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A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready

Bret Harte

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A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready

by Bret Harte

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A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY

by BRET HARTE

PROLOGUE

There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last!

It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of

brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding

enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its

honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of

his pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.

He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew

not why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his

heart foolishly beating, his breath impotently hurried. Yet he was

walking slowly and vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at

the landscape, which no longer looked familiar to him. He was

hoping for some instinct or force of habit to recall him to

himself; yet when he saw a neighbor at work in an adjacent claim,

he hesitated, and then turned his back upon him. Yet only a moment

before he had thought of running to him, saying, "By Jingo! I've

struck it," or "D--n it, old man, I've got it"; but that moment had

passed, and now it seemed to him that he could scarce raise his

voice, or, if he did, the ejaculation would appear forced and

artificial. Neither could he go over to him coolly and tell his

good fortune; and, partly from this strange shyness, and partly

with a hope that another survey of the treasure might restore him

to natural expression, he walked back to his tunnel.

Yes; it was there! No mere "pocket" or "deposit," but a part of

the actual vein he had been so long seeking. It was there, sure

enough, lying beside the pick and the debris of the "face" of the

vein that he had exposed sufficiently, after the first shock of

discovery, to assure himself of the fact and the permanence of his

fortune. It was there, and with it the refutation of his enemies'

sneers, the corroboration of his friends' belief, the practical

demonstration of his own theories, the reward of his patient

labors. It was there, sure enough. But, somehow, he not only

failed to recall the first joy of discovery, but was conscious of a

vague sense of responsibility and unrest. It was, no doubt, an

enormous fortune to a man in his circumstances: perhaps it meant a

couple of hundred thousand dollars, or more, judging from the value

of the old Martin lead, which was not as rich as this, but it

required to be worked constantly and judiciously. It was with a

decided sense of uneasiness that he again sought the open sunlight

of the hillside. His neighbor was still visible on the adjacent

claim; but he had apparently stopped working, and was

contemplatively smoking a pipe under a large pine-tree. For an

instant he envied him his apparent contentment. He had a sudden

fierce and inexplicable desire to go over to him and exasperate his

easy poverty by a revelation of his own new-found treasure. But

even that sensation quickly passed, and left him staring blankly at

the landscape again.

As soon as he had made his discovery known, and settled its value,

he would send for his wife and her children in the States. He

would build a fine house on the opposite hillside, if she would

consent to it, unless she preferred, for the children's sake, to

live in San Francisco. A sense of a loss of independence--of a

change of circumstances that left him no longer his own master--

began to perplex him, in the midst of his brightest projects.

Certain other relations with other members of his family, which had

lapsed by absence and his insignificance, must now be taken up

anew. He must do something for his sister Jane, for his brother

William, for his wife's poor connections. It would be unfair to

him to say that he contemplated those things with any other

instinct than that of generosity; yet he was conscious of being

already perplexed and puzzled.

Meantime, however, the neighbor had apparently finished his pipe,

and, knocking the ashes out of it, rose suddenly, and ended any

further uncertainty of their meeting by walking over directly

towards him. The treasure-finder advanced a few steps on his side,

and then stopped irresolutely.

"Hollo, Slinn!" said the neighbor, confidently.

"Hollo, Masters," responded Slinn, faintly. From the sound of the

two voices a stranger might have mistaken their relative condition.

"What in thunder are you mooning about for? What's up?" Then,

catching sight of Slinn's pale and anxious face, he added abruptly,

"Are you sick?"

Slinn was on the point of telling him his good fortune, but

stopped. The unlucky question confirmed his consciousness of his

physical and mental disturbance, and he dreaded the ready ridicule

of his companion. He would tell him later; Masters need not know

WHEN he had made the strike. Besides, in his present vagueness, he

shrank from the brusque, practical questioning that would be sure

to follow the revelation to a man of Masters' temperament.

"I'm a little giddy here," he answered, putting his hand to his

head, "and I thought I'd knock off until I was better."

Masters examined him with two very critical gray eyes. "Tell ye

what, old man!--if you don't quit this dog-goned foolin' of yours

in that God-forsaken tunnel you'll get loony! Times you get so

tangled up in follerin' that blind lead o' yours you ain't

sensible!"

Here was the opportunity to tell him all, and vindicate the justice

of his theories! But he shrank from it again; and now, adding to

the confusion, was a singular sense of dread at the mental labor of

explanation. He only smiled painfully, and began to move away.

"Look you!" said Masters, peremptorily, "ye want about three

fingers of straight whiskey to set you right, and you've got to

take it with me. D--n it, man, it may be the last drink we take

together! Don't look so skeered! I mean--I made up my mind about

ten minutes ago to cut the whole d--d thing, and light out for

fresh diggings. I'm sick of getting only grub wages out o' this

bill. So that's what I mean by saying it's the last drink you and

me'll take together. You know my ways: sayin' and doin' with me's

the same thing."

It was true. Slinn had often envied Masters' promptness of

decision and resolution. But he only looked at the grim face of

his interlocutor with a feeble sense of relief. He was GOING. And

he, Slinn, would not have to explain anything!

He murmured something about having to go over to the settlement on

business. He dreaded lest Masters should insist upon going into

the tunnel.

"I suppose you want to mail that letter," said Masters, drily.

"The mail don't go till to-morrow, so you've got time to finish it,

and put it in an envelope."

Following the direction of Masters' eyes, Slinn looked down and

saw, to his utter surprise, that he was holding an unfinished

pencilled note in his hand. How it came there, when he had written

it, he could not tell; he dimly remembered that one of his first

impulses was to write to his wife, but that he had already done so

he had forgotten. He hastily concealed the note in his breast-

pocket, with a vacant smile. Masters eyed him half contemptuously,

half compassionately.

"Don't forget yourself and drop it in some hollow tree for a

letter-box," be said. "Well--so long!--since you won't drink.

Take care of yourself," and, turning on his heel, Masters walked

away.

Slinn watched him as he crossed over to his abandoned claim, saw

him gather his few mining utensils, strap his blanket over his

back, lift his hat on his long-handled shovel as a token of

farewell, and then stride light-heartedly over the ridge.

He was alone now with his secret and his treasure. The only man in

the world who knew of the exact position of his tunnel had gone

away forever. It was not likely that this chance companion of a

few weeks would ever remember him or the locality again; he would

now leave his treasure alone--for even a day perhaps--until he had

thought out some plan and sought out some friend in whom to

confide. His secluded life, the singular habits of concentration

which had at last proved so successful had, at the same time, left

him few acquaintances and no associates. And in all his well-laid

plans and patiently-digested theories for finding the treasure, the

means and methods of working it and disposing of it had never

entered.

And now, at the hour when he most needed his faculties, what was

the meaning of this strange benumbing of them!

Patience! He only wanted a little rest--a little time to recover

himself. There was a large boulder under a tree in the highway of

the settlement--a sheltered spot where he had often waited for the

coming of the stage-coach. He would go there, and when he was

sufficiently rested and composed he would go on.

Nevertheless, on his way he diverged and turned into the woods, for

no other apparent purpose than to find a hollow tree. "A hollow

tree." Yes! that was what Masters had said; he remembered it

distinctly; and something was to be done there, but what it was, or

why it should be done, he could not tell. However, it was done,

and very luckily, for his limbs could scarcely support him further,

and reaching that boulder he dropped upon it like another stone.

And now, strange to say, the uneasiness and perplexity which had

possessed him ever since he had stood before his revealed wealth

dropped from him like a burden laid upon the wayside. A

measureless peace stole over him, in which visions of his new-found

fortune, no longer a trouble and perplexity, but crowned with

happiness and blessing to all around him, assumed proportions far

beyond his own weak, selfish plans. In its even-handed

benefaction, his wife and children, his friends and relations, even

his late poor companion of the hillside, met and moved harmoniously

together; in its far-reaching consequences there was only the

influence of good. It was not strange that this poor finite mind

should never have conceived the meaning of the wealth extended to

him; or that conceiving it he should faint and falter under the

revelation. Enough that for a few minutes he must have tasted a

joy of perfect anticipation that years of actual possession might

never bring.

The sun seemed to go down in a rosy dream of his own happiness, as

he still sat there. Later, the shadows of the trees thickened and

surrounded him, and still later fell the calm of a quiet evening

sky with far-spaced passionless stars, that seemed as little

troubled by what they looked upon as he was by the stealthy

creeping life in the grasses and underbrush at his feet. The dull

patter of soft little feet in the soft dust of the road, the gentle

gleam of moist and wondering little eyes on the branches and in the

mossy edges of the boulder, did not disturb him. He sat patiently

through it all, as if he had not yet made up his mind.

But when the stage came with the flashing sun the next morning, and

the irresistible clamor of life and action, the driver suddenly

laid his four spirited horses on their haunches before the quiet

spot. The express messenger clambered down from the box, and

approached what seemed to be a heap of cast-off clothes upon the

boulder.

"He don't seem to be drunk," he said, in reply to a querulous

interrogation from the passengers. "I can't make him out. His

eyes are open, but he cannot speak or move. Take a look at him,

Doc."

A rough unprofessional-looking man here descended from the inside

of the coach, and, carelessly thrusting aside the other curious

passengers, suddenly leant over the heap of clothes in a

professional attitude.

"He is dead," said one of the passengers.

The rough man let the passive head sink softly down again. "No

such luck for him," he said curtly, but not unkindly. "It's a

stroke of paralysis--and about as big as they make 'em. It's a

toss-up if he ever speaks or moves again as long as he lives."

CHAPTER I

When Alvin Mulrady announced his intention of growing potatoes and

garden "truck" on the green slopes of Los Gatos, the mining

community of that region, and the adjacent hamlet of "Rough-and-

Ready," regarded it with the contemptuous indifference usually

shown by those adventurers towards all bucolic pursuits. There was

certainly no active objection to the occupation of two hillsides,

which gave so little promise to the prospector for gold that it was

currently reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had

once gone mad or imbecile through repeated failures. The only

opposition came, incongruously enough, from the original pastoral

owner of the soil, one Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven

leagues of hill and valley, including the now prosperous towns of

Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was met with simple derision from the

squatters and miners. "Looks ez ef we woz goin' to travel three

thousand miles to open up his d--d old wilderness, and then pay for

the increased valoo we give it--don't it? Oh, yes, certainly!" was

their ironical commentary. Mulrady might have been pardoned for

adopting this popular opinion; but by an equally incongruous

sentiment, peculiar, however, to the man, he called upon Don Ramon,

and actually offered to purchase the land, or "go shares" with him

in the agricultural profits. It was alleged that the Don was so

struck with this concession that he not only granted the land, but

struck up a quaint reserved friendship for the simple-minded

agriculturist and his family. It is scarcely necessary to add that

this intimacy was viewed by the miners with the contempt that it

deserved. They would have been more contemptuous, however, had

they known the opinion that Don Ramon entertained of their

particular vocation, and which he early confided to Mulrady.

"They are savages who expect to reap where they have not sown; to

take out of the earth without returning anything to it but their

precious carcasses; heathens, who worship the mere stones they dig

up." "And was there no Spaniard who ever dug gold?" asked Mulrady,

simply. "Ah, there are Spaniards and Moors," responded Don Ramon,

sententiously. "Gold has been dug, and by caballeros; but no good

ever came of it. There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had

mines of SILVER, and worked them with peons and mules, and lost

their money--a gold mine to work a silver one--like gentlemen! But

this grubbing in the dirt with one's fingers, that a little gold

may stick to them, is not for caballeros. And then, one says

nothing of the curse."

"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine

superstition. "What is that?"

"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to

my ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse

upon any who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the

three Americanos who founded yonder town, one was shot, another

died of a fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the

last got himself crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,* who

came here years ago and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was

afterwards punished for his profanation, and died of an accident in

other lands. But," added Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this

touches not yourself. Through me, YOU are of the soil."

* Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who

visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an

accident in the Sandwich Islands.

Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was

the result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and

market garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with

magnificent vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons

at defiance with extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork

and biscuit consuming settlers did not allow their contempt of

Mulrady's occupation to prevent their profiting by this opportunity

for changing their diet. The gold they had taken from the soil

presently began to flow into his pockets in exchange for his more

modest treasures. The little cabin, which barely sheltered his

family--a wife, son, and daughter--was enlarged, extended, and

refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more pretentious house on the

opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced the rudely-split

rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees, the first

evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles of

brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of stone--

melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green, which

made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.

Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was

necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at

great expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency

Mulrady thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope

beside his house; not, however, without serious consultation and

much objection from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don

Ramon pointed out that this trifling with the entrails of the earth

was not only an indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking

and tunneling, but was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and

my fathers, San Diego rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself,

"were content with wells and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its

appointed seasons; the cattle, dumb brutes though they were, knew

where to find water when they wanted it. But thou sayest truly,"

he added, with a sigh, "that was before streams and rain were

choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with their spume. Go on,

friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in a seemly fashion,

and not with impious earthquakes of devilish gunpowder."

With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian

shaft. Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the

work went on slowly. The market garden did not suffer meantime, as

Mulrady had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder

tillage, while he superintended the engineering work of the well.

This trifling incident marked an epoch in the social condition of

the family. Mrs. Mulrady at once assumed a conscious importance

among her neighbors. She spoke of her husband's "men"; she alluded

to the well as "the works"; she checked the easy frontier

familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary Mulrady, her

seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple Alvin Mulrady looked with

astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all

feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity.

"Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys

that want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of 'em may be

makin' up to her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady,"

responded Mrs. Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever

thought of givin' your daughter to a common miner, or that I'm

goin' to allow her to marry out of our own set?" "Our own set!"

echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her in astonishment, and then

glancing hurriedly across at his freckle-faced son and the two

Chinamen at work in the cabbages. "Oh, you know what I mean," said

Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move in. The Alvarados and

their friends! Doesn't the old Don come here every day, and ain't

his son the right age for Mamie? And ain't they the real first

families here--all the same as if they were noblemen? No, leave

Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft; there never was a man yet had

the least sabe about these things, or knew what was due to his

family." Like most of his larger minded, but feebler equipped sex,

Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the latter proposition,

which left the meannesses of life to feminine manipulation, and

went off to his shaft on the hillside. But during that afternoon

he was perplexed and troubled. He was too loyal a husband not to

be pleased with this proof of an unexpected and superior foresight

in his wife, although he was, like all husbands, a little startled

by it. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down

from the hillside upon his little venture, where gradual increase

and prosperity had not been beyond his faculties to control and

understand, he found himself haunted by the more ambitious projects

of his helpmate. From his own knowledge of men, he doubted if Don

Ramon, any more than himself, had ever thought of the possibility

of a matrimonial connection between the families. He doubted if he

would consent to it. And unfortunately it was this very doubt

that, touching his own pride as a self-made man, made him first

seriously consider his wife's proposition. He was as good as Don

Ramon, any day! With this subtle feminine poison instilled in his

veins, carried completely away by the logic of his wife's illogical

premises, he almost hated his old benefactor. He looked down upon

the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted him with

the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was

losing its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.

Happily, about this time Don Ramon died. It is not probable that

he ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to

his son, who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly

partitioned by relatives and lawsuits. The feminine Mulradys

attended the funeral, in expensive mourning from Sacramento; even

the gentle Alvin was forced into ready-made broadcloth, which

accented his good-natured but unmistakably common presence. Mrs.

Mulrady spoke openly of her "loss"; declared that the old families

were dying out; and impressed the wives of a few new arrivals at

Red Dog with the belief that her own family was contemporary with

the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was far from perfect.

She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don Caesar.

Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still

more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the

shyness of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely

availed himself of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he

carried out the intentions of his father by consenting to sell to

Mulrady, for a small sum, the property he had leased. The idea of

purchasing had originated with Mrs. Mulrady.

"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and

it's better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his

tenants."

It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her

husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly

approached the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink

cotton gown, in honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar,

and Mrs. Mulrady was tidying the house in view of the same event.

Something in the tone of her good man's voice, and the unusual

circumstance of his return to the house before work was done,

caused her, however, to drop her dusting cloth, and run to the

kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running through the rows of

cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and excitement, a

light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She recalled,

without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had called

him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at the

back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her

parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw

his arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow

cheek.

"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush

that had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's

apron, "what are you doin', and company expected every minit?"

"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"

She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and

looked at him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.

"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have

been looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands

and tens of thousands!"

"Wait a minit."

She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could

hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new

frock, Mamie," she called out.

There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.

"I'm speaking," said Mrs. Mulrady, emphatically.

The murmuring ceased. Mrs. Mulrady returned to her husband. The

interruption seemed to have taken off the keen edge of his

enjoyment. He at once abdicated his momentary elevation as a

discoverer, and waited for her to speak.

"Ye haven't told any one yet?" she asked.

"No. I was alone, down in the shaft. Ye see, Malviny, I wasn't

expectin' of anything." He began, with an attempt at fresh

enjoyment, "I was just clearin' out, and hadn't reckoned on

anythin'."

"You see, I was right when I advised you taking the land," she

said, without heeding him.

Mulrady's face fell. "I hope Don Caesar won't think"--he began,

hesitatingly. "I reckon, perhaps, I oughter make some sorter

compensation--you know."

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mulrady, decidedly. "Don't be a fool. Any gold

discovery, anyhow, would have been yours--that's the law. And you

bought the land without any restrictions. Besides, you never had

any idea of this!"--she stopped, and looked him suddenly in the

face--"had you?"

Mulrady opened his honest, pale-gray eyes widely.

"Why, Malviny! You know I hadn't. I could swear!"

"Don't swear, and don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it

was there. Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me." Her voice here took

the strident form of action. "Knock off work at the shaft, and

send your man away at once. Put on your things, catch the next

stage to Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie with you."

"Mamie!" echoed Mulrady, feebly.

"You want to see Lawyer Cole and my brother Jim at once," she went

on, without heeding him, "and Mamie wants a change and some proper.

clothes. Leave the rest to me and Abner. I'll break it to Mamie,

and get her ready."

Mulrady passed his hands through his tangled hair, wet with

perspiration. He was proud of his wife's energy and action; he did

not dream of opposing her, but somehow he was disappointed. The

charming glamour and joy of his discovery had vanished before he

could fairly dazzle her with it; or, rather, she was not dazzled

with it at all. It had become like business, and the expression

"breaking it" to Mamie jarred upon him. He would have preferred to

tell her himself; to watch the color come into her delicate oval

face, to have seen her soft eyes light with an innocent joy he had

not seen in his wife's; and he felt a sinking conviction that his

wife was the last one to awaken it.

"You ain't got any time to lose," she said, impatiently, as he

hesitated.

Perhaps it was her impatience that struck harshly upon him;

perhaps, if she had not accepted her good fortune so confidently,

he would not have spoken what was in his mind at the time; but he

said gravely, "Wait a minit, Malviny; I've suthin' to tell you

'bout this find of mine that's sing'lar."

"Go on," she said, quickly.

"Lyin' among the rotten quartz of the vein was a pick," he said,

constrainedly; "and the face of the vein sorter looked ez if it had

been worked at. Follering the line outside to the base of the hill

there was signs of there having been an old tunnel; but it had

fallen in, and was blocked up."

"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.

"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder

looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."

"And went away, and left it for others! That's likely--ain't it?"

interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance. "Everybody

knows the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was

abandoned when we came here. It's your property and you've paid

for it. Are you goin' to wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin

Mulrady, or are you going to Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"

Mulrady started. He had never seriously believed in the

possibility of a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature

had prompted him to give it a fair consideration. She was probably

right. What he might have thought had she treated it with equal

conscientiousness he did not consider. "All right," he said

simply. "I reckon we'll go at once."

"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff

about the pick to yourself. There's no use of putting queer ideas

into other people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."

When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr.

Mulrady and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman,

carrying their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to

meet the up stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and

wistfully into his daughter's face. He had looked forward to those

few moments to enjoy the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful

delight and enthusiasm as a relief to his wife's practical, far-

sighted realism. There was a pretty pink suffusion in her delicate

cheek, the breathless happiness of a child in her half-opened

little mouth, and a beautiful absorption in her large gray eyes

that augured well for him.

"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress? How do we like

layin' over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"

"Eh?"

She had not heard him. The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in

an anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy

Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks;

in glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide

brogues that strode at her side; in looking up the road for the

stage-coach; in regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but

in the loving eyes of the man beside her.

He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming

preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.

"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly

disengaging his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his

elbow to soften the separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING

would happen. I suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added;

"but ma made me hurry to get away before Don Caesar came."

"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.

"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply.

"I reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight

laugh.

"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said

Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him

NOW," he added, triumphantly.

"I don't know about that," said Mamie. "He's been rich all the

time, and his father and grandfather before him; while we've been

poor and his tenants."

His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had

followed her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger.

"Did he get off such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.

"No. I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly.

"There's better nor him to be had for the asking now."

They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the

Chinaman might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen

them. But Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips. "La,

pa! it ain't that! He cares everything for me, and I do for him;

and if ma hadn't got new ideas--" She stopped suddenly.

"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.

"Oh, nothing! I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots!

Everybody can see these are made for the farrows. And you ain't a

market gardener any more."

"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy

laugh.

"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."

Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on

the Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with

his head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have

already gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that

title. Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her

preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended

the hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the

coach, or the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately

prompted her. She was so far away at one time that the stage-

coach, which finally drew up before Mulrady, was obliged to wait

for her.

When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to

the box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,--

"Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."

"Ez how?"

"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at

just this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your

attitude, was a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let

him in, when, darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at

me without speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept

with that idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in

mighty strong English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next

morning, when I came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't

thar, but lyin' all of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops down and

picks him up. Doctor Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a

played-out prospector, with a big case of paralysis, and we

expressed him through to the County Hospital, like so much dead

freight. I've allus been kinder superstitious about passin' that

rock, and when I saw you jist now, sittin' thar, dazed like, with

your head down like the other chap, it rather threw me off my

centre."

In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this

coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost

on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order

to prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in

time.

"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger. "Did you

ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.

With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver

resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my

cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and

then afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get

even." He paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he

never kem to enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he

was eventooally taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral

and Permiskus Imbeciles at Sacramento. I've heerd it's considered

a first-class institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and

can't talk, as for them ez is the reverse and is too chipper.

Now," he added, languidly turning for the first time to his

miserable questioners, "how did YOU find it?"

CHAPTER II

When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally

made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the

history of the country. Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready

were emptied upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until

their circling camp fires looked like a besieging army that had

invested his peaceful pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by

assault. Unfortunately for them, they found the various points of

vantage already garrisoned with notices of "preemption" for mining

purposes in the name of the various members of the Alvarado family.

This stroke of business was due to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of

mollifying the conscientious scruples of her husband and of

placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote contingency. It is

but fair to say that this degradation of his father's Castilian

principles was opposed by Don Caesar. "You needn't work them

yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way to keep

the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"

argued Mrs. Mulrady. Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to

the business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple

suggestion of Mamie's mother. Enough that he realized a sum in

money for a few acres that exceeded the last ten years' income of

Don Ramon's seven leagues.

Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the

discovery in Mulrady's shaft. It was alleged that a company,

hastily formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down,

leaving him still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine.

With an obstinacy, however, that amounted almost to a moral

conviction, he refused to include the house and potato-patch in the

property. When the company had yielded the point, he declined,

with equal tenacity, to part with it to outside speculators on even

the most extravagant offers. In vain Mrs. Mulrady protested; in

vain she pointed out to him that the retention of the evidence of

his former humble occupation was a green blot upon their social

escutcheon.

"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden."

But Mulrady was adamant.

"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil

with my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be

the end of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back

to some day, and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of

it."

By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that

a portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden,

and by a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its

vulgar part. Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in

another effort to mitigate the austerities of their earlier state.

It occurred to her to utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in

the pronunciation of their family name, and privately had "Mulrade"

take the place of Mulrady on her visiting card. "It might be

Spanish," she argued with her husband. "Lawyer Cole says most

American names are corrupted, and how do you know that yours

ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his ancestors came from

Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to refute the

assertion. But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish, American

provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once. When

Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter, as

"Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter

rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel.

But she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her

husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--

as "Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure,

his orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose,

even that dominant woman withheld his title. It was currently

reported at Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day

approached Mulrady with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of

addressing Don Alvino Mulrady?" "You kin bet your boots, stranger,

that's me," had returned that simple hidalgo.

Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain

at Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to

"the States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to

astonish Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe,

and unfold in the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with

which she was to fly from them forever. "I don't want them to

remember me afterwards in those spotted prints, ma, and like as not

say I never had a decent frock until I went away." There was

something so like the daughter of her mother in this delicate

foresight that the touched and gratified parent kissed her, and

assented. The result was gratifying beyond her expectation. In

that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl seemed to

have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of fashion

with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and taste.

Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to

supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace

and manner peculiar to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education,

or precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things

being possible, which made them so often probable. Mr. Mulrady

looked at his daughter with mingled sentiments of pride and awe.

Was it possible that this delicate creature, so superior to him

that he seemed like a degenerate scion of her remoter race, was his

own flesh and blood? Was she the daughter of her mother, who even

in her remembered youth was never equipped like this? If the

thought brought no pleasure to his simple, loving nature, it at

least spared him the pain of what might have seemed ingratitude in

one more akin to himself. "The fact is, we ain't quite up to her

style," was his explanation and apology. A vague belief that in

another and a better world than this he might approximate and

understand this perfection somewhat soothed and sustained him.

It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered cambric

dress which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside

at Los Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic

and expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or

to herself in the eyes of a general audience. It certainly did not

seem so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her

from time to time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-

twenty, walked at her side. He was the new editor of the "Rough-

and-Ready Record," and, having been her fellow-passenger from

Sacramento, had already once or twice availed himself of her

father's invitation to call upon them. Mrs. Mulrady had not

discouraged this mild flirtation. Whether she wished to disconcert

Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether, like the rest of

her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the unheroic,

unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine humor, did

not appear.

"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady,"

said the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my

unselfishness, since I frankly admit your departure would be a

positive relief to me as an editor and a man. The pressure in the

Poet's Corner of the 'Record' since it was mistakingly discovered

that a person of your name might be induced to seek the 'glade' and

'shade' without being 'afraid,' 'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been

something enormous, and, unfortunately, I am debarred from

rejecting anything, on the just ground that I am myself an

interested admirer."

"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full

name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much

horror in her face.

"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he

responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men,

with a mediaeval style of compliment. I've discovered that amatory

versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is

about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and

scatters as terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both

discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and

their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss

Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of

admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the

end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your

subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in

a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write poetry?"

"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.

"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously; "it must

be a pallid substitute for other opportunities."

"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.

"To see you."

"Nonsense! You know what I mean. Why did you ever leave

Sacramento to come here? I should think it would suit you so much

better than this place."

"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find

a gold mine."

"Men like you never do," she said, simply.

"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"

"I don't know. But I think that you think that it is."

He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a

sympathetic intelligence. "Do I? This is interesting. Let's sit

down." In their desultory rambling they had reached, quite

unconsciously, the large boulder at the roadside. Mamie hesitated

a moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already

opulent indifference to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat

herself upon it, with her furled parasol held by her two little

hands thrown over her half-drawn-up knee. The young editor, half

sitting, half leaning, against the stone, began to draw figures in

the sand with his cane.

"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here.

You are leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich. We are

coming to it because we are poor."

"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.

"Yes. My father and two sisters."

"I am sorry. I might have known them if I hadn't been going away."

At the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were

like the man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent

and critical. "Is your father in business?" she asked.

He shook his head. After a pause, he said, punctuating his

sentences with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is

paralyzed, and out of his mind, Miss Mulrady. I came to California

to seek him, as all news of him ceased three years since; and I

found him only two weeks ago, alone, friendless--an unrecognized

pauper in the county hospital."

"Two weeks ago? That was when I went to Sacramento."

"Very probably."

"It must have been very shocking to you?"

"It was."

"I should think you'd feel real bad?"

"I do, at times." He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone.

"You now see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good

fortune that you don't think me worthy of. Meantime I must try to

make a home for them at Rough-and-Ready."

Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol. "We mustn't stay

here much longer, you know."

"Why?"

"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."

"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"

"Of course they will."

"Miss Mulrady, I implore you to stay."

He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and

gesture that the color came into her cheek. For a moment she

scarcely dared to lift her conscious eyes to his. When she did so,

she suddenly glanced her own aside with a flash of anger. He was

laughing.

"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated.

"Stay a moment longer, and my fortune is made. The passengers will

report us all over Red Dog as engaged. I shall be supposed to be

in your father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director

of all the new companies. The 'Record' will double its

circulation; poetry will drop out of its columns, advertising rush

to fill its place, and I shall receive five dollars a week more

salary, if not seven and a half. Never mind the consequences to

yourself at such a moment. I assure you there will be none. You

can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay, more, the 'Record'

itself will deny it in an extra edition of one thousand copies, at

ten cents each. Linger a moment longer, Miss Mulrady. Fly, oh fly

not yet. They're coming--hark! oh! By Jove, it's only Don

Caesar!"

It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado,

blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them

on a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness

seemed to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of

his rider. Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the

"Record" did not withhold his admiration of this perfect

horsemanship. Mamie, who, in her wounded amour propre, would like

to have made much of it to annoy her companion, was thus estopped

any ostentatious compliment.

Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with

grave courtesy to the gentleman. While the lower half of this

Centaur was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground

in his evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with

natural dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave

the privilege of an explanation with them. But Mamie was too wise,

and her companion too indifferent, to offer one. A slight shade

passed over Don Caesar's face. To complicate the situation at that

moment, the expected stagecoach came rattling by. With quick

feminine intuition, Mamie caught in the faces of the driver and the

expressman, and reflected in the mischievous eyes of her companion,

a peculiar interpretation of their meeting, that was not removed by

the whispered assurance of the editor that the passengers were

anxiously looking back "to see the shooting."

The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity,

remained impassive.

"You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?"

Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn. He was under

the impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the

"Record."

"Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn. "I'm taking his place."

"Bueno! To be shot too? I trust not."

Slinn looked quickly and sharply into Don Caesar's grave face. He

seemed to be incapable of any double meaning. However, as he had

no serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very

little desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation,

and possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take his

leave of her. From a sudden feminine revulsion of sympathy, or

from some unintelligible instinct of diplomacy, Mamie said, as she

extended her hand, "I hope you'll find a home for your family near

here. Mamma wants pa to let our old house. Perhaps it might suit

you, if not too far from your work. You might speak to ma about

it."

"Thank you; I will," responded the young man, pressing her hand

with unaffected cordiality.

Don Caesar watched him until he had disappeared behind the wayside

buckeyes.

"He is a man of family--this one--your countryman?"

It seemed strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as

"her countryman"--not the first time nor the last time in her

career. As there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her

questioner's manner, she answered briefly but vaguely:

"Yes; it's a shocking story. His father disappeared some years

ago, and he has just found him--a helpless paralytic--in the

Sacramento Hospital. He'll have to support him--and they're very

poor."

"So, then, they are not independent of each other always--these

fathers and children of Americans!"

"No," said Mamie, shortly. Without knowing why, she felt inclined

to resent Don Caesar's manner. His serious gravity--gentle and

high-bred as it was, undoubtedly--was somewhat trying to her at

times, and seemed even more so after Slinn's irreverent humor. She

picked up her parasol, a little impatiently, as if to go.

But Don Caesar had already dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree

with a strong lariat that hung at his saddle-bow.

"Let us walk through the woods towards your home. I can return

alone for the horse when you shall dismiss me."

They turned in among the pines that, overcrowding the hollow, crept

partly up the side of the hill of Mulrady's shaft. A disused

trail, almost hidden by the waxen-hued yerba buena, led from the

highway, and finally lost itself in the undergrowth. It was a

lovers' walk; they were lovers, evidently, and yet the man was too

self-poised in his gravity, the young woman too conscious and

critical, to suggest an absorbing or oblivious passion.

"I should not have made myself so obtrusive to-day before your

friend," said Don Caesar, with proud humility, "but I could not

understand from your mother whether you were alone or whether my

company was desirable. It is of this I have now to speak, Mamie.

Lately your mother has seemed strange to me; avoiding any reference

to our affection; treating it lightly, and even as to-day, I fancy,

putting obstacles in the way of our meeting alone. She was

disappointed at your return from Sacramento where, I have been

told, she intended you to remain until you left the country; and

since your return I have seen you but twice. I may be wrong.

Perhaps I do not comprehend the American mother; I have--who

knows?--perhaps offended in some point of etiquette, omitted some

ceremony that was her due. But when you told me, Mamie, that it

was not necessary to speak to HER first, that it was not the

American fashion--"

Mamie started, and blushed slightly.

"Yes," she said hurriedly, "certainly; but ma has been quite queer

of late, and she may think--you know--that since--since there has

been so much property to dispose of, she ought to have been

consulted."

"Then let us consult her at once, dear child! And as to the

property, in Heaven's name, let her dispose of it as she will.

Saints forbid that an Alvarado should ever interfere. And what is

it to us, my little one? Enough that Dona Mameta Alvarado will

never have less state than the richest bride that ever came to Los

Gatos."

Mamie had not forgotten that, scarcely a month ago, even had she

loved the man before her no more than she did at present, she would

still have been thrilled with delight at these words! Even now she

was moved--conscious as she had become that the "state" of a bride

of the Alvarados was not all she had imagined, and that the bare

adobe court of Los Gatos was open to the sky and the free criticism

of Sacramento capitalists!

"Yes, dear," she murmured with a half childlike pleasure, that lit

up her face and eyes so innocently that it stopped any minute

investigation into its origin and real meaning. "Yes, dear; but we

need not have a fuss made about it at present, and perhaps put ma

against us. She wouldn't hear of our marrying now; and she might

forbid our engagement."

"But you are going away."

"I should have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she

answered, naively, "even if it were all settled. I should have to

get things! One couldn't be decent here."

With the recollection of the pink cotton gown, in which she had

first pledged her troth to him, before his eyes, he said, "But you

are charming now. You cannot be more so to me. If I am satisfied,

little one, with you as you are, let us go together, and then you

can get dresses to please others."

She had not expected this importunity. Really, if it came to this,

she might have engaged herself to some one like Slinn; he at least

would have understood her. He was much cleverer, and certainly

more of a man of the world. When Slinn had treated her like a

child, it was with the humorous tolerance of an admiring superior,

and not the didactic impulse of a guardian. She did not say this,

nor did her pretty eyes indicate it, as in the instance of her

brief anger with Slinn. She only said gently,--

"I should have thought you, of all men, would have been particular

about your wife doing the proper thing. But never mind! Don't let

us talk any more about it. Perhaps as it seems such a great thing

to you, and so much trouble, there may be no necessity for it at

all."

I do not think that the young lady deliberately planned this

charmingly illogical deduction from Don Caesar's speech, or that

she calculated its effect upon him; but it was part of her nature

to say it, and profit by it. Under the unjust lash of it, his

pride gave way.

"Ah, do you not see why I wish to go with you?" he said, with

sudden and unexpected passion. "You are beautiful; you are good;

it has pleased Heaven to make you rich also; but you are a child in

experience, and know not your own heart. With your beauty, your

goodness, and your wealth, you will attract all to you--as you do

here--because you cannot help it. But you will be equally

helpless, little one, if THEY should attract YOU, and you had no

tie to fall back upon."

It was an unfortunate speech. The words were Don Caesar's; but the

thought she had heard before from her mother, although the

deduction had been of a very different kind. Mamie followed the

speaker with bright but visionary eyes. There must be some truth

in all this. Her mother had said it; Mr. Slinn had laughingly

admitted it. She HAD a brilliant future before her! Was she right

in making it impossible by a rash and foolish tie? He himself had

said she was inexperienced. She knew it; and yet, what was he

doing now but taking advantage of that inexperience? If he really

loved her, he would be willing to submit to the test. She did not

ask a similar one from him; and was willing, if she came out of it

free, to marry him just the same. There was something so noble in

this thought that she felt for a moment carried away by an impulse

of compassionate unselfishness, and smiled tenderly as she looked

up in his face.

"Then you consent, Mamie?" he said, eagerly, passing his arm around

her waist.

"Not now, Caesar," she said, gently disengaging herself. "I must

think it over; we are both too young to act upon it rashly; it

would be unfair to you, who are so quiet and have seen so few

girls--I mean Americans--to tie yourself to the first one you have

known. When I am gone you will go more into the world. There are

Mr. Slinn's two sisters coming here--I shouldn't wonder if they

were far cleverer and talked far better than I do--and think how I

should feel if I knew that only a wretched pledge to me kept you

from loving them!" She stopped, and cast down her eyes.

It was her first attempt at coquetry, for, in her usual charming

selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not

have been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not

prepared for a recoil of her own argument.

"If you admit that it is possible--that it is possible to you!" he

said, quickly.

She saw her mistake. "We may not have many opportunities to meet

alone," she answered, quietly; "and I am sure we would be happier

when we meet not to accuse each other of impossibilities. Let us

rather see how we can communicate together, if anything should

prevent our meeting. Remember, it was only by chance that you were

able to see me now. If ma has believed that she ought to have been

consulted, our meeting together in this secret way will only make

matters worse. She is even now wondering where I am, and may be

suspicious. I must go back at once. At any moment some one may

come here looking for me."

"But I have so much to say," he pleaded. "Our time has been so

short."

"You can write."

"But what will your mother think of that?" he said, in grave

astonishment.

She colored again as she returned, quickly, "Of course, you must

not write to the house. You can leave a letter somewhere for me--

say, somewhere about here. Stop!" she added, with a sudden girlish

gayety, "see, here's the very place. Look there!"

She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet

from the trail. A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton

leaves and pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's

hoard, but for some reason had been deserted.

"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on

tip-toe to peep into its recesses. Don Caesar looked at her

admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-

making in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage

rows in her brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in

the woods. He recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a

lover already seeking to restore in past recollections something

that was wanting in the present. She received it with the

impatience of youth, to whom the present is all sufficient.

"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland

apron," she said, looking down upon her new dress.

"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her

waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.

"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free

herself. "There's not time. Write it, and put it in the box.

There," she added, hastily, "listen!--what's that?"

"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.

"No; it's somebody coming! I must go! Please! Caesar, dear!

There, then--"

She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement

of her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into

the woods, and was gone.

Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a

look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then

slowly retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang.

He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that

interruption. A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from

the bough of an adjacent tree. It was a squirrel, who, having had

serious and prior intentions of making use of the cavity they had

discovered, had only withheld examination by an apparent courteous

discretion towards the intruding pair. Now that they were gone he

slipped down the tree and ran towards the decayed stump.

CHAPTER III

Apparently dissatisfied with the result of an investigation, which

proved that the cavity was unfit as a treasure hoard for a discreet

squirrel, whatever its value as a receptacle for the love-tokens of

incautious humanity, the little animal at once set about to put

things in order. He began by whisking out an immense quantity of

dead leaves, disturbed a family of tree-spiders, dissipated a drove

of patient aphides browsing in the bark, as well as their attendant

dairymen, the ants, and otherwise ruled it with the high hand of

dispossession and a contemptuous opinion of the previous

incumbents. It must not be supposed, however, that his proceedings

were altogether free from contemporaneous criticism; a venerable

crow sitting on a branch above him displayed great interest in his

occupation, and, hopping down a few moments afterwards, disposed of

some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and an insect or two, with

languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain incumbrances,

however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction; among them

a folded square of paper with sharply defined edges, that declined

investigation, and, owing to a nauseous smell of tobacco, escaped

nibbling as it had apparently escaped insect ravages. This, owing

to its sharp angles, which persisted in catching in the soft

decaying wood in his whirlwind of house-cleaning, he allowed to

remain. Having thus, in a general way, prepared for the coming

winter, the self-satisfied little rodent dismissed the subject from

his active mind.

His rage and indignation a few days later may be readily conceived,

when he found, on returning to his new-made home, another square of

paper, folded like the first, but much fresher and whiter, lying

within the cavity, on top of some moss which had evidently been

placed there for the purpose. This he felt was really more than he

could bear, but it was smaller, and with a few energetic kicks and

whisks of his tail he managed to finally dislodge it through the

opening, where it fell ignominiously to the earth. The eager eyes

of the ever-attendant crow, however, instantly detected it; he flew

to the ground, and, turning it over, examined it gravely. It was

certainly not edible, but it was exceedingly rare, and, as an old

collector of curios, he felt he could not pass it by. He lifted it

in his beak, and, with a desperate struggle against the

superincumbent weight, regained the branch with his prize. Here,

by one of those delicious vagaries of animal nature, he apparently

at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became utterly

oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern, and

eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been

another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where

it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a

passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that

delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into the

adjacent county.

But the troubles of the squirrel were not yet over. On the

following day the young man who had accompanied the young woman

returned to the trunk, and the squirrel had barely time to make his

escape before the impatient visitor approached the opening of the

cavity, peered into it, and even passed his hand through its

recesses. The delight visible upon his anxious and serious face at

the disappearance of the letter, and the apparent proof that it had

been called for, showed him to have been its original depositor,

and probably awakened a remorseful recollection in the dark bosom

of the omnipresent crow, who uttered a conscious-stricken croak

from the bough above him. But the young man quickly disappeared

again, and the squirrel was once more left in undisputed

possession.

A week passed. A weary, anxious interval to Don Caesar, who had

neither seen nor heard from Mamie since their last meeting. Too

conscious of his own self-respect to call at the house after the

equivocal conduct of Mrs. Mulrady, and too proud to haunt the lanes

and approaches in the hope of meeting her daughter, like an

ordinary lover, he hid his gloomy thoughts in the monastic shadows

of the courtyard at Los Gatos, or found relief in furious riding at

night and early morning on the highway. Once or twice the up-stage

had been overtaken and passed by a rushing figure as shadowy as a

phantom horseman, with only the star-like point of a cigarette to

indicate its humanity. It was in one of these fierce recreations

that he was obliged to stop in early morning at the blacksmith's

shop at Rough-and-Ready, to have a loosend horseshoe replaced, and

while waiting picked up a newspaper. Don Caesar seldom read the

papers, but noticing that this was the "Record," he glanced at its

columns. A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the dark type

like a spark from the anvil. With a brain and heart that seemed to

be beating in unison with the blacksmith's sledge, he read as

follows:--

"Our distinguished fellow-townsman, Alvin Mulrady, Esq., left town

day before yesterday to attend an important meeting of directors of

the Red Dog Ditch Company, in San Francisco. Society will regret

to hear that Mrs. Mulrady and her beautiful and accomplished

daughter, who are expecting to depart for Europe at the end of the

month, anticipated the event nearly a fortnight, by taking this

opportunity of accompanying Mr. Mulrady as far as San Francisco, on

their way to the East. Mrs. and Miss Mulrady intend to visit

London, Paris, and Berlin, and will be absent three years. It is

possible that Mr. Mulrady may join them later at one or other of

those capitals. Considerable disappointment is felt that a more

extended leave-taking was not possible, and that, under the

circumstances, no opportunity was offered for a 'send off' suitable

to the condition of the parties and the esteem in which they are

held in Rough-and-Ready."

The paper dropped from his hands. Gone! and without a word! No,

that was impossible! There must be some mistake; she had written;

the letter had miscarried; she must have sent word to Los Gatos,

and the stupid messenger had blundered; she had probably appointed

another meeting, or expected him to follow to San Francisco. "The

day before yesterday!" It was the morning's paper--she had been

gone scarcely two days--it was not too late yet to receive a

delayed message by post, by some forgetful hand--by--ah--the tree!

Of course it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week!

Why had he not thought of it before? The fault was his, not hers.

Perhaps she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country

boor.

"In the name of the Devil, will you keep me here till eternity!"

The blacksmith stared at him. Don Caesar suddenly remembered that

he was speaking, as he was thinking--in Spanish.

"Ten dollars, my friend, if you have done in five minutes!"

The man laughed. "That's good enough American," he said, beginning

to quicken his efforts. Don Caesar again took up the paper. There

was another paragraph that recalled his last interview with Mamie:--

"Mr. Harry Slinn, Jr., the editor of this paper, has just moved

into the pioneer house formerly occupied by Alvin Mulrady, Esq.,

which has already become historic in the annals of the county. Mr.

Slinn brings with him his father--H. J. Slinn, Esq.,--and his two

sisters. Mr. Slinn, Sen., who has been suffering for many years

from complete paralysis, we understand is slowly improving; and it

is by the advice of his physicians that he has chosen the

invigorating air of the foothills as a change to the debilitating

heat of Sacramento."

The affair had been quickly settled, certainly, reflected Don

Caesar, with a slight chill of jealousy, as he thought of Mamie's

interest in the young editor. But the next moment he dismissed it

from his mind; all except a dull consciousness that, if she really

loved him--Don Caesar--as he loved her, she could not have assisted

in throwing into his society the young sisters of the editor, who

she expected might be so attractive.

Within the five minutes the horse was ready, and Don Caesar in the

saddle again. In less than half an hour he was at the wayside

boulder. Here he picketed his horse, and took the narrow foot-

trail through the hollow. It did not take him long to reach their

old trysting-place. With a beating heart he approached the

decaying trunk and looked into the cavity. There was no letter

there!

A few blackened nuts and some of the dry moss he had put there were

lying on the ground at its roots. He could not remember whether

they were there when he had last visited the spot. He began to

grope in the cavity with both hands. His fingers struck against

the sharp angles of a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran

through them and stopped his beating heart; he drew out the hidden

object, and was chilled with disappointment.

It was an ordinary-sized envelope of yellowish-brown paper,

bearing, besides the usual government stamp, the official legend of

an express company, and showing its age as much by this record of a

now obsolete carrying service as by the discoloration of time and

atmosphere. Its weight, which was heavier than that of any

ordinary letter of the same size and thickness, was evidently due

to some loose enclosures, that slightly rustled and could be felt

by the fingers, like minute pieces of metal or grains of gravel.

It was within Don Caesar's experience that gold specimens were

often sent in that manner. It was in a state of singular

preservation, except the address, which, being written in pencil,

was scarcely discernible, and even when deciphered appeared to be

incoherent and unfinished. The unknown correspondent had written

"dear Mary," and then "Mrs. Mary Slinn," with an unintelligible

scrawl following for the direction. If Don Caesar's mind had not

been lately preoccupied with the name of the editor, he would

hardly have guessed the superscription.

In his cruel disappointment and fully aroused indignation, he at

once began to suspect a connection of circumstances which at any

other moment he would have thought purely accidental, or perhaps

not have considered at all. The cavity in the tree had evidently

been used as a secret receptacle for letters before; did Mamie know

it at the time, and how did she know it? The apparent age of the

letter made it preposterous to suppose that it pointed to any

secret correspondence of hers with young Mr. Slinn; and the address

was not in her handwriting. Was there any secret previous intimacy

between the families? There was but one way in which he could

connect this letter with Mamie's faithlessness. It was an

infamous, a grotesquely horrible idea, a thought which sprang as

much from his inexperience of the world and his habitual

suspiciousness of all humor as anything else! It was that the

letter was a brutal joke of Slinn's--a joke perhaps concocted by

Mamie and himself--a parting insult that should at the last moment

proclaim their treachery and his own credulity. Doubtless it

contained a declaration of their shame, and the reason why she had

fled from him without a word of explanation. And the enclosure, of

course, was some significant and degrading illustration. Those

Americans are full of those low conceits; it was their national

vulgarity.

He had the letter in his angry hand. He could break it open if he

wished and satisfy himself; but it was not addressed to HIM, and

the instinct of honor, strong even in his rage, was the instinct of

an adversary as well. No; Slinn should open the letter before him.

Slinn should explain everything, and answer for it. If it was

nothing--a mere accident--it would lead to some general

explanation, and perhaps even news of Mamie. But he would arraign

Slinn, and at once. He put the letter in his pocket, quickly

retraced his steps to his horse, and, putting spurs to the animal,

followed the high road to the gate of Mulrady's pioneer cabin.

He remembered it well enough. To a cultivated taste, it was

superior to the more pretentious "new house." During the first

year of Mulrady's tenancy, the plain square log-cabin had received

those additions and attractions which only a tenant can conceive

and actual experience suggest; and in this way the hideous right

angles were broken with sheds, "lean-to" extensions, until a

certain picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline,

and a home-like security and companionship to the congregated

buildings. It typified the former life of the great capitalist, as

the tall new house illustrated the loneliness and isolation that

wealth had given him. But the real points of vantage were the

years of cultivation and habitation that had warmed and enriched

the soil, and evoked the climbing vines and roses that already hid

its unpainted boards, rounded its hard outlines, and gave

projection and shadow from the pitiless glare of a summer's long

sun, or broke the steady beating of the winter rains. It was true

that pea and bean poles surrounded it on one side, and the only

access to the house was through the cabbage rows that once were the

pride and sustenance of the Mulradys. It was this fact, more than

any other, that had impelled Mrs. Mulrady to abandon its site; she

did not like to read the history of their humble origin reflected

in the faces of their visitors as they entered.

Don Caesar tied his horse to the fence, and hurriedly approached

the house. The door, however, hospitably opened when he was a few

paces from it, and when he reached the threshold he found himself

unexpectedly in the presence of two pretty girls. They were

evidently Slinn's sisters, whom he had neither thought of nor

included in the meeting he had prepared. In spite of his

preoccupation, he felt himself suddenly embarrassed, not only by

the actual distinction of their beauty, but by a kind of likeness

that they seemed to bear to Mamie.

"We saw you coming," said the elder, unaffectedly. "You are Don

Caesar Alvarado. My brother has spoken of you."

The words recalled Don Caesar to himself and a sense of courtesy.

He was not here to quarrel with these fair strangers at their first

meeting; he must seek Slinn elsewhere, and at another time. The

frankness of his reception and the allusion to their brother made

it appear impossible that they should be either a party to his

disappointment, or even aware of it. His excitement melted away

before a certain lazy ease, which the consciousness of their beauty

seemed to give them. He was able to put a few courteous inquiries,

and, thanks to the paragraph in the "Record," to congratulate them

upon their father's improvement.

"Oh, pa is a great deal better in his health, and has picked up

even in the last few days, so that he is able to walk round with

crutches," said the elder sister. "The air here seems to

invigorate him wonderfully."

"And you know, Esther," said the younger, "I think he begins to

take more notice of things, especially when he is out-of-doors. He

looks around on the scenery, and his eye brightens, as if he knew

all about it; and sometimes he knits his brows, and looks down so,

as if he was trying to remember."

"You know, I suppose," exclaimed Esther, "that since his seizure

his memory has been a blank--that is, three or four years of his

life seem to have been dropped out of his recollection."

"It might be a mercy sometimes, Senora," said Don Caesar, with a

grave sigh, as he looked at the delicate features before him, which

recalled the face of the absent Mamie.

"That's not very complimentary," said the younger girl, laughingly;

"for pa didn't recognize us, and only remembered us as little

girls."

"Vashti!" interrupted Esther, rebukingly; then, turning to Don

Caesar, she added, "My sister, Vashti, means that father remembers

more what happened before he came to California, when we were quite

young, than he does of the interval that elapsed. Dr. Duchesne

says it's a singular case. He thinks that, with his present

progress, he will recover the perfect use of his limbs; though his

memory may never come back again."

"Unless-- You forget what the doctor told us this morning,"

interrupted Vashti again, briskly.

"I was going to say it," said Esther, a little curtly. "UNLESS he

has another stroke. Then he will either die or recover his mind

entirely."

Don Caesar glanced at the bright faces, a trifle heightened in

color by their eager recital and the slight rivalry of narration,

and looked grave. He was a little shocked at a certain lack of

sympathy and tenderness towards their unhappy parent. They seemed

to him not only to have caught that dry, curious toleration of

helplessness which characterizes even relationship in its

attendance upon chronic suffering and weakness, but to have

acquired an unconscious habit of turning it to account. In his

present sensitive condition, he even fancied that they flirted

mildly over their parent's infirmity.

"My brother Harry has gone to Red Dog," continued Esther; "he'll be

right sorry to have missed you. Mrs. Mulrady spoke to him about

you; you seem to have been great friends. I s'pose you knew her

daughter, Mamie; I hear she is very pretty."

Although Don Caesar was now satisfied that the Slinns knew nothing

of Mamie's singular behavior to him, he felt embarrassed by this

conversation. "Miss Mulrady is very pretty," he said, with grave

courtesy; "it is a custom of her race. She left suddenly," he

added with affected calmness.

"I reckon she did calculate to stay here longer--so her mother

said; but the whole thing was settled a week ago. I know my

brother was quite surprised to hear from Mr. Mulrady that if we

were going to decide about this house we must do it at once; he had

an idea himself about moving out of the big one into this when they

left."

"Mamie Mulrady hadn't much to keep her here, considerin' the money

and the good looks she has, I reckon," said Vashti. "She isn't the

sort of girl to throw herself away in the wilderness, when she can

pick and choose elsewhere. I only wonder she ever come back from

Sacramento. They talk about papa Mulrady having BUSINESS at San

Francisco, and THAT hurrying them off! Depend upon it, that

'business' was Mamie herself. Her wish is gospel to them. If

she'd wanted to stay and have a farewell party, old Mulrady's

business would have been nowhere."

"Ain't you a little rough on Mamie," said Esther, who had been

quietly watching the young man's face with her large languid eyes,

"considering that we don't know her, and haven't even the right of

friends to criticise?"

"I don't call it rough," returned Vashti, frankly, "for I'd do the

same if I were in her shoes--and they're four-and-a-halves, for

Harry told me so. Give me her money and her looks, and you

wouldn't catch me hanging round these diggings--goin' to choir

meetings Saturdays, church Sundays, and buggy-riding once a month--

for society! No--Mamie's head was level--you bet!"

Don Caesar rose hurriedly. They would present his compliments to

their father, and he would endeavor to find their brother at Red

Dog. He, alas! had neither father, mother, nor sister, but if they

would receive his aunt, the Dona Inez Sepulvida, the next Sunday,

when she came from mass, she should be honored and he would be

delighted. It required all his self-possession to deliver himself

of this formal courtesy before he could take his leave, and on the

back of his mustang give way to the rage, disgust and hatred of

everything connected with Mamie that filled his heart. Conscious

of his disturbance, but not entirely appreciating their own share

in it, the two girls somewhat wickedly prolonged the interview by

following him into the garden.

"Well, if you MUST leave now," said Esther, at last, languidly, "it

ain't much out of your way to go down through the garden and take a

look at pa as you go. He's somewhere down there, near the woods,

and we don't like to leave him alone too long. You might pass the

time of day with him; see if he's right side up. Vashti and I have

got a heap of things to fix here yet; but if anything's wrong with

him, you can call us. So-long."

Don Caesar was about to excuse himself hurriedly; but that sudden

and acute perception of all kindred sorrow which belongs to refined

suffering, checked his speech. The loneliness of the helpless old

man in this atmosphere of active and youthful selfishness touched

him. He bowed assent, and turned aside into one of the long

perspectives of bean-poles. The girls watched him until out of

sight.

"Well," said Vashti, "don't tell ME. But if there wasn't something

between him and that Mamie Mulrady, I don't know a jilted man when

I see him."

"Well, you needn't have let him SEE that you knew it, so that any

civility of ours would look as if we were ready to take up with her

leavings," responded Esther, astutely, as the girls reentered the

house.

Meantime, the unconscious object of their criticism walked sadly

down the old market-garden, whose rude outlines and homely details

he once clothed with the poetry of a sensitive man's first love.

Well, it was a common cabbage field and potato patch after all. In

his disgust he felt conscious of even the loss of that sense of

patronage and superiority which had invested his affection for a

girl of meaner condition. His self-respect was humiliated with his

love. The soil and dirt of those wretched cabbages had clung to

him, but not to her. It was she who had gone higher; it was he who

was left in the vulgar ruins of his misplaced passion.

He reached the bottom of the garden without observing any sign of

the lonely invalid. He looked up and down the cabbage rows, and

through the long perspective of pea-vines, without result. There

was a newer trail leading from a gap in the pines to the wooded

hollow, which undoubtedly intersected the little path that he and

Mamie had once followed from the high road. If the old man had

taken this trail he had possibly over-tasked his strength, and

there was the more reason why he should continue his search, and

render any assistance if required. There was another idea that

occurred to him, which eventually decided him to go on. It was

that both these trails led to the decayed sycamore stump, and that

the older Slinn might have something to do with the mysterious

letter. Quickening his steps through the field, he entered the

hollow, and reached the intersecting trail as he expected. To the

right it lost itself in the dense woods in the direction of the

ominous stump; to the left it descended in nearly a straight line

to the highway, now plainly visible, as was equally the boulder on

which he had last discovered Mamie sitting with young Slinn. If he

were not mistaken, there was a figure sitting there now; it was

surely a man. And by that half-bowed, helpless attitude, the

object of his search!

It did not take him long to descend the track to the highway and

approach the stranger. He was seated with his hands upon his

knees, gazing in a vague, absorbed fashion upon the hillside, now

crowned with the engine-house and chimney that marked the site of

Mulrady's shaft. He started slightly, and looked up, as Don Caesar

paused before him. The young man was surprised to see that the

unfortunate man was not as old as he had expected, and that his

expression was one of quiet and beatified contentment.

"Your daughters told me you were here," said Don Caesar, with

gentle respect. "I am Caesar Alvarado, your not very far neighbor;

very happy to pay his respects to you as he has to them."

"My daughters?" said the old man, vaguely. "Oh, yes! nice little

girls. And my boy Harry. Did you see Harry? Fine little fellow,

Harry."

"I am glad to hear that you are better," said Don Caesar, hastily,

"and that the air of our country does you no harm. God benefit

you, senor," he added, with a profoundly reverential gesture,

dropping unconsciously into the religious habit of his youth. "May

he protect you, and bring you back to health and happiness!"

"Happiness?" said Slinn, amazedly. "I am happy--very happy! I

have everything I want: good air, good food, good clothes, pretty

little children, kind friends--" He smiled benignantly at Don

Caesar. "God is very good to me!"

Indeed, he seemed very happy; and his face, albeit crowned with

white hair, unmarked by care and any disturbing impression, had so

much of satisfied youth in it that the grave features of his

questioner made him appear the elder. Nevertheless, Don Caesar

noticed that his eyes, when withdrawn from him, sought the hillside

with the same visionary abstraction.

"It is a fine view, Senor Esslinn," said Don Caesar.

"It is a beautiful view, sir," said Slinn, turning his happy eyes

upon him for a moment, only to rest them again on the green slope

opposite.

"Beyond that hill which you are looking at--not far, Senor Esslinn--

I live. You shall come and see me there--you and your family."

"You--you--live there?" stammered the invalid, with a troubled

expression--the first and only change to the complete happiness

that had hitherto suffused his face. "You--and your name is--is

Ma--"

"Alvarado," said Don Caesar, gently. Caesar Alvarado."

"You said Masters," said the old man, with sudden querulousness.

"No, good friend. I said Alvarado," returned Don Caesar, gravely.

"If you didn't say Masters, how could I say it? I don't know any

Masters."

Don Caesar was silent. In another moment the happy tranquillity

returned to Slinn's face; and Don Caesar continued:--

"It is not a long walk over the hill, though it is far by the road.

When you are better you shall try it. Yonder little trail leads to

the top of the hill, and then--"

He stopped, for the invalid's face had again assumed its troubled

expression. Partly to change his thoughts, and partly for some

inexplicable idea that had suddenly seized him, Don Caesar

continued:--

"There is a strange old stump near the trail, and in it a hole. In

the hole I found this letter." He stopped again--this time in

alarm. Slinn had staggered to his feet with ashen and distorted

features, and was glancing at the letter which Don Caesar had drawn

from his pocket. The muscles of his throat swelled as if he was

swallowing; his lips moved, but no sound issued from them. At

last, with a convulsive effort, he regained a disjointed speech, in

a voice scarcely audible.

"My letter! my letter! It's mine! Give it me! It's my fortune--

all mine! In the tunnel--hill! Masters stole it--stole my

fortune! Stole it all! See, see!"

He seized the letter from Don Caesar with trembling hands, and tore

it open forcibly: a few dull yellow grains fell from it heavily,

like shot, to the ground.

"See, it's true! My letter! My gold! My strike! My--my--my

God!"

A tremor passed over his face. The hand that held the letter

suddenly dropped sheer and heavy as the gold had fallen. The whole

side of his face and body nearest Don Caesar seemed to drop and

sink into itself as suddenly. At the same moment, and without a

word, he slipped through Don Caesar's outstretched hands to the

ground. Don Caesar bent quickly over him, but no longer than to

satisfy himself that he lived and breathed, although helpless. He

then caught up the fallen letter, and, glancing over it with

flashing eyes, thrust it and the few specimens in his pocket. He

then sprang to his feet, so transformed with energy and

intelligence that he seemed to have added the lost vitality of the

man before him to his own. He glanced quickly up and down the

highway. Every moment to him was precious now; but he could not

leave the stricken man in the dust of the road; nor could he carry

him to the house; nor, having alarmed his daughters, could he

abandon his helplessness to their feeble arms. He remembered that

his horse was still tied to the garden fence. He would fetch it,

and carry the unfortunate man across the saddle to the gate. He

lifted him with difficulty to the boulder, and ran rapidly up the

road in the direction of his tethered steed. He had not proceeded

far when he heard the noise of wheels behind him. It was the up

stage coming furiously along. He would have called to the driver

for assistance, but even through that fast-sweeping cloud of dust

and motion he could see that the man was utterly oblivious of

anything but the speed of his rushing chariot, and had even risen

in his box to lash the infuriated and frightened animals forward.

An hour later, when the coach drew up at the Red Dog Hotel, the

driver descended from the box, white, but taciturn. When he had

swallowed a glass of whiskey at a single gulp, he turned to the

astonished express agent, who had followed him in.

"One of two things, Jim, hez got to happen," he said, huskily.

"Either that there rock hez got to get off the road, or I have.

I've seed HIM on it agin!"

CHAPTER IV

No further particulars of the invalid's second attack were known

than those furnished by Don Caesar's brief statement, that he had

found him lying insensible on the boulder. This seemed perfectly

consistent with the theory of Dr. Duchesne; and as the young

Spaniard left Los Gatos the next day, he escaped not only the

active reporter of the "Record," but the perusal of a grateful

paragraph in the next day's paper recording his prompt kindness and

courtesy. Dr. Duchesne's prognosis, however, seemed at fault; the

elder Slinn did not succumb to this second stroke, nor did he

recover his reason. He apparently only relapsed into his former

physical weakness, losing the little ground he had gained during

the last month, and exhibiting no change in his mental condition,

unless the fact that he remembered nothing of his seizure and the

presence of Don Caesar could be considered as favorable. Dr.

Duchesne's gravity seemed to give that significance to this

symptom, and his cross-questioning of the patient was characterized

by more than his usual curtness.

"You are sure you don't remember walking in the garden before you

were ill?" he said. "Come, think again. You must remember that."

The old man's eyes wandered restlessly around the room, but he

answered by a negative shake of his head. "And you don't remember

sitting down on a stone by the road?"

The old man kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the bedclothes before

him. "No!" he said, with a certain sharp decision that was new to

him.

The doctor's eye brightened. "All right, old man; then don't."

On his way out he took the eldest Miss Slinn aside. "He'll do," he

said, grimly: "he's beginning to lie."

"Why, he only said he didn't remember," responded Esther.

"That was because he didn't want to remember," said the doctor,

authoritatively. "The brain is acting on some impression that is

either painful and unpleasant, or so vague that he can't formulate

it; he is conscious of it, and won't attempt it yet. It's a heap

better than his old self-satisfied incoherency."

A few days later, when the fact of Slinn's identification with the

paralytic of three years ago by the stage-driver became generally

known, the doctor came in quite jubilant.

"It's all plain now," he said, decidedly. "That second stroke was

caused by the nervous shock of his coming suddenly upon the very

spot where he had the first one. It proved that his brain still

retained old impressions, but as this first act of his memory was a

painful one, the strain was too great. It was mighty unlucky; but

it was a good sign."

"And you think, then--" hesitated Harry Slinn.

"I think," said Dr. Duchesne, "that this activity still exists, and

the proof of it, as I said before, is that he is trying now to

forget it, and avoid thinking of it. You will find that he will

fight shy of any allusion to it, and will be cunning enough to

dodge it every time."

He certainly did. Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based

or not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive

with his watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the

boulder--which still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later

practical explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly

refused to talk about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and

perhaps more perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which

took the place of his former vacuity of contentment, and an

intolerance of his attendants, which supplanted his old habitual

trustfulness to their care, that had been varied only by the

occasional querulousness of an invalid. His daughters sometimes

found him regarding them with an attention little short of

suspicion, and even his son detected a half-suppressed aversion in

his interviews with him.

Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his

children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very

little attention to it. They were more pleasantly occupied. The

two girls succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the

society of the neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-

and-Ready. The young editor of the "Record" had really achieved,

through his supposed intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune

he had jestingly prophesied. The disappearance of Don Caesar was

regarded as a virtual abandonment of the field to his rival: and

the general opinion was that he was engaged to the millionaire's

daughter on a certain probation of work and influence in his

prospective father-in-law's interests. He became successful in one

or two speculations, the magic of the lucky Mulrady's name

befriending him. In the superstition of the mining community, much

of this luck was due to his having secured the old cabin.

"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a

polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims

where the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping

into the old man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt,

however, of the alliance of the families was dissipated by the

intimacy that sprang up between the elder Slinn and the

millionaire, after the latter's return from San Francisco.

It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the

man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength

had never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and who was

still able to set his workmen an example of hard labor; it was

sustained by a singular and superstitious reverence for his mental

condition, which, to the paternal Mulrady, seemed to possess that

spiritual quality with which popular ignorance invests demented

people.

"Then you mean to say that during these three years the vein o'

your mind, so to speak, was a lost lead, and sorter dropped out o'

sight or follerin'?" queried Mulrady, with infinite seriousness.

"Yes," returned Slinn, with less impatience than he usually showed

to questions.

"And durin' that time, when you was dried up and waitin' for rain,

I reckon you kinder had visions?"

A cloud passed over Slinn's face.

"Of course, of course!" said Mulrady, a little frightened at his

tenacity in questioning the oracle. "Nat'rally, this was private,

and not to be talked about. I meant, you had plenty of room for

'em without crowdin'; you kin tell me some day when you're better,

and kin sorter select what's points and what ain't."

"Perhaps I may some day," said the invalid, gloomily, glancing in

the direction of his preoccupied daughters; "when we're alone."

When his physical strength had improved, and his left arm and side

had regained a feeble but slowly gathering vitality, Alvin Mulrady

one day surprised the family by bringing the convalescent a pile of

letters and accounts, and spreading them on a board before Slinn's

invalid chair, with the suggestion that he should look over,

arrange, and docket them. The idea seemed preposterous, until it

was found that the old man was actually able to perform this

service, and exhibited a degree of intellectual activity and

capacity for this kind of work that was unsuspected. Dr. Duchesne

was delighted, and divided with admiration between his patient's

progress and the millionaire's sagacity. "And there are envious

people," said the enthusiastic doctor, "who believe that a man like

him, who could conceive of such a plan for occupying a weak

intellect without taxing its memory or judgment, is merely a lucky

fool! Look here. May be it didn't require much brains to stumble

on a gold mine, and it is a gift of Providence. But, in my

experience, Providence don't go round buyin' up d--d fools, or

investin' in dead beats."

When Mr. Slinn, finally, with the aid of crutches, was able to

hobble every day to the imposing counting-house and the office of

Mr. Mulrady, which now occupied the lower part of the new house,

and contained some of its gorgeous furniture, he was installed at a

rosewood desk behind Mr. Mulrady's chair, as his confidential clerk

and private secretary. The astonishment of Red Dog and Rough-and-

Ready at this singular innovation knew no bounds; but the boldness

and novelty of the idea carried everything before it. Judge Butts,

the oracle of Rough-and-Ready, delivered its decision: "He's got a

man who's physically incapable of running off with his money, and

has no memory to run off with his ideas. How could he do better?"

Even his own son, Harry, coming upon his father thus installed, was

for a moment struck with a certain filial respect, and for a day or

two patronized him.

In this capacity Slinn became the confidant not only of Mulrady's

business secrets, but of his domestic affairs. He knew that young

Mulrady, from a freckle-faced slow country boy, had developed into

a freckle-faced fast city man, with coarse habits of drink and

gambling. It was through the old man's hands that extravagant

bills and shameful claims passed on their way to be cashed by

Mulrady; it was he that at last laid before the father one day his

signature perfectly forged by the son.

"Your eyes are not ez good ez mine, you know, Slinn," said Mulrady,

gravely. "It's all right. I sometimes make my Y's like that. I'd

clean forgot to cash that check. You must not think you've got the

monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh.

Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish

expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the

chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs. As Mulrady

had already noticed that Slinn had no confidence with his own

family, he did not try to withhold from them these domestic

details, possibly as an offset to the dreary catalogue of his son's

misdeeds, but more often in the hope of gaining from the taciturn

old man some comment that might satisfy his innocent vanity as

father and husband, and perhaps dissipate some doubts that were

haunting him.

"Twelve hundred dollars looks to be a good figger for a dress,

ain't it? But Malviny knows, I reckon, what ought to be worn at

the Tooilleries, and she don't want our Mamie to take a back seat

before them furrin' princesses and gran' dukes. It's a slap-up

affair, I kalkilate. Let's see. I disremember whether it's an

emperor or a king that's rulin' over thar now. It must be suthin'

first class and A 1, for Malviny ain't the woman to throw away

twelve hundred dollars on any of them small-potato despots! She

says Mamie speaks French already like them French Petes. I don't

quite make out what she means here. She met Don Caesar in Paris,

and she says, 'I think Mamie is nearly off with Don Caesar, who has

followed her here. I don't care about her dropping him TOO

suddenly; the reason I'll tell you hereafter. I think the man

might be a dangerous enemy.' Now, what do you make of this? I

allus thought Mamie rather cottoned to him, and it was the old

woman who fought shy, thinkin' Mamie would do better. Now, I am

agreeable that my gal should marry any one she likes, whether it's

a dook or a poor man, as long as he's on the square. I was ready

to take Don Caesar; but now things seem to have shifted round. As

to Don Caesar's being a dangerous enemy if Mamie won't have him,

that's a little too high and mighty for me, and I wonder the old

woman don't make him climb down. What do you think?"

"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn.

"The man what picked you up that day. I mean," continued Mulrady,

seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I

mean a sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a

circus-rider. You might have seen him round the house talkin' to

your gals."

But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently

unfeigned. Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time

of his attack, the incident that caused it had no part in his

recollection. With the exception of these rare intervals of

domestic confidences with his crippled private secretary, Mulrady

gave himself up to money-getting. Without any especial faculty for

it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous financiers--his unfailing

luck, however, carried him safely through, until his very mistakes

seemed to be simply insignificant means to a large significant end

and a part of his original plan. He sank another shaft, at a great

expense, with a view to following the lead he had formerly found,

against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and struck the

artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume of

water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to

furnish supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit.

A league of tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for

which he had paid Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the

presumption that it was auriferous, furnished the most accessible

timber to build the town, at prices which amply remunerated him.

The practical schemes of experienced men, the wildest visions of

daring dreams delayed or abortive for want of capital, eventually

fell into his hands. Men sneered at his methods, but bought his

shares. Some who affected to regard him simply as a man of money

were content to get only his name to any enterprise. Courted by

his superiors, quoted by his equals, and admired by his inferiors,

he bore his elevation equally without ostentation or dignity.

Bidden to banquets, and forced by his position as director or

president into the usual gastronomic feats of that civilization and

period, he partook of simple food, and continued his old habit of

taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner. Without

professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where

alcoholic stimulation was a custom. With neither refinement nor an

extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate.

With nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he

seemed to be as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to

its virtues. That such a man should offer little to and receive

little from the companionship of women of any kind was a foregone

conclusion. Without the dignity of solitude, he was pathetically

alone.

Meantime, the days passed; the first six months of his opulence

were drawing to a close, and in that interval he had more than

doubled the amount of his discovered fortune. The rainy season set

in early. Although it dissipated the clouds of dust under which

Nature and Art seemed to be slowly disappearing, it brought little

beauty to the landscape at first, and only appeared to lay bare the

crudenesses of civilization. The unpainted wooden buildings of

Rough-and-Ready, soaked and dripping with rain, took upon

themselves a sleek and shining ugliness, as of second-hand

garments; the absence of cornices or projections to break the

monotony of the long straight lines of downpour made the town

appear as if it had been recently submerged, every vestige of

ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines left. Mud was

everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and invaded the

houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged Nature

was trying to revenge herself. Mud was brought into the saloons

and barrooms and express offices, on boots, on clothes, on baggage,

and sometimes appeared mysteriously in splashes of red color on the

walls, without visible conveyance. The dust of six months, closely

packed in cornice and carving, yielded under the steady rain a thin

yellow paint, that dropped on wayfarers or unexpectedly oozed out

of ceilings and walls on the wretched inhabitants within. The

outskirts of Rough-and-Ready and the dried hills round Los Gatos

did not appear to fare much better; the new vegetation had not yet

made much headway against the dead grasses of the summer; the pines

in the hollow wept lugubriously into a small rivulet that had

sprung suddenly into life near the old trail; everywhere was the

sound of dropping, splashing, gurgling, or rushing waters.

More hideous than ever, the new Mulrady house lifted itself against

the leaden sky, and stared with all its large-framed, shutterless

windows blankly on the prospect, until they seemed to the wayfarer

to become mere mirrors set in the walls, reflecting only the watery

landscape, and unable to give the least indication of light or heat

within. Nevertheless, there was a fire in Mulrady's private office

that December afternoon, of a smoky, intermittent variety, that

sufficed more to record the defects of hasty architecture than to

comfort the millionaire and his private secretary, who had lingered

after the early withdrawal of the clerks. For the next day was

Christmas, and, out of deference to the near approach of this

festivity, a half-holiday had been given to the employees.

"They'll want, some of them, to spend their money before to-morrow;

and others would like to be able to rise up comfortably drunk

Christmas morning," the superintendent had suggested. Mr. Mulrady

had just signed a number of checks indicating his largess to those

devoted adherents with the same unostentatious, undemonstrative,

matter-of-fact manner that distinguished his ordinary business.

The men had received it with something of the same manner. A half-

humorous "Thank you, sir"--as if to show that, with their patron,

they tolerated this deference to a popular custom, but were a

little ashamed of giving way to it--expressed their gratitude and

their independence.

"I reckon that the old lady and Mamie are having a high old time in

some of them gilded pallises in St. Petersburg or Berlin about this

time. Them diamonds that I ordered at Tiffany ought to have

reached 'em about now, so that Mamie could cut a swell at Christmas

with her war-paint. I suppose it's the style to give presents in

furrin' countries ez it is here, and I allowed to the old lady that

whatever she orders in that way she is to do in Californy style--no

dollar-jewelry and galvanized-watches business. If she wants to

make a present to any of them nobles ez has been purlite to her,

it's got to be something that Rough-and-Ready ain't ashamed of. I

showed you that pin Mamie bought me in Paris, didn't I? It's just

come for my Christmas present. No! I reckon I put it in the safe,

for them kind o' things don't suit my style: but s'pose I orter

sport it to-morrow. It was mighty thoughtful in Mamie, and it must

cost a lump; it's got no slouch of a pearl in it. I wonder what

Mamie gave for it?"

"You can easily tell; the bill is here. You paid it yesterday,"

said Slinn. There was no satire in the man's voice, nor was there

the least perception of irony in Mulrady's manner, as he returned

quietly,--

"That's so; it was suthin' like a thousand francs; but French

money, when you pan it out as dollars and cents, don't make so

much, after all." There was a few moments' silence, when he

continued, in the same tone of voice, "Talkin' o' them things,

Slinn, I've got suthin' for you." He stopped suddenly. Ever

watchful of any undue excitement in the invalid, he had noticed a

slight flush of disturbance pass over his face, and continued

carelessly, "But we'll talk it over to-morrow; a day or two don't

make much difference to you and me in such things, you know.

P'raps I'll drop in and see you. We'll be shut up here."

"Then you're going out somewhere?" asked Slinn, mechanically.

"No," said Mulrady, hesitatingly. It had suddenly occurred to him

that he had nowhere to go if he wanted to, and he continued, half

in explanation, "I ain't reckoned much on Christmas, myself.

Abner's at the Springs; it wouldn't pay him to come here for a day--

even if there was anybody here he cared to see. I reckon I'll

hang round the shanty, and look after things generally. I haven't

been over the house upstairs to put things to rights since the

folks left. But YOU needn't come here, you know."

He helped the old man to rise, assisted him in putting on his

overcoat, and than handed him the cane which had lately replaced

his crutches.

"Good-by, old man! You musn't trouble yourself to say 'Merry

Christmas' now, but wait until you see me again. Take care of

yourself."

He slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and went back into his

private office. He worked for some time at his desk, and then laid

his pen aside, put away his papers methodically, placing a large

envelope on his private secretary's vacant table. He then opened

the office door and ascended the staircase. He stopped on the

first landing to listen to the sound of rain on the glass skylight,

that seemed to echo through the empty hall like the gloomy roll of

a drum. It was evident that the searching water had found out the

secret sins of the house's construction, for there were great

fissures of discoloration in the white and gold paper in the

corners of the wall. There was a strange odor of the dank forest

in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain had brought out the

sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and white satin

furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre tables had

taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones. Mr. Mulrady,

who had always retained his old farmer-like habit of taking off his

coat with his hat on entering his own house, and appearing in his

shirt-sleeves, to indicate domestic ease and security, was obliged

to replace it, on account of the chill. He had never felt at home

in this room. Its strangeness had lately been heightened by Mrs.

Mulrady's purchase of a family portrait of some one she didn't

know, but who, she had alleged, resembled her "Uncle Bob," which

hung on the wall beside some paintings in massive frames. Mr.

Mulrady cast a hurried glance at the portrait that, on the strength

of a high coat-collar and high top curl--both rolled with equal

precision and singular sameness of color--had always glared at

Mulrady as if HE was the intruder; and, passing through his wife's

gorgeous bedroom, entered the little dressing-room, where he still

slept on the smallest of cots, with hastily improvised

surroundings, as if he was a bailiff in "possession." He didn't

linger here long, but, taking a key from a drawer, continued up the

staircase, to the ominous funeral marches of the beating rain on

the skylight, and paused on the landing to glance into his son's

and daughter's bedrooms, duplicates of the bizarre extravagance

below. If he were seeking some characteristic traces of his absent

family, they certainly were not here in the painted and still damp

blazoning of their later successes. He ascended another staircase,

and, passing to the wing of the house, paused before a small door,

which was locked. Already the ostentatious decorations of wall and

passages were left behind, and the plain lath-and-plaster partition

of the attic lay before him. He unlocked the door, and threw it

open.

CHAPTER V

The apartment he entered was really only a lumber-room or loft over

the wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and

which revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the

hollow sham of the whole structure. But in more violent contrast

to the fresher glories of the other part of the house were its

contents, which were the heterogeneous collection of old furniture,

old luggage, and cast-off clothing, left over from the past life in

the old cabin. It was a much plainer record of the simple

beginnings of the family than Mrs. Mulrady cared to have remain in

evidence, and for that reason it had been relegated to the hidden

recesses of the new house, in the hope that it might absorb or

digest it. There were old cribs, in which the infant limbs of

Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old looking-glasses, that had

reflected their shining, soapy faces, and Mamie's best chip Sunday

hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn out in active

service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose long

drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and

old toys. There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old

frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London News" of a

Christmas gathering in an old English country house. He stopped

and picked up this print, which he had often seen before, gazing at

it with a new and singular interest. He wondered if Mamie had seen

anything of this kind in England, and why couldn't he have had

something like it here, in their own fine house, with themselves

and a few friends? He remembered a past Christmas, when he had

bought Mamie that now headless doll with the few coins that were

left him after buying their frugal Christmas dinner. There was an

old spotted hobby-horse that another Christmas had brought to

Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast trotter to-morrow at the

Springs! How everything had changed! How they all had got up in

the world, and how far beyond this kind of thing--and yet--yet it

would have been rather comfortable to have all been together again

here. Would THEY have been more comfortable? No! Yet then he

might have had something to do, and been less lonely to-morrow.

What of that? He HAD something to do: to look after this immense

fortune. What more could a man want, or should he want? It was

rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything

they wanted, to be wanting anything more. He laid down the print

gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk

handkerchief, and slowly left the room.

The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he

shut it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door

of his office. He set diligently to work by the declining winter

light, until he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese

waiter to tell him that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady

religiously adhered to in place of the late dinner of civilization--

was ready in the dining-room. Mulrady mechanically obeyed the

summons; but on entering the room the oasis of a few plates in a

desert of white table-cloth which awaited him made him hesitate.

In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic mahogany ecclesiastical

sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked like the

appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and to-

day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of

a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most

depressing.

"You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a

sudden inspiration. "I'll eat it there."

He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not

require even the stimulation of company. He had just finished,

when his Irish cook--the one female servant of the house--came to

ask permission to be absent that evening and the next day.

"I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the

Christmas Day? And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-

and-Ready that are invitin' me."

"Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another

vague inspiration. "I'll stand treat."

"Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman! But it's the likes of

them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."

There was so much truth in this that Mulrady checked a sigh as he

gave the required permission, without saying that he had intended

to remain. He could cook his own breakfast: he had done it before;

and it would be something to occupy him. As to his dinner, perhaps

he could go to the hotel at Rough-and-Ready. He worked on until

the night had well advanced. Then, overcome with a certain

restlessness that disturbed him, he was forced to put his books and

papers away. It had begun to blow in fitful gusts, and

occasionally the rain was driven softly across the panes like the

passing of childish fingers. This disturbed him more than the

monotony of silence, for he was not a nervous man. He seldom read

a book, and the county paper furnished him only the financial and

mercantile news which was part of his business. He knew he could

not sleep if he went to bed. At last he rose, opened the window,

and looked out from pure idleness of occupation. A splash of

wheels in the distant muddy road and fragments of a drunken song

showed signs of an early wandering reveller. There were no lights

to be seen at the closed works; a profound darkness encompassed the

house, as if the distant pines in the hollow had moved up and round

it. The silence was broken now only by the occasional sighing of

wind and rain. It was not an inviting night for a perfunctory

walk; but an idea struck him--he would call upon the Slinns, and

anticipate his next day's visit! They would probably have company,

and be glad to see him: he could tell the girls of Mamie and her

success. That he had not thought of this before was a proof of his

usual self-contained isolation, that he thought of it now was an

equal proof that he was becoming at last accessible to loneliness.

He was angry with himself for what seemed to him a selfish

weakness.

He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been

lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his

shoulders, and locked the front door of the house behind him. It

was well that the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet

instinctively found the trail, for the night was very dark. At

times he was warned only by the gurgling of water of little

rivulets that descended the hill and crossed his path. Without the

slightest fear, and with neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he

recalled how, the winter before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros,

crossing this hill at night, had fallen down the chasm of a

landslip caused by the rain, and was found the next morning with

his neck broken in the gully. Don Caesar had to take care of the

man's family. Suppose such an accident should happen to him?

Well, he had made his will. His wife and children would be

provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he

had arranged for that. Would anybody miss him? Would his wife, or

his son, or his daughter? No. He felt such a sudden and

overwhelming conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as

suddenly as if the chasm had opened before him. No! It was the

truth. If he were to disappear forever in the darkness of the

Christmas night there was none to feel his loss. His wife would

take care of Mamie; his son would take care of himself, as he had

before--relieved of even the scant paternal authority he rebelled

against. A more imaginative man than Mulrady would have combated

or have followed out this idea, and then dismissed it; to the

millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a deduction that, having

once presented itself to his perception, was already a recognized

fact. For the first time in his life he felt a sudden instinct of

something like aversion towards his family, a feeling that even his

son's dissipation and criminality had never provoked. He hurried

on angrily through the darkness.

It was very strange; the old house should be almost before him now,

across the hollow, yet there were no indications of light! It was

not until he actually reached the garden fence, and the black bulk

of shadow rose out against the sky, that he saw a faint ray of

light from one of the lean-to windows. He went to the front door

and knocked. After waiting in vain for a reply, he knocked again.

The second knock proving equally futile, he tried the door; it was

unlocked, and, pushing it open, he walked in. The narrow passage

was quite dark, but from his knowledge of the house he knew the

"lean-to" was next to the kitchen, and, passing through the dining-

room into it, he opened the door of the little room from which the

light proceeded. It came from a single candle on a small table,

and beside it, with his eyes moodily fixed on the dying embers of

the fire, sat old Slinn. There was no other light nor another

human being in the whole house.

For the instant Mulrady, forgetting his own feelings in the mute

picture of the utter desolation of the helpless man, remained

speechless on the threshold. Then, recalling himself, he stepped

forward and laid his hand gayly on the bowed shoulders.

"Rouse up out o' this, old man! Come! this won't do. Look! I've

run over here in the rain, jist to have a sociable time with you

all."

"I knew it," said the old man, without looking up; "I knew you'd

come."

"You knew I'd come?" echoed Mulrady, with an uneasy return of the

strange feeling of awe with which he regarded Slinn's abstraction.

"Yes; you were alone--like myself--all alone!"

"Then, why in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just

now?" he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness.

"Where's your daughters?"

"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."

"And your son?"

"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."

"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."

"So might yours."

He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted

conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort.

Mulrady did not appear to notice it.

"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without

them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness. "Let's have a

good time, you and me. Let's see--you haven't any one you can send

to my house, hev you?"

"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly. "There is

no one here."

"All right," said the millionaire, briskly. "I'll go myself. Do

you think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a

fire in the kitchen while I'm gone? It used to be mighty

comfortable in the old times."

He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have

infused into him some of his own energy. He then added, "Now,

don't you get yourself down again into that chair until I come

back," and darted out into the night once more.

In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad

shoulders, which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting,

and laid it before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen.

"It's something the old woman got for her party, that didn't come

off," he said, apologetically. "I reckon we can pick out enough

for a spread. That darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he

added, with a laugh, "because, he said, he'd knocked off work

'allee same, Mellican man!' Look here, Slinn," he said, with a

sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of the men around here don't run

short of a hundred and fifty dollars a day, and yet I couldn't get

a hand to help me bring this truck over for my Christmas dinner."

"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.

"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly. "Why,

it's only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as

I am their boss. I don't mind a man's being independent," he

continued, taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a

common "gunny bag"--used for potatoes. "We're independent

ourselves, ain't we, Slinn?"

His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had

become natural. Slinn, looking at his brightened eye and fresher

color, could not help thinking he was more like his own real self

at this moment than in his counting-house and offices--with all his

simplicity as a capitalist. A less abstracted and more observant

critic than Slinn would have seen in this patient aptitude for real

work, and the recognition of the force of petty detail, the

dominance of the old market-gardener in his former humble, as well

as his later more ambitious, successes.

"Heaven keep us from being dependent upon our children!" said

Slinn, darkly.

"Let the young ones alone to-night; we can get along without them,

as they can without us," said Mulrady, with a slight twinge as he

thought of his reflections on the hillside. "But look here,

there's some champagne and them sweet cordials that women like;

there's jellies and such like stuff, about as good as they make

'em, I reckon; and preserves, and tongues, and spiced beef--take

your pick! Stop, let's spread them out." He dragged the table to

the middle of the floor, and piled the provisions upon it. They

certainly were not deficient in quality or quantity. "Now, Slinn,

wade in."

"I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into

a chair before the fire.

"No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to

do about this time. Some folks think they can't be happy without

they're getting outside o' suthin', and my directors down at

'Frisco can't do any business without a dinner. Take some

champagne, to begin with."

He opened a bottle, and filled two tumblers. "It's past twelve

o'clock, old man, so here's a merry Christmas to you, and both of

us ez is here. And here's another to our families--ez isn't."

They both drank their wine stolidly. The rain beat against the

windows sharply, but without the hollow echoes of the house on the

hill. "I must write to the old woman and Mamie, and say that you

and me had a high old time on Christmas Eve."

"By ourselves," added the invalid.

Mr. Mulrady coughed. "Nat'rally--by ourselves. And her

provisions," he added, with a laugh. "We're really beholden to HER

for 'em. If she hadn't thought of having them--"

"For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them--would you?" said

Slinn, slowly, gazing at the fire.

"No," said Mulrady, dubiously. After a pause he began more

vivaciously, and as if to shake off some disagreeable thought that

was impressing him, "But I mustn't forget to give you YOUR

Christmas, old man, and I've got it right here with me." He took

the folded envelope from his pocket, and, holding it in his hand

with his elbow on the table, continued, "I don't mind telling you

what idea I had in giving you what I'm goin' to give you now. I've

been thinking about it for a day or two. A man like you don't want

money--you wouldn't spend it. A man like you don't want stocks or

fancy investments, for you couldn't look after them. A man like

you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor a gold-headed cane, when

it's got to be used as a crutch. No, sir. What you want is

suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always there before

you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone. That's

land! And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give

away this house and that garden, if it wasn't that I've held out

agin the old woman and Mamie on that point, you should have THIS

house and THAT garden. But, mebbee, for the same reason that I've

told you, I want that land to keep for myself. But I've selected

four acres of the hill this side of my shaft, and here's the deed

of it. As soon as you're ready, I'll put you up a house as big as

this--that shall be yours, with the land, as long as you live, old

man; and after that your children's."

"No; not theirs!" broke in the old man, passionately. "Never!"

Mulrady recoiled for an instant in alarm at the sudden and

unexpected vehemence of his manner, "Go slow, old man; go slow," he

said, soothingly. "Of course, you'll do with your own as you

like." Then, as if changing the subject, he went on cheerfully:

"Perhaps you'll wonder why I picked out that spot on the hillside.

Well, first, because I reserved it after my strike in case the lead

should run that way, but it didn't. Next, because when you first

came here you seemed to like the prospect. You used to sit there

looking at it, as if it reminded you of something. You never said

it did. They say you was sitting on that boulder there when you

had that last attack, you know; but," he added, gently, "you've

forgotten all about it."

"I have forgotten nothing," said Slinn, rising, with a choking

voice. "I wish to God I had; I wish to God I could!"

He was on his feet now, supporting himself by the table. The

subtle generous liquor he had drunk had evidently shaken his self-

control, and burst those voluntary bonds he had put upon himself

for the last six months; the insidious stimulant had also put a

strange vigor into his blood and nerves. His face was flushed, but

not distorted; his eyes were brilliant, but not fixed; he looked as

he might have looked to Masters in his strength three years before

on that very hillside.

"Listen to me, Alvin Mulrady," he said, leaning over him with

burning eyes. "Listen, while I have brain to think and strength to

utter, why I have learnt to distrust, fear, and hate them! You

think you know my story. Well, hear the truth from ME to-night,

Alvin Mulrady, and do not wonder if I have cause."

He stopped, and, with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and

inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if

to calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner

like you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a

theory, and the patience and energy to carry it out. I selected a

spot that had all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid,

counsel or assistance of any kind, worked it for six months,

without rest or cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain

my body. Well, I made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a

blunder of good luck, a fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you

for it--but in perfect demonstration of my theory, the reward of my

labor. It was no pocket, but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly

hunted down and found--a fortune!

"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never

knew what privations I had undergone until that moment of my

success, when I found I could scarcely think or move! I staggered

out into the open air. The only human soul near me was a

disappointed prospector, a man named Masters, who had a tunnel not

far away. I managed to conceal from him my good fortune and my

feeble state, for I was suspicious of him--of any one; and as he

was going away that day I thought I could keep my secret until he

was gone. I was dizzy and confused, but I remember that I managed

to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my good fortune, and

begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw Masters go. I

don't remember anything else. They picked me up on the road, near

that boulder, as you know."

"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-

driver's account of his discovery.

"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered

my senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost

my memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy,

while I lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say,

because I could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature

required it, that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came

to my senses until after my son found me in the hospital. They SAY

that--but I tell you to-night, Alvin Mulrady," he said, raising his

voice to a hoarse outcry, "I tell you that it is a lie! I came to

my senses a week after I lay on that hospital cot; I kept my senses

and memory ever after during the three years that I was there,

until Harry brought his cold, hypocritical face to my bedside and

recognized me. Do you understand? I, the possessor of millions,

lay there a pauper. Deserted by wife and children--a spectacle for

the curious, a sport for the doctors--AND I KNEW IT! I heard them

speculate on the cause of my helplessness. I heard them talk of

excesses and indulgences--I, that never knew wine or woman! I

heard a preacher speak of the finger of God, and point to me. May

God curse him!"

"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, gently.

"I heard them speak of me as a friendless man, an outcast, a

criminal--a being whom no one would claim. They were right; no one

claimed me. The friends of others visited them; relations came and

took away their kindred; a few lucky ones got well; a few, equally

lucky, died! I alone lived on, uncared for, deserted.

"The first year," he went on more rapidly, "I prayed for their

coming. I looked for them every day. I never lost hope. I said

to myself, 'She has not got my letter; but when the time passes she

will be alarmed by my silence, and then she will come or send some

one to seek me.' A young student got interested in my case, and,

by studying my eyes, thought that I was not entirely imbecile and

unconscious. With the aid of an alphabet, he got me to spell my

name and town in Illinois, and promised by signs to write to my

family. But in an evil moment I told him of my cursed fortune, and

in that moment I saw that he thought me a fool and an idiot. He

went away, and I saw him no more. Yet I still hoped. I dreamed of

their joy at finding me, and the reward that my wealth would give

them. Perhaps I was a little weak still, perhaps a little flighty,

too, at times; but I was quite happy that year, even in my

disappointment, for I had still hope!"

He paused, and again composed his face with his paralyzed hand; but

his manner had become less excited, and his voice was stronger.

"A change must have come over me the second year, for I only

dreaded their coming now and finding me so altered. A horrible

idea that they might, like the student, believe me crazy if I spoke

of my fortune made me pray to God that they might not reach me

until after I had regained my health and strength--and found my

fortune. When the third year found me still there--I no longer

prayed for them--I cursed them! I swore to myself that they should

never enjoy my wealth; but I wanted to live, and let them know I

had it. I found myself getting stronger; but as I had no money, no

friends, and nowhere to go, I concealed my real condition from the

doctors, except to give them my name, and to try to get some little

work to do to enable me to leave the hospital and seek my lost

treasure. One day I found out by accident that it had been

discovered! You understand--my treasure!--that had cost me years

of labor and my reason; had left me a helpless, forgotten pauper.

That gold I had never enjoyed had been found and taken possession

of by another!"

He checked an exclamation from Mulrady with his hand. "They say

they picked me up senseless from the floor, where I must have

fallen when I heard the news--I don't remember--I recall nothing

until I was confronted, nearly three weeks after, by my son, who

had called at the hospital, as a reporter for a paper, and had

accidentally discovered me through my name and appearance. He

thought me crazy, or a fool. I didn't undeceive him. I did not

tell him the story of the mine to excite his doubts and derision,

or, worse (if I could bring proof to claim it), have it perhaps

pass into his ungrateful hands. No; I said nothing. I let him

bring me here. He could do no less, and common decency obliged him

to do that."

"And what proof could you show of your claim?" asked Mulrady,

gravely.

"If I had that letter--if I could find Masters," began Slinn,

vaguely.

"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of

Masters?" continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that

seemed to increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability.

"I don't know--I sometimes think--" He stopped, sat down again,

and passed his hands across his forehead. "I have seen the letter

somewhere since. Yes," he went on, with sudden vehemence, "I know

it, I have seen it! I--" His brows knitted, his features began to

work convulsively; he suddenly brought his paralyzed hand down,

partly opened, upon the table. "I WILL remember where."

"Go slow, old man; go slow."

"You asked me once about my visions. Well, that is one of them. I

remember a man somewhere showing me that letter. I have taken it

from his hands and opened it, and knew it was mine by the specimens

of gold that were in it. But where--or when--or what became of it,

I cannot tell. It will come to me--it MUST come to me soon."

He turned his eyes upon Mulrady, who was regarding him with an

expression of grave curiosity, and said bitterly, "You think me

crazy. I know it. It needed only this."

"Where is this mine," asked Mulrady, without heeding him.

The old man's eyes swiftly sought the ground.

"It is a secret, then?"

"No."

"You have spoken of it to any one?"

"No."

"Not to the man who possesses it?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I wouldn't take it from him."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Because that man is yourself!"

In the instant of complete silence that followed they could hear

that the monotonous patter of rain on the roof had ceased.

"Then all this was in MY shaft, and the vein I thought I struck

there was YOUR lead, found three years ago in YOUR tunnel. Is that

your idea?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't sabe why you don't want to claim it."

"I have told you why I don't want it for my children. I go

further, now, and I tell you, Alvin Mulrady, that I was willing

that your children should squander it, as they were doing. It has

only been a curse to me; it could only be a curse to them; but I

thought you were happy in seeing it feed selfishness and vanity.

You think me bitter and hard. Well, I should have left you in your

fool's paradise, but that I saw to-night, when you came here, that

your eyes had been opened like mine. You, the possessor of my

wealth, my treasure, could not buy your children's loving care and

company with your millions, any more than I could keep mine in my

poverty. You were to-night lonely and forsaken, as I was. We were

equal, for the first time in our lives. If that cursed gold had

dropped down the shaft between us into the hell from which it

sprang, we might have clasped hands like brothers across the

chasm."

Mulrady, who in a friendly show of being at his ease had not yet

resumed his coat, rose in his shirt-sleeves, and, standing before

the hearth, straightened his square figure by drawing down his

waistcoat on each side with two powerful thumbs. After a moment's

contemplative survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he

raised his eyes to Slinn. They were small and colorless; the

forehead above them was low, and crowned with a shock of tawny

reddish hair; even the rude strength of his lower features was

enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like beard; but for the first

time in his life the whole face was impressed and transformed with

a strong and simple dignity.

"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between

you and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is

doo and right from them to us. Afore we preach at them for playing

in the slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we

mout ez well remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own

sluice-boxes, where we wash our gold. So we'll just put THEM

behind us, so," he continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful

hand towards the chimney, "and goes on. The next thing that crops

up ahead of us is your three years in the hospital, and wot you

went through at that time. I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you,

and that you didn't have it about as big as it's made; but ez

you'll allow that you'd hev had that for three years, whether I'd

found your mine or whether I hadn't, I think we can put THAT behind

us, too. There's nothin' now left to prospect but your story of

your strike. Well, take your own proofs. Masters is not here; and

if he was, accordin' to your own story, he knows nothin' of your

strike that day, and could only prove you were a disappointed

prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you wrote to

never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only your

own story without proof! There is not a business man ez would look

at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe

you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez

wouldn't say ez you'd invented it. Slinn, I'm a business man--I am

your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I

don't think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good

one!

"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine

to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a

deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken. For your own sake, and the

sake of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly

than you hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will

spare neither time nor money to help you to do it. I have more

than doubled the amount that you would have had, had you taken the

mine the day you came from the hospital. When you prove to me that

your story is true--and we will find some way to prove it, if it IS

true--that amount will be yours at once, without the need of a word

from law or lawyers. If you want my name to that in black and

white, come to the office to-morrow, and you shall have it."

"And you think I'll take it now?" said the old man passionately.

"Do you think that your charity will bring back my dead wife, the

three years of my lost life, the love and respect of my children?

Or do you think that your own wife and children, who deserted you

in your wealth, will come back to you in your poverty? No! Let

the mine stay, with its curse, where it is--I'll have none of it!"

"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, quietly, putting on his

coat. "You will take the mine if it is yours; if it isn't, I'll

keep it. If it is yours, you will give your children a chance to

sho what they can do for you in your sudden prosperity, as I shall

give mine a chance to show how they can stand reverse and

disappointment. If my head is level--and I reckon it is--they'll

both pan out all right."

He turned and opened the door. With a quick revulsion of feeling,

Slinn suddenly seized Mulrady's hand between both of his own, and

raised it to his lips. Mulrady smiled, disengaged his hand gently,

and saying soothingly, "Go slow, old man; go slow," closed the door

behind him, and passed out into the clear Christmas dawn.

For the stars, with the exception of one that seemed to sparkle

brightly over the shaft of his former fortunes, were slowly paling.

A burden seemed to have fallen from his square shoulders as he

stepped out sturdily into the morning air. He had already

forgotten the lonely man behind him, for he was thinking only of

his wife and daughter. And at the same moment they were thinking

of him; and in their elaborate villa overlooking the blue

Mediterranean at Cannes were discussing, in the event of Mamie's

marriage with Prince Rosso e Negro, the possibility of Mr.

Mulrady's paying two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the

gambling debts of that unfortunate but deeply conscientious

nobleman.

CHAPTER VI

When Alvin Mulrady reentered his own house, he no longer noticed

its loneliness. Whether the events of the last few hours had

driven it from his mind, or whether his late reflections had

repeopled it with his family under pleasanter auspices, it would be

difficult to determine. Destitute as he was of imagination, and

matter-of-fact in his judgments, he realized his new situation as

calmly as he would have considered any business proposition. While

he was decided to act upon his moral convictions purely, he was

prepared to submit the facts of Slinn's claim to the usual patient

and laborious investigation of his practical mind. It was the

least he could do to justify the ready and almost superstitious

assent he had given to Slinn's story.

When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light,

he again took the key of the attic, and ascended to the loft that

held the tangible memories of his past life. If he was still under

the influence of his reflections, it was with very different

sensations that he now regarded them. Was it possible that these

ashes might be warmed again, and these scattered embers rekindled?

His practical sense said No! whatever his wish might have been. A

sudden chill came over him; he began to realize the terrible change

that was probable, more by the impossibility of his accepting the

old order of things than by his voluntarily abandoning the new.

His wife and children would never submit. They would go away from

this place, far away, where no reminiscence of either former wealth

or former poverty could obtrude itself upon them. Mamie--his

Mamie--should never go back to the cabin, since desecrated by

Slinn's daughters, and take their places. No! Why should she?--

because of the half-sick, half-crazy dreams of an old vindictive

man?

He stopped suddenly. In moodily turning over a heap of mining

clothing, blankets, and india-rubber boots, he had come upon an old

pickaxe--the one he had found in the shaft; the one he had

carefully preserved for a year, and then forgotten! Why had he not

remembered it before? He was frightened, not only at this sudden

resurrection of the proof he was seeking, but at his own fateful

forgetfulness. Why had he never thought of this when Slinn was

speaking? A sense of shame, as if he had voluntarily withheld it

from the wronged man, swept over him. He was turning away, when he

was again startled.

This time it was by a voice from below--a voice calling him--

Slinn's voice. How had the crippled man got here so soon, and what

did he want? He hurriedly laid aside the pick, which, in his first

impulse, he had taken to the door of the loft with him, and

descended the stairs. The old man was standing at the door of his

office awaiting him.

As Mulrady approached, he trembled violently, and clung to the

doorpost for support.

"I had to come over, Mulrady," he said, in a choked voice; "I could

stand it there no longer. I've come to beg you to forget all that

I have said; to drive all thought of what passed between us last

night out of your head and mine forever! I've come to ask you to

swear with me that neither of us will ever speak of this again

forever. It is not worth the happiness I have had in your

friendship for the last half-year; it is not worth the agony I have

suffered in its loss in the last half-hour."

Mulrady grasped his outstretched hand. "P'raps," he said, gravely,

"there mayn't be any use for another word, if you can answer one

now. Come with me. No matter," he added, as Slinn moved with

difficulty; "I will help you."

He half supported, half lifted the paralyzed man up the three

flights of stairs, and opened the door of the loft. The pick was

leaning against the wall, where he had left it. "Look around, and

see if you recognize anything."

The old man's eyes fell upon the implement in a half-frightened

way, and then lifted themselves interrogatively to Mulrady's face.

"Do you know that pick?"

Slinn raised it in his trembling hands. "I think I do; and yet--"

"Slinn! is it yours?"

"No," he said hurriedly.

"Then what makes you think you know it?"

"It has a short handle like one I've seen."

"And is isn't yours?"

"No. The handle of mine was broken and spliced. I was too poor to

buy a new one."

"Then you say that this pick which I found in my shaft is not

yours?"

"Yes."

"Slinn!"

The old man passed his hand across his forehead, looked at Mulrady,

and dropped his eyes. "It is not mine," he said simply.

"That will do," said Mulrady, gravely.

"And you will not speak of this again?" said the old man, timidly.

"I promise you--not until I have some more evidence."

He kept his word, but not before he had extorted from Slinn as full

a description of Masters as his imperfect memory and still more

imperfect knowledge of his former neighbor could furnish. He

placed this, with a large sum of money and the promise of a still

larger reward, in the hands of a trustworthy agent. When this was

done he resumed his old relations with Slinn, with the exception

that the domestic letters of Mrs. Mulrady and Mamie were no longer

a subject of comment, and their bills no longer passed through his

private secretary's hands.

Three months passed; the rainy season had ceased, the hillsides

around Mulrady's shaft were bridal-like with flowers; indeed, there

were rumors of an approaching fashionable marriage in the air, and

vague hints in the "Record" that the presence of a distinguished

capitalist might soon be required abroad. The face of that

distinguished man did not, however, reflect the gayety of nature

nor the anticipation of happiness; on the contrary, for the past

few weeks, he had appeared disturbed and anxious, and that rude

tranquillity which had characterized him was wanting. People shook

their heads; a few suggested speculations; all agreed on

extravagance.

One morning, after office hours, Slinn, who had been watching the

careworn face of his employer, suddenly rose and limped to his

side.

"We promised each other," he said, in a voice trembling with

emotion; "never to allude to our talk of Christmas Eve again unless

we had other proofs of what I told you then. We have none; I don't

believe we'll ever have any more. I don't care if we ever do, and

I break that promise now because I cannot bear to see you unhappy

and know that this is the cause."

Mulrady made a motion of deprecation, but the old man continued--

"You are unhappy, Alvin Mulrady. You are unhappy because you want

to give your daughter a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand

dollars, and you will not use the fortune that you think may be

mine."

"Who's been talking about a dowry?" asked Mulrady, with an angry

flush.

"Don Caesar Alvarado told my daughter."

"Then that is why he has thrown off on me since he returned," said

Mulrady, with sudden small malevolence, "just that he might unload

his gossip because Mamie wouldn't have him. The old woman was

right in warnin' me agin him."

The outburst was so unlike him, and so dwarfed his large though

common nature with its littleness, that it was easy to detect its

feminine origin, although it filled Slinn with vague alarm.

"Never mind him," said the old man, hastily; "what I wanted to say

now is that I abandon everything to you and yours. There are no

proofs; there never will be any more than what we know, than what

we have tested and found wanting. I swear to you that, except to

show you that I have not lied and am not crazy, I would destroy

them on their way to your hands. Keep the money, and spend it as

you will. Make your daughter happy, and, through her, yourself.

You have made me happy through your liberality; don't make me

suffer through your privation."

"I tell you what, old man," said Mulrady, rising to his feet, with

an awkward mingling of frankness and shame in his manner and

accent, "I should like to pay that money for Mamie, and let her be

a princess, if it would make her happy. I should like to shut the

lantern jaws of that Don Caesar, who'd be too glad if anything

happened to break off Mamie's match. But I shouldn't touch that

capital--unless you'd lend it to me. If you'll take a note from

me, payable if the property ever becomes yours, I'd thank you. A

mortgage on the old house and garden, and the lands I bought of Don

Caesar, outside the mine, will screen you."

"If that pleases you," said the old man, with a smile, "have your

way; and if I tear up the note, it does not concern you."

It did please the distinguished capitalist of Rough-and-Ready; for

the next few days his face wore a brightened expression, and he

seemed to have recovered his old tranquillity. There was, in fact,

a slight touch of consequence in his manner, the first ostentation

he had ever indulged in, when he was informed one morning at his

private office that Don Caesar Alvarado was in the counting-house,

desiring a few moments' conference. "Tell him to come in," said

Mulrady, shortly. The door opened upon Don Caesar--erect, sallow,

and grave. Mulrady had not seen him since his return from Europe,

and even his inexperienced eyes were struck with the undeniable

ease and grace with which the young Spanish-American had

assimilated the style and fashion of an older civilization. It

seemed rather as if he had returned to a familiar condition than

adopted a new one.

"Take a cheer," said Mulrady.

The young man looked at Slinn with quietly persistent significance.

"You can talk all the same," said Mulrady, accepting the

significance. "He's my private secretary."

"It seems that for that reason we might choose another moment for

our conversation," returned Don Caesar, haughtily. "Do I

understand you cannot see me now?"

Mulrady hesitated, he had always revered and recognized a certain

social superiority in Don Ramon Alvarado; somehow his son--a young

man of half his age, and once a possible son-in-law--appeared to

claim that recognition also. He rose, without a word, and preceded

Don Caesar up-stairs into the drawing-room. The alien portrait on

the wall seemed to evidently take sides with Don Caesar, as against

the common intruder, Mulrady.

"I hoped the Senora Mulrady might have saved me this interview,"

said the young man, stiffly; "or at least have given you some

intimation of the reason why I seek it. As you just now proposed

my talking to you in the presence of the unfortunate Senor Esslinn

himself, it appears she has not."

"I don't know what you're driving at, or what Mrs. Mulrady's got to

do with Slinn or you," said Mulrady, in angry uneasiness.

"Do I understand," said Don Caesar, sternly, "that Senora Mulrady

has not told you that I entrusted to her an important letter,

belonging to Senor Esslinn, which I had the honor to discover in

the wood six months ago, and which she said she would refer to

you?"

"Letter?" echoed Mulrady, slowly; "my wife had a letter of

Slinn's?"

Don Caesar regarded the millionaire attentively. "It is as I

feared," he said, gravely. "You do not know or you would not have

remained silent." He then briefly recounted the story of his

finding Slinn's letter, his exhibition of it to the invalid, its

disastrous effect upon him, and his innocent discovery of the

contents. "I believed myself at that time on the eve of being

allied with your family, Senor Mulrady," he said, haughtily; "and

when I found myself in the possession of a secret which affected

its integrity and good name, I did not choose to leave it in the

helpless hands of its imbecile owner, or his sillier children, but

proposed to trust it to the care of the Senora, that she and you

might deal with it as became your honor and mine. I followed her

to Paris, and gave her the letter there. She affected to laugh at

any pretension of the writer, or any claim he might have on your

bounty; but she kept the letter, and, I fear, destroyed it. You

will understand, Senor Mulrady, that when I found that my

attentions were no longer agreeable to your daughter, I had no

longer the right to speak to you on the subject, nor could I,

without misapprehension, force her to return it. I should have

still kept the secret to myself, if I had not since my return here

made the nearer acquaintance of Senor Esslinn's daughters. I

cannot present myself at his house, as a suitor for the hand of the

Senorita Vashti, until I have asked his absolution for my

complicity in the wrong that has been done to him. I cannot, as a

caballero, do that without your permission. It is for that purpose

I am here."

It needed only this last blow to complete the humiliation that

whitened Mulrady's face. But his eye was none the less clear and

his voice none the less steady as he turned to Don Caesar.

"You know perfectly the contents of that letter?"

"I have kept a copy of it."

"Come with me."

He preceded his visitor down the staircase and back into his

private office. Slinn looked up at his employer's face in

unrestrained anxiety. Mulrady sat down at his desk, wrote a few

hurried lines, and rang a bell. A manager appeared from the

counting-room.

"Send that to the bank."

He wiped his pen as methodically as if he had not at that moment

countermanded the order to pay his daughter's dowry, and turned

quietly to Slinn.

"Don Caesar Alvarado has found the letter you wrote your wife on

the day you made your strike in the tunnel that is now my shaft.

He gave the letter to Mrs. Mulrady; but he has kept a copy."

Unheeding the frightened gesture of entreaty from Slinn, equally

with the unfeigned astonishment of Don Caesar, who was entirely

unprepared for this revelation of Mulrady's and Slinn's

confidences, he continued, "He has brought the copy with him. I

reckon it would be only square for you to compare it with what you

remember of the original."

In obedience to a gesture from Mulrady, Don Caesar mechanically

took from his pocket a folded paper, and handed it to the

paralytic. But Slinn's trembling fingers could scarcely unfold the

paper; and as his eyes fell upon its contents, his convulsive lips

could not articulate a word.

"P'raps I'd better read it for you," said Mulrady, gently. "You

kin follow me and stop me when I go wrong."

He took the paper, and, in dead silence, read as follows:--

"DEAR WIFE,--I've just struck gold in my tunnel, and you must get

ready to come here with the children, at once. It was after six

months' hard work; and I'm so weak I . . . It's a fortune for us

all. We should be rich even if it were only a branch vein dipping

west towards the next tunnel, instead of dipping east, according to

my theory--"

"Stop!" said Slinn, in a voice that shook the room.

Mulrady looked up.

"It's wrong, ain't it?" he asked, anxiously; "it should be EAST

towards the next tunnel."

"No! IT'S RIGHT! I am wrong! We're all wrong!"

Slinn had risen to his feet, erect and inspired. "Don't you see,"

he almost screamed, with passionate vehemence, "it's MASTERS'

ABANDONED TUNNEL your shaft has struck? Not mine! It was Masters'

pick you found! I know it now!"

"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in

excitement. "And YOUR strike?"

"Is still there!"

The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn

had darted from the room. In the exaltation of that supreme

discovery he regained the full control of his mind and body.

Mulrady and Don Caesar, no less excited, followed him precipitately,

and with difficulty kept up with his feverish speed. Their way lay

along the base of the hill below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with

Masters' abandoned tunnel. Only once he stopped to snatch a pick

from the hand of an astonished Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he

still kept on his way, a quarter of a mile beyond the shaft. Here

he stopped before a jagged hole in the hillside. Bared to the sky

and air, the very openness of its abandonment, its unpropitious

position, and distance from the strike in Mulrady's shaft had no

doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or prospector.

"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady,

laying his hand on the arm of the excited man. "Let me get more

help and proper tools."

"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn,

struggling. "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason!

Stand aside!"

He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the

yawning blackness. They waited with bated breath until, after a

seeming eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning

footsteps, and ran forward to meet him. As he was carrying

something clasped to his breast, they supported him to the opening.

But at the same moment the object of his search and his burden, a

misshapen wedge of gold and quartz, dropped with him, and both fell

together with equal immobility to the ground. He had still

strength to turn his fading eyes to the other millionaire of Rough-

and-Ready, who leaned over him.

"You--see," he gasped, brokenly, "I was not--crazy!"

No. He was dead!

End of this Project Gutenberg etext of A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready.

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