PART I.

It was growing quite dark in the telegraph-office at Cottonwood, Tuolumne County, California.  The office, a box-like enclosure, was separated from the public room of the Miners’ Hotel by a thin partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-stand preparatory to going home.  Without, the first monotonous rain of the season was dripping from the porches of the hotel in the waning light of a December day.  The operator, accustomed as he was to long intervals of idleness, was fast becoming bored.

The tread of mud-muffled boots on the veranda, and the entrance of two men, offered a momentary excitement.  He recognized in the strangers two prominent citizens of Cottonwood; and their manner bespoke business.  One of them proceeded to the desk, wrote a despatch, and handed it to the other interrogatively.

“That’s about the way the thing p’ints,” responded his companion assentingly.

“I reckoned it only squar to use his dientical words?”

“That’s so.”

The first speaker turned to the operator with the despatch.

“How soon can you shove her through?”

The operator glanced professionally over the address and the length of the despatch.

“Now,” he answered promptly.

“And she gets there?”

“To-night.  But there’s no delivery until to-morrow.”

“Shove her through to-night, and say there’s an extra twenty left here for delivery.”

The operator, accustomed to all kinds of extravagant outlay for expedition, replied that he would lay this proposition with the despatch, before the San Francisco office.  He then took it and read it ­and re-read it.  He preserved the usual professional apathy, ­had doubtless sent many more enigmatical and mysterious messages, ­but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes inquiringly to his customer.  That gentleman, who enjoyed a reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his gaze a little impatiently.  The operator had recourse to a trick.  Under the pretence of misunderstanding the message, he obliged the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of accuracy, and even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly to insure correctness, but really to extract further information.  Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript of his message.  The operator went to his instrument hesitatingly.

“I suppose,” he added half-questioningly, “there ain’t no chance of a mistake.  This address is Rightbody, that rich old Bostonian that everybody knows.  There ain’t but one?”

“That’s the address,” responded the first speaker coolly.

“Didn’t know the old chap had investments out here,” suggested the operator, lingering at his instrument.

“No more did I,” was the insufficient reply.

For some few moments nothing was heard but the click of the instrument, as the operator worked the key, with the usual appearance of imparting confidence to a somewhat reluctant hearer who preferred to talk himself.  The two men stood by, watching his motions with the usual awe of the unprofessional.  When he had finished, they laid before him two gold-pieces.  As the operator took them up, he could not help saying, ­

“The old man went off kinder sudden, didn’t he?  Had no time to write?”

“Not sudden for that kind o’ man,” was the exasperating reply.

But the speaker was not to be disconcerted.  “If there is an answer ­” he began.

“There ain’t any,” replied the first speaker quietly.

“Why?”

“Because the man ez sent the message is dead.”

“But it’s signed by you two.”

“On’y ez witnesses ­eh?” appealed the first speaker to his comrade.

“On’y ez witnesses,” responded the other.

The operator shrugged his shoulders.  The business concluded, the first speaker slightly relaxed.  He nodded to the operator, and turned to the bar-room with a pleasing social impulse.  When their glasses were set down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful condemnation of the hard times and the weather, apparently dismissed all previous proceedings from his mind, and lounged out with his companion.  At the corner of the street they stopped.

“Well, that job’s done,” said the first speaker, by way of relieving the slight social embarrassment of parting.

“Thet’s so,” responded his companion, and shook his hand.

They parted.  A gust of wind swept through the pines, and struck a faint Aeolian cry from the wires above their heads; and the rain and the darkness again slowly settled upon Cottonwood.

The message lagged a little at San Francisco, laid over half an hour at Chicago, and fought longitude the whole way; so that it was past midnight when the “all night” operator took it from the wires at Boston.  But it was freighted with a mandate from the San Francisco office; and a messenger was procured, who sped with it through dark snow-bound streets, between the high walls of close-shuttered rayless houses, to a certain formal square ghostly with snow-covered statues.  Here he ascended the broad steps of a reserved and solid-looking mansion, and pulled a bronze bell-knob, that somewhere within those chaste recesses, after an apparent reflective pause, coldly communicated the fact that a stranger was waiting without ­as he ought.  Despite the lateness of the hour, there was a slight glow from the windows, clearly not enough to warm the messenger with indications of a festivity within, but yet bespeaking, as it were, some prolonged though subdued excitement.  The sober servant who took the despatch, and receipted for it as gravely as if witnessing a last will and testament, respectfully paused before the entrance of the drawing-room.  The sound of measured and rhetorical speech, through which the occasional catarrhal cough of the New-England coast struggled, as the only effort of nature not wholly repressed, came from its heavily-curtained recesses; for the occasion of the evening had been the reception and entertainment of various distinguished persons, and, as had been epigrammatically expressed by one of the guests, “the history of the country” was taking its leave in phrases more or less memorable and characteristic.  Some of these valedictory axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as a genteel contribution to the entertainer.  Some had been already prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified the guest at other mansions.

The last guest departed, the last carriage rolled away, when the servant ventured to indicate the existence of the despatch to his master, who was standing on the hearth-rug in an attitude of wearied self-righteousness.  He took it, opened it, read it, re-read it, and said, ­

“There must be some mistake!  It is not for me.  Call the boy, Waters.”

Waters, who was perfectly aware that the boy had left, nevertheless obediently walked towards the hall-door, but was recalled by his master.

“No matter ­at present!”

“It’s nothing serious, William?” asked Mrs. Rightbody, with languid wifely concern.

“No, nothing.  Is there a light in my study?”

“Yes.  But, before you go, can you give me a moment or two?”

Mr. Rightbody turned a little impatiently towards his wife.  She had thrown herself languidly on the sofa; her hair was slightly disarranged, and part of a slippered foot was visible.  She might have been a finely-formed woman; but even her careless deshabille left the general impression that she was severely flannelled throughout, and that any ostentation of womanly charm was under vigorous sanitary surveillance.

“Mrs. Marvin told me to-night that her son made no secret of his serious attachment for our Alice, and that, if I was satisfied, Mr. Marvin would be glad to confer with you at once.”

The information did not seem to absorb Mr. Rightbody’s wandering attention, but rather increased his impatience.  He said hastily, that he would speak of that to-morrow; and partly by way of reprisal, and partly to dismiss the subject, added ­

“Positively James must pay some attention to the register and the thermometer.  It was over 70 degrees to-night, and the ventilating draught was closed in the drawing-room.”

“That was because Professor Ammon sat near it, and the old gentleman’s tonsils are so sensitive.”

“He ought to know from Dr. Dyer Doit that systematic and regular exposure to draughts stimulates the mucous membrane; while fixed air over 60 degrees invariably ­”

“I am afraid, William,” interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, with feminine adroitness, adopting her husband’s topic with a view of thereby directing him from it, ­“I’m afraid that people do not yet appreciate the substitution of bouillon for punch and ices.  I observed that Mr. Spondee declined it, and, I fancied, looked disappointed.  The fibrine and wheat in liqueur-glasses passed quite unnoticed too.”

“And yet each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of a pound of beef.  I’m surprised at Spondee!” continued Mr. Rightbody aggrievedly.  “Exhausting his brain and nerve force by the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas.  Even Mrs. Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the temperature of the stomach by the introduction of ice ­”

“Yes; but she took a lemon ice at the last Dorothea Reception, and asked me if I had observed that the lower animals refused their food at a temperature over 60 degrees.”

Mr. Rightbody again moved impatiently towards the door.  Mrs. Rightbody eyed him curiously.

“You will not write, I hope?  Dr. Keppler told me to-night that your cerebral symptoms interdicted any prolonged mental strain.”

“I must consult a few papers,” responded Mr. Rightbody curtly, as he entered his library.

It was a richly-furnished apartment, morbidly severe in its decorations, which were symptomatic of a gloomy dyspepsia of art, then quite prevalent.  A few curios, very ugly, but providentially equally rare, were scattered about.  There were various bronzes, marbles, and casts, all requiring explanation, and so fulfilling their purpose of promoting conversation, and exhibiting the erudition of their owner.  There were souvenirs of travel with a history, old bric-a-brac with a pedigree, but little or nothing that challenged attention for itself alone.  In all cases the superiority of the owner to his possessions was admitted.  As a natural result, nobody ever lingered there, the servants avoided the room, and no child was ever known to play in it.

Mr. Rightbody turned up the gas, and from a cabinet of drawers, precisely labelled, drew a package of letters.  These he carefully examined.  All were discolored, and made dignified by age; but some, in their original freshness, must have appeared trifling, and inconsistent with any correspondent of Mr. Rightbody.  Nevertheless, that gentleman spent some moments in carefully perusing them, occasionally referring to the telegram in his hand.  Suddenly there was a knock at the door.  Mr. Rightbody started, made a half-unconscious movement to return the letters to the drawer, turned the telegram face downwards, and then, somewhat harshly, stammered, ­

“Eh?  Who’s there?  Come in.”

“I beg your pardon, papa,” said a very pretty girl, entering, without, however, the slightest trace of apology or awe in her manner, and taking a chair with the self-possession and familiarity of an habitue of the room; “but I knew it was not your habit to write late, so I supposed you were not busy.  I am on my way to bed.”

She was so very pretty, and withal so utterly unconscious of it, or perhaps so consciously superior to it, that one was provoked into a more critical examination of her face.  But this only resulted in a reiteration of her beauty, and perhaps the added facts that her dark eyes were very womanly, her rich complexion eloquent, and her chiselled lips fell enough to be passionate or capricious, notwithstanding that their general effect suggested neither caprice, womanly weakness, nor passion.

With the instinct of an embarrassed man, Mr. Rightbody touched the topic he would have preferred to avoid.

“I suppose we must talk over to-morrow,” he hesitated, “this matter of yours and Mr. Marvin’s?  Mrs. Marvin has formally spoken to your mother.”

Miss Alice lifted her bright eyes intelligently, but not joyfully; and the color of action, rather than embarrassment, rose to her round cheeks.

“Yes, he said she would,” she answered simply.

“At present,” continued Mr. Rightbody still awkwardly, “I see no objection to the proposed arrangement.”

Miss Alice opened her round eyes at this.

“Why, papa, I thought it had been all settled long ago!  Mamma knew it, you knew it.  Last July, mamma and you talked it over.”

“Yes, yes,” returned her father, fumbling his papers; “that is ­well, we will talk of it to-morrow.”  In fact, Mr. Rightbody had intended to give the affair a proper attitude of seriousness and solemnity by due precision of speech, and some apposite reflections, when he should impart the news to his daughter, but felt himself unable to do it now.  “I am glad, Alice,” he said at last, “that you have quite forgotten your previous whims and fancies.  You see we are right.”

“Oh!  I dare say, papa, if I’m to be married at all, that Mr. Marvin is in every way suitable.”

Mr. Rightbody looked at his daughter narrowly.  There was not the slightest impatience nor bitterness in her manner:  it was as well regulated as the sentiment she expressed.

“Mr. Marvin is ­” he began.

“I know what Mr. Marvin is,” interrupted Miss Alice; “and he has promised me that I shall be allowed to go on with my studies the same as before.  I shall graduate with my class; and, if I prefer to practise my profession, I can do so in two years after our marriage.”

“In two years?” queried Mr. Rightbody curiously.

“Yes.  You see, in case we should have a child, that would give me time enough to wean it.”

Mr. Rightbody looked at this flesh of his flesh, pretty and palpable flesh as it was; but, being confronted as equally with the brain of his brain, all he could do was to say meekly, ­

“Yes, certainly.  We will see about all that to-morrow.”

Miss Alice rose.  Something in the free, unfettered swing of her arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe hips, suggested his next speech, although still distrait and impatient.

“You continue your exercise with the health-lift yet, I see.”

“Yes, papa; but I had to give up the flannels.  I don’t see how mamma could wear them.  But my dresses are high-necked, and by bathing I toughen my skin.  See!” she added, as, with a child-like unconsciousness, she unfastened two or three buttons of her gown, and exposed the white surface of her throat and neck to her father, “I can defy a chill.”

Mr. Rightbody, with something akin to a genuine playful, paternal laugh, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

“It’s getting late, Ally,” he said parentally, but not dictatorially.  “Go to bed.”

“I took a nap of three hours this afternoon,” said Miss Alice, with a dazzling smile, “to anticipate this dissipation.  Good-night, papa.  To-morrow, then.”

“To-morrow,” repeated Mr. Rightbody, with his eyes still fixed upon the girl vaguely.  “Good-night.”

Miss Alice tripped from the room, possibly a trifle the more light-heartedly that she had parted from her father in one of his rare moments of illogical human weakness.  And perhaps it was well for the poor girl that she kept this single remembrance of him, when, I fear, in after-years, his methods, his reasoning, and indeed all he had tried to impress upon her childhood, had faded from her memory.

For, when she had left, Mr. Rightbody fell again to the examination of his old letters.  This was quite absorbing; so much so, that he did not notice the footsteps of Mrs. Rightbody, on the staircase as she passed to her chamber, nor that she had paused on the landing to look through the glass half-door on her husband, as he sat there with the letters beside him, and the telegram opened before him.  Had she waited a moment later, she would have seen him rise, and walk to the sofa with a disturbed air and a slight confusion; so that, on reaching it, he seemed to hesitate to lie down, although pale and evidently faint.  Had she still waited, she would have seen him rise again with an agonized effort, stagger to the table, fumblingly refold and replace the papers in the cabinet, and lock it, and, although now but half-conscious, hold the telegram over the gas-flame till it was consumed.

For, had she waited until this moment, she would have flown unhesitatingly to his aid, as, this act completed, he staggered again, reached his hand toward the bell, but vainly, and then fell prone upon the sofa.

But alas! no providential nor accidental hand was raised to save him, or anticipate the progress of this story.  And when, half an hour later, Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed, and more indignant at his violation of the doctor’s rules, appeared upon the threshold, Mr. Rightbody lay upon the sofa, dead!

With bustle, with thronging feet, with the irruption of strangers, and a hurrying to and fro, but, more than all, with an impulse and emotion unknown to the mansion when its owner was in life, Mrs. Rightbody strove to call back the vanished life, but in vain.  The highest medical intelligence, called from its bed at this strange hour, saw only the demonstration of its theories made a year before.  Mr. Rightbody was dead ­without doubt, without mystery, even as a correct man should die ­logically, and indorsed by the highest medical authority.

But even in the confusion, Mrs. Rightbody managed to speed a messenger to the telegraph-office for a copy of the despatch received by Mr. Rightbody, but now missing.

In the solitude of her own room, and without a confidant, she read these words: ­

“[Copy.]

“To Mr. Adams Rightbody, Boston, mass.

“Joshua Silsbie died suddenly this morning.  His last request was
that you should remember your sacred compact with him of thirty
years ago. 
(Signed) “Seventy-four. 
“Seventy-five.”

In the darkened home, and amid the formal condolements of their friends who had called to gaze upon the scarcely cold features of their late associate, Mrs. Rightbody managed to send another despatch.  It was addressed to “Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five,” Cottonwood.  In a few hours she received the following enigmatical response: ­

“A horse-thief named Josh Silsbie was lynched yesterday morning by the Vigilantes at Deadwood.”

PART II.

The spring of 1874 was retarded in the California sierras; so much so, that certain Eastern tourists who had early ventured into the Yo Semite Valley found themselves, one May morning, snow-bound against the tempestuous shoulders of El Capitan.  So furious was the onset of the wind at the Upper Merced Canyon, that even so respectable a lady as Mrs. Rightbody was fain to cling to the neck of her guide to keep her seat in the saddle; while Miss Alice, scorning all masculine assistance, was hurled, a lovely chaos, against the snowy wall of the chasm.  Mrs. Rightbody screamed; Miss Alice raged under her breath, but scrambled to her feet again in silence.

“I told you so!” said Mrs. Rightbody, in an indignant whisper, as her daughter again ranged beside her.  “I warned you especially, Alice ­that ­that ­”

“What?” interrupted Miss Alice curtly.

“That you would need your chemiloons and high boots,” said Mrs. Rightbody, in a regretful undertone, slightly increasing her distance from the guides.

Miss Alice shrugged her pretty shoulders scornfully, but ignored her mother’s implication.

“You were particularly warned against going into the valley at this season,” she only replied grimly.

Mrs. Rightbody raised her eyes impatiently.

“You know how anxious I was to discover your poor father’s strange correspondent, Alice.  You have no consideration.”

“But when you have discovered him ­what then?” queried Miss Alice.

“What then?”

“Yes.  My belief is, that you will find the telegram only a mere business cipher, and all this quest mere nonsense.”

“Alice!  Why, you yourself thought your father’s conduct that night very strange.  Have you forgotten?”

The young lady had not, but, for some far-reaching feminine reason, chose to ignore it at that moment, when her late tumble in the snow was still fresh in her mind.

“And this woman, whoever she may be ­” continued Mrs. Rightbody.

“How do you know there’s a woman in the case?” interrupted Miss Alice, wickedly I fear.

“How do ­I ­know ­there’s a woman?” slowly ejaculated Mrs. Rightbody, floundering in the snow and the unexpected possibility of such a ridiculous question.  But here her guide flew to her assistance, and estopped further speech.  And, indeed, a grave problem was before them.

The road that led to their single place of refuge ­a cabin, half hotel, half trading-post, scarce a mile away ­skirted the base of the rocky dome, and passed perilously near the precipitous wall of the valley.  There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more to this terrace-like passage; and the guides paused for a moment of consultation, cooly oblivious, alike to the terrified questioning of Mrs. Rightbody, or the half-insolent independence of the daughter.  The elder guide was russet-bearded, stout, and humorous:  the younger was dark-bearded, slight, and serious.

“Ef you kin git young Bunker Hill to let you tote her on your shoulders, I’ll git the Madam to hang on to me,” came to Mrs. Rightbody’s horrified ears as the expression of her particular companion.

“Freeze to the old gal, and don’t reckon on me if the daughter starts in to play it alone,” was the enigmatical response of the younger guide.

Miss Alice overheard both propositions; and, before the two men returned to their side, that high-spirited young lady had urged her horse down the declivity.

Alas! at this moment a gust of whirling snow swept down upon her.  There was a flounder, a mis-step, a fatal strain on the wrong rein, a fall, a few plucky but unavailing struggles, and both horse and rider slid ignominiously down toward the rocky shelf.  Mrs. Rightbody screamed.  Miss Alice, from a confused debris of snow and ice, uplifted a vexed and coloring face to the younger guide, a little the more angrily, perhaps, that she saw a shade of impatience on his face.

“Don’t move, but tie one end of the ‘lass’ under your arms, and throw me the other,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean by ’lass’ ­the lasso?” asked Miss Alice disgustedly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then why don’t you say so?”

“O Alice!” reproachfully interpolated Mrs. Rightbody, encircled by the elder guide’s stalwart arm.

Miss Alice deigned no reply, but drew the loop of the lasso over her shoulders, and let it drop to her round waist.  Then she essayed to throw the other end to her guide.  Dismal failure!  The first fling nearly knocked her off the ledge; the second went all wild against the rocky wall; the third caught in a thorn-bush, twenty feet below her companion’s feet.  Miss Alice’s arm sunk helplessly to her side, at which signal of unqualified surrender, the younger guide threw himself half way down the slope, worked his way to the thorn-bush, hung for a moment perilously over the parapet, secured the lasso, and then began to pull away at his lovely burden.  Miss Alice was no dead weight, however, but steadily half-scrambled on her hands and knees to within a foot or two of her rescuer.  At this too familiar proximity, she stood up, and leaned a little stiffly against the line, causing the guide to give an extra pull, which had the lamentable effect of landing her almost in his arms.

As it was, her intelligent forehead struck his nose sharply, and I regret to add, treating of a romantic situation, caused that somewhat prominent sign and token of a hero to bleed freely.  Miss Alice instantly clapped a handful of snow over his nostrils.

“Now elevate your right arm,” she said commandingly.

He did as he was bidden, but sulkily.

“That compresses the artery.”

No man, with a pretty woman’s hand and a handful of snow over his mouth and nose, could effectively utter a heroic sentence, nor, with his arm elevated stiffly over his head, assume a heroic attitude.  But, when his mouth was free again, he said half-sulkily, half-apologetically, ­

“I might have known a girl couldn’t throw worth a cent.”

“Why?” demanded Miss Alice sharply.

“Because ­why ­because ­you see ­they haven’t got the experience,” he stammered feebly.

“Nonsense! they haven’t the clavicle ­that’s all!  It’s because I’m a woman, and smaller in the collar-bone, that I haven’t the play of the fore-arm which you have.  See!” She squared her shoulders slightly, and turned the blaze of her dark eyes full on his.  “Experience, indeed!  A girl can learn anything a boy can.”

Apprehension took the place of ill-humor in her hearer.  He turned his eyes hastily away, and glanced above him.  The elder guide had gone forward to catch Miss Alice’s horse, which, relieved of his rider, was floundering toward the trail.  Mrs. Rightbody was nowhere to be seen.  And these two were still twenty feet below the trail!

There was an awkward pause.

“Shall I put you up the same way?” he queried.  Miss Alice looked at his nose, and hesitated.  “Or will you take my hand?” he added in surly impatience.  To his surprise, Miss Alice took his hand, and they began the ascent together.

But the way was difficult and dangerous.  Once or twice her feet slipped on the smoothly-worn rock beneath; and she confessed to an inward thankfulness when her uncertain feminine hand-grip was exchanged for his strong arm around her waist.  Not that he was ungentle; but Miss Alice angrily felt that he had once or twice exercised his superior masculine functions in a rough way; and yet the next moment she would have probably rejected the idea that she had even noticed it.  There was no doubt, however, that he was a little surly.

A fierce scramble finally brought them back in safety to the trail; but in the action Miss Alice’s shoulder, striking a projecting bowlder, wrung from her a feminine cry of pain, her first sign of womanly weakness.  The guide stopped instantly.

“I am afraid I hurt you?”

She raised her brown lashes, a trifle moist from suffering, looked in his eyes, and dropped her own.  Why, she could not tell.  And yet he had certainly a kind face, despite its seriousness; and a fine face, albeit unshorn and weather-beaten.  Her own eyes had never been so near to any man’s before, save her lover’s; and yet she had never seen so much in even his.  She slipped her hand away, not with any reference to him, but rather to ponder over this singular experience, and somehow felt uncomfortable thereat.

Nor was he less so.  It was but a few days ago that he had accepted the charge of this young woman from the elder guide, who was the recognized escort of the Rightbody party, having been a former correspondent of her father’s.  He had been hired like any other guide, but had undertaken the task with that chivalrous enthusiasm which the average Californian always extends to the sex so rare to him.  But the illusion had passed; and he had dropped into a sulky, practical sense of his situation, perhaps fraught with less danger to himself.  Only when appealed to by his manhood or her weakness, he had forgotten his wounded vanity.

He strode moodily ahead, dutifully breaking the path for her in the direction of the distant canyon, where Mrs. Rightbody and her friend awaited them.  Miss Alice was first to speak.  In this trackless, uncharted terra incognita of the passions, it is always the woman who steps out to lead the way.

“You know this place very well.  I suppose you have lived here long?”

“Yes.”

“You were not born here ­no?”

A long pause.

“I observe they call you ‘Stanislaus Joe.’  Of course that is not your real name?” (Mem. ­Miss Alice had never called him anything, usually prefacing any request with a languid, “O-er-er, please, mister-er-a!” explicit enough for his station.)

“No.”

Miss Alice (trotting after him, and bawling in his ear). ­“What name did you say?”

The Man (doggedly). ­“I don’t know.”  Nevertheless, when they reached the cabin, after an half-hour’s buffeting with the storm, Miss Alice applied herself to her mother’s escort, Mr. Ryder.

“What’s the name of the man who takes care of my horse?”

“Stanislaus Joe,” responded Mr. Ryder.

“Is that all?”

“No.  Sometimes he’s called Joe Stanislaus.”

Miss Alice (satirically). ­“I suppose it’s the custom here to send young ladies out with gentlemen who hide their names under an alias?”

Mr. Ryder (greatly perplexed). ­“Why, dear me, Miss Alice, you allers ’peared to me as a gal as was able to take keer ­”

Miss Alice (interrupting with a wounded, dove-like timidity). ­“Oh, never mind, please!”

The cabin offered but scanty accommodation to the tourists; which fact, when indignantly presented by Mrs. Rightbody, was explained by the good-humored Ryder from the circumstance that the usual hotel was only a slight affair of boards, cloth, and paper, put up during the season, and partly dismantled in the fall.  “You couldn’t be kept warm enough there,” he added.  Nevertheless Miss Alice noticed that both Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe retired there with their pipes, after having prepared the ladies’ supper, with the assistance of an Indian woman, who apparently emerged from the earth at the coming of the party, and disappeared as mysteriously.

The stars came out brightly before they slept; and the next morning a clear, unwinking sun beamed with almost summer power through the shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the details of its rude interior.  Two or three mangy, half-eaten buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory.  A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity respected its secret.  Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her husband’s unknown correspondent.  “Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five represent two members of the Vigilance Committee, my dear, and Mr. Ryder will assist me to find them.”

“Mr. Ryder!” ejaculated Miss Alice, in scornful astonishment.

“Alice,” said Mrs. Rightbody, with a suspicious assumption of sudden defence, “you injure yourself, you injure me, by this exclusive attitude.  Mr. Ryder is a friend of your father’s, an exceedingly well-informed gentleman.  I have not, of course, imparted to him the extent of my suspicions.  But he can help me to what I must and will know.  You might treat him a little more civilly ­or, at least, a little better than you do his servant, your guide.  Mr. Ryder is a gentleman, and not a paid courier.”

Miss Alice was suddenly attentive.  When she spoke again, she asked, “Why do you not find out something about this Silsbie ­who died ­or was hung ­or something of that kind?”

“Child!” said Mrs. Rightbody, “don’t you see there was no Silsbie, or, if there was, he was simply the confidant of that ­woman?”

A knock at the door, announcing the presence of Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe with the horses, checked Mrs. Rightbody’s speech.  As the animals were being packed, Mrs. Rightbody for a moment withdrew in confidential conversation with Mr. Ryder, and, to the young lady’s still greater annoyance, left her alone with Stanislaus Joe.  Miss Alice was not in good temper, but she felt it necessary to say something.

“I hope the hotel offers better quarters for travellers than this in summer,” she began.

“It does.”

“Then this does not belong to it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Who lives here, then?”

“I do.”

“I beg your pardon,” stammered Miss Alice, “I thought you lived where we hired ­where we met you ­in ­in ­You must excuse me.”

“I’m not a regular guide; but as times were hard, and I was out of grub, I took the job.”

“Out of grub!” “job!” And she was the “job.”  What would Henry Marvin say?  It would nearly kill him.  She began herself to feel a little frightened, and walked towards the door.

“One moment, miss!”

The young girl hesitated.  The man’s tone was surly, and yet indicated a certain kind of half-pathetic grievance.  Her curiosity got the better of her prudence, and she turned back.

“This morning,” he began hastily, “when we were coming down the valley, you picked me up twice.”

“I picked you up?” repeated the astonished Alice.

“Yes, contradicted me:  that’s what I mean, ­once when you said those rocks were volcanic, once when you said the flower you picked was a poppy.  I didn’t let on at the time, for it wasn’t my say; but all the while you were talking I might have laid for you ­”

“I don’t understand you,” said Alice haughtily.

“I might have entrapped you before folks.  But I only want you to know that I’m right, and here are the books to show it.”

He drew aside the dingy calico curtain, revealed a small shelf of bulky books, took down two large volumes, ­one of botany, one of geology, ­nervously sought his text, and put them in Alice’s outstretched hands.

“I had no intention ­” she began, half-proudly, half-embarrassedly.

“Am I right, miss?” he interrupted.

“I presume you are, if you say so.”

“That’s all, ma’am.  Thank you!”

Before the girl had time to reply, he was gone.  When he again returned, it was with her horse, and Mrs. Rightbody and Ryder were awaiting her.  But Miss Alice noticed that his own horse was missing.

“Are you not going with us?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, indeed!”

Miss Alice felt her speech was a feeble conventionalism; but it was all she could say.  She, however, did something.  Hitherto it had been her habit to systematically reject his assistance in mounting to her seat.  Now she awaited him.  As he approached, she smiled, and put out her little foot.  He instantly stooped; she placed it in his hand, rose with a spring, and for one supreme moment Stanislaus Joe held her unresistingly in his arms.  The next moment she was in the saddle; but in that brief interval of sixty seconds she had uttered a volume in a single sentence, ­

“I hope you will forgive me!”

He muttered a reply, and turned his face aside quickly as if to hide it.

Miss Alice cantered forward with a smile, but pulled her hat down over her eyes as she joined her mother.  She was blushing.

PART III.

Mr. Ryder was as good as his word.  A day or two later he entered Mrs. Rightbody’s parlor at the Chrysopolis Hotel in Stockton, with the information that he had seen the mysterious senders of the despatch, and that they were now in the office of the hotel waiting her pleasure.  Mr. Ryder further informed her that these gentlemen had only stipulated that they should not reveal their real names, and that they be introduced to her simply as the respective “Seventy-Four” and “Seventy-Five” who had signed the despatch sent to the late Mr. Rightbody.

Mrs. Rightbody at first demurred to this; but, on the assurance from Mr. Ryder that this was the only condition on which an interview would be granted, finally consented.

“You will find them square men, even if they are a little rough, ma’am.  But, if you’d like me to be present, I’ll stop; though I reckon, if ye’d calkilated on that, you’d have had me take care o’ your business by proxy, and not come yourself three thousand miles to do it.”

Mrs. Rightbody believed it better to see them alone.

“All right, ma’am.  I’ll hang round out here; and ef ye should happen to have a ticklin’ in your throat, and a bad spell o’ coughin’, I’ll drop in, careless like, to see if you don’t want them drops.  Sabe?”

And with an exceedingly arch wink, and a slight familiar tap on Mrs. Rightbody’s shoulder, which might have caused the late Mr. Rightbody to burst his sepulchre, he withdrew.

A very timid, hesitating tap on the door was followed by the entrance of two men, both of whom, in general size, strength, and uncouthness, were ludicrously inconsistent with their diffident announcement.  They proceeded in Indian file to the centre of the room, faced Mrs. Rightbody, acknowledged her deep courtesy by a strong shake of the hand, and, drawing two chairs opposite to her, sat down side by side.

“I presume I have the pleasure of addressing ­” began Mrs. Rightbody.

The man directly opposite Mrs. Rightbody turned to the other inquiringly.

The other man nodded his head, and replied, ­

“Seventy-Four.”

“Seventy-Five,” promptly followed the other.

Mrs. Rightbody paused, a little confused.

“I have sent for you,” she began again, “to learn something more of the circumstances under which you gentlemen sent a despatch to my late husband.”

“The circumstances,” replied Seventy-Four quietly, with a side-glance at his companion, “panned out about in this yer style.  We hung a man named Josh Silsbie, down at Deadwood, for hoss-stealin’.  When I say we, I speak for Seventy-Five yer as is present, as well as representin’, so to speak, seventy-two other gents as is scattered.  We hung Josh Silsbie on squar, pretty squar, evidence.  Afore he was strung up, Seventy-Five yer axed him, accordin’ to custom, ef ther was enny thing he had to say, or enny request that he allowed to make of us.  He turns to Seventy-Five yer, and ­”

Here he paused suddenly, looking at his companion.

“He sez, sez he,” began Seventy-Five, taking up the narrative, ­“he sez, ‘Kin I write a letter?’ sez he.  Sez I, ’Not much, olé man:  ye’ve got no time.’  Sez he, ‘Kin I send a despatch by telegraph?’ I sez, ’Heave ahead.’  He sez, ­these is his dientikal words, ­’Send to Adam Rightbody, Boston.  Tell him to remember his sacred compack with me thirty years ago.’”

“‘His sacred compack with me thirty years ago,’” echoed
Seventy-Four, ­“his dientikal words.”

“What was the compact?” asked Mrs. Rightbody anxiously.

Seventy-Four looked at Seventy-Five, and then both arose, and retired to the corner of the parlor, where they engaged in a slow but whispered deliberation.  Presently they returned, and sat down again.

“We allow,” said Seventy-Four, quietly but decidedly, “that you know what that sacred compact was.”

Mrs. Rightbody lost her temper and her truthfulness together.  “Of course,” she said hurriedly, “I know.  But do you mean to say that you gave this poor man no further chance to explain before you murdered him?”

Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five both rose again slowly, and retired.  When they returned again, and sat down, Seventy-Five, who by this time, through some subtile magnetism, Mrs. Rightbody began to recognize as the superior power, said gravely, ­

“We wish to say, regarding this yer murder, that Seventy-Four and me is equally responsible; that we reckon also to represent, so to speak, seventy-two other gentlemen as is scattered; that we are ready, Seventy-Four and me, to take and holt that responsibility, now and at any time, afore every man or men as kin be fetched agin us.  We wish to say that this yer say of ours holds good yer in Californy, or in any part of these United States.”

“Or in Canady,” suggested Seventy-Four.

“Or in Canady.  We wouldn’t agree to cross the water, or go to furrin parts, unless absolutely necessary.  We leaves the chise of weppings to your principal, ma’am, or being a lady, ma’am, and interested, to any one you may fetch to act for him.  An advertisement in any of the Sacramento papers, or a playcard or handbill stuck unto a tree near Deadwood, saying that Seventy-Four or Seventy-Five will communicate with this yer principal or agent of yours, will fetch us ­allers.”

Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed and desperate, saw her blunder.  “I mean nothing of the kind,” she said hastily.  “I only expected that you might have some further details of this interview with Silsbie; that perhaps you could tell me ­” a bold, bright thought crossed Mrs. Rightbody’s mind ­“something more about her.”

The two men looked at each other.

“I suppose your society have no objection to giving me information about her,” said Mrs. Rightbody eagerly.

Another quiet conversation in the corner, and the return of both men.

“We want to say that we’ve no objection.”

Mrs. Rightbody’s heart beat high.  Her boldness had made her penetration good.  Yet she felt she must not alarm the men heedlessly.

“Will you inform me to what extent Mr. Rightbody, my late husband, was interested in her?”

This time it seemed an age to Mrs. Rightbody before the men returned from their solemn consultation in the corner.  She could both hear and feel that their discussion was more animated than their previous conferences.  She was a little mortified, however, when they sat down, to hear Seventy-Four say slowly, ­

“We wish to say that we don’t allow to say how much.”

“Do you not think that the ‘sacred compact’ between Mr. Rightbody and Mr. Silsbie referred to her?”

“We reckon it do.”

Mrs. Rightbody, flushed and animated, would have given worlds had her daughter been present to hear this undoubted confirmation of her theory.  Yet she felt a little nervous and uncomfortable even on this threshold of discovery.

“Is she here now?”

“She’s in Tuolumne,” said Seventy-Four.

“A little better looked arter than formerly,” added Seventy-Five.

“I see.  Then Mr. Silsbie enticed her away?”

“Well, ma’am, it was allowed as she runned away.  But it wasn’t proved, and it generally wasn’t her style.”

Mrs. Rightbody trifled with her next question.

“She was pretty, of course?”

The eyes of both men brightened.

“She was that!” said Seventy-Four emphatically.

“It would have done you good to see her!” added Seventy-Five.

Mrs. Rightbody inwardly doubted it; but, before she could ask another question, the two men again retired to the corner for consultation.  When they came back, there was a shade more of kindliness and confidence in their manner; and Seventy-Four opened his mind more freely.

“We wish to say, ma’am, looking at the thing, by and large, in a far-minded way, that, ez you seem interested, and ez Mr. Rightbody was interested, and was, according to all accounts, deceived and led away by Silsbie, that we don’t mind listening to any proposition you might make, as a lady ­allowin’ you was ekally interested.”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Rightbody quickly.  “And you will furnish me with any papers?”

The two men again consulted.

“We wish to say, ma’am, that we think she’s got papers, but ­”

“I must have them, you understand,” interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, “at any price.

“We was about to say, ma’am,” said Seventy-Four slowly, “that, considerin’ all things, ­and you being a lady ­you kin have her, papers, pedigree, and guaranty, for twelve hundred dollars.”

It has been alleged that Mrs. Rightbody asked only one question more, and then fainted.  It is known, however, that by the next day it was understood in Deadwood that Mrs. Rightbody had confessed to the Vigilance Committee that her husband, a celebrated Boston millionaire, anxious to gain possession of Abner Springer’s well-known sorrel mare, had incited the unfortunate Josh Silsbie to steal it; and that finally, failing in this, the widow of the deceased Boston millionaire was now in personal negotiation with the owners.

Howbeit, Miss Alice, returning home that afternoon, found her mother with a violent headache.

“We will leave here by the next steamer,” said Mrs. Rightbody languidly.  “Mr. Ryder has promised to accompany us.”

“But, mother ­”

“The climate, Alice, is over-rated.  My nerves are already suffering from it.  The associations are unfit for you, and Mr. Marvin is naturally impatient.”

Miss Alice colored slightly.

“But your quest, mother?”

“I’ve abandoned it.”

“But I have not,” said Alice quietly.  “Do you remember my guide at the Yo Semite, ­Stanislaus Joe?  Well, Stanislaus Joe is ­who do you think?”

Mrs. Rightbody was languidly indifferent.

“Well, Stanislaus Joe is the son of Joshua Silsbie.”

Mrs. Rightbody sat upright in astonishment

“Yes.  But mother, he knows nothing of what we know.  His father treated him shamefully, and set him cruelly adrift years ago; and, when he was hung, the poor fellow, in sheer disgrace, changed his name.”

“But, if he knows nothing of his father’s compact, of what interest is this?”

“Oh, nothing!  Only I thought it might lead to something.”

Mrs. Rightbody suspected that “something,” and asked sharply, “And pray how did you find it out?  You did not speak of it in the valley.”

“Oh!  I didn’t find it out till to-day,” said Miss Alice, walking to the window.  “He happened to be here, and ­told me.”

PART IV.

If Mrs. Rightbody’s friends had been astounded by her singular and unexpected pilgrimage to California so soon after her husband’s decease, they were still more astounded by the information, a year later, that she was engaged to be married to a Mr. Ryder, of whom only the scant history was known, that he was a Californian, and former correspondent of her husband.  It was undeniable that the man was wealthy, and evidently no mere adventurer; it was rumored that he was courageous and manly:  but even those who delighted in his odd humor were shocked at his grammar and slang.

It was said that Mr. Marvin had but one interview with his father-in-law elect, and returned so supremely disgusted, that the match was broken off.  The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled, found its way through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly repeated it.  Only one member of the Rightbody family ­and a new one ­saved them from utter ostracism.  It was young Mr. Ryder, the adopted son of the prospective head of the household, whose culture, manners, and general elegance, fascinated and thrilled Boston with a new sensation.  It seemed to many that Miss Alice should, in the vicinity of this rare exotic, forget her former enthusiasm for a professional life; but the young man was pitied by society, and various plans for diverting him from any mésalliance with the Rightbody family were concocted.

It was a wintry night, and the second anniversary of Mr. Rightbody’s death, that a light was burning in his library.  But the dead man’s chair was occupied by young Mr. Ryder, adopted son of the new proprietor of the mansion; and before him stood Alice, with her dark eyes fixed on the table.

“There must have been something in it, Joe, believe me.  Did you never hear your father speak of mine?”

“Never.”

“But you say he was college-bred, and born a gentleman, and in his youth he must have had many friends.”

“Alice,” said the young man gravely, “when I have done something to redeem my name, and wear it again before these people, before you, it would be well to revive the past.  But till then ­”

But Alice was not to be put down.  “I remember,” she went on, scarcely heeding him, “that, when I came in that night, papa was reading a letter, and seemed to be disconcerted.”

“A letter?”

“Yes; but,” added Alice, with a sigh, “when we found him here insensible, there was no letter on his person.  He must have destroyed it.”

“Did you ever look among his papers?  If found, it might be a clew.”

The young man glanced toward the cabinet.  Alice read his eyes, and answered, ­

“Oh, dear, no!  The cabinet contained only his papers, all perfectly arranged, ­you know how methodical were his habits, ­and some old business and private letters, all carefully put away.”

“Let us see them,” said the young man, rising.

They opened drawer after drawer; files upon files of letters and business papers, accurately folded and filed.  Suddenly Alice uttered a little cry, and picked up a quaint ivory paper-knife lying at the bottom of a drawer.

“It was missing the next day, and never could be found:  he must have mislaid it here.  This is the drawer,” said Alice eagerly.

Here was a clew.  But the lower part of the drawer was filled with old letters, not labelled, yet neatly arranged in files.  Suddenly he stopped, and said, “Put them back, Alice, at once.”

“Why?”

“Some of these letters are in my father’s handwriting.”

“The more reason why I should see them,” said the girl imperatively.  “Here, you take part, and I’ll take part, and we’ll get through quicker.”

There was a certain decision and independence in her manner which he had learned to respect.  He took the letters, and in silence read them with her.  They were old college letters, so filled with boyish dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and utopian theories, that I fear neither of these young people even recognized their parents in the dead ashes of the past.  They were both grave, until Alice uttered a little hysterical cry, and dropped her face in her hands.  Joe was instantly beside her.

“It’s nothing, Joe, nothing.  Don’t read it, please; please, don’t.  It’s so funny! it’s so very queer!”

But Joe had, after a slight, half-playful struggle, taken the letter from the girl.  Then he read aloud the words written by his father thirty years ago.

“I thank you, dear friend, for all you say about my wife and boy.  I thank you for reminding me of our boyish compact.  He will be ready to fulfil it, I know, if he loves those his father loves, even if you should marry years later.  I am glad for your sake, for both our sakes, that it is a boy.  Heaven send you a good wife, dear Adams, and a daughter, to make my son equally happy.”

Joe Silsbie looked down, took the half-laughing, half-tearful face in his hands, kissed her forehead, and, with tears in his grave eyes, said, “Amen!”

I am inclined to think that this sentiment was echoed heartily by Mrs. Rightbody’s former acquaintances, when, a year later, Miss Alice was united to a professional gentleman of honor and renown, yet who was known to be the son of a convicted horse-thief.  A few remembered the previous Californian story, and found corroboration therefor; but a majority believed it a just reward to Miss Alice for her conduct to Mr. Marvin, and, as Miss Alice cheerfully accepted it in that light, I do not see why I may not end my story with happiness to all concerned.

A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT.

It was the sacred hour of noon at Sammtstadt.  Everybody was at dinner; and the serious Kellner of “Der Wildemann” glanced in mild reproach at Mr. James Clinch, who, disregarding that fact and the invitatory table d’hote, stepped into the street.  For Mr. Clinch had eaten a late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American, and, moveover, preoccupied with business.  He was consequently indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like counting-house of “Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins,” to find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth “Mittagsessen” as a reasonable explanation of the solitude.  “A country,” said Mr. Clinch to himself, “that stops business at mid-day to go to dinner, and employs women-servants to talk to business-men, is played out.”

He stepped from the silent building into the equally silent Kronprinzen Straße.  Not a soul to be seen anywhere.  Rows on rows of two-storied, gray-stuccoed buildings that might be dwellings, or might be offices, all showing some traces of feminine taste and supervision in a flower or a curtain that belied the legended “Comptoir,” or “Direction,” over their portals.  Mr. Clinch thought of Boston and State Street, of New York and Wall Street, and became coldly contemptuous.

Yet there was clearly nothing to do but to walk down the formal rows of chestnuts that lined the broad Straße, and then walk back again.  At the corner of the first cross-street he was struck with the fact that two men who were standing in front of a dwelling-house appeared to be as inconsistent, and out of proportion to the silent houses, as were the actors on a stage to the painted canvas thoroughfares before which they strutted.  Mr. Clinch usually had no fancies, had no eye for quaintness; besides, this was not a quaint nor romantic district, only an entrepôt for silks and velvets, and Mr. Clinch was here, not as a tourist, but as a purchaser.  The guidebooks had ignored Sammtstadt, and he was too good an American to waste time in looking up uncatalogued curiosities.  Besides, he had been here once before, ­an entire day!

One o’clock.  Still a full hour and a half before his friend would return to business.  What should he do?  The Verein where he had once been entertained was deserted even by its waiters; the garden, with its ostentatious out-of-door tables, looked bleak and bare.  Mr. Clinch was not artistic in his tastes; but even he was quick to detect the affront put upon Nature by this continental, theatrical gardening, and turned disgustedly away.  Born near a “lake” larger than the German Ocean, he resented a pool of water twenty-five feet in diameter under that alluring title; and, a frequenter of the Adirondacks, he could scarce contain himself over a bit of rock-work twelve feet high.  “A country,” said Mr. Clinch, “that ­” but here he remembered that he had once seen in a park in his native city an imitation of the Drachenfels in plaster, on a scale of two inches to the foot, and checked his speech.

He turned into the principal allée of the town.  There was a long white building at one end, ­the Bahnhof:  at the other end he remembered a dye-house.  He had, a year ago, met its hospitable proprietor:  he would call upon him now.

But the same solitude confronted him as he passed the porter’s lodge beside the gateway.  The counting-house, half villa, half factory, must have convoked its humanity in some out-of-the-way refectory, for the halls and passages were tenantless.  For the first time he began to be impressed with a certain foreign quaintness in the surroundings; he found himself also recalling something he had read when a boy, about an enchanted palace whose inhabitants awoke on the arrival of a long-predestined Prince.  To assure himself of the absolute ridiculousness of this fancy, he took from his pocket the business-card of its proprietor, a sample of dye, and recalled his own personality in a letter of credit.  Having dismissed this idea from his mind, he lounged on again through a rustic lane that might have led to a farmhouse, yet was still, absurdly enough, a part of the factory gardens.  Crossing a ditch by a causeway, he presently came to another ditch and another causeway, and then found himself idly contemplating a massive, ivy-clad, venerable brick wall.  As a mere wall it might not have attracted his attention; but it seemed to enter and bury itself at right angles in the side-wall of a quite modern-looking dwelling.  After satisfying himself of this fact, he passed on before the dwelling, but was amazed to see the wall reappear on the other side exactly the same ­old, ivy-grown, sturdy, uncompromising, and ridiculous.

Could it actually be a part of the house?  He turned back, and repassed the front of the building.  The entrance door was hospitably open.  There was a hall and a staircase, but ­by all that was preposterous! ­they were built over and around the central brick intrusion.  The wall actually ran through the house!  “A country,” said Mr. Clinch to himself, “where they build their houses over ruins to accommodate them, or save the trouble of removal, is, ­” but a very pleasant voice addressing him here stopped his usual hasty conclusion.

“Guten Morgen!”

Mr. Clinch looked hastily up.  Leaning on the parapet of what appeared to be a garden on the roof of the house was a young girl, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, blond-haired.  The voice was soft, subdued, and mellow; it was part of the new impression he was receiving, that it seemed to be in some sort connected with the ivy-clad wall before him.  His hat was in his hand as he answered, ­

“Guten Morgen!”

“Was the Herr seeking anything?”

“The Herr was only waiting a longtime-coming friend, and had strayed here to speak with the before-known proprietor.”

“So?  But, the before-known proprietor sleeping well at present after dinner, would the Herr on the terrace still a while linger?”

The Herr would, but looked around in vain for the means to do it.  He was thinking of a scaling-ladder, when the young woman reappeared at the open door, and bade him enter.

Following the youthful hostess, Mr. Clinch mounted the staircase, but, passing the mysterious wall, could not forbear an allusion to it.  “It is old, very old,” said the girl:  “it was here when I came.”

“That was not very long ago,” said Mr. Clinch gallantly.

“No; but my grandfather found it here too.”

“And built over it?”

“Why not?  It is very, very hard, and so thick.”

Mr. Clinch here explained, with masculine superiority, the existence of such modern agents as nitro-glycerine and dynamite, persuasive in their effects upon time-honored obstructions and encumbrances.

“But there was not then what you call ­this ­ni ­nitro-glycerine.”

“But since then?”

The young girl gazed at him in troubled surprise.  “My great-grandfather did not take it away when he built the house:  why should we?”

“Oh!”

They had passed through a hall and dining-room, and suddenly stepped out of a window upon a gravelled terrace.  From this a few stone steps descended to another terrace, on which trees and shrubs were growing; and yet, looking over the parapet, Mr. Clinch could see the road some twenty feet below.  It was nearly on a level with, and part of, the second story of the house.  Had an earthquake lifted the adjacent ground? or had the house burrowed into a hill?  Mr. Clinch turned to his companion, who was standing close beside him, breathing quite audibly, and leaving an impression on his senses as of a gentle and fragrant heifer.

“How was all this done?”

The maiden did not know.  “It was always here.”

Mr. Clinch reascended the steps.  He had quite forgotten his impatience.  Possibly it was the gentle, equable calm of the girl, who, but for her ready color, did not seem to be moved by anything; perhaps it was the peaceful repose of this mausoleum of the dead and forgotten wall that subdued him, but he was quite willing to take the old-fashioned chair on the terrace which she offered him, and follow her motions with not altogether mechanical eyes as she drew out certain bottles and glasses from a mysterious closet in the wall.  Mr. Clinch had the weakness of a majority of his sex in believing that he was a good judge of wine and women.  The latter, as shown in the specimen before him, he would have invoiced as a fair sample of the middle-class German woman, ­healthy, comfort-loving, home-abiding, the very genius of domesticity.  Even in her virgin outlines the future wholesome matron was already forecast, from the curves of her broad hips, to the flat lines of her back and shoulders.  Of the wine he was to judge later.  That required an even more subtle and unimpassioned intellect.

She placed two bottles before him on the table, ­one, the traditional long-necked, amber-colored Rheinflasche; the other, an old, quaint, discolored, amphorax-patterned glass jug.  The first she opened.

“This,” she said, pointing to the other, “cannot be opened.”

Mr. Clinch paid his respects first to the opened bottle, a good quality of Niersteiner.  With his intellect thus clarified, he glanced at the other.

“It is from my great-grandfather.  It is old as the wall.”

Mr. Clinch examined the bottle attentively.  It seemed to have no cork.  Formed of some obsolete, opaque glass, its twisted neck was apparently hermetically sealed by the same material.  The maiden smiled, as she said, ­

“It cannot be opened now without breaking the bottle.  It is not good luck to do so.  My grandfather and my father would not.”

But Mr. Clinch was still examining the bottle.  Its neck was flattened towards the mouth; but a close inspection showed it was closed by some equally hard cement, but not glass.

“If I can open it without breaking the bottle, have I your permission?”

A mischievous glance rested on Mr. Clinch, as the maiden answered, ­

“I shall not object; but for what will you do it?”

“To taste it, to try it.”

“You are not afraid?”

There was just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch’s audacity in the maiden’s manner to impel him to any risk.  His only answer was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument.  Holding the neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the steel twice or thrice around it.  A faint rasping, scratching sound was all the wondering girl heard.  Then, with a sudden, dexterous twist of his thumb and finger, to her utter astonishment he laid the top of the neck, neatly cut off, in her hand.

“There’s a better and more modern bottle than you had before,” he said, pointing to the cleanly-divided neck, “and any cork will fit it now.”

But the girl regarded him with anxiety.  “And you still wish to taste the wine?”

“With your permission, yes!”

He looked up in her eyes.  There was permission:  there was something more, that was flattering to his vanity.  He took the wine-glass, and, slowly and in silence, filled it from the mysterious flask.

The wine fell into the glass clearly, transparently, heavily, but still and cold as death.  There was no sparkle, no cheap ebullition, no evanescent bubble.  Yet it was so clear, that, but for a faint amber-tinting, the glass seemed empty.  There was no aroma, no ethereal diffusion from its equable surface.  Perhaps it was fancy, perhaps it was from nervous excitement; but a slight chill seemed to radiate from the still goblet, and bring down the temperature of the terrace.  Mr. Clinch and his companion both insensibly shivered.

But only for a moment.  Mr. Clinch raised the glass to his lips.  As he did so, he remembered seeing distinctly, as in a picture before him, the sunlit terrace, the pretty girl in the foreground, ­an amused spectator of his sacrilegious act, ­the outlying ivy-crowned wall, the grass-grown ditch, the tall factory chimneys rising above the chestnuts, and the distant poplars that marked the Rhine.

The wine was delicious; perhaps a trifle, only a trifle, heady.  He was conscious of a slight exaltation.  There was also a smile upon the girl’s lip and a roguish twinkle in her eye as she looked at him.

“Do you find the wine to your taste?” she asked.

“Fair enough, I warrant,” said Mr. Clinch with ponderous gallantry; “but methinks ’tis nothing compared with the nectar that grows on those ruby lips.  Nay, by St. Ursula, I swear it!”

No sooner had this solemnly ridiculous speech passed the lips of the unfortunate man than he would have given worlds to have recalled it.  He knew that he must be intoxicated; that the sentiment and language were utterly unlike him, he was miserably aware; that he did not even know exactly what it meant, he was also hopelessly conscious.  Yet feeling all this, ­feeling, too, the shame of appearing before her as a man who had lost his senses through a single glass of wine, ­nevertheless he rose awkwardly, seized her hand, and by sheer force drew her towards him, and kissed her.  With an exclamation that was half a cry and half a laugh, she fled from him, leaving him alone and bewildered on the terrace.

For a moment Mr. Clinch supported himself against the open window, leaning his throbbing head on the cold glass.  Shame, mortification, an hysterical half-consciousness of his utter ridiculousness, and yet an odd, undefined terror of something, by turns possessed him.  Was he ever before guilty of such perfect folly?  Had he ever before made such a spectacle of himself?  Was it possible that he, Mr. James Clinch, the coolest head at a late supper, ­he, the American, who had repeatedly drunk Frenchmen and Englishmen under the table ­could be transformed into a sentimental, stagey idiot by a single glass of wine?  He was conscious, too, of asking himself these very questions in a stilted sort of rhetoric, and with a rising brutality of anger that was new to him.  And then everything swam before him, and he seemed to lose all consciousness.

But only for an instant.  With a strong effort of his will he again recalled himself, his situation, his surroundings, and, above all, his appointment.  He rose to his feet, hurriedly descended the terrace-steps, and, before he well knew how, found himself again on the road.  Once there, his faculties returned in full vigor; he was again himself.  He strode briskly forward toward the ditch he had crossed only a few moments before, but was suddenly stopped.  It was filled with water.  He looked up and down.  It was clearly the same ditch; but a flowing stream thirty feet wide now separated him from the other bank.

The appearance of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt the full restoration of his faculties.  He stepped to the brink of the flood to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last vestiges of his potations.  But as he approached the placid depths, and knelt down he again started back, and this time with a full conviction of his own madness; for reflected from its mirror-like surface was a figure he could scarcely call his own, although here and there some trace of his former self remained.

His close-cropped hair, trimmed a la mode, had given way to long, curling locks that dropped upon his shoulders.  His neat mustache was frightfully prolonged, and curled up at the ends stiffly.  His Piccadilly collar had changed shape and texture, and reached ­a mass of lace ­to a point midway of his breast!  His boots, ­why had he not noticed his boots before? ­these triumphs of his Parisian bootmaker, were lost in hideous leathern cases that reached half way up his thighs.  In place of his former high silk hat, there lay upon the ground beside him the awful thing he had just taken off, ­a mass of thickened felt, flap, feather, and buckle that weighed at least a stone.

A single terrible idea now took possession of him.  He had been “sold,” “taken in,” “done for.”  He saw it all.  In a state of intoxication he had lost his way, had been dragged into some vile den, stripped of his clothes and valuables, and turned adrift upon the quiet town in this shameless masquerade.  How should he keep his appointment? how inform the police of this outrage upon a stranger and an American citizen? how establish his identity?  Had they spared his papers?  He felt feverishly in his breast.  Ah! ­his watch?  Yes, a watch ­heavy, jewelled, enamelled ­and, by all that was ridiculous, five others!  He ran his hands into his capacious trunk hose.  What was this?  Brooches, chains, finger-rings, ­one large episcopal one, ­ear-rings, and a handful of battered gold and silver coins.  His papers, his memorandums, his passport ­all proofs of his identity ­were gone!  In their place was the unmistakable omnium gatherum of an accomplished knight of the road.  Not only was his personality, but his character, gone forever.

It was a part of Mr. Clinch’s singular experience that this last stroke of ill fortune seemed to revive in him something of the brutal instinct he had felt a moment before.  He turned eagerly about with the intention of calling some one ­the first person he met ­to account.  But the house that he had just quitted was gone.  The wall!  Ah, there it was, no longer purposeless, intrusive, and ivy-clad, but part of the buttress of another massive wall that rose into battlements above him.  Mr. Clinch turned again hopelessly toward Sammtstadt.  There was the fringe of poplars on the Rhine, there were the outlying fields lit by the same meridian sun; but the characteristic chimneys of Sammtstadt were gone.  Mr. Clinch was hopelessly lost.

The sound of a horn breaking the stillness recalled his senses.  He now for the first time perceived that a little distance below him, partly hidden in the trees, was a queer, tower-shaped structure with chains and pulleys, that in some strange way recalled his boyish reading.  A drawbridge and portcullis!  And on the battlement a figure in a masquerading dress as absurd as his own, flourishing a banner and trumpet, and trying to attract his attention.

“Was wollen Sie?”

“I want to see the proprietor,” said Mr. Clinch, choking back his rage.

There was a pause, and the figure turned apparently to consult with some one behind the battlements.  After a moment he reappeared, and in a perfunctory monotone, with an occasional breathing spell on the trumpet, began, ­

“You do give warranty as a good knight and true, as well as by the bones of the blessed St. Ursula, that you bear no ill will, secret enmity, wicked misprise or conspiracy, against the body of our noble lord and master Von Kolnsche?  And you bring with you no ambush, siege, or surprise of retainers, neither secret warrant nor lettres de cachet, nor carry on your knightly person poisoned dagger, magic ring, witch-powder, nor enchanted bullet, and that you have entered into no unhallowed alliance with the Prince of Darkness, gnomes, hexies, dragons, Undines, Loreleis, nor the like?”

“Come down out of that, you d ­d old fool!” roared Mr. Clinch, now perfectly beside himself with rage, ­“come down, and let me in!”

As Mr. Clinch shouted out the last words, confused cries of recognition and welcome, not unmixed with some consternation, rose from the battlements:  “Ach Gott!” “Mutter Gott ­it is he!  It is Jann, Der Wanderer.  It is himself.”  The chains rattled, the ponderous drawbridge creaked and dropped; and across it a medley of motley figures rushed pellmell.  But, foremost among them, the very maiden whom he had left not ten minutes before flew into his arms, and with a cry of joyful greeting sank upon his breast.  Mr. Clinch looked down upon the fair head and long braids.  It certainly was the same maiden, his cruel enchantress; but where did she get those absurd garments?

“Willkommen,” said a stout figure, advancing with some authority, and seizing his disengaged hand, “where hast thou been so long?”

Mr. Clinch, by no means placated, coldly dropped the extended hand.  It was not the proprietor he had known.  But there was a singular resemblance in his face to some one of Mr. Clinch’s own kin; but who, he could not remember.  “May I take the liberty of asking your name?” he asked coldly.

The figure grinned.  “Surely; but, if thou standest upon punctilio, it is for me to ask thine, most noble Freiherr,” said he, winking upon his retainers.  “Whom have I the honor of entertaining?”

“My name is Clinch, ­James Clinch of Chicago, Ill.”

A shout of laughter followed.  In the midst of his rage and mortification Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and annoyance flit across the face of the maiden.  He was puzzled, but pressed her hand, in spite of his late experiences, reassuringly.  She made a gesture of silence to him, and then slipped away in the crowd.

“Schames K’l’n’sche von Schekargo,” mimicked the figure, to the unspeakable delight of his retainers.  “So!  That is the latest French style.  Holy St. Ursula!  Hark ye, nephew!  I am not a travelled man.  Since the Crusades we simple Rhine gentlemen have staid at home.  But I call myself Kolnsche of Köln, at your service.”

“Very likely you are right,” said Mr. Clinch hotly, disregarding the caution of his fair companion; “but, whoever you are, I am a stranger entitled to protection.  I have been robbed.”

If Mr. Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry statement, it could not have been more hilariously received.  He paused, grew confused, and then went on hesitatingly, ­

“In place of my papers and credentials I find only these.”  And he produced the jewelry from his pockets.

Another shout of laughter and clapping of hands followed this second speech; and the baron, with a wink at his retainers, prolonged the general mirth by saying, “By the way, nephew, there is little doubt but there has been robbery ­somewhere.”

“It was done,” continued Mr. Clinch, hurrying to make an end of his explanation, “while I was inadvertently overcome with liquor, ­drugged liquor.”

The laughter here was so uproarious that the baron, albeit with tears of laughter in his own eyes, made a peremptory gesture of silence.  The gesture was peculiar to the baron, efficacious and simple.  It consisted merely in knocking down the nearest laugher.  Having thus restored tranquillity, he strode forward, and took Mr. Clinch by the hand.  “By St. Adolph, I did doubt thee a moment ago, nephew; but this last frank confession of thine shows me I did thee wrong.  Willkommen zu Hause, Jann, drunk or sober, willcommen zu Cracowen.”

More and more mystified, but convinced of the folly of any further explanation, Mr. Clinch took the extended hand of his alleged uncle, and permitted himself to be led into the castle.  They passed into a large banqueting-hall adorned with armor and implements of the chase.  Mr. Clinch could not help noticing, that, although the appointments were liberal and picturesque, the ventilation was bad, and the smoke from the huge chimney made the air murky.  The oaken tables, massive in carving and rich in color, were unmistakably greasy; and Mr. Clinch slipped on a piece of meat that one of the dozen half-wild dogs who were occupying the room was tearing on the floor.  The dog, yelping, ran between the legs of a retainer, precipitating him upon the baron, who instantly, with the “equal foot” of fate, kicked him and the dog into a corner.

“And whence came you last?” asked the baron, disregarding the little contretemps, and throwing himself heavily on an oaken settle, while he pushed a queer, uncomfortable-looking stool, with legs like a Siamese-twin-connected double X, towards his companion.

Mr. Clinch, who had quite given himself up to fate, answered mechanically, ­

“Paris.”

The baron winked his eye with unutterable, elderly wickedness.  “Ach Gott! it is nothing to what it was when I was your age.  Ah! there was Manon, ­Sieur Manon we used to call her.  I suppose she’s getting old now.  How goes on the feud between the students and the citizens?  Eh?  Did you go to the bal in la Cite?”

Mr. Clinch stopped the flow of those Justice-Shallow-like reminiscences by an uneasy exclamation.  He was thinking of the maiden who had disappeared so suddenly.  The baron misinterpreted his nervousness.  “What ho, within there! ­Max, Wolfgang, ­lazy rascals!  Bring some wine.”

At the baleful word Mr. Clinch started to his feet.  “Not for me!  Bring me none of your body-and-soul-destroying poison!  I’ve enough of it!”

The baron stared.  The servitors stared also.

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Clinch, recalling himself slowly; “but I fear that Rhine wine does not agree with me.”

The baron grinned.  Perceiving, however, that the three servitors grinned also, he kicked two of them into obscurity, and felled the third to the floor with his fist.  “Hark ye, nephew,” he said, turning to the astonished Clinch, “give over this nonsense!  By the mitre of Bishop Hatto, thou art as big a fool as he!”

“Hatto,” repeated Clinch mechanically.  “What! he of the Mouse Tower?”

“Ay, of the Mouse Tower!” sneered the baron.  “I see you know the story.”

“Why am I like him?” asked Mr. Clinch in amazement.

The baron grinned.  “He punished the Rhenish wine as thou dost, without judgment.  He had ­”

“The jim-jams,” said Mr. Clinch mechanically again.

The baron frowned.  “I know not what gibberish thou sayest by ‘jim-jams’; but he had, like thee, the wildest fantasies and imaginings; saw snakes, toads, rats, in his boots, but principally rats; said they pursued him, came to his room, his bed ­ach Gott!”

“Oh!” said Mr. Clinch, with a sudden return to his firmer self and his native inquiring habits; “then that is the fact about Bishop Hatto of the story?”

“His enemies made it the subject of a vile slander of an old friend of mine,” said the baron; “and those cursed poets, who believe everything, and then persuade others to do so, ­may the Devil fly away with them! ­kept it up.”

Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch’s sceptical mind.  He forgot himself and his surroundings.

“And that story of the Drachenfels?” he asked insinuatingly, ­“the dragon, you know.  Was he too ­”

The baron grinned.  “A boar transformed by the drunken brains of the Bauers of the Siebengebirge.  Ach Gott!  Ottefried had many a hearty laugh over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service with the nervous mother of the silly maiden.”

“And the seven sisters of Schonberg?” asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.

“‘Schonberg!  Seven sisters!’ What of them?” demanded the baron sharply.

“Why, you know, ­the maidens who were so coy to their suitors, and ­don’t you remember? ­jumped into the Rhine to avoid them.”

“’Coy?  Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors’?” roared the baron, purple with rage.  “Hark ye, nephew!  I like not this jesting.  Thou knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father.  How ‘coy’ they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap we might tell another story.  Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do other than he did.  And this is his reward?  Ach Gott!  ‘Coy!’ And this, I warrant, is the way the story is delivered in Paris.”

Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in a guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the explanation.  Besides, he was on the eve of historic information; he was, as it were, interviewing the past; and, whether he would ever be able to profit by the opportunity or not, he could not bear to lose it.  “And how about the Lorelei ­is she, too, a fiction?” he asked glibly.

“It was said,” observed the baron sardonically, “that when thou disappeared with the gamekeeper’s daughter at Obercassel ­Heaven knows where! ­thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some creature.  Ach Gott!  I believe it!  But a truce to this balderdash.  And so thou wantest to know of the ‘coy’ sisters of Schoenberg?  Hark ye, Jann, that cousin of thine is a Schonberg.  Call you her ‘coy’?  Did I not see thy greeting?  Eh?  By St. Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call you her greeting ’coy’?”

Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt that his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit, or himself from weakness.  But out of his very perplexity and turmoil a bright idea was born.  He turned to the baron, ­

“Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?”

The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.

“But what if I told you a new one?”

“You?”

“Yes; a part of my experience?”

The baron was curious.  It was early in the afternoon, just after dinner.  He might be worse bored.

“I’ve only one condition,” added Mr. Clinch:  “the young lady ­I mean, of course, my cousin ­must hear it too.”

“Oh, ay!  I see.  Of course ­the old trick!  Well, call the jade.  But mark ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights.  Keep to thyself.  Be as thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the road. ­What ho there, scoundrels!  Call the Lady Wilhemina.”

It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend’s name; but it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the very decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified.  Nevertheless, with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast eyes, she stood before them.

Mr. Clinch began.  Without heeding the baron’s scornful grin, he graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a Lorelei, her usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge into the Rhine.

“I am free to confess,” added Mr. Clinch, with an affecting glance to Wilhelmina, “that I was not enamoured of the graces of the lady, but was actuated by my desire to travel, and explore hitherto unknown regions.  I wished to travel, to visit ­”

“Paris,” interrupted the baron sarcastically.

“America,” continued Mr. Clinch.

“What?” ­“America.”

“’Tis a gnome-like sounding name, this Meriker.  Go on, nephew:  tell us of Meriker.”

With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described his landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and Hell Gate, East River, New York.  He described the railways, tram-ways, telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone.  An occasional oath broke from the baron, but he listened attentively; and in a few moments Mr. Clinch had the raconteur’s satisfaction of seeing the vast hall slowly filling with open-eyed and open-mouthed retainers hanging upon his words.  Mr. Clinch went on to describe his astonishment at meeting on these very shores some of his own blood and kin.  “In fact,” said Mr. Clinch, “here were a race calling themselves ‘Clinch,’ but all claiming to have descended from Kolnische.”

“And how?” sneered the baron.

“Through James Kolnische and Wilhelmina his wife,” returned Mr. Clinch boldly.  “They emigrated from Köln and Crefeld to Philadelphia, where there is a quarter named Crefeld.”  Mr. Clinch felt himself shaky as to his chronology, but wisely remembered that it was a chronology of the future to his hearers, and they could not detect an anachronism.  With his eyes fixed upon those of the gentle Wilhelmina, Mr. Clinch now proceeded to describe his return to his fatherland, but his astonishment at finding the very face of the country changed, and a city standing on those fields he had played in as a boy; and how he had wandered hopelessly on, until he at last sat wearily down in a humble cottage built upon the ruins of a lordly castle.  “So utterly travel-worn and weak had I become,” said Mr. Clinch, with adroitly simulated pathos, “that a single glass of wine offered me by the simple cottage maiden affected me like a prolonged debauch.”

A long-drawn snore was all that followed this affecting climax.  The baron was asleep; the retainers were also asleep.  Only one pair of eyes remained open, ­arch, luminous, blue, ­Wilhelmina’s.

“There is a subterranean passage below us to Linn.  Let us fly!” she whispered.

“But why?”

“They always do it in the legends,” she murmured modestly.

“But your father?”

“He sleeps.  Do you not hear him?”

Certainly somebody was snoring.  But, oddly enough, it seemed to be Wilhelmina.  Mr. Clinch suggested this to her.

“Fool, it is yourself!”

Mr. Clinch, struck with the idea, stopped to consider.  She was right.  It certainly was himself.

With a struggle he awoke.  The sun was shining.  The maiden was looking at him.  But the castle ­the castle was gone!

“You have slept well,” said the maiden archly.  “Everybody does after dinner at Sammtstadt.  Father has just awakened, and is coming.”

Mr. Clinch stared at the maiden, at the terrace, at the sky, at the distant chimneys of Sammtstadt, at the more distant Rhine, at the table before him, and finally at the empty glass.  The maiden smiled.  “Tell me,” said Mr. Clinch, looking in her eyes, “is there a secret passage underground between this place and the Castle of Linn?”

“An underground passage?”

“Ay ­whence the daughter of the house fled with a stranger knight.”

“They say there is,” said the maiden, with a gentle blush.

“Can you show it to me?”

She hesitated.  “Papa is coming:  I’ll ask him.”

I presume she did.  At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs me of a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and Kolnische of Köln; and there is an amusing story extant in the Verein at Sammtstadt, of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines, who mistook a flask of Cognac and rock-candy, used for “craftily qualifying” lower grades of wine to the American standard, for the rarest Rudesheimerberg.