitals to a purist in diction. 
 He had, however, a very unaffected love of candor and straight 
 forwardness, when they could be employed without impairing his 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 321 
 
 political influence, and scrupled not to express his honest convic 
 tions on select occasions. It was a maxim with him that many 
 things might rightfully be done which would make political rela 
 tions more symmetrical, but which it was not expedient to at 
 tempt, lest the advantages already secured and enjoyed might 
 be hazarded thereby. Thus there was an apparent inconsistency 
 between his public and private professions which his enemies 
 were ever swift to stigmatize, but which did not prevent his 
 wielding a power which was often greatest when, to the common 
 eye, its source was unseen. Perhaps the chief secret of his 
 strength, so far as it was not immediately imputable to his natu 
 ral powers, lay in the fact that such great numbers owed to Mr. 
 Clyde their political advancement. He was curiously happy in 
 reversing, for his own purposes, the adage which makes gratitude 
 the reward of favors to come. At least he made those which 
 were past pay a very fair and regular rate of interest. 
 
 " I believe," said Gifford. as he regarded with curiosity a man 
 of whose political exploits he had heard so much, " I believe, 
 Mr. Clyde, that you have never held office l ?" 
 
 " I I Good heavens ! No. Do I look like an office holder?" 
 
 Hugh was obliged to confess that, so far as his individual ex 
 perience was concerned, he did not. Circumstances had lately, 
 and to his misfortune, taken Hugh into that Milesian close 
 borough on a large scale called the common council of the city 
 of New York, and he certainly remembered nobody there who 
 looked a bit like Mr. Clyde. 
 
 " If I had ever accepted office for myself," continued Mr. 
 Clyde, graciously receiving the acknowledgment, " I should not 
 now be in the same position to command it for others." 
 
 " That seems to me," observed Hugh, smiling, "to be a dis 
 interestedness rather at variance with your previous explana 
 tions." 
 
 " And, as I don t value office a straw," Mr. Clyde went on 
 quietly, " while others value it very much, I make no sacrifice in 
 escaping responsibilities. And now let me ask you, a question ; 
 have you seen Doke ?" 
 
 "Doke ? No. Who is he, pray ? . 
 
 " Ah, you ll soon see him, no doubt. I thought he would have 
 called before now. But then you ve been absent a good deal 
 since you settled in your new house." 
 
 "Yes," answered Hugh, coloring, " business has taken me 
 to the south and west ; but I shah 1 stay in town now for the 
 present." 
 
 14* 
 
322 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " Then you ll see him, without question, in good time. You ll 
 be at the Egremont Ball ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes. I promised Mrs. Parapet." 
 
 u A very good thing to do. Not quite so select, you know, 
 as some of our ultra-fastidious ones would have it, but you ll find 
 a great deal to amuse." 
 
 "I m anxious to see some of the celebrities of the day." 
 " To be sure. The Parapet circle is quite the loftiest, of course, 
 but a trifle too monotonous, perhaps, to revolve in perpetually. 
 Nothing like variety. I believe in social rotations as I do in offi 
 cial ones." 
 
 ." Variety, I am told, is quite the feature of the Egremonts." 
 " And so it is. Not indiscriminate, you know. It wouldn t 
 be fair to say so ; but they re safe to give you a very tolerable 
 idea of our social fabric. You ll find it quite diversified enough, 
 considering it s a democratic one. Light and shade, color and 
 ornamentation, enough to please Mr. Ruskin. There s sufficient 
 variety in all conscience, before you get up to the Parapets." 
 "And yet, as you say, the edifice is a democratic one." 
 " Politically, my dear sir, but not socially ; a distinction with 
 a difference, which no one can better expound than your friend 
 Mrs. Parapet." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CRUSH, glitter, and confusion. A paradise of silks and laces 
 and flowers, from which glance dazzling eyes and snowy shoul 
 ders and dainty feet. A paradise of light and movement, mel 
 odious with Verdi and oderous with Lubin. A paradise of 
 beauty, with houris innumerable floating about in every bewitch 
 ing phase of coloring and contour that dreams present to us or 
 fancy paints. Mrs. Parapet spoke most truly when she said 
 the Egremonts always had shoals of pretty girls. And, albeit 
 the expression which implied multitude might also have con 
 veyed a tincture of contempt, I for one am religiously of opiniou 
 that shoals of pretty girls are signally conducive to the eclat and 
 success of a ball. To look lovely and dance well, are virtues 
 which no vigor of intellect, no loftiness of soul, can compensate 
 in those fleeting hours when pretty girls at once play havoc 
 with one sex and revenge themselves on the other for that 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 323 
 
 current sneer of theirs, that beauty must ever and perforce be 
 brainless. 
 
 But the Egremonts had something besides pretty girls to boast 
 of. they had also noble rooms to show them off in ; lofty 
 saloons, where, eschewing old-fashioned chandeliers, light came 
 from above, and, the jets concealed by cornices, a softened re 
 fulgence spared the eyes without impairing the effect of ladies 
 toilets ; saloons in long suites of almost regal splendor, and 
 ending hi a theatre large enough to hold all the assembled 
 guests ; they had pictures and statues of sterling merit, which 
 relieved the delicate neutral tints of the walls ; and a spacious 
 conservatory, which afforded the charm of masses of green 
 shade and the perfume of natural flowers to refresh senses which 
 the outer radiance and artificial odors might have palled. 
 
 Then the Egremonts had an orchestra probably as good of 
 its kind as could be found in the world an orchestra which 
 dealt forth dance music in the crispest and daintiest of styles, 
 and supplied operatic entr actes with a feeling and completeness 
 which quickened imagination and stimulated flirtation quite as 
 much as was desirable. Moreover, in good time, viands were 
 forthcoming, which no French or any other cuisine could be ex 
 pected to surpass ; while the wines were such that more fastidi 
 ous critics than the majority of guests were likely to be would 
 have been more than content with them. 
 
 As Mr. Clyde had prognosticated, there were a great many 
 celebrities there. People noted for gold were perhaps the shin 
 ing lights, but there were others whose names were famous in 
 connection with law, with big contracts, with houses and ships, 
 with high offices of state, with long railways, and fat insurance 
 companies ; nay, there were one or two who had made good 
 books and pictures, and, not over agreeably to the sensitive 
 Parapetian taste, there were a good many politicians. Politics, 
 however, were as essential as mother s milk had been to the head 
 of the house of Egremont ; and, to do him justice, he was liberal 
 enough to invite opponents as well as friends.. He courts yon 
 der great lawyer, who thinks Slavery must be right, because he 
 has had some heavy slaveholdiug clients, and has read up in their 
 interest, no more than he does Blurt, the great sewing-machine 
 man, who thinks Slavery must be wrong, because a black man 
 he once had in his employ understood the binomial theorem. 
 
 The truth is, the master of the house, without being a giant 
 in intellect, has an essentially kind and liberal nature. Even 
 poor poets find places at his board a phenomenon which, it 
 must be owned, is rarer at the tables of the rich in republics than 
 
324 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 in monarchies. There is Prodder, for instance ; you don t know 
 Prodder? He writes little articles and versicles for what are 
 called "literary weeklies," which start into existence with a 
 great blaze of trumpets, and an imposing roll-call Prodder s 
 always figuring in large caps and die in a few weeks after, 
 without even the poor reverence of a valedictory dead march 
 for the burial of the last number. Of course it isn t Prodder s 
 fault that the New Yorkers have no taste for any sort of weekly, 
 unless in the style of a feeble cross between Reynolds s Miscellany 
 and the Sporting Life. And yet, perhaps, if he had saved a little 
 vitality whatever else he may have exhausted it upon so that 
 his effusions, always respectable in other respects, had not been 
 so desperately dry, provincial, and prejudiced, something like a 
 sounder taste might have grown up ere this and waxed strong 
 in the land. However, let us not blame Prodder too severely. 
 He is the product of his latitude and his age ; and if his latitude 
 and his age require as intellectual pabulum nothing better than 
 vulgar newspapers, emasculated poemlets, and political sermons, 
 let them have their meat and go their way. There are worse 
 men than Prodder here, for all his blunder in thinking the gods 
 have made him poetical. 
 
 Crash goes the orchestra, and back and forth swings the motley 
 throng. Through a gorgeous fringe of it comes Hugh Gifford, 
 who has retained, as he promised, in season for the famous ball. 
 He makes his way through a brilliant knot of officers whom 
 he notices particularly, as recognizing in several the shopmen 
 who attended to his wants when making sundry small purchases, 
 at various times, in Broadway. They are point-de-vice now, how 
 ever, and think no more of shop than Gifford himself thinks of 
 Armstrong s Bar. Not so much, perhaps ; for his thoughts did 
 wander thither as he gazed on the many lovely women before 
 him, and remembered how often on starlight nights he had 
 wandered by the river side there with one more beautiful than 
 the loveliest, all unaided as was the gem by the fashion and cost 
 liness of its setting. Hugh ensconced himself behind some 
 shrubbery, and looked for a while on the joyous scene in 
 silence. 
 
 "Not sad and solitary on a night like this, surely?" cried a 
 voice, as Mr. Clyde stepped into the conservatory by his side. 
 
 " Oh, dear, no. Only waiting. It is a gala day with the 
 Parapets ; Clinton has returned, quite unexpectedly, by the 
 Scotia, and Madame mere is in the best of spirits. I promised 
 to meet the party here at ten." 
 
 "And it only lacks five minutes. Good evening, General; 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 325 
 
 you re looking younger than ever, I protest ; and how is trade 
 now ?" 
 
 " Slack, sir, slack ; and will be until the spring season. We re 
 always dull, you know, after the river closes," replied a dignified 
 man with white hair and epaulets. The general was a boot and 
 shoe dealer down town. They have found different generals of 
 late years. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Clyde," cried a handsome middle-aged woman in 
 white brocade, sweeping by on the arm of an Italian singer, 
 "are you going to oppose Mr. Mellish for the Senate this 
 spring? I told him I d get it from your own lips, and I will." 
 
 " Ah, my dear madam, so much may happen between now 
 and spring. Why, you can t even tell what may then be the 
 fashion in bonnets ; how then can $ou expect me to tell what 
 may be the mode for senators ?" 
 
 " But only just listen. Pray forgive me an instant, Signor 
 Bragoli. That cold-blooded fish, Bayman, says you re dead set 
 against him ; and that you declared you d send him out of Albany 
 ten thousand behind!" 
 
 " Indeed, I never made such a boast. Believe me, if I intend 
 ed such a thing I should never trumpet it beforehand. And 
 as to Mr. Bayman " 
 
 "I know; the little sallow wretch thinks only of himself. I 
 may tell Mr. Mellish you won t oppose him then ?" 
 
 " Tell him I never thought of such a thing." 
 
 " He ll be so grateful, -for if you don t nobody else can." 
 And she swept on, leaving a heavy flavor of verbena mingled 
 with the geraniums and tea roses of the conservatory. 
 
 " Women are such odd creatures." said Mr. Clyde, softly, 
 " especially when they turn politicians. She ll tell Bayman the 
 same thing of me before the night s over, and wring from him 
 an assurance which will be equally valuable with my own. And 
 yet Mrs. Mellish fancies herself, and Indeed has the reputation, 
 of being a very female Machiavel. Have you danced ?" 
 
 "I promised to stand up first with Miss Parapet." 
 
 "Oh, you could scarcely do so with a more lovely partner." 
 
 " Miss Parapet is certainly very handsome. There are many 
 lovely girls here, but none I have seen are more beautiful than 
 she is." 
 
 " Have you seen Miss Dimity ?" 
 
 "No. Who is she?" 
 
 "Daughter to the great diy goods firm. A tall girl the 
 finest blonde in the room. Great rush for her since the new 
 
326 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 store has been built up town. But they say nothing in trade 
 will do for her now." 
 
 "What! Do such people despise the ladder whereby they 
 have mounted to fortune 1 ?" 
 
 " Certainly. Kick it over when they get to the top rung, and 
 pretend they never mounted it at all." 
 
 u But in a democratic community " 
 
 " My dear sir, if there were less political equality among us 
 there would be more social equality. As it is, every one is dying 
 to get among the Parapets, and to achieve the reputation of do 
 ing nothing." 
 
 And, talking of their majesties, in came the Parapets at this 
 moment, appropriately heralded by a grand march. They always 
 came late to affairs of this .sort, and went early. . The mystery 
 of their existence would be rudely dispelled were they to make 
 themselves common to the eyes of the vulgar. Sailing augustly 
 through the clouds of laces and satins, decked out with bouquets 
 and flashing gems, the party made its way to the hostess, who 
 was duly crushed by the honor done her ; and then to a cor 
 ner where Mrs. Parapet mounted a sort of throne, where she 
 received the homage of a select few who were permitted to 
 approach it. Clinton, more condescending as becoming the 
 younger scion of royalty, presently mingled with the rabble, and 
 established a violent flirtation with Miss Dimity. That young 
 lady, alive to the opportunity for social advancement, hazarded 
 something at a favorable moment about his mother and sister ; 
 but Clinton, quite free from snobbery as he was, would no more 
 have dared to present her than he would have dared to present 
 Mr. M Fenian. There was a despotism which not even the au 
 dacity of youth, the impulse of good nature, and the fresh hold 
 on a mother s heart gained by the unexpected return from abroad, 
 could venture to offend. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hugh was waltzing away in fine style with Edith 
 Parapet, and all was going merry as a marriage-bell. 
 
 More arrivals, more silks and diamonds, more waltzes of 
 Strauss, Lanner, and Labitzky, and more pretty women ! Just 
 after midnight-enter the Mayor and his family. His honor is re 
 puted to have committed every sin in the decalogue, and, unmind 
 ful of the old-time axiom, which attributes honor to thieves who 
 deal with each other, he is said to be a double-edged glaive, cut 
 ting both friend and foe. There are people before, behind, on 
 every hand, who have suffered from his peculations, and the 
 aggregate public worst of all. Yet he is received, adulated, 
 smiled upon. Oh yes, my dear sir, for you must know he is an 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 327 
 
 amazingly smart man, and weareth a robe in his civic chair which 
 covers as much as charity. One thing in fairness let us admit 
 he gets no recognition from the Parapets. He may wriggle and 
 finesse as he likes ; and madam mayoress may exhaust her mag 
 azine of feminine intrigues and devices, but into that charmed 
 circle they get no entrance. 
 
 "What a fearfully mixed assemblage !" murmurs Mrs. Para 
 pet, as, with brows and eye-glass raised, she glances hastily at 
 the new arrivals. 
 
 " Ah, my dear madam," answers the gentleman at her elbow, 
 "what can you expect when there are scarcely any occupations 
 save trading and cheating, any studies save of cash-books and 
 ledgers, any aspirations save who shall be richest! The ele 
 ments which constitute a high-minded, chivalrous, and cultivated 
 society, are wanting in a purely commercial community, and so 
 must they ever be." 
 
 The speaker is Mr. Cabot, a fossil beau of the past generation. 
 He saw Washington and Hamilton when a youth, and sat at 
 table with Carroll of Carrollton. No wonder he dislikes the peo 
 ple of to-day. 
 
 " Clinton is dancing too much with that yellow-haired girl. 
 I don t know her, so of course she s one of the new people s 
 daughters." 
 
 " Any one could detect that by comparing her with Miss Para 
 pet," said the old gentleman, with his courtly bow. " There are 
 scores of handsome young women now-a-days to a single really 
 elegant one." 
 
 What a delicious polka! and away goes Clinton Parapet 
 around the great saloon for the twentieth time with his new 
 charmer, and until she is quite exhausted, and must sink upon a 
 fautcuil in a cooler room. 
 
 "I say, Gifford," says Clinton, " it s deuced hot! Come, Pinck- 
 ney, come with us. You get no supper until half-past one, you 
 know. Gifford and I are going to have a bottle of cham 
 pagne." 
 
 " May I not bring you an ice ?" asks Gifford of Edith Parapet. 
 
 " Thanks, yes ; only don t remain ; but pray go with Clinton, 
 for I m sure you must feel the heat." 
 
 " It won t be uncomfortable long," lisped Wirt Pinckney; 
 " Egremont has a new ventilating apparatus, and can fix the mer 
 cury exactly where he likes without making a draught." 
 
 "How delightful! Thank you, Mr. Gifford. Yes, I like 
 vanilla ; and now, do go, you three, and get your champagne." 
 
 "I shan t stay long," exclaims Clinton, running back hurried- 
 
328 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ly to his charmer. " Remember, Miss Dimity, the schottische, 
 please, the fourth dance from this." 
 
 " Oh, I shall be sure to recollect," responded the young lady, 
 with a smile all the more fascinating for being a little languid. 
 
 " Don t dance with that girl any more," whispers Edith, as 
 her brother passes her again. "Mamma isn t pleased, and papa 
 has just come in from the club with Mr. Stapleton." 
 
 " I must keep my engagement, whatever I do." 
 
 "Well, but after?" 
 
 "After will be supper time." 
 
 "I ve just met an old friend," remarks Mr. Clyde to Gilford, 
 as the young men returned from their champagne, " and if you 
 like I ll introduce you to a ward of his, a young lady who, to my 
 poor bachelor taste, is the most bewitching at the ball. Only 
 you mustn t be bewitched, for she s engaged. Will you come f 
 
 " With much pleasure. Just permit me to make a word of 
 apology to Miss Parapet/ 
 
 Which done, on they go through the crowded rooms, now 
 denser than ever with laces, and silks, and dazzling eyes, and 
 complexions radiant with exercise and excitement ; and, as they 
 go, the orchestra, by way of respite from the long continued 
 dance-music, strikes up some tender souvenir of Bellini s. 
 Through the saloons, under arches, across corridors, to the con 
 servatory, where Clyde first accosted him, and Gilford finds 
 himself presented to a tall, suave-looking man, with white cravat 
 and frosty locks. He misses the name, but hears himself intro 
 duced as "My young friend, Mr. Gilford." Then some one in 
 a delicate lemon-colored silk, with rose-buds in her hair, glides 
 forward from among the geraniums, while Mr. Clyde concludes 
 the ceremony with : 
 
 " And allow me to present Mr. Gifford Miss Rooke." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 GODWIN thought a man was never in such danger of missing 
 the applause of the world as when he took the greatest possible 
 pains to deserve it. The cynicism is gloomy enough, and its 
 inference, if generally accepted, would surely be fatal to honest 
 endeavor. Perhaps, like many wise saws, its application should 
 be limited to philosophers ; when it would become easy and not 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 329 
 
 so disheartening to recognize its truth. The author of " Political 
 Justice" had doubtless some reason to complain of a world which 
 thought it had many to complain of him ; but the judgments of 
 author and public are so often at variance respecting the compar 
 ative merit of works as to make it strange that a philosopher 
 should overlook the root of the discrepancy. Now, Hugh Gif- 
 ford. being neither author nor philosopher, was duly astonished 
 that after taking the utmost possible pains to find Marian, so that 
 he really felt he deserved to have found her, she should sudden 
 ly rise before his eyes unsought and unexpected. But they were 
 in veiy decorous and very observant society now, so that they 
 could not rush into each other s arms had they been so minded. 
 Neither could Marian faint, nor Hugh indulge in any correspond 
 ing sign of emotion, such as they would have been tree to in the 
 woods or prairies. The meeting, so far as words went, was 
 most prosaic ; for Hugh, as he bowed low over Marian s ouk- 
 stretched hand, merely mumbled something inarticulate, while 
 Marian, who was never inarticulate, said simply in the old sweet 
 contralto : 
 
 " I am very glad to see you.* 
 
 " You have, then, met before ?" said Mr. Clyde, in some sur 
 prise. 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Marian steadily, "we are very old 
 friends. But it is some time since we have seen each other." 
 
 "lam fortunate in bringing you together. And since you 
 have both been in Europe at the same time without meeting, you 
 will be grateful that the contretemps is not repeated hi America." 
 
 "You have been in Europe?" asked Marian with interest. 
 "You?" 
 
 " Why not?" said Hugh, laughing. " You always told me I 
 was to go, you know." 
 
 " But that was to be after you had made your fortune." 
 
 " Ah, in this great gossiping city one is, after all, so obscure. 
 You have not heard, of course ?" 
 
 "Heard what?" 
 
 Why, Miss Rooke " he did not call her Marian now, 
 although the two elder gentlemen had strolled away hi earnest 
 conversation, and were fairly out of earshot "Why, Miss 
 Rooke, the great dream is accomplished at last, and I have made 
 my fortune." 
 
 " You, Mr. Giffbrd ; you are rich ?" 
 
 "Passably so," returned Hugh, carelessly, " although mine is 
 no great heap of lucre compared to some of the colossal ones 
 which tower around me. However, I don t complain. I have 
 
330 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 my house, my carriage, and more than enough to support them 
 with dignity ; more than I ever expected to possess more than 
 I deserve." 
 
 "A house ; a carriage?" 
 
 " Which I keep up as well as one so solitary can." 
 
 "Solitary?" 
 
 " Quite so. For although I have some good friends who are 
 very civil to me in their houses, my own is lonely enough. The 
 Parapets, for example " 
 
 "Ah, you know the Parapets?" 
 
 "I owe to them such footing as I have in this slippery world 
 of fashion." 
 
 "Miss Parapet is beautiful, is she not?" 
 
 Most people call her so. She is strikingly graceful and well 
 bred." 
 
 "You have known her long?" 
 
 "Not long; nor any such as she. You forget I am quite a 
 nouveau riche" 
 
 "At least since your return from Europe." 
 
 "Oh, yes; since my return from Europe." 
 
 "And how long were you there?" 
 
 " Nearly a twelvemonth. I returned three months ago." 
 
 " And when did you leave California f 
 
 " Almost immediately before that. I was in the Eastern 
 States hardly a week before I sailed." 
 
 "And our friends at Armstrong s Bar?" 
 
 1 1 Were all well and happy when I left them ; and a few 
 weeks ago they were all equally well, and happier still." 
 
 "Why happier?" 
 
 "What, of all things, should make them so? They are 
 growing richer. Like myself, they have been having their turn 
 of luck. Doctor Landale writes me that they have done so well 
 that the Armstrongs think seriously of returning and settling, 
 as they long since hoped to do, on the old family place at Say- 
 brook. And the doctor hopes to have his cottage on the Clyde. 
 And pretty Kitty is to be Mrs. Railes at Midsummer, and " 
 
 " Tell me," interrupted Marian, to whom all these questions 
 and answers had been vague and half meaningless, except as 
 they drew near to the subject which most absorbed her thoughts. 
 Hugh s last statement, suggestive as it. was, stimulated an im 
 patience which now overleaped her reserve. "Tell me, then, 
 Hugh Gilford, since you have grown rich, where where is 
 Virginia ?" 
 
 Hugh s countenance fell. " I will tell you all when we may 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 331 
 
 see each other without interruption. For the present I will 
 only say that we met directly on my return. The family ytill 
 believed me poor. It was arranged that a year should elapse 
 another year of probation. That year has barely expired, 
 and " 
 
 "Now, Miss Marian," cried Mr. Rivingstone, approaching, 
 "my friend Clyde here claims the fulfilment of your promise." 
 
 "He can scarcely forego it," said Mr. Clyde, " since it is his 
 only dance his sole assertion of juvenility for the evening and 
 Miss Rooke has kindly promised to lend it lustre." 
 
 " To-morrow," whispered Hugh, hurriedly, ; if I may call, I 
 will finish my story." And "Mi. Clyde bore off his prize at a 
 moment when she was almost inclined to show fight rather than 
 be captured. And Hugh, looking after in a dazed and helpless 
 fashion, watched while his prairie flower mingled with the choice 
 exotics of the ball-room, putting to shame the sweetest and most 
 attractive among them ; at least in the opinion of one connois 
 seur who fancied himself a qualified judge. 
 
 "You have known Miss Rooke in former days," said Mr. 
 Rivingstone, drawing near and regarding our hero with in 
 terest. 
 
 "Yes. In the west in California," replied Hugh, scarcely 
 knowing how far he was justified in referring to Marian s pre 
 vious life. 
 
 "Her fate seemed rather a sad one," continued the elder gen 
 tleman, gravely, " although not more so than that of many by 
 whom it was equally undeserved. In a few years the world will 
 marvel that things could occur among a Christian people such as 
 would disgrace the records of middle-age barbarians ; and some 
 will deny they ever existed. But Marian Rooke is only one 
 among hundreds of those who will live and bear witness to the 
 truth." 
 
 ; I supposed you to be a Southerner, observed Gifford, cau 
 tiously. 
 
 I have lived in the South during many years of my life, else 
 I should not feel competent to judge it so freely. There is more 
 good and more evil there than most Northerners believe ; and 
 both are misrepresented. What with philanthropists who get 
 all their facts at second hand on the one side, and bigoted parti 
 sans who would suppress facts altogether on the other, the South 
 fares ill, I think, with both friends and foes in the North. But 
 Miss Rooke has enlightened you." 
 
 " She has told me," said Hugh, with some hesitation, t; enough 
 to convince me that wrong can exist in the South as foul as the 
 
332 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 bitterest abolitionist ever painted. But perhaps I have no right 
 without her license to refer to such a subject." 
 
 " She has spoken of you before, and told me how far you were 
 in her confidence." 
 
 " Indeed !" 
 
 " When Mr. Clyde proposed to introduce you I did not catch 
 the name, but identified it afterwards. Marian has told me 
 much of you." 
 
 " Miss Rooke is most kind to hold me in such remembrance." 
 
 " She was interested in your future. She looked forward to 
 your marriage I am versed in your private affairs, you see 
 and to your becoming distinguished hereafter." 
 
 " Distinguished ?" 
 
 " She thought you had qualities which would ripen into valua 
 ble ones for your country. A great politician is Marian." 
 
 "I should scarcely have supposed, did I not know to the con 
 trary, that one who had suffered so much by its institutions 
 would feel much interest in the country which fostered an d per 
 petuated them." 
 
 " Ah, women are so different from men in that respect. Their 
 inspiration is more of His who said, They that are well need 
 not a physician, but they that are sick. The women will prove 
 the best healers, and, in good time, the best peacemakers among 
 us after all. But so far as Marian is concerned, she has no un 
 mitigated complaint to make against her country s laws, bad as 
 some of them may be." 
 
 " I do not understand you." 
 
 " Then I must leave her to finish a story which was only partly 
 told. To change the subject how do you like the family I heard 
 Clyde mention just now ? How do you like the Parapets f 
 
 "Why," answerered Hugh, who thought the change of subject 
 rather abrupt, "they are a most dignified and excellent family. 
 Highly accomplished, of high breeding, and superior parts." 
 
 "They are like many families I have known in the South ; 
 at least in the characteristics you cite. But my Southern friends 
 were not faultless, whereas you appear to think the Para 
 pets " 
 
 "I did not say so. On the contrary, however impeccable in 
 a moral or social sense, I think them decidedly at fault politically. 
 Why, do you know, that with all their wealth, lands, influential 
 position, and ancient name, so far as the public service is con 
 cerned, they positively do 
 
 " Nothing, I know ; while our Southern Parapets do every 
 thing ; so that, although working in different directions, they 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 333 
 
 effect about an equal amount of mischief. In the North the 
 higher classes are unrepresented, and in the South the lower. 
 Each will ultimately be forced to fulfil the neglected duty by 
 agencies whose stress will be the more irresistible the longer they 
 remain dormant." 
 
 "Our Parapets say, after them the deluge. " 
 
 " And so say their Southern prototypes. But like the prophet 
 who said it before them, they may yet see and feel the storm be 
 fore their tenure is over. But here come one of them to check 
 our treason." 
 
 Excuse me, my dear fellow," cried Clinton Parapet, coming 
 up, " but you are under an engagement which it will be danger 
 ous not to fulfil ; and, being in disgrace myself, I am well fitted 
 to warn you of its pains and penalties." 
 
 " A thousand thanks. I have been thoughtless indeed, but 
 through uncommon provocation. May I beg you, sir, to offer 
 my compliments to Miss Rooke, and to say that I assume 
 her permission to call ?" 
 
 >; With much pleasure. I am certain she will have much to 
 hear and to tell." 
 
 "By Jupiter!" exclaimed Clinton, as the two young men 
 wound then- way back to the Parapet throng, "the moun 
 tain has come to Mahomet after all I" 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GIFFORD had modestly described his pyramid of gold as small 
 compared with others. It was not, however, so small as to fail 
 to attract attention and homage. The very day after the great 
 ball brought evidence to the contrary. His presence at that fes 
 tivity was quickly known to many wistful adorers whom his 
 erratic movements hitherto had enabled him to elude, but who 
 now congratulated themselves that then victim had returned to 
 town for the season, and could not hereafter escape their toils. 
 
 Upon his breakfast-table Hugh found an extraordinary variety 
 of cards, notes, and other missives, chiefly from strangers, and 
 which excited his surprise as to how the senders could even know 
 of his existence. There were printed suggestions that he should 
 buy his boots at the store of the general officer to whom he had 
 been presented the night before ; and requests that he should pat- 
 
334 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ronize in the way of dry goods the house of Dimity, Drilling, & 
 Co , the senior partner being the parent of the young lady who 
 had been Clinton Parapet s for such an unconscionable number 
 of dances on the same occasion. 
 
 There were, besides, a shop-card of Mr. McFenian s liquor 
 establishment, down town, and a package of election tickets, 
 containing that patriot s name, as a candidate for some muniei- 
 .pal office of trust and emolument, with "McFenian s Unap 
 proachable Mountain Dew, at one dollar and fifty cents a gallon," 
 underlined thereon ; several playbills affixed to preposterous eu 
 logies of the " classic and scholarly performance of the Melan 
 choly Dane and the Cardinal Duke, by an artist whose classi- 
 cality must have been culled from Sunday newspapers, and whose 
 scholarship certainly went very little beyond writing his name ; 
 an illustrated exhibit of the merits of the "Matutinal Regenera 
 tor, or Croto-Columbian Prize Cocktail," strengthened by the 
 names of one hundred statesmen, divines, heroes, and poets, 
 who had been rescued through profuse indulgence in that cordial 
 from the couch of disease and decrepitude to attain the highest 
 pinnacle of health and fame ; many kindred schedules of won 
 derful hair-dyes, apple-papers, life-restorers, lip-salves, seven- 
 shooters, water-cure establishments, and electrical machines ; 
 together with a handsomely-printed statement on silver paper, to 
 the effect that there would be an auction sale of some of the 
 choicest pews in the Reverend Dr. Grade s new church, on 
 Fifth Avenue, that day, at one o clock precisely; half cash, the 
 balance on approved bills at sixty pr ninety days. 
 
 But what struck Hugh as the oddest among these remarkable 
 productions, was an enamelled card of rather large size, on which 
 appeared the figures of two cherubs, apparently struggling for 
 the possession of a scroll, each having got hold of one end. On 
 this scroll was inscribed in a text, surrounded by flourishes, the 
 name " Salathiel Doke." When our hero rose in the morning 
 he found one of these cards lying on a chair by his bedside, and 
 concluded it had found its way there by some mistake. But 
 when in due course he went to his toilet-table, he discovered 
 that the error must have been duplicated, for " Salathiel Doke" 
 lay there as well. When he was taking his bath, the steady 
 Englishman Hugh had engaged as a sort of major-domo, inti 
 mated through the door that Mr. Doke was most anxious to see 
 him ; that he had been informed Mr. Gifford was not yet dress 
 ed, but that he declared he would wait ; that he had made his 
 way into the reception room on the ground-floor, where he was 
 now engaged in conversing with a policeman through the win- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 335 
 
 dow ; and should he, Dobson, request the policeman to take him 
 away, or would Mr. Gifford choose to see him ? 
 
 Mr. Gifford chose the latter, by all means ; since he had heard 
 the name mentioned, not disrespectfully, by his friend Mr. Clyde. 
 But he should not be ready to see any one for some time ; so, 
 not to keep him waiting, his compliments, and would Mr. Doke 
 be good enough to call an hour hence ? To this proposal Mr. 
 Doke was pleased graciously to assent, although he favored the 
 imperturbable Dobson as he departed with the expression of his 
 wonder as to what folks should be a week washin themselves for. 
 Reasons for such a want of sympathy might have been found 
 with no veiy minute examination perhaps, but Dobson was too 
 anxious to get the pertinacious visitor out of the house before his 
 own surveillance should be withdrawn in favor of his master s 
 breakfast, to be over critical. 
 
 Hugh was trying to read a leader in the Optimist, which con 
 sisted chiefly of adjectives and personal pronouns, when a third 
 pair of cherubs, striving to rend Salathiel Doke, were presented 
 to him, and, without waiting to be asked, the gentleman himself 
 followed Dobson into the room. He was a short, stoutish man, 
 with a large beard, which should have been grizzled, but which 
 was dyed to a changeable color. That is to say, it was of a glit 
 tering, metallic black in the shade or by candle-light, and a mis 
 cellaneous sea-green when viewed in the rays of the sun. This 
 beard was suffered to grow as it listed, save on about two inches 
 of the upper lip, where it was carefully scraped off, leaving the 
 flesh livid and indignant below. Over each corner of the mouth, 
 therefore, two tufts of truncated moustache were permitted to 
 flourish, stiff with the vigor which was prohibited from develop 
 ing itself elsewhere. Mr. Doke s eyes were small, and would 
 have been colorless had they not been slightly bloodshot ; his 
 nose was long and peaked, but enlarged suddenly at the base of 
 the nostrils, so as to give an idea that sections of two incongru 
 ous noses had through some accident been pieced together. The 
 hair was cut very short, and stood up in bristles all over the 
 , head ; and the mouth was armed with rows of short, white teeth, 
 \ which were almost constantly displayed. 
 
 Mr. Doke s expression was suggestive of the hybrid that he 
 was : being of that pleasant compound of Jesuit and rowdy which 
 has grown to be something too prevalent in the Atlantic cities, 
 and which is not prone to alleviate the effect of numbers, by 
 hiding its light under a bushel. The general results which ac 
 crue from pouring multitudes of ignorant immigrants, bound by 
 the ties of common nationality and religion, into the crowded 
 
336 MARIAN ROOKE J OR, 
 
 streets of seaboard towns, instead of modifying their power of 
 mischief by scattering them over the boundless prairie, have 
 now been sufficiently felt and appreciated to need no description 
 here. One of those results was Mr. Salathicl Doke ; and he 
 was, perhaps, a favorable specimen of the Americanized Celt. 
 Of the origin of his name, patronymic or other, history makes 
 no sign ; but the Dennises and Patricks and Terences usually 
 die out in the second republican generation, the latter dying 
 harder than the others ; although why Irish- Americans should 
 cleave to a prenomen borrowed from an African slave, is an 
 enigma difficult to solve. However, the present Mr. Doke was 
 innocent of such a taint, and probably owed his Christian name 
 if the term be not inapplicable to a progenitor who had 
 learned to be proud of the fame of his countryman, Dr. Croly. 
 Like the prince of Naphtali, Mr. Doke was a great man in Is 
 rael, as he, in good season, let Gifford understand ; but the lat 
 ter had time to speculate neither on his visitor s person nor his 
 origin, since Mr. Doke instantly attacked him in a manner which 
 compelled the adoption of a vigilant and exclusive defensive. 
 
 "Ho! ho! ho!" roared Mr. Doke at the top of his voice, 
 and, before his host knew what he was at, slapping him vigor 
 ously on the back, " How are yer ? Ho ! ho ! ho ! managed to 
 crawl out o bed, at last, have yer? I bin down to Fulton 
 Market, and eat two dozen on the half-shell at Dorlon s before I 
 come here fust, I did. What yer doin with them things ?" and 
 he took up an egg-cup which Hugh had been in the act of using, 
 and capsized the contents of the egg into a saucer. " That s 
 handier, ain t it 1 Ho ! ho ! ho ! and how are yer, anyhow T 
 
 Gifford was so taken aback by the assurance the elan of his 
 assailant so persuaded that no sane human being would accost 
 another in such a way unless they had met before, that he 
 yielded instinctively to the impression that he must really be for 
 getting some old friend whom he ought to remember, and found 
 himself responding to Mr. Doke s almost superhuman hand 
 shakes and hyena-grins before, as the phrase goes, he knew 
 where he was. 
 
 " I m devilish glad to see yer," pursued Salathiel, with a fresh 
 burst of laughter, and, wringing his host s hand with frantic 
 energy, "That s so. Ha! ha! ha! I hain t had time to look 
 at the paper to-day; let s have a squint," and he took the 
 journal from Gifford s knees. " Let s see what the gay old cuss 
 has to say for himself. Circulation increased ten thousand since 
 yesterday. Certingly, nuthin shorter. He s a lively old skunk, 
 ain t he ? Only paper there is though. Only paper that s posted 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 337 
 
 on the true distribootion of political power, and writin just the 
 way common folks talk, so they can always understand it. 
 Highfalutin don t go down for papers in York. Folks hain t 
 got tune to study em out. Ha ! ha ! ha ! and how are yer, 
 anyhow ?" 
 
 "Well," said Hugh, beginning to recover himself at last, 
 "I m tolerably, thank you. But am I mistaken in supposing 
 that we have met before f 
 
 " Oh, no," responded the other, " Oh dear, no. We ve met, 
 sure enough. Didn t know as you d recollect it, though. That 
 smells nice now, don t it?" and Mr. Doke took a cigar from the 
 mantel and quietly lighted it, continuing his discourse between 
 the puffs. " That s genuine, sure. Some folks have no eye for 
 faces I have. It s part o my business. Many and rnany s the 
 vote I ve got by spottin a man, and recollecting his name just 
 when he was a waverin after, may be, takin his V from both 
 sides. He ! he ! he ! You didn t say nothin about bitters, did 
 yer?" 
 
 "No, I didn t," answered Hugh, quietly ; " but I will, if you 
 like. Dobson, a bottle of brandy, glasses, and Boker s bitters. 
 Pray mix for yourself, sir; and then, perhaps, you ll tell me 
 whether it was in Boston or in California in San Francisco, 
 perhaps that I had the pleasure 
 
 "Oh no," interrupted Mr. Doke, "Oh dear, no. I don t go 
 out of York if I know it. It s a good enough town for me. I 
 don t count it a true sign of a patriot to be runnin about from 
 pillar to post all over Ameriky when there s such a rippin good 
 burg as this to stay in ;" and the speaker, by way of emphasizing 
 his contentment, hooked a second chair toward him with his 
 foot, and stretched his legs thereon in great ease and comfort. 
 
 "Then, may I ask where?" 
 
 "You may that. I met yer one day comin out of old Car 
 boy s office, in Wall Street. I was there to get his assessment 
 for puttin through the Unscratched Scallywag ticket for the 
 next moonicipal, and you was there to buy stocks. We met, as 
 they say, on the Ri-al-ter, where muchants most do congregate. 
 I dunno who got stuck, but it weren t me. The Scallywags 
 was elected by a large majority, and if you was histed on Erie 
 or Harlem it ll be because old Carboy is too many for yer. Ha I 
 ha I ha 1 better luck next time. My respecks " 
 
 " Thank you. You ll excuse my restricting myself to coffee, 
 as I don t take spirits, and hardly feel the need of a tonic so 
 early in the day. I have, I believe, the pleasure of addressing 
 Mr/DokeT 
 
 15 
 
338 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " That s so. S. Doke in general, Sal Doke among the b hoys, 
 Colonel Doke at Gammony Hall, Salathiel Doke, Esquire, on 
 School Committees and in the papers. You can take yer 
 chice. " 
 
 Hugh bowed. " Well, Mr. Doke, perhaps you will now tell 
 me how I can serve you." 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! ho ! That s reversin the ingine, that is. Howlin* 
 good cigars o yourn. I ll take a few if you don t mind. Serve 
 me. He ! he ! he ! That s votin the ticket backwards ; putting 
 the cart before the horse. Why, Judge, I come here to serve 
 you /" 
 
 Hugh bowed again. "I m greatly obliged, I m sure, 
 only " 
 
 " Only you don t see how I can ! Don t put too fine a point 
 on it ! Ha ! ha! ha ! You don t see how I can." 
 
 "Why, you perceive in my ignorance of your profession and 
 influence " 
 
 " Sech," interposed Mr. Doke, settling himself more com 
 fortably by throwing one leg over the arm of his chair, and 
 ejecting his smoke in half-benignant, half-speculative puffs 
 " Sech is fame ; a man invents a patent back-action bowie slicer, 
 or scribbles a voloom of peek-a-boo pomes, and his name is 
 girdled round about the airth in forty minutes is big in mouths 
 of widest censor ! But direct the politics of a great metropolis 
 reggerlate the internal affairs of a million haughty and 
 screechin freemen manipoolate every ticket for three years in 
 the Gammony interest, kerryin even the unterrified Sixth in the 
 holler of yer hand, until yer consoomate the triumph of liberty 
 in an overwhelmin majority for the whole ticket of Unscratched 
 Scallywags, and then not to be heard tell of ! Why, Mr. Presi 
 dent, it s enough to make a man, however patriotic, blush for the 
 advertisin mediums of the community he has served ! Enough 
 to make him abandon, in disgust, the service of that public 
 which has proved so ungrateful, and devote to his own private 
 aggrandizement the talents so imperfectly requited !" 
 
 " As I am and have been an utter stranger," began Hugh, 
 apologetically, " and scarcely know a dozen names in the 
 city " 
 
 "-It is the cuss," continued the orator, waving his hand as if 
 to deprecate any interruption to his peroration " It is the cuss 
 of Republican communities that they are prone to be ungrateful ; 
 it should be, above all others, our endeavor to wipe out that re 
 proach, so far as it is applicable to the case of our heroic fellow- 
 citizen, Colonel S. Doke. That, sir, is an extract from a speech 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 339 
 
 made in the walls of Gammony by Erin s pure and high-souled 
 orator. Phoenix O Grady, when candidate for City Attorney, I 
 bein Chairman of the Nominating Committee." 
 
 "I ve heard complaints that Mr. O Grady permitted some 
 heavy claims, due the city from individuals, to lapse ; and that 
 his laches, however influenced, cost New York a million or more 
 of money." 
 
 " A base fabrication," exclaimed Doke, frowning sternly, "in 
 vented by the nigger-worshippers, who hate O Grady, for his 
 advocacy of the interests of his noble and enlightened country 
 men. However, that s neither here or there. Comin more im- 
 mejiately to the question before the meeting, I ve heard tell of 
 you, sir, if you haven t heard tell of me." 
 
 "Pardon me. I have heard of you, Mr. Doke," said Gifford, 
 soothingly, " through my friend, Mr. Clyde. I merely intended 
 to express my ignorance of your particular station and pur 
 suits." 
 
 "Oh, Eldon talked about me, did he?" inquired Mr. Doke, 
 somewhat mollified. 
 
 " He spoke of you as a celebrity." 
 
 " I reckon he might without setting him back any. Why, do 
 you know, if it hadn t been for me, he d never kerned out that 
 precious little game o his, that ended in nominatin Spidershank 
 and upsettin the Locomotive Bill ?" 
 
 "No," marvelled Gifford, quite innocent of the whole affair ; 
 " wouldn t he, though?" 
 
 " Fact, While he fixed the legislate, I cooked Gammony. 
 And neither of em could have worked without the other." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 "The Silver-grays and the Dough-heads could pull together 
 for once, you know," added Mr. Doke, explanatorily, "when 
 there was so much money in a thing. But, now," said the 
 speaker, waving aside all previous subjects of conversation, and 
 mixing another cocktail to go on with "now, about your 
 affair." 
 
 Mr. Doke paused for a reply; and Hugh, seeing one was 
 expected, waited a moment or two, and then asked vaguely, 
 "Whataffiiirf" 
 
 "Ha ! ha ! ha ! That s a good un ! I take it there s only one 
 kind of affair in whicE the services of Salathiel Doke is requisite. 
 Here you are surrounded by gilded luxury, havin , as I may say, 
 the entry to good society, and requirin only one thing to com 
 plete the advantages of your position. Only one thing you 
 need, and for that the assistance of Doke is indispensable." 
 
340 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " I am still in the dark." 
 
 "Look a hear! Be you a patriot? Be you anxious to serve 
 your country ? Does your bosom swell with a lofty desire to be 
 a leader among men 1 Would you admire to have your name 
 writ high in the annals of history? If that s so, Doke s your 
 man." 
 
 "I begin to perceive." 
 
 " I allowed you only wanted one thing havin , as you may 
 say, youth, health, and wealth only one thing is needed in our jj 
 happy land to finish off the sum of human felicity ; but one 1 
 thing office. To that giddy height, Doke s is the hand that 
 can smooth yer way."- 
 
 " But to what kind of office," asked Hugh, doubtfully, "do you 
 refer? and, supposing a candidate to be qualified, upon what 
 conditions are your services proffered ?" 
 
 Mr. Doke smiled. There was a refreshing simplicity to his in 
 durated and experienced mind, both in the idea of any particular 
 qualification being essential to a candidate s success, and in that 
 that there could be any possible obscurity as to the conditions 
 to be exacted for assuring it. He gazed upon Gifford for a while, 
 with something of that mingling of pity and contempt where 
 with an old campaigner, worn and battle-scarred, regards the 
 juvenile recruit whose toils and hazards are all before him. 
 
 " Look a hear !" he said at length, " there s different kinds of 
 offices, and there s different kinds o ways to get at em. It s 
 just like this," and he drew from his pocket five silver coins, and 
 laid them on the table ; a half dime, a dime, a quarter dollar, a 
 half dollar, and a dollar. " This ere kitten s eye stands for a 
 little berth like common councillor, or school commissioner same 
 as I am. This one next to it might be an alderman, or even a 
 surrogate. The quarter dollar signifies p raps a representative 
 to the state legislatur, or some minor state office. The half is a 
 state senator, or, may be, congressman. Finally, the big feller 
 is a United States senator, or, possibly, a governor. These are 
 just for signs. Now, the higher the office, the wider is the circle . 
 which has to be worked, the more wires there is to pull to work j 
 it, and the more it costs to pay for hands to pull em. That s all ! 
 there is about it." 
 
 " And do you mean to say," said Hugh, with some indignation, 
 " that a man who cherishes the honorable ambition to serve the 
 country, in either of these capacities, must pay money in this grad 
 uated scale to achieve it *?" 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha!" roared Mr. Doke. " Did you ever get any 
 thing of vally yet without payin for t 1 D ye suppose men are 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 841 
 
 going to all the labor and expense of ward and country organiza 
 tions, payin the rent of halls, and whole fort-ins in printin , and 
 banners, and transparencies, let alone the mm of half the fightin 
 men in the district, and black mailin the papers, and takin the 
 risk now and again of stuffin a ballot box, just for the sake of 
 amusin theirselves ? Go way ! you ain t no baby to swallow 
 sech stuff as that !" 
 
 . "Why, as to necessary expenses in election time," modified 
 Gifford, "they may be all right and proper ; but bribery and 
 corruption in a free country like this " 
 
 " He ! he ! he ! Don t let any of the Gammony boys hear yer 
 talk that way, if we set out to run yer in one o the city districts. 
 They d reckon yer a Dead Beat a psalm singin blower, they d 
 call yer, that won t come down. Necessary expenses ! Election 
 time ! He ! he ! he ! Why, the expenses are runnin always, 
 in election tune or out on t. Only when votin day s comin on 
 the cash is paid up, cause then it goes further, and tells more ! I 
 know they work it different up in St. Lawrence, and the rest o 
 them old-fashioned back counties, where they put on their Sun- 
 day-go-to-meetins to vote in, and shut up the toddy shops ; but 
 sech ways don t go down in York. York s a live town, I tell 
 yer ! That s so. And pint early, and pint often, is the motto 
 for them who want handles to their names, or to finger the peo 
 ple s money !" 
 
 "In a word, Mr. Doke," said Hugh, impatiently, "what do 
 you propose L ?" 
 
 Mr. Doke peered at his host mysteriously for a space, without 
 speaking, and then glanced rapidly about the handsome apartment 
 with the apparent design of taking an auctioneer s inventory of 
 its contents, before he replied : 
 
 " Slick house this o yourn, ain t it 1" 
 
 " It is a very comfortable one." 
 
 " How much might it have cost yer, now ?" 
 
 Hugh laughed, but answered the question. 
 
 !" You re a pooty rich man, ain t yer ?" 
 " Pray what has that to do with our discussion ?" 
 " Only that I don t want to be onreasonably hard on yer. I 
 ain t one o these ere kind o men who want all the fat ; and 
 what I say, I ll do. Make up yer mind what sort o nomination 
 11 suit, and in about ten days I ll tell yer what ll be the finger.* 1 
 " You mean how much I must pay to secure the nomination ?" 
 "Well, not to cipher it too fine, that s about the way to put it. 
 Only don t take my word for anythin . Just ask Mr. Clyde, or 
 any other man posted in politics, and satisfy yourself what Doke 
 
342 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 can do before you trust him. Don t take nothin on any one 
 man s word. That s my style. How does it suit you f 
 
 " It seems prudent enough ; especially in so delicate an affair. 
 As a matter of curiosity, now, Mr. Doke, at what would you ap 
 praise the congressional nomination for the th district ?" 
 
 " You mean the figger ? Well, now, it s a thing that has to be 
 gone into some to get it exact. You see there s generally a 
 kind of double-barrelled arrangement ; one for the nomination, 
 the other for election. Of course the Hall can insure the first, 
 but the second is more expensive, likewise more uncertain. I 
 couldn t tell you percise, not right off ; I couldn t, really. It s 
 hard times just now, that s a fact ; and one o the Sachems is put 
 ting up a new block on his Central Park property ; and another s 
 bought out the Rising Star Brewery, half on time. I allow it s 
 likely to be steep ; but I d rayther not name any thin ontil we ve 
 both had time to turn it over." 
 
 "Very well, Mr. Doke," said Gifford, rising, " I will, as you 
 suggest, take the matter into consideration ; you can do the 
 same, and we can compare notes hereafter." 
 
 "All right. No harm done, anyhow. I heard you had some 
 leanin s towards public life, and that bein in my line I just 
 thought I d call. Dreadful good brandy o yourn. Ha! ha! 
 ha ! My respects. Excuse my French. You talk with Mr. 
 Clyde, and ask him what Doke can do. He ll tell yer I ain t one 
 o these ere kind o men who go about, blowin about what they 
 can t do ! He ! he ! he ! Thank yer, I don t care if I do take 
 another cigar." 
 
 "Take a dozen." 
 
 "Well, since yer so pressin I think I will. Shan t get such 
 weeds up to Jones s Wood that s where I m going mass 
 meetin of laboring men, to protest against wastiii the public 
 money on a new system of drainage. Spohr Hall, yer know. 
 Oppersition ; but we re goin to split a ticket, and fetch in our 
 own men. Ho! ho! ho!" 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Doke. 
 
 "Mornin*. Only one word more to say, and the best of 
 friends must part. Only one word Mum!" and Mr. Doke 
 pressed his forefinger to his prepossessing mouth. "We ll do 
 business, I don t doubt. He!, he! he! I always do business 
 with men o the right kind ! Only Mum ! you know ; except, 
 of course, inquirin as to character, and so forth. I don t fear 
 that sort o scrootiny. And when yer posted on Doke, I ll say, 
 for further pettikilars see small bills ! Ho ! ho ! ho ! So good 
 bye, Mr. Gifford ! Good mornin !" 
 
 And the political aspirant was left alone with his Optimist. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 343 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " You think my conduct culpable, then ?" 
 
 " To be candid, I do not quite approve it. 
 
 "Would you have had me tell all at the first greeting ; walk 
 blindfold into an ambuscade ; feeling that rocks were there, drive 
 on to certain shipwreck ?" 
 
 " Who can ever tell the effect of confidence ; whether it might 
 not have dispersed the hidden enemy have melted the rocks ? 
 Alas ! In all such cases do we not judge after the event ? Which 
 shall boast, See I have escaped such a danger, when a nobler 
 course might have obviated it altogether, and no one suffered 
 wrong?" 
 
 " You think I have inflicted a wrong then ; you think me 
 wicked a criminal." 
 
 " I do not say that. Perhaps you are entirely right. Your 
 opportunities to judge were surely of the best. I only said, since 
 you asked me the question, and viewing the subject with such 
 lights as I have, that I did not quite approve the course you had 
 pursued." 
 
 Hugh rose and paced the room impatiently. He had told 
 Marian the whole story of his adventures since they had parted. 
 Of how he amassed his fortune, and how a foolish man had 
 achieved what half-a-dozen wise ones had failed in when he help 
 ed him to gain it. Of how he had returned all flushed with his 
 new-born wealth, only to hide its every sign in the old haunts, 
 and among the old friends, where it would have been hailed with 
 loudest rapture. Of how he had used this touch-stone of pov 
 erty to test the affection of Virginia Chester ; and had found it, 
 as the quick event so clearly proved, to be no current coin. 
 Tush I Gifford knew perfectly well instinctivelythat, what 
 ever Marian s feelings, she would not approve of the episode in 
 question. It is true that when he came to its recital, he suffered 
 himself for a few fleeting moments to be deceived. Deceived 
 by a wondrously beautiful blush which ran swiftly up to Marian s 
 brow, and was followed by a marble paleness, when she first 
 heard that Virginia was wedded to another, and Hugh Gifford a 
 free man. But this transitory emotion the sign merely of feel 
 ing was no true index of the decision of her judgment no 
 
344 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 mark that her sense of justice could be blinded or misled. Ma 
 rian s first and strongest instinct was an abhorrence of deception. 
 No one had ever hurt or pained her in all her laughing days of 
 childhood in all her happy days of girlhood up to the moment 
 of the catastrophe, whose shadow was sharp and black indeed, 
 but too sudden to reverse the habits of a whole previous life. 
 That poor Hugh s experience had left him less ingenuous, and 
 so less ready to sympathize with or to participate in this par 
 ticular virtue, we need not now enforce. But he had not been 
 near Marian for many months in daily and familiar intercourse, 
 he had not loved Marian so deeply for most of those months, 
 without cherishing in his breast a monitor, sometimes dormant, 
 sometimes watchful, but never absent, which told him unerring 
 ly what that pure nature of hers would denounce as wrong, and 
 what it would permit to pass unchallenged. When he had prac 
 tised his ruse with Virginia, the monitor was dormant ; but when 
 the story was passing from his lips to Marian s ears, the monitor 
 was cruelly active. So Hugh adopted man s frequent and most 
 rational argument, and tried to stifle its voice by getting 
 angry. 
 
 "Your scruples are too fastidious," he complained, "to apply 
 to the realities of life. By what law of right, what precept of 
 conscience, should a man be obliged to incur the risk of his life s 
 happiness rather than by a harmless experiment to. satisfy him 
 self whether he is about to place it in safe keeping 1" 
 
 " What is right is never too fastidious," said Marian, gently ; 
 " and the Golden Rule suggests both the law and the precept 
 that you ask for." 
 
 " I should not shrink from such an ordeal, if applied to my 
 self." 
 
 * How could you, since from the conditions of the case you 
 would be ignorant of its application ?" 
 
 " I mean as regards the time of probation." 
 
 "If you were purposely kept in ignorance of its real object?" 
 
 " If my love were sincere, that could make no difference." 
 " You have hit it at last. If your love were sincere! Ah, my 
 friend, had your love been sincere, you never had tried such an 
 experiment. The love which is sincere would have accepted 
 all, and doubted nothing. Your fears as to Virginia s motives 
 were but the reflexes of your own inconstancy !" 
 
 "Even admitting this for argument s sake wherein am I 
 so culpable, since, had she been faithful, I was bound to keep my 
 promise ?" 
 
 "Because you subjected her to a temptation for which you 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 345 
 
 had no warranty. Because, when she plighted her troth and 
 you reciprocated the pledge, it was a compact between erring, 
 finite, human beings, and not between spotless angels. Be 
 cause there was no condition annexed that either party should 
 proye to be perfection in the hour of trial ; but that they would 
 each strive then* feeble best to approach it. You knew well 
 what influences surrounded Virginia influences which had sur 
 rounded her from her birth. You knew that if those influences 
 tended to produce a moral warp, especially objectionable, your 
 duty was to seek to counteract it. What did you do ? Pre 
 cisely what was calculated to encourage the perversion and^in- 
 sure its catastrophe !" 
 
 " Enough. Marian. I remember we have been over such a 
 ground as this before. I might have known how severely you 
 would judge me," he added, bitterly. 
 
 " I was your adviser then, and if now your judge, only a self- 
 imposed one." 
 
 " I pleaded then as I plead now, that there was one thing 
 wanting which made your advice so difficult to follow. Do you 
 remember it ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Marian, with a heightened color, " I do remem 
 ber it. On the same occasion it was agreed that we should 
 always be friends." 
 
 "Friends!" 
 
 - And," she continued, steadfastly, " as nothing was said to 
 make us otherwise then, so I hope nothing will make us other 
 wise now." 
 
 4i Friends!" he repeated. " Always friends! Oh, Marian, 
 Marian, can we never be anything more ?" 
 
 The girl did not answer, but turned very pale, as one does 
 when a crisis is coming which cannot be averted, when nothing 
 can be thrown away, not even words, without weakening that 
 brace of the nerves which is needed to meet the expected strain. 
 Her lips slightly parted, as they always did at moments of strong 
 excitement; and her bust heaved up and clown as does the 
 breezeless sea in sympathy with the still distant but approaching 
 storm. Beautiful was Marian always ; but, like all things not 
 quite passionless, more beautiful in action than in repose. 
 
 Can we never be anything more ? Is that cold, cold word 
 to be used now that there is no bar between us ? Are all our 
 hours of sympathy, whispers of consolation, the sweet dreams 
 of beauty and happiness which gilded our coarse, mean lives. 
 those very lives themselves risked and redeemed side by side, 
 are these to bring no softer, warmer fruit than icy friendship ?" 
 
846 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "What would you have, Hugh?" she whispered mechani 
 cally, almost inaudibly. 
 
 ; What would I have ?" he echoed, marking with eager de 
 light those signs that seemed to say he would not ask in vain. 
 ""Hear the woman ! as if she did not know and feel, in her in 
 most soul, better than words can teach her. What would 
 I have ? Oh, Marian, can it be that you do not know ? Not 
 know that I love you deeply, passionately, eternally ; and would 
 have you love me in return?" 
 
 " This fire is too swift, too sudden," she murmured, her face 
 dyeing crimson, and paling rapidly again. He caught her hand, 
 which she vainly strove to free. 
 
 "Swift! sudden! Why, it has been burning for years ! Is 
 it not more than two since we toiled together through the 
 heart of the continent? And was it not then and there that 
 the fire was kindled ? Was it not then that, for the first time in 
 my hard, bitter life, I was taught to see there was beauty and 
 joy in this barren world, and that life might after all be worth 
 the living ? Did I not learn then that there were souls innocent 
 of narrow, canting prejudice, free of the corroding taint of gold- 
 grubbing? Did I not gaze then, through portals for the first 
 time unbarred, on a new and brighter existence, whose possi 
 bility, however distant, made me endure and struggle on in the 
 hope of one day attaining it ?" 
 
 " Do you mean, Gifiord, to say that " 
 
 " That I have loved you with all my soul since the night 
 before we fought the Indians ! That I knew that night, if life 
 were spared to us, mine would never know love again but for 
 you. Ah, Marian, it was not I who was your knight not I 
 who bore your glove your little Testament through that des 
 perate strife ; but I was not the less vowed thenceforth to your 
 service." 
 
 " You saw it then?" she asked, half smiling in the midst of 
 the momentous tumult these words were exciting. 
 
 "Yes; and knew how Luke came by it. More, Marian; I 
 knew that Luke loved you with a fervid, honest, manly love " 
 
 " Poor, good Luke !" murmured Marian. 
 
 "But not, Marian oh, not with a love like mine! I would 
 not disparage what I know for manly and sincere, but love can 
 be all that, and more than that, and yet be far. far below mine ! 
 The sun would shine, the grass would grow, the spheres con 
 tinue their music for one who felt a love like that, even if un 
 requited ; but not for me, Marian ! For once this tale is told, 
 darkness, obstruction, silence, would come and welcome, too, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. . 347 
 
 with disappointment. You reproach me with inconstancy, 
 Marian ; ah, me! who made me inconstant?" 
 
 Alas !" 
 
 " Alas, indeed, if you regret it ! I mean if for my sake as 
 well as for that of another ! Do you mean you cannot return 
 my love ? For Heaven s sake don t don t say that ! Think, Ma 
 rian, how very natural it was I mean for one born and bred like 
 me to passionately love when he met one like you ! Think of 
 ho\v the gloomy vista of his future was hung around after that 
 with the warm, glowing colors of your Southern imagination! 
 Think of how your dear presence, all glorious with hope, lighted 
 up the path which had always before seemed so dark, so profit 
 less, and so monotonous ; and then think how natural it was that 
 such a presence, in scattering the promise of gladness, should 
 also sow the seeds of love. 
 
 "I know myself weak vain a selfish egotist, no doubt. Let 
 me have all the censure I deserve, but let me not be condemned 
 without extenuation. The world has not been altogether kind 
 to me. An unhappy childhood, a joyless youth, a morose and 
 cynical manhood, are not all the fault of him who suffers or ex 
 hibits them. Is it vanity to say I think there is some little good 
 buried among this ill, some gold amid this dross, some service to 
 mankind below this misanthropy, if a tender hand be haply found 
 winch, like an enchanter s, shall reveal and put them to their 
 noblest uses? Marian, dearest Marian, shall this hand be 
 yours ?" 
 
 And there was more of this talk wild, hea.ted, and incohe 
 rent, indeed, but terribly earnest, for the man s heart was on his 
 tongue, and like all men of his stamp, once the floodgates were 
 open, he made no reservation. He drew a sketch of his joy, his 
 rapture, when through the good offices of simple, grateful Ike, 
 he saw his way to wealth such as he never dreamed of possess 
 ing ; joy to think that now there was at least a chance remote 
 though it might be that he could one day lay at Marian s feet 
 fortune, heart, all! Of how he had hurried from Berkshire, 
 after doing what he deemed his duty there, and sought Marian 
 in New York to find that she had sailed for Europe. Of how 
 he had followed her across the sea, and hunted up and down the 
 continent for weeks and months, to be again foiled and disap 
 pointed. And when he had found her at last when he had a 
 home, a fortune worthy of such a mistress, with a heart which, 
 if unworthy, was yet so supremely devoted would she, would 
 Marian, disappoint him again now ? 
 
 And his arm had stolen about her waist during these passion- 
 
348 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ate adjurations, and his pleading face came nearer and nearer 
 while he poured forth a story of love, so earnest and eloquent, 
 that it seemed impossible for Marian, with her strong preposses 
 sion and her warm Southern blood, to resist its force. 
 
 And yet she did so. There was something repugnant to her 
 delicacy notwithstanding the stress which backed HughGifford s 
 suit in listening to the tale of the way he had ended the old 
 love, and in the same hour accepting the position of the new. 
 Yet Hugh could scarcely have told one story without telling the 
 other. The latter was -the complement in some sort the justi 
 fication of the former. And he was free ; not, after all, by his 
 own act so much as by Virginia s. Still, Marian was faithful as 
 she had ever been, in spite of the strongest temptations, to her 
 convictions of right and of maidenly propriety. She had been 
 tried before, and did not hesitate ; she did not falter now. 
 
 " Listen, Hugh," she said, as she disengaged herself from his 
 eager arms, and, standing apart, with a pale face, but a steady 
 voice, made answer to his passionate speeches, " I have been to 
 blame unwittingly, perhaps, but still in part to blame for the 
 miscarriage of your engagement with Virginia. I will not put 
 myself in the position of hastening to fill a place I have helped 
 to vacate. Nor do I think promises on either side exchanged in 
 the first moments of our meeting are, under all the circumstances, 
 either delicate or proper. Therefore, I cannot give the pledge 
 you ask of me." 
 
 " Your heart is entangled elsewhere !" he cried, hotly. " I re 
 member now ; even at the ball I heard you were engaged. 
 Your guardian s friend Mr. Clyde told me as much." 
 
 "He must have been in jest. Or he referred, perhaps, to the 
 dance for which I was indeed engaged to himself. The pledge 
 I refuse to give to you I have given to no other." 
 
 " But, Marian, this is mere trifling ; trifling with the happi 
 ness of both ; for I feel I know that I am not quite indifferent 
 to you. Speak; is not this true, Marian? I charge you to 
 answer, and answer faithfully." 
 
 A bright blush rose slowly over the girl s face, until it crim 
 soned even to her glossy hair. " It is true, Gifford." 
 
 "And yet," he exclaimed joyfully, "yet you will make no 
 pledge will plight no troth?" 
 
 " Hear me," answered Marian, " and if you can with patience. 
 I am not quite satisfied either with you or with myself ; and I 
 think neither will be the worse for an ordeal which for your part 
 you have said you would not shrink from." 
 
 " I do not understand." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 349 
 
 " You have said that, even if ignorant of the real object of 
 such an ordeal, it could yet, if your love were sincere, make no 
 difference in it. I- propose just such an one." 
 
 "I am still in the dark." 
 
 " The measure you offered to Virginia Chester I would now 
 mete out to you and to myself as well. You should not shrink 
 from this application of the golden rule this test of constancy 
 according to your own practice, your own showing." 
 
 " You would have me wait for a year ?" said Hugh, with a 
 darkened face, as he began to perceive her drift. 
 
 1 i I would prefer it, Nay, I will make no other promise. Let 
 twelvemonths roll by, each to be free as Virginia was to set aside 
 the pact at will. If, at their expiration, your mind be unchanged, 
 you will find mine no less so." 
 
 " These are hard terms, Marian." 
 
 "If you say so, you will make me doubt you. Is it agreed ?" 
 
 " And I cannot lout think unnecessary ones. If we love each 
 other, and surely we do, and if wrong is done to no living crea 
 ture beside, and surely none is done, why so cruel a delay "?" 
 
 "And if you shrink from itj" said Marian, rather proudly, 
 " you must not expect me to rate your constancy very high ; in 
 which case, am I not right to impose the delay ?" 
 
 " Enough, Marian. Let it be as you will. Let it be my pur- 
 
 fation for the wrong, if wrong it was. inflicted upon Virginia, 
 shall at least have earned your forgiveness for that sin." 
 
 " And for all others, Hugh. Do not think this probation 
 agreeable to me. Far from it. I will confess so much. But it 
 seems to me right ; and I would fain you thought so too." 
 
 " I ll try. Marian ; and indeed what is right to you cannot be 
 otherwise to me. Only I have learned, and that so well that 
 one lesson to the contraiy cannot undo the conviction, that it is 
 far harder for man to wait than for woman." 
 
 " Heresy ! Unless you mean he is less likely to be faithful." 
 
 " Wait and see !" 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MR. DYCE PARAPET walked down Fifth Avenue in no very con 
 tented frame of mind. His gloves were of as cool a gray, his 
 boots of as radiant a jet, his trousers of as spotless a pearl, his 
 
350 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 coat of as glossy a black, his neckcloth of as delicate a white as 
 they usually were when he walked down Fifth Avenue of a 
 morning. But his face was by no means of as smooth and be 
 nignant an expression as it was its custom to be. For perhaps 
 the eighth or tenthtime in his life, Mr. Parapet was ruffled ; ruf 
 fled when another would have been very angry. A calamity 
 had befallen his house. A blot threatened to affix its permanent 
 stain upon his escutcheon. A necessity for prompt action to avert 
 the threatened evil had arisen. To be at once annoyed and com 
 pelled to exhibit energy was a complication of misfortune whose 
 effects upon Mr. Parapet may be measured by its singularity. 
 Either grievance alone he would have endured with his ordinary 
 chronic placidity. The two together were sufficient to ruffle its 
 surface. 
 
 Clinton Parapet the cream of cream of youths, only sons, and 
 Parapetian representatives had been seen driving in the park 
 that beautiful but ineligible heiress of the cotton trade Miss 
 Flora Dimity. Not in the dusky evening, Avith a quiet equipage 
 stealing along out-of-the-way roads, as if such an atrocity were 
 to be committed at all, reason and good sense would counsel ; 
 but with a pair of slashing grays, known to the whole town, an 
 open carriage through the most frequented drives of the Central 
 Park, at the hour of high fashion, flaunting up and down in the 
 eyes of the chattering world as if in veriest defiance to give his 
 crime the widest publicity. 
 
 Just now, too," moaned Mrs. Parapet, "when that odious 
 man s odious new shop is the talk of the whole country ; when 
 its height and its breadth, and its length, and the number of its 
 simpering shopmen, and the yards of stuff they sell in a day are 
 published in every newspaper ! It seems as if when young men 
 do commit a blunder, it must needs be advertised in the most 
 conspicuous and objectionable of settings." 
 
 "May there not be, after all, some mistake ?" suggested Mr. 
 Parapet, soothingly. " There are more than one pair of grays 
 many young men not unlike Clinton. You informant " 
 
 " Alas ! The best authority ! Indeed half a dozen of them I 
 Mrs. Crespigny, with her eye of lynx and heart of steel, drove 
 here the same afternoon made a pretence of returning a volume 
 of Edith s and congratulated us incidentally as she was leaving ! 
 She was perfectly delighted, bursting with the thing during her 
 whole visit, and her artistic self-control, putting it off for an exit 
 speech, was enough to make one go mad ! Afterwards the Van 
 Tassels called ; they were simply angry, on Henrietta s account 
 you know, and wondered whether it was the last Parisian mode 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 351 
 
 to drive out one s tradespeople s daughters. And Edith heard 
 it from the Slamrnerhorns at the opera ; they were neither 
 delighted nor angry, but sorry ; pitied her beautifully, she said; 
 and asked when it was to be, and could it not be stopped in some 
 way. They had heard that busybody. De Talbot Jones, tell it to 
 Mrs. Madison Custard ; and when people like that, who are on the 
 fringe of society, get hold of a story, you know what it means ! 
 How I grieve that Clinton came from abroad!" 
 
 " Unfortunate, truly unfortunate," sympathized Mr. Parapet, 
 caressing his white hands as if some one had slighted or injured 
 them, and they needed a little petting to make them come 
 round. 
 
 ;i Unfortunate ? It s irreparable, almost. The next thing will 
 be a paragraph in the Sphere or the Optimist. Really, if it is not 
 one thing, it appears it must be another. How we have felicitated 
 ourselves on Clinton s freedom from vice, even from the lighter 
 dissipations common to his years, and compared him to others 
 less fortunate! But of what avail is it to escape having delirium 
 tremens like young Schindy, or not to forge on a grandfather, 
 like Tom Creasy, if a son is to turn out like this ! A Cranstoun 
 I might have endured. At a Slarnmerhorn I might have smiled 
 in silence. Even with a Van Booreni my chagrin, though sharp, 
 might have been smothered. But a a DIMITY !" 
 
 "But, my dear," said her husband, still affectionately consol 
 ing his hands, " since what s done cannot be undone " 
 
 "Can it not? It strikes me that is precisely the point. I 
 am impressed with a conviction that it is to undo we ought, or 
 rather you ought, to bend all your energies. Think of Edith s 
 prospects dragged down by a Dimity ! Think of a cotton woof 
 spun into the family line ! Distinctly, what is done m ust be undone ! " 
 
 " But how ? The young people have been seen driving in the 
 park. Voila tout. It s very sad, but I see no way of undo 
 ing it." 
 
 "Tut! the drive is nothing save as the index and prologue of 
 what has preceded, and may follow it. We must seize on the 
 occasion to reverse any previous understanding, to forestall any 
 injurious consequences. Either Clinton must pledge himself to 
 see Flora Dimity no more, or he must at once be sent abroad." 
 
 You remember, of course, that he is his own master ? 
 
 Nominally and technically he is so ; but it cannot be that 
 this girl has gained such a hold in two weeks as to induce him 
 to set at defiance both your authority and mine. To interpose 
 them at least is better than mere quiescence, even should they 
 prove to have been interposed in vain." 
 
352 MARIAH ROOKE; OK, 
 
 "I ll tell you what I ll do," said Mr. Parapet, with a happy 
 inspiration ; " I ll speak to Clinton of course, and do what I can 
 in the way of direct expostulation ; but I ll also get young Gif- 
 ford to attack him. Sensible fellow young Gilford, very. Has 
 sharp perceptions and remarkably sound viows for nig years, and 
 Clinton thinks more of him than of any other young man of his 
 acquaintance." 
 
 Mrs. Parapet thought well of the idea. Gifford was a sort of 
 person who would see at a glance the horrible incongruity of an 
 alliance between a Parapet and a Dimity. He was one of those 
 who, if they cannot exactly boast pur sang themselves, have very 
 just notions of its quality and responsibility. A young man him 
 self, he could, with a good grace, point out the grave distinc 
 tion which lies between venial flirtation and criminal matrimony. 
 Moreover, his great respect for Edith would surely prompt him 
 to do all in his power to prevent a step which would be at once 
 so painful to her feelings, and so damaging to her future pros 
 pects. Gifford was, therefore, elected member of the privy 
 council, which was to circumvent the ambitious scheme imputed 
 to pretty Flora Dimity. 
 
 So, when Mr. Parapet got into Union Square and saw Hugh 
 standing and looking up disconsolately at the equestrian figure of 
 the father of his country, he hooked the young gentleman incon 
 tinently by the arm, and led him away captive to his club. The 
 meeting was apropos, since Hugh had some advice to ask as well 
 as to give ; and Mr. Parapet was the first of whom he had re 
 solved to seek it. 
 
 Our hero heard the statement of his companion with the grav 
 ity befitting a councillor received into the confidence of a rever 
 end senior, and the caution suitable to the fidelity due to his 
 friendship for a son. 
 
 " Mere flirtation and nonsense, my dear sir," was the consola 
 tory opinion he felt justified in expressing. " The young lady is 
 excessively pretty, and Clinton is amazingly fond of pretty girls. 
 But I m quite sure he has no serious intentions." 
 
 "I m pleased to hear you say so, and Mrs. Parapet would be 
 delighted. But, pray how can you be sure of such a thing f 
 
 "Ah, well, that may be a facon de parler perhaps. I mean to 
 imply the conviction that were Clinton s sentiments of a graver 
 character, they would find no such public expression." 
 
 " Yet he should be cautious to avoid the imputation of any 
 thing dishonorable." 
 
 " My dear sir, he is your son, and I m confident if he thought 
 his conduct obnoxious to such a censure, a word or two would 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 3.13 
 
 set him right. Of course a young gentleman could not do such 
 things abroad as he does with Miss Dimity. But if American 
 girls will walk and drive and go to the opera without duennas, 
 and the custom is permitted by society, Clinton is not individu 
 ally responsible for it" 
 
 " You believe then " 
 
 "That he is merely doing what inclination suggests when no 
 particular reason occurs for declining to gratify it. The young 
 lady is perhaps a little flattered, and encourages him quite as 
 much as she ought. " 
 
 " I hope you ll say as much to Mrs. Parapet." 
 
 " With much pleasure, if you think it will be in the least 
 gratifying to her." 
 
 " It certainly will be. But you see she will draw this distinc 
 tion ; that what Miss Dimity is doing would not be done by 
 young women of Clinton s own set, and that her own will put 
 only one construction upon it, in which the world might gener 
 ally uphold them, and thus he may become awkwardly entangled 
 before he has even considered what he is about." 
 
 ; You will speak with him, however, and point out this dan 
 ger r 
 
 "At once; and, if you don t object, I would ask you to do 
 the same. The friend may well put such a case in a more tell 
 ing light than the father." 
 
 He might possibly have the credit of being quite disinter 
 ested." 
 
 " Precisely But there is a dilemma which may prove im 
 practicable for either. Suppose, after all, his heart should be 
 touched ; suppose he has been infatuated to such a degree as to 
 commit himself f 
 
 "Really," laughed Gilford, "I don t think a few dances and 
 promenades, or even this unfortunate drive in the park, can fairly 
 justify so terrible a suspicion. Yet, even were it to prove well 
 founded, I should not despair." 
 
 " You have a panacea for even such an evil?" 
 
 " I have found it so. You are consulting one, I may observe, 
 not entirely without experience. If matters have gone such a 
 length, I would counsel, not direct opposition, but masterly in 
 activity. Get Clinton to agree to a year s delay: he might 
 chafe, but the hope of condoning the mam offence would prob 
 ably induce his acquiescence ; and in that year, you may depend, 
 sir, one of the contracting parties will find reason or excuse to 
 escape the bond." 
 
 He spoke rather bitterly, and his companion looked at him 
 
354 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 with surprise, excited rather by the tone than the words. Hugh 
 was smarting under an infliction, which he was not, at the mo 
 ment, unwilling to extend to somebody else, while he was hon 
 estly satisfied that his previous experience justified the soundness 
 of his advice. 
 
 Mr. Parapet had too much delicacy to remark upon the feeling 
 of his speech, so he merely thanked Hugh, saying he had no 
 doubt but in the majority of instances such a resource would 
 prove invaluable, and he would certainly put it to the proof in 
 case of need, and reminding him that he had promised to 
 afford some counsel in turn, by way of quid pro quo. 
 
 Hugh s matter was simply this. He had some thoughts, as 
 Mr. Parapet knew, of embarking in political life. Occupation 
 of one sort or another, he considered essential to keep his mind 
 from rusting ; and to serve the country seemed as laudable an 
 ambition as could be cherished. He would be happy of any 
 hints which Mr. Parapet s experience might enable him to fur 
 nish. Mr. Clyde had been good enough to give him much val 
 uable information ; but, on a subject so many-sided, a multitude 
 of counsels begat wisdom. Hugh would be glad of Mr. Para 
 pet s in a general way, and of any details he could supply of the 
 character and uses of Mr. Salathiel Doke in a particular one. 
 The subject was one which Mr. Parapet could discuss con spirito, 
 if not con amore. 
 
 "My dear young friend," he said, feelingly, "who toucheth 
 pitch, shall be defiled. If you can achieve something thereby, 
 whose blessing overtops the curse of defilement, profit may come, 
 although I fail to see it. If to spend your substance for the 
 delectation of an unclean rabble ; to breathe an atmosphere fla 
 vored of humanity unwashed, onions and bad whiskey ; to listen 
 always to foul oaths unreproved, envy and uncharitableness 
 toward all better educated, better dressed, or indeed different 
 in any respect from the rabble itself; to sit under the wing of 
 spread eagles barbarously caricatured to suit the taste of that 
 rabble ; to serve it for a constituency, with Salathiel Dokes to 
 interpret its lofty behests ; if to do these things be desirable, or 
 if the end sanctify the means for there is but one road, and 
 that no royal one become a politician. 
 
 " If to be drawn gradually but irresistibly into the habit of 
 talking slang instead of English exaggerated and hybrid fus 
 tian instead of pure and simple idiom the habit of lowering 
 yourself on principle to please the tastes and prejudices of the 
 vulgar $ of pretending to be coarse and commonplace, because 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 355 
 
 the bulk of your audience are so, until the habit becomes second 
 nature, and you sink to the same level-r-become a politician. 
 
 " You heard a politician speak here the other night a poli 
 tician who is also an orator. The occasion was a solemn one 
 the death of an eminent public servant and benefactor and the 
 audience might be considered a selectone. I remember the speaker 
 as a youth ; and he had the education, if not altogether the man 
 ners, of a gentleman. But to hear him, even under such circum 
 stances, was to show what the habit I cite may do in the way of 
 deterioration. What incredible bombast was his speech ! How 
 turgid the diction how puffed by superfluous and unmeaning 
 adjectives! How preposterous the metaphors learned by rote 
 on an hundred stumps to tickle the ears of the groundlings ! 
 How inconclusive and irrelevant was his argument, and how 
 laughably magniloquent and unscholarly the peroration ! The 
 speech was just fit for a grog-shop gathering to nominate an 
 
 Irish councilman for the Sixth ward ; and yet Mr. ranks as 
 
 one of the leaders* of his party, and, you may depend upon it, 
 is unconscious of his solecisms his sins against taste and pro 
 priety. It is in the nature of this disease that its victim s are 
 utterly ignorant of its ravages. Tell them it exists, and they will 
 tell you you are a fool. They resent the imputation to the last 
 degree, and are quite sincere in their incredulity ; and they are 
 not entirely wrong, so far as censure attaches to their malady, 
 since it is the product, not of individuals, but of a system. 
 
 With these and more opinions of a similar uncomprom ising 
 character did Mr. Parapet regale the ears of Gifford ; winding 
 up with the, for him, rather extreme statement that he believed 
 Mr. Doke to be one of the most arrant scoundrels who went un 
 hung. Nevertheless, he added, if Hugh were absolutely deter 
 mined upon entering the thorny paths so deprecated, Doke 
 could be made, beyond doubt, very useful as a tool. He was 
 celebrated as having done the duty work for divers eminent 
 officials, whilst they were climbing to the dizzy heights they now 
 occupied ; and, if unscrupulousness were a virtue, it could not 
 be gainsaid that he possessed that, at least, if no other. He 
 had the ear of many who would dislike to be publicly mentioned 
 in connection with "his name ; for even Mr. Clyde, who certainly 
 would not associate with him, had employed the man politically. 
 Finally, he might be fitly regarded as a fair specimen of the 
 people whom an aspirant for political honors must make up his 
 mmd to see and hear a good deal of; so that, on the whole, 
 Gifford might as well get accustomed to the species in his per 
 son as in another s. 
 
356 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 All this was more disagreeable to our hero than he cared to 
 acknowledge. Somewhat later in his career, he would not have 
 had to learn that a gentleman of his mentor s order was the last 
 to whom he should apply for an account of the favorable side 
 of political life. He was no more likely to speak well of the 
 existing order of things than an unenfranchised Englishman 
 who sees no chance of rising to the dignity of a ten-pounder. 
 Indeed, the analogy could be carried to very interesting con 
 clusions as regards these twin classes, thus excluded on their re 
 spective sides of the Atlantic from all share in the business of 
 the state. Practically, their positions are the same. The highest 
 class in America and the lowest class in England are in the like 
 category of discontented or apathetic exclusion ; and, however 
 difficult it may be for philosophers to suggest the remedies, it is 
 easy enough to point out the evils which both systems entail. 
 Neither are compatible with that political Utopia which Hugh 
 Gifford, like many embryo statesmen, was fond to dream of; 
 but he might have been wiser than to seek either for sympathy 
 or enthusiastic patriotism in a Parapet and, happily, in time, 
 he grew to be so. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RUMOR, with her thousand tongues, painted our hero far richer 
 than he was. Unknown in the haunts of trade, or the walks 
 of professional life, and a stranger even in social circles, there 
 was a mystery about his antecedents well calculated to sharpen 
 wonder, and give a zest to speculation. The sponsorship of 
 the Parapets had assured his position, and an expenditure, lib 
 eral, yet tasteful, attendant on his taking up a settled residence 
 in the metropolis, did its share in attracting attention and re 
 mark. As the news spread abroad of the new Croesus who had 
 come to dwell among them, the keen-witted, the parasitical, and 
 the grovelling, gathered together to profit by, to fasten to, and 
 to worship him. 
 
 Greatly to his surprise for although he fancied he knew 
 much of the world, Hugh was yet but a young man he found 
 himself quite overwhelmed with compliments and attentions. 
 The letters from tradespeople ; cringing proffers of unlimited 
 credit from disinterested tailors, and saddlers, and jockeys, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 357 
 
 were sufficiently explicable, and he was quite old enough to see 
 through them. But the cut flowers on his breakfast-table every 
 morning ; the pressing invitations sent daily by sumptuous oc 
 cupants of palaces ; the requests for the honor of his company, 
 and the favor of his patronage, from societies and corporations 
 having some name in the world ; the cordial proposals to attend 
 to his Wall street business, free of all expense, by fascinating 
 brokers, who seemed to devote themselves exclusively to such 
 benevolently unrequited labors ; the private boxes, mysteriously 
 offered at his shrine by rival managers ; the profusion of nods 
 and becks, and wreathed smiles from hosts of fair ones, to whom 
 he had barely been presented ; and, finally, the outrageous puffs 
 of his person, carriage, horses, mansion, and everything that 
 was his, which, to his confusion, appeared one morning in the 
 Optimist, were not so readily seen through or appreciated. 
 
 "He s a millionaire!" whispered Mr. Doke into the greedy 
 ears of the Sachems of Gammony; and "He s a millionaire !" 
 echoed in joyful unison through the ancient wigwam where they 
 sat in council. "But," added Salathiel, darkly, "no capers, 
 mind ! I m a workin of him, I am ; and I ll cook any duck that 
 comes between me and my game before killin time." And Sa 
 chems, preferring, as a rule, to cook, rather than be cooked, grim 
 ly awaited the event, with the consolatory hope of sharing in 
 the feast when it should be served. 
 
 " He s a millionaire !" muttered Gollop, the famous speculator, 
 of the heavy firm of Ingott and Gollop, and, as he himself said 
 in the way of boast, one of Mr. Clyde s right-hand men in great 
 political enterprises. ; Wonder how much I could get him to 
 take of the Great Consolidated Horse Railway ! Wonder how 
 much he s really worth any how! Wonder what s his 
 bait : politics, gals, bosses, or buildin !" For Gollop was re 
 ligiously persuaded that every man on earth had, what he termed, 
 his "bait;" which, like the shining fly to a trout, or toasted 
 cheese to a mouse, was certain, sooner or later, to lure him to 
 his ruin. 
 
 "He s a millionaire!" murmured Mrs. Cranstoun, with the 
 marriageable daughter, who, after a poor season or so more, 
 would be no longer marriageable. "Heavens! if he would 
 only take a fancy to dear Julia ! Surely she doesn t look more 
 than eight-and-twenty by gas-light ; and they say he s so sensi 
 ble and well read, perferring sound, good sense, and solid do 
 mestic virtues to mere prettiness. Ah, me ! If I could only 
 see those giggling girls, who call her a skinny old maid, turn 
 green with envy as she dashed by in that love of a coupe, to 
 
358 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 that sweet house of his with the brown stone caryatides, I do 
 believe I could die in peace! But how to manage it, oh! how 
 to manage it!" 
 
 " He s a millionaire !" pondered Mr. Clyde, as he flew by the 
 Erie Railway into the heart of the Sate, and made little entries 
 and calculations on the tablets be habitually carried. " If I put 
 him in by-and-by for one of the River Counties, bringing him 
 forward, as he develops, into the line of promotion ; what, with 
 his brain and that conscientiousness which is sure to keep him 
 grateful, I might hum well, we ll see." 
 
 " He s a millionaire !" breathed the reverential rabble, as the 
 Gifford coupe dashed up Broadway, while the hotel loafers, the 
 actors lounging about the doors of theatres, and the red-eyed 
 gamblers looked after it with desire. " Brought back five hun 
 dred thousand dollars in sacks of gold dust from California, and 
 doubled it in Wall Street the week after." " One of the ablest 
 young men in our great country, sir. Made the tour of Europe 
 in six weeks, at an expense of six thousand seven hundred and 
 fifty dollars a week, not countin drinks." "Don t chew none, 
 but smokes like sin. Half the gals on Fifth Avenue are fightin 
 for him." "Sphinx is a paintin of him, as a Roman emperor 
 with a wreath of laurel on." " Gollop and him are going into 
 partnership to buy Staten Island, and turn it into Cremorne Gar 
 dens." " Is that so V " Yer lie !" " Shaver told me, anyhow. 
 Only Live Oak George and old Corneel Gingergilt fit as to who 
 should hev the lion s share." " Git aout." " Them bosses cost 
 one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four dollars and sixty-eight 
 cents." " Show !" " Jube Cinnamon told me, and he had em 
 a week on the Centreville course, slickin up for market. He 
 says this here ghost s income is five hundred dollars a day !" 
 " Gas ! I don t swaller that." "Bill Astor, and sech, chalk a heap 
 higher n that !" "Yes ; and how long was old John Jacob a 
 makin of it ?" " No one ever heerd o this man afore. I b lieve 
 he s some skunk of a lord playin possum on the upper ten ! 
 Stuck up lookin cuss anyhow." 
 
 Gifford would have been more than man had he remained 
 utterly insensible to the incense which was perpetually burning 
 below and around him. It is not singular that he grew to mis 
 take some of the adulation which his reputed wealth commanded 
 for genuine appreciation of his personal qualities. Alas ! Which 
 of us are so strong as to be sure that, similarly circumstanced, we 
 should be more clear-headed ? Let those who are doubtful on 
 this point, seek the confidence, if they can get it, of some one 
 who has suddenly acquired wealth, and is now so fortunate as to 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 359 
 
 be able to look back calmly and measure its immediate effects and 
 consequences. 
 
 Little by little the aspirations for greatness, for usefulness to 
 his fellow-men, which had formerly been clear, strong, and 
 sharply defined hi Hugh s mind, became confused, weak, .and 
 blurred. Why should one who was so much respected and es 
 teemed labor to win respect and esteem ? Why run races when 
 the goal is already won l ? True, the ignorant people he had form 
 erly associated with did not reverence him so highly as the more 
 clear-sighted community he now lived among ; but that was 
 their lack of education and consequent appreciation, poor things. 
 It could not be expected that srch as they could comprehend the 
 exceptional merits of an uncommon character understand the 
 value of attainments to which they were utter strangers. 
 
 But there was Marian she .surely could understand and ap 
 preciate him there could be no doubt of her capacity ; and yet 
 a little while ago she had censured him ; and more than once 
 since, she had gently implied dissatisfaction with the course he 
 was pursuing. She thought it very different, this life of fes 
 tivity, pride, and indulgence, from the ideal "life of progressive 
 usefulness and resolutely developed faculties she had sketched 
 out for him of old, at Armstrong s Bar ; and she said so. This 
 contrast between the admiration, the felicitations of others, and 
 Marian s quiet, thoughtful disapproval, jarred on Gilford s self- 
 esteem ; and at almost that very time when he was wild with joy 
 at having found her the tune when the acme of human happi 
 ness, as he once esteemed it, was within his reach he was weak 
 enough to feel pained by the noble girl s frank sincerity, and to 
 foster an estrangement which was the merest offspring of vanity. 
 
 This grew not up in a day. Its growth was slow, sinister, 
 and gradual. The old love was too strong to be readily shaken, 
 and there were many occasions when it swept through Hugh s 
 heart with all its wonted power, overthrowing and putting to 
 flight all meaner thoughts, or unworthy jealousies which stood 
 in its way. But the miserable effect of his wealth was ever 
 present. When he left Marian, who told him he was a weak, 
 : erring mortal, with good capacities, but much to achieve, he went 
 forth to meet a crowd of worshippers, who hailed him as a de 
 migod, and filled his path with flowers of praise and his ears 
 with poems of admiration. And then, alas I for the tender mon- 
 itress who, self-abnegatory as she was, thought only of her lover s 
 good, thus contending with the merciless worldlings who thought 
 only of their own. 
 
 One morning Gifford received two letters which brought many 
 
3 GO MAKIAN KOOKE ; OR, 
 
 an old memory up before him, which made him think of his 
 childhood, of his boyhood, of his earlier manhood, its struggles, 
 its temptations, its romantic success ; more than all, it recalled 
 the hours passed at Armstrong s Bar with her who had won his 
 heart there. But the letters shall speak for themselves. 
 
 DR. DAVID LANDALE TO HUGH GIFFORD. 
 
 "Armstrong s Bar, Oct. 14th, 1852. 
 
 "lam just back here taking a look at the old place before 
 coming east. Lion s Dale has been the making of our pockets ; 
 but it s a wild, uncouth place, compared with this. There is quite 
 a village here now shops with painted signs ; a big hotel with 
 Corinthian columns (cut out in profile of deal boards) ; two bil 
 liard-rooms, and twenty-three new houses. Also seven flumes 
 running to the Canon and pumping the poor old stream nearly 
 dry in hot weather. And the old shanty still stands, with a 
 wooden roof instead of a cotton one, and " Post Office" in gilt 
 letters just under the eaves. Of course there are many more folks 
 here than of yore ; but it s not a bit pleasanter for all that. 
 
 " The solitude that used to be so soothing and grateful ; the 
 woods so silent, and the banks of the streams and tarns where 
 we wandered like chiefs who had shut out all the world beside ; 
 the pretty spots where we used to idle away the leisure, schem 
 ing what we d all do when we got rich; all these are made 
 common and vulgar now by the coarse crowd who see beauty 
 only where gold is, and leave traces wherever they go enough 
 to scare away the fairies forever. You ll remember the bit of a 
 lake among the hills where Luke made the seat after the lassie 
 left? I was there yesterday ; and the green sod was crushed 
 with heavy feet, and strewn with broken whiskey bottles and 
 pipes, and fragments of tin cans and old bones. It s well we re 
 all gone or going, for the spot will never again be the spot that 
 it was. 
 
 " Well, you d like to know how we ve fared. Briefly, then, 
 we have about fifty thousand each to his share ; and by staying 
 a couple of years more might have the double of it. But for 
 me, I am weary of the life. There are things dearer in the 
 world than gold getting; and time rolls on and on without 
 making me younger. For one who s neither kith nor kin, ten 
 thousand pounds may keep the wolf from the door, and some 
 thing better ; so that I ve no fears on that score, and am ready 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 361 
 
 to cry content while yet free of fever or ague to poison the days 
 to come. 
 
 "The old people are well and cheerful. Having got on so 
 well, they are now heart-set for the old family place, a farm 
 where Seth was born, not far from New York on the banks of 
 the Connecticut. And pretty Kitty has made up her mind to 
 be Mrs. Railes she has put it off once or twice after they get 
 home, she says, and have time to turn round. As to Dick, he 
 worships the ground she treads on. I don t think he ever 
 thought so much of any creature or thing on earth except the 
 theodolite and I believe he says his prayers to that every 
 morning. 
 
 "For Luke, he is more studious and quiet-like than ever. 
 He s always done his share of the work and more ; but he s 
 done something else besides. He s taught himself a good bit of 
 the Lathi grammar, and with a word from me now and then, is 
 well on with the mathematics. I ve taught him the principles 
 of plane surveying and levelling, and he s quite up to trigono 
 metry and the use of logarithms. Last tune I went to San 
 Francisco I bought him a Legendre, by way of Euclid, you 
 know, and a Bourdon s algebra ; so that you ll guess he s im 
 proving his mind. 
 
 " And when I was at the town a wonderfully different town 
 from what you saw it I heard somewhat of other friends of 
 oui*s. Mr. Sloper has become enormously rich, and is soon to 
 return to the Atlantic States. He made ten thousand dollars 
 out of the great fire ; and it is said, has doubled it about once 
 a month ever since. Judge Skewer killed two men in a gam 
 bling row, making five homicides he has committed in all, and 
 had to fly to the mountains, where he is now reputed to be con 
 cealed. Of the two other gentlemen who dined with us at the 
 Cafe Lafayette, Mr. Gallus was hung last summer by the Vigi 
 lance Committee, and Mr. McCracken is Mayor of Sonora. 
 
 " Mr. Du Solle, the Southerner, whom we saw leave so much 
 at the gaming house, lost two hundred thousand dollars shortly 
 afterwards, and blew liis brains out one fine morning at his 
 lodgings in the Occidental Hotel. What is very singular is, 
 that I happened to sleep at the hotel that night, and was sum 
 moned, as the nearest surgeon at hand, to see the man. For a 
 few moments I was alone with the body, and I found in an 
 inner pocket of his waistcoat next his heart a very striking min 
 iature of Miss Marian Rooke. . There could be no mistake, for 
 the likeness was too life-like. It struck me that, considering all 
 things, as a friend of the young lady, I was justified in taking 
 16 * 
 
362 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 this picture ; and I have kept it by me without mention to any 
 one, to return to herself when I see her. 
 
 " If it had not been for the barking of Lion hard by, just 
 now, I do believe I should have been thoughtless enough not to 
 name him or his master. They are both well ; but do you know 
 I think both Ike and the dog took your going very much to 
 heart. It was many a day after that they went spooking about 
 as if to find you in some out of the way place, the dog smelling 
 and the man peering; however, they re both greatly creatures 
 of habit, and are getting to be much the same as ever. They 
 will be brought home to the East by the Armstrongs, and may 
 be the new change will do the poor laddie some good. 
 
 " I might write many more details, but then I d have nothing 
 to interest you when we meet at New York, which, at my pres 
 ent thinking, may be in three months time ; that is, provided 
 you re not away when we arrive. So I ll just close this Avith 
 wishing you a continuance of the health you always had, and of 
 the fortune begun at Lion s Dale. 
 
 " DAVID LAND ALE. 
 
 " P. S, They all tell me to put in their good wishes, and 
 hope soon to see you, and that you have seen Mary Anne. 
 And if I were you, having leisure in abundance, I d try to un 
 earth and bring to grief that never-to-be-sufficiently-execrated, 
 and yet most facetious scoundrel Colonel Pangburn." 
 
 JOHN CHESTER TO HUGH GIFPORD. 
 
 " Court Street, Boston, Nov. 15th. 
 
 " My dear friend Hugh, What a world this is ! Only three 
 days ago I heard from an old and attached acquaintance of yours 
 of your great although I am sure deserved good fortune ; that 
 you were living in style at New York, keeping your carriage, 
 aud holding your head as high as the best. How time flies I It 
 seems- only yesterday since you and I were clerks together in 
 Old Tarbox s office, where wie were such dear old friends were 
 we not, Hugh? and laid the foundations of that friendship 
 .which, I trust, is to last always. 
 
 " It is pleasant, dear friend, as the months come round and 
 we feel ourselves going further and further irom boyhood, to 
 feel that we still preserve some of boyhood s friendships to aid 
 each other in lightening the burthen of life and to console each 
 other under its afflictions. Watching your course, as I have ever 
 done, with the solicitude shall I say of a brother ? natural to the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 3C3 
 
 circumstances ; for although Gaycow supplanted you with Vir 
 ginia he never could fill your place with me with the solicitude, 
 then, of a brother, I need not say how delighted I am by the 
 prosperity which you have attained, and which will enable you 
 to carry out what was always your prime desire the diffusion 
 of happiness among those around you. 
 
 The news of your good fortune has spread rapidly among 
 your friends here, and all are anxious to see and congratulate 
 you. They appear to be surprised that you should not settle in 
 Boston instead of New York, as, of course, there cannot be a 
 comparison between the two cities in point of society and cul 
 ture, and they would have thought the memory of the happy 
 hours you have spent in old Trimountain to say nothing of the 
 shades of Harvard would have led you to turn with yearning 
 to the scenes of your childhood. But I tell them it is wrong to 
 judge you without a hearing, and that it is quite improbable so 
 prudent and sensible a man as Hugh Gifford has ever been, would 
 act in this or any other matter without due reflection and suffi 
 cient cause. 
 
 "Father was here yesterday, well and hearty. I have just 
 been conducting a little suit of his against the Pennifeajhers, the 
 final result of an old standing quarrel about metes and bounds, 
 the farms you know being contiguous. He says Canaan is over 
 building itself, trying to compete with the new houses of the 
 Gaycows and Cuticle Flips. When I told him of your great 
 accession of riches and honors, father s face fell a little ; not, you 
 will do him the justice to believe, that he was sorry for your 
 prosperity, but because he thought perhaps of how good a 
 chance had been missed by Virginia. Ah, Hugh ! we must make 
 allowances for these little weaknesses. Perhaps it is true that 
 the generation which is passing away was over fond of money, 
 over ready to sacrifice all else to its acquisition ; and there may 
 have been, probably were, excuses for them. It is not because 
 we of the generation of to-day have outlived that particular 
 weakness or defect of money-worship, that we are to hold our 
 selves without sin. It should rather teach us humility ; teach us 
 how by increased kindness and lenity, and consideration for the 
 interests and feelings of others, we may at once mitigate the 
 faults of our brethren and palliate our own. 
 
 " Business is good. My own prospects I consider to be sub 
 stantial and improving. They are putting up a great number of 
 nice new houses at the South End, and I think of buying. I 
 keep a sharp lookout on the registry of mortgages, knowing 
 that when so much is borrowed to put in bricks and mortar, 
 
304 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 sooner than the legitimate increase of population warrants it, 
 somebody must sacrifice. They have repainted the State House, 
 and the dome looks quite a different object, provoking much 
 remark. I should like some more New York business than I 
 have, and will not apologize (knowing you would laugh at that) 
 for enclosing the names of some firms of your city whose business 
 here I would like to get. 
 
 " Do write me all the particulars of your wonderful success, 
 as to how it came about, and so on. If you could run on here, 
 although only for a day, I am certain you would enjoy it much, 
 and your friends would receive you with open arms. It would 
 have quite touched you to hear how some of the dear old chaps 
 at Cambridge took the news of your rise in the world it would 
 indeed. But I am sure, dear Hugh, that none could rejoice 
 more heartily in so happy a circumstance than does 
 "Your affectionate old friend, 
 
 "JonN CHESTER. 
 
 "P. S. Pray write soon, as I am most anxious to hear from 
 you ; would come on, if not so very busy." 
 
 "Talk of fame!" said Mr. Doke, exultingly.; "look at that 
 air!" And Hugh looked at that air; and, to do him justice, 
 blushed very deeply in so doing. He was not so far gone as to 
 be unable to see the absurdity of the thing ; but how could he 
 help it ? How could he possibly tell that that eccentric genius, 
 Sphinx, would not only have finished his portrait in time, but 
 would have it hanging in that barefaced way on the walls of the 
 Academy the first day it opened its doors ? 
 
 Hugh had been cajoled into sitting, not so much out of vanity 
 as good nature ; and not as a Roman emperor, but as that scarce 
 ly less-abused individual " a gentleman." He met Sphinx at 
 Wirt Pinckney s, and had been somewhat puzzled and embar 
 rassed by the great artist staring fixedly at him in what he 
 thought a rather ironical manner for a long time, and just as he 
 began to think of asking him what he meant, bursting into a k 
 very audible aside to his next neighbor of, "What a magnifi- : 
 cent head !" 
 
 "You must sit to Sphinx," said Wirt Pinckney, a little while 
 after. 
 
 "I? What for 1 ?" 
 
 " Oh, everybody does, just now ; that is, everybody who can 
 get him. He s very cranky a genius you know and won t 
 paint people he doesn t fancy. He s struck by you, and will take 
 great pains, so you must sit to him by all means." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 305 
 
 " He s the fashion," said Edith Parapet, to whom our hero re 
 ferred the point, "so, of course, for the moment, is perfection. 
 To be painted by him is to gain distinction, of a certain sort. It 
 doesn t suit us, but " 
 
 Gilford knew very well how to fill up the sentence. Eldon 
 Clyde filled it up in a different manner. " There is no more ef 
 fectual way," he affirmed, " of being well advertised, at a small 
 expeuse/and without too pointed an ostentation. Very few, com 
 paratively, go to the Academy, but all read the papers ; and the 
 papers that know least about painting always print most about 
 it ; and of course they are the ones that reach the masses. By 
 all means let Sphinx paint you ; he ll make you a great man be 
 fore you know it." 
 
 So Sphinx painted him. The artist was fond of working by 
 surprises. He liked to dawdle over his work for weeks and 
 months as a rule, but now and then he would produce a picture 
 with really astonishing celerity. Gifford was very much talked 
 about just then, and it was quite in the painter s way to finish 
 him in his express-train style, and drive him into the Exhibition. 
 So there was Hugh on the walls, and on the line, rather too hasty, 
 rather too Byronic and Corsairish, but still making a very effec 
 tive picture, undeniably like, and incontestably handsome. And 
 there was a rapt and admiring crowd, chiefly of ladies, ex 
 claiming and rustling and buzzing before it. And there was Mr. 
 Salathiel Doke, like a low-living Mephistopheles as he was. doing 
 his utmost to excite and pander to the lowest passions of Hugh s 
 nature. According to him, there was something signally meri 
 torious in having a slightly-flattered effigy hung up in this manner 
 in the public eye, a prima facie evidence which, like certain foreign 
 orders, was to be accepted as token irrefragable of desert. It was 
 the outward and visible sign of what Doke, and all such as Doke, 
 most dutifully worship success ; the why and Avherefore had 
 no more interest to him than the coral insects would have after 
 they had once piled up what he would call the real estate which 
 now towered ostentatiously above the level of the sea. 
 
 ki Talk of fame !" repeated Mr. Doke, while the Vyses, and 
 the Dimitys, and the Slammerhorns, and the Cranstouns, and the 
 marriageable daughters, and the manoeuvring mammas, stumbled 
 over one another, and tore out each other s gathers, in the in 
 tensity of the anxiety to get near the costly unage. " Look at 
 that air I" 
 
 What a galaxy of worthies ! There was the general officer in 
 full uniform, sword on one side, and what should be yardstick on 
 the other ; there was the last mayor, who made more money 
 
366 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 while in office than any even of his most indefatigable predeces 
 sors ; there was old Dimity himself, looking sublimely conscious 
 of the regal qualities of cotton and his ministers ; there was the 
 great statesman, Doephase, who had taught the Northern people 
 those sublime strokes of wisdom and policy whereby they had 
 preserved their quiet and their dollars at the cheap cost of their 
 political morality and their manhood ; there was Prodder 
 in an obscure corner by the way with a torn shirt collar, and 
 his hair on end, as if the artist had surprised him just after the 
 application of some stimulating unguent ; there wasRullock, the 
 great shipbuilder, who, to his honor, had grown to be what he 
 was from a poor dock-laborer ; and there were divers military 
 and naval heroes, who happily gave their professions the benefit 
 of their undivided talents ; together with a great variety of other 
 worthies and notables, male and female, native and foreign. 
 
 But none of these, however eminent or deserving, attracted 
 the attention bestowed upon our young Croesus. They were 
 hopeless, and dried up as sources of favor or profit, while he was 
 budding with the promise of auriferous benefits to come. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Blobb," said Mrs. Cranstoun, " as you gentlemen 
 of the press know everything and make such a good use of 
 your time in spreading it do tell me how did he make his 
 money ?" 
 
 " In strict secrecy, then, dearest Madam " 
 
 i In strict secrecy, of course." 
 
 " He found some of Blackbeard s treasure concealed on one of 
 the guano islands of the Spanish Main." 
 
 "Bless my heart, how romantic !" 
 
 " And among a heap of old parchments fortunately preserved 
 in a steel skull-cap worn by the pirate chief he discovered a clue 
 to the secret of Captain Kidd s buried wealth, which, as you 
 know, has always been supposed to be hidden somewhere on the 
 coast of New Jersey." 
 
 "And he found that, too ?" 
 
 " Yes ; by excavating to the depth of nearly a hundred feet at 
 Long Branch having first purchased the farm where he knew 
 the property lay concealed." 
 
 " How very extraordinary I" 
 
 " Is it not ? But they say this is nothing to what he s made, 
 since he came to New York, in stocks." 
 
 1 Quite a Monte Cristo, is he not ? But dear Julia thinks 
 him the very ideal of Byron s Conrad !" 
 
 "I m sure Miss Julia herself is more like Medora ! So deli 
 cate, so spirtiuelle as she is." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 367 
 
 I 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Blobb!" 
 
 " I hadn t the remotest idea," explained Gifford to Clinton 
 Parapet, " that the wretched thing would be here, or I wouldn t 
 have coine." 
 
 " Tut, what does it matter? It helps Sphinx, who, his affec 
 tations aside, is a very good fellow, and does you no harm. 
 Look at that sketch of Milhiis. It seems absolutely surprised to 
 find itself in such odd company." 
 
 "I ve got some chiny things," observed Mr. Doke, "screens 
 and things, that look like that." 
 
 "Oh, indeed! Then I advise you to get them hung in the 
 Exhibition. The more the better of that sort. Come, Gifford, 
 I want to show you something grand from a hand less known/ 
 
 The two young men strolled into another room, and stood be 
 fore a very large painting, representing "The Heart of the Con 
 tinent." Hugh gazed at the picture for a long time, and sighed. 
 
 " You seem struck by it ?" said Clinton. 
 
 "Yes; the scenery, the coloring, are very familiar to me." 
 
 "Indeed? I thought it ideal, with correct details, of course." 
 
 * I think not. No idea of an artist could equal what he 
 would find ready-made to his hand, and no one could paint that 
 coloring who had not seen it." 
 
 " I perceive. Whoever had been on the spot would have no 
 need to draw on his invention. Excuse me a moment, I want 
 to say a civil word to old Dimity." 
 
 Marian was to meet Hugh at the gallery, and in a few mo 
 ments she was standing beside him. "I had some trouble in 
 getting through the next room," she observed, significantly. 
 
 Hugh blushed again, and to the eyes. " It was quite without 
 my assent, without my knowledge." 
 
 "I m glad of that; not that there s any real harm that I know 
 of, only it seemed unlike you." 
 
 "Unlike me," mused Hugh, as he took a rose-bud from his 
 coat and offered it to Marian ; " I suppose you Tnean, unlike as I 
 was there," he added, pointing to the picture. 
 
 Marian uttered an exclamation of surprise. " Why, it is the 
 place, the very spot!" 
 
 "You recognize it, then?" 
 
 "Indeed I do. These hills; the little stream as it wound 
 down the ravines between them ; the bold, distant mountains. 
 I can even see the knot of trees where Luke and Ike and Lion 
 awaited us before we crossed the stream ; and, this this surely 
 is the site of our camp." 
 
368 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 "It is very like it, certainly," said Hugh, smiling, "but I 
 suppose there are many similar spots." 
 
 "It is the same," said Marian, her eyes riveted to the paint 
 ing, "always the same, will ever be so. Unlike ourselves, 
 nature remains what she has been, now and for ever." 
 
 " Do you think we change so much, then ?" questioned the 
 young man in a low voice. 
 
 "Ask yourself, Hugh; are you now quite what you were 
 when you stood there ?" 
 
 " No ; I am richer, older." 
 
 "Happier?" 
 
 " I ought to be, as you" may fairly witness." 
 
 " Would would that we were there again !" 
 
 "What! so poor, so environed by dangers, so hopeless!" 
 
 " Do not say so hopeless. For the world was all before us ; 
 to ourselves the censure, if we chose not well. As for poverty, 
 we lived and were happy ; and, for dangers, what matter since 
 heaven gave us strength and courage to surmount them ? Ah, 
 Hugh ! is this crowded, jostling world, with its hypocrisy, its 
 parasites, and its gold-worship, so much better than the free, 
 open prairie, where man can grow as God made him, without 
 the warps and stunts and deformities which come of over-crowd 
 ing ; so that each is trying to overreach, or overshadow, or draw 
 sustenance from his neighbor ? Is your life the happier for a 
 society whose only measure of any man s merits corresponds 
 with its estimate of the length of his purse? Do you really 
 feel, standing as we do face to face with those glorious plains, 
 that existence in a stifling city is so much better, so much nobler, 
 as to lead you to adopt it as of a permanent choice?" 
 
 "If you dislike the town, dearest Marian, in good time we ll 
 forsake and turn our backs upon it. Our friends are coming 
 home from Armstrong s Bar, and we can again join their little 
 circle. We will search out some charming rural home, where 
 the evils of this surging city shall never be seen or heard of; 
 where Lion and Ike, and those simple-minded Armstrongs shall 
 1 be our companions, in place of the fashionables you have grown 
 so weary of ; where you can imagine yourself to be once more 
 on the boundless plains ; where- " 
 
 "I beg yer parding, I m sure," interrupted Doke, bustling 
 up and apologizing to Marian with an awkward bow, but I 
 really must interdoose you to Colonel Ingott the great firm, 
 you know, Ingott and Gollop. One o the Sachems, you know," 
 he added, to Gifford, in a lower key, one of our great pillars, 
 he is wuth a million if he is a cent. He kin do more n most 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 3G9 
 
 any one cept Clyde to put ye through. He s been blowin to 
 Sphinx bout your pictur. He s goin to sit to him himself as 
 Atlas or somethink. Here he is, now. Colonel Ingott, have 
 I the pleasure ? Allow me ! This is Mr. Gifford, the risin 
 millionaire ! It really makes me feel good to interdoose you two 
 gentlemen, I m sure!" 
 
 Pending the salutations, a long train of Colonel Ingott s fol 
 lowers completely encircled the group, and our hero found him 
 self, in a few moments, presented to an imposing array of poli 
 ticians, officials, and other dignitaries. It was not a place of 
 customary resort with them, but Doke had managed an im 
 promptu gathering, to give eclat and amplitude to the report 
 which would appear in to-morrow s papers of Sphinx s cJicf 
 d* waive the portrait of the future political candidate. The 
 latter was quickly the cynosure of an admiring band, at whose 
 approach Marian stole away like a nymph from the advent of 
 so many satyrs. Truly, Gifrbrd s prospects were waxing brighter 
 and brighter. What with the substantial weight of his gold, 
 and the judicious ministerings of Doke and his creatures what 
 with the pencil of Sphinx, and the drums and hautboys of rival 
 mammas, he was fast rising into celebrity, if he did not al 
 together promise as Eldon Clyde suggested to become a 
 great man before he knew it 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GOLD is a subtle and insidious destroyer of good resolutions. 
 Dangerous under the most favorable circumstances, it is espe 
 cially so when it comes as the product of unexpected fortune 
 rather than as that of accumulating and patient toil. Our hero 
 was quite right when he thought himself for many reasons un- 
 suited to the peculiar social atmosphere in which his boyhood 
 had been passed; but he was decidedly wrong when he thought, 
 as he often did, that, because he could appreciate and despise the 
 vulgar deference paid to money the sordid uses to which it was 
 put he could, therefore, in the event of growing suddenly rich, 
 become a model of self-command and beneficial dispensation. 
 
 How he had longed for gold 1 What images had he conjured 
 up of the good he would do with it, of how it should be the step 
 ping-stone to his own moral and intellectual development, of 
 
370 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 how lie would set an example to its grovelling worshippers, and 
 teach them that man should be its master and not its slave. And 
 yet now, surrounded by pretty women, by cunning speculators, 
 by social drones, ever ready to batten on others hives ; led to 
 credit by sheer force of iteration that he really must be a very 
 remarkable person, and one to be looked up to, else wherefore 
 had he grown to be what he was ? feted and courted, and invited 
 to a degree which would have been wearisome had it not been so 
 very flattering our hero began to grow sadly like the pattern of 
 Croesus he had once thought so contemptible, to drink in for 
 daily excitement the species of incense he had once so much 
 despised. 
 
 The tone of his moral nature began to be vitiated. The 
 studies in constitutional law, political economy, and the like, 
 which lie had laid out for himself when he should once settle in 
 New York, were first slighted, then postponed, finally thrust 
 out of mind altogether and thought of no more. What need 
 of all those things when people were constantly assuring him 
 that he was so very clever ? Especially what need when a con 
 trast with Doke and his fellows assured him that such know 
 ledge was at all events not necessary to a considerable degree 
 of political success ? If he had been poor and friendless, these 
 attainments might be well enough as weapons to fight his way 
 through the throng ; but if the throng were ready to concede 
 him a foremost place, merely on seeing the color of his money, 
 why waste strength in conquering them otherwise ? 
 
 Dearly as he loved Marian, too, . the force of circumstances 
 tended to weaken the influence for good which she possess 
 ed over him. Long ago, when in a different frame of mind, 
 he would have comprehended and admired the delicacy of her 
 motives in deferring the period of their union. But now, en 
 vironed by flatterers and sycophants who cultivated the idea 
 that his slightest desires ought properly to be met by instant 
 gratification, he reasoned himself into a half belief that those 
 motives were based on a foundation as ignoble as mere caprice. 
 They saw much of each other; but after a time he found it 
 somewhat irritating when Marian questioned him as to the 
 progress of his studies, the intended line of his political pur 
 suits, or otherwise reminded him that the life they had both 
 contemplated as being that of his future was one of useful ac 
 tivity and not of luxurious sloth. Such irritation was slightly 
 felt at first. It increased by slow and insensible degrees. It 
 had grown to grave proportions almost before Gifford knew he 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 371 
 
 had felt it at all. And, by a sad fatality, it tended more and 
 more to coolness and constraint as he grew richer. 
 
 For he was day by day growing richer. Persuaded that he 
 had a talent for speculation, and craving an excitement which 
 balls, and parties, and operas, and theatres could not entirely 
 supply, he had gone into Wall Street, and by some of those in 
 explicable turns of luck which occasionally attend the wildest 
 and most ignorant ventures, he had in a few weeks nearly 
 doubled his fortune. All he touched turned to gold ; and the 
 elation born of this fresh success did not increase his humility. 
 
 People began to come to him for the use of his name to print 
 in lists of committees, corporations, and public meetings. " We 
 don t wish you to subscribe, Mr. Gifford ; not even to trouble 
 yourself to be present : we only solicit the use of your name." 
 
 His name ! Only the use of his name ! The name which a 
 few little months ago was that of a poor, unknown wanderer, 
 whose very connections would gladly forget that it existed, was 
 now a spell a talisman to enlist the confidence of the world 
 and command its respect. 
 
 ; You ain t a common kind of man, Mr. Gifford," quoth, the 
 delicate and scrupulous Doke. " You ain t no common man 
 you re an INSTITUTION I" And Hugh actually began to believe 
 that he was one. 
 
 Presently there appeared in the columns of the daily newspa 
 pers detailed accounts of his establishment, his horses, his income 
 and whence it came, with all the embellishments and piquant 
 exaggerations wherewith it is the custom of those fastidious 
 prints to regale then- fastidious readers. " Nothin like it," ex 
 ulted Doke, " for makin a man known. Yer chance is twice as 
 good on a ticket when yer name s buzzed round amongst the 
 folks, especially when it s tacked on to accounts of things that 
 costs so much money." 
 
 Gifford soon found himself hand and glove with various great 
 men, speculators, capitalists, stock company makers, and political 
 sachems. Among the latter was that eminent man, Demosthe 
 nes Ingott, the senior partner of the firm of Ingott and Gollop. 
 He was a person of better education and more cultivated address 
 than Gollop ; the latter, being chiefly efficient as a very hard- 
 headed, practical, and determined man, who could and would 
 manage and control the lower order of politicians, with whom 
 the firm had heavy dealings. For Ingott and Gollop were large 
 contractors and indefatigable schemers ; and it was perpetually 
 necessary for them to " work" legislative and other pure-minded 
 and clean-handed public servants in the furtherance of their 
 
372 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 schemes. Mr. Ingott was the aristocratic, Mr. Gollop the demo 
 cratic member. One pulled the wires which made rich men, 
 influential men, the puppets of the higher circles, dance ; the- 
 other, those which controlled the vicious, the low, and conse 
 quently the numerous. 
 
 On the first day that Mr. Ingott made our hero s acquaintance 
 he proposed to him a share in a little speculation whereby Gif- 
 ford found himself, to his astonishment, a thousand dollars the 
 richer in less than a week. Ingott was always helping his iViends 
 to make money quickly, and always wanting to be paid in kind. 
 Afterwards they had various confidential transactions ; but they 
 were nearly all of a character which worked to Hugh s profit ; 
 and he very reasonably congratulated himself on having met so 
 sagacious and good-natured an adviser in his monetary affairs. 
 Mr. Ingott s political connection was exceedingly powerful, and 
 Gifford soon found that by pleasing him he could in all likelihood 
 succeed in attaining almost any position to which in reason he 
 might aspire. 
 
 This view was fully indorsed by Eldon Clyde, of whom our 
 hero took an early opportunity of 4 making a confidant. 
 
 " Ingott," said he, "is one of the smartest men in America. 
 People talk against him, it is true : success always invites cal 
 umny. I ve found him fair-dealing enough. However, it s only 
 right to say that he would not dare attempt to overreach me ; so 
 that I may not be the best judge. He is very rich. That s be 
 yond question. As to Gollop, he s a coarse, illiterate fellow ; but 
 highly useful to Ingott, and completely tinder his thumb. Doke 
 is an infernal rascal, and can do everything he says he can. He 
 certainly seems a rough customer, but he has the ear of influen 
 tial men, and they ll go far to carry out his plans. When fifty 
 thousand people have votes which they cast without having in 
 telligence enough to know what for, middle-men like Doke be 
 come political necessities. Only one caution I d give you, and 
 that is not to trust him with too much money. As to running 
 for office, the time is unfavorable just at present to prepare for 
 such a thing. I recommend you to study the board carefully, 
 and to wait a few months, when I can be of some service to you 
 myself." 
 
 Thus encouraged, Hugh had no hesitation in embarking in 
 other- of Ingott s schemes of a larger character, and was equally 
 prosperous in all, for the man s cunning was of no ordinary kind. 
 His whole soul was wrapped up in the pursuit of dollars, and he 
 had lived fifty years in the chase ; so that long experience whet 
 ted his natural instincts to an almost unerring certainty in the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 373 
 
 overtaking of his game. Why he should admit others to share 
 in spoil which he might easily monopolize, was not veiy appar 
 ent. But this belonged to a class of considerations which par 
 ticipants in spoil are very ready to overlook. So Hugh waxed 
 richer and richer, and troubled himself not at all with Mr. Ingott s 
 motives. 
 
 Meanwhile he was subjected to temptation of another sort, in 
 the beautiful person and fascinating manners of Edith Parapet. 
 That this aristocratic young lady would have repelled the idea 
 of marrying any person of an unknoAvn or humble family, 
 whether rich or poor, is most true. But she was excessively 
 pleased with Hugh Gifford; and, perhaps, a tacit belief that 
 such a consummation was quite out of the question, made her 
 less cautious than she otherwise would have been. I have said 
 she was handsome, with a tall, exquisitely moulded figure not 
 like Marian s, there was not one in ten thousand that was but 
 still uncommonly fine ; a delicate aquiline nose, arching brows, 
 coral lips curved like Diana s bow, and hands and feet which were 
 perfect studies. 
 
 Yet it was not physical attractions alone which constituted 
 Edith s charm. There was a loftiness in her mien which, with 
 out giving the least idea of personal vanity, and so being in that 
 sense offensive, made her condescension marvellously gracious 
 and winning. Her accomplishments were many, and could be 
 judiciously employed ; but neither they nor her beautiful person 
 had half the power of her manner when she chose. 
 
 Now, she had been accustomed to find this particular weapon 
 quite irresistible ; and it was not strange on coming in contact 
 with the good-looking, unequivocally well-bred, but as unequi 
 vocally reserved, Hugh Gifford, that she should in time be 
 tempted to experiment to see if he were really so unimpression 
 able as he seemed. And Hugh, perceiving those all but imper 
 ceptible distinctions, those incipient, half-blown coquetries that 
 a lady of high degree can show to a man of sensitive nature and 
 quick perceptions, without then* being in the least observable to 
 the rest of the world, would have been more or less than mortal 
 not to have enjoyed them. It was a sort of flirtation which goes 
 on more frequently among refined people than the world is 
 aware of far more frequently than the sort which it is much 
 readier to impute, and freer to censure. 
 
 There was not a spark of intentional disloyalty to Marian 
 in Hugh s breast. But the flattery of a beautiful and distin 
 guished woman s preference assailed him in his weakest moments. 
 It came upon him when wealth had purchased adultation, and 
 
374 MARIAN ROOKE; OB, 
 
 idleness had encouraged dissipation ; when his egotism was 
 puffed by the worthless paeans of the sordid and the vulgar, and 
 his self-respect was belittled by a secret, but ever present, sense 
 of un worthiness by a sense of being false to a sacred trust, and 
 hiding away his talent in a napkin. Still, he had no not the 
 least notion of infidelity. His acquaintance with the family of 
 the Parapets had commenced before he had discovered Marian, 
 and it merely continued afterwards as it had been before. It 
 never occurred to Hugh at least not for a long time that the 
 pleasure he found in the society of Edith was in any degree pur 
 chased at the expense of his duty to Marian. 
 
 Unhappily, both Edith and GifFord had qualities which were 
 very much admired in an aesthetic sense by the other. They 
 loved to linger near one another, as one lingers near a fine pic 
 ture or piece of sculpture, and with as little sense of being 
 harmed thereby. But the harm was there, nevertheless, and 
 threatened to break forth by-and-by to the misery of all con 
 cerned. 
 
 The pair were seen together at the opera, at concerts, in the 
 park, walking in. Fifth Avenue, or in other fashionable resorts. 
 They were seen too often to escape comment, and after a while 
 the world began to draw its inferences. However, Mrs. Parapet 
 was so generally present upon these occasions, and the Parapets 
 were, as a rule, so studious to avoid being conspicuous, that re 
 mark was not so swift in spreading through the community as it 
 might otherwise have been. 
 
 Pending such inauspicious rumors, there was one day con 
 vened a solemn conclave in the Wall Street office of Messrs. 
 Ingott and Gollop. Mr. Salathiel Doke was present, and joined 
 in the deliberations. The meeting lasted for an hour or more, 
 and broke up with the emphatic statement of Mr. Gollop, con 
 fidently expressed, after hearing all the others had to say on the 
 subject under discussion, " You kin bet yer life that to be a Con 
 gressman s his bait !" 
 
 In the afternoon, Mr. Ingott waited upon Gifford at his house, 
 and unfolded the fact that he was- going to confer upon that 
 gentleman a greater proof of his goodwill than ever before : that 
 is to say, it was open to him to accept or not ; but he should 
 have the opportunity of electing. The truth was, that Ingott 
 and Gollop had just entered into a gigantic contract with the 
 State Government, which was absolutely certain to clear for the 
 contractors a profit of no less than five millions of dollars in less 
 than two years. One-eighth of this enterprise Messrs. Ingott 
 and Gollop were willing to allot to Hugh on so simple a con- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 375 
 
 dition that it amounted to a positive gift. This was merely the 
 filling of a bond in the extent of 250,000, which was one- 
 quarter of the security they were obliged to give. The sum 
 was large, but it would be no inconvenience, since the authori 
 ties would accept Gifford s bond without any transfer or tying- 
 up of property ; and if he objected, it was all the s^rne, as Mr. 
 Ingott s only wish was to do his friend a great service. More 
 over, his connection with the affair would be a material advan 
 tage in respect to his political prospects. 
 
 A man who had made his fortune by hard work, or who had 
 not doubled it when made by preposterous luck, would have 
 hesitated over this proposition, and declined it. Not so our hero, 
 who only saw in the scheme a fresh stride, whereby he wa$ to 
 become four times as rich as when he came to the great city. 
 Twenty-four hours later saw him become, practically speaking, a 
 silent partner in the house of Ingott and Gollop, entitled to one- 
 eighth of their profits responsible for one-eighth of their losses. 
 If he had only been wise enough to put his eggs in different 
 baskets! But it is not alone "The wisdom of the Giaour" 
 which " cometh after the catastrophe 1" 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " MY dear Edith," said Mrs. Parapet, as they rolled in their 
 stately carnage through the wide avenues of the Park, "what 
 now that you have had such good opportunities for judging 
 what do you think of Mr. Gilford?" 
 
 "Think of him?" 
 
 " Do you think him clear-sighted, discreet, sagacious or 
 should you esteem him obtuse, frivolous, conceited ?" 
 
 "Good heavens Dear mamma, are you jesting? Surely 
 you cannot for an instant suppose that any one could apply these 
 latter epithets to Hugh Gilford?" 
 
 " But the former ?" 
 
 " Most persons, I should say, would credit him for having an 
 uncommonly good head for his years. But really one can 
 scarcely tell. Men are so deceptive ; and I have seen so very 
 little of him " 
 
 " Little of him ! Let me see ; he came from Europe, I think, 
 some tune in September. It is now past the holidays, although, 
 
S7G MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 with so little, snow, it certainly seems incredible. After buying 
 his house, he spent a few weeks in travel. Since his return, 
 there may have been many days when he has not been at the 
 house, but I cannot recall more than half-a-dozen !" 
 
 " He has been much with Clinton," said Miss Parapet, playing 
 with the tassel of her parasol with a delicately gloved hand, 
 " and, doubtless, has been in the house very frequently when I, 
 have not seen him." 
 
 "Your papa is much pleased with his report, apropos of little 
 Dimity. He thinks Clinton is only amusing himself after all. 
 Dangerous sport, perhaps ! But better so than to be frightfully 
 in earnest." 
 
 " Unquestionably !" 
 
 "Nothing could be so dreadful as for him to compromise him 
 self in such a manner. Of course they re very rich ; but what 
 are riches in our eyes?" 
 
 A responsive curl wreathed the aristocratic lips of Edith, 
 which was observed by her mamma with anxious satisfaction. 
 
 " You quite agree, my love, that no considerations of money 
 could, or should, reconcile us to what would be otherwise a 
 mesalliance T 
 
 " Most certainly." 
 
 "Ah, Edith, I am so glad to hear you say so." 
 
 Edith looked surprised. " Did you ever hear me express 
 myself otherwise?" 
 
 "Not in terms, my dear, assuredly." 
 
 < By implication, then?" 
 
 "It is not quite easy to answer that question." 
 
 " Not quite easy ?" 
 
 "Since different constructions may more readily be put upon 
 actions, in such matters, than upon words." 
 
 " Positively, mamma, you re quite like a Delphic prophetess 
 to-day. I really wish you d think proper to explain your 
 self!" 
 
 They had passed Gifford and Clinton Parapet a few minutes 
 before, and the manner in which Edith had received the former s 
 profound salutation had been the cue to the mother s discourse. 
 Hugh was looking remarkably handsome, and his bow had 
 brought a peculiar carnation to the cheek of the proud girl be 
 side her, which a score of obeisances from as many different 
 cavaliers, since their carriage entered the Park, had collectively 
 failed to produce. It was natural that Mrs. Parapet s anixety 
 should threaten to get the better of her prudence when she thus 
 marked the outward and visible sign of what she had, for some 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTCNE. 377 
 
 weeks, with maternal apprehension, suspected ; natural even that 
 it should make her indifferent for the time to the admiration 
 freely bestowed on the Parapet vehicle from a hundred rolling 
 equipages as they flashed by ; admiration of which the mamma 
 received her full share as she sat there wrapped in costly furs, 
 and looking infinitely more like Edith s sister than her parent. 
 
 My confidence in my dear Edith s tact," said the lady, after 
 a diplomatic pause, " her discretion, and, above all, in her just 
 regard for the family position and name, have been so implicit 
 that I feel I ought to apologize even to a child before alluding 
 to what might appeal* to be a temporary forgetfulness of 
 either." 
 
 " I am quite at a loss, dear mamma," returned Edith, in the 
 impenetrable manner she knew so well how to assume, " to ap 
 prehend your meaning." 
 
 "We were speaking of Clinton, you know, my love, and of 
 our fears lest he should compromise himself, or the family." 
 
 And I understood you to convey the hope that, on the 
 whole, those fears were unfounded." 
 
 " So far as your brother is concerned, dear Edith, your papa 
 thinks that is, Mr. Gifford thinks, and your papa accepts his 
 opinion that they are quite so." 
 
 "Well, dear mamma, as we were quite agreed about the 
 nature of the emergency, quite in accord as to its essentially ob 
 jectionable character, and quite ready to congratulate each other 
 that the danger is not so imminent as we supposed, I really 
 don t see why you should apologize to me or any one else for so 
 doing!" 
 
 A trace of vexation passed over Mrs. Parapet s face, but it 
 passed very quickly, and left behind her most polished smile. 
 
 "I am not quite clear," she resumed, after a moment s reflec 
 tion, " that Clinton and Mr. Gifford have been doing ea^h other 
 much good of late." 
 
 "Indeed !" 
 
 "At first we were well pleased that so cultivated a young man, 
 one so free from the dissipations young men now-a-days are so apt to 
 indulge in. should be Clinton s associate. But I have a suspicion 
 that of late they have been encouraging each other in wildness 
 rather than in self-restraint." 
 
 "We have seen no great proofs of it, surely. New York is so 
 ready to chatter about men without regular employment. It is 
 the vengeance taken by the mass who have no leisure upon the 
 few r who have." 
 
 "In any case," continued Mrs. Parapet airily, "it can make 
 
378 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 no particular difference, since Mr. Gifford s reform, if needed, will 
 be likely to follow swiftly on the heels of his transgression." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 "You haven t heard, then ? Do you remember a Mr. Riving- 
 stone, connected with the Rivingstones, you know, only he lived 
 many years in the South ; an old friend of your papa s, too, by the 
 way " 
 
 " Pray what has Mr. Rivingstone to do with Mr. Gifford, or 
 his affairs ?" 
 
 " Very much, since the latter gentleman is to marry his ward." 
 
 "Mr. -Gifford marry !" 
 
 " Why not ? He s eligible, isn t he ? Do you know of any 
 lawful bar or impediment ? No ! Very well then, Mr. Gifford 
 is to marry old Mr. Rivingstone s ward. That Southern girl, the 
 brunette, who was so much admired at the Egremonts ; she is 
 our young friend ajiancec" 
 
 Edith made a great effort, for the occasion called for it. The 
 news came upon her with the suddenness of a thunder clap. No 
 one who might have taken pleasure in being its bearer, through 
 possible suspicion of its being unwelcome, had happened to en 
 counter her since it had been whispered in society, so that the 
 rumor even was absolutely unexpected. Mrs. Parapet leaned 
 quietly back in the seat, surveying Edith s face much as the man 
 ager of an electrical machine studies those of his victims when 
 he is turning on the power. The lips grew a little white and 
 tremulous, and the carnation slowly faded away; but the proud 
 sparkle of the eye was there, the sparkle which tells of the effort 
 the will is making to retain the appearance of self-possession. 
 
 " I don t believe it," said Edith, quietly. 
 
 Her mother smiled. She knew her daughter perfectly, and 
 was watching the processes of her mind with appreciative sa 
 gacity. 
 
 "Pardon me, my dear child, but there can be no doubt as to 
 the fact. And you will forgive me if I add that I am not sorry 
 for it." 
 
 " You mean, of course, on account of his own and of Clinton s 
 habits ? So am I if it be true, but how do you know it to be 
 so 1" 
 
 Her voice was so steady now, her manner so assured, that 
 Mrs. Parapet looked at her just an instant with some alarm. 
 
 " Surely you have no reason to know it is otherwise ?" 
 
 " Not exactly," replied Edith, trying to smile in turn ; "yet 
 it is at least improbable that a man of his years should have vis- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 379 
 
 ited so frequently in a family and made no mention of a fact so 
 intimately connected with his happiness and his future prospects." 
 
 4k There are circumstances in which such mention is precisely 
 the last thing to be expected of a man. I only trust Mr. Gifford s 
 reticence is not connected with the worst possible cause for it." 
 
 "You continue to puzzle me, dear mamma." 
 
 " But if no one complains, I suppose we must of course acquit 
 him. The wedding is not to take place until next autumn, I 
 hear. You do not seem interested in our friend s engagement, 
 my love ?" 
 
 "I simply disbelieve in its existence." 
 
 "As to that, you may be readily convinced. Lewis, Mrs. 
 Cranstoun s carriage is stopping in the square, this side of the 
 Circular Drive. Go to it." 
 
 The coachman touched his hat, and Edith turned pale again at 
 the confident tone with which her mother promised corroboration. 
 In a few moments the vehicles were side by side. Mrs. Cran- 
 stoun was speaking with some shadowy young ladies, of an un 
 certain age, in a brougham. The Misses Drieiiy in fact ; people 
 of a respectable but bigoted Kew England family, famous for 
 their bitter prejudices, their curious egotism, their worship for 
 the head of their family, a litterateur, whom they consoled for the 
 indifference of the world by affecting to think him a demi-god, 
 and for their pertinacious efforts to insinuate themselves into 
 society which either was, or which was reputed to be, above that 
 of then* own proper degree. The Parapets had no knoweldge of 
 the Drierly start her than was implied by the most distant of bows, 
 and had never visited or been visited by them. But, although 
 Mrs. Cranstoun, who knew them better, had said adieu before the 
 Parapet equipage drove up, they made some m ysterious excuse 
 for remaining on the other side of her carriage, that even such 
 an indirect evidence of acquaintanceship with the Parapets might 
 not be lost upon the passing world. 
 
 " Good morning, my dear Mrs. Cranstoun. I have taken the 
 liberty, perceiving you had stopped, to detain you for a moment 
 to ask for the health of our dear Julia." 
 
 " A thousand thanks, dear Mrs. Parapet ; you are always 
 kind. She is scarcely as well to-day, although the weather is so 
 fine. She is delicate at best, poor thing. Xo^ like Miss Parapet, 
 who has the strength as well as the bloom of the wild rose." 
 
 " Our family are fortunate in point of health, certainly ; but it 
 is not always the healthiest who last the longest." 
 
 " I dare say, when my dear Julia gets older, she may improve. 
 
380 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Doctor Nott*says the constitution is scarcely set before four or 
 five anel twenty." 
 
 "To be sure. How many people are driving, are there 
 not ?" 
 
 " A vast number. The weather is uncommonly mild for the 
 season." 
 
 "Remarkably so. A friend of ours Mr. Rivingstone who 
 has been much in the South, was observing that it is nearly as 
 temperate thus far as a winter at New Orleans. Not a chance 
 for skating ye,t on the lakes." 
 
 " Mr. Rivingstone ! I had the pleasure of receiving a call 
 from him a day or two since." 
 
 " Indeed. Most amiable and gentlemanly person, is he not ? 
 How odd that he should never have married. He is quite with 
 out a family." 
 
 "Not strictly," said Mrs. Cranstoun, in the pride of superior 
 knowledge ; "he lives with a sister, you know." 
 
 " Ah, to be sure ; I know the sister." 
 
 " And then there s his ward," pursued the other lady, in a tone 
 expressive of a conviction that this piece of information, at least, 
 was not held in common ; " his ward, from the South, a fine girl, 
 although rather too dark for my taste." 
 
 " I saw her at the Egremonts, now you mention it. Beautiful 
 eyes and teeth, has she not?" 
 
 "Y-es," admitted Mrs. Cranstoun, grudgingly, for these were 
 neither of them strong points with Julia, poor girl. " But dark, 
 almost like a quadroon. By-the-bye, it s half a secret, but she s 
 engaged to a friend of yours." 
 
 " So says rumor ; but I think it rather doubtful." 
 
 " By no means ; I questioned Mr. Rivingstone particularly ; 
 and, although he was a little evasive, and said they did not care 
 to give needless publicity to the fact, he admitted definitely that 
 it was one." 
 
 " Ah, that puts it beyond question, I suppose." 
 
 "Entirely. He s so very scrupulous; so cautious a person is 
 Mr. Rivingstone. So, we ll consider what I repeat as entre nous, 
 please." 
 
 " I shall congratulate Mr. Gifford when I see him, may I 
 not?" 
 
 " Not on my authority, if you ll oblige me, although it s quite 
 true. She s very charming, no doubt. At the same time 1 be 
 lieve entirely without fortune, and no one ever heard of her be 
 fore ; quite an obscure name, as one may say. He might have 
 done better, dear Mrs. Parapet." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 381 
 
 " Very likely ; still, we must permit him to judge for himself. 
 Thanks ; my love to dear Julia, and good morning, dear Mrs. 
 Cranstoun." 
 
 And, with a repetition of adieux, the vehicles separated, leav 
 ing the Drierly brougham in doubt whether to foUow the Cran 
 stoun coupe or the Parapet barouche. 
 
 "Now, dear Edith," said Mrs. Parapet, sweetly, "I have 
 driven as much as I care to drive for the day, have no calls to 
 make, and am therefore entirely at your service. So if you 
 choose to give Lewis your orders, pray do so." 
 
 The coachman turned a respectful ear and took them. They 
 were very intelligible, if very laconic ; being comprised in the 
 single monosyDable, " Home." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IT is an unfortunate peculiarity about New York society that 
 it affords little or no occupation in the hours of daylight. There 
 are, to be sure, such things as morning calls to be paid there as 
 well as elsewhere, but, in general, they are little indulged in save 
 among the indubitable Parapets ; and where a community is so 
 exclusively commercial where men who are not in counting- 
 houses or offices of a morning are regarded for the most part 
 with undisguised suspicion where the majority of ladies devote 
 themselves at such times to pursuits whereon masculine intrusion 
 is least agreeable the incitements to such social amenities are at 
 their minimum. 
 
 But the resources which suggest themselves to the mind, and 
 which, in older cities, are lavishly supplied in the shape of art 
 galleries, museums, reading-rooms, ancient architecture, morn 
 ing concerts, suburban excursions and other pastimes, commonly 
 open to the middle class stranger sojourning in Europe, are as 
 yet in a callow or infantile state in the Tyre of the West. Truly 
 there are attempts in these directions which will occur to the 
 critical Tyrian himself ; but they are not such as a traveller can 
 acknowledge to even approach the old world achievements in the 
 same way. 
 
 Under these circumstances, people who are unfortunate enough 
 to have leisure in New York are rather put to their trumps how 
 to dispose of it ; and wealthy American youth, or, for that mat- 
 
382 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 ter, idlers of any age or condition, are sadly apt to have recourse 
 to expedients which are the reverse of profitable or edifying. 
 In the first place, by a process familiar to ethical analysts, leis 
 ure itself being commonly voted a crime, the unhappy possessors 
 thereof are constantly impelled to verify the imputation. In the 
 second, by an equally natural provision flowing from the pre 
 sumed moral status of idlers, the net- weavers or caterers of 
 pleasure prepare what their experience teaches are the most fas 
 cinating and profitable of dainties. That is to say, daylight 
 leisure in New York is chiefly devoted to lounging in hotels, 
 playing billiards, smoking cigars, drinking drams, and driving 
 trotting-horses. 
 
 Hugh Giftbrd came upon the scene with unusual social advan 
 tages ; and, when it is said that even he, with his prudence, his 
 dislike of low vice, and his honorable ambition, began, after a 
 season, to incline overmuch towards these time-killers, the force 
 of the impulsion may be fairly estimated. It is true, that he came 
 too easily by his money to rightly measure the value of time ; also 
 true, that he was dissatisfied with the state of his relations with 
 Marian; but inexperience and discontent together would not 
 have led him into the sort of dissipation he now affected ; it was 
 because all other men of leisure affected the same, .and because 
 there was no other. 
 
 When the social condition is such, that wealthy young men 
 have no spurs of conscience to remind them of a duty to the 
 State, and when there is little social consideration to be gained 
 by work which their gold has not already purchased without it, 
 it is not a matter of surprise that efforts should not be made 
 which point to nothing^-not strange that aimless frivolity should 
 take the place of useful ambition. 
 
 I am not writing an essay to prove the advantage of heredi 
 tary aristocracy, which would be, at least for many readers, "to 
 assert what they have never seen denied, and distinguish what 
 they are in no danger of confounding;" and would willingly 
 escape, if possible, the censure Hallam passed upon Tasso. I 
 mean simply to convey the idea that Hugh Gifford, a rich young 
 man in the great western metropolis, being beyond the necessity 
 for labor, and sickened almost beyond measure by glimpses of 
 the political paths to distinction pointed out by the crafty-mind 
 ed Doke, fell into ways he would gladly have avoided had any 
 others presented themselves. 
 
 Let us, if we can, eschew cant of all sorts. Let us acknowl 
 edge the good in democracy, manhood suffrage, free soil, free 
 trade, and, in the reasonable limits of decency and taste, free 
 
THE QUEST FOK FORTUNE. 383 
 
 speech as well : in which enjoyment, let us declare that, because 
 all men vote, does not necessitate either a social or a political 
 Utopia ; its advantages may be many, but it niaketh us not as 
 gods that we worship the rabble and crown it king. Moreover, 
 since free speech is the text of the niomont, let me put upon 
 record, ere it slip my memory, that the man who swears loudest 
 there is no Salathiel Doke, is surely he who most employs and 
 profits by him. 
 
 Hugh did not altogether abandon his political projects. He 
 held the whole scheme under advisement. Mr. Clyde had gone 
 into the interior of the State to arrange the machinery of a com 
 ing election. He would soon return, and then our hero would 
 seek his advice, and, perhaps, abide by it. There was certainly 
 one thing about Eldon Clyde s advice which made it rather dif 
 ferent from other people s, which was, that in most cases he 
 could back it up if he liked by insuring success in the path he 
 counselled. Pending his rural wanderings, Clinton and Hugh 
 were killing time together. 
 
 Clinton, assailed by father, mother, and friend together, had 
 made oath that he really was not in love with Flora Dimity. If 
 it would afford them any satisfaction, he would give up driving 
 her in the park, most certainly. It had been merely a harmless 
 attention on his part, and he Avas quite confident the young lady 
 herself had not misconstrued it. She was a good partner, waltz 
 ed nicely, altogether a pretty, lively girl, full of vivacity the 
 most attractive blonde he had ever seen in fact but as to any 
 thing serious, tut ! he had never thought of such a thing. 
 
 The truth was, Clinton had a hereditary aversion from being 
 bored, and bored he knew he would infallibly be, were he to 
 make any other professions, adopt any other policy respecting 
 Flora Dimity, than those he avowed. But a close observer 
 would have soon detected in the young gentleman marks of dis 
 quietude. He began to smoke cigars of a morning, and omi 
 nous symptom of a perturbed soul ! to drink champagne cock 
 tails. He also took long drives into the country, now crossing 
 by the ferries and penetrating into Long Island, and now plung 
 ing northward until he had left Harlem and King s Bridge far 
 behind. .Both he and Hugh Gifford were in capital frame of 
 mind to encourage each other in folly and they did so. 
 
 " You see, my dear fellow," said Clinton, with that ready 
 employment of commonplaces men often display when some 
 thing out of the common has dictated their action ; "you see 
 why it is we travel ; there s really nothing for it here but to 
 drink, smoke, play billiards, and drive fast horses. The women 
 
384 MARIAN ROOKE J OR, 
 
 are charming, of course ; but since to be out of your cage of a 
 morning is a sign of bankruptcy, or something worse, they don t 
 care to harbor us by daylight. We have an afternoon drive in 
 the park ; we have dinner and a cigar at the clubs ; a soapcon too 
 much en bourgeoise perhaps ; a lounge at the opera ; all very well 
 from four to twelve, but that s only eight hours out of the twen 
 ty-four." 
 
 " Why not get up an Idler s Club," suggested Gilford, puffing 
 lazily at his havana, " to reduce the art of doing nothing to the 
 most exquisite and symmetrical practice ? No one to be admit 
 ted of whom it can be proved that he has, or is ever likely to 
 have, any thing whatever to do. You d make a capital president, 
 and I think I could draw up a very good set of by-laws." 
 
 "The most emphatic of which," said Clinton, pursuing the 
 idea, " should be that no one in trade should, under any possible 
 pretext, be admitted." 
 
 "Nay, such a prohibition must not be pronounced, not expli 
 citly in terms, that is. It would be included in the comprehen 
 sive generality of having something to do. To have such a clause 
 literally set forth in so democratic a community, were to invert 
 the object of the association, and to give us speedily something to 
 do with a vengeance." 
 
 " True, true. The republican gorge riseth at the notion of 
 dignified ease, as does that of the fiend at the sacred water. It 
 might be well, to insure quiet, to aifect that we were engaged in 
 some most arduous and exacting toils." 
 
 "Seeking the Philosopher s Stone, for example." 
 
 " Our countrymen would not believe that capital was invested 
 in so unpractical an object, and it would rouse their suspicions." 
 
 " The object being for the sake of lucre !" 
 
 " The goal is well enough, but the path to it would excite 
 distrust. Better some new device for making cloth without cot 
 ton walls without mortar bricks without straw." 
 
 " Or scholars by steam, without the drudgery of a curriculum. 
 Why waste years in laborious accumulation, when an active pis 
 ton may thrust in the whole mass in a twinkling ?" 
 
 " Such a machine would be useful in many ways, as in the 
 manufacture of statesmen and diplomatists, seeing that as we 
 change them every four years, a large supply ought properly to 
 be kept on hand." 
 
 "Jene vois pas lo necessite" said Hugh, recurring bitterly to his 
 lengthy experience. "The candidates have need of long purses 
 rather than of any other qualifications ; and my friend, Mr. Doke, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 385 
 
 is as efficacious as any patent machine could be in filling the 
 niches when occasion serves." 
 
 I m rather surprised that any one should give himself the 
 trouble," returned Clinton ; " but every one to his taste." 
 
 " < "Tishis vocation, Hal. He makes public servants to order 
 for so many dollars a piece, as Mr. Dimity no offence sells bom 
 bazine, or as the Optimist murders reputations, all in the way oi 
 business." 
 
 " Heaven keep him still in that mind, then, since it saves a 
 world of labor to the Parapets ! " 
 
 "Exactly. The Parapets rust that Dokes may shine ; and 
 the latter, instead of being grateful, are for ever abusing even 
 your very shadows. They revile in the same breath that they 
 vow you are mythical. They reign through a species of indolent 
 sufferance, whilst they swear to the people it is by divine right." 
 
 " Let them swear what they like, and the people choose to be 
 lieve," quoth Clinton, indolently; "so they leave us alone. 
 There is one thing which troubles me sorely just now, a thing 
 which you may have forgotten there is no opera to-night." 
 
 "No opera !" 
 
 " Ergo, there is nothing to do. There is no ball, no party to 
 fill up the blank, save the conversazione at those appalling Drierlys. 
 We voted, you remember, that nothing but brute force should 
 drag us thither ; and what remains ?" 
 
 "One of the theatres perhaps." 
 
 " Irish comedy for pit and gallery ; Irish farce for pit and gal 
 lery ; Irish stuffed stick, lilt, broken hat, tail of my coat, virtuous 
 maid, broth of a boy, cruel agent of absentee landlord, beast of 
 an English officer, who knows how to read and write and has 
 clean hands, insults virtuous maid, and is knocked down by stuffed 
 stick and broth of a boy for pit and gallery ! Faugh ! The thing 
 is beyond measure offensive, preposterous, and untruthful." 
 
 " But all the theatres don t do Irish pieces." 
 
 "Too many of them do. Your friend Doke s constituency is 
 heavy. The exceptions are scarcely more inviting ; high comedy, 
 with uneducated counter-jumpers trying to ape the fine gentle 
 man ; over-dressed Heb rews, with bushels of hair and tons of 
 jewelry for jeunes premieres ; and peacock- voiced women, buried 
 in finery for every character, no matter how incongruous, with 
 manners like those of a dissipated governess, for fineladies. Why, 
 these people have not the remotest idea, the faintest, how the 
 beings walk, talk, dress, think, or feel, they conceive themselves 
 to be imitating !" 
 
 "But if their audiences have no better, what harm ?" 
 
 17- 
 
386 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 "Ah, that indeed ! But you ll observe such a fact makes the 
 exhibition rather more, than less, distasteful to any accidental ex 
 ception. We have no national comedy, nor shall we have yet 
 awhile." 
 
 "There are no national standards I mean in the way of so 
 ciety except the Parapets, and they cannot well be copied if they 
 are never seen." 
 
 u Ah, but if they were seen, the people would not care for the 
 example. The mass cares not to reproduce that which does not 
 reflect itself. By and by, with the attrition of years and the cos 
 mopolitan taste which comes with a maturer civilization, things 
 may change. Not now." 
 
 "But we may eschew Thalia for Melpomene." 
 
 "Better, but still objectionable. The ideal of Tragedy is 
 represented by the neck and lungs of Taurus bellowing ultra- 
 isms about the glory of ignorance. Dignity, pathos, hatred, 
 despair, must be depicted as the lowest types of mankind would 
 express or try to express them, else they reach not the popular 
 heart. There can be no school where the artist works down to 
 a level, and never up to one." 
 
 " Alas! we exc^l in nothing, then, it would seem." 
 
 "Oh dear, yes. In industry, invention, enterprise, all that 
 goes to make up a rapid national growth, do we not? But 
 scarcely in matters aesthetic, social grace, art, and so on. In 
 these we are yet in our infancy, and perhaps it is well we are 
 so; since the energies of the nation being directed to that which 
 is more immediately practical and necessary, accomplish the 
 more through being undivided." 
 
 " Assuming this to be true, it is very unfortunate that it 
 should be so hazardous to say it. The burthen of our universal 
 song, briefly speaking, is brag ; and who interrupts the chorus 
 is beaten for his pains. Alas ! that democracies should be more 
 ready to stone their prophets than despotisms !" 
 
 "And yet what more natural? Since, where all are equally 
 powerful and equally responsible, the self-love of each is wounded 
 by the suggestion of a national weakness or deficiency : it is not 
 the philosopher but the ignoramus who writhes under such a 
 stigma. Foreigners continually marvel at the Americans being, 
 as they say, so thin-skinned, piquing themselves in the same 
 breath for being so pachydermatous, and forgetting that the sus 
 ceptibility to improvement is implied by the one, and the con 
 trary by the other." 
 
 " But if, as you admit, we stone our prophets " 
 
 " Ay, but we never forget what they say ! A glorious conso- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 387 
 
 lation to existing or intending martyrs, without which, perhaps, 
 there would be no new ones." 
 
 " Apropos, they tell me the Drierlys invariably cage all the 
 Wise Men of the East who may happen to be running at large, 
 to give eclat to their shows ; since you can t stand the poor his- 
 trions, what say you to being bored for an hour and trying the 
 magi ?" 
 
 " Agreed ; on one condition." 
 
 " Which is " 
 
 "That we really do come away in an hour. That delightful 
 mixture of Puritanism, mutual admiration, provincialism, and 
 Mrs. Grundyism becomes rather exhausting after sixty minutes. 
 Besides, we are not in the highest favor, you must know." 
 
 " And why not, pray?" 
 
 " Simply that nothing can induce Mrs. or Miss Parapet to 
 darken the Drkrly doors, notwithstanding their quasi-literary 
 position. Of course, they re not in our set, and equally of 
 course, liberal folk overlook punctilio in the cases of clever 
 writers. But there is something in the Drierly atmosphere 
 which the female Parapet, however graciously entreated, abso 
 lutely declines to breathe ; so that the males, albeit courteously 
 received, are, in a manner, accepted under protest." 
 
 "I see. These gentry are parvenus like myself; but, unlike 
 myself, wish to manoevre their way to circles where they are 
 not quite wanted." 
 
 "It might be too harsh to say that; but I fear they would 
 prefer to be uncomfortable in such than at ease where better 
 known. The way of the world ; only I suppose more con 
 spicuous here because of the absence of nominal or legal social 
 distinctions, so that the incongruity between profession and 
 practice looks sharper by contrast. None will insist more elo 
 quently than the Drierlys on democratic equality ; they affect 
 to despise a stray Englishman who happens to bear a title 
 through no fault of his own ; and yet almost their whole lives 
 are passed in a bitter struggle for access to strata of society 
 they think better or higher in general repute than that they 
 now flourish in." 
 
 "Ah, you are jealous because they have what you are so de 
 ficient in a laudable ambition!" 
 
 " I will present you as their champion ! Being, like them 
 selves, born and bred in New England, they will receive you 
 with open arms !" 
 
 ; That will scarcely be consistent with their character, as 
 you draw it, when they learn the obscurity of my origin." 
 
388 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " Tut, man ! that is where their democracy comes in ; the 
 obscurity of your origin would doubtless be damnatory but for 
 the extenuating circumstances. They certainly wouldn t see 
 you but for those. But the Drierlys are too democratic to look 
 fororigin when the obscure one stands in a halo such as yours. 
 * A man s a man for a that, invariably with them when he s 
 rich and keeps a carriage /" 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE Drierlys were a peculiar family. Generally speaking, the 
 impression they made on the mind of a stranger was that they 
 were very bigoted, very provincial, very well educated in veiy 
 narrow limits, very ambitious in a social point of view, and very 
 conceited. Physically, they were very much alike, so that there 
 was always some doubt about telling one from another. They 
 were skinny, sallow, with hair of feeble whity-brown, and color 
 less eyes, and were each and all of a semi-diaphanous character, 
 so that for one of the family to melt slowly away before your 
 eyes would hardly have excited your astonishment or consterna 
 tion. 
 
 The Drierlys were also remarkable people politically. They 
 came originally from New England, and indeed always seemed 
 out of their element in New York. They combined, in a very 
 happy manner, the Puritanic and the literary character the 
 strange mingling of asceticism and belles-lettres, the yearning for 
 intellectual flesh-pots with a morbid regard for appearances 
 which grows indigenously in i^e atmosphere of Boston. Pro 
 fessedly, they were ardent democrats, and advocated strenuously 
 a levelling process to be applied to all above them ; whilst all 
 below they wished to be vigorously kept at a distance. Thus 
 they positively loathed the presumed assumption of the Parapets ; 
 but they had rather take serpents into then* houses than people 
 with less money or inferior social position than their own. 
 
 A Drierly, if questioned on the point, would have professed to 
 be a cosmopolitan. America was the country which opened its 
 arms to all races and conditions of men ; all were welcome, for 
 all mankind were brothers. Unhappily this proved, upon close 
 investigation, to be merely a theoretical fraternity : for the hatred 
 of the Drierlys for other nations was found to be of the nature 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 389 
 
 of an absorbing passion. Most especially they hated England ; 
 assuming, in all eases, that every Englishman they met v> as in 
 dividually responsible for every error in judgment or policy the 
 government of his country had ever committed. But then* aver 
 sion was tolerably comprehensive ; embracing all foreigners who 
 did not promptly declare that their own country was a hell and 
 America a heaven, of which the Drierlys were highly conspicu 
 ous and eminent ministering angels. 
 
 This charitable characteristic of the Drierlys, however, began 
 very fairly and handsomely at home. They disliked people of 
 their own country in proportion to their distance from themselves, 
 and opposed slavery rather because they hated slaveholders than 
 because they pitied the slaves. As their countrymen flourished 
 nearer and nearer to their own home, the animosity of the 
 Drierlys was slowly mitigated ; but it was only those of their 
 immediate set, circle, or clique that they regarded with unalloyed 
 approbation ; and to obtain this seal it was needful, as a rule, to 
 pay tribute of some sort to the family. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the sweetness and amiability of the 
 Drierlys as shown to those who, from their wealth or position, 
 could afford them a stepping-stone upward, and fortify their 
 worldly consideration ; except, indeed, the indifference, if not 
 bitterness, with which they treated those who might once have 
 served them, and could no longer do so. Such as were in this 
 unlucky category, most especially if the world had treated them 
 hardly, the Drierlys regaled with a mixture of acrimony and con 
 tempt refreshing to behold, and delicious to partake of. 
 
 The station claimed by the Drierlys rested upon somewhat 
 strange foundations, consisting mainly in certain dry and didac 
 tic lucubrations contributed to the literature of his country by the 
 head of the family some half a century before. These productions, 
 inoffensive and respectable enough in their way, were assuredly 
 of too bloodless and negative a type either to possess abiding in 
 fluence, or to justify the hope of a brilliant reputation. But from 
 the paucity of rivals, and the blamelessness of their author s 
 private life, people were willing to accord them higher consider 
 ation than his writings intrinsically deserved. It was not sur 
 prising that this element of kindly concession somehow escaped 
 the eye of the Drierlys, or that they cherished a profound con 
 viction that their illustrious relative had clearly won a wreath, 
 to which those of the greatest sages of the elder world were 
 but as dust and tinsel. 
 
 Personally, the old gentleman was not prepossessing, nor did 
 he, to appearance, bear his honors over meekly. He was of an 
 
390 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 austere presence, as if ever fearful of his state being infringed, 
 and, albeit a profusion of snowy hair and beard gave reverence 
 to his face, they did not give it benignity. He was reputed to 
 rule his household by no law of kindness, and to exact a species of 
 deference, if notof homage, which is worse than worthless, other 
 wise than as the freewill offering of love. When he stood by, no 
 dog was permitted to bark ; and any stranger who might be 
 caught smiling at what appeared, considering all things, a ludi 
 crous exaggeration, was cut, tabooed, ostracized, sent to Coven 
 try, clone anything to which the genius of the Drierlys could de 
 vise, or their malice compass. 
 
 Flowing from such a source, there was a flavor of solemn hum 
 bug in the mansion of the Drierlys, which inspired awe or ridi 
 cule according to the experience or susceptibility to the absurd 
 of the visitor. There was a pomp and circumstance which were 
 systematically tried on all new comers, and which were supposed 
 to be accepted as matters of course by those whom the family 
 patronized, or. in general, who were in a position to stand it. 
 For those, on the other hand, upon whom the display would make 
 no impression, and whom it was yet worth while to propitiate, 
 there was an affectation of overflow a gay, light-hearted, affec 
 tionate abandon which was marvellously effective ; that is to say, 
 with people who were deficient in that faculty so largely possessed 
 by Americans, a swiftness in detecting what is inconsistent with 
 common sense. 
 
 Mrs. Drierly was seldom seen, but, as has been before ob 
 served, the extraordinary resemblance which subsisted made it 
 really quite immaterial which of the feminine branches should 
 do the honors upon any given occasion. It was sure to be some 
 body who was peaked, thin-voiced, semi-transparent, well up in 
 the ologies, austere to inferiors, sycophantic to superiors, rev 
 erential to the head of the house, adroit as a stirrer up of lions, 
 intensely national in the Drierly sense, and n cordial hater of all 
 dissentients. 
 
 Thus, when Gifford and Clinton Parapet were ushered up from 
 the hall, they were met near the landing by a diaphanous Some 
 body who received them with pale affability, and a series of 
 courtesies expressive of profound welcome, such as was fitting 
 to the advent of a Millionaire and a Parapet. 
 
 u We are very gay to-night," said this ghostly Being, in an 
 acidulated and slightly nasal accent, " although promiscuous. 
 Talk has been lively. There are a good many ladies round. Pa 
 and Professor Sukkar have conferred on immortality. Pa is 
 speaking now. H-u-s-h !" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 391 
 
 This last monosyllable was directed to the servant who had 
 flung open the drawing-room door, through which a hollow 
 voice was heard, as from the tombs, discoursing within. 
 
 Man, then," pursued the Voice with that assurance which 
 indicates no fear of contradiction, kt will be precluded by no sub 
 terranean devices from asserting perennial spiritual elasticity ; 
 since, even if driven to estimate the subject with the eye of the 
 physicist, we shall find that by some occult and deeply myste 
 rious processes of percolation he shall divest himself of his 
 trammels, and soar into the empryean upon pinions devoid of 
 corporeal ponderosity!" 
 
 That s so," endorsed another voice near the door, in which 
 Hugh, to his amazement, recognized the tones of Mr. Doke. 
 
 " Misther Parapet and Misther Gifford !" announced the do 
 mestic, who had evidently been trained to watch for periods. 
 A buzz of admiration ran round the apartment at the imposing 
 names, and that general flutter succeeded among the Drierlys 
 and their adherents which always attended the arrival in their 
 circle of wealth and station. 
 
 "Ladies!" said the Head of the family, rising from his chair 
 of state, and standing in front of it, flanked by two large solar 
 lamps, which beamed upon him with quite a picturesque effect, 
 "ladies Mr. Parapet, Mr. Gifford. Gentlemen 4Ir. Par 
 apet Mr. Gifford. Mr. Parapet," he added, unctuously, "knows 
 full well how welcome he is here, and that whoever calls Mr. 
 Parapet friend is no less so. Many of you know Mr. Parapet : 
 Mrs. Camomile, Mrs. Cranstoun. Mrs. Dimity Mr. Parapet. 
 Some of you do not know Mr. Parapet : Miss Steelyard of Bos 
 ton, Miss Rooke, Miss Cranstoun, Miss Dimity Mr. Parapet, 
 Mr. Gifford. I beg pardon ! Miss Rosette P. Aloe, M.D., 
 Mr. Parapet, Mr. Gifford." 
 
 A profusion of bows and courtesies followed this partly super 
 fluous introduction. 
 
 Professor Sukkar of Heidelberg, the great Psychommetri- 
 cal Idealist Mr. Parapet, Mr. Gifford. Major Gollop, the 
 great capitalist and speculator ; Mr. Doke, the eminent politi 
 cian ; Mr. Moke, the far-famed abolitionist ; Mr. Coke, the cel 
 ebrated lawyer ; Mr. Prodder, the warbler of nature ; Mr. Jobb, 
 of the Post Office ; Mr. Schwindel, of the Custom House ; Mr. 
 Whiting Blobb, of the Centurion; Mr. Grindle of the Moon; etc., 
 etc. Mr Parapet, Mr. Gifford." 
 
 Mr. Drierly here sunk back exhausted into his chair, and our 
 two friends had time to glance comprehensively about the large 
 rooms, which communicated by a lofty arch, arid around which 
 
392 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 the company were gathered in a circle, or rather in an ellipse, 
 at the upper end of which was the Drierly dais. Scarcely, how 
 ever, had they seated themselves, when a little gentleman with 
 green glasses and no hair, who sat on the right of the host, 
 leaped spasmodically to his feet, and exclaimed : 
 
 " Penetrated wiz a lively sense of de greatness of dis glorious 
 country, even I, de poor exile, dus expatriated, must agree to 
 tank our world-famous patron for giving me opportunity to 
 make acquaintance wiz dose distinguished shentlemens. Vash 
 it not for interrupting the vonderful vords of our world-famous 
 patron, more as dis might I say ; but no vords of mine can be 
 allowed to shtop dose rays of vishdom wherein we bashk as in 
 de noon-day sun dose rays of de glorious orb, like him, which 
 truth sprinkles and light diffuses!" 
 
 "Oncore!" cried Mr. Blobb, immediately taking down this 
 speech in shorthand, while Miss Aloe rapped on the mantel 
 piece with her fan, and a general murmur of satisfaction ran 
 round the apartment. 
 
 " Our friend, Professor Sukkar, while he does justice always 
 to our majestic our towering land over-rates, perhaps, my 
 humble capacities." (Murmurs of "No! no!") "It is not, to 
 be sure, given to all to grapple with the tremendous problems 
 of our Hfe and being with precisely equivalent perspicacity, for 
 men have different gifts. Every man has his gifts." (" Every 
 man has his baits," growled Mr. Gollop, from his corner.) "Not 
 to the humble but industrious mole is given the eagle eye which 
 glares undimmed upon the gorgeous luminary of day, yet he is 
 not deficient in compensatory advantages which atone even for 
 the absence of so valuable a faculty. Not to the capitalist" 
 (a bow from Gollop) "not to the journalist" (ditto from 
 Blobb) " not to the physician" (the same from Dr. Rosette 
 P. Aloe) "nay, not even to the Psychommetrical Idealist" 
 (oriental salaam from Sukkar) " is it given to penetrate those 
 profound intricacies which connect nature, spirit, and the poet 
 ical faculty in elusive but indestructible bonds, only to be de 
 tected and expounded by rare and wonderful organizations, 
 whose native genius, chastened by severest toil, enables them 
 to trace the misty paths through an exceptional appreciation of 
 their obscure, yet heaven-born adumbrations!" 
 
 "That s so!" repeated Mr. Doke, evidently profoundly im 
 pressed. 
 
 "De organization of Homer!" exclaimed Professor Sukkar, 
 volcanically ; " of Goethe of Shakespeare, and of Drierly!" 
 
 "Oncore!" cried Blobb. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 003 
 
 " "What the deuce do they mean ?" whispered Gifford to his 
 companion. 
 
 Deuce take me if I know, except it is some roundabout in 
 cense to theii Magnus Apollo," replied Clinton. 
 
 "What was them men s baits?" asked Gollop, mistily, of his 
 nearest neighbor, Blobb. 
 
 " Baits?" 
 
 " Yes. How could you ketch em if you wanted to? Which 
 was t now ? Politics, gals, hosses, or buildin ?" 
 
 "Ah, you re always so funny, Mr. Gollop !" said Blobb doubt 
 fully, at a venture. 
 
 Funny !" echoed Gollop, relapsing into his arm-chair. " That 
 ain t my bait, anyhow." 
 
 < ; The English," continued Mr. Drierly, after pausing, clearing 
 his throat, and looking fishily into space, "the English, with 
 that narrow-minded perversity which is their predominant idio 
 syncrasy, have denied to this great and growing land that mighty 
 pre-eminence in everything that ever Was, or Is. or Will Be, 
 which is our birthright" (groans), " and in the particular depart 
 ment of intellectuo-poetic discrimination of creative spontaneity 
 in the poetic perceptions of what may be termed the Pre-Ral- 
 faelitic faculty of interpreting the Real and the Vital of Nature s 
 handiwork in contradistinction to the Artificial and the Lifeless 
 forms of the schools, they have, I say, in this wise endeavored 
 to exalt the Thinkers of the effete and cramp-souled Old World 
 over those of free-born America !" 
 
 "Hi, hi!" began Mr. Doke, but was instantly checked by 
 Gifford, who was happily near enough to intervene. 
 
 " Poshterity," cried Professor Sukkar, " vill put on dose Tink 
 ers de seal of oblivion I" 
 
 " Meanwhile," proceeded the Patriot Sage, " our friend, Mr. 
 Steelyard of Boston, informs me that a society has been thought 
 of in that great centre of thought for the exclusion of all foreign 
 intellectual as well as material wares for the protection of native 
 brains as well as that of native manufactures, which, although it 
 may justly be thought that they are certain to distance competi 
 tion, and so render such a design supererogatory, may yet be 
 deemed a fit proposal for national consideration." 
 
 "Bravo!" exclaimed Mr. Prodder, waking up from a state of 
 coma. " Why should trade be protected and the muses go 
 naked ? Why should our odes and eclogues be bandied in cheap 
 editions, when, by keeping all others from the market, we could 
 force the people to read them !" 
 
394 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " Urn !" doubted Blobb, "we couldn t do without the news, you 
 know." 
 
 " News, sir!" said Mr. Drierly, reprovingly, " we would make 
 our own news, and quite enough, too, for a free-born people." 
 
 "Misther Bladderly Flytte !" announced the servitor at the 
 door. 
 
 " Who may he bef asked Hugh, sotto voce. 
 
 "Why," said Clinton, in the same tone, "is it possible you 
 never heard of Flytte ? He s the great traveller, you know, who 
 goes abroad, learns all about a foreign country in six weeks, and 
 then writes a comprehensive book about it." 
 
 " Humph! I don t like his face. That projecting mouth and 
 the rat-like teeth are to me full of unpleasant reminiscences." 
 
 "But you ve never seen him before 1 ?" 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ! I was thinking of some one else." 
 
 " What s the matter with Prodder "? See, he s turned his face 
 to the wall." 
 
 " He doesn t write travels, does he 1" 
 
 " Oh, no ! but Flytte writes poems." 
 
 The new arrival \vas marshalled to the front by an escort of 
 feminine Drierlys, alike as the Antipholi, to do homage to the 
 Nestor of poesy, philosophy, and the arts. 
 
 "I have just parted," observed Flytte, affectedly, having paid 
 his compliments, " from Mr. Randolph Burgee of Georgia." 
 
 "Of Georgia!" repeated the patriarch, frowning. 
 
 " Arid Mr. Walsingham Scuttle of Alabama." 
 
 "Of Alabama!" echoed four Drierlys, with simultaneous 
 wrath. 
 
 "Very gentlemanly men they are ; and although, to be sure, 
 they are slaveholders " 
 
 " Slaveholders ! Oh, oh, oh !" chorused a dozen voices in 
 dismal deprecation. 
 
 " Dey ish shentlemens like de imps of der tuyfel !" exclaimed 
 Professor Sukkar, furiously. 
 
 " They certainly did no original sin by being voluntarily born 
 such." 
 
 " Open to controversy that open to controversy," said Blobb, 
 senteriiously ; " been refuted in the Centurion years ago, as 
 Flytte ought to know." 
 
 " What s his baits f inquired Gollop, thickly ; he had been 
 chewing tobacco on the sly, and spitting softly in the grate. 
 
 "His baits?" 
 
 " Yes," repeated Gollop, impatiently, "his weak spots his 
 darlin vices. What s he sweet on 1 What does he like best 1" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 305 
 
 " Slaveholders, I reckon. Beg pardon, Mr. Gollop, I thought 
 you were joking again." 
 
 " Jokin be d d! I didn t get half the shares in your 
 
 paper by jokin , but by findin out folkses baits." 
 
 "Slavery," began Mr. Drierly, in a very high key, whereat all 
 the adherents cried, "Hush!" and rubbed their hands as if to 
 say, "Now for it!" while Professor Sukkar cried, " Ordersh," 
 and Dr. Rosette P. Aloe rapped on the mantelpiece with her fan. 
 "Slavery," repeated the philosopher, looking over Mr. Flytte s 
 head as though he were talking to somebody about ten feet high 
 immediately behind him, is the sum of all Yillanies and the 
 aggravated quintessence of each and every hypothetical Turpi 
 tude ; and the toleration extended to its vile practisers is a pre 
 mium paid to vice. We are the Apostles of Freedom, and hold 
 that as an abomination which, while it profiteth not our purses, 
 drags down and blackens our souls. Not by gentleness and 
 long-suffering will we entreat the children of sin for whom the 
 penalty of social ostracism becomes a religious duty " 
 
 "Oucore!" shouted Blobb, enthusiastically. 
 
 " Beautiful, ain t it ?" cried several worshippers in chorus, 
 while Prodder, delighted with the reproof administered to a 
 brother bard, gazed with passionate admiration on the patriarch, 
 and melodiously chanted : 
 
 " He wears the white flower of a blameless life I" 
 
 " Wherefore," continued the Sinless One, " let us have nought 
 to do with Randolph Burgee ; let us hold ourselves guiltless of 
 association with Walsingham Scuttle. Let us rather hold them 
 up to the scorn and hatred of mankind, that they may become 
 the Ishmaels of the land, and that the Christian world may not 
 include us in the reprobation which attaches to then* stupendous 
 crime." 
 
 " Hurrah !" " Hear, hear !" " Dat ish goot !" 
 
 " Oncore !" arose tumultuously from the throng of disciples. 
 Sir," quoth Mr. Flytte, manfully, and forgetting his lisp, 
 " that may be the way to infuriate the Sinners, but I cannot 
 think it the best way to abolish the Sin." 
 
 " What do you think of this ?" whispered Clinton. 
 
 "Think ! That he is a selfish old hypocrite," answered Hugh. 
 "Heaven knows I have no love for slavery; but this cheap 
 method of being conspicuous for virtue of getting credit for 
 mercy to the slave, at the small expense of being unmerciful to 
 
396 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 the master must surely have an alloy of meanness, of bigotry, 
 and of selfishness in it." 
 
 " Of course it has. It is this narrow-minded advocacy 
 which has reflected so much prejudice on a noble cause. But 
 good taste has always been on the side of obstruction, and I sup 
 pose will ever be." 
 
 " Niggers is niggers," muttered Mr. Doke, not relishing the 
 attack on a class always in alliance with his party. "Niggers is 
 niggers ; and blowin won t make em white. What do you 
 think of it, Colonel Gollop ?" 
 
 "Let him cackle," replied Gollop, cautiously, and quite in 
 sympathy politically with his questioner, " if it makes him feel 
 good ; for it won t make any difference, no how, and blowin 
 and bein king-pin is his baits. Interdoose me to that man 
 that rich man who s fetcht his pile from Californy. I ve been 
 tryin to spot him more n a month !" 
 
 " Only to peculiar and exceptional organizations," continued 
 Mr. Drierly, with dignity, " is it given to penetrate the true solu 
 tions of complicated social phenomena. In such cases we do not 
 argue, we know; we do not speculate, we divine; and thus, armed 
 with a knowledge which is not obnoxious to common criticism, we 
 lay down immutable formula for the instruction and guidance of 
 Mankind !" 
 
 With these luminous words the patriarch, bowing loftily, with 
 drew. It was his custom to retire at a comparatively early hour 
 on the occasion of these intellectual symposia, when it would be 
 intimated that he. was engaged in profound study in his library ; 
 but when, if traced to his actual retreat, he would have been 
 found comfortably snoring in bed. 
 
 Most of the company rose as he departed, while Professor 
 Sukkar and Dr. Aloe, supported by four translucent Drierlys, 
 supported him to the door, bowing low, in speechless homage, 
 as he passed its portals. A hum of applause attended this cer 
 emony, serving as a sort of graceful music to garnish the exit. 
 
 " Our great friend," said the physician, shrilly, as the door 
 closed, "is in force to-night." 
 
 " He ish," affirmed the professor, conclusively, " de light, de 
 beacons of de world !" 
 
 " Only needing to be a little more cosmopolitan," said Mr. 
 Flytte, gravely, " to set it on fire." 
 
 The professor looked at him suspiciously. " Sir," he observed, 
 at length, feeling called on, in a general way, to confute some 
 thing, "vat you call de Plutonian in contradistinction to de 
 Neptunian theory " 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 307 
 
 " A thousand pardons! But I see my friend Mr. Parapet 
 moving toward the door, and must really speak with him before 
 he goes." 
 
 One of the Shadows placed herself in Clinton s way. " Pray 
 don t go. Mr. Parapet. Indeed you mustn t. We usually play 
 and sing some after Pa goes. And see how much dear Mr. 
 Giflbrd is in request ! It will really be most unkind of you to 
 tear him away from us !" * 
 
 Dear Mr. Gilford was in request with a vengeance. The 
 company had made a slight, but very perceptible movement to 
 wards him, when he was first announced. During the intelli 
 gible debate which had succeeded, the company had oscillated 
 impatiently between respect for philosophy and attraction for 
 lucre. It had shuffled its feet and moved its chairs uneasily . 
 Once or twice Mr. Doke had arisen, and tried to glide round 
 unperceived to Hugh s neighborhood ; in doing which he knocked 
 something down, and was looked at with solemn reproof by sev 
 eral ghostly worshippers, while the idol himself made a comma 
 into a semicolon, that the interruption to his discourse might 
 appear more marked and reprehensible ; whereat, Mr. Gollop, 
 who was burning to be introduced to our hero, and did not want 
 Doke, as he averred, to "play no advantages gittin hold of 
 him fust," seized that enterprising gentleman fiercely by the 
 coat-tail and forced him, struggling, back into his chair. But 
 the philosopher once gone, all hesitancy in the repression of in 
 clination went to6, and an enthusiastic gush of popular appre 
 ciation rolled upon Gifford in a flood, the more overwhelming 
 for being hitherto confined. 
 
 ; Dear Mr. Gifford, pray allow me to present my daughter. 
 Julia, love, this is Mr. Gifford you ve heard us all speak so much 
 of." "Excuse me, ma am; Mr. Gifford, Colonel Gollop ; you 
 know his partner, Mr. Ingott. Ha! ha! ha! Guess he is a 
 
 rich man. What he don t know, ain t worth -" "Most 
 
 happy, I m sure. Delighted, dear madam, certainly." " How 
 are yer ? I kin help yer with the Sixth, I kin ; and as to Gam- 
 mony " " I m told, dear sir, you know every inch of Cali 
 fornia; and as my dear Robert is going out in the Electric 
 
 Eel " " So pleased to hear you liked my Union Square to 
 
 Hyde Park Corner; and, as * Belgravia to Fifth Avenue is 
 
 coining out next week ; Do let me say a word to my 
 
 dear Mr. Gifford. Did you meet the Yon Donks in Europe ?" 
 ; Well, I never! On Blobb s authority?" " No, the descrip 
 tion of the carriage was in the Optimist same column with Dan 
 Prior, the nigger minstrels, and Sloggins the gentlemanly 
 
398 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 butcher of Ninety-ninth street." "Show!" "Fact" "Mr. 
 Gifford, I beg your pardon, I m sure ; but I must speak with 
 him. The pleasure of shaking hands with you, sir honor 
 never forget " "Made fifty thousand in Consolidated Under 
 ground." "Is that so?" " Tweren t, twas Harlem River!" 
 "Anyhow, he made it in a week." "I must interdoose Mr. 
 Gollop and Miss Gollop." " You re very kind, I m sure." 
 "And if I can t put ye through, me and Doke here, I ll bust!" 
 " Don t, please, don t push !" " I can t get any nearer !" " Mr. 
 Gifford ! Dr. Aloe ! Two such distinguished people ought to 
 know each other." "You, sir, bein , as you air, the architeck 
 of your own fortunes," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 The adulation Gifford encountered was truly sickening enough, 
 but what man of his years and experience would ? he did not 
 attribute it entirely to his wealth. He stood and breathed a 
 great deal of the intoxicating incense ; enough, perhaps, to be 
 wilder and confuse a clearer head and a maturer judgment than 
 his own ; and then, feeling a sudden sense of shame, he turned 
 to extricate himself and to find his friend. Clinton had con 
 trived to spirit his blue-eyed charmer into some quiet nook or 
 another, where he was flirting desperately, and oblivious of 
 everything on earth but Flora Dimity. As Hugh, with great 
 difficulty, struggled through and out of the legion of his adorers, 
 he met the eyes of Marian fixed earnestly upon him. Her face 
 wore a smile ; but he thought, and thought truly, that, except 
 ing one, it was the saddest smile he had ever teen there. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 IT is a sad consolation when we have, with such shifts as we 
 may, provided against any dire calamity, to have the sound 
 ness of our judgment attested by the event. When Marian 
 had stipulated for that year s delay which was to gauge the 
 steadiness of GiffoixVs love, as well as to serve in a measure as 
 an atonement for what she thought not altogether right in his 
 treatment of Virginia Chester, she had attached far less siguifi- 
 cancy to the first object than to the second. There seemed to 
 be no special reason why a love which had outlived a year of 
 separation should droop during a year of frequent intercourse 
 and promised fruition. And Marian, although far more free of 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 309 
 
 vanity than most of her sex, could not be entirely unconscious 
 of her own exceeding loveliness, or of the strong fascination 
 she exercised without effort upon those around her. 
 
 But as the fatal, never-pausing time rolled on, she began to 
 believe that the prudence of her stipulation was wretchedly ver 
 ified. She saw Hugh often, and, when with her, no woman, 
 however exacting, need have been dissatisfied with his tender 
 ness, his attention, his marked acknowledgment of the cherished 
 spell which bound him. But all that she heard in his absence 
 seemed to Marian full of gloom and foreboding. 
 
 Report said, with a malignant persistency which enforced con 
 viction, that Gifford was becoming dissipated. His household, 
 which had been noted for order, regularity, and unusual decorum 
 for that of a bachelor, was now declared to be the scene of nightly 
 revels, and of reckless extravagance. Clinton Parapet, who was 
 belying the promise of a well-spent youth in a most unexpected 
 manner, was Hugh s constant companion, and the pair vied with 
 each other, it was said, in wildness and excess. The fact was, 
 report exaggerated infamously, the truth being substatially that 
 one young man was endeavoring to escape from ennui and the 
 disgust which sprung from his political researches and experi 
 ence, while the other was trying to forget Flora Dimity. But 
 worse than this was busily hinted, and Marian heard the worst. 
 
 Mr. Riviugstone too, standing as he did in the place of a father, 
 and having a strong title to her respect and affection, from 
 having, with untiring skill and industry, pursued an investigation 
 of the last importance to Marian s position and future welfare, felt 
 it his duty to lay before her such truths as he thought she might 
 fairly weigh, prior to committing her happiness irrevocably to 
 the keeping of Hugh Gifford. 
 
 The investigation, so momentous and so difficult, was also of a 
 most delicate description. It involved nothing less than the tact 
 whether, legally speaking, Marian was a free woman or a slave. 
 Before Mr. Rivingstone had undertaken it, she would actually 
 have been liable to be arrested and sent to the South, under the 
 provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. But Rivingstone, who 
 had acted as her dead father s legal adviser, had drawn, under 
 his instructions, papers of manumission for Marian s mother, which 
 took effect prior to her infant s birth : that these papers were ex 
 ecuted as well as prepared, the lawyer could swear ; the question 
 was as to their whereabouts or present existence. 
 
 Nor was this all. The estate had gone to the legal heirs ; but 
 a large accumulation of money, which Rivingstone knew his 
 friend to have saved as the surplus of a heavy income, was no- 
 
400 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 where to be found, although he was equally certain Mr. Rooke 
 had intended it for Marian. It was in connection with these im 
 portant subjects that she had been summoned from California ; 
 in the same connection that Rivingstone had gone to the South 
 a short time after ; and in the same connection that the party 
 had subsequently sailed for Europe. 
 
 The lawyer s efforts then pointed to the momentous objects of 
 metamorphosing his ward from a poor runaway slave to a wealthy 
 and free woman. In the respect of securing her liberty dejure as 
 well as de facto, he had already substantially succeeded. The 
 less important, but highly desirable, pecuniary consummation, 
 was not yet achieved, although it was nearer than, with profes 
 sional prudence, he thought it wise to declare. 
 
 His services and his sincere regard for the child of an old and 
 much attached friend were warmly estimated by Marian ; and it 
 scarcely needed personal qualities of a nature at once dignified 
 and lovable to make her regard him with almost filial considera 
 tion. When, therefore, with no little hesitancy and compunc 
 tion, he spoke on the subject of Gifford s course of life, she was 
 prepared to listen with deference and attention. 
 
 " He is without doubt a brilliant young man," said the lawyer, 
 "and could achieve anything with steadiness and perseverance. 
 But he has a fastidious taste, which makes him keenly sensitive 
 to the repulsive features of any particular pursuit or vocation, 
 and which blinds him to the redeeming ones. Yet he has for 
 tune, and tells me he was born poor, without explaining the 
 change. You have known him longer. Should you think stead 
 fastness persistency in a given object were strong character 
 istics of his ?" 
 
 "No," said truthful Marian, sadly; " I should fear, on the con 
 trary, that they were not." 
 
 "He spoke of entering political life," continued Mr. Riving 
 stone, "of a desire to serve his country. But the months have 
 rolled by, and he seems to have attempted nothing in such a di 
 rection. His pursuits are said to be of the most frivolous char 
 acter. This, of course, he might easily outlive. But worse is 
 said : rumor is swift to magnify such things ; yet, when testi 
 mony appears quite universal and concurrent as to a man s habits, 
 it is unfortunately apt to be well founded in fact." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 "Believe me, I should be slow in attempting to sway your 
 judgment at least, on such a subject. Nor would I counsel you 
 to believe one-half of what you hear. But it is right you should 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 401 
 
 be upon your guard ; and my duty, under all the circumstances, 
 would be but imperfectly performed, did I not put you so." 
 
 ;; He is, as you say, very fastidious," said Marian, slowly, as if 
 seeking something to say in extenuation. " A strange mixture 
 of caution and impetuosity. I don t think bad habits would mas 
 ter him. He is too proud for that. But they might go far 
 enough to make those who loved him miserable." 
 
 Ay," said Riviugstone, mournfully, " there are many who 
 keep a fair front to the world, too selfish to risk its penalties, too 
 cowardly to face its frowns, who yet indulge vile passions in se 
 cret to that degree as to make a hell of then firesides." 
 
 " He would never do that !" exclaimed Marian, quickly. 
 " Hugh is not selfish not at least in great things, and he is any 
 thing " and her thoughts wandered back to the past. ; Oh ! 
 
 anything but cowardly. But " 
 
 "Nay, I was not describing him, but what others have be 
 come. Let us trust that report is exaggerated, and that all may 
 yet be well. My duty is done in uttering a warning, and I am 
 sure you will not misconstrue its motives." 
 
 " Indeed, dear sir, I will not." 
 
 " For I shall only strive to do what your dear father, had he 
 lived, would have done ; and my mistakes will be only those of 
 prudence or over-jealous care of what I regard as a sacred 
 trust." 
 
 " And you shall have," cried Marian, with one of her old out 
 bursts, which were rarer now, "no less than a daughter s afiec- 
 tion and obedience." 
 
 There were many conferences like this. Hints and sugges 
 tions, rather than direct statements on his part ; partial defences 
 and acknowledgments on hers. There were occasions when 
 Rivingstone heard what he knew would have given his ward 
 great pain to hear ; and he suppressed such things as honorable 
 men will, giving the accused the benefit of the doubt where great 
 room existed for misconstruction. To his eyes and to those of 
 the world, so far as it took the pains to form an opinion on the 
 subject, Gifford was simply going by a very much frequented 
 and commonplace road to destruction. To his conscience there 
 was nothing for it but to keep so noble a girl as Marian Rooke 
 from becoming the young man s travelling companion. 
 
 But MarianRooke herself saw deeper than this. She saw that 
 Gifford was scarcely more in his right groove, in his proper niche, 
 when scattering unearned wealth among aimless companions in 
 the gold-worshipping city, than he was while delving as a labor 
 er at Armstrong s Bar. There were more people of culture and 
 
402 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 of leisure about him, but there were no more people of higher aims. 
 The men with whom he had unhappily been brought in contact 
 in this Babylon had poisoned the very springs of his ambition, 
 by showing how miserably poor and worthless was all that he 
 once prized and could now strive for. Truly he should have 
 more strength of mind than to be led thus tenderly to see only 
 one side of the picture. But it was the office of true love 
 clear-sighted, womanly, wifely love to make him see the other ; 
 and then, ah ! how much with such aid and encouragement he 
 had the powers to achieve ! 
 
 With such thoughts and convictions as these, Marian might 
 have gone on despite truth, or despite calumny, firm in purpose, to 
 fulfil her share of the bargain if he asked it at the close of the 
 year. But there was something else to traverse the thoughts and 
 to shake, if not to reverse, the convictions. 
 
 Hers was not a nature to harbor jealousy. That ignoble pas 
 sion was, of all others, the one most foreign to Marian s character. 
 When whispers reached her ears of attentions pointedly offered 
 by Gifford to Edith Parapet attentions graciously received 
 she gave them little heed. She was not so ignorant of the pre 
 tentious of that proud family, as not to know that, for all Hugh s 
 advantages, they would look for greater and higher ones in a 
 suitor whose alliance they would be disposed to favor ; nor could 
 she believe that her betrothed could wittingly be guilty of any 
 act of treachery toward herself. Still, there was more to lend 
 color to the rumor in the manner of the parties inculpated when 
 together, and yet in the eye of the world, than could be quite 
 agreeable to an affianced woman ; and Hugh s frequent visits to 
 the Parapet mansion, and his all but inseparable intimacy with 
 its heir, added strength to the current reports. 
 
 When the repetition of these stories began to be irksome to 
 her, Marian, instead of inviting an explanation from Hugh she 
 was too proud for that sought refuge from the gossip of the 
 world in the country houst of Mr. Rivingstone, situated some 
 dozen miles up the North River. Here dwelt her guardian s 
 sister, and here Marian was always secure of quiet and an affec 
 tionate welcome. After midwinter she spent most of her time 
 there, rarely coming to the metropolis ; and Gifford, after being 
 frequently disappointed when he sought her at the town house, 
 took umbrage, and absented himself for some weeks. Estrange 
 ment seemed to be growing up between them, yet still it need 
 only be temporary and trilling. A few words of frank expla 
 nation, of affectionate acknowledgment, of regret for past errors, 
 of fresh promises for the future, would have been quite enough, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTCXE. 403 
 
 so far as the gentle girl was concerned, to set GifFord s suit all 
 right again 
 
 One cold miserable day in early March, Marian carne to town 
 to do some necessary shopping, and the modest brougham of 
 Mr. Riviugstone awaited her without ; she had just entered the 
 famous " store" of Mr. Dimity, when she was encountered by 
 one of the Drierly Shades. There was an expression of cada 
 verous joy on the countenance of this lady, which, to those who 
 knew her best, portended the dissemination of something sad, 
 or painful, or scandalous ; and even Marian, who knew her but 
 slightly, would fain have passed with a courteous recognition, 
 but the Shadow would not have it so. She knew that Marian 
 had been from town, and that, therefore, what she had to inflict 
 might have the exquisite zest of a fresh and unexpected wound. 
 Furthermore, there had been some slight political coolness be 
 tween Mr. Rivingstone and Mr. Drierly of late ; and the female 
 Drierly always treated such matters with the bitterest personal 
 animosity. Lastly, she had a vague notion of the engagement 
 of Gifford and Marian, vague, because neither had thought it 
 necessary to publish the fact to the world, and what she had to 
 say would at once gratify her curiosity, while it inflicted a pang 
 on the near friend ot one who had dared to differ with a 
 Drierly. 
 
 k> Dear Miss Rooke," she ejaculated, with that cordiality of 
 manner the family kept largely in stock for people who rode in 
 broughams. Such a pleasure to see you. I know you ve been 
 out of town. The country must be very dreary at this season. 
 But, of course, you have your reasons." 
 
 ** Reasons of convenience and friendship only," replied Marian, 
 smiling ; "and I go but a short distance, not much further than 
 a Broadway omnibus will carry one." 
 
 "Oh, indeed ! Then, of course, you can go to the opera, or 
 to parties of an evening, and all that ?" 
 
 Xot quite so readily as while staying in town ; still I can do so 
 for a particular occasion." 
 
 " That s so nice, now. If you only would come to our conver 
 sazione next Tuesday. Count Poppo, who married our sweet 
 poetess, you know. Maud Squelch, is going to read a paper on 
 the mediaeval rennaissance of Abyssinian art. What a love of a pop 
 lin that is 1 And Mr. Clinton Parapet is coming, and Mr. Gifford ; 
 of course you ve heard, by-the-by ?" 
 
 " Heard what ?" 
 Oh, about the engagement !" 
 
 "Whose engagement^ 
 
404 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 "Why, all the world is talking about it. Surmise is turned 
 into certainty. The winter has been lively with suspicions, and 
 the spring blossoms with facts. Mr. Gifford is to marry Edith 
 Parapet I" 
 
 Marian made no reply, but she turned very pale, and the 
 Shadow saw her arrow had gone home. 
 
 "Unless," pursued the relentless Apparition, "all signs and 
 omens are to be translated backwards, the happy event will not 
 be long postponed." 
 
 " What signs ? What omens ?" asked Marian, steadily, 
 though her tall figure shook for a moment, and she moved as 
 if to get near a chair. 
 
 "Together always at the opera tete-a-tete in the saddle or 
 when driving in the Park the happy man domesticated at the 
 family mansion Miss Parapet coloring whenever his name is 
 mentioned Miss Parapet s eyes folio wing him wherever he moves 
 in society Mr. Gifford buying a lovely set, opals and diamonds, 
 at Bullet and Green s and being caught in the act by Wirt 
 Pinckney and she wearing them the night after at the academy 
 etc., etc. ; and what would you have more T 
 
 " What, indeed ?" said Marian, more faintly, but sinking 
 quietly into a seat. 
 
 " So I may put you down as certain, may Inot, dear Miss Rooke ? 
 And we shall have the great pleasure to see you on Tuesday ?" 
 
 " Perhaps thanks yes," replied Marian, mechanically, as the 
 Shade glided triumphantly away. 
 
 The rumor was gaining strength vitality ; was becoming com 
 promising to a degree that threatened the worst its verification. 
 Alas, for the days when both Hugh arid Marian believed them 
 selves penniless, with the world all before them, and nothing but 
 hope to cheer them on ! Alas, for the dear old days at Arm 
 strong s Bar, where nought but the knowledge of mutual love 
 had been wanting to make an earthly paradise ! From this mo 
 ment Marian began to realize a terrible truth the truth that Gif 
 ford s wealth was somehow a barrier to their love stronger than 
 the poverty had been wh ich parted him from Virginia Chester. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 405 
 
 CHAPTER XVHL 
 
 me a reward " cried Clinton Parapet, as he bounded 
 into Gifford s breakfast-room one bright morning in spring. 
 
 "For what?" 
 
 " For the most praiseworthy thing in life, inventing you a new 
 pleasure ! Here we are, bored and hipped to our heart s discon 
 tent ; having done operas, theatres, balls, parties, artists recep 
 tions, wedding breakfasts, racing on the Bloomingdale Road, bet 
 ting on the Centreville Track, showing our paces in his park of 
 parks, even indulging for your blessed delectation, not mine, re 
 member in several political meetings; what is there left for us but 
 gentlemanly suicide, going abroad, or, dernier ressort, the inven 
 tion of a new pleasure ?" 
 
 " But you see," said Hugh, looking rather jaded and woebe 
 gone for a handsome young man of fortune with, uncommonly 
 fine prospects, " but you see, after all, I have the advantage of 
 you. At the moment, I grant, we appear to be in the same cat 
 egory ; we ve struggled through the season, doing no good for 
 ourselves or for any one else ; we ve sown our seed of sight-see 
 ing, idling, pleasure-seeking, call it what you will, and have 
 reaped a plentiful crop of satiety. Good. But now comes the 
 per contra. You have nothing before you but to go through the 
 same agricultural process over again, while I have a project to 
 carry out, involving not only honorable occupation, but profit and 
 service to the common weal !" 
 
 "Ah, your Congressional scheme! I give you a twelve 
 month to weary of "that. You ll find a year of the sweet soci 
 ety of tinker, tailor, weaver, and bellows-maker, quite sufficient, 
 believe me. The batch sent on last fall, after you arrived, in 
 deed, will make a more charming Zoological Garden than ever." 
 
 " I ve laid my plans, and must cany them out. You see 
 Clyde, and Ingott, and Doke are all interested in my success 
 have all promised or sold their aid, and must not be disappoint 
 ed. If I make a blunder, to me the penalty. But take a seat, 
 a cigar, and a cup of coffee, and unfold the new pleasure." 
 
 Briefly, then," said Clinton, accepting all three offers, " un 
 like our previous mundane joys, it contains nothing of the earth, 
 earthy. It is to be enjoyed in a more pellucid element." 
 
406 MARIAN ROOKE; OR. 
 
 "In the air, I suppose? Chateaux en Espagne or balloons?" 
 
 u Neither, good GEdipus. What say you to the sea? The 
 open, bounding, tumbling, and all the rest of it, sea ?* 
 
 " Not going abroad again ?" 
 
 " Stupid ! How can I leave my adorable, my blue-eyed maid 
 my inestimable Flora, just as the season comes when she 
 strews the earth with flowers ?" 
 
 "Perpend, then." 
 
 " Know that I am member of one society whose association 
 involves neither the aid of Pokes nor Ingotts ; which craves 
 the countenance of neither Optimist nor Pessimist; which exists 
 without the hand of the City Government to sustain, or the 
 dirty fingers of Milesian politicians to pilfer ; a society to which 
 Neptune is the only god, and the voice of the sovereign people 
 is as nothing." 
 
 " And which is called " 
 
 " The Yacht Club, potent statesman ; which creates and per 
 fects most delicate, beautiful, and swift-winged engines, for fly 
 ing far away from the pomps and vanities, the unclean streets 
 and the unwashed population, the unseemly sights and the pol 
 luting smells of this worshipful city, all of which flourish most 
 consumedly at the approach of the dog days ; engines whereof 
 the most delicate, the most beautiful, and the most swift- winged 
 is now the heir-loom of the Parapets." 
 
 Bravo ! And you propose to take wing thereby and fly 
 away ?" 
 
 " Even so. Yet not prematurely. It is as yet too early in 
 the season for a lengthy cruise, and our Regatta yearly test of 
 speed for the various craft comes not until much later. But 
 you must know that the Ariadne such is the name of our 
 beauty has rivals ; prominent among which is one built only 
 last summer by Wirt Pinckney. His charmer, the Sylphide, 
 was the winner last season when we were in Europe. Boast 
 ful with this success, he challenges me for a preliminary contest, 
 to take place soon after the first of May, and I have taken up 
 his gage." 
 
 " And how do the boats compare as to size ?" 
 
 " As like as two peas. Indeed, Pinckney s was modelled di 
 rectly from mine a base imitation ! Yet still there are one or 
 two super-refined points whereupon our skipper believes the 
 Ariadne still may keep her advantage. We re each about a 
 hundred and fifty as to tonnage, and show canvas enough for 
 two hundred. By-and-by, if you have leisure, I will show 
 you some of the best shooting in the world, beyond the Capes 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 407 
 
 of Delaware. Meanwhile, with plenty of decent wine, provis 
 ions, and havanas to match, and a picked company, we ll have 
 our race, and clear out the winter s cobwebs with an early taste 
 of old ocean s champagne I What say you?" 
 
 " Oh, count on me, of course, and many thanks. That is to 
 say, up to the first of June ; afterwards, I believe, I belong to 
 my country." 
 
 " Unhappy man ! For about a month then you are free, and 
 ait er wards " 
 
 Afterwards, stump speaking, letter writing, vote concilia 
 ting ; in a word, capital-making, until the period of the great 
 struggle in the autumn." 
 
 " Appalling prospect! And at best, how lame and impotent 
 the conclusion ! However, it s no affair of mine, except as 
 having a certain moderate lien on your society. Mind, you ll 
 never find grace again in Edith s eyes when once you don the 
 scurvy harness." 
 
 "I shall resort to unheard-of devices to make my peace. 
 Besides, after all, I may fail." 
 
 "Not when Doke is interested in the result, believe me. 
 Only you must not scrutinize his doings too closely. Ask no 
 questions, and get no lies, will be his motto at election time." 
 
 " Still, the fight will be a sharp one; and, if defeated, pity 
 may perhaps overcome the horror inspired by my crime." 
 
 Like many brothers, Clinton was blind to what scarcely any 
 one else so close to the parties would have failed to suspect 
 his sister s partiality for Hugh Gifford. He liked him person 
 ally, and was gratified that the family had extended him, upon 
 the indorsement of his introduction, rather unusual attentions. 
 Bnt, in addition to a general persuasion that no female Parapet, 
 at least, could many any one without a name, there was the 
 common fraternal obtusity to aid in keeping him in the dark. 
 Besides, he had heard of Hugh s engagement to Marian, which, 
 although it had been little discussed between them, or much 
 thought of by Clinton at all, would have directly suggested 
 itself to his mind, had the possibility of any tender relation be 
 tween Edith and Gifford once entered there. 
 
 " Edith shall be of our party," said Clinton, " and you can 
 have the way for your peace in advance." 
 
 "Agreed. I suppose some one else," added Hugh signifi 
 cantly, "will be of the party as well ?" 
 
 "It will require management," replied Clinton, puffing blue 
 rings speculatively into space, " but with adroitness it may be ac 
 complished. Wirt, of course, will have lots of people, and so 
 
408 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 shall we. We start from the same place at Hoboken, so that 
 nothing more easy than a trifling mistake or two." 
 
 " I see. Only I think you re really playing a rather dangerous 
 gam o. To amuse oneself is one thing, but to run a very great 
 risk " 
 
 "My dearfellow, one must have excitement, and where is 
 there excitement when a man grows blase, save it includes some 
 spice of danger ?" 
 
 " But if the danger threatens a fatal catastrophe ?" 
 
 " Nonsense! We play with pyrotechnics, not bomb-shells. 
 Besides, after all, grave Mentor, what do you know about 
 war 1" 
 
 Gifford knew more about it, in his sense, than the excitement- 
 loving Mr. Parapet supposed ; but judiciously held his peace, 
 content in his office of discreet adviser, with Clinton s assurances 
 that nothing in the nature of grave hostilities was included in 
 his prospective plans. 
 
 Both Marian and Edith had played during the winter a game 
 in which womanly pride had more to do than purposed dissimu 
 lation. I do not mean to compare their characters. They were 
 as unlike, in most respects, as two women well could be ; but 
 they shared in common this one particular resolution, that Gif 
 ford should not see, whatever his motives may have been, that 
 his behavior had caused them any jealous pain as regards the 
 other. 
 
 Edith felt, after hearing of his engagement, that she had per 
 mitted herself to become far more interested in Gifford than his 
 conduct had justified, even if she had ever seriously contempla 
 ted relations to which, in truth, she had not given a thought. 
 Still she did not quite estimate arightly the strength of that in 
 terest ; and when she coolly laid down for herself the task of 
 continuing to meet Hugh, and to conduct their intercourse pre 
 cisely as if she had never felt toward him except as a friend, and 
 that in a manner implying all their previous intercourse had been 
 exactly of the same nature, and no other, she committed a seri 
 ous error. 
 
 I hope it is unnecessary to say that Gifford was not a coxcomb. 
 It was not needful that he should be one in order to be pleased 
 with the obvious liking of a lovely, fashionable, and greatly 
 admired young lady who had chosen to distinguish him from 
 among a crowd of attending admirers, any of whom would have 
 become for a look her willing slave. He thought she must know 
 of his engagement, but that that knowledge did not prevent her 
 indeed, why should it ? from regarding him as a friend. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 409 
 
 True, the subject, strangely enough, was never mentioned be 
 tween them ; but this fact, if it presented itself, was quickly 
 dismissed from his mind. He was. in a manner, intoxicated by 
 the unaccustomed glitter, adulation, and luxury of his position, 
 and his judgment was, for the time, stultified and disarmed. 
 
 It suited Edith, in spite of a real pain at heart, which might 
 have taught her such a course was neither right nor politic, to 
 have Gilford in attendance upon her at the opera, in the park, 
 and at balls as much asever. Her wishes conveyed in a hun 
 dred nameless ways received implicit obedience, and Hugh, with 
 out the least idea of doing an injustice to the noble girl he had 
 asked to be his wife, wasl ulledintoan impression by her silence 
 and if she were content, who had a right to object ? that every 
 thing in his conduct was confessedly, or tacitly, what it should 
 be. 
 
 Thus matters ran on in the same groove, in the same routine, 
 throughout the winter. Hugh attended Marian in society on 
 one occasion, and Edith on another ; escorted hisjiancce to a 
 ball to-night, drove in the park with Miss Parapet to-morrow. 
 Of course remarks came at length in proper order ; first of sur 
 prise, then irony, and, finally, condemnation. But Marian, 
 although not altogether the Marian to Hugh she had been, while 
 he, poor dazed fool, was all unconscious of the priceless treasure 
 he was idly jeopardizing, was yet kind and patient, and tried 
 now and then to rouse him from the ominous intellectual and 
 moral lethargy into which he was sinking. This, after a season, 
 she began to fear was hopeless ; and, fatal change! although she 
 loved him still, Hugh began to lose her respect. His percep 
 tions were not filmed to this as to some other things, and his 
 dislike of the delay she had stipulated for reinforced his annoy 
 ance at finding himself sinking in her esteem. Then came peri 
 ods of coolness, distance, almost alienation, interrupted by bursts 
 of passionate fondness, for he loved her very, very dearly ; but 
 the chasm between them had opened, the delicate feather of the 
 wedge had entered, and these are things which neither narrow 
 nor go backward. 
 
 Alas, for the wretched, wretched gold that was working so 
 much misery I Alas, for the boon that poor Ike, in his simple 
 gratitude, had striven so hard to bestow, thinking, poor innocent 
 as he was, that the philosopher, Hugh Gilford, well knew what 
 would buy him happiness I 
 
 Marian was kind and patient. But, although long-suffering 
 and loving, she was a woman, and a very proud one. She was 
 a woman with a torrent of hot Southern blood coursing through 
 18 
 
410 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 her veins, which required all the force of an uncommonly well 
 balanced brain to subjugate and control it. She said nothing 
 during the months of the winter. Rumor, however painful and 
 humiliating its whispers, she could afford to despise. At worst 
 she could lay bare her mind to GnTord at the end of the year, 
 and give him oh, cruel, dismal thought! the dismissal which 
 pride, self-respect, his own happiness as it appeared, would render 
 necessary. 
 
 She was kind and patient. But, when she heard repeated 
 over and over again the deliberate statement of his engagement 
 to Edith Parapet, her patience yielded at last, and she resolved 
 to bring matters to an explicit understanding. Calmly, but 
 with a heart nearly bursting from the effort of self-command, 
 she told Gifford all she had heard. She offered to bring their 
 engagement to an end then and there. She reminded him that 
 to cover such a possibility of change, the year of probation had 
 been agreed upon, and expressed her readiness to concede in 
 terms what had thus been implied. 
 
 Not for fear of my own constancy," she said, "did I make 
 that stipulation. Let it meet the contingency for which it was 
 intended. I can share no man s heart, would deprive no other 
 of a fraction of it. I do not blame you, her, any one, only this 
 must come to an end. Your hold on my esteem had been the 
 greater, were it ended before. The love of such a woman, so 
 situated, with such advantages, such position, such aspirations, 
 may be better suited to your altered prospects than mine could 
 have been. Let it be so, but let there be no division, no par 
 celling out in shares, of love and affection. Let it end once 
 now, and forever !" 
 
 There was no mistaking the flashing eye, the outstretched 
 arm, the erect, lithe figure, all quivering as it was, the heaving 
 bust, which responded as unmistakably as her expressive face 
 itself to any powerful emotion. There was no mistake as to 
 her resolution or purpose, and Hugh made none. He was as 
 tonished, confounded, for the explosion had been long in coming 
 so long, when just as great a reason existed, so far as his con 
 science could advise him, for it to burst forth, that it seemed 
 amazing it should burst forth at all. But he loved Marian very 
 dearly. And, open to enervating influences as he might be, 
 as unhappily he had shown himself to be, there was that in 
 Gifford which ever made him rise so as to be equal to any oc 
 casion, however great, to face any dilemma, however bewilder 
 ing. 
 
 Marian was in no mood to be readily pacified. She became 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 411 
 
 BO, however, before he left her. He protested the entire falsity 
 of the story she had .heard. It had color, without doubt; he 
 had been heedless, foolish, vain, but not intentionally guilty, nor 
 deliberately disloyal. Edith was a most attractive person, a 
 most brilliant one. but never, never could she have inspired tfce 
 love he felt for Marian. Nor did he believe she had the remo 
 test thought of inspiring it. It was a blunder, a stupid, mean 
 ingless blunder, which should be at once corrected and atoned. 
 He would cease to visit altogether at the Parapets; take any 
 steps Marian should herself dictate them, and they should be 
 religiously observed. 
 
 Most of these asseverations Hugh delivered very appropri 
 ately on his knees ; delivered them with all the eloquence, the 
 passion, and, above all, the sincerity which the critical nature of 
 the emergency demanded, and he earned his reprieve. But, al 
 though her resolutions were beaten down, her suspicions lulled, 
 her confidence revived by the fiery ardor, the outpoured ex 
 planations of her repentant lover, Marian s feelings had received 
 a shock which caused their reconciliation to partake more of 
 the nature of a truce than of a lasting peace. Fire there must 
 be where so much smoke had been ; it was for the future to 
 show whether it was to be altogether extinguished. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 NEW YORK enjoys one supreme advantage more important 
 than its many others, and which will go further to make it 
 great as the years roll on than all the rest combined : it is 
 washed on all sides by the salt sea. Neptune strives hard to 
 undo the dirty work of civic councillors, by sweeping with his 
 purifying surge through the quays and slips and wharfs, and 
 thus, at least twice during the day, he makes sweet and whole 
 some the water and air which defective drainage and cloud 
 less skies have done so much to pollute. It is one of the nu 
 merous instances in this couutry where nature does so much to 
 confer blessings which are quietly cited as proofs of the wis 
 dom of man. 
 
 What a glorious harbor ! Swelled with the volume of the 
 magnificent Hudson, the inner bay affords an expanse of full 
 five-and twenty square miles, whose entrance, like that of San 
 
412 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 Francisco, is through a portal of scarcely one in width. Gem 
 med with green islets, circled with purple hills, brimming with 
 the tributary floods of the mountain region to the North, guarded 
 at throat and channel-line by sweeps of snowy ramparts where 
 the starry banner floats over hundreds of heavy guns, there are 
 few places on earth whose approach inspires such ideas of space 
 and beauty and strength as does New York harbor. There is not, 
 truly, the majesty of distant pinnacle and mountain top which 
 keep guard over its occidental sister but there is a variety, an 
 extent and a panoramic effect of undulating and cultivated loveli 
 ness which are all its own. 
 
 Beyond the Narrows rolls the far Atlantic. In the sultry mid 
 summer days, when the thermometer rises to a hundred degrees 
 in the shade, pleasure or health seekers may leave the city piers, 
 and, in less than an hour, be drinking the inspiriting breezes from 
 the great reservoir of the open sea ; a blessed privilege, as those 
 who have been able to enjoy it can well attest. But there are 
 days long before midsummer when the air hangs still and murky 
 about the island city, and when a draught of fresh air from the 
 sea is a grateful tonic to its denizens ; days when a foretaste of 
 what July and August are to bring is afforded by a close, thick 
 atmosphere, which dims the sun without showing any definite 
 cloud ; days when subtle and mysterious odors steal about the 
 cross streets which run to the rivers, and occasionally venture 
 into Broadway, to remind people of a prospective luxury so abun 
 dant in the solstice of Sirius. 
 
 It was on such a day, when a gray veil hung over the town, 
 although the sky and sea beyond the Narrows were of a laughing 
 blue, that some of our friends were to be found on the deck of 
 the Ariadne, standing outwards about S. S. E. from Sandy Hook. 
 At about a cable s length abeam glided the Sylphide, the air just 
 filling her towering canvas, while her pennon and streamers 
 now flew straight from their halyards, and anon fell idly and flut 
 tered by their sides. 
 
 It was two o clock, and they had been waiting since nine for 
 such a breeze as would give fair opportunity for the projected 
 trial of speed. Earlier in the day it had been well-nigh calm, so 
 that all the enormous spread of sail the two yachts could show 
 had been needed to force them slowly through a sea like a mill- 
 pond, which reached from Fort Hamilton to the Battery. 
 
 Outside the Narrows, delicate little waves were tumbling and 
 wrestling merrily in the sun-beams, but the zephyrs hardly ruffled 
 their crests, and the sun was falling before there was wind enough 
 to keep the sails full without that intermittent flapping backwards 
 
HE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 413 
 
 so discordant to the ears of expectant yachtsmen, and, ah I how 
 far more so to those who have long voyages before them. By four 
 bells however, for nothing else would the bluejackets of a clay call 
 two o clock, the breeze freshened, and the craft were running about 
 fiveknots as they made long tacks back and forth athwart the Hook. 
 When the sun should fall an hour or two lower, the wind was 
 confidently expected to freshen into a stiff breeze, and the race 
 was to be from the Hook straight through the Narrows, and 
 around the lighthouse on Bobbin s Reef. 
 
 If neatness and elegance could make a schooner swift, the 
 Ariadne should surely have been second to none. Nothing could 
 exceed the beauty of her run, the taper grace of her spars, the 
 compact finish of her wood-work, the taut simplicity of her rig 
 ging. Neither, to descend from externals, could more luxury 
 and convenience have been united than were to be found in her 
 cabin. The furniture, the tiny state-rooms, the miniature rack of 
 arms, the lockers, the table gear, were each as perfect of their 
 kind as they well could be. There was every appearance then, 
 both alow and aloft, of the most sagacious and comprehensive 
 adaptation of means to ends ; and an acute observer would have 
 found such evidences of success in aught she might undertake about 
 the Ariadne, that nought could have made him doubt of it until 
 he had seen the Sylphide. That rival vessel, in truth, seemed 
 quite as perfect ; and, untried as both were, no means remained 
 to settle their respective pretensions, save the practical test on 
 which their owners now alike were bent. 
 
 Bang went Mr. Pinckney s swivel for about the tenth tune 
 since noon. 
 
 "Ha I ha !" laughed Clinton Parapet, " Wirt grows impatient 
 as the day gets older ; but we ll cool his zeal before sundown, 
 unless the saucy Ariadne falls far short of her promise." 
 
 " No fear, sir," said John Brime, ex-New York pilot, and now 
 skipper of the Ariadne, "if we only get wind. We re nigh 
 enough alike to be sisters, save and exceptin allus she is a few 
 shavins lighter aloft, Jest the odds that we kin kerry our upper 
 story kites when she ll have to haul her n." 
 
 " That is to say, in a light breeze she has the advantage, you 
 think r 
 
 "You see, sir, she draws a thought to windward of us. This 
 air, light as it is, is flawy. When it puffs up we hold our own, 
 and something better. But the difference 11 be in kerryin all in 
 a stiffish blow." 
 
 Old Boreas is too sedate for that to-day, I fear." 
 
 " I don t know that, sir. That smoke yonder that s been hug- 
 
-1 1-1 MARIAN KOoKK ; OR, 
 
 gin Long Isl:ui(l nil tlu! morniif like. :i sweetheart, is ;t curlin its 
 onlcr t-clo-rs like :i tickled caterpillar, .lest, see it, hist there, sir, 
 1<> the north ardand cast ard ; and see that ribbon of clear dark 
 blue opening under the. ha/.c !" 
 
 k > AIM! that 8 wind, is it, !" 
 
 M Knough to make the water bil( under our keel afore Rundown, 
 or I m a lubber. 1 lowrmmever, it s easier to Hay it than to make 
 i! eome, and seein s believin . Kasc away a bit on that jib-sheet,, 
 will ye, Jim >. The wind s a pint free, and ye ve got her as tight 
 ;s a drum." 
 
 The two schooners ivcre very much alike, in length and in 
 symmetry, in the moulding of their runs, and t he e.\t reine sharp- 
 ness of their bows : alike in I he c,;it and si/e of their sails, and in 
 the BUmptUOUS fittings of their cabins J alike in the inviting re 
 pasts spread in their cabins, and plenteously Hanked by costly 
 wines. lut in respec,t of their passengers the resemblance cer 
 tainly ceased. Theso aquatic eZOUTSionS not uncommonly bring 
 together rather incongruous assemblages, and this was no excep 
 tion. \\y an ingenious I issue ormisreprcsentations and evasions, 
 (Tmton had managed t,o get his sister on board, in ignorance that 
 Horn Dimity was to be of the party ; nor did she detect, what 
 t-.Ii . certainly would have resented by refusing to go. until the 
 yacht was irrevocably on her way. The same device, cost Clin 
 ton the company of I high ( iifford. Mr. Kivingstone and Ma 
 rian were of Pinckney s parly ; and after what had passed, OUT 
 hero of course was bound to be of the same or neil her. On board 
 the Sylphide, too, was .Mr. Salalhi -l Doke, although nobody 
 knew who invited him; and Mr. (Jollop, who scarcely cvcrquit- 
 te<l (Jiflbrd now, either night, or day. 
 
 Moreover, the same party included, besides several pretty girls, 
 chaperoned by a suitable elder of the I mckncy set, Mr. Clyde, 
 who had returned to town after settling the aflairs of the State 
 at Rochester, and Mr. Illobb, who \vas making an elaborate report 
 of the beauties and dimensions of the Sylphide for the columns 
 of I lie (!rnt.itrion. 
 
 On the other hand, the Ariadne boasted the society of Mr. 
 Uladderly Hylic, who, unmindful of the Drierly rebuke, had 
 obtained permission to introduce his friends, Mr. Randolph Bur 
 ger and Mr. Walsinghain Seulile 5 a couple of Drierly Shades, 
 who, in the absence of pa, were not disinclined to receive atten 
 tion from those wretched malefactors; divers dignified I arapet- 
 ian connections, chielly sea-sick; and a representative of the 
 ()/>titn./xfy who smuggled himself on board by observing that he 
 u friend of Mr. Gilford s, who had appointed to meet him 
 
1111, viCKST FOR FORTfNK. 415 
 
 there, a statenv nt which a little reflection would have persuaded 
 
 Clinton was untrue, but that he was occupied just at tin- time in 
 admiring those lovely blonde curls of Flora Dimity s which stole 
 so bewitchingly from under her hat. 
 
 There were these additional points of resemblance between 
 the two yachts, that the conversation on board both ciiidly ran 
 on the probable chances of beating the other in the expected 
 contest, and that the copious libations of Mi ^srs. Gollop, Dokc, 
 and the representative of the Cfnturion were fairly paralleled by 
 Messrs. Burgee, Scuttle, and the representative of the 1 Opt<mi.<t. 
 with this difference, that whereas the iirsi-named eoiiplr became, 
 as a result, more thick of speech and more disagreeably familiar 
 as the day wore on, the Southerners only grew more distinct 
 and more studiously punctilious a philosophical enigma which 
 those who choose may investigate. 
 
 " I was down on that ere island." obs r ryed Mr. (lollop, point 
 ing to a line of white sand as he thirstily disposed of his do/.enih 
 cocktail, with the city authorities, to a elambake last tall : and 
 three, o the aldermen got loaded on apple-jack, and lell a-leep in 
 a bath-house, they did. So wo jest capsi/.ed em, doors down, 
 and poured pails o water all over the top. lettin on that the tide 
 was eomin in : and whilst the rest on em was hollerhf * murder 
 and let me out, old Pete M Sn.-.rliy sings out, * If thai - BO, 
 jest, for God s sake, do put the kag of apple-jack aboard, and let 
 em go to sea all serene. Jack is I Vic s bait, jack is." 
 
 Ho, ho, ho!" roared the appreciative Doke. "That was about 
 the time they all voted for the .Madison Gridiron Hill, weren t 
 it! Dan O Gorrill swears you wouldn t let em out till they 
 promised to vote the thing through fire and water, if need was; 
 and that they all made oath to t, then and there, with the kag 
 o jack for a Bible." 
 
 4< It took more n the kag o jack." said Mr. Gollop, grimly, 
 you d better believe. But them stories do very well to pasa 
 among the boys. Men o their kind love their rum, but they don t 
 bait on rum exclusive. If they did I d be better oft* or wuss." 
 With which bewildering statement, Mr. Gollop lit a cigar, and 
 again prepared to "smile." 
 
 "Do you understand their jargon . " asked Eldon Clyde, 
 remarking that Hugh seemed to overbear the conversation just 
 described ; for they stood by an open skylight which rose from 
 the cabin through the quarter-deck. 
 
 "Quite well enough. I believe ; both gentlemen have favored 
 me with abundance of it of late." 
 
 " And what do you think of them 7" pursued Clyde, with a 
 
416 MAKIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 grave smile, -candidly now, and, of course, between our 
 selves?" 
 
 " Candidly then, I think them fair specimens of a class, un- 
 happilytoo numerous, who make a complete trade of the weak 
 nesses and crimes of their fellow-men ; and who utilize universal 
 suffrage in the! most profitable manner, by buying and selling 
 the poor rapscallions whom it places in office. I have undertaken 
 to do something wherein you tell me their services may be made 
 valuable, but I cannot the less despise them, or regret the work 
 ings of a system Avhich invites the existence of such a class, and 
 renders their misdeeds possible." 
 
 " Yet you are not unwilling to buy their help?" queried the 
 older man, archly. 
 
 "Very unwilling," replied Gifford, reddening ; "but dislik 
 ing to undertake a project and then to abandon it ignorant of 
 the modus operand^ and so forced to depend on the teachings of 
 others I strive to reconcile my conscience to an application of 
 the maxim that, being at Home, I may do as Romans do. 
 
 "Come," said Clyde, more seriously, "the system is not so 
 bad after all. What you justly condemn is notoriously prevalent 
 in our large seaboard cities, where is massed a vast immigrant 
 population, but there is little or none of it in the greater part of 
 the country the vast agricultural interior. Our theory lies in 
 choosing the leaser of two evils, or rather, so to speak, in over 
 coming a considerable urban evil by a preponderating rural good. 
 I m not one of those who think that ethics and politics can be 
 made utterly distinct, still you cannot make them convertible 
 terms. The gist of the whole matter is, that when everything 
 is said and done, the moral, steadfast and homogeneous country 
 always out-votes, and consequently controls the brawling, giddy, 
 and hybrid town." 
 
 " I ought to go into political life in the country," said Hugh, 
 thoughtfully, "if at all." 
 
 "Why, to tell you the truth," said Mr. Clyde, laughing, " I 
 think you would find it more congenial. Only if you ask my 
 opinion or advice as to what these civic fuglemen can do for you, 
 I give it, mind not ethically, but politically." 
 
 " And if a lady s opinion were ever likely to be asked upon 
 such a profound subject," laughed Marian, for the speakers had 
 come close to where she was seated during their discussion, " I 
 should offer as mine, that whoso touch eth pitch shall be-,defiled I" 
 
 " Alas, fayre ladye !" said the politician, with a courtly bow, 
 " the dirty work of the nation must be done by some one, and I 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 417 
 
 need not tell so thoughtful an observer that we cannot all be 
 Parapets." 
 
 A blush rose to the lovely face, which was not altogether one 
 of pleasure, and Hugh looked a little embarrassed. 
 
 Must the work needs be of such a description," asked Ma 
 rian with her simple straightforwardness, ; because not done by 
 Parapets ?" 
 
 I ll tell you one thing, Miss Rooke, which won t be done by 
 a Parapet," cried Wirt Pinckney, coming up in great good humor, 
 and that is, to beat the Sylphide 1" 
 
 " You feel sure of that, Mr. Pinckney 1 Take care ! Over- 
 confidence is no augur of success." 
 
 " Oh, I don t reckon without my host. Our blue jackets tell 
 me that we can beat them famously in light winds, and it seems 
 we are to have no other. Their top-hamper is weightier than 
 ours, they say. and if the breeze steadies, we shall draw away 
 from them in no time." 
 
 " Bravo !" cried Eldon Clyde. " There s nothing like being 
 on the winning side." 
 
 Especially," amended Marian, "especially, Mr. Clyde, if it s 
 the right one." 
 
 Ah, stern moralist, you did not hear Mr. Gifford and me just 
 now drawing distinctions between politics and ethics." 
 
 " Distinctions ! If you do indeed draw them, it suggests an 
 explanation which has often puzzled me." 
 
 " As to what ?" 
 
 The reason why politicians object to let women vote." 
 
 " You shall vote here. Miss Rooke," said Pinckney, " and 
 carry the election, though you be in a minority. Shall it be 
 Chambertin or Champagne ? Tis long past noon, and we haven t 
 spliced the main brace quite an indispensable ceremony for 
 sailors." 
 
 " Why then, Chambertin, Mr. Pinckney; much the more sober 
 and unpretending, and the Sylphide makes foam and sparkle 
 enough as it is." 
 
 " Champagne for me," quoth Mr. Rivingstone. gaily. " My 
 older blood can stand a fillip, and be none the worse." 
 
 "Bravo!" cried Clyde; ; I ll join you so as to have an ally 
 against your fair ward, who seeks to punish me for all the sins, 
 omitted or committed, of the day." 
 
 "Nay, that isn t fair," urged Marian ; " only for those of which 
 you avow yourself the champion." 
 
 "Let me be your Ganymede, Miss Rooke," solicited Mr. 
 Blobb, drawn irresistibly to the spot by the popping of Cham- 
 18* 
 
418 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 pagne corks, " if not your champion. I ll take the humbler 
 post rather than interfere with so many doughty candidates." 
 
 " For shame, Blobb!" said Wirt Pinckney: " I thought yours 
 was only a temperance journal in point of fact, a teetotaller!" 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Pinckney, you. must give us poor scribblers a little 
 latitude at least on salt water." 
 
 "Take your Champagne, Blobb," advised Mr. Clyde, "and 
 may it make your report more sparkling. " 
 
 "The subject needs no stimulus," returned Blobb, gallantly, 
 "but I ll do my best." 
 
 " Angels can no more," cried Pinckney. " Here s to Blobb s 
 best!" 
 
 "Champagne and oysters," remarked Mr. Gollop, heralding 
 his approach with an audible aside, " Champagne and oysters is 
 Blobb s baits, they are. When I want to capture Blobb, I say, 
 k Champagne and oysters, and he nibbles quicker n a wink." 
 
 " Ha ! ha I ha !" cachinnated Mr. Doke ; "I heard somethin 
 drop, Mr. Pinckney, and I m always in at the death!" 
 
 "Quite right, Mr. Doke. Steward, more Champagne ! I do 
 believe they re trying to put another gaff-topsail on the Ariadne. 
 Miss Rooke, will you kindly propose a toast?" 
 
 With much pleasure. And may it prove more than a toast 
 a Drophecy ! Here s success to the Sylphide !" 
 
 " Omncs. Hip ! Hip ! Hurrah !" 
 
 Boom ! boom ! boom ! went three great guns from Fort 
 Hamilton, far away to the northward. Some man-of-war was 
 coming out. And bang replied the Sylphide s tiny brass bull 
 dog on her forecastle. The cheer was plainly regarded as a de 
 fiance on board the Ariadne, for presently was heard echoing 
 faintly across the water a hurrah in reply. In a moment after, 
 there came cleaving swiftly through the waters of the Narrows, 
 and firing gun after gun from port and starboard battery, in re 
 sponse to the salutation of the forts, a great war-steamer, out 
 ward bound. 
 
 " We are in august neighborhood," said Clyde, as he counted 
 the reports. " She carries an ambassador." 
 
 " I don t like this ere wastin money and burnin powder for 
 empty forms," criticized Mr. Gollop. " We don t ketch nothin 
 by it. It don t set us ahead any, that folks fires back. I don t 
 see the good on t." 
 
 "Perhaps not," returned Clyde, coolly; " but you see we find 
 it prudent to respect the representatives of other nations if we 
 don t respect our own." 
 
 " I don t keer how much you keep on respectm of em," 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 419 
 
 muttered Goflop as he turned away, * not a cuss, so long as it 
 don t cost nut bin ." 
 
 A very fair commentary on much of our popular democ 
 racy," said Hugh Gifford, bitterly, - which grudges all that 
 may give dignity TO the nation abroad, and nothing which may 
 encourage corruption at home. A liberal outfit for a foreign 
 minister is decried as anti-republican ; and more money is liter 
 ally stolen every year from -the people to enrich greasy politi 
 cians in the city of New York alone, than would double the 
 salaries of every United States minister, commissioner, secre 
 tary or consul, the nation maintains abroad." 
 
 Sec, we shall not want for company up the bay," cried 
 Marian, pointing seaward. The weather had been nearly calm 
 for a day or two before, and, indeed, the breeze was but light 
 now. Still it had been sufficient to gather scores of inward- 
 bound craft, who were now closing in on the eastern horizon 
 from every direction, and making what had been an hour or 
 two before but a lonely blue line, populous with silvery sails. 
 
 Meanwhile, on board the Ariadne, rather less hilarity pre 
 vailed than with the company of the Sylphide, since tLere were 
 to be found there not only less ease, but more conflicting ele 
 ments to harmonize. To assuage Edith s annoyance at what she 
 regarded as a deception practised upon her, and, at the same time 
 to make ardent love to Flora Dimity; to entertain his other guests, 
 and to watch the performance of his schooner, constituted an 
 aggregate of duties which might have taxed even a person of 
 habitually industrious habits; and much more onerous were 
 they to a gentleman so exclusively versed in doing nothing. 
 Both Clinton and Edith were irritated by the absence of Gil 
 ford, although for manifestly different reasons. It had been at 
 first arranged that he was to be of the Ariadne party : and not 
 until the time of departure was Clinton informed that Hugh 
 found it necessary to make a change, while Edith was ignorant 
 of it for some time after. The schooners were often quite near 
 enough to each other, however, to forestall the need of expla 
 nations, since all on the deck of one were recognizable from 
 that of the other. 
 
 " Pray, Edith, acquit me of any blame in the matter," at whis 
 pered Clinton, knowing well how wise it would be for him to 
 make his peace before reaching home. " There was a mistake, 
 you see ; Gifford was to be with us, and Miss Dimity was to go 
 with Pinckney." 
 
 u The latter I disbelieve, so don t repeat it ; as to the former, 
 if Mr. Gifford made an engagement, which he afterwards chose 
 
420 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 to break, it is a question for him to settle with his own sense of 
 politeness, and certainly nothing to me." 
 
 " He did not break it, not strictly, for he apologized amply 
 before the carriage brought you down, and explained " 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 " That it was important he should see Clyde, who will only 
 be in town for two days, and the opportunity was too good to 
 be missed, and so " 
 
 "Mr. Clyde could not possibly be asked onboard the Ari 
 adne?" 
 
 On the contrary, he was ; but Pinckney happened to ask 
 him first ; that s all. Now, like a dear, charming sister as you 
 are, do be a little civil to this poor migonne, whom you ve fright 
 ened half out of her wits with your stately ways, and I ll swear 
 to obey you in anything for a month to come there!" And 
 Clinton flew away to say something civil to pretty Flora, him 
 self, by way of avant courier. 
 
 "Monstrous strange, Miss Parapet!" observed Mr. Walsing- 
 ham Scuttle, * that Pinckney should have those very odd people, 
 Gollop and Poke, of his party ! Why, I m told they re almost 
 disreputable "?" 
 
 "They are not of the elite, certainly," said Edith; "but the 
 Pinckneys are a trifle more allied with political circles than 
 ourselves ; and I suppose they find it to their account to en 
 dure its penalties now and again. For my part, I could never 
 believe the game paid for the candle." 
 
 "I should say not, indeed. Why, they are perfect boors! 
 Quite unresentable, and " 
 
 44 Hist! I beg pardon ; but I feared Miss Drierly might hear 
 you." 
 
 One of the Shades had indeed just glided towards the cabin 
 door, her customary sallow modifying ominously to a delicate 
 green. 
 
 "Thanks. I know the creatures visit there; and it seemed 
 to me to be equally odd." 
 
 " The same reason. They have r;reat strength, great in 
 fluence with the masses ; one through political connections, the 
 other through a heavy and unscrupulous purse." 
 
 " Ah, those are implements which, in our, section are usually 
 wielded by gentlemen." 
 
 "But your section doesn t invite immigration. Voila tout. 
 However, you ll find Mr. Flytte a capital authority in these mys 
 teries." 
 
 " Pardon, for boring you with so dry a subject. You know I 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 421 
 
 am quite a neophyte in Northern politics, and too eager to be in 
 structed. May I not bring you some fruit, or a glass of wine *" 
 
 " Pray take nothing, dear Miss Parapet," urged Miss Drierly, 
 reappearing from the cabin, and looking somewhat more com 
 posed. " We are to have luncheon presently, and it looks so ex 
 cessively nice 1 Really, Mr. Parapet has an exquisite taste in 
 these things." 
 
 Mr. Parapet piqued himself on his taste in most things es 
 pecially in the article of pretty blonds and he was exhibiting it 
 at the moment, on the opposite side of the deck, with admirable 
 emprcssemcnt. 
 
 "A golden sunset I" he murmured, echoing a suggestion from 
 the lovely creature in the blue hat beside him, and who looked 
 as if she were floating in azure muslin draperies. Oh, yes ; 
 and a beautiful one, no doubt ; yet not so beautiful a gold as 
 certain fairy tresses I know of!" 
 
 "Nonsense," blushed the conscious Flora; " nonsense, Mr. 
 Parapet ; how can there possibly be a comparison between the 
 sky and hah- ?" 
 
 " Quite right, I agree perfectly. What I meant to convey was, 
 that there certainly could be none 1" 
 
 "Flatterer !" 
 
 " There can be no flattery in the cold statement of a physical 
 fact. Now, the deep, melting blue of yonder sky " 
 
 "Clinton," cried Edith, from the other side, "I should like to 
 show Miss Dimity those aquatic views you said were in the saloon, 
 if you will permit me ; and since Miss Drierly declares luncheon 
 to be nearly ready, we may, perhaps, as well retire !" 
 
 The gentlemen all raised their hats, and Miss Parapet bore off 
 the simpering beauty in triumph. 
 
 "What can Parapet see to admire in that doll-faced girl I" 
 marvelled, sotto voce, Mr. Burgee, who had hay-colored hah* and 
 no-colored eyes. 
 
 "Doll-faced girl!" repeated Mr. Scuttle, a Spanish-looking 
 man, with raven hair and flashing eyes of jet. " Why, she s a 
 perfect Hebe!" 
 
 " De gmtibusi et cetera, et cetera," said Mr. Flytte, as he threw 
 the stump of his cigar into the bubbling waters, and finished the 
 last stanzas of that kt Ode to the Sea," which his brother bard 
 Prodder afterwards criticized so savagely and so anonymously 
 in the columns of the sparkling Sideboard. 
 
 "Fearfully hot it s getting," said Clinton, thus bereft of his 
 idol. " Why, what the deuce !" he cried more hastily, "what s 
 the matter, Brime ? We seem to be at a stand-still !" 
 
422 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 " That s jest it, sir. The wind s dropping us like a hot potato ; 
 and look ! the Sylphide s becalmed as well ! I was afeerd twould 
 be so, pervided it didn t freshen. It ll stay like this maybe till 
 sundown, and then come out stiff* from somewhere s else most 
 like from the north ard." 
 
 The wind had indeed fallen very suddenly, and the gray veil 
 which had lifted somewhat from the northern horizon seemed to 
 be quietly settling down again for the night. The Sylphide lay 
 at about a hundred yards from her consort, whose sails and stream 
 ers were flattering sluggishly against her rigging, and which 
 seemed otherwise motionless. The two schooners had been 
 making, as has been said, long stretches in lines at a right angle 
 to the projection of Sandy Hook, and the breeze had left them 
 two or three miles away from it. For a while the water ap 
 peared to dance and eddy about them, thus giving some life and 
 vivacity to the scene. But soon, from a counteracting action of 
 the tide, it became apparently as torpid and motionless as the 
 yachts themselves, each of which now lay becalmed " like a 
 painted ship upon a painted ocean." 
 
 Under these circumstances, the voyagers did what people are 
 very apt to do when thus imprisoned in hopeless passivity, betook 
 themselves to the dinner-table for such consolation as they might 
 find. And in neither case was there any room for disappoint 
 ment ; for, whatever Clinton s taste or liberality in such matters, 
 Wirt Pinckney was no whit behind him ; so that a couple of 
 hours passed away very pleasantly, and there being not enough 
 movement to cause inconvenience even to the most delicate, the 
 ladies got on as happily as their companions. 
 
 The two hours having passed, however, and the parties 
 having returned to their respective decks, prospects did not ap 
 pear quite so cheerful. It was now past six o clock, and the sun 
 was going down, not in gold, but in a bank of sullen, leaden- 
 looking clouds. The horizon was thickly dotted with vessels as 
 motionless as their own, and with glasses it could be seen that 
 no flag on any of the distant forts was lifted by even an excep 
 tional puff of air. All hung drooping, dull, and spiritless. 
 
 As the sun sank behind the cloud-bank which covered his point 
 of departure on the horrizon, the windless air grew chilly, so that 
 Edith Parapet was glad to don a crimson burnous to eke out the 
 warmth of her gauzy muslin ; an example which the ladies on 
 board the two yachts were not slow to follow. Meanwhile, both 
 Captain Brime and the skipper of the Sylphide, ill-pleased with 
 the ominous calm which surrounded them, had shortened their 
 towering canvas until fore and mainsails were under close reefs, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 423 
 
 and nothing was seen forward but the scantiest possible apologies 
 for jibs. The work was done in each vessel simultaneously, eo 
 that both were in what Brime called then* fighting rig at the same 
 moment. 
 
 Whether due to a vague presentiment of coming danger or 
 simply to curiosity, the ladies and gentlemen of the yachts view 
 ed these preparations in absolute silence. It seemed a melancholy 
 and foreboding evening to follow so gay and sprightly a day ; but 
 the silence was so deep, so oppressive, that the slightest move 
 ment of block or tackle from either vessel smote on the ears of 
 those on board the other as if it must needs be within reach of 
 their hands. 
 
 Presently the darkness grew denser, and on the horizon deli 
 cate ribbons of blue lightning began playing and dancing fan 
 tastically, while, as if in reproof, hoarse and distant, but perfect 
 ly audible, the thunder began to mutter and roll in company. 
 
 How silent they are on board the Ariadne!" said Marian 
 breathlessly to Gifford; " I could see Miss Parapet sitting by the 
 bulwark in a crimson shawl by that light, and a group around 
 her as pale and speechless as herself. Strange they should keep 
 so very still !" 
 
 I dare say they think the same of us," answered Hugh, 
 laughing, " since your voice is the first I have heard for full ten 
 minutes!" 
 
 < ; What. Mr. Pinckney !" cried Eldon Clyde. " You haven t 
 brought us here to offer up so many sacrifices to the fishes of 
 New York Bay !" 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! Our bark is staunch enough, no doubt, and 
 my only regret is that of keeping the ladies in the night air ; but 
 we must wait, perforce, the pleasure of the elements." 
 
 The conversation grew general, and, thus encouraged, voices 
 from the Ariadne emulated the example. But in a few minutes 
 longer a far brighter flash of lightning blinded all eyes, succeed 
 ed by a heavy crash of thunder, while a long low wail of wind 
 quickly followed the explosion, giving menace of its speedy ap 
 proach. Upon this, all the speakers were silent again. Marian, 
 indeed, whispered : 
 
 " Do you think there is any danger ?" 
 
 And Hugh, with a brave memory in his heart, replied, " And 
 if there should be, I can answer for one woman not to fear it, 
 whatever may be said of the men !" 
 
 A great rush of wind was close at hand, and a sharp shout 
 from the Ariadne was echoed back from the Sylphide, as from 
 the same voice. "Stand by the halyards!" from the skippers, 
 
424 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 and "Ay, ay, sir!" from the tiny crews, sounded strangely to 
 most other ears ; but the precaution was quite necessary, for in 
 an instant the squall was upon them, bowing both the light craft 
 nearly to their gunwales, and straining their scanty sails almost 
 to bursting. 
 
 "If this capful only holds as tis, sir," said John Brime, as, 
 clenching the tiller of the Ariadne in his brawny hands, he care 
 fully humored the gallant little craft through the blinding strain 
 of the squall, " twill sweep us clear by Lafayette in less than a 
 jiffey. We won t let go nuthin till it pipes up higher than 
 this." 
 
 Both boats behaved very well, and stood up sturdily after the 
 first onset of the blast, which was now driving them at a furious 
 rate through the water. As had been expected, the Ariadne 
 took and kept the lead, although of course all idea of racing was 
 now banished from the minds of both parties of passengers. In 
 an incredibly short . space the yachts had traversed most of the 
 stretch which had lain between them and the coast of Long 
 Island ; but, in order to get through the Narrows, and pass to 
 the westward of Fort Lafayette, it was evidently necessary to 
 tack. The wind, blowing with great violence as it was, had 
 shifted one or two points ahead, and so suddenly that it was 
 only obvious at the last moment that the manoeuvre in question 
 was not only unavoidable, but must be executed under rather 
 critical circumstances. 
 
 Not far in the wake of the Ariadne flew onward her consort, 
 and perhaps it was well that, at the moment the former went 
 round like a top, as her prow was driven into the wind, a series 
 of brilliant flashes lit up the scene, although the volleying thun 
 der which ensued drowned the voices which essayed to shout 
 their orders. Still the task to be performed was so manifest to 
 the three or four skillful tars who worked the Sylphide that no 
 harm was done, and her helm was*down and her sails shivering 
 in the wind directly after her leader s. 
 
 But in the interval a piercing, an appalling cry rang in the 
 ears of those on the deck of the hindmost vessel. When it 
 ceased, the Ariadne was on the other tack and flying like an 
 arrow from the spot she had filled an instant before. It had 
 burst forth at the moment the great boom of her mainsail had 
 swung with a crash to the larboard. Marian Rooke heard in 
 that cry another which mingled with it a wild, despairing cry 
 of "Edith! Edith!" which came down on the gale and was 
 swallowed in the darkness. She saw, too, by the vivid gleam 
 of the lightning, a crimson mass floating away to leeward on the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 425 
 
 crest of the rushing billows ; and she saw, the next instant, that 
 Hugh Gifford had left her side, and plunged straight into the 
 sea. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 IT was some moments before either of the yachts could be so 
 far controlled by the frantic efforts of their crews as to retrace 
 the path they had so swiftly described just before. The race 
 was now for a graver stake, however, than any on board had 
 contemplated when they set sail that sultry morning, and their 
 exertions were commensurate with its dreadful importance. 
 
 It was some moments, although it seemed an age to those 
 most interested in the result, before the Sylphide could make 
 her way back to the spot where Gifford had leaped into the 
 foaming waters ; and, when she did so, the last-ebbing tide, 
 pressed turnultously by a gale which now blew directly down 
 the channel, had carried the objects of her search some distance 
 out to sea. 
 
 Battling desperately with the waves, Gifford had made his 
 way to the crimson guide which fortunately made Edith s posi 
 tion so conspicuous even in the obscurity, that it was not diffi 
 cult to find her. Time courses with awful speed in these cases. 
 3Iany a poor wretch has drowned in the space inevitably taken 
 in putting about the ship whence he had fallen. The yachts, 
 however, were handy, and despite the resistance of the elements, 
 they fought their way quickly to the rescue. Presently the 
 whole scene was illumined by blue lights burning from both their 
 decks, feeble competitors with the flashes of lightning indeed, 
 but more steady. And now two life-preservers are within Hugh s 
 reach, lashed to lines running from the Sylphide s taffrail as she 
 hurtles by. Again she is thrown into the wind ; he has made 
 one of the buoyant rings fast under Edith s arms, and in a few 
 moments more both are drawn in safety over the bulwarks. 
 
 Edith was quite senseless. The gun, the rocket, and the glad 
 cheer which outrang for an instant the howl of the wind, and told 
 her brother of her rescue, conveyed no sound to her ears. But 
 she was living, breathing ; of that there could b e no doubt. " In 
 tender hands of those of her own sex, and with proper restora 
 tives, applied in the comfortable cabin, she would soon recover. " 
 said Eldon Clyde ; and he said truly. As for Hugh, he was 
 
426 MAKIAN BOOKE J OR, 
 
 quite self-possessed, although greatly exhausted $ and dry clothes 
 and a little hot brandy and water would doubtless be all-sufficient 
 to remedy any ill effects from his bath. 
 
 Congratulations flew thick and fast at so happy an ending to 
 the adventure ; and as, in a briefer space than the whole had 
 taken, both schooners were laid on the other tack, and with a 
 short stretch attained the comparatively smooth surface of the in 
 ner bay, while Clinton s anxious hails had received the most re 
 assuring and satisfactory replies, there really seemed only room 
 for unmingled joy. 
 
 And yet this joy was dashed with bitterness ; an affair which, 
 promising as it did to end in a terrible catastrophe, and ren 
 dered apparently harmless by an act of promptness and courage, 
 was yet destined to evolve results fraught with pain to several of 
 the personages of our story ; for it led to an incident, which, 
 however induced by a train of most natural circumstances, was 
 yet of a character which people in certain relations are seldom 
 persuaded is susceptible of misconstruction. 
 
 When Edith was drawn on board she was carried directly into 
 the cabin, and, all unconscious as she was, laid upon a couch 
 near the door. Hither the ladies and gentlemen crowded with 
 injudicious but natural solicitude, while Marian, with a practical 
 good sense which seldom deserted her, had flown for hot water 
 to the little galley forward, leaving the stewardess, who happily 
 had changes of her own, to arrange dry clothes as substitutes 
 for the drenched garments which the half-drowned girl had worn. 
 
 In the mean time, when one young lady was supporting her 
 head, another striving to pour wine between her pale lips, and 
 Mr. Rivingstone doing his best to keep a space clear about her, 
 Edith suddenly opened her eyes, and, in accents of terror, 
 shrieked : 
 
 "He Hugh! He has saved me! He is lost himself! 
 Where where is he ?" 
 
 At which Wirt Pinckney ran hastily to fetch Gifford, and 
 thrust him streaming with salt water into the anxious circle ; 
 whereat Edith, with a scream of joy, cried : 
 
 " Safe ! safe ! Thank God ! thank God I Dear dear Hugh is 
 safe!" And, clasping her arms about his neck, she straightway 
 fainted at the moment that Marian entered, in time to hear the 
 ejaculations and to see the accompanying tableau. 
 
 The cabin was speedily cleared, and our hero relieved from his 
 rather embarrassing situation ; while Marian, tending Edith like 
 a sister, soon had the satisfaction to see her conscious and com 
 fortable. But, all engrossed in such feminine cares as she was, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 427 
 
 and which prevented her dwelling for the tune upon aught else, 
 Marian felt she had witnessed what could neither be explained 
 away nor forgotten ; what, as she believed, must have had its 
 origin hi foregone conclusions, incompatible alike with Hugh s 
 truth and her own future happiness. 
 
 Now, the explanation of the affair was very simple. Torture 
 could not have wrung from Edith Parapet those expressions of 
 fondness which, off her guard, unnerved, shaken and dismayed 
 as she was, had only half wittingly escaped her. Apprehensions 
 lest her preserver had fallen a victim to the magnanimity which 
 led him to risk his life to preserve her own, had given birth to an 
 outburst which was in truth as surprising to Gilford as it was to 
 any one else who heard it. But how many women are there who 
 would credit such an explanation were it offered ? Marian was 
 resolved to seek none. She put her own construction upon what 
 she had witnessed, and steeled herself in the conviction that there 
 could absolutely be no other. Fate had decided that she was to 
 stumble in good season upon the evidence of her lover s duplicity, 
 and had thus guarded her against making shipwreck, not only 
 of her happiness, but most probably of his own. 
 
 For Edith was very lovely. No one could look upon her, 
 even now, pale and bowed like a broken lily, with the hauteur 
 which was so marked a characteristic, and, in her case, so be 
 coming a one, all subdued, awkwardly draped in unseemly gar 
 ments as she was, and not perceive that she must be. under 
 favorable circumstances, supremely captivating. 
 
 And Marian had been subjected of late to sore trials. She 
 had been condemned to hear in bitter silence reports which 
 were humiliating to her pride, fatal to her peace. In the excite 
 ment, the enthusiasm of an explanation when all his better feel 
 ings had been roused, when every dear old memory of the past 
 had been evoked to awaken his imagination and buttress his 
 loyalty, Hugh had indeed denied the truth of these reports. 
 But Marian was not without experience in matters of the heart. 
 She had been taught betimes, " when the blood burns, how 
 prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows." How did Hugh s 
 denial look in the light of what nad been revealed to her in 
 the light of Edith s evidently not unsought or unreturned affec 
 tion? 
 
 He was ambitious too ; and the sin by which angels fell might 
 easily prove too strong for the faith of one whose youth had 
 been cankered embittered warped into reserve, if not into 
 double-dealing, by early surroundings and misdirections. The 
 temptation to ally himself with so proud a family, as the step- 
 
428 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 ping-stone to social and political success, had been too strong for 
 him, and he had fallen. Should she judge harshly? No, a 
 hundred times, no. His behavior might have been unjustifiable, 
 nay, criminal ; but he had much to struggle withal in his own 
 breast as well as in the outer world, and she knew, when she 
 first had loved him, the imperfections of his character. 
 
 Marian had enjoyed many hours of almost unalloyed bliss. 
 When Gifford and she first met after their separation when he 
 had poured into her willing ear the story so long pent up in his 
 breast of deep and passionate love when he pictured how for 
 many a day it had dwelt there, on the prairie, in the mines, when 
 she was yet in his sight ; in all his wanderings by land and sea 
 since they had been parted she had believed, and believed with 
 a rush of happiness that was almost unearthly, in the literal 
 truth of his protestations. Why should she not ? She knew 
 she was beautiful. It was mere affectation on her part to ignore it. 
 She knew herself accomplished; it was a naked fact, which 
 whoever ran might read. She knew herself young and attract 
 ive in a social sense ; experience teaches to average intellects a 
 lesson in this wise not readily misconstrued. Why, then, should 
 she not be loved"? Again and again she asked herself this ques 
 tion. Why should not Hugh Gifford love her as dearly as he 
 swore he did ? 
 
 On this day a wretched shiver came over the girl, for an an 
 swer smote suddenly upon her mind which, strange to say, in 
 connection with Gifford, had never occurred to it before. An 
 answer which was bound up and interwoven with the most pain 
 ful recollections of her life, which was, perhaps, the cause why 
 it had been hidden away in the recesses of her memory only to 
 be tortured forth by a calamity which brought something of the 
 same burthen of sorrow. This was the secret, she began to per 
 suade herself, of her lover s alienation. He had lived among 
 people of high thoughts of late people of fastidious tastes 
 and they had engendered or stimulated in his mind a prejudice 
 which had been absent or feeble before. 
 
 Wandering like Nature s own children in her luxuriant forests, 
 sitting side by side on mossy banks which bordered her lakes 
 and streams of crystal, finding health and safety, and plenty, 
 while trusting to her and her alone ; hearing whispers and sug 
 gestions from her lips and from no others ; before the thirst for 
 gold, and the herding with its worshippers, had brought sophis 
 tication and littleness, and the taint of mean and ungenerous 
 prejudices, no such thought as was now in Marian s mind 
 would have arisen there, no such motive have been attributed to 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTCNE. 429 
 
 her lover. But as it was, there must be something, she reasoned, 
 beside more obvious and selfish incentives, something in the 
 nature of a powerful stimulus, to have perverted Gifford to false 
 hood, and worked in him so great a change. 
 
 She went quietly home, showing no mark of distrust, no sign 
 of disquietude, but playing her part on board the yacht with 
 even and gracious propriety to the last, and prepared to take a 
 step which should be irrevocable. 
 
 She wrote Hugh a very long letter, taking for its preparation 
 not one day, nor two, nor three. It was a week, in truth, be 
 fore she had finished it to her mind ; and it was covered over 
 and over with those traces which time makes invisible to mortal 
 eyes, but whereof the angels keep a translation to be forever 
 tenderly and compassionately remembered. What a love was 
 hers ! So catholic, so deep ; it was more than that of a maiden 
 for her lover, for it had something of the holier love of a mother 
 for her child ; a love which survives the burning ardor of youth ; 
 a love which dies not under unkiudness, neglect, or even deceit ; 
 a love as much greater and nobler than common love as it is 
 nobler and greater to love the stained and erring than it is to 
 love the spotless and innocent ; a love which transcends human 
 love of the ordinary type so strangely, that it may have first 
 suggested to men s minds the character of the divine. Rarely 
 do we see or know of such love on earth, still more rarely are 
 we its objects ; but when we are, we are supremely fortunate, as 
 Hugh Gilford was, in its enjoyment ; and generally supremely 
 blind, as he appeared to be, in appreciating what we enjoy. 
 
 The adventure of the yacht was of course a nine days won 
 der. Equally of course, the public voice mated Edith Parapet 
 with Hugh Gifford in every direction. It was quite impossible, 
 incredible, absurd, that a man should go on in that way, run a 
 great hazard to perform an act of humanity, without being self 
 ishly interested beforehand or paid in one particular manner 
 afterwards. It Avould be contrary to all precedent to all romance 
 to all public expectation and, consequently, to all decency 
 that the matter should have any other termination. 
 
 Perhaps the stories which thus met her on all sides may have 
 had something to do in fortifying Marian s resolution. Perhaps 
 the fact that she did not see anything of Hugh, or hear any 
 thing of his subsequent actions, may have had some effect. Per 
 haps an idea that there really was a species of poetical justice in 
 his marrying Edith may have had weight. But whatever the 
 mingling of motives, she faltered not in carrying out her design 
 when she had once determined upon it. 
 
430 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 Her letter released Hugh entirely from his engagement ; but 
 it carefully avoided allusion to the particular circumstance which 
 was the mainspring of her actions. She said that matters had 
 changed very materially during the months that had passed since 
 their engagement was made. He had new companions, new 
 pursuits was reputed to have grown very wealthy ; and it was 
 her wish that he should have whatever change may have taken 
 place the opportunity to act as if he were bound by no ties or 
 pledges whatever. They were both still very young, and nothing 
 was more natural than that they should have mistaken the depth, 
 the permanent character, of their feelings. Such was the sub 
 stance of the first part of her missive. 
 
 But more followed of a grave and earnest nature, for Marian 
 thought it her duty, as she had thought it of old, to do what 
 she could to aid Hugh to become better and worthier. She 
 pointed out and this in a way disconnected with their personal 
 relations how the acquisition of wealth in so short a space, with 
 so little labor on his part to attain it, had worked unfavorably 
 upon his character. How it had weakened good resolutions, 
 sapped his moral vigor, opened the door to petty temptation, 
 subjected him to poisonous flatteries from all manner of vulgar 
 and ignoble sycophants. How, instead of devoting himself to 
 the noble tasks of regeneration and improvement services of 
 which his country was so palpably and vastly in need he had 
 merely gone floating on in a paltry tide fed by the principle of 
 accepting wrongs because they exist of winking at corruption 
 instead of denouncing it of folding the hands in indolent sleep 
 when duty and the talents God had given demanded self-sacrifice 
 and laborious exertion. Thus even in parting with Hugh, as 
 she thought for ever, the keen agony of that parting only prompt 
 ed Marian the more to do all that in her lay to make him a purer 
 and better man. 
 
 It was a week before the letter was delivered. During this 
 time no one had seen Hugh with whom Marian came in contact. 
 After its lapse he disappeared altogether from society, and 
 vanished from the eye of the world. Poor Hugh ! His sorrows 
 had come indeed not single spies, but literally in battalions. The 
 day before Marian s letter reached him, the failure was announc 
 ed, on a colossal scale, of the great house of Ingott and Gollop. 
 Already the exposure and excitement of the adventure in the 
 bay had forced him to take to his bed. The accumulation of ills 
 brought on a raging fever; and involved as he was for a vast 
 sum in the misfortune of the insolvents, he became utterly un- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 431 
 
 able to direct his affairs, or even to endeavor to save anything 
 from the wreck. 
 
 The sheriff s officers were in his house, while he lay above, 
 either entirely unconscious, or with occasional waking fits of 
 delirium. The great fortune, with all the accumulations which 
 it had gathered, was scattered to the winds, and its whilome 
 master, the pet of society, the caressed and admired candidate 
 for political and social honors, was penniless and forsaken. The 
 gold by which he had set so much store the gold which was to 
 be the ladder of his renown the gold, in virtue of whose pos 
 session men had been almost ready to fall down and worship 
 him the gold so carefully hidden from Virginia, to build a wall 
 between himself and Marian the gold so swiftly gained had 
 flown more swiftly still, and Hugh Gilford was once more a 
 dreaming and houseless beggar. 
 
 OF THE. FOURTH BOOK. 
 
432 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 BOOK THE FIFTH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HISTORY, it is said, repeats itself. However it may be with 
 nations, most of us can vouch that that of individuals does so. 
 Few but are reminded almost every day of their lives of some 
 thing that has gone before. Sometimes the remembrance is so 
 startling, that it is hard to escape the conviction that there exists 
 a subtle but vital connection between the two sets of incidents. 
 Such was my reflection one quiet evening in October, when I 
 found myself on horseback winding down a series of low hills, 
 which trend towards Long Island Sound, near the point of its 
 contact with the beautiful valley of the Connecticut. 
 
 I seemed to be living over again the self-same evening which 
 had found me three years before descending the hills into the 
 valley of Armstrong s Bar. Now there were a great many 
 strongly-marked points of difference between the two occasions. 
 The former was in spring, this was in autumn. In one case, the 
 air smelt strongly of the sea ; in the other, I was many a league 
 from blue water. That was in the extreme west of the conti 
 nent, this in the extreme east. The first was the land of gold 
 and license, the last the land of husbandry and rigor. Where, 
 then, was the resemblance ? In what lay the force of the asso 
 ciation ? 
 
 Truly, not in place, season, or, least of all, in coloring. 
 Well I remember that vivid green, so like the tropical glare, 
 which drenching, long-continued rains had clothed earth and 
 trees withal about the Bar. The coloring around me now was 
 such as is almost indescribable, except for such as have seen it ; 
 but those who have not may gain some idea by imagining that 
 countless rainbows had fallen from the skies, and steeped the 
 forests in all directions with glorious dyes, which lost their eva- 
 
THE QUEST FOK FORTUNE. 433 
 
 nescence, and became fixed in the process. It was the most lovely 
 period of the American autumn ; but with all its gorgeousness, 
 there was a sobriety befitting the maturity of the year, far dif 
 ferent from the callow and upstart youth of the Californian 
 spring. 
 
 But we are too far on our journey to linger by the way to des 
 cant on its scenery. Let me eschew negatives and divergences, 
 and say at once why the two occasions were so strangely alike 
 reminded me so irresistibly of each other. 
 
 It was a soft, breezeless evening then ; I was riding slowly 
 down those graduated slopes which suggest the neighborhood 
 of some great water-course ; my path was bordered and arched 
 with foliage of the densest description, and suddenly, seated 
 upon a log, I came upon two men. 
 
 The instant I saw them the past three years seemed altogether 
 a dream. I was again in a Mexican saddle, weary with a four 
 days journey from Marysville, armed with revolver and bowie- 
 knife, and with papers in my saddle-bags showing a legal title 
 to fifteen leagues of territory, covering what was called Arm 
 strong s Bar. I was again to be greeted, first surlily, then hos 
 pitably, and invited to a queer-looking cabin, far down in the 
 valley, which boasted a cotton roof, and such strangely-jumbled 
 inhabitants. I was again to hear the melodious contralto of the 
 tall, dark girl, whom those inhabitants would call Mary Anne. 
 Once more I should receive the uncouth but kindly attentions 
 of the Armstrongs ; h sten to the brusque criticisms and enco 
 miums of the rough Scotch doctor ; gaze furtively at the sad and 
 thoughtful face of the young New Englander, who sat so moodily 
 alone in the corner. Once more I should be an amused witness 
 of the conversations and opinions of the editor of the "Moun 
 tain Clarion"; once more marvel at the quaint follies, the min 
 gling of scraps of wisdom and painful puerility which came from 
 the witling Ike, with Ms shock of red hair, and his extravagant 
 shreds and patches of finery ; marvelling but for a brief space, 
 however, as it soon became evident enough what was the secret 
 of the poor fellow s vagaries ; once more I should see the great 
 dog leap up and pull down the latch; once more hear his joyous 
 bark and 
 
 Yet no ! The charm was broken the illusion was dispelled 
 the absence of this one sound it was that made the difference 
 between now and then ! Not spring or autumn, east or west, 
 changes in colors, time, or odors made the real difference ! It 
 was the absence of that deep, well-remembered bay of Lion 1 
 There sat Dick Railes and Ike upon the log as of yore ; but the 
 19 
 
434 MARIAN BOOKE; OK, 
 
 dog, with his ringing bark, was gone, and in a moment my 
 wandering imagination was at one with facts again, and the past 
 was gone for ever ! 
 
 I was merely going to see the Armstrongs, and some others, 
 at the ancestral homestead near Old Saybrook, partly for friend 
 ship s sake, partly for business connected with Armstrong s Bar. 
 They had acquired a title there, which, for a consideration, was to 
 be extinguished, and my old employers were to establish their 
 claim. This was all. Not because of a desire to avail of a facti 
 tious appearance of authenticity, but merely for truth s sake, I 
 lead the reader here to receive his last impressions of those 
 whose acquaintance he has made, and in whom, it may be trusted, 
 his chief interest may be centred. After which, in accordance 
 with a not-forgotten promise, the individuality of the writer is 
 withdrawn, to traverse the course of his story no more. 
 
 Let us go through the dense, arching woods with our guides 
 who have been long expecting us and find out what we can 
 of our old friends and acquaintances. 
 
 Of all the many charming old places which grace the swelling 
 line of the Sound, there is none more so to certain eyes than Old 
 Saybrook. To eyes which love to rest upon old trees, old houses, 
 old roads ; to find in daily walks and drives the proof that its 
 inhabitants regard their town, such as it is, as finished; to see 
 evidences of that which is so rare in American towns of re 
 pose ; to such eyes Old Saybrook is charming indeed. 
 
 About a quarter of a mile from the village is the ancient Arm 
 strong homestead. Two hundred solid acres had Seth repur 
 chased which an Armstrong once had held, as far back as the 
 time when the place got its name, from a Say and Sele. You 
 can find the name, nearly obliterated by weather and time, on 
 many an old tombstone in the churchyard hard by, and in village 
 archives there is matter enough, if need be, to trace an ample 
 genealogical record of the family. 
 
 The house was very large and very old. But, like many old 
 things, there was substance enough in it to build half a dozen new 
 ones ; and the barns and other out-buildings corresponded with 
 the house. When the Armstrongs came back rich from Califor 
 nia, and bought the place back into the family again, the build 
 ings certainly looked rather shabby and unpromising ; and pretty 
 Kitty, when she first saw the house, bit her lip with vexation. True, 
 she was to be Mrs. Railes at midsummer ; but, as is the fashion 
 with some American families, they were all to live under one 
 roof. Seth could not bear, after what they had passed through 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 435 
 
 together, to have the household separated, and Dick was nothing 
 loth to fall in with the old man s wish. They came to New York 
 in May, and, as the purchase had been negotiated through an 
 agent some time before, they moved into then new-old posses 
 sion soon after. But it was a house which none of the villagers 
 who knew it best could have recognized by October. What with a 
 verandah running round the whole building, and all manner of 
 rustic porches and entrances, flanked by rustic seats ; what with 
 fresh paint which Luke, who had actually been reading John 
 Ruskin among other recondite authors, happily prevented from 
 being of an implacable, staring white and a world of clambering 
 vines, the Armstrong mansion became a very tasteful-looking as 
 well as comfortable abode. 
 
 It was a dear old home ! With rolling meadows and chang 
 ing woods to be seen from its windows for many a mile ; with 
 the silvery Connecticut widening away to the northward, and on 
 the south the great ocean-like Sound glittering with a scarcely 
 less "innumerable smile." 
 
 No wonder Doctor Landalejfell in love with the place, and 
 bought what he styled a ram-shackle, tumble-down old house in 
 the village. He was laughed at a good deal by those who knew 
 how he was wont to growl at America, her boasting and swag 
 gering, and her universal suffrage. But at first he said be bought 
 only as an investment. The spot was near New York, which 
 must become a prodigiously huge city, and all watering-places in 
 its vicinity would then be valuable. Afterwards he averred, that 
 although he had by no means given up his idea of a cottage on 
 the Clyde, yet the air of Connecticut agreed with him, and he 
 would stay a year or two to settle his constitution. Finally, he 
 declared this was more recently that he found he could do 
 good in America, and that the people were more disposed than 
 formerly to be done good to ; so that, in short, he would stay 
 among them a little longer. 
 
 Habit, indeed, does much, and the doctor is not the only one 
 who has learned by experience, which is better than books, that 
 men are neither so culpable nor so meritorious as most of the 
 world would have them, for qualities which spring from circum 
 stances which they had no share in arranging, and wherein 
 other men would be much the same as themselves. But the doc 
 tor really did good in his way, and to no one did he do more 
 good than to poor Hugh Gifford. 
 
 It so happened that the party arrived in New York just at the 
 season of our hero s misfortunes. There was no need of consul 
 tation among themselves after the doctors agreed that he might 
 
436 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 be safely removed, and Hugh was taken by railway, passive and 
 half-conscious as he was, and comfortably bestowed among kind 
 friends in the old farm-house. His fortune was utterly swept 
 away. If it had not been, we may mention, entre nous, that In- 
 gott and Gollop would have been quite unable to go into that 
 great street-cleaning contract which they secured about nine 
 months afterwards. 
 
 But fortune mattered little in his present condition ; for he 
 was attacked by an illness so violent and so prostrating, that for 
 many weeks life just trembled in the balance. The sweet, whole 
 some country air, unremitting watchfulness, youth, and latterly 
 a ray of hope, perhaps, brought him ultimately through. But all 
 summer long, Hugh lay on a couch where he suffered first long- 
 continued delirium, and afterwards more protracted and racking 
 pain. 
 
 He did not suffer for want of gentle attendants of both sexes. 
 Of others, more hereafter ; but there was one whose care and 
 tenderness were rather like those of a woman than a man ; who 
 could never watch enough, do enough to minister to his comfort, 
 to increase the chances of his recovery. Through all the long 
 wearying nights, when Hugh s state was most critical, Luke 
 Armstrong was by his side ; and when, little by little, mind and 
 body began to regain their tone, who but Luke cheered him, 
 nursed him, read to him when books were forbidden, save at 
 second hand, went long journeys to fetch him fruit, or other del 
 icacies, whichthe system, jaded by fierce attacks of fever, craved 
 in the course of its slow rcaetion. 
 
 Certainly no woman could have been more watchful or delicate 
 in offices which belong to woman s own vocation. Perhaps Luke 
 felt himself in the position of a legate or deputy, and his con 
 scientiousness was on the alert to omit nothing his principal 
 would have wished done. 
 
 " I am giving you sad trouble," said Hugh, faintly, one balmy 
 evening in August. Luke had pushed back the white curtains 
 of a window opposite the sofa where the invalid lay, and there 
 came wandering into the room all manner of delicate scents of 
 jessamine and honeysuckle. " Trouble to all, but most to you, 
 Luke." 
 
 " Trouble, Mr. Gifiord. Trouble, to take care of you. What 
 a word !" 
 
 " Call rne Hugh ; I call you Luke. " 
 
 "Well, Hugh, then; although it never seems quite natural, 
 like. " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 437 
 
 , you know, you are educated a gentleman, and we 
 are only poor farmers. It is not natural, even in a republic, for 
 us to be exactly like equals." 
 
 The room opened into another beyond, and through the door 
 Hugh s eye rested upon many well-filled book-shelves. It was 
 Luke s library ; and a very good library too. More of history 
 and science than of the classics perhaps ; yet still a very good 
 library. Then Hugh s eye wandered back to the owner s face. 
 It was much more thoughtful than formerly. The brow seemed 
 positively to have risen in these three years. But all the old 
 kindliness was there. The head had not gained at the expense 
 of the heart. The love which had been so sweet, which had 
 been so bitterly disappointed, had exalted and ennobled a nature 
 which was of that rare type that defeated love, or vanity if we 
 will, cannot force to grow downwards or to become distorted. 
 Luke was surely a gentleman, if any of earth s delvers could 
 ever be such, and so thought Gifford as he gazed. 
 
 " You have studied, read a great deal in thece years, Luke. 
 I ve no right to claim superiority as to book learning. And as 
 to money, you are independent now, whilst I I am very, very 
 poor." 
 
 " So far as the money goes," said Luke, " nearly every dollar 
 we have came from Lionsdale. But for you we should never 
 have had it. So we re even there. Often since you have been 
 sick has father said not that any of us needed to be reminded 
 of it that part of the money by good rights was yours, and we 
 ought, when you got well, to pay it to you." 
 
 "That s nonsense absurd. I wouldn t listen to it not for 
 a moment. If any one has a right of discovery, it is poor Ike. 
 Strange," added Hugh, feebly. "I ve had such queer fan 
 cies since I ve been ill. I thought or did I dream it ? that 
 Ike was no longer weak-minded no longer silly ; that he had 
 marvellously recovered, and grown quite sane." 
 
 There has been a great change in him, and there s no dream 
 in that," replied Luke ; " but I ll tell you all about it when you re 
 stronger. The doctor and he s more cranky and despotic than 
 ever, as you can see says you re not to talk about exciting 
 things ; you re to be kept quiet, and soothed." 
 
 "At all events," said Gifford with a smile, "there s no reason 
 why you shouldn t call me Hugh." 
 
 "I will, since you wish it. But as we have spoken of such 
 things there s a difference between us, besides those of read 
 ing and dollars, after all." 
 "A difference?" 
 
438 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 " Yes, there t s a difference in man that democracy ignores, but 
 which, I take it, all philosophers have to take into account. It 
 wouldn t do in America, I suppose, to call it blood; but there s 
 a difference, call it what you will." 
 
 " If there is," said Hugh, bitterly, " it s a pity it has not made 
 me a better man. Why, Luke, you are a hundredfold worthier 
 and better than I am !" 
 
 "Hush! You musn t say so." 
 
 "But I will because it s true. Would you have misused 
 advantages as I have ? Having fortune, some talent, health, and, 
 more than all, the love of the purest, loveliest being that ever 
 breathed ; would you, possessing these, have cast them all from 
 you like toys, merely through the indulgence of a contemptible 
 indolence a miserable vanity ! Would you have sacrificed, as 
 I have, fortune, honorable ambition, a holy love, for mere self 
 ish egotism? That love, more priceless than all else beside, 
 would you have cast it from you, outraged and humiliated? 
 Would you " 
 
 "Stop!" interrupted Luke, and a feminine blush rose over his 
 sunburnt face into the paler forehead. " Stop, Hugh ! don t say 
 you have ill-treated Marian?" 
 
 The name came with difficulty from his lips, and when it 
 passed them it was with a lingering softness, as if he feared, 
 when he let it go forth, that something might happen even to 
 the name. 
 
 Hugh looked confused. His head was weak yet, and he had 
 scarcely thought, in saying what he did, whether his companion 
 had any knowledge of the events of the past year or not. 
 
 "Why, didn t you know, Luke, that we were " 
 
 "Engaged? Yes. The doctor read his letter to us most 
 of it. That was in it. I I was glad of it. I knew you re 
 member what I told you? that it would make her happy. And 
 I could not doubt she would make you so." 
 
 Who could ? Heaven forgive me ; who could ? But it is 
 all over now." 
 
 " Do you mean to say " 
 
 " That our engagement is over broken off yes." 
 
 Luke said nothing for some time, but sat looking straight 
 out of the window at the blue sky. Had he ho inkling of this ? 
 Perhaps ; but no certainty. Presently he spoke : 
 
 " And you treated her badly, then ?" 
 
 " Very, as I now think. I didn t think so at the time. I was 
 bewildered dazzled like one in a dream. But surely," he 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 439 
 
 said, suddenly, "surely you must have heard something of 
 this?" 
 
 Luke s face reddened again. " I don t think this talk is quite 
 good for you," he said; " but when you ask me that, I don t 
 Uke to keep back the truth. While you ve been sick you ve 
 gone on much in this way in self-reproach, like declaring you 
 had ill-used her, and destroyed your own happiness. But I 
 thought it was the fever, and Doctor Landale said people often 
 went on and talked in contraries about their affairs in delirium, 
 something as drunken folks abuse those they love best. So I 
 took no notice, or as little as I could ; but I never dreamed it pos 
 sible that you could have treated her badly !" 
 
 " Xonc but a villain a cold-hearted, selfish villain could 
 have done so. Don t mistake ; I committed no direct no 
 flagrant outrage. To have done so would have been less cruel 
 if more unmanly. I persuaded her to tie herself to me, and 
 then neglected her ; placed her in the humiliating position of 
 being regarded by the world as slighted for another for 
 another, brilliant hi the eye of fashion, and rich in the world s 
 homage ; left her to believe herself supplanted likely to be 
 altogether abandoned by a paltry trifler to whom she had given 
 her love, but who was not worthy even to kiss the hem of her 
 garment." 
 
 " But you loved her always still ?" 
 
 1 As I do now ; as I love my own soul ! Sometimes I think 
 better, since my senses have returned, and I feel the whole ex 
 tent, the supreme wretchedness of my loss. Alas I I have not 
 even the consolation of thinking it undeserved. Ah. Luke ! 
 what I said is true ; you are and were worthier a hundred 
 fold than I. a hundredfold better worth the priceless treasure of 
 such a woman s love!" 
 
 " No more of this," said Luke, hurriedly ; " you ve talked 
 already more, far more than is good for you. Try and sleep for 
 a while ; the doctor said you were to fall asleep before sundown. 
 I ll come and read to you by-and-by, as usual." 
 
 *> Thank you, Luke ; you are too good too kind far more so 
 than I deserve." His voice was weak and hoarse; ho had indeed 
 talked over much, and with undue excitement. A crimson spot 
 was in the middle of each cheek, and the eye which had been so 
 dull was in a brilliant flame. 
 
 Luke darkened the room, gravely wet a handkerchief with 
 some cool essence, adjusted the sick man s pillows, and went 
 softly away. 
 
 Not far from the house was a grove of stately young pines, 
 
440 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 a cool, shady retreat, with the smooth, dry, brown carpet those 
 trees are wont to spread, covering the earth at their feet. Here 
 Luke had set up a sort of altar ; a rustic bench only, just like 
 what he had made for Marian on the shore of the lake, near 
 Armstrong s Bar. He took a strange pleasure in making divers 
 little nooks and crannies about the homestead look like the 
 former home in California. He liked to reproduce the same lit 
 tle conveniences; to erect them where they would afford as 
 nearly as possible the same views ; to plant flowers that would 
 diffuse the same odors with those at the Bar. That there was a 
 tinge of melancholy in this did not make him the less enjoy it ; 
 nor was it exclusively the memory of a cherished love which 
 prompted his action. The innate refinement of his nature had 
 received from the presence and handiwork of Marian its first 
 strong impulse to growth and development; whatever, then, 
 was associated with that auspicious period, either in sense or 
 spirit, he strove to re-create around him. He came now to this 
 rustic bench in the pine grove, and, casting himself at full length 
 upon it, he looked up at the deepening blue of the skies, and 
 thought. And the deepening blue gave place to a dusky gray, 
 and that, after a while, to a deeper blue than before, and the stars 
 came out one by one, and looked down inquiringly at him ; and 
 still Luke lay stretched upon the bench, staring up at the zenith, 
 but buried all the time in profound meditation. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 tk l didn t think," said Seth Armstrong, as he sat smoking his 
 pipe in the piazza, and gazing forth on the fair expanse of roll 
 ing meadows before him, " I didn t think to own the old Arm 
 strong Farm afore I died. When I went off West as a young 
 man, I reckoned it made no great odds where folks lived or 
 where they died, so long s grain was cheap and land plenty ; and 
 I kept on a thinkin so for a good many year. But now, now I 
 ketch myself wonderin every day how people can find it in 
 their hearts to leave the sile they was born and bred on ; how 
 they can bear the idee of laying down to rest anywheres except 
 among their fathers." 
 
 "Humph!" grunted the doctor, who was playing apostate to 
 his own long-cherished religion of a cottage on the Clyde. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 441 
 
 "When you were poor and had many mouths to feed, you went 
 where nature was most generous to help you, and had no time 
 to think of sentiment Now you re well off. with the larder 
 full, and the granary running over, and can amuse yourself by 
 becoming poetical." 
 
 " Fie, Doctor," cried Luke, " are not the poorest of your own 
 countrymen those who love then* native land the best?" 
 
 "Truly it s said so," quoth the Doctor, who would have been 
 furious had any one maintained the contrary; " but most in 
 sisted on when they had only Hobson s choice. If they were 
 like you Yankees, with a land of promise within reach a Mis 
 sissippi valley with no herring pond rolling between there 
 might have been more migration and less romance." 
 
 " It s nateral, perhaps, to love the land where you re prospered 
 must," mused Seth, between his whiffs, " and yet see how our 
 folks come back when they ve got a little money, and often when 
 they hain t, even from sech a fine country as California. See 
 how they come flutterin back to nestle on these ere barren Xew 
 England hills, like fledglings coming home to a mother!" 
 
 "Folks like what they ve been used to," observed Mrs. Arm 
 strong, oracularly, " and if they cotton to outlandish ways for a 
 season it s only for love o novelty, and they yearn for the home 
 made crust when the gilt once wears off the furriii gingerbread. 
 Armstrong s Bar was well enough, that is, as it got to be ; but 
 even there what a sight of things there was you couldn t have 
 for all the gold, and flour at fifty, and bacon a dollar a pound!" 
 And the worthy woman peered fondly over her glasses at the 
 interior of the parlor close at hand ; an interior embarrassed 
 with such riches of china and patchwork that it must have re 
 quired affection the most profound, coupled with experience of 
 the lengthiest, to cram all into the same apartment. 
 
 " Armstrong s Bar," pronounced a sad, measured voice from 
 just within the room, "is the pootiest place in the world. 
 Whilst water runs and grass grows we ll see no nicer place ; and 
 I love it love it better than any other spot I ever trod on 
 besides." 
 
 The speaker was Ike. Ike, without any fantastic ornaments, 
 in a plain suit of blue homespun, his red hah combed straight 
 behind his ears, and the old look the strange eerie mixture of 
 wiklness, feebleness, and cunning replaced by an expression of 
 steadfast sorrow. The voice, too, had no longer the querulous, 
 self-asserting ring it often gave out of yore ; its tone was grave 
 and even, not that of a person entirely rational, but far nearer 
 to it than ever before. 
 19* 
 
442 MARIAN RO ORE; OR, 
 
 " We re going to make the homestead as much like the Bar 
 as we can, Ike," said Seth, "for we was all fond of it, and don t 
 mean to forget bein very happy, and arter all is said and done 
 very lucky there. I m not quite so spry as I was, but Luke, 
 and you, and Dick can jest fix things up as ye like em best, and 
 what suits you ll suit me." 
 
 He did look a trifle older. A little more grizzle in the hair ; 
 a little more stoop in the shoulders ; a deepening of the hardy 
 lines about the mouth, and the furrows athwart the brow ; but 
 the eye was as gentle as on the day when tears came into it at 
 the hearing of Marian Rooke s sad story her appeal for aid and 
 protection and the old accents of kindliness and considerate- 
 ness, notwithstanding uncouth phrases and pronunciation, were 
 mellowed and more genial, if anything, through the passage of 
 time. 
 
 " The river s wider and deeper," said Kitty, softly, " than the 
 stream at the Bar. We can t alter that. But there s many a 
 walk and many a view around here that you couldn t tell apart 
 from them we left behind. There s a little lake in the wood 
 behind the Blackberry Pasture just like the one in the hills 
 where where poor Lion used to bathe and Mary Anne and 
 Mr. Gifford used to sit and watch him while he brought things 
 out you threw in the water." 
 
 A low sigh came from Ike, which showed he was an attentive 
 listener. 
 
 "And we ve got the same kind of clambering vines set out," 
 proceeded Luke, as if taking up in an understood manner a con 
 solatory strain, " so that you might shut your eyes anywhere 
 about the house, and not know whether you were in Connecti 
 cut or California." 
 
 "And the seats you ve fixed in the grove," added Kitty, " and 
 the views to be seen from them, are so like the old ones that I m 
 sure twould puzzle sharp eyes to tell the difference." 
 
 "Cappin which," struck in Dick Railes as an irresistible 
 climax in the way of resemblance, " the Doctor and me s goin 
 to run a line of levels with the th odolite, to see if we can t 
 fetch water from Buttermilk Creek to irrigate the south-east 
 meadows, just for all the world as we flumed it over to wash 
 gold out o the Canon." 
 
 "You see, Ike," added the Doctor, with, for him, an un 
 common gentleness, " you see. with money enough and 
 we ve all got that now we can change the Armstrong Farm 
 into Armstrong s Bar almost as easily as build the flume. We ll 
 have them as like as two peas in a little while." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 443 
 
 "All except," said Ike, tremulously, "all except" he hesi 
 tated, choked a little, and then went on hastily but steadily, 
 "This I know though there s some bad ones everywhere 
 there s as kind hearts on the Farm as ever there was on the Bar." 
 He rose as he ended, and, going down the steps of the piazza, 
 wandered away in the twilight. 
 
 Every one turned, and looked inquiringly at the Doctor. 
 "Better." he said, briefly, better every day. Indeed, the 
 two seem to be getting well together one in body, the other in 
 mind. For that matter, Gifford had a very long mental siege, 
 too." 
 
 "Not altogether," inquired Seth, "not entirely for the money s 
 sake ?" 
 
 "Tut, man, no. Only misers go mad about their gold, and 
 the season is generally gone by with them for fevers such as 
 breed in youthful veins. Twas a combination of causes 
 physical as well as mental whose seeds were sown a long time 
 back." 
 
 "It s strange," quoth Seth "at least to a man who s been 
 poor for the most of his days that of all his fine friends, none 
 have come or inquired for him in his sickness, his misfor 
 tune." 
 
 " Not strange at all," contradicted the Doctor, " if it were so 
 but it isn t. We left no country address when we moved 
 him. and any letters were to go to my own agents. I ve got 
 several three in the same handwriting but it is not time yet 
 to let him have them. His affairs have been settled, or are in the 
 course of being settled, by the lawyers. These are not business 
 letters, or they would have gone to them." 
 
 "Do you think anything will be saved," asked Seth, "after 
 paying the claims against him?" 
 
 " I think they ll bring him in in debt," said the Doctor, 
 coolly; "they generally do on the other side, and I take it 
 Yankee lawyers are no honester. But what then ? He s young, 
 will soon be as strong as ever, the world is all before him ; he 
 can take heart of grace and try again." 
 
 " I dunno," doubted Seth, " naters is different. Twouldn t 
 hurt my Luke now to be a poor man agin to-morrow. lie 
 never was bred to expect to be anything else, and twouldn t 
 come hard on him. But it runs in my head it ll be different with 
 Mr. Gifford." 
 
 "Like as if," elucidated Mrs. Armstrong, "folks had been 
 used allers to the best things in chiny and patchwork, and would 
 
444 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 feel wuss to give em up than them ere red Pawnees who never 
 know d what it was to want em." 
 
 "It s not the money part of the business," observed Luke, 
 quietly, "which will discourage our friend. These letters, 
 Doctor, perhaps you know?" 
 
 " They re all in men s handwriting," said the Doctor, signi 
 ficantly, " and none that I can remember having seen before, 
 excepting this," and he drew from his wallet a letter, which he 
 held up in the dusky light for inspection. It was a large, thick, 
 coarse-looking letter, addressed to Hugh Gilford, Esq., in a 
 vulgar, scrawling, but very legible hand, and a huge " private " 
 was pen -prin ted on the upper left-hand corner. The packet was 
 passed from hand to hand, finally reaching Mrs. Armstrong s, 
 who held it at arm s length and glanced at it over her spectacles 
 for some time with quivering suspicion ; but no one could guess 
 at the name of the writer, and it came back to the Doctor un 
 detected, so that there was a pause of expectancy when he re 
 placed the missive in his wallet. 
 
 "Whatever my supposition," he added, blandly, noticing the 
 curiosity he had excited, " it is the business of the recipient to 
 mention it if he chooses and not mine." 
 
 "And whosoever it is," asserted Kitty, positively, "it s not 
 the handwriting which will do Mr. Gilford s eyes or his heart 
 good to see." 
 
 There was a suspicion in the family that something was wrong 
 respecting the engagement of GifFord and Marian liooke ; but, 
 partly from a feeling for Luke, and partly from a sentiment of 
 delicacy rare in so untutored a circle, they had seldom touched 
 upon the subject during Hugh s illness. 
 
 "I don t think it ought to hurt him," continued Seth, philoso 
 phically, " havin sech a trial so early in life. I ve seen enough 
 o the world to know that what s lightly got, lightly goes. A 
 man isn t a real man till he s had to buckle down and fight 
 fortun into givin him a fair show. The good there is in Hugh 
 Gilford weren t goin to be fetched out by luck, but by hard 
 blows. And when he gits strong agin, if he don t see it in that 
 light, he ain t the man I took him for. But, settin that aside, 
 it s my judgment that we re beholden to him for the sight o gold 
 we got at Lionsdale ; and twould be no more n fair to offer to 
 share, leastways to offer to give him a fresh start in the world." 
 
 The Doctor shook his head. " Why, man, he d no more take 
 it than he d take Mrs. Armstrong s china. No. He may be 
 the better for his fall that s as happens in the long run but 
 he ll take nobody s money as a staff to prop him up again ; and, 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 445 
 
 what he d helped others to get, is the very last on earth he d 
 accept." 
 
 "We were all in partnership on the Bar," urged Seth. 
 
 " That was ended by his departure. Still, the interest we have 
 in the real estate may fairly be esteemed as partly his. If the 
 adverse claim is substantially good in law, our title is valueless ; 
 but if there is any doubt about it, it will be worth while for the 
 holders of the Mexican patent to buy us off, and worth our while 
 to be bought. Such a transaction may yield a few thousands, 
 and, as you say, give Master Hugh a fresh start in the world." 
 
 " But Luke thinks him so very much depressed, Doctor," 
 said Kitty, " so hopeless and despairing like, though very gent Je 
 and grateful for what he says all of us have done for him." 
 
 " ; Time and the hour run through the roughest day, " quoted 
 the Doctor. " We must wait and hope. When the body mends, 
 the spirit may also." 
 
 " Ah, you can cure the one, but the other " 
 
 " For the other, he needs another medicine." 
 
 Luke sighed, and strolled out to find Ike. 
 
 " What he needs," affirmed Kitty, " is what I fear none of us 
 can find. Mercy knows we ve tried hard enough." 
 
 < Which is " 
 
 " What my poor boy could not get," said Mrs. Armstrong 
 gently, but with a tinge of motherly regret ; " I s pose you mean 
 Mary Anne ?" 
 
 To be sure. There s something wrong, and he won t come 
 round not for money not for a share in the estate not for a 
 new Lionsdale put clear into his lap until that s made right." 
 
 " Ah, Kitty," said Dick Railes, lachrymously, " you kin feel 
 for the sore heart, the hope deferred of another, but for one like 
 mine that s a beating " 
 
 "Go along, stupid! Where s the resemblance, I d like to 
 know ?" 
 
 " Even for that necessity," said the Doctor, " I repeat, Wait 
 and hope! " 
 
 ;i There s a good deal in that" acquiesced Seth Armstrong, 
 gravely. " Even Ike, afflicted as he was, at last found his rem 
 edy." 
 
 " At the cost," said Kitty, sorrowfully, " of the friend he loved 
 best in all the world. Poor Lion !" 
 
 And they all repeated in mournful chorus, " Poor Lion I" 
 
446 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IT is a sad episode, that of poor Lion. But my story would 
 be incomplete without it, and I would not leave the fate of even 
 BO humble a character in the action untold, or, by touching upon 
 it in ambiguous phrase, clothe the subject in a mystery which 
 might be more painful than silence. And after all, may we not 
 hope as some of us who have been so simple as to love dumb 
 animals do hope that the love and the kindliness which passed 
 between us is not all lost even when the poor faithful creature is 
 gone out of sight and buried forever ; that the interchange of 
 fidelity and protection has served a wholesome purpose, has sown 
 a generous seed, to blossom and bear fruits of charity long after 
 we as well as our dead pets may be out of sight forgotten ? 
 
 If so, even the memory of such episodes may not be without 
 their uses. That which softens the heart and makes moist the 
 eye, which inclines us to one gentle action that might have gone 
 undone beside, which teaches a lesson of that catholic charity 
 which includes not only all races of men, but even the brutes 
 whom the Almighty has appointed to live among and be pro 
 tected by us, may not be all in vain. I know that the life and 
 the death of this dog have not been so. I know that both 
 brought blessings. I know that there are those to whom the 
 remembrance of them is tender and salutary ; to whom it is as 
 grateful and softening as the south wind which sweeps over poor 
 Lion s grave. 
 
 They had brought him home through the tropics, and the unac 
 customed heat which so often prostrates human beings was man 
 ifestly injurious to him. The clearness of his eye, the unceasing 
 and watchful intelligence of his face, became alike blurred and 
 confused. Once on board the steamer in the Pacific, he showed 
 equivocal symptoms of disturbance, and some had proposed to 
 throw him overboard, or otherwise to destroy him. But Ike, 
 who had an instinct about the dog like a mother s for an infant, 
 staid with him constantly by night and day, so that no oppor 
 tunity presented for the deed ; and on the Atlantic side, Luke 
 managed to have the creature put in a cool, dark place, where he 
 was undisturbed either by strangers or the fatal broiling sun, so 
 that he was no worse when they arrived at New York. 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 447 
 
 But they arrived in the heat of midsummer, and although ev 
 ery possible care and pains were taken, his spirit did not revive, 
 and his constitution seemed to have lost its elasticity. He was a 
 powerful animal, truly, but he was no longer young ; a dog of 
 his breed at ten or twelve is, like a man past middle lite, less 
 able to grapple with a powerful disease than when in his prime. 
 However they went speedily to the farm, the Armstrong family s 
 old time possession, and it was hoped that in its green fields and 
 unpolluted atmosphere Lion would recover. 
 
 They were comfortably settled on the farm by July, but the 
 weather grew hotter and hotter, and the dog became more rest 
 less than he had ever been known to be before. He was savage 
 to strangers too, in a fashion very different from his old saga 
 cious way. when he would learn by the expression of a face, the 
 inflection of a voice, whether hostility was proper, and whether 
 he had to face friend or foe. Soon he took to wandering in the 
 village hard by, and once or twice growled at the farmers 
 children, or otherwise unhappily made himself enemies ; and 
 presently there began to spread a latal report that he was mad. 
 
 So complaint was made in a deprecative and neighborly way, 
 and Seth said the creature should be safely confined. A kennel 
 was placed in a quiet nook behind the barn, where both shelter 
 and air were of the best, and to this abode Lion was banished 
 until his health should give signs of amendment. But Ike had 
 got hold of an impression not an unreasonable one that his 
 favorite required free access to grass and water, and that, to effect 
 his restoration, liberty was at least as important as anything else. 
 The simpleton, with his usual cunning, made no open objection 
 to the imprisonment, but he crept to the place at night and set 
 the dog free, taking care to leave matters in such a position at the 
 kennel as to favor the idea that Lion had enfranchised himself. On 
 these occasions he would be found rambling about the premises on 
 the following morning, and Luke or Dick Railes would tie him up 
 again. 
 
 But on one unlucky night, or rather morning, for the incident 
 appeared to have occurred in the small hours, a youth somewhat 
 noted in the neighborhood for a rather predatory turn of mind, 
 was cornered by Lion in the pear orchard near the house, and not 
 only roughly treated in respect of his homespun trousers, but re 
 ceived one severe bite in the leg. The lad s mother was related 
 to half the village, and raised a terrible hue and cry, so that the 
 little place was quite in a ferment of commotion. The unlawful 
 attempt which led to the misfortune was prudently lost sight of 
 in the swelling proportions of Lion s crime. What indeed was a 
 
448 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 whole wilderness of pears compared with the darling s maltreated 
 calf? what the sanctity of property contrasted with a be-lamed 
 tendon Achillis ? 
 
 The echo of this ominous commotion speedily reached the farm, 
 and serious counsel was taken regarding the best plan of opera 
 tions. While this was yet undetermined, a delegation arrived 
 from the village, consisting of the blacksmith, the wounded ad 
 venturer s uncle, and the sexton, his maternal grandfather. 
 These officials, with a respect due to the wealth and conceded 
 standing of the Armstrong family, coolly demanded the life of the 
 assassin who had mutilated the leg of their kinsman. It was a 
 fact so firmly established as tobe beyond all cavil or question that, 
 whether the dog were mad now or not, if he subsequently be 
 came so, their kinsman would go mad likewise. In view of this 
 possible catastrophe, no Christian could hesitate between the life 
 of a brute, however honest, and that of a human being, however 
 the reverse. This was the spirit, if not the letter, of their rea 
 soning ; and it was clear, notwithstanding the veil of a civil de 
 ference, that the deputation considered their statement rather in 
 the light of a mandate supported by an overwhelming majority, 
 than as a request, open to deliberation and optional refusal. In 
 other words, they implied, prior to their departure, that, if the 
 owner did not think fit to destroy the animal, it would be pre 
 sumed that the task was voluntarily relegated to any patriot of the 
 vicinity who might choose to undertake it. With this they departed. 
 
 The family were in sore perplexity. They knew no one at a 
 distance to whose care the poor dog could be consigned ; and 
 even if they had, it were scarcely kindly or conscientious to call 
 upon friends to assume the care and risk of a culprit whose fair 
 fame had received so blackening a tinge, and for whose deeds, 
 should he forget himself, they would become responsible in an 
 imminent degree. There seemed no security in tying him up, 
 since he always managed to get free ; and if anybody had a sus 
 picion as to how this had happened hitherto, he also had a con 
 viction that a similar objection would remain hereafter. 
 
 While Seth, Luke, and Dick Railes debated, the question was 
 settled in an apparently conclusive manner. The dog could no 
 where he found. Of course, every one suspected Ike, but no one 
 could get him to make the least admission, or offer the least ex 
 planation. Naturally, this gave rise to anxiety ; for it seemed 
 certain that whatever danger existed of Lion s destruction was 
 not obviated by a temporary concealment, and all dreaded the 
 effect which any sudden casualty of the sort might have upon Ike. 
 The Doctor was still in New York ; but he had always warned 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 449 
 
 the family that any violent excitement might be expected to pro 
 duce a great and permanent effect on the simpleton s clouded 
 mind, and all were naturally anxious to avert what might prove 
 a grave calamity. When it was evident that straightforward 
 questions were useless, then recourse was had to indirection. 
 
 "I s pose ye know, lad," observed Seth, discreetly, "that the 
 folks in the village feel as though they had a call to finish the 
 poor critter if he comes in their way. Twquld be an awful pity 
 if he was to go onloosin of hisself again, and meetin praps a 
 cruel and a lingerin death ; wouldn t it now ?" 
 
 Ike said nothing, but he gripped the axe wherewith he was 
 splitting wood with a tighter hold, and his furtive-looking eyes 
 flashed with an unwonted fire ; so the old man shook his head 
 and went his way. 
 
 " I d much rather not have an enemy in the neighborhood," 
 said Luke, confidentially, " now that we are all settled so snug 
 and comfortable on the old homestead ; but I fear I couldn t for 
 give any man who did old Lion a mischief. I d a great deal 
 rather such a thing were put out of the question ; wouldn t you, 
 Ike?" 
 
 But Ike only set his teeth and went sullenly on with what he 
 called his "chores." If he had possessed the wealth of Croesus, he 
 would have insisted on doing all the same what he was so habit 
 uated to, and have neglected it now and again when the humor 
 seized him in the like reasonless way. 
 
 Then it was sweet, kind-hearted Kitty s turn. Kitty, always 
 a great favorite with Ike, and growing more plump and, if pos 
 sible, more comely as a young matron than she had been as 
 a budding girl. " Poor dear old Lion," she breathed, softly, to 
 Ike, as they stood in the dusk of the evening after the cows had 
 been milked and supper-time had come, when Lion used inva 
 riably, wherever they might be, to present himself for his own. 
 "Poor dear old Lion ; I suppose he knows they want to hurt 
 him, and so keeps out of harm s way. But oh, Ike, if he gets 
 loose and goes about the village again at night and anything 
 happened, what should we do ?" 
 
 But Ike was silent still. Even the ingenious assumption of 
 Lion s being confined for safe keeping, and of Ike s being privy 
 to the fact, entirely failed to draw forth any admission. Not a 
 word should pass his lips that would give any. the faintest, clue 
 to friend or foe. Ike had heard that morning one word, one 
 horrible word, spoken in connection with Lion, and it had glow 
 ed before his imagination in letters of blood, ever since. This 
 awful word, death, never quitted his thoughts, and all the force 
 
450 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 of his feeble brain was obstinately bent, as it always was when 
 his affections were deeply involved, to prevent its infliction upon 
 Lion. 
 
 After midnight Ike rose, as he had done long ago to guide 
 Hugh Gifford to his ill-fated fortune, and made his way stealth 
 ily to the barn. Far away in a remote corner above the main- 
 floor and even with the loft, where was stowed a great quantity 
 of hay, he groped cautiously along until he came to a long-dis 
 used corn-bin, secured with a rusty padlock, and which he opened. 
 In this binlay Lion, patient and silent. Ike had had a long, earn 
 est interview with him, while the deputation of his enemies were 
 concluding their harangue in the morning, and the consequent 
 understanding was no doubt comprehensive and complete. Lion 
 knew what was expected of him in the way of noiselessness and 
 caution, and he was not a dog wittingly to go behind his engage 
 ments. 
 
 Then Ike took a hatchet, a piece of stout chain, a tin pail, 
 and a bag of broken meat he had secreted, and whispering the 
 animal to follow, passed down to the ground floor of the barn, 
 and so out into the open air. On they went over the bosky 
 fields, which lay still and glooming in the summer s night, while 
 the air was weighted with the sweets of new-mown hay, and the 
 fragrance which falling dew distilled from harvest flowers. 
 
 . They went a long way, and that back from the river, and so 
 toward the inner country. Practised wanderer and explorer as 
 he was, Ike was not at fault for a refuge, a sanctuary for his 
 favorite. It was about two miles from the farm-house, where a 
 range of rather abrupt hills finished a spur which cropped down 
 from the rougher country northwards. Among these hills was 
 one steeper, higher, and more difficult of access in every way 
 than any other. Scarcely precipitous enough to deserve its cur 
 rent name of " Sugarloaf," it was yet so much more so than its 
 fellows, as to defy agricultural invasion, and its ascent was sel 
 dom attempted by dwellers adjacent, to whom the only reward, 
 in the shape of a very fine landscape, would have offered no at 
 tractions commensurate with the labor of earning it. No plough 
 would ever disturb that hill-top, and few footsteps. Ike was a 
 very good judge of the chances in a case like this. What he 
 most disliked was the necessity for depriving Lion of his liberty, 
 practically as well as ostensibly. The creature knew much, but 
 hardly enough to refrain from following his master down again 
 when he should ofler to leave him solitary and alone on the des 
 olate hill. 
 
 When with some difficulty and protracted toil they gained the 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 451 
 
 summit, Ike set vigorously to work to erect a habitation for 
 Lion s future residence. There was plenty of loose stone, and 
 a good deal of practice at amateur house-building in California 
 enabled the architect to work with no little skill and celerity. 
 In an hour he had made a cool, dark cell for the future recluse, 
 so arranged that he would in no case be visible from below, and 
 could always at pleasure avoid the glare of the sun. During 
 these preparations Lion watched his master with comprehensive 
 sagacity, and wagged his tail in acquiescence when the latter 
 would now and again inquire his wishes as to some matter of 
 construction. 
 
 The citadel being finished, it remained to provide the garrison 
 with provisions. Ike had brought meat in his bag sufficient to 
 last for a couple of days ; and lie now went half way down the 
 acclivity to a spring, where he filled the pail he had fetched for 
 this purpose. When all was done, Lion was chained to a staple 
 driven into a tree close to the door of his mansion, the other end 
 being carefully secured by a double swivel to his collar. Ike 
 took great pains this time that the captive should not be able to 
 release himself, a fact of which the tender reproach in the latter* s 
 shaggy face showed him to be well aware. 
 
 ; You must stay put this time, Lion," said Ike, apologetically, 
 "or else them bloody-minded varmints 11 ketch ye, sure. 
 Seein there s enough to eat and drink, a good roof over your 
 head, and a fine airy prospect, you might stay put if it is a 
 little lonesome ; let alone that, Ike 11 come back to-morrow, if 
 he can; the next day whether or no." 
 
 So Lion mournfully acquiesced, and, with much compunction 
 and many marks of love, Ike made his way down Sugarloaf, 
 and home to the old farmhouse, just as the red ribbons were com 
 mencing to flutter and widen in the eastern skies, and the cool 
 blue at the zenith was beginning to fade. 
 
 For many days some weeks in fact nothing was heard or 
 seen of the missing one. Of course everybody at the house 
 knew that Ike was in the secret, whatever it was, otherwise he 
 would never take Ms friend s absence so quietly. They tried 
 cross-examining again, but with the same ill success as before ; 
 and then, experienced in the poor witling s obstinacy as they 
 were, they ceased to question, and the quiet life rolled on as 
 before. 
 
 Every night or two Ike would steal off to Sugarloaf, and 
 supply the hermit with provisions and fresh water. But Lion 
 pined under his tedious incarceration, and expressed a growing 
 discontent that it should be so long protracted. Might not the 
 
452 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 memory of his crime have so far softened and dissipated, that he 
 could again, with prudence, show himself in the community ? 
 Might not the fact of his lengthy exile fairly plead in condona 
 tion of the offence which had been its cause ? Lion thought so ; 
 and, perhaps, he had a certain perception of the weakness of his 
 friend s understanding, which led him, unhappily, to a fatal self- 
 reliance when he came to choose between Ike s caution and his 
 own inclinations. 
 
 Be that as it may, one solitary night in July, when there was 
 no moon, Luke, who had been at the neighboring town on 
 some business or another, happened to drive home very late. 
 As his horse trotted by the orchard which ran over a series of 
 hillocks rising behind the great barn he saw on the most dis 
 tant slope, where the trees were sparsest, a suspicious-looking 
 figure. 
 
 It looked draggled and woebgone, and had that wistful and 
 yet doubtful air which wretched beings wear who, rightfully or 
 wrongfully, have been cast forth by society, and who cherish 
 evermore thereafter a resentful, yet shrinking consciousness, that 
 they never again shall be welcomed in it. The figure was pen 
 sive and gaunt, and it drew along with it a fragment of dismal 
 chain. 
 
 Luke first called gently to the outcast, but it only shook its 
 tail with one sorrowful wag and kept its attitude of dull expect 
 ancy. Then Luke alighted, and clambering over a rough stone 
 wall, made straight for the spot where it stood. But whether 
 the creature had a conviction of his own wrongdoing in the 
 matter of his escape, or mistook in the darkness one who had 
 always been kind to him for a stranger, he took alarm at his 
 approach, and fled silently away. Luke tried pursuit, but soon 
 found it useless and gave up the chase. 
 
 Next morning he resolved to put Ike on his guard, since it 
 was clear Lion had found means to break from prison, and en 
 largement must needs be fraught with grave peril to his life. 
 But the breakfast-table was in a sad uproar. People had come 
 from the village with accounts of a most calamitous character. 
 Two sheep had been worried and one killed in the night; a 
 large mastiff belonging to the butcher had been mercilessly 
 thrashed, so that it was thought he must also be destroyed; 
 several people who tried to come to the rescue had been savagely 
 attacked, and although none were hurt, more than one was much 
 frightened, and all escaped only by the chance of being near 
 their own doors. Finally, no one was safe while this marauding 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 453 
 
 desperado was at large, and the village peremptorily demanded 
 his instant execution. 
 
 It appeared that poor Lion was fulfilling the usual destiny of 
 Ishmaels and Pariahs from time immemorial. What physiologi 
 cal causes connected with his long imprisonment may have pro 
 voked him to wild and sudden lawlessness may be surmised, but, 
 in the absence of means for hearing his defence, cannot be posi 
 tively known. Luke and Dick Railes stoutly maintained their 
 disbelief that Lion was capable of such foul deeds as were thus 
 imputed to him. Seth was dreadful sorry dreadful but really 
 he didn t know where the poor critter was. Kitty cried and 
 looked beseechingly at the deputation, as if to disarm then- san 
 guinary intention; Mrs. Armstrong glared at them over her 
 spectacles, shook her head and her knitting-needles in boding 
 unison, and said nothing; while Ike religiously followed her 
 example. 
 
 The sum of ah 1 was, that the culprit was ranging at large; 
 that none of the family knew or would tell of his whereabouts ; 
 that if he had misbehaved in the manner described, they certainly 
 could not expect the parties aggrieved to refrain from demand 
 ing expiation ; and that, albeit they could not deliver up the 
 dog, they assuredly would pay for the sheep. "With this under 
 standing the villagers departed with mollified feelings towards 
 the family, but breathing vows of vengeance on the fugitive 
 criminal. The Fates were weaving away slowly but surely, and 
 the catastrophe was not far off. 
 
 But Ike, his mind in a whirl of blended fury and apprehension, 
 swore silently to avert it. He knew that the dog would not 
 tarry in the open country, and that since he had escaped the 
 dangers of the night he was probably safe in his retreat for the 
 day. So Ike went calmly about his usual avocations, and waited 
 until darkness again covered the earth ere he sought the place 
 of concealment. At midnight he made his way thither, and, as 
 he expected, found the wanderer at home. When he found him, 
 Ike s heart rather sank ; for there were more physical evidences 
 than one scattered about of Lion s guilt ; moreover, there were 
 two especial circumstances which told against him very badly : 
 when he ostensibly recognized his master he assumed an air of 
 hypocritical penitence, but when Ike first came up the height he 
 affected to be asleep. Poor Lion! Thou art not the first or 
 the last who has sought, by lying, to cover sins to which thou 
 wast driven by the unmerited persecutions of society. 
 
 After that night, Ike felt no less love for his old friend ; he 
 even felt more tenderly toward him since there mingled with the 
 
454 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 sentiment an increased impulse of pity. Yet he had also an ill- 
 detined emotion of dread and self-accusation ; for he now knew 
 that he was shielding a criminal. Alas ! for the poor unfortu 
 nates, the cast-offs and tabooed ones of the world, when even 
 the compassionate hearts which have sheltered, begin to waver 
 as to whether justice has really braced their arm when it inter 
 posed the pitying shield. 
 
 Lion was now made fast in bonds intended to defy his utmost 
 cunning. The chain was doubled, and a rope was added to sup 
 plement its restraints. The cry of vengeance was on the gale, 
 and nothing should now be left to chance. When all was done, 
 Ike delivered a long and touching expostulation on the impro 
 priety of Lion s conduct and the risks to which it subjected him. 
 But Lion did not listen with the same apparent interest and clear 
 ness of apprehension as before, and once or twice he turned his 
 head sullenly away. Injustice was doing her work and his con 
 science was becoming seared. 
 
 Ike pondered long and anxiously about the best means of 
 saving his favorite s life. There was no doubt but the danger 
 was imminent. Some of the villagers had talked of poison and 
 some of steel, but there were certain perils about the use of 
 either which led them to be objected to. Gunpowder was free 
 from such, so that it was generally agreed that the dog should be 
 shot. Whenever he might again make his nocturnal way into 
 the village, half-a-dozen guns would be ambushed for him, and 
 by one of these it was resolved that Lion should fall. 
 
 Still, there seemed to be no safer place than Sugarloaf for the 
 hunted beast to abide in. The danger of his being discovered 
 there was small, but that of his again descending among his 
 enemies was considerable. To insure against this, Ike took all 
 possible precaution. 
 
 For several days a bitter feeling prevailed in the village. Some 
 one had started the idea that the dog was intentionally hidden 
 about the farm. Then there followed much prowling and spy 
 ing around the premises, which did not quite please the Arm 
 strongs, but which made Ike morose and savage. The fourth 
 night after Lion s last escapade, his master, on attempting to leave 
 the homestead to visit him, found that he was watched. Two 
 men had been lurking in the adjacent fields with guns. They 
 saw Ike emerge from the house, and they followed in his tracks. 
 He had gone nearly a mile, when, by accident, he became con 
 scious of the fact. One of the men in scaling a wall knocked a 
 stone or two off its top. Ike did not look behind, but kept on 
 for a hundred yards more, and then turned and led his pursuers 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 455 
 
 a wild dance for several miles through woods and meadows, and 
 then retraced his way to the farm. Thus he gave up seeing Lion 
 or taking him food for that night. 
 
 The following morning, he got hold of an old fowlingpiece of 
 Dick s and carefully loaded it, putting buck shot in both barrels, 
 and scrupulously cleaning and priming the nipples to insure that 
 it did not miss fire. Was Lion to starve because his relentless 
 foes were keeping him in virtual blockade ? No ; that very night 
 he would make his way to Sugarloaf by hook or crook and take 
 him supplies. The weather was stifling hot and the animal could 
 do without food, perhaps with advantage, but not without water. 
 Water he must have, at all hazards, and that night he should 
 have it. 
 
 Alas ! that night was too late. It was nearly evening, and 
 the red sun was going down in ablaze of sultry glory. The cows 
 were flocking lazily up to the farm-yard or standing in odorous 
 complacency at the gates. The men had come in from toil, and 
 were bathing their flushed and sunburnt faces in the cool water, 
 for which poor Lion had yearned and yearned in vain. Mrs. 
 Armstrong was blinking over her glasses at the setting sun, and 
 Kitty was bustling after her handmaid, who was getting supper. 
 
 Suddenly there rose from the direction of the village a fearful, 
 an appalling yell ! and the boy, who threw down his milking- 
 pail and dashed off to the nearest house, came scampering back, 
 his face white with terror. A mad dog I A mad dog was in the 
 village \ It had been seen slinking down the old Saybrookpike 
 towards the Armstrong Farm, and some boys had driven it 
 toward the main street, where it had bitten a child, and was running 
 about snapping furiously at all in its way. Presently two shots 
 were heard in quick succession, and a neighbor ran in to say 
 it was their dog Lion ; he had gone mad, certainly ; they had 
 fired at but did not succeed in disabling him, and he had escaped 
 into the woods on the south side of the burying-ground, with 
 half the village in hot pursuit ! 
 
 All this took scarcely a minute, and before the words were 
 well out of the last messenger s mouth, Ike had dashed off to the 
 barn, seized his gun from its place of hiding, and was running across 
 the fields like a deer. Not far behind him came Luke and Dick 
 Railes, and behind them again came the laborers of the farm. 
 
 The whole party, as well as Lion and his pursuers, were con 
 verging upon Sugarloaf Hill. Happily the dog had managed 
 to get a long start of his enemies, and, although wounded, his 
 legs were safe, and he pressed, as Ike expected, straight for his 
 retreat. He had broken his collar and airped for the farm, but 
 
456 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 set upon as he had been, and driven obliquely in another direc 
 tion, he could not now, without facing his assailants, carry out 
 this design, while he could readily run toward the hill. 
 
 When Ike got there, the dog was in his lair. Breathless with 
 the speed of his flight, which had been thus concluded by climb 
 ing the precipitous slope, Ike threw himself on the turf to re 
 cover. It was smeared and dabbled with blood! Poor Ike 
 found his hands all covered with it, and without looking for 
 his friend, he burst out crying. 
 
 At which Lion came crawling forth crawling with great 
 difficulty, for he was sorely wounded, and well-nigh spent ; but 
 he crawled to where Ike lay, panting and sobbing like a- stricken 
 hart, and licked his hands, and then his face, with a comforting 
 expression that was very pitiful. And Ike put his arms around 
 Lion s neck and kissed his head again and again as if he had 
 been a human being, while the dog, with all the feeble expres 
 sion which was left to him, testified his love and joy. 
 
 It was the only living thing the poor simpleton had ever loved. 
 Attached he had been to Gilford, but that was a secondary feel 
 ing, friendship or gratitude, engendered of the first. Was it 
 foolish then, or absurd, this tenderness for a poor, dumb brute 1 
 I do not think so ; nor would any one who could have gazed 
 upon that scene and read aright the world of sympathy and af 
 fection, which darkened mind and brute instinct could thus in 
 terchange to console and bless each other. 
 
 The roar of bitter, threatening voices came nearer and nearer, 
 and the sun s disk was on the horizon. They were coming 
 straight to the quarry. Some one had seen Lion toiling up the 
 steep, and the whole array of avengers were following in his 
 track. On one side came the party of the village headed by 
 the man whose child was said to have been bitten, and who 
 carried a musket. Nearer and nearer they came, until at last 
 their heads, then their bodies, then their feet were level with 
 the top of the hill. Lion crept closer to his master, and laid 
 his head on Ike s lap. 
 
 "Move!" gasped the foremost man, thickly. "Move so s I 
 shan t hurt ye !" and he presented his musket. 
 
 " Don t be rash, Anderson !" cried Luke, coming up close be 
 hind. "Let s hear, any way, what the poor brute s done !" 
 
 "Done!" roared the crowd in derision, k done, enough, I 
 guess!" "He ain t no safe critter to have round!" "He bites 
 folks !" " He kills sheep !" " Taint right to the neighborhood 
 to let him live!" 
 
 "Bitten my child!" retorted Anderson for his part, "who ll 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 457 
 
 die, like enough; anyhow, he will !" and again he threw the mus 
 ket up to his shoulder. 
 
 "It s true, Mr. Armstrong," said a calm-looking man with a 
 deep red face and white hair, " I see poor little Susy bit, and a 
 bad bite it was too. She was playing in the road, and she hove 
 a stick jest like this, and " 
 
 "He ll die, any how." exclaimed Dick Railes, who had been 
 hastily examining the dog s hurt with an utter disregard to the 
 tale of his being rabid. "He s shot clean through the side, and 
 two ribs are broken !" 
 
 " Then make an end on t ! It s a mercy! Kill him off and have 
 done ! " shouted the crowd. 
 
 " I said I d kill him, and I will!" cried Anderson fiercely. 
 
 "He was drav to it druv to it!" murmured poor Ike, the 
 tears falling fast on Lion s head ; and, drawing him closer to 
 his bosom, " You druv him to it, among ye you shan t kill him 
 for it!" The villagers were now closely huddled about the 
 group, and their murmurs grew each moment more ominous 
 and threatening. 
 
 "Consent, Ike," whispered Luke, kindly; "poor, dear old 
 Lion is sadly hurt, and will thank us for being out of his mis 
 ery indeed he will!" 
 
 "Once for all," roared Anderson, noisily supported and urged 
 on by the crowd, " stand aside, and let me fire !" 
 
 A gleam of resolution flew over Ike s face, and he dashed the 
 back of his hand across his eyes. The parting rays of the sun 
 gilded his forehead as he sprang to his feet and looked up to 
 Heaven as if seeking there for the mercy denied by man. 
 
 " Me, then!" cried Ike hoarsely. "No one else shall touch 
 him !" and, quick as light, he levelled his gun while Luke and 
 Dick pressed back the others. Instantly the report of both bar 
 rels followed ; the contents of both had passed through Lion s 
 heart, The dog died without a cry. But Ike, without pausing 
 to close the poor brute s forgiving eyes, threw the fatal gun far 
 down the hill, and with a groan of. anguish fell insensible across 
 the body. 
 
 20 
 
458 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 KITTY ARMSTRONG had lately become Kitty Railes ; for after 
 many postponements and excuses concerning the new house, the 
 bridal trousseau, the absence of somebody she wanted for a 
 bridesmaid, the illness of somebody she wanted for a grooms 
 man, and the like, the marriage ceremony was consummated at 
 last in the old village church of Saybrook. 
 
 Things were managed very quietly for more reasons than one. 
 It was not quite seemly, for example, when so old a friend and 
 a friend to whom, in spite of his distant ways, they were all 
 sincerely attached lay ill in the house of a malady which might 
 yet prove mortal, to indulge over much merry-making. Then 
 they had failed to see Marian ; and not only failed to see, but even 
 to hear from her. Luke, his father, and the Doctor had repair 
 ed to the agent s together, to make inquiries. Mr. Rivingstone 
 had gone South, for how long they did not know, and to what 
 particular quarter they were not informed ; they presumed that 
 Miss Rooke accompanied him ; at all events, it was business 
 connected with her affairs which had taken Mr. Rivingstone 
 away ; but it was quite impossible to tell when he, or she, or 
 both might return. It was much the same account as that which 
 Hugh received when he also returned from California ; and the 
 South was quite as large as Europe to hunt about in. So Kitty, 
 after fretting and vowing she would not be married unless Marian 
 came to help her, and after writing her some half-dozen long let 
 ters, which neither she nor any one else had the least idea how 
 to direct, finally consented to a very plain wedding without her. 
 For Dick s part, he had a great respect for Mr. Gifford, and 
 truly hoped he d get well and hearty again ; but as for a grooms 
 man, he d as soon have the Doctor as anybody; or, failing him, 
 the theodolite would no doubt have equally answered his pur 
 pose. 
 
 On the whole, then, the happy pair had a cheerful rather than 
 a merry honeymoon. They went off to Boston during the first 
 week ; but Dick came back in high dudgeon, swearing he had 
 seen more hypocritical faces, starchy airs, tippling of bad wins- 
 key on the sly, and general under-hand and make-believe doings, 
 than he allowed could be found from St. Paul s to the Rio 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 459 
 
 Grande. Hugh was not yet strong enough to talk or be talked 
 to in a general way, else Dick would have perhaps found in him 
 a sympathizing auditor. 
 
 Hugh lay on his couch and heard the old church bells peal out 
 for Kitty s wedding. A little while, he thought, and the year 
 of probation would have passed which was to have brought his 
 union with Marian. It was strange she had never sent to inquire 
 for him, since she must have heard of his illness. Surely it need 
 not have compromised her in any way to send a kindly message, 
 to ask whether he was like to live or die. And yet, he thought 
 bitterly, it was the way of the world. He was in the position 
 of Jacques wounded deer, and even his lost love followed the 
 example of the herd of " fat and greasy citizens" which swept 
 on without even a look for "the poor and broken bankrupt 
 there." 
 
 Hugh did Marian injustice ; she had gone South with Mr. 
 Rivingstone on the third day after sending her letter, and was 
 entirely ignorant of what had befallen during the week which 
 succeeded the adventure in the Bay. She supposed him as rich 
 and as prosperous as ever, nor could she doubt, after what she 
 had heard, that however her resolution, and the missive in which 
 it was set forth, may have given him pain, Hugh would soon 
 find consolation in the smiles of Edith Parapet. 
 
 Some people are very much swayed by what they deem the 
 inevitable consequences of certain romantic juxtapositions or ac 
 cidents in affairs of the heart. If a man stops a runaway steed, 
 or saves a woman from a burning house, he must marry the 
 rescued party by the same law which led gallant knights of old 
 to espouse the damsels they preserved from remorseless tyrants. 
 When Gifford leaped overboard and sustained Miss Parapet in 
 the yeasty waves, amid which she was cast by the boom of the 
 Ariadne, the Town cried out at once for a match, never mind 
 whether well or ill assorted ; never mind whether the lady were 
 a Thompson or a Parapet ; never mind whether the gentleman 
 were plebeian or patrician. The eternal fitness of things demand 
 ed, in any event, that an exception should be made rf need be, 
 or even a miracle performed, rather than that a bold young man 
 who had saved a fair young maiden s rife should not earn the 
 right to make it happy ever after. 
 
 Marian fell into this way of thinking more readily than if she 
 had not been personally interested in the result. She could not 
 bear to think of being a stumbling-block in the way of poetical 
 justice. Perhaps this made her the more ready than she should 
 have been to set Gifford free by bringing their engagement to a 
 
460 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 close. At the same time, she did not forget that Hugh could, 
 if he chose, refuse his consent to such an abrogation. If he 
 chose, he might fly to her side ; .might explain away what seem 
 ed so equivocal in the speech of Edith Parapet ; might renew 
 his vows of constancy. But were he disposed to take such a 
 course at all, he would take it at once. There was certainly 
 nothing ought to be nothing to deliberate about. Either her 
 imputations, and the deductions to which they pointed, were 
 sound and substantially grounded, or they were not. In the lat 
 ter case there was not a shadow of reason or excuse for delay. 
 In the former, there was nothing better for Hugh to do than to 
 receive her letter in silence. 
 
 Now when that letter arrived, he was too ill even to open it. 
 There was, however an interval between the time of its coming 
 and the access of delirium when he read it through. His phy 
 sician had directed otherwise, but the letters had been laid on 
 his dressing-table, he had recognized Marian s hand, ran hastily 
 through the contents of her missive, and, all weak and unstrung as 
 he was, he had sunk on the bed in a fainting fit. The same 
 evening he tried to write a reply, failed, and at midnight was 
 quite out of his head, and equally incapable of either writing or 
 thinking at all. Marian waited for three miserable days, and 
 then quietly signified to her guardian and friend, Mr. Riving- 
 stone, her willingness to comply with a wish expressed by him 
 some time before, to expedite the business which he was con 
 ducting in her behalf, by a visit to the South. But although 
 Hugh felt pained by Marian s apparent indifference to his fate, 
 he was too profoundly impressed by a sense of his own unwor- 
 thiness, and by the conviction that he had given her bitter pro 
 vocation, to question the justice of her behavior. It was his 
 fault, he thought as the merry bells pealed forth, and awakened 
 so sad a response in his heart his fault, and not Marian s, that 
 they were not pealing for his own happy nuptials. 
 
 He found a melancholy pleasure in pouring his self-reproaches 
 into the ear of Luke Armstrong. Perhaps he had some subtle 
 feeling that it would afford Luke satisfaction to know how un 
 worthy a rival Marian had preferred to himself. Perhaps he 
 thought it a sort of atonement to Marian that he should humbly 
 and unreservedly confess his short comings, and, with many a 
 protestation of unalterable and devoted love, should acknowl 
 edge his un worthiness to be loved in return. 
 
 Luke listened gravely to all this, checking the speaker when 
 he talked too much or became over-excited, and occasionally 
 putting in a question or a suggestion, until he had become 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 4G1 
 
 thoroughly acquainted with all the details of Gifford s life since 
 he had left Armstrong s Bar. It seemed to him so utterly in 
 comprehensible, that a man blessed with the love of such a 
 creature as Marian should neglect or undervalue it, that the 
 whole discussion had something of the interest for him which 
 would have attached to some curious psychological problem. 
 
 Finally, one day he felt there was no indelicacy in the step 
 with such a man and such a friend as Luke Hugh gave him her 
 last letter to read, together with his own attempted reply, a bro 
 ken, incoherent fragment enough, which he found folded within 
 the other, although he had not the faintest recollection of having 
 placed it there. It was something like this : 
 
 "lam ill ill, dearest Marian, and your letter falls on my 
 brain like words of fire. You may be unable to believe that 
 what was said surprised me ... as well as yourself. Weak I 
 have been . . . vain, foolish . . . but not such a mean, despi 
 cable wretch not a liar, nor yet a hypocrite. Ah, my darling, 
 the gold, the wretched gold, which stood between us like a mock 
 ing shadow, poisoning love, and forbidding happiness, is taken 
 from me now ! I am poor again, Marian ... a mere, house 
 less, penniless adventurer, as I was when you first knew me. 
 Don t ^hate me now. I am again become what I was when you 
 first lo ved me. Don t turn from me now that there s no money 
 to come between us. Do you think others will smile upon, 
 pity or comfort a poor shattered bankrupt, only because you cease 
 to do so ? . . . 
 
 " I see you again on the prairie, Marian! . . with your glossy 
 locks flying in the wind, with your flashing dark eyes all alight 
 with the love of freedom. Fearless as Diana, beautiful as Venus, 
 untrammelled, unchecked, all radiant with the joy of a new- 
 gamed liberty ! . . Long before I knew you loved me ... long 
 before we heard together the war-whoop of the savage .... 
 before we saw together the accursed gleam of the gold . . . Oh, 
 my own one, if we could find some spot where money, and what 
 they call society, were not, we might yet ... do not desert, but 
 forgive . . . darling . . forgive ..." 
 
 Then there were a few feeble, unintelligible scratches, and 
 that was all. It was much the kind of incoherency that Hugh 
 had uttered in his delirium. Luke read it over steadily twice, 
 and then his eyes filled, and one drop fell upon the paper, adding 
 another to several misty blurs which were there already. Some 
 men. so circumstanced, in reading such a correspondence, would 
 have felt anger some self-pity some a not uupleasing contempt. 
 
402 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 What Luke felt, I will not say, but leave it to be judged by his 
 actions. 
 
 Soon after the wedding, after he had seen the bride all blush 
 ing in a new white bonnet, a delicate blue watered-silk, and a 
 snowy china-crape shawl ; after he had seen the bridegroom, 
 more shamefaced than Kitty, with a new shining beaver, con 
 tinually dropped about the floor, and a glossy suit of black 
 broad-cloth Gifford, to the alarm and anxiety of all at the 
 homestead, had a relapse. 
 
 Luke had gone to New York on some matter of business, so 
 that the task of watching devolved chiefly upon his father and 
 Ike. The doctor was with his patient during most of the day, 
 but he had undertaken to attend to some others, to visit whom 
 he must traverse long distances by country roads, so that at 
 night he was obliged to get sleep. However, Seth was a con 
 scientious watcher, and his helpmate the best of nurses, while, 
 since his bereavement, Ike s affections seemed to have fastened 
 themselves upon Hugh with more adhesiveness than ever. Thus 
 although Luke was absent, as well as his sister and her husband, 
 there was no danger of the invalid being neglected. 
 
 Hugh suffered from no want of care, medical or auxiliary, but 
 he had been very much weakened by the previous violence of 
 the disease. He was sadly emaciated, and when Doctor Lan- 
 dale found that the fever had really come back with much of its 
 old fury, he, for the first time, felt grave apprehensions. 
 
 When Luke returned, after less than a week s absence, he was 
 horrified to see the change. Again the struggle was renewed 
 between the forces of youth and vigor and those of death and 
 decay. For many a long summer night did Luke and Ike sit up 
 anxiously watching the progress of the battle. For many a long 
 summer day did the doctor glide in and out of the darkened 
 room, taxing to the uttermost every resource of his skill to rein 
 force the vitality which was put to so fearfully exhausting a 
 strain. 
 
 Hour after hour did Ike sit, solemnly studying the sick man s 
 movements, ready to give him drink, to turn his pillows, or to 
 summon help as the case might be. Ike s brain was clearer now 
 than it had ever been before, but he found, it hard, as he sat 
 with his red hair brushed smoothly behind his ears, and his 
 hands folded meekly before him, to understand why it was that 
 a man who had craved for a thing so earnestly as Hugh Gifford 
 had craved for gold, and who had had his aspirations so abund 
 antly gratified, should have been made so prostrate and miser 
 able, so abject and dying, even, as there was so great cause to 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 463 
 
 fear, as the only tangible fruit of his good fortune. Why, if 
 Heaven had but seen fit to preserve the life of poor Lion, Ike 
 thought, for his part, he would have been sufficiently happy ! 
 
 And Luke sat and pondered too, after his fashion ; ponder 
 ed on the strangeness of the dispensation by which Providence 
 had vouchsafed not money, he cared little for that but such 
 advantages of reading and knowledge and wisdom, and to be 
 crowned by the love of an angel, a veiy angel upon earth, such 
 as Hugh Gifford had enjoyed, only to bring him to such a sad 
 plight of suffering and hopelessness as this I Ah ! if Marian 
 could only have loved him ! But it was a selfish thought, and 
 Luke thrust it manfully from him. He had that to do with 
 which the indulgence of such a thought was incompatible. 
 
 The crisis came at last, and youth and vigor once more won 
 the victory. It was after the harvests were gathered, at the 
 season when Hugh had played his little comedy with Virginia 
 Chester, that the fever was once more expelled from his wearied 
 frame, and the sufferer felt slowly but surely that reviving elasti 
 city which braces the nerves and lightens the heart with the ap 
 proach of convalescence. Life was spared ; but he had been 
 near enough to the Dark Valley to feel its damps near enough 
 never thenceforth to forget its sombre but salutary teachings. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT was the fall of the leaf. The yellow corn was all ravished 
 from the fields, which looked desolate and pitiful in their naked 
 ness. The foliage, shredded from the trees, flew hither and 
 thither, flecking the roads and hedges with patches of crimson, 
 of purple, and of gold. The bleak winds, forerunning the ap 
 proach of winter, came singing and moaning in from the ocean, 
 and lingered about the gables and roof-points of the old home 
 stead, and whispered among the denuded elms as if greeting so 
 many old acquaintances there. And the glassy, placid Sound 
 was angry and ruffled at last, bearing in ceaselessly, as it did, 
 from the main " the sea s swift fringe of foaming lace." 
 
 The hush of repose which had so long brooded over the place 
 while Gifford was passing through his wrestle with disease was 
 blown away by the autumn gales, and the color came back to his 
 
464 MARIAN ROOKE; OK, 
 
 cheek while the rosy apples were tumbling from their branches, 
 and the barns were puffing out with their harvests, and the sail 
 in the offing bowed lower and lower to sharp gusts from the 
 darkening east. 
 
 But what cared they at the homestead 1 Ample store had 
 they in abundance, and more than enough for charity. For in 
 that neighborhood, although the soil be sterile, and the seasons 
 sometimes bitter, free schools are many and labor dear ; so that 
 beggary is pleasantly rare, and the low plea for food which, to 
 unused ears, gives such a sound of shame, is almost unheard, 
 save now and then from some chance old-world wanderer, who, 
 by a cruel mistake, has set his face toward the rising, instead of 
 toward the setting, sun. 
 
 What cared they at the homestead? Notwithstanding their 
 independence, long custom had made a measure of toil rather 
 sweet to them than otherwise, and, for all their money in bank 
 and their hired laborers on the farm, they had fairly earned ease 
 and jollity for the winter, by working with a will through the 
 summer. And Hugh, whose state had been the cloud which 
 dimmed the cheery sunlight of their recovered home, was nearly 
 well now, so that apprehension for his sake was thought of no more. 
 
 And sounds of laughter were heard about the house. It was 
 not a house to shake, as many are said to do, with such sounds. 
 Although built in America, it was too solid for that like some 
 other things built there, which transatlantic prejudice would lain 
 believe both fragile and ephemeral. You might laugh in it, shout in 
 it, play blind-man s-buff in it, almost trot your horse up stairs with 
 out doing more damage than to set the venerable timbers creaking. 
 It was built by strong arms, as their name betokened. It was not 
 built for along lease, as some English houses are said to be, which, 
 at the expiration of ninety-nine years, will almost punctually rattle 
 down of themselves, like so many castles of cards. There are some 
 exceptions to received rules ; there are such things as flimsy struc 
 tures in the Old World, and such things as substantial structures 
 in the New, and Armstrong homestead was one of them. 
 
 May be the savor of sturdiness about the old place did some 
 thing toward making a strong man again of our hero. There is 
 a sense of security which is reassuring in itself when the floors 
 do not rattle and shiver under one s foot, and the whole house 
 hold is not advertised when one crosses a room. And when 
 Hugh first went down the firm staircase, flanked on the landings 
 by certain images of dead-and-gone agriculturists, the like of 
 which he had never seen before, and came into the low cozy par 
 lor, where Mrs. Armstrong and Kitty had just been putting up 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 4G5 
 
 red curtains, and where a snug little fire was throwing ruddy 
 rays on unheard-of treasures of china and patchwork, he cer 
 tainly felt better for the solid character of all that he saw and 
 felt around him. 
 
 It was evening, and the skies and fields looked rather sad as 
 Hugh gazed at them through the small panes of the windows. 
 But there was a gaiety within which made amends, for the fami 
 ly had assembled to give their guest a greeting on the occasion 
 of his first descending among them since his illness ; and they 
 determined to give the gathering as far as possible the character 
 of a merry-making. The Doctor was there, with his hard Scotch 
 face wreathed in congratulatory smiles, and Kitty was laughing 
 and showing her white teeth, and Mrs. Armstrong was beaming 
 and quivering over her spectacles, as if there were no such cares 
 as the possession of superabundant patchwork and china entailed 
 in the world. And Seth stroked Hugh s delicate fingers in his 
 great horny hand, as if it had been, what indeed it looked like, 
 a woman s ; while Dick Railes, promoted to his dignity of Ben 
 edict, regarded him with a half-superior, half-reverential affec 
 tion, which could hardly have been exceeded if he had been a 
 theodolite. 
 
 On Luke s face alone there was a trace of anxiety and thought, 
 a look which betokened, if not distrust, solicitude as to some 
 thing to come. Luke was weary perhaps. He had had much 
 to do of -late. A great deal of the head-work of the farm de 
 volved on him ; and as, when it was purchased, it was but imper 
 fectly stocked and supplied, he had been often not only to large 
 towns near at hand, but also to the metropolis, to make his pur 
 chases. Only that very morning he had come from New York, 
 and his honest face showed signs, as has been said, of anxiety and, 
 fatigue. 
 
 But he had been at home in time to give Hugh an arm down 
 stairs ; to see his easy-chair comfortably placed by the chimney 
 corner ; to help to raise the joyous shout of welcome when the 
 invalid made his appearance in the parlor ; and to rejoice with 
 heartfelt satisfaction when he saw that the evidences of returning 
 vigor were genuine, and not like to be, as they had been before, 
 deceptive and transitory. 
 
 Presently Ike came in, and went up and shook hands with 
 Hugh, with a smile very different from what used to come on 
 his face long ago ; and it looked as strange to the others as it did 
 to Hugh, for it was the first that had been seen there since the 
 day that Lion died. 
 
 The skies grew darker and darker as the sun went down, and 
 
466 MARIAN BOOKE ; OR, 
 
 the rays from the little fire grew redder and redder. Tea was 
 brought in, with a plenitude of those mysterious dishes which in 
 New England are wedded to it ; but as yet no candles. The 
 company laughed, and chatted, and joked, and Kitty skipped 
 through the folding-doors, and came back after a little while with 
 a slice of her wedding-cake, which Mr. Gifford must eat, doctor 
 or no doctor. There were as yet no candles, or it might have 
 been seen that Kitty s cheeks were strangely flushed, and her 
 blue eyes wet, as though something had happened to excite 
 her by the way. 
 
 "It seems so curus, " said Seth, through the twilight, "socurus, 
 and yet so nateral, that we should all be brought together again. 
 It looks as though it had been allowed we was to live together 
 allers, and not to part at all. It looks as though, do what we 
 might, we was to fetch together, in the long run, jest like the 
 mercoory and the gold at the bottom of a pan." 
 
 " You being the gold, and I the quicksilver," said Hugh, with 
 a faint smile. 
 
 "No," returned the old man, "exceptin in one sense perhaps, 
 that you ve done a sight to clear us away from the dirt. I don t 
 know much myself, not havin been brought up among the eddi- 
 cated ; but I know that the schools and the teachin air what ll 
 make us great and free and, please God, keep us so. And I 
 know that our folks here our Luke and our Kitty both on em 
 bless em and even rough Dick, who used to be stubborn and 
 sarsy air all better and happier for bein with you and the 
 Doctor, and and Mary Anne." 
 
 He pronounced the last name with a sort of compunction 
 with an apologetic accent that might have been attributed to 
 various motives. Hugh did not pause to try to select any par 
 ticular one, but, like Kitty, he reddened invisibly in the dark 
 ness, and said : 
 
 " Heaven knows, good friend, I had more to learn from you 
 than you from me. Steadiness, patience, content in the place 
 and with the gifts I had been blessed withal all these was I 
 sadly deficient in all these might I have learned from you, who 
 had them abundantly. But I was proud proud, vain, and 
 blind, believing that I could teach, indeed, but not learn and 
 the result is well deserved." 
 
 " Stuff, man ! " grunted the Doctor. " You re not more than 
 half out of your tantrums yet. What have pride, vanity, and 
 blindness to do with the failure of Irigott and Gollop ? You ve 
 had a vein of ill-luck, that s all. If you had been Moses and 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 4G7 
 
 Solomon, rolled into one, von couldn t have kept a couple of 
 rascally contractors from tailing!" 
 
 " Or Pangburn from robbing our strong box," laughed Hugh. 
 Xow it appears to me that the prudence and foresight we all 
 lacked in that matter have been although in a greater degree 
 my deficiencies to the end of the chapter. Bnt I doubt if my 
 last betrayers ever seek to make them up as that extraordinary 
 being, the first, has done." 
 
 When Hugh was well enough to be trusted with his letters. 
 he had found among them some which excited very opposite 
 emotions. Those of condolence were few ; two from Clinton 
 Parapet, who was most anxious to come to him, and who beg 
 ged Hugh to command his purse, or anything that was his, 
 without stint ; and one from Eldon Clyde, offering, if nothing 
 better presented, to get him a place on the staff of a very respec 
 table newspaper at Albany. There was a communication from 
 Mr. Doke. urging an assignment or some other provision for 
 the payment of a large balance, which he afiirmed he had paid 
 to different ward politicians for keeping Giffbrd s name before 
 their constituencies, and paying for unlimited whiskey on 
 account of the same for caucus nights. But the letter which 
 gave Hugh most surprise was from no other than the redoubt 
 able Pangburn himself. It was dated from Palmyra, and from 
 the context it would appear that the writer had prospered enor 
 mously. After a general expression of sorrow for Hugh s mis 
 fortunes, which he said -afflicted him the wuss as bein them of 
 an old pard," and after a remarkable passage wherein he con 
 trasted Hugh s improvidence and folly with his own wit and 
 sagacity. Mr. Paugburu added a mysterious calculation, which 
 would have puzzled Cocker and Colburn together to understand. 
 Toward the end appeared a statement of a sum which, after pro 
 found reflection, Hugh decided was intended to represent the 
 principal and interest of his share of what the writer had ab 
 stracted from Armstrong s Bar ; and the letter concluded with an 
 intimation that if he would like to have this sum/br a loan, tak 
 ing his own or an indefinite time for its payment, Mr. Pangburn 
 would send a negotiable check there for. on receipt of ad vise to that 
 effect. On the whole, it appeared that Zelotes was really desirous to 
 do an act of justice and atonement, but in such a manner that he 
 might avoid responsibility to other claimants ; and he evinced 
 his sincerity, when Hugh, after consideration, wrote him word 
 that he icould like to receive the sum in question, by sending 
 the check by return of post. 
 
 u We re very lucky so far as that s concerned," said the Doo 
 
468 MARIAN ROOKE; OR, 
 
 tor, " no doubt the rascal owns whole streets of stone-front 
 blocks by this time, bringing him 12 per cent, with the greatest 
 ease ; and if we lose our little fortunes, he ll doubtless offer us 
 all loans in like manner !" 
 
 " I don t know that I d mind much what he called it," observ- . 
 ad Seth, sagely, "so long as he paid the money." 
 
 " That is to say," said the Doctor, " he may keep his charac 
 ter if he ll disgorge our dollars. I ve known many small rascals, 
 what you may call retailers of their consciences, selling small bits 
 for small profits, but he was the most delicious, wholesale scoundrel 
 I everstumbled upon." 
 
 " Ah," murmured Mrs. Armstrong plaintively, "he was such 
 a good judge of patchwork and chiny!" 
 
 " I ve often thought, "continued Seth, " how won erfully we all 
 got our wishes jest as we sot round and wished for em three 
 years ago. 1 recolleck the Doctor put it to me one Saturday 
 night as we was all gathered together to know what, most of 
 anything, I ambitioned." 
 
 " And your answer was a very modest one," laughed the 
 Doctor, " at least your first answer; do you remember itf 
 
 " A wood roof d be slicker n a cotton one, and a nice barn 
 with stalls is a sight better n a corral," quoted Dick Railes, with 
 great accuracy. 
 
 " But arterwards," said Seth, "I made a larger mouth; rather 
 I said if I was awful lucky I d like to spend my old age on the 
 Blueberry Hill Farm, at Old Saybrook, where my grandfather s 
 bones is, my father havin bad luck and bein obleeged to sell 
 when I was a little shaver. Them was my words. But I never 
 tho t, I allow, that they d come actooally true." 
 
 "You said something else, Uncle Seth," said Hugh, " which 
 you don t repeat, but which was of more consequence than aught 
 else. You said you were always content with what Providence 
 saw fit to send, and that you were not going to begin to be a 
 grumbler now. You said, too, with reference to our adventure 
 on the Plains, that, aside from having a roof, we ought to be 
 grateful for having heads safe and sound to put under it, and that, 
 for one, you were willing to rest and be thankful." 
 
 "And I grumbled and found fault that you wouldn t tote six 
 bureaus-full of linen fixings and chiny and patchwork across the 
 plains," put in Mrs. Armstrong, penitently, "which wasn t very 
 Christian-like o me, let alone if ye had, I dproberly never had em 
 here at home safe and sound, nor yit had em at all !" 
 
 " As to Pangburn," proceeded Seth, continuing his reminis- 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 4G9 
 
 cences, " he wanted a stone-front block in Utica, and I spose he s 
 got it." 
 
 " And Mr. Gifford wanted to be rich enough to go and travel 
 in Europe," cried Kitty, "and lie did it !" 
 
 What was your wish, Dick?" asked the Doctor; "do you re 
 member it ?" 
 
 " I reckon : a good double-barr l, a good dog, a good house, 
 and a good horse, play-day half the time, and a a pooty gal to 
 help me enjoy it I" replied Dick, with more promptness perhaps 
 than he would have exhibited by daylight. 
 
 "And Luke tho t if he could hev his tune he d like to get some 
 books and read, and study for a year or two," said Seth, with 
 pride, <; and sure enough he has I So that we can see, as I said 
 afore, how won erfully all our wishes has come to us jest as we 
 sot around and wished for em three year ago !" 
 
 "All except the Doctor s," cried Kitty, archly. "Don t you 
 remember, Doctor A cottage on the Clyde, with many friends 
 and few patients ; with a pretty view, and enough to feel easy 
 without being rich ? " 
 
 " I ve got all but the first item, Miss Kitty," retorted the Doc 
 tor, and can have that when I like ; so my shortcoming needn t 
 be set against the unanimity of our good luck." 
 
 "Shan t we say of our good Blessings, rather," said Seth, seri 
 ously, for it seems to me when folks are made so happy as we 
 air, when prosperity comes to em that their own good works 
 never deserved, when each particular wish, even, comes true more 
 than often it does in a fairy story ; it seems to me that there s 
 somethin better n luck about it. and that we ought to recognize 
 and be grateful to a generous Providence." 
 
 " Right, Seth," quoth the Doctor; " we are over-apt to credit 
 a blind and heathen idol for what we ought to give praise to an 
 All-seeing and Beneficent Ruler." 
 
 "And Uncle Seth has a right to remind us of the omission." 
 said Hugh, since he thought of it, and recognized it when none 
 of us did in his first aspiration, the truest and wisest aspiration 
 after all, the one that taught the best lesson philosophy has to 
 teach, contentment and resignation." 
 
 A faint sigh came from the window where Luke stood watch 
 ing the blackening shadows, and a moan of the wind answered 
 from without as it thrilled through the lonesome branches of the 
 elms. Kitty threw more fagots on the fire, audit blazed up and 
 set half-a-dozen weird figures dancing on the opposite walls and 
 ceiling. 
 
 " I d no idee," said Seth Armstrong, softly, " that a man so 
 
470 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR. 
 
 poor and ignorant as me could teach anything wuth knowing to 
 folks well eddicated, and up to all that books could teach em. 
 But I s pose God has uses for all, even the humblest of us, and 
 I m sure it makes me very happy to think that even onkijowingly 
 I ve been put to any." 
 
 "The humblest I" echoed Hugh GifFord ; u even they or -those 
 who think themselves so, are evermore His chosen instruments. 
 Even they, in His good time, are exalted, while the proud and 
 vain are cast down. Surely we have an instance here which can 
 not be gainsaid. Of all our party that crossed the Plains, I was 
 at once the least deserving and the most expecting. When your 
 hopes were lowly, mine were presumptuously high. While you 
 were content with little, happy with what Heaven saw fit to 
 send, I was dissatisfied with much, and fretted for more than 
 either my talent or my virtues made me worthy to receive, or 
 fitted me usefully to employ. My aspirations were answered at 
 last, but to what end ? Behold the sequel ! To you who asked 
 for so little, abundance is given, in the full confidence of a faith 
 ful stewardship. Abundance was also bestowed upon me, and, 
 alas ! for what purpose ? That I might show, beyond the cavil 
 of even my own proud and exacting nature, how greatly I had 
 overrated my own strength of mind, how unworthy I was of the 
 trust to which I had aspired !" 
 
 " Not unworthy," murmured Luke, " but unfortunate." 
 
 " Unworthy. We may trifle with our own future our own 
 health, mental or physical our own happiness, in a word, if we 
 will, and be debited alone for misfortune or imprudence ; but we 
 have no right to trifle with those of others; and when we do so, 
 our conduct is unworthy, and no gentler word may fairly describe 
 it." 
 
 "And admitting the propriety of all this self-castigation,"said 
 the Doctor, cheerfully, " let us finish the picture. You have 
 dealt literally with the shadows, let us now put in the lights. 
 I m nearly twice your age, and claim the privilege to use a free 
 pencil. You have had a bit of experience which will serve you 
 all your life. Whatever injustice you may have done to others, 
 you are young enough, and ought to be good enough, to atone 
 for. You have youth, talent, experience, as we have seen ; soon 
 will have health and strength ; you have friends whom poverty 
 won t alienate, even were there danger of it, which there isn t. 
 In a word, you have all before you which a reasonable man ought 
 to expect or hope for to make him happy." 
 
 "No, not all." 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 471 
 
 "Not all? Then you re not truly repentant, and you re as 
 difficult to please as ever !" 
 
 " Truly," said Seth, warmly, " I think you ought now to be 
 content." 
 
 " And so do I !" " And I!" " And I !" went in a strange in 
 visible chorus round the little circle. Only one voice was silent, 
 but it was not from dissent. 
 
 "Alas!" said Hugh, mournfully, "that opinion should be so 
 unanimous against me. But I must resist it still." 
 
 4 *Tell us, then/ pursued the Doctor, "tell us, oh! most 
 exacting of men, what is needed to make you happy to fill the 
 measure of your joy ?" 
 
 "One thing," answered Hugh, "to name which is to prove 
 that I ask less hope less than of yore. One thing forgive 
 ness !" 
 
 And a sweet, solemn voice repeated the word as Kitty gently 
 opened the folding-doors and let in a flood of light 
 
 " If it will make you happier, you have it, Hugh !" 
 
 Oh, moment of ecstasy! Oh, forgetfulness of all past tears, 
 sickness, and misery ! Oh, joy never felt before, even in the 
 first consciousness of requited love ! 
 
 Marian was in his arms nestling there closer, closer, never 
 to be parted more. 
 
 And every face was alight with pleasure, and every tongue 
 musical with congratulation, except Luke s. And Luke s lace 
 was hidden in the curtain of the window ; and he could not, for 
 his life, have made his tongue at that moment other than it was 
 speechless. But he lived a lifetime in those moments that 
 Gifford and Marian stood locked in that intoxicating embrace 
 and when they looked around for him, he had glided noiselessly 
 away, none knew whither. Had they sought, they would have 
 found him lying under the stars on the bench he had built in the 
 grove of pines the bench which replaced the one he had made 
 for Marian at Armstrong s Bar. 
 
 It was all owing to Luke. He had never ceased to strive 
 until he opened communication with Marian, until he had finally 
 seen her, and, in his own way and at his own time, told her all. 
 He told her of Hugh s misfortunes, his illness, and of his repent 
 ance, of how he* had continually talked of her in his delirium, 
 charging himself with destroying her happiness as well as his 
 own. Of how, when reason returned, he still talked in the 
 same strain, in words which none could hear without believing 
 that they flowed from a fervent and undying love. Finally, he 
 
472 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 had given her Hugh s letter the incoherent letter he had written 
 but did not send in reply to her own ; and Luke saw in Marian s 
 face, when she read the blurry scrawl, that she would not refuse 
 what he besought her to do to accompany him to the old home 
 stead. 
 
 Not all men would have behaved thus. Luke acted as he did 
 because he was Luke ; and if there are any who think his action 
 was vain or incredible, that it brought him no reward, or that 
 people never do such things in this selfish world of ours, I have 
 only to say that they have never known Luke Armstrong. 
 
 Marian and Hugh were married of course. And they were 
 happier, far happier than they would have been had the heyday 
 of then* wooing never been darkened by a cloud. The Influence 
 for good which Marian exerted upon all who came near her was 
 the stronger with Hugh now that he had felt its need; now that 
 a sharp but salutary experience had admonished him that he was 
 not sufficient unto himself ; that his character manifestly required, 
 irrespective of the tender promptings of love, that aid in its 
 proper development, which a strong, affectionate, truth-seeing 
 and truth-loving woman, like Marian Rooke, is so well fitted to 
 bestow. 
 
 And Hugh was not so proud now as to be unwilling to accept 
 the little fortune which Marian was able to bring him. He had 
 learned to know that to be behoven to those we love is not 
 altogether a one-sided transaction ; and that there are occasions 
 in life when it is at least as graceful to receive as it is to give. 
 Therefore he was not displeased when he heard that her father s 
 faithful friend and her own had succeeded in recovering a 
 considerable sum which had been bequeathed to her by will, 
 but which the ingenuity of interested parties had enabled them 
 hitherto to withhold. Hugh was comparatively poor, and Marian 
 comparatively rich ; and, on the whole, it was perhaps better, 
 since discrepancy there must be, that it should lie in this 
 direction. 
 
 Hugh resumed his old profession, and labored at it manfully, 
 strenuously, and in good time profitably. No doubt it strikes 
 him now and then, that to be a lawyer in a country town is not 
 
 Siite so splendid as to be a member of Congress for the th 
 istrict, even with Salathiel Doke as chief fugleman. But he 
 is pressing steadily onwards, and I should not be in the least 
 surprised if he reached such a distinction at last, without the 
 disadvantage or the expense of so questionable an ally. 
 
 Nobody will be surprised to hear that Clinton Parapet ran 
 away with Flora Dimity. The blue-eyed fairy proved too much 
 
THE QUEST FOR FORTUNE. 473 
 
 for him after all, and the escutcheon of the family has a 
 cotton cross, which it is to be feared the stately lady at its 
 head will never either forget or forgive. When I heard of this 
 shocking casualty, for the first time in my life I ceased to envy 
 Mr. Parapet, senior. The calm, luxurious ease of his existence, 
 with its wealth of books and pictures and statues, and free 
 dom from public cares as from private straits, no longer seemed 
 so delightful. The ladies kept up a dignified silence. Their 
 expressions became more distant, more pervaded with hauteur, 
 than ever. Their noses became more aquiline, and the curl 
 of then* chiselled lips more pronounced. They ceased to 
 appear at balls of equivocal ton, and became more than 
 ever inaccessible and exclusive. As a consequence, I hear 
 that the reality of their existence has been more gravely 
 questioned of late than ever ; and that there are scores 
 of people who stoutly contend that there are no such 
 people as the Parapets at all. To which I have only hum 
 bly to oppose my personal veracity, and to trust that the 
 evidence contained in these pages will be received with 
 that dispassionate consideration which it certainly de 
 serves. 
 
 The fact that Edith Parapet married a real baron, in Florence, 
 two years after the events related in these pages, would have no 
 great weight in America, since many people there disbelieve in 
 the existence of such a place as Florence at all ; and notwith 
 standing he was a real bona fide baron, and not somebody s 
 valet I should probably be flatly contradicted if I stated the 
 circumstance. Still, I am glad to be able to put it on record in 
 this unanswerable fashion; for I have always had a kindly feel 
 ing for Edith, and like to think she has prospered in the world, 
 and outlived her old love-cross, in spite of some little defects 
 which are hereditary, and always will be so, in the Parapet 
 family. 
 
 The last I heard of Messrs. Ingott and Gollop was, that they 
 were trying to swindle the government in a stupendous gun- 
 contract, and judging from all I know of their antecedents and 
 consequents, there is very little doubt, indeed, but that they have 
 been successful. 
 
 Virginia s husband failed in business they all do in that line 
 and went out West, where he repeated the same thing ad injini- 
 tum. She has not improved much, poor girl, either in body or 
 mind, from her marriage of convenience ; who ever does 1 ? The 
 game is not worth the candle, but the fact is only discovered 
 when it is burnt out. Mr. Gaycow withdrew the money he put 
 
474 MARIAN ROOKE ; OR, 
 
 in the mortgage on old Chester s property, on the plea that he 
 must collect all his resources, before the time of his failure. 
 John Chester, however, came forward and advanced the sum in 
 his place ; and he makes his father pay the interest every half 
 year, and punctually to the day. 
 
 Of the remainder of our characters nothing of special moment 
 remains to be told. Generally speaking they move on in their 
 old grooves, nibbling or snapping, as Mr. Gollop would say, at 
 their "baits," and striving each in his vocation to get the better 
 of the world. Most of them can be found to-day at their old 
 trades, and any one may identify them who chooses to .take the 
 trouble. 
 
 And Luke dear, noble-hearted, self-sacrificing Luke ! is he 
 to go on to the end of the chapter loveless, desolate, and alone ? 
 In one sense, I fear, he must. He has never wedded, for he was 
 not one to wed without loving, and for love, all that he had to 
 give in this world of such love, was poured out upon the altar of 
 Marian. He loves indeed ; he loves Marian s chubby children, 
 who climb his knees, and would fight for them as he would for 
 their mother ! But 
 
 No more ! For words are all in vain to convey what those 
 who have known men like Luke Armstrong will feel without 
 them ; and those who have not, have something of human 
 nature yet to learn, which it is not mine to fitly teach. But 
 Luke lives, and has lived a type of that best character in America 
 the staunch, well-to-do, well-read, and conscientious farmer; 
 thoughtful, patriotic, and out-spoken. He is, and ever has been, 
 ready to serve a neighbor on a small scale, or to serve his country 
 on a great one ; and happy indeed has it been for that coun 
 try in this respect, and in her time of need, that, where she 
 has had one man of the pattern of Doke, or Pangburn, 
 or Gollop, she has had ten of the pattern of Luke Arm 
 strong. 
 
 In the terrible storm which lately ravaged their native land, 
 both Hugh and Luke did yeoman s service. I am not going to 
 say upon which side they fought, for there have been good men, 
 honestly persuaded they were in the right, who have fought on 
 both ; and I am not one of those who, when the battle is over, 
 would strive to fan the expiring ashes of discord, even with the 
 light words of romance. A holy conviction makes a holy cause ; 
 and the triumphs of brethren over brethren are best forgotten, 
 except in so far as they teach a lesson, which is in its nature in 
 delible, of the folly of fighting against the laws of truth, of liberty, 
 of God ! All else may well be forgotten, as Hugh and Luke now 
 
THE QUEST FOR FOUTUXE. 475 
 
 forget it in the joy wherewith the Angel of Peace is welcomed ; 
 while the Demon of War is fading away into the grisly Past, and 
 the nations are looking in hope toward the bright promise of the 
 Future. 
 
 T11E END. 
 
Books Published by Sheldon & Go. 
 
 MARION HARLAND S WORKS. 
 
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 acUlphia Press. 
 
 44 It is worthy of note that the former works of this authoress have been republished 
 in England, France, and Germany indeed, no other American female writer has the 
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JBooks Published by Sheldon <6 Co. 
 
 LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 By EDWARD EVERETT, LL.D 
 1 vol., 12mo. 348 pages. 
 
 With a steel-plate likeness of Mr. Everett, from the celebrated bust by 
 Hiram Powers. 
 
 Price, in cloth, $1 50. 
 
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 Life of Washington." Correspondence of the Boston Post. 
 
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 Express. 
 
 "That it will be one of the most elegant, faithful, and charming productions of the 
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 Father of his Country more closely than the distinguished orator of Massachusetts. 
 It will unquestionably be in great demand." Boston Atlas. 
 
 " It will, doubtless, as it should, find its way into every household, as the popular em 
 bodiment of Washington, and be seen alike in the costly library, surrounded by thou 
 sands of other volumes, and on the humble mantel, where, in connection with the Bible 
 and Pilgrim s Progress, it will form the entire stock of family reading." New York Ex 
 aminer. 
 
 " It is a duodecimo elegantly printed. It tells the whole story without circum 
 locution cleaily, fully, faithfully, and with the simple force and fluency the theme re 
 quires. It has evidently been a labor of love. Familiar as are the incidents, they read 
 delightfully in Mr. Everett s diction, and are illustrated anew by many a fresh hint .and 
 Idea gathered by bis long study and great love of the subject. The work comes with 
 singular propriety from his felicitous pen, as the orator whose eloquence has done so 
 much to rescue Washington s domain, hone, and sepulchre from desecration, and con 
 secrate them to the nation. An excellent engraved portra t of the author, from Power * 
 bust, and fresh material in the appendix, enhance the interest and value of this chaiming 
 national souvenir. " Henry T. Tuckerman, the distinguished Essayist. 
 
Bootes Published by Sheldon <& Co. 
 
 MARY BUNYAN, 
 
 THE DREAMER S BLIND DAUGHTER. 
 
 & Tale of religious persecution. By MBS. S. ROCHESTER FORD, of Louisnlle. 
 1 vol., 12mo., 488 pages, Illustrated. Price $1 25. 
 
 From tht New York Examiner. 
 
 " The numerous readers of Grace Trnman have here another work on a topic of deep 
 ant! thrilling interest, from the author of that highly popular book. Mary Bunyan, the 
 blind daughter of the immortal dreamer, is referred to repeatedly in his autobiography 
 and other works. She was about twelve years of age when Bunyan was imprisoned in 
 Bedford Jail, and his anxiety on her behalf was one of his principal causes of distress 
 In his long imprisonment. 
 
 M As drawn by Mrs. Ford, her character seems to have been one of great modesty and 
 loveliness, and the story of her love for William Dormer, and of his death for the cause 
 of civil and religious freedom, has much of the pathetic element in it. Mrs. Ford is evi 
 dently thoroushly aufait in the incidents of Bunyan s family history, and in the topog> 
 raphy of Bedford and Elstow. "We can safely predict for the work an extensive sals." 
 
 From ftw Few York Evangelist* 
 
 44 The simple Incidents of Bunyan s life, his protracted imprisonment, his heroic endur 
 fcnce and lofty faith, are of themselves full of the deepest and most thrilling interest It 
 needed only the picture of his blind daughter Mary, in her gentleness and patience under 
 sore misfortune, to sive completeness to the trasic yet noble scenes in which Bunyaa 
 fleures, so modestly yet grandly conspicuous. The author of the volume before us has 
 carefully gathered up such historical facts and they are fortunately numerous and well 
 authenticated as could throw light upon her subject, and has employed them with great 
 ifcgacity and effect in the construction of her story." 
 
 From th American Baptist, N. Y 
 
 "The announcement of a new work from the accomplished authoress of Grace Trn 
 man, will send a thrill of delight through thousands of hearts. This book will be read 
 with an enthusiasm rarely equaled. Think of the subject, the persecution of John Bun 
 yan, his family and the times. Who does not know him ? Who does not want to hear 
 him as he pleads his cause before unjust judges, and members of churches? his wife, as 
 she seeks his release from the gloomy prison cell ? his poor blind daughter, as she tries 
 to help her weeping mother bear the burden of her bereavement ? It is by no means 
 untimely at this day, when so many shrink from suffering for truth and liberty of speech. 
 There will be many a moistened eye over the be&utifui pages of touching scenes in tL 
 history of one whom all know only to love. Before It was out of the press live thou.- 
 *and copies had been ordered, and we doubt not it will have an immense sale. It con 
 tains a few cuts illustrative of the scenes." 
 
 From the Pittsburg Chronicle. 
 
 ** This Is the last product from the pen of a lady whose writings are rapidly becoming 
 popular. Her last work, Grace Truman, had a sale of over 30,000 copies, a nd this one 
 is said to be a better and a more interesting book. It is a very pleasing tale of fiction, 
 the scene of which is in Menie England, and tho chief character, the immortal and 
 lever-to-be-forgotten John Bunyan, writer of the Pilgrim s Progress." 
 
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