CHAPTER III

A hot afternoon on the plains. A dusty cavalcade of United States

cavalry and commissary wagons, which from a distance preserved a certain

military precision of movement, but on nearer view resolved itself into

straggling troopers in twos and fours interspersed between the wagons,

two noncommissioned officers and a guide riding ahead, who had already

fallen into the cavalry slouch, but off to the right, smartly erect and

cadet-like, the young lieutenant in command. A wide road that had the

appearance of being at once well traveled and yet deserted, and that,

although well defined under foot, still seemed to disappear and lose

itself a hundred feet ahead in the monotonous level. A horizon that

in that clear, dry, hazeless atmosphere never mocked you, yet never

changed, but kept its eternal rim of mountains at the same height and

distance from hour to hour and day to day. Dust--a parching alkaline

powder that cracked the skin--everywhere, clinging to the hubs and

spokes of the wheels, without being disturbed by movement, incrusting

the cavalryman from his high boots to the crossed sabres of his cap;

going off in small puffs like explosions under the plunging hoofs of the

horses, but too heavy to rise and follow them. A reeking smell of horse

sweat and boot leather that lingered in the road long after the train

had passed. An external silence broken only by the cough of a jaded

horse in the suffocating dust, or the cracking of harness leather.

Within one of the wagons that seemed a miracle of military neatness and

methodical stowage, a lazy conversation carried on by a grizzled driver

and sunbrowned farrier.

“'Who be you?' sezee. 'I'm Philip Atherly, a member of Congress,' sez

the long, dark-complected man, sezee, 'and I'm on a commission

for looking into this yer Injin grievance,' sezee. 'You may be God

Almighty,' sez Nebraska Bill, sezee, 'but you look a d--d sight

more like a hoss-stealin' Apache, and we don't want any of your

psalm-singing, big-talkin' peacemakers interferin' with our ways of

treatin' pizen,--you hear me? I'm shoutin',' sezee. With that the

dark-complected man's eyes began to glisten, and he sorter squirmed all

over to get at Bill, and Bill outs with his battery.--Whoa, will ye;

what's up with YOU now?” The latter remark was directed to the young

spirited near horse he was driving, who was beginning to be strangely

excited.

“What happened then?” said the farrier lazily.

“Well,” continued the driver, having momentarily quieted his horse, “I

reckoned it was about time for me to wheel into line, for fellers of the

Bill stripe, out on the plains, would ez leave plug a man in citizen's

clothes, even if he was the President himself, as they would drop on

an Injin or a nigger. 'Look here, Bill,' sez I, 'I'm escortin' this

stranger under gov'ment orders, and I'm responsible for him. I ain't

allowed to waste gov'ment powder and shot on YOUR kind onless I've

orders, but if you'll wait till I strip off this shell* I'll lam the

stuffin' outer ye, afore the stranger.' With that Bill just danced with

rage, but dassent fire, for HE knew, and I knew, that if he'd plugged me

he'd been a dead frontiersman afore the next mornin'.”

* Cavalry jacket.

“But you'd have had to give him up to the authorities, and a jury of his

own kind would have set him free.”

“Not much! If you hadn't just joined, you'd know that ain't the way o'

30th Cavalry,” returned the driver. “The kernel would have issued his

orders to bring in Bill dead or alive, and the 30th would have managed

to bring him in DEAD! Then your jury might have sat on him! Tell you

what, chaps of the Bill stripe don't care overmuch to tackle the yaller

braid.” *

* Characteristic trimming of cavalry jacket.

“But what's this yer Congressman interferin' for, anyway?”

“He's a rich Californian. Thinks he's got a 'call,' I reckon, to look

arter Injins, just as them Abolitionists looked arter slaves. And get

hated just as they was by the folks here,--and as WE are, too, for the

matter of that.”

“Well, I dunno,” rejoined the farrier, “it don't seem nateral for white

men to quarrel with each other about the way to treat an Injin, and that

Injin lyin' in ambush to shoot 'em both. And ef gov'ment would only make

up its mind how to treat 'em, instead of one day pretendin' to be

their 'Great Father' and treatin' them like babies, and the next makin'

treaties with 'em like as they wos forriners, and the next sendin' out

a handful of us to lick ten thousand of them--Wot's the use of ONE

regiment--even two--agin a nation--on their own ground?”

“A nation,--and on their own ground,--that's just whar you've hit it,

Softy. That's the argument of that Congressman Atherly, as I've heard

him talk with the kernel.”

“And what did the kernel say?”

“The kernel reckoned it was his business to obey orders,--and so should

you. So shut your head! If ye wanted to talk about gov'ment ye might

say suthin' about its usin' us to convoy picnics and excursion parties

around, who come out here to have a day's shootin', under some big-wig

of a political boss or a railroad president, with a letter to the

general. And WE'RE told off to look arter their precious skins, and

keep the Injins off 'em,--and they shootin' or skeerin' off the Injins'

nat'ral game, and our provender! Darn my skin ef there'll be much to

scout for ef this goes on. And b'gosh!--of they aren't now ringin' in

a lot of titled forriners to hunt 'big game,' as they call it,--Lord

This-and-That and Count So-and-So,--all of 'em with letters to the

general from the Washington cabinet to show 'hospitality,' or from

millionaires who've bin hobnobbin' with 'em in the old country. And darn

my skin ef some of 'em ain't bringin' their wives and sisters along too.

There was a lord and lady passed through here under escort last week,

and we're goin' to pick up some more of 'em at Fort Biggs tomorrow,--and

I reckon some of us will be told off to act as ladies' maids or

milliners. Nothin' short of a good Injin scare, I reckon, would send

them and us about our reg'lar business. Whoa, then, will ye? At it

again, are ye? What's gone of the d--d critter?”

Here the fractious near horse was again beginning to show signs of

disturbance and active terror. His quivering nostrils were turned

towards the wind, and he almost leaped the centre pole in his frantic

effort to avoid it. The eyes of the two men were turned instinctively in

that direction. Nothing was to be seen,--the illimitable plain and

the sinking sun were all that met the eye. But the horse continued to

struggle, and the wagon stopped. Then it was discovered that the horse

of an adjacent trooper was also laboring under the same mysterious

excitement, and at the same moment wagon No. 3 halted. The infection

of some inexplicable terror was spreading among them. Then two

non-commissioned officers came riding down the line at a sharp canter,

and were joined quickly by the young lieutenant, who gave an order.

The trumpeter instinctively raised his instrument to his lips, but was

stopped by another order.

And then, as seen by a distant observer, a singular spectacle was

unfolded. The straggling train suddenly seemed to resolve itself into a

large widening circle of horsemen, revolving round and partly hiding

the few heavy wagons that were being rapidly freed from their struggling

teams. These, too, joined the circle, and were driven before the

whirling troopers. Gradually the circle seemed to grow smaller under the

“winding-up” of those evolutions, until the horseless wagons reappeared

again, motionless, fronting the four points of the compass, thus making

the radii of a smaller inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons

as well as the troopers' horses were closely “wound up” and densely

packed together in an immovable mass. As the circle became smaller the

troopers leaped from their horses,--which, however, continued to blindly

follow each other in the narrower circle,--and ran to the wagons,

carbines in hand. In five minutes from the time of giving the order

the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses corralled in the

centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted with their repeating

carbines in the angles of the rude bastions formed by the deserted

wagons, and ready for an attack. The stampede, if such it was, was

stopped.

And yet no cause for it was to be seen! Nothing in earth or sky

suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous

evolution that suppressed it. The guide, with three men in open order,

rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as empty of

result. In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed and fed, the camp

slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and were led out of the

circle, and as the rays of the setting sun began to expand fanlike

across the plain the cavalcade moved on. But between them and the

sinking sun, and visible through its last rays, was a faint line of haze

parallel with their track. Yet even this, too, quickly faded away.

Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west

he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle more

marvelous than that he had just witnessed. For the illimitable plain

with its monotonous prospect was far from being level; a hundred yards

further on he would have slowly and imperceptibly descended into

a depression nearly a mile in width. Here he not only would have

completely lost sight of his own cavalcade, but have come upon another

thrice its length. For here was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky

shapes, some crouching on dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing

lances, lodge-poles, rifles, women and children after them, all moving

with a monotonous rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision

of the other cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it. They had

done so all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that

crept and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious

white men. It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those watchers

that had touched the keen scent of the troopers' horses.

The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved on

in unison together. Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to arise,

stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist towards the west.

The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.

*****

Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of the

commandant's house at Fort Biggs. It had been his intention to visit

the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received a letter

announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished to join him.

He had never told her the secret of their Indian paternity, as it had

been revealed to him from the scornful lips of Gray Eagle a year ago;

he knew her strangely excitable nature; besides, she was a wife now, and

the secret would have to be shared with her husband. When he himself

had recovered from the shock of the revelation, two things had impressed

themselves upon his reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous

claim upon the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards

his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this

one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his

position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy,

should have given him this singular opportunity.

Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position. He was obliged to

divorce himself from his political party as well as keep clear of the

wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical “contractors,”

and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian civilizers, who would

have regenerated the Indian with a text which he did not understand

and they were unable to illustrate by example. He had expected the

opposition of lawless frontiersmen and ignorant settlers--as roughly

indicated in the conversation already recorded; indeed he had felt

it difficult to argue his humane theories under the smoking roof of

a raided settler's cabin, whose owner, however, had forgotten his

own repeated provocations, or the trespass of which he was proud. But

Atherly's unaffected and unobtrusive zeal, his fixity of purpose,

his undoubted courage, his self-abnegation, and above all the gentle

melancholy and half-philosophical wisdom of this new missionary, won

him the respect and assistance of even the most callous or the most

skeptical of officials. The Secretary of the Interior had given him

carte blanche; the President trusted him, and it was said had granted

him extraordinary powers. Oddly enough it was only his own Californian

constituency, who had once laughed at what they deemed his early

aristocratic pretensions, who now found fault with his democratic

philanthropy. That a man who had been so well received in England--the

news of his visit to Ashley Grange had been duly recorded--should sink

so low as “to take up with the Injins” of his own country galled their

republican pride. A few of his personal friends regretted that he had

not brought back from England more conservative and fashionable graces,

and had not improved his opportunities. Unfortunately there was no

essentially English policy of trusting aborigines that they knew of.

In his gloomy self-scrutiny he had often wondered if he ought not to

openly proclaim his kinship with the despised race, but he was always

deterred by the thought of his sister and her husband, as well as by the

persistent doubt whether his advocacy of Indian rights with his fellow

countrymen would be as well served by such a course. And here again he

was perplexed by a singular incident of his early missionary efforts

which he had at first treated with cold surprise, but to which later

reflection had given a new significance. After Gray Eagle's revelation

he had made a pilgrimage to the Indian country to verify the statements

regarding his dead father,--the Indian chief Silver Cloud. Despite

the confusion of tribal dialects he was amazed to find that the Indian

tongue came back to him almost as a forgotten boyish memory, so that

he was soon able to do without an interpreter; but not until that

functionary, who knew his secret, appeared one day as a more significant

ambassador. “Gray Eagle says if you want truly to be a brother to his

people you must take a wife among them. He loves you--take one of his!”

Peter, through whose veins--albeit of mixed blood--ran that Puritan ice

so often found throughout the Great West, was frigidly amazed. In

vain did the interpreter assure him that the wife in question, Little

Daybreak, was a wife only in name, a prudent reserve kept by Gray

Eagle in the orphan daughter of a brother brave. But Peter was adamant.

Whatever answer the interpreter returned to Gray Eagle he never knew.

But to his alarm he presently found that the Indian maiden Little

Daybreak had been aware of Gray Eagle's offer, and had with pathetic

simplicity already considered herself Peter's spouse. During his stay

at the encampment he found her sitting before his lodge every morning.

A girl of sixteen in years, a child of six in intellect, she flashed

her little white teeth upon him when he lifted his tent flap, content

to receive his grave, melancholy bow, or patiently trotted at his side

carrying things he did not want, which she had taken from the lodge.

When he sat down to work, she remained seated at a distance, looking at

him with glistening beady eyes like blackberries set in milk, and softly

scratching the little bare brown ankle of one foot with the turned-in

toes of the other, after an infantine fashion. Yet after he had left--a

still single man, solely though his interpreter's diplomacy, as he

always believed--he was very worried as to the wisdom of his course.

Why should he not in this way ally himself to his unfortunate race

irrevocably? Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness

which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English

Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that

episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there

were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering,

fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own

race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the

soldier Atherly and the carven captive savage supporter. He could not

pass the upright supported bier of an Indian brave--slowly desiccating

in the desert air--without seeing in the dead warrior's paraphernalia of

arms and trophies some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose

marble effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of

her ancestors. Yet only the peaceful gloom and repose of the old church

touched him now; even she, too, with all her glory of English girlhood,

seemed to belong to that remote past. She was part of the restful quiet

of the church; the yews in the quaint old churchyard might have waved

over her as well.

Still, he was eager to see his sister, and if he should conclude to

impart to her his secret, she might advise him. At all events, he

decided to delay his departure until her arrival, a decision with which

the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had that morning

discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the fort, and the lately

arrived commissary train had reported the unaccountable but promptly

prevented stampede.

Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her husband, who

seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and confide to him his

anxiety about her health, and the strange fits of excitement under which

she occasionally labored. Remembering the episode of the Californian

woods three years ago, Peter stared at this good-natured, good-looking

man, whose life he had always believed she once imperiled, and wondered

more than ever at their strange union.

“Do you ever quarrel?” asked Peter bluntly.

“No,” said the good-hearted fellow warmly, “never! We have never had a

harsh word; she's the dearest girl,--the best wife in the world to me,

but”--he hesitated, “you know there are times when I think she confounds

me with somebody else, and is strange! Sometimes when we are in company

she stands alone and stares at everybody, without saying a word, as

if she didn't understand them. Or else she gets painfully excited and

dances all night until she is exhausted. I thought, perhaps,” he added

timidly, “that you might know, and would tell me if she had any singular

experience as a child,--any illness, or,” he went on still more gently,

“if perhaps her mother or father”--

“No,” interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction

that this was no time for revelation of his secret, “no, nothing.”

“The doctor says,” continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost

mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon which

their wives talk openly, “that it may be owing to Jenny's peculiar state

of health just now, you know, and that if--all went well, you know, and

there should be--don't you see--a little child”--

Peter interrupted him with a start. A child! Jenny's child! Silver

Cloud's grandchild! This was a complication he had not thought of.

No! It was too late to tell his secret now. He only nodded his head

abstractedly and said coldly, “I dare say he is right.”

Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well. Perhaps it was the

excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe figure,

nearly half a head taller than her husband's, was a striking one among

the officers' wives in the commandant's sitting-room. Her olive cheek

glowed with a faint illuminating color; there was something even

patrician in her slightly curved nose and high cheek bones, and her

smile, rare even in her most excited moments, was, like her brother's,

singularly fascinating. The officers evidently thought so too, and when

the young lieutenant of the commissary escort, fresh from West Point

and Flirtation Walk, gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were

slightly scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs.

Lascelles received his attentions. Even Peter was a little disturbed.

Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife's animation, and pleased at her

success, gazed at her with unqualified admiration. Indeed, he was

so satisfied with her improvement, and so sanguine of her ultimate

recovery, that he felt justified in leaving her with her brother and

returning to Omaha by the regular mail wagon next day. There was no

danger to be apprehended in her accompanying Peter; they would have

a full escort; the reservation lay in a direction unfrequented by

marauding tribes; the road was the principal one used by the government

to connect the fort with the settlements, and well traveled; the

officers' wives had often journeyed thither.

The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the

journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and drew

up before the house of the Indian agent. Peter was relieved; he had been

anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which might be produced

on her excitable nature by a first view of her own kinsfolk, although

she was still ignorant of her relationship. Her interest and curiosity,

however, had nothing abnormal in it. But he was not prepared for the

effect produced upon THEM at her first appearance. A few of the braves

gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own

guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and

Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him. Knowing that his

old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a

hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply

introduced her as his sister. But he presently found that the braves had

added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor,

and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent's wife,

while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection. Later,

on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be

with difficulty suppressing a laugh.

“Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here,” he said. “Do you know

that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it

that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in captivity against

your plighted faith to them! You'll excuse me,” he went on with an

attempt to recover his gravity, “troubling you with their d--d fool

talk, and you won't say anything to HER about it, but I thought you

ought to know it on account of your position among 'em. You don't want

to lose their confidence, and you know how easily their skeery faculties

are stampeded with an idea!”

“Where is she now?” demanded Peter, with a darkening face.

“Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon. I thought she might be a little

skeered of the braves, and I've kept them away. SHE'S all right, you

know; only if you intend to stay here long I'd”--

But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket of

cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's voices.

When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on a stump,

surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young girls and old

women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap. Some of them had

already half mischievously, half curiously possessed themselves of her

dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves, and were parading before her

in their grotesque finery, apparently as much to her childish excited

amusement as their own. She was even answering their gesticulations with

equivalent gestures in her attempt to understand them, and trying amidst

shouts of laughter to respond to the monotonous chant of the old women

who were zigzagging a dance before her. With the gayly striped blankets

lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly colored

feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights and shadows,

it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the more experienced

Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain temper and want of

consecutive idea of playing animals, and the stolid unwinking papoose in

his sister's lap gave his sentiment a momentary shock.

Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children

slinking away from his grave face. “I have had such a funny time, Peter!

Only to think of it, I believe they've never seen men or women with

decent clothes before,--of course the settlers' wives don't dress

much,--and I believe they'd have had everything I possess if you hadn't

come. But they're TOO funny for anything. It was killing to see them put

on my hat wrong side before, and try to make one out of my parasol. But

I like them a great deal better than those gloomy chiefs, and I think I

understand them almost. And do you know, Peter, somehow I seem to have

known them all before. And those dear little papooses, aren't they

ridiculously lovely. I only wish”--she stopped, for Peter had somewhat

hurriedly taken the Indian boy from her arms and restored it to the

frightened mother. A singular change came over her face, and she glanced

at him quickly. But she resumed, with a heightened color, “I like it

ever so much better here than down at the fort. And ever so much better

than New York. I don't wonder that you like them so much, Peter, and

are so devoted to them. Don't be angry, dear, because I let them have

my things; I'm sure I never cared particularly for them, and I think

it would be such fun to dress as they do.” Peter remembered keenly his

sudden shock at her precipitate change to bright colors after leaving

her novitiate at the Sacred Heart. “I do hope,” she went on eagerly,

“that we are going to stay a long time here.”

“We are leaving to-morrow,” he said curtly. “I find I have urgent

business at the fort.”

And they did leave. None too soon, thought Peter and the Indian agent,

as they glanced at the faces of the dusky chiefs who had gathered around

the cabin. Luckily the presence of their cavalry escort rendered any

outbreak impossible, and the stoical taciturnity of the race kept

Peter from any verbal insult. But Mrs. Lascelles noticed their lowering

dissatisfaction, and her eyes flashed. “I wonder you don't punish them,”

she said simply.

For a few days after their return she did not allude to her visit, and

Peter was beginning to think that her late impressions were as volatile

as they were childlike. He devoted himself to his government report, and

while he kept up his communications with the reservation and the agent,

for the present domiciled himself at the fort.

Colonel Bryce, the commandant though doubtful of civilians, was not

slow to appreciate the difference of playing host to a man of Atherly's

wealth and position and even found in Peter's reserve and melancholy an

agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and material recreations of

garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while

Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle

dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a

prig or an “example.” Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers,

and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her

harmlessness. Once or twice she was found apparently interested in

the gesticulations of a few “friendlies” who had penetrated the parade

ground of the fort to barter beads and wampum. The colonel was obliged

at last to caution her against this, as it was found that in her

inexperience she had given them certain articles that were contraband of

the rules, and finally to stop them from an intrusion which was becoming

more frequent and annoying. Left thus to herself, she relieved her

isolation by walks beyond the precincts of the garrison, where she

frequently met those “friendly” wanderers, chiefly squaws and children.

Here she was again cautioned by the commander,--

“Don't put too much faith in those creatures, Mrs. Lascelles.”

Jenny elevated her black brows and threw up her arched nose like a

charger. “I'm not afraid of old women and children,” she said loftily.

“But I am,” said the colonel gravely. “It's a horrible thing to think

of, but these feeble old women and innocent children are always selected

to torture the prisoners taken by the braves, and, by Jove, they seem to

like it.”

Thus restricted, Mrs. Lascelles fell back upon the attentions of

Lieutenant Forsyth, whose gallantry was always as fresh as his smart

cadet-like tunics, and they took some rides together. Whether it was

military caution or the feminine discretion of the colonel's wife,--to

the quiet amusement of the other officers,--a trooper was added to the

riding party by the order of the colonel, and thereafter it consisted

of three. One night, however, the riders did not appear at dinner, and

there was considerable uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout

the garrison. It was already midnight before they arrived, and then with

horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing

every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp,

decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his

little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs.

Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late

when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was no fault of HIS, and

they had to ride at the top of their speed to cover the ground between

them and the fort. It was noticed that Mrs. Lascelles scarcely spoke to

Forsyth, and turned abruptly away from the colonel's interrogations and

went to her room.

Peter, absorbed in his report, scarcely noticed the incident, nor

the singular restraint that seemed to fall upon the little military

household for a day or two afterwards. He had accepted the lieutenant's

story without comment or question; he knew his own sister too well to

believe that she had lent herself to a flirtation with Forsyth; indeed,

he had rather pitied the young officer when he remembered Lascelles'

experience in his early courtship. But he was somewhat astonished one

afternoon to find the trooper Cassidy alone in his office.

“Oi thought Oi'd make bould to have a word wid ye, sorr,” he said,

recovering from a stiff salute with his fingers nipping the cord of his

trousers. “It's not for meeself, sorr, although the ould man was

harrd on me, nor for the leddy, your sister, but for the sake of the

leftenant, sorr, who the ould man was harrdest on of all. Oi was of the

parrty that rode with your sister.”

“Yes, yes, I remember, I heard the story,” said Peter. “She and Mr.

Forsyth got lost.”

“Axin' your pardin, sorr, she didn't. Mr. Forsyth loid. Loid like an

officer and a jintleman--as he is, God bless him--to save a leddy, more

betoken your sister, sorr. They never got lost, sorr. We was all three

together from the toime we shtarted till we got back, and it's the love

av God that we ever got back at all. And it's breaking me hearrt, sorr,

to see HIM goin' round with the black looks of everybody upon him, and

he a-twirlin' his moustache and purtending not to mind.”

“What do you mean?” said Peter, uneasily.

“Oi mane to be tellin' you what happened, sorr,” said Cassidy stoutly.

“When we shtarted out Oi fell three files to the rear, as became me,

so as not to be in the way o' their colloguing, but sorra a bit o'

stragglin' was there, and Oi kept them afore me all the toime. When we

got to Post Oak Bottom the leddy p'ints her whip off to the roight,

and sez she: 'It's a fine bit of turf there, Misther Forsyth,' invitin'

like, and with that she gallops away to the right. The leftenant follys

her, and Oi closed up the rear. So we rides away innoshent like amongst

the trees, me thinkin' only it wor a mighty queer place for manoovrin',

until we seed, just beyond us in the hollow, the smoke of an Injin camp

and a lot of women and childer. And Mrs. Lascelles gets off and goes

to discoursin' and blarneying wid 'em: and Oi sees Mr. Forsyth glancin'

round and lookin' oneasy. Then he goes up and sez something to your

sister, and she won't give him a hearin'. And then he tells her she must

mount and be off. And she turns upon him, bedad, like a tayger, and bids

him be off himself. Then he comes to me and sez he, 'Oi don't like the

look o' this, Cassidy,' sez he; 'the woods behind is full of braves,'

sez he. 'Thrue for you, leftenant,' sez Oi, 'it's into a trap that the

leddy hez led us, God save her!' 'Whisht,' he sez, 'take my horse, it's

the strongest. Go beside her, and when Oi say the word lift her up into

the saddle before ye, and gallop like blazes. Oi'll bring up the rear

and the other horse.' Wid that we changed horses and cantered up to

where she was standing, and he gives the word when she isn't lookin',

and Oi grabs her up--she sthrugglin' like mad but not utterin' a

cry--and Oi lights out for the trail agin. And sure enough the braves

made as if they would folly, but the leftenant throws the reins of her

horse over the horn of his saddle, and whips out his revolver and houlds

'em back till I've got well away to the trail again. And then they let

fly their arrows, and begorra the next thing a BULLET whizzes by him.

And then he knows they have arrms wid 'em and are 'hostiles,' and he

rowls the nearest one over, wheelin' and fightin' and coverin' our

retreat till we gets to the road agin. And they daren't folly us out of

cover. Then the lady gets more sinsible, and the leftenant pershuades

her to mount her horse agin. But before we comes to the fort, he sez to

me: 'Cassidy,' sez he, 'not a word o' this on account of the leddy.'

And I was mum, sorr, while he was shootin' off his mouth about him bein'

lost and all that, and him bein' bully-ragged by the kernel, and me

knowin' that but for him your sister wouldn't be between these walls

here, and Oi wouldn't be talkin' to ye. And shure, sorr, ye might be

tellin's the kernel as how the leddy was took by the hysterics, and was

that loony that she didn't know whatever she was sayin', and so get the

leftenant in favor again.”

“I will speak with the colonel to-night,” said Peter gloomily.

“Lord save yer honor,” returned the trooper gratefully, “and if ye could

be sayin' that the LEDDY tould you,--it would only be the merest taste

of a loi ye'd be tellin',--and you'd save me from breakin' me word to

the leftenant.”

“I shall of course speak to my sister first,” returned Peter, with a

guilty consciousness that he had accepted the trooper's story mainly

from his previous knowledge of his sister's character. Nevertheless, in

spite of this foregone conclusion, he DID speak to her. To his

surprise she did not deny it. Lieutenant Forsyth,--a vain and conceited

fool,--whose silly attentions she had accepted solely that she might get

recreation beyond the fort,--had presumed to tell her what SHE must do!

As if SHE was one of those stupid officers' wives or sisters! And

it never would have happened if he--Peter--had let her remain at the

reservation with the Indian agent's wife, or if “Charley” (the gentle

Lascelles) were here! HE would have let her go, or taken her there.

Besides all the while she was among friends; HIS, Peter's own

friends,--the people whose cause he was championing! In vain did Peter

try to point out to her that these “people” were still children in mind

and impulse, and capable of vacillation or even treachery. He remembered

he was talking to a child in mind and impulse, who had shown the same

qualities, and in trying to convince her of her danger he felt he was

only voicing the common arguments of his opponents.

He spoke also to the colonel, excusing her through her ignorance, her

trust in his influence with the savages, and the general derangement of

her health. The colonel, relieved of his suspicions of a promising

young officer, was gentle and sympathetic, but firm as to Peter's future

course. In a moment of caprice and willfulness she might imperil the

garrison as she had her escort, and, more than that, she was imperiling

Peter's influence with the Indians. Absurd stories had come to his ears

regarding the attitude of the reservation towards him. He thought she

ought to return home as quickly as possible. Fortunately an opportunity

offered. The general commanding had advised him of the visit to the fort

of a party of English tourists who had been shooting in the vicinity,

and who were making the fort the farthest point of their western

excursion. There were three or four ladies in the party, and as they

would be returning to the line of railroad under escort, she could

easily accompany them. This, added Colonel Carter, was also Mrs.

Carter's opinion,--she was a woman of experience, and had a married

daughter of her own. In the mean time Peter had better not broach the

subject to his sister, but trust to the arrival of the strangers,

who would remain for a week, and who would undoubtedly divert Mrs.

Lascelles' impressible mind, and eventually make the proposition more

natural and attractive.

In the interval Peter revisited the reservation, and endeavored to

pacify the irritation that had sprung from his previous inspection.

The outrage at Post Oak Bottom he was assured had no relation to the

incident at the reservation, but was committed by some stragglers from

other tribes who had not yet accepted the government bounty, yet had not

been thus far classified as “hostile.” There had been no “Ghost Dancing”

nor other indication of disturbance. The colonel had not deemed

it necessary to send out an exemplary force, or make a counter

demonstration. The incident was allowed to drop. At the reservation

Peter had ignored the previous conduct of the chiefs towards him;

had with quiet courage exposed himself fully--unarmed and

unattended--amongst them, and had as fully let it be known that this

previous incident was the reason that his sister had not accompanied him

on his second visit. He left them at the close of the second day more

satisfied in his mind, and perhaps in a more enthusiastic attitude

towards his report.

As he came within sound of the sunset bugles, he struck a narrower trail

which led to the fort, through an oasis of oaks and cottonwoods and

a small stream or “branch,” which afterwards lost itself in the dusty

plain. He had already passed a few settler's cabins, a sutler's shop,

and other buildings that had sprung up around this armed nucleus of

civilization--which, in due season, was to become a frontier town. But

as yet the brief wood was wild and secluded; frequented only by the

women and children of the fort, within whose protecting bounds it

stood, and to whose formal “parade,” and trim white and green cottage

“quarters,” it afforded an agreeable relief. As he rode abstractedly

forward under the low cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence

stealing over him, an influence that was not only a present experience

but at the same time a far-off memory. The concave vault above deepened;

the sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the

leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through the two

shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley Church! He

was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly slipped across his

pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke with the disturbance and

sense of unreality of a dream. For he saw Lady Elfrida standing before

him!

It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although the

figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain changes

of costume which the eye of recollection noticed. In place of the smart

narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was wearing a slouched

cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown, that, with all its

becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to become characteristic

and respectable, as a crest to her refined head, and as historic as a

Lely canvas. She wore a flannel shirt, belted in at her slight waist

with a band of yellow leather, defining her small hips, and short

straight pleatless skirts that fell to her trim ankles and buckled

leather shoes. She was fresh and cool, wholesome and clean, free and

unfettered; indeed, her beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident.

So much so that when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy,

gauzy, and challenging graces of the officer's wives, who were dressed

in their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned

naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who seemed to

defy it. She was clearly not an idealized memory, a spirit or a ghost,

but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle rosier, as she laughingly

addressed him:--

“I suppose it isn't quite fair to surprise you like that,” she said,

with an honest girlish hand-shake, “for you see I know all about you

now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were expected; and

I dare say you thought we were still in England, if you remembered us

at all. And we haven't met since that day at Ashley Church when I put my

foot in it,--or rather on your pet protege's, the Indian's: you remember

Major Atherly's tomb? And to think that all the while we didn't know

that you were a public man and a great political reformer, and had a fad

like this. Why, we'd have got up meetings for you, and my father would

have presided,--he's always fond of doing these things,--and we'd have

passed resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel

shirts, and revolvers--but I believe you draw the line at that. My

brother was saying only the other day that you weren't half praised

enough for going in for this sort of thing when you were so rich,

and needn't care. And so that's why you rushed away from Ashley

Grange,--just to come here and work out your mission?”

His whole life, his first wild Californian dream, his English visit, the

revelation of Gray Eagle, the final collapse of his old beliefs, were

whirling through his brain to the music of this clear young voice. And

by some cruel irony of circumstance it seemed now to even mock his later

dreams of expiation as it also called back his unhappy experience of the

last week.

“Have you--have you”--he stammered with a faint smile, “seen my sister?”

“Not yet,” said Lady Elfrida. “I believe she is not well and is confined

to her room; you will introduce me, won't you?” she added eagerly. “Of

course, when we heard that there was an Atherly here we inquired about

you; and I told them you were a relation of ours,” she went on with a

half-mischievous shyness,--“you remember the de Bracys,--and they seemed

surprised and rather curious. I suppose one does not talk so much about

these things over here, and I dare say you have so much to occupy your

mind you don't talk of us in England.” With the quickness of a refined

perception she saw a slight shade in his face, and changed the subject.

“And we have had such a jolly time; we have met so many pleasant people;

and they've all been so awfully good to us, from the officials and

officers down to the plainest working-man. And all so naturally too--so

different from us. I sometimes think we have to work ourselves up to

be civil to strangers.” “No,” she went on gayly, in answer to his

protesting gesture, and his stammered reminder of his own reception.

“No. You came as a sort of kinsman, and Sir Edward knew all about you

before he asked you down to the Grange--or even sent over for me from

the Towers. No! you Americans take people on their 'face value,' as

my brother Reggy says, and we always want to know what are the

'securities.' And then American men are more gallant, though,” she

declared mischievously, “I think you are an exception in that way.

Indeed,” she went on, “the more I see of your countrymen the less you

seem like them. You are more like us,--more like an Englishman--indeed,

more like an Englishman than most Englishmen,--I mean in the matter of

reserve and all that sort of thing, you know. It's odd,--isn't it? Is

your sister like you?”

“You shall judge for yourself,” said Peter with a gayety that was forced

in proportion as his forebodings became more gloomy. Would his sister's

peculiarities--even her secret--be safe from the clear eyes of the young

girl?

“I know I shall like her,” said Lady Elfrida, simply. “I mean to make

friends with her before we leave, and I hope to see a great deal of her;

and,” she said with a naive non sequitur, that, however, had its painful

significance to Peter, “I do want you to show me some Indians--your

Indians, you know YOUR friends. I've seen some of them, of course; I

am afraid I am a little prejudiced, for I did not like them. You see

my taste has to be educated, I suppose; but I thought them so foolishly

vain and presuming.”

“That is their perfect childishness,” said Peter quickly. “It is not, I

believe, considered a moral defect,” he added bitterly.

Lady Elfrida laughed, and yet at the same moment a look of appeal that

was in itself quite as childlike shone in her blue eyes. “There, I

have blundered again, I know; but I told you I have such ridiculous

prejudices! And I really want to like them as you do. Only,” she laughed

again, “it seems strange that YOU, of all men, should have interested

yourself in people so totally different to you. But what will be the

result if your efforts are successful? Will they remain a distinct race?

Will you make citizens, soldiers, congressmen, governors of them? Will

they intermarry with the whites? Is that a part of your plan? I hope

not!”

It was a part of Peter's sensitive excitement that even through the

unconscious irony of this speech he was noticing the difference between

the young English girl's evident interest in a political problem and the

utter indifference of his own countrywomen. Here was a girl scarcely out

of her teens, with no pretension to being a blue stocking, with half

the aplomb of an American girl of her own age, gravely considering

a question of political economy. Oddly enough, it added to his other

irritation, and he said almost abruptly, “Why not?”

She took the question literally and with a little youthful timidity.

“But these mixed races never attain to anything, do they? I thought that

was understood. But,” she added with feminine quickness, “and I suppose

it's again only a PERSONAL argument, YOU wouldn't like your sister to

have married an Indian, would you?”

The irony of the situation had reached its climax to Peter. It didn't

seem to be his voice that said, “I can answer by an argument still more

personal. I have even thought myself of marrying an Indian woman.”

It seemed to him that what he said was irrevocable, but he was

desperate. It seemed to him that in a moment more he would have told her

his whole secret. But the young girl drew back from him with a slight

start of surprise. There may have been something in the tone of his

voice and in his manner that verged upon a seriousness she was never

contemplating in her random talk; it may have been an uneasiness of

some youthful imprudence in pressing the subject upon a man of his

superiority, and that his abrupt climax was a rebuke. But it was only

for a moment; her youthful buoyancy, and, above all, a certain common

sense that was not incompatible to her high nature, came to her rescue.

“But that,” she said with quick mischievousness, “would be a SACRIFICE

taken in the interest of these people, don't you see; and being a

sacrifice, it's no argument.”

Peter saw his mistake, but there was something so innocent and

delightful in the youthful triumph of this red-lipped logician, that

he was forced to smile. I have said that his smile was rare and

fascinating, a concession wrung from his dark face and calm beardless

lips that most people found irresistible, but it was odd, nevertheless,

that Lady Elfrida now for the first time felt a sudden and not

altogether unpleasant embarrassment over the very subject she had

approached with such innocent fearlessness. There was a new light in her

eyes, a fresher color in her cheeks as she turned her face--she knew not

why--away from him. But it enabled her to see a figure approaching them

from the fort. And I grieve to say that, perhaps for the first time in

her life, Lady Elfrida was guilty of an affected start.

“Oh, here's Reggy coming to look for me. I'd quite forgotten, but I'm

so glad. I want you to know my brother Reggy. He was always so sorry he

missed you at the Grange.”

The tall, young, good-looking brown Englishman who had sauntered up

bestowed a far more critical glance upon Peter's horse than upon Peter,

but nevertheless grasped his hand heartily as his sister introduced him.

Perhaps both men were equally undemonstrative, although the reserve of

one was from temperament and the other from education. Nevertheless Lord

Reginald remarked, with a laugh, that it was awfully jolly to be there,

and that it had been a beastly shame that he was in Scotland when

Atherly was at the Grange. That none of them had ever suspected till

they came to the fort that he, Atherly, was one of those government

chappies, and so awfully keen on Indian politics. “Friddy” had been

the first to find it out, but they thought she was chaffing. At which

“Friddy,” who had suddenly resolved herself into the youthfulest of

schoolgirls in the presence of her brother, put her parasol like an

Indian club behind her back, and still rosy, beamed admiringly upon

Reggy. Then the three, Peter leading his horse, moved on towards the

fort, presently meeting “Georgy,” the six-foot Guardsman cousin in

extraordinary tweeds and flannel shirt; Lord Runnybroke, uncle

of Friddy, middle-aged and flannel-shirted, a mighty hunter; Lady

Runnybroke, in a brown duster, but with a stately head that suggested

ostrich feathers; Moyler-Spence, M. P., with an eyeglass, and the Hon.

Evelyn Kayne, closely attended by the always gallant Lieutenant Forsyth.

Peter began to feel a nervous longing to be alone on the burning plain

and the empty horizon beyond them, until he could readjust himself to

these new conditions, and glanced half-wearily around him. But his eye

met Friddy's, who seemed to have evoked this gathering with a wave of

her parasol, like the fairy of a pantomime, and he walked on in silence.

A day or two of unexpected pleasure passed for Peter. In these new

surroundings he found he could separate Lady Elfrida from his miserable

past, and the conventional restraint of Ashley Grange. Again, the

revelation of her familiar name Friddy seemed to make her more

accessible and human to him than her formal title, and suited the

girlish simplicity that lay at the foundation of her character, of which

he had seen so little before. At least so he fancied, and so excused

himself; it was delightful to find her referring to him as an older

friend; pleasant, indeed, to see that her family tacitly recognized it,

and frequently appealed to him with the introduction, “Friddy says you

can tell us,” or “You and Friddy had better arrange it between you.”

Even the dreaded introduction of his sister was an agreeable surprise,

owing to Lady Elfrida's frank and sympathetic prepossession, which Jenny

could not resist. In a few moments they were walking together in serious

and apparently confidential conversation. For to Peter's wonder it was

the “Lady Elfrida” side of the English girl's nature that seemed to

have attracted Jenny, and not the playfulness of “Friddy,” and he was

delighted to see that the young girl had assumed a grave chaperonship

of the tall Mrs. Lascelles that would have done credit to Mrs. Carter

or Lady Runnybroke. Had he been less serious he might have been amused,

too, at the importance of his own position in the military outpost,

through the arrival of the strangers. That this grave political

enthusiast and civilian should be on familiar terms with a young

Englishwoman of rank was at first inconceivable to the officers.

And that he had never alluded to it before seemed to them still more

remarkable.

Nevertheless, there was much liveliness and good fellowship at the fort.

Captains and lieutenants down to the youngest “cub,” Forsyth, vied

with each other to please the Englishmen, supplied them with that

characteristic American humor and anecdote which it is an Englishman's

privilege to bring away with him, and were picturesquely and

chivalrously devoted in their attentions to the ladies, who were pleased

and amused by it, though it is to be doubted if it increased their

respect for the giver, although they were more grateful for it than

the average American woman. Lady Elfrida found the officers very

entertaining and gallant. Accustomed to the English officer, and his

somewhat bored way of treating his profession and his duties, she may

have been amused at the zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm of these

youthful warriors, who aspired to appear as nothing but soldiers, when

she contrasted them with her Guardsmen relatives who aspired to

be everything else but that; but she kept it to herself. It was a

recognized, respectable, and even superior occupation for gentlemen in

England; what it might be in America,--who knows? She certainly found

Peter, the civilian, more attractive, for there really was nothing

English to compare him with, and she had something of the same feeling

in her friendship for Jenny, except the patronage which Jenny seemed to

solicit, and perhaps require, as a foreigner.

One afternoon the English guests, accompanied by a few of their hosts

and a small escort, were making a shooting expedition to the vicinity of

Green Spring, when Peter, plunged in his report, looked up to find his

sister entering his office. Her face was pale, and there was something

in her expression which reawakened his old anxiety. Nevertheless he

smiled, and said gently:--

“Why are you not enjoying yourself with the others?”

“I have a headache,” she said, languidly, “but,” lifting her eyes

suddenly to his, “why are YOU not? You are their good friend, you

know,--even their relation.”

“No more than you are,” he returned, with affected gayety. “But look at

the report--it is only half finished! I have already been shirking it

for them.”

“You mustn't let your devotion to the Indians keep you from your older

friends,” said Mrs. Lascelles, with an odd laugh. “But you never told

me about these people before, Peter; tell me now. They were very kind to

you, weren't they, on account of your relationship?”

“Entirely on account of that,” said Peter, with a sudden bitterness he

could not repress. “But they are very pleasant,” he added quickly, “and

very simple and unaffected, in spite of their rank; perhaps I ought to

say, BECAUSE of it.”

“You mean they are kind to us because they feel themselves

superior,--just as you are kind to the Indians, Peter.”

“I am afraid they have no such sense of political equality towards us,

Jenny, as impels me to be just to the Indian,” he said with affected

lightness. “But Lady Elfrida sympathizes with the Indians--very much.”

“She!” The emphasis which his sister put upon the personal pronoun was

unmistakable, but Peter ignored it, and so apparently did she, as she

said the next moment in a different voice, “She's very pretty, don't you

think?”

“Very,” said Peter coldly.

There was a long pause. Peter slightly fingered one of the sheets of his

delayed report on his desk. His sister looked up. “I'm afraid I'm as bad

as Lady Elfrida in keeping you from your Indians; but I had something to

say to you. No matter, another time will do when you're not so busy.”

“Please go on now,” said Peter, with affected unconcern, yet with a

feeling of uneasiness creeping over him.

“It was only this,” said Jenny, seating herself with her elbow on the

desk and her chin in a cup-like hollow of her hand, “did you ever think

that in the interests of these poor Indians, you know, purely for the

sake of your belief in them, and just to show that you were above vulgar

prejudices,--did you ever think you could marry one of them?”

Two thoughts flashed quickly on Peter's mind,--first, that Lady Elfrida

had repeated something of their conversation to his sister; secondly,

that some one had told her of Little Daybreak. Each was equally

disturbing. But he recovered himself quickly and said, “I might if I

thought it was required. But even a sacrifice is not always an example.”

“Then you think it would be a sacrifice?” she said, slowly raising her

dark eyes to his.

“If I did something against received opinion, against precedent, and

for aught I know against even the prejudices of those I wish to serve,

however lofty my intention was and however great the benefit to them in

the end, it would still be a sacrifice in the present.” He saw his own

miserable logic and affected didactics, but he went on lightly, “But

why do you ask such a question? You haven't any one in your mind for me,

have you?”

She had risen thoughtfully and was moving towards the door. Suddenly she

turned with a quick, odd vivacity: “Perhaps I had. Oh, Peter, there was

such a lovely little squaw I saw the last time I was at Oak Bottom! She

was no darker than I am, but so beautiful. Even in her little cotton

gown and blanket, with only a string of beads around her throat, she

was as pretty as any one here. And I dare say she could be educated and

appear as well as any white woman. I should so like to have you see her.

I would have tried to bring her to the fort, but the braves are very

jealous of their wives or daughters seeing white men, you know, and I

was afraid of the colonel.”

She had spoken volubly and with a strange excitement, but even at the

moment her face changed again, and as she left the office, with a quick

laugh and parting gesture, there were tears in her eyes.

Accustomed to her moods and caprices, Peter thought little of the

intrusion, relieved as he was of his first fears. She had come to him

from loneliness and curiosity, and, perhaps, he thought with a sad

smile, from a little sisterly jealousy of the young girl who had evinced

such an interest in him, and had known him before. He took up his pen

and continued the interrupted paragraph of his report.

“I am satisfied that much of the mischievous and extravagant prejudice

against the half breed and all alliances of the white and red

races springs from the ignorance of the frontiersman and his hasty

generalization of facts. There is no doubt that an intermixture of blood

brings out purely superficial contrasts the more strongly, and that

against the civilizing habits and even costumes of the half breed,

certain Indian defects appear the more strongly as in the case of the

color line of the quadroon and octoroon, but it must not be forgotten

that these are only the contrasts of specific improvement, and the

inference that the borrowed defects of a half breed exceed the original

defects of the full-blooded aborigine is utterly illogical.” He stopped

suddenly and laid down his pen with a heightened color; the bugle had

blown, the guard was turning out to receive the commandant and his

returning party, among whom was Friddy.

*****

Through the illusions of depression and distance the “sink” of Butternut

Creek seemed only an incrustation of blackish moss on the dull gray

plain. It was not until one approached within half a mile of it that it

resolved itself into a copse of butternut-trees sunken below the distant

levels. Here once, in geological story, the waters of Butternut Creek,

despairing of ever crossing the leagues of arid waste before them, had

suddenly disappeared in the providential interposition of an area of

looser soil, and so given up the effort and the ghost forever, their

grave being marked by the butternut copse, chance-sown by bird or beast

in the saturated ground. In Indian legend the “sink” commemorated the

equally providential escape of a great tribe who, surrounded by enemies,

appealed to the Great Spirit for protection, and was promptly conveyed

by subterraneous passages to the banks of the Great River a hundred

miles away. Its outer edges were already invaded by the dust of the

plain, but within them ran cool recesses, a few openings, and the

ashes of some long-forgotten camp-fires. To-day its sombre shadows were

relieved by bright colored dresses, the jackets of the drivers of a

large sutler's wagon, whose white canvas head marked the entrance of the

copse, and all the paraphernalia of a picnic. It was a party gotten up

by the foreign guests to the ladies of the fort, prepared and arranged

by the active Lady Elfrida, assisted by the only gentleman of the party,

Peter Atherly, who, from his acquaintance with the locality, was allowed

to accompany them. The other gentlemen, who with a large party of

officers and soldiers were shooting in the vicinity, were sufficiently

near for protection. They would rejoin the ladies later.

“It does not seem in the least as if we were miles away from any town

or habitation,” said Lady Runnybroke, complacently seating herself on a

stump, “and I shouldn't be surprised to see a church tower through those

trees. It's very like the hazel copse at Longworth, you know. Not at all

what I expected.”

“For the matter of that neither are the Indians,” said the Hon. Evelyn

Rayne. “Did you ever see such grotesque creatures in their cast-off

boots and trousers? They're no better than gypsies. I wonder what Mr.

Atherly can find in them.”

“And he a rich man, too,--they say he's got a mine in California worth

a million,--to take up a craze like this,” added the lively Mrs. Captain

Joyce, “that's what gets me! You know,” she went on confidentially,

“that cranks and reformers are always poor--it's quite natural; but

I don't see what he, a rich man, expects to make by his reforms, I'm

sure.”

“He'll get over it in time,” said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, “they all do.

At least he expects to get the reforms he wants in a year, and then he's

coming over to England again.”

“Indeed, how very nice,” responded Lady Runnybroke quickly. “Did he say

so?”

“No. But Friddy says he is.”

The two officers' wives glanced at each other. Lady Runnybroke put up

her eyeglass in default of ostrich feathers, and said didactically, “I'm

sure Mr. Atherly is very much in earnest, and sincerely devoted to his

work. And in a man of his wealth and position here it's most estimable.

My dear,” she said, getting up and moving towards Mrs. Lascelles, “we

were just saying how good and unselfish your brother was in his work for

these poor people.”

But Jenny Lascelles must have been in one of those abstracted moods

which so troubled her husband, for she seemed to be staring straight

before her into the recesses of the wood. In her there was a certain

resemblance to the attitude of a listening animal.

“I wish Mr. Atherly was a little more unselfish to US poor people,”

said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, “for he and Friddy have been nearly an hour

looking for a place to spread our luncheon baskets. I wish they'd leave

the future of the brown races to look after itself and look a little

more after us. I'm famished.”

“I fancy they find it difficult to select a clear space for so large

a party as we will be when the gentlemen come in,” returned Lady

Runnybroke, glancing in the direction of Jenny's abstracted eyes.

“I suppose you must feel like chicken and salad, too, Lady Runnybroke,”

suggested Mrs. Captain Joyce.

“I don't think I quite know HOW chicken and salad feel, dear,” said

Lady Runnybroke with a puzzled air, “but if that's one of your husband's

delightful American stories, do tell us. I never CAN get Runnybroke to

tell me any, although he roars over them all. And I dare say he gets

them all wrong. But look, here comes our luncheon.”

Peter and Lady Elfrida were advancing towards them. The scrutiny of a

dozen pairs of eyes--wondering, mischievous, critical, impertinent, or

resentful--would have been a trying ordeal to any errant couple; but

there was little if any change in Peter's grave and gentle demeanor,

albeit his dark eyes were shining with a peculiar light, and Lady

Elfrida had only the animation, color, and slight excitability that

became the responsible leader of the little party. They neither

apologized or alluded to their delay. They had selected a spot on the

other side of the copse, and the baskets could be sent around by the

wagon; they had seen a slight haze on the plain towards the east which

betokened the vicinity of the rest of the party, and they were about to

propose that as the gentlemen were so near they had better postpone

the picnic until they came up. Lady Runnybroke smiled affably; the only

thing she had noticed was that Lady Elfrida in joining them had gone

directly to the side of the abstracted Jenny, and placed her arm around

her waist. At which Lady Runnybroke airily joined them.

The surmises of Peter and Friddy appeared to be correct. The transfer

of the provisions and the party to the other side was barely concluded

before they could see the gentlemen coming; they were riding a little

more rapidly than when they had set out, and were arriving fully

three hours before their time. They burst upon the ladies a little

boisterously but gayly; they had had a glorious time, but little sport;

they had hurried back to join the ladies so as to be able to return with

them betimes. They were ravenously hungry; they wanted to fall to at

once. Only the officers' wives noticed that the two files of troopers

DID NOT DISMOUNT, but filed slowly before the entrance to the woods.

Lady Elfrida as hostess was prettily distressed by it, but was told by

Captain Joyce that it was “against rules,” and that she could “feed”

them at the fort. The officers' wives put a few questions in whispers,

and were promptly frowned down. Nevertheless, the luncheon was a

successful festivity: the gentlemen were loud in the praises of their

gracious hostess; the delicacies she had provided by express from

distant stations, and much that was distinctly English and despoiled

from her own stores, were gratefully appreciated by the officers of

a remote frontier garrison. Lady Elfrida's health was toasted by

the gallant colonel in a speech that was the soul of chivalry. Lord

Runnybroke responded, perhaps without the American abandon, but with

the steady conscientiousness of an hereditary legislator, but the M. P.

summed up a slightly exaggerated but well meaning episode by pointing

out that it was on occasions like this that the two nations showed their

common ancestry by standing side by side. Only one thing troubled the

rosy, excited, but still clear-headed Friddy; the plates were whisked

away like magic after each delicacy, by the military servants, and

vanished; the tables were in the same mysterious way cleared as rapidly

as they were set, and any attempt to recall a dish was met by the

declaration that it was already packed away in the wagon. As they

at last rose from the actually empty board, and saw even the tables

disappear, Lady Elfrida plaintively protested that she felt as if she

had been presiding over an Arabian Nights entertainment, served by

genii, and she knew that they would all awaken hungry when they were

well on their way back. Nevertheless, in spite of this expedition, the

officers lounged about smoking until every trace of the festivity had

vanished. Reggy found himself standing near Peter. “You know,” he said,

confidentially, “I don't think the colonel has a very high opinion of

your pets,--the Indians. And, by Jove, if the 'friendlies' are as nasty

towards you as they were to us this morning, I wonder what you call the

'hostile' tribes.”

“Did you have any difficulty with them?” said Peter quickly.

“No, not exactly, don't you know--we were too many, I fancy; but, by

Jove, the beggars whenever we met them,--and we met one or two gypsy

bands of them,--you know, they seemed to look upon us as TRESPASSERS,

don't you know.”

“And you were, in point of fact,” said Peter, smiling grimly.

“Oh, I say, come now!” said Reggy, opening his eyes. After a moment he

laughed. “Oh, yes, I see--of course, looking at it from their point

of view. By Jove, I dare say the beggars were right, you know; all the

same,--don't you see,--YOUR people were poaching too.”

“So we were,” said Peter gravely.

But here, at a word from the major, the whole party debouched from

the woods. Everything appeared to be awaiting them,--the large covered

carryall for the guests, and the two saddle horses for Mrs. Lascelles

and Lady Elfrida, who had ridden there together. Peter, also mounted,

accompanied the carryall with two of the officers; the troopers and

wagons brought up the rear.

It was very hot, with little or no wind. On this part of the plain the

dust seemed lighter and finer, and rose with the wheels of the carryall

and the horses of the escort, trailing a white cloud over the cavalcade

like the smoke of an engine over a train. It was with difficulty the

troopers could be kept from opening out on both sides of the highway to

escape it. The whole atmosphere seemed charged with it; it even appeared

in a long bank to the right, rising and obscuring the declining sun. But

they were already within sight of the fort and the little copse beside

it. Then trooper Cassidy trotted up to the colonel, who was riding in a

dusty cloud beside the carryall, “Captain Fleetwood's compliments, sorr,

and there are two sthragglers,--Mrs. Lascelles and the English lady.” He

pointed to the rapidly flying figures of Jenny and Friddy making towards

the wood.

The colonel made a movement of impatience. “Tell Mr. Forsyth to bring

them back at once,” he said.

But here a feminine chorus of excuses and expostulations rose from

the carryall. “It's only Mrs. Lascelles going to show Friddy where the

squaws and children bathe,” said Lady Runnybroke, “it's near the fort,

and they'll be there as quick as we shall.”

“One moment, colonel,” said Peter, with mortified concern. “It's another

folly of my sister's! pray let me take it upon myself to bring them

back.”

“Very well, but see you don't linger, and,” turning to Cassidy, as Peter

galloped away, he added, “you follow him.”

Peter kept the figures of the two women in view, but presently saw

them disappear in the wood. He had no fear for their safety, but he was

indignant at this last untimely caprice of his sister. He knew the idea

had originated with her, and that the officers knew it, and yet she had

made Lady Elfrida bear an equal share of the blame. He reached the edge

of the copse, entered the first opening, but he had scarcely plunged

into its shadow and shut out the plain behind him before he felt his

arms and knees quickly seized from behind. So sudden and unexpected was

the attack that he first thought his horse had stumbled against a coil

of wild grapevine and was entangled, but the next moment he smelled the

rank characteristic odor and saw the brown limbs of the Indian who had

leaped on his crupper, while another rose at his horse's head. Then a

warning voice in his ear said in the native tongue:--

“If the great white medicine man calls to his fighting men, the

pale-faced girl and the squaw he calls his sister die! They are here, he

understands.”

But Peter had neither struggled nor uttered a cry. At that touch, and

with the accents of that tongue in his ears, all his own Indian blood

seemed to leap and tingle through his veins. His eyes flashed; pinioned

as he was he drew himself erect and answered haughtily in his captor's

own speech:--

“Good! The great white medicine man obeys, for he and his sister have

no fear. But if the pale-face girl is not sent back to her people before

the sun sets, then the yellow jackets will swarm the woods, and they

will follow her trail to the death. My brother is wise; let the girl go.

I have spoken.”

“My brother is very cunning too. He would call to his fighting men

through the lips of the pale-face girl.”

“He will not. The great white medicine man does not lie to his red

brother. He will tell the pale-face girl to say to the chief of the

yellow jackets that he and his sister are with his brothers, and all is

peace. But the pale-face girl must not see the great white medicine man

in these bonds, nor as a captive! I have spoken.”

The two Indians fell back. There was so much of force and dignity in the

man, so much of their own stoic calmness, that they at once mechanically

loosened the thongs of plaited deer hide with which they had bound him,

and side by side led him into the recesses of the wood.

*****

There was some astonishment, although little alarm at the fort, when

Lady Elfrida returned accompanied by the orderly who had followed Peter

to the wood, but without Peter and his sister. The reason given was

perfectly natural and conceivable. Mrs. Lascelles had preceded Lady

Elfrida in entering the wood and taken another opening, so that Lady

Elfrida had found herself suddenly lost, and surrounded by two or three

warriors in dreadful paint. They motioned her to dismount, and said

something she did not understand, but she declined, knowing that she had

heard Mr. Atherly and the orderly following her, and feeling no fear.

And sure enough Mr. Atherly presently came up with a couple of braves,

apologized to her for their mistake, but begged her to return to the

fort at once and assure the colonel that everything was right, and that

he and his sister were safe. He was perfectly cool and collected and

like himself; she blushed slightly, as she said she thought that he

wished to impress upon her, for some reason she could not understand,

that he did not want the colonel to send any assistance. She was

positive of that. She told her story unexcitedly; it was evident that

she had not been frightened, but Lady Runnybroke noticed that there was

a shade of anxious abstraction in her face.

When the officers were alone the colonel took hurried counsel of them.

“I think,” said Captain Fleetwood, “that Lady Elfrida's story quite

explains itself. I believe this affair is purely a local one, and has

nothing whatever to do with the suspicious appearances we noticed this

afternoon, or the presence of so large a body of Indians near Butternut.

Had this been a hostile movement they would have scarcely allowed so

valuable a capture as Lady Elfrida to escape them.”

“Unless they kept Atherly and his sister as a hostage,” said Captain

Joyce.

“But Atherly is one of their friends; indeed he is their mediator

and apostle, a non-combatant, and has their confidence,” returned the

colonel. “It is much more reasonable to suppose that Atherly has noticed

some disaffection among these 'friendlies,' and he fears that our

sending a party to his assistance might precipitate a collision. Or he

may have reason to believe that this stopping of the two women under

the very walls of the fort is only a feint to draw our attention from

something more serious. Did he know anything of our suspicions of the

conduct of those Indians this morning?”

“Not unless he gathered it from what Lord Reginald foolishly told

him. We said nothing, of course,” returned Captain Fleetwood, with a

soldier's habitual distrust of the wisdom of the civil arm.

“That will do, gentlemen,” said the colonel, as the officers dispersed;

“send Cassidy here.”

The colonel was alone on the veranda as Cassidy came up.

“You followed Mr. Atherly to-day?”

“Yes sorr.”

“And you saw him when he gave the message to the young lady?”

“Yes sorr.”

“Did you form any opinion from anything else you saw, of his object in

sending that message?”

“Only from what I saw of HIM.”

“Well, what was that?”

“I saw him look afther the young leddy as she rode away, and then wheel

about and go straight back into the wood.”

“And what did you think of that?” said the colonel, with a half smile.

“I thought it was shacrifice, sorr.”

“What do you mean?” said the colonel sharply.

“I mane, sorr,” said Cassidy stoutly, “that he was givin' up hisself and

his sister for that young leddy.”

The colonel looked at the sergeant. “Ask Mr. Forsyth to come to me

privately, and return here with him.”

As darkness fell, some half a dozen dismounted troopers, headed by

Forsyth and Cassidy, passed quietly out of the lower gate and entered

the wood. An hour later the colonel was summoned from the dinner table,

and the guests heard the quick rattle of a wagon turning out of the road

gate--but the colonel did not return. An indefinable uneasiness crept

over the little party, which reached its climax in the summoning of the

other officers, and the sudden flashing out of news. The reconnoitring

party had found the dead bodies of Peter Atherly and his sister on the

plains at the edge of the empty wood.

The women were gathered in the commandant's quarters, and for the

moment seemed to have been forgotten. The officers' wives talked with

professional sympathy and disciplined quiet; the English ladies were

equally sympathetic, but collected. Lady Elfrida, rather white, but

patient, asked a few questions in a voice whose contralto was rather

deepened. One and all wished to “do something”--anything “to help”--and

one and all rebelled that the colonel had begged them to remain within

doors. There was an occasional quick step on the veranda, or the

clatter of a hoof on the parade, a continued but subdued murmur from the

whitewashed barracks, but everywhere a sense of keen restraint.

When they emerged on the veranda again, the whole aspect of the garrison

seemed to have changed in that brief time. In the faint moonlight they

could see motionless files of troopers filling the parade, the officers

in belted tunics and slouched hats,--but apparently not the same men;

the half lounging ease and lazy dandyism gone, a grim tension in all

their faces, a set abstraction in all their acts. Then there was the

rolling of heavy wheels in the road, and the two horses of the ambulance

appeared. The sentries presented arms; the colonel took off his hat;

the officers uncovered; the wagon wheeled into the parade; the surgeon

stepped out. He exchanged a single word with the colonel, and lifted the

curtain of the ambulance.

As the colonel glanced within, a deep but embarrassed voice fell

upon his ear. He turned quickly. It was Lord Reginald, flushed and

sympathetic.

“He was a friend,--a relation of ours, you know,” he stammered. “My

sister would like--to look at him again.”

“Not now,” said the colonel in a low voice. The surgeon added something

in a voice still lower, which scarcely reached the veranda.

Lord Reginald turned away with a white face.

“Fall back there!” Captain Fleetwood rode up.

“All ready, sir.”

“One moment, captain,” said the colonel quietly. “File your first half

company before that ambulance, and bid the men look in.”

The singular order was obeyed. The men filed slowly forward, each in

turn halting before the motionless wagon and its immobile freight. They

were men inured to frontier bloodshed and savage warfare; some halted

and hurried on; others lingered, others turned to look again. One man

burst into a short laugh, but when the others turned indignantly upon

him, they saw that in his face that held them in awe. What they saw in

the ambulance did not transpire; what they felt was not known. Strangely

enough, however, what they repressed themselves was mysteriously

communicated to their horses, who snorted and quivered with eagerness

and impatience as they rode back again. The horse of the trooper who

had laughed almost leaped into the air. Only Sergeant Cassidy was

communicative; he took a larger circuit in returning to his place, and

managed to lean over and whisper hoarsely in the ear of a camp follower

spectator, “Tell the young leddy that the torturin' divvils couldn't

take the smile off him!”

The little column filed out of the gateway into the road. As Captain

Fleetwood passed Colonel Carter the two men's eyes met. The colonel said

quietly, “Good night, captain. Let us have a good report from you.”

The captain replied only with his gauntleted hand against the brim of

his slouched hat, but the next moment his voice was heard strong and

clear enough in the road. The little column trotted away as evenly as on

parade. But those who climbed the roof of the barracks a quarter of an

hour later saw, in the moonlight, a white cloud drifting rapidly across

the plain towards the west. It was a small cloud in that bare,

menacing, cruel, and illimitable waste; but in its breast was crammed a

thunderbolt.

It fell thirty miles away, blasting and scattering a thousand warriors

and their camp, giving and taking no quarter, vengeful, exterminating,

and complete. Later there were different opinions about it and the

horrible crime that had provoked it: the opposers of Peter's policy

jubilant over the irony of the assassination of the Apostle of

Peace, Peter's disciples as actively deploring the merciless and

indiscriminating vengeance of the military; and so the problem that

Peter had vainly attempted to solve was left an open question. There

were those, too, who believed that Peter had never sacrificed himself

and his sister for the sake of another, but had provoked and incensed

the savages by the blind arrogance of a reformer. There were wild

stories by scouts and interpreters how he had challenged his fate by

an Indian bravado; how himself and his sister had met torture with

an Indian stoicism, and how the Indian braves themselves at last in a

turmoil of revulsion had dipped their arrows and lances in the heroic

heart's blood of their victims, and worshiped their still palpitating

flesh.

But there was one honest loyal little heart that carried back--three

thousand miles--to England the man as it had known and loved him. Lady

Elfrida Runnybroke never married; neither did she go into retirement,

but lived her life and fulfilled her duties in her usual clear-eyed

fashion. She was particularly kind to all Americans,--barring, I fear, a

few pretty-faced, finely-frocked title-hunters,--told stories of the

Far West, and had theories of a people of which they knew little, cared

less, and believed to be vulgar. But I think she found a new pleasure in

the old church at Ashley Grange, and loved to linger over the effigy of

the old Crusader,--her kinsman, the swashbuckler De Bracy,--with a vague

but pretty belief that devotion and love do not die with brave men, but

live and flourish even in lands beyond the seas.

TWO AMERICANS

Perhaps if there was anything important in the migration of the Maynard

family to Europe it rested solely upon the singular fact that Mr.

Maynard did not go there in the expectation of marrying his daughter to

a nobleman. A Charleston merchant, whose house represented two honorable

generations, had, thirty years ago, a certain self-respect which did

not require extraneous aid and foreign support, and it is exceedingly

probable that his intention of spending a few years abroad had no

ulterior motive than pleasure seeking and the observation of many

things--principally of the past--which his own country did not possess.

His future and that of his family lay in his own land, yet with

practical common sense he adjusted himself temporarily to his new

surroundings. In doing so, he had much to learn of others, and others

had something to learn of him; he found that the best people had a

high simplicity equal to his own; he corrected their impressions that a

Southerner had more or less negro blood in his veins, and that, although

a slave owner, he did not necessarily represent an aristocracy. With a

distinguishing dialect of which he was not ashamed, a frank familiarity

of approach joined to an invincible courtesy of manner, which made even

his republican “Sir” equal to the ordinary address to royalty, he

was always respected and seldom misunderstood. When he was--it was

unfortunate for those who misunderstood him. His type was as distinctive

and original as his cousin's, the Englishman, whom it was not the

fashion then to imitate. So that, whether in the hotel of a capital,

the Kursaal of a Spa, or the humbler pension of a Swiss village, he was

always characteristic. Less so was his wife, who, with the chameleon

quality of her transplanted countrywomen, was already Parisian in

dress; still less so his daughter, who had by this time absorbed the

peculiarities of her French, German, and Italian governesses. Yet

neither had yet learned to evade their nationality--or apologize for it.

Mr. Maynard and his family remained for three years in Europe, his stay

having been prolonged by political excitement in his own State of

South Carolina. Commerce is apt to knock the insularity out of people;

distance from one's own distinctive locality gives a wider range to the

vision, and the retired merchant foresaw ruin in his State's politics,

and from the viewpoint of all Europe beheld instead of the usual

collection of individual States--his whole country. But the excitement

increasing, he was finally impelled to return in a faint hope of

doing something to allay it, taking his wife with him, but leaving

his daughter at school in Paris. At about this time, however, a single

cannon shot fired at the national flag on Fort Sumter shook the whole

country, reverberated even in Europe, sending some earnest hearts back

to do battle for State or country, sending others less earnest into

inglorious exile, but, saddest of all! knocking over the school bench

of a girl at the Paris pensionnat. For that shot had also sunk Maynard's

ships at the Charleston wharves, scattered his piled Cotton bales

awaiting shipment at the quays, and drove him, a ruined man, into the

“Home Guard” against his better judgment. Helen Maynard, like a good

girl, had implored her father to let her return and share his risks. But

the answer was “to wait” until this nine days' madness of an uprising

was over. That madness lasted six years, outlived Maynard, whose gray,

misdoubting head bit the dust at Ball's Bluff; outlived his colorless

widow, and left Kelly a penniless orphan.

Yet enough of her country was left in her to make her courageous and

independent of her past. They say that when she got the news she cried

a little, and then laid the letter and what was left of her last

monthly allowance in Madame Ablas' lap. Madame was devastated. “But you,

impoverished and desolated angel, what of you?” “I shall get some of

it back,” said the desolated angel with ingenuous candor, “for I speak

better French and English than the other girls, and I shall teach THEM

until I can get into the Conservatoire, for I have a voice. You yourself

have told papa so.” From such angelic directness there was no appeal.

Madame Ablas had a heart,--more, she had a French manageress's

discriminating instinct. The American schoolgirl was installed in a

teacher's desk; her bosom friends and fellow students became her pupils.

To some of the richest, and they were mainly of her own country, she

sold her smartest, latest dresses, jewels, and trinkets at a very good

figure, and put the money away against the Conservatoire in the future.

She worked hard, she endured patiently everything but commiseration.

“I'd have you know, Miss,” she said to Miss de Laine, daughter of the

famous house of Musslin, de Laine & Co., of New York, “that whatever my

position HERE may be, it is not one to be patronized by a tapeseller's

daughter. My case is not such a very 'sad one,' thank you, and I prefer

not to be spoken of as having seen 'better days' by people who haven't.

There! Don't rap your desk with your pencil when you speak to me, or

I shall call out 'Cash!' before the whole class.” So regrettable an

exhibition of temper naturally alienated certain of her compatriots who

were unduly sensitive of their origin, and as they formed a considerable

colony who were then reveling in the dregs of the Empire and the last

orgies of a tottering court, eventually cost her her place. A republican

so aristocratic was not to be tolerated by the true-born Americans who

paid court to De Morny for the phosphorescent splendors of St. Cloud

and the Tuileries, and Miss Helen lost their favor. But she had already

saved enough money for the Conservatoire and a little attic in a very

tall house in a narrow street that trickled into the ceaseless flow

of the Rue Lafayette. Here for four years she trotted backwards

and forwards regularly to work with the freshness of youth and the

inflexible set purpose of maturity. Here, rain or shine, summer or

winter, in the mellow season when the large cafes expanded under the

white sunshine into an overflow of little tables on the pavement, or

when the red glow of the Brasserie shone through frosty panes on the

turned-up collars of pinched Parisians who hurried by, she was always to

be seen.

Half Paris had looked into her clear, gray eyes and passed on; a smaller

and not very youthful portion of Paris had turned and followed her with

small advantage to itself and happily no fear to her. For even in her

young womanhood she kept her child's loving knowledge of that great

city; she even had an innocent camaraderie with street sweepers, kiosk

keepers, and lemonade venders, and the sternness of conciergedom

melted before her. In this wholesome, practical child's experience she

naturally avoided or overlooked what would not have interested a child,

and so kept her freshness and a certain national shrewd simplicity

invincible. There is a story told of her girlhood that, one day playing

in the Tuileries gardens, she was approached by a gentleman with a waxed

mustache and a still more waxen cheek beneath his heavy-lidded eyes.

There was an exchange of polite amenities.

“And your name, ma petite?”

“Helen,” responded the young girl naively. “What's yours?”

“Ah,” said the kind gentleman, gallantly pulling at his mustache, “if

you are Helen I am Paris.”

The young girl raised her clear eyes to his and said gravely, “I reckon

your majesty is FRANCE!”

She retained this childish fearlessness as the poor student of the

Conservatoire; went alone all over Paris with her maiden skirts

untarnished by the gilded dust of the boulevards or the filth of

by-ways; knew all the best shops for her friends, and the cheapest for

her own scant purchases; discovered breakfasts for a few sous with pale

sempstresses, whose sadness she understood, and reckless chorus girls,

whose gayety she didn't; she knew where the earliest chestnut buds were

to be found in the Bois, when the slopes of the Buttes Chaumont were

green, and which was the old woman who sold the cheapest flowers before

the Madeleine. Alone and independent, she earned the affection of

Madame Bibelot, the concierge, and, what was more, her confidence. Her

outgoings and incomings were never questioned. The little American could

take care of herself. Ah, if her son Jacques were only as reasonable!

Miss Maynard might have made more friends had she cared; she might have

joined hands with the innocent and light-hearted poverty of the coterie

of her own artistic compatriots, but something in her blood made her

distrust Bohemianism; her poverty was something to her too sacred for

jest or companionship; her own artistic aim was too long and earnest

for mere temporary enthusiasms. She might have found friends in her own

profession. Her professor opened the sacred doors of his family circle

to the young American girl. She appreciated the delicacy, refinement,

and cheerful equal responsibilities of that household, so widely

different from the accepted Anglo-Saxon belief, but there were certain

restrictions that rightly or wrongly galled her American habits of

girlish freedom, and she resolutely tripped past the first etage four or

five flights higher to her attic, the free sky, and independence! Here

she sometimes met another kind of independence in Monsieur Alphonse,

aged twenty two, and she who ought to have been Madame Alphonse, aged

seventeen, and they often exchanged greetings on the landing with great

respect towards each other, and, oddly enough, no confusion or distrait.

Later they even borrowed each other's matches without fear and without

reproach, until one day Monsieur Alphonse's parents took him away,

and the desolated soi-disant Madame Alphonse, in a cheerful burst of

confidence, gave Helen her private opinion of monsieur, and from her

seventeen years' experience warned the American infant of twenty against

possible similar complications.

One day--it was near the examination for prizes, and her funds were

running low--she was obliged to seek one of those humbler restaurants

she knew of for her frugal breakfast. But she was not hungry, and after

a few mouthfuls left her meal unfinished as a young man entered and half

abstractedly took a seat at her table. She had already moved towards

the comptoir to pay her few sous, when, chancing to look up in a mirror

which hung above the counter, reflecting the interior of the cafe, she

saw the stranger, after casting a hurried glance around him, remove

from her plate the broken roll and even the crumbs she had left, and

as hurriedly sweep them into his pocket-handkerchief. There was nothing

very strange in this; she had seen something like it before in these

humbler cafes,--it was a crib for the birds in the Tuileries Gardens,

or the poor artist's substitute for rubber in correcting his crayon

drawing! But there was a singular flushing of his handsome face in the

act that stirred her with a strange pity, made her own cheek hot with

sympathy, and compelled her to look at him more attentively. The back

that was turned towards her was broad-shouldered and symmetrical, and

showed a frame that seemed to require stronger nourishment than the

simple coffee and roll he had ordered and was devouring slowly. His

clothes, well made though worn, fitted him in a smart, soldier-like way,

and accentuated his decided military bearing. The singular use of his

left hand in lifting his cup made her uneasy, until a slight movement

revealed the fact that his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his

coat. He was one-armed. She turned her compassionate eyes aside, yet

lingered to make a few purchases at the counter, as he paid his bill and

walked away. But she was surprised to see that he tendered the waiter

the unexampled gratuity of a sou. Perhaps he was some eccentric

Englishman; he certainly did not look like a Frenchman.

She had quite forgotten the incident, and in the afternoon had strolled

with a few fellow pupils into the galleries of the Louvre. It was

“copying-day,” and as her friends loitered around the easels of the

different students with the easy consciousness of being themselves

“artists,” she strolled on somewhat abstractedly before them. Her own

art was too serious to permit her much sympathy with another, and in

the chatter of her companions with the young painters a certain levity

disturbed her. Suddenly she stopped. She had reached a less frequented

room; there was a single easel at one side, but the stool before it was

empty, and its late occupant was standing in a recess by the window,

with his back towards her. He had drawn a silk handkerchief from

his pocket. She recognized his square shoulders, she recognized the

handkerchief, and as he unrolled it she recognized the fragments of her

morning's breakfast as he began to eat them. It was the one-armed man.

She remained so motionless and breathless that he finished his scant

meal without noticing her, and even resumed his place before the easel

without being aware of her presence. The noise of approaching feet

gave a fresh impulse to her own, and she moved towards him. But he was

evidently accustomed to these interruptions, and worked on steadily

without turning his head. As the other footsteps passed her she was

emboldened to take a position behind him and glance at his work. It

was an architectural study of one of Canaletto's palaces. Even her

inexperienced eyes were struck with its vigor and fidelity. But she was

also conscious of a sense of disappointment. Why was he not--like the

others--copying one of the masterpieces? Becoming at last aware of

a motionless woman behind him, he rose, and with a slight gesture of

courtesy and a half-hesitating “Vous verrez mieux la, mademoiselle,”

moved to one side.

“Thank you,” said Miss Maynard in English, “but I did not want to

disturb you.”

He glanced quickly at her face for the first time. “Ah, you are

English!” he said.

“No. I am American.”

His face lightened. “So am I.”

“I thought so,” she said.

“From my bad French?”

“No. Because you did not look up to see if the woman you were polite to

was old or young.”

He smiled. “And you, mademoiselle,--you did not murmur a compliment to

the copy over the artist's back.”

She smiled, too, yet with a little pang over the bread. But she was

relieved to see that he evidently had not recognized her. “You are

modest,” she said; “you do not attempt masterpieces.”

“Oh, no! The giants like Titian and Corregio must be served with both

hands. I have only one,” he said half lightly, half sadly.

“But you have been a soldier,” she said with quick intuition.

“Not much. Only during our war,--until I was compelled to handle nothing

larger than a palette knife. Then I came home to New York, and, as I was

no use there, I came here to study.”

“I am from South Carolina,” she said quietly, with a rising color.

He put his palette down, and glanced at her black dress. “Yes,” she went

on doggedly, “my father lost all his property, and was killed in battle

with the Northerners. I am an orphan,--a pupil of the Conservatoire.” It

was never her custom to allude to her family or her lost fortunes; she

knew not why she did it now, but something impelled her to rid her mind

of it to him at once. Yet she was pained at his grave and pitying face.

“I am very sorry,” he said simply. Then, after a pause, he added, with

a gentle smile, “At all events you and I will not quarrel here under the

wings of the French eagles that shelter us both.”

“I only wanted to explain why I was alone in Paris,” she said, a little

less aggressively.

He replied by unhooking his palette, which was ingeniously fastened by a

strap over his shoulder under the missing arm, and opened a portfolio of

sketches at his side. “Perhaps they may interest you more than the

copy, which I have attempted only to get at this man's method. They are

sketches I have done here.”

There was a buttress of Notre Dame, a black arch of the Pont Neuf, part

of an old courtyard in the Faubourg St. Germain,--all very fresh and

striking. Yet, with the recollection of his poverty in her mind, she

could not help saying, “But if you copied one of those masterpieces, you

know you could sell it. There is always a demand for that work.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but these help me in my line, which is architectural

study. It is, perhaps, not very ambitious,” he added thoughtfully,

“but,” brightening up again, “I sell these sketches, too. They are quite

marketable, I assure you.”

Helen's heart sank again. She remembered now to have seen such

sketches--she doubted not they were his--in the cheap shops in the

Rue Poissoniere, ticketed at a few francs each. She was silent as he

patiently turned them over. Suddenly she uttered a little cry.

He had just uncovered a little sketch of what seemed at first sight only

a confused cluster of roof tops, dormer windows, and chimneys, level

with the sky-line. But it was bathed in the white sunshine of Paris,

against the blue sky she knew so well. There, too, were the gritty

crystals and rust of the tiles, the red, brown, and greenish mosses

of the gutters, and lower down the more vivid colors of geraniums and

pansies in flower-pots under the white dimity curtains which hid the

small panes of garret windows; yet every sordid detail touched and

transfigured with the poetry and romance of youth and genius.

“You have seen this?” she said.

“Yes; it is a study from my window. One must go high for such effects.

You would be surprised if you could see how different the air and

sunshine”--

“No,” she interrupted gently, “I HAVE seen it.”

“You?” he repeated, gazing at her curiously.

Helen ran the point of her slim finger along the sketch until it

reached a tiny dormer window in the left-hand corner, half-hidden by an

irregular chimney-stack. The curtains were closely drawn. Keeping her

finger upon the spot, she said, interrogatively, “And you saw THAT

window?”

“Yes, quite plainly. I remember it was always open, and the room seemed

empty from early morning to evening, when the curtains were drawn.”

“It is my room,” she said simply.

Their eyes met with this sudden confession of their equal poverty. “And

mine,” he said gayly, “from which this view was taken, is in the rear

and still higher up on the other street.”

They both laughed as if some singular restraint had been removed; Helen

even forgot the incident of the bread in her relief. Then they compared

notes of their experiences, of their different concierges, of their

housekeeping, of the cheap stores and the cheaper restaurants of

Paris,--except one. She told him her name, and learned that his was

Philip, or, if she pleased, Major Ostrander. Suddenly glancing at her

companions, who were ostentatiously lingering at a little distance,

she became conscious for the first time that she was talking quite

confidentially to a very handsome man, and for a brief moment wished,

she knew not why, that he had been plainer. This momentary restraint was

accented by the entrance of a lady and gentleman, rather distingue in

dress and bearing, who had stopped before them, and were eying

equally the artist, his work, and his companion with somewhat insolent

curiosity. Helen felt herself stiffening; her companion drew himself up

with soldierly rigidity. For a moment it seemed as if, under that banal

influence, they would part with ceremonious continental politeness, but

suddenly their hands met in a national handshake, and with a frank smile

they separated.

Helen rejoined her companions.

“So you have made a conquest of the recently acquired but unknown

Greek statue?” said Mademoiselle Renee lightly. “You should take up

a subscription to restore his arm, ma petite, if there is a modern

sculptor who can do it. You might suggest it to the two Russian

cognoscenti, who have been hovering around him as if they wanted to buy

him as well as his work. Madame La Princesse is rich enough to indulge

her artistic taste.”

“It is a countryman of mine,” said Helen simply.

“He certainly does not speak French,” said mademoiselle mischievously.

“Nor think it,” responded Helen with equal vivacity. Nevertheless, she

wished she had seen him alone.

She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises. But

the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing, she

drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole in the

curtain, looked over the opposite roofs. She had seen them many times

before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness, which as her

view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter's sketch, must have

been a transfigured memory of her own. Then she glanced curiously along

the line of windows level with hers. All these, however, with their

occasional revelations of the menage behind them, were also familiar to

her, but now she began to wonder which was his. A singular instinct at

last impelled her to lift her eyes. Higher in the corner house, and so

near the roof that it scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand

upright behind it, was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other

roofs, and framed in that circular opening like a vignette was the

handsome face of Major Ostrander. His eyes seemed to be turned towards

her window. Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a

friendly nod. But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn

away quickly.

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her

house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his

part. She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire. In the light

of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked;

she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to

conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality

at least for a single meal, when he said:--

“I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard.”

Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

“The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased,

however, to also stare at my work. They offered me a fabulous sum for

one or two of my sketches. It didn't seem to me quite the square thing

to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had forced to take a lot at one

fifteenth the price, so I simply referred them to him.”

“No!” said Miss Helen indignantly; “you were not so foolish?”

Ostrander laughed.

“I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted what

they saw in my portfolio.”

“Of course,” said Helen. “Why, that sketch of the housetop alone was

worth a hundred times more than what you”--She stopped; she did not like

to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, “more than what any

of those usurers would give.”

“I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,” he

said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.

She did not see him again for several days. The preparation for her

examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in her work

fully preoccupied her thoughts. She was surprised, but not disturbed, on

the day of the awards to see him among the audience of anxious parents

and relations. Miss Helen Maynard did not get the first prize, nor

yet the second; an accessit was her only award. She did not know until

afterwards that this had long been a foregone conclusion of her teachers

on account of some intrinsic defect in her voice. She did not know until

long afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion

had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him. For

she herself had been calm and collected. No one else knew how crushing

was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor

and privation a useless struggle. Yet though no longer a pupil she could

still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her

from destitution. That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her

usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on

the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge--who knew,

mon Dieu! what a beast the director of the Conservatoire was and how he

could be bribed; but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she

cried--just a little.

But what was all this to that next morning--the glorious spring morning

which bathed all the roofs of Paris with warmth and hope, rekindling

enthusiasm and ambition in the breast of youth, and gilding even much

of the sordid dirt below. It seemed quite natural that she should meet

Major Ostrander not many yards away as she sallied out. In that bright

spring sunshine and the hopeful spring of their youth they even laughed

at the previous day's disappointment. Ah! what a claque it was, after

all! For himself, he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced

Parisian girl who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the

boards of the Grand Opera than his countrywoman! The Conservatoire

settled things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world! America would

come to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy

there now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own. Of course, Paris

schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but, thank

heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from her! This and

much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly found that they were

both free for that day. Why should they not take advantage of that rare

weather and rarer opportunity to make a little suburban excursion? But

where? There was the Bois, but that was still Paris. Fontainebleau? Too

far; there were always artists sketching in the forest, and he would

like for that day to “sink the shop.” Versailles? Ah, yes! Versailles!

Thither they went. It was not new to either of them. Ostrander knew

it as an artist and as an American reader of that French historic

romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of the Oeil de

Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Petit Trianon, and the sham heroics of

a shifty court, to get to Lafayette. Helen knew it as a child who had

dodged these lessons from her patriotic father, but had enjoyed the

woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly the restaurant at the

park gates. That day they took it like a boy and girl,--with the amused,

omniscient tolerance of youth for a past so inferior to the present.

Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far

superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled

through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her

fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the

Louvre. Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the

one-armed soldier-painter!

All this was as yet free from either sentiment or passion, and was only

the frank pride of friendship. But, oddly enough, their mere presence

and companionship seemed to excite in others that tenderness they had

not yet felt themselves. Family groups watched the handsome pair in

their innocent confidences, and, with French exuberant recognition of

sentiment, thought them the incarnation of Love. Something in

their manifest equality of condition kept even the vainest and

most susceptible of spectators from attempted rivalry or cynical

interruption. And when at last they dropped side by side on a sun-warmed

stone bench on the terrace, and Helen, inclining her brown head towards

her companion, informed him of the difficulty she had experienced in

getting gumbo soup, rice and chicken, corn cakes, or any of her favorite

home dishes in Paris, an exhausted but gallant boulevardier rose from a

contiguous bench, and, politely lifting his hat to the handsome couple,

turned slowly away from what he believed were tender confidences he

would not permit himself to hear.

But the shadow of the trees began to lengthen, casting broad bars across

the alle, and the sun sank lower to the level of their eyes. They were

quite surprised, on looking around a few moments later, to discover that

the gardens were quite deserted, and Ostrander, on consulting his watch,

found that they had just lost a train which the other pleasure-seekers

had evidently availed themselves of. No matter; there was another train

an hour later; they could still linger for a few moments in the brief

sunset and then dine at the local restaurant before they left. They both

laughed at their forgetfulness, and then, without knowing why, suddenly

lapsed into silence. A faint wind blew in their faces and trilled the

thin leaves above their heads. Nothing else moved. The long windows

of the palace in that sunset light seemed to glisten again with the

incendiary fires of the Revolution, and then went out blankly and

abruptly. The two companions felt that they possessed the terrace and

all its memories as completely as the shadows who had lived and died

there.

“I am so glad we have had this day together,” said the painter, with

a very conscious breaking of the silence, “for I am leaving Paris

to-morrow.”

Helen raised her eyes quickly to his.

“For a few days only,” he continued. “My Russian customers--perhaps I

ought to say my patrons--have given me a commission to make a study of

an old chateau which the princess lately bought.”

A swift recollection of her fellow pupil's raillery regarding the

princess's possible attitude towards the painter came over her and gave

a strange artificiality to her response.

“I suppose you will enjoy it very much,” she said dryly.

“No,” he returned with the frankness that she had lacked. “I'd much

rather stay in Paris, but,” he added with a faint smile, “it's a

question of money, and that is not to be despised. Yet I--I--somehow

feel that I am deserting you,--leaving you here all alone in Paris.”

“I've been all alone for four years,” she said, with a bitterness she

had never felt before, “and I suppose I'm accustomed to it.”

Nevertheless she leaned a little forward, with her fawn-colored lashes

dropped over her eyes, which were bent upon the ground and the point

of the parasol she was holding with her little gloved hands between her

knees. He wondered why she did not look up; he did not know that it

was partly because there were tears in her eyes and partly for another

reason. As she had leaned forward his arm had quite unconsciously moved

along the back of the bench where her shoulders had rested, and she

could not have resumed her position except in his half embrace.