CHAPTER XXVI.

THE LAST ACT OF PART ONE.

Mrs. Wood’s supper, prepared with so much care, was near being spoiled,

it waited so long for Craig and Alice, who did not reach the house until

after six o’clock. To Craig it did not matter what he ate. Nothing

mattered except Alice, with whom he grew more and more in love each

moment he spent with her. Of the farmhouse and its appointments he

scarcely thought at all except as a kind of Elysium which held his

divinity. Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Mary he knew were plain country people,

but they belonged to Alice and so belonged to him and he once caught

himself about to address Mrs. Wood as Aunt Mary in the familiar

conversation which ensued after supper was over and he had made his

errand known. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wood were insensible to the good

fortune which had come to Alice, and though it would be hard parting

with her they did not withhold their consent and accepted Craig readily

as their future nephew.

All preliminaries were settled as far as they could be until Craig saw

his mother, and the next morning he left Rocky Point, promising to come

again within a few days and saying he should stop in Ridgefield with the

news. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were just sitting down to their tea when Craig

walked in upon them and unceremoniously drew up to the table in spite of

Mrs. Taylor’s protestations that he must not till she brought down the

silver forks and got him a china plate. At the farm house he had not

thought whether he was eating from the choicest Dresden or the coarsest

of delft, and it made no difference here. The light of a great happiness

was in his heart and after supper was over and he was alone with his

host and hostess he said to them laughingly, “Guess what I have done.”

“I know. You let me tell,” Uncle Zach exclaimed, waving his hand towards

his wife, who was about to speak. “You have offered yourself to Miss

Alice. Ain’t I right?”

“Yes, and she has accepted,” Craig replied.

“My boy, I congratulate you. Yes, sir, I do, and I’m most as pleased as

I should be if it was I instead of you,” Uncle Zach exclaimed.

“Zacheus, I’m ashamed of you,—putting yourself in Mr. Mason’s place, and

you an old married man,” Mrs. Taylor said reprovingly, but her husband

did not see the point, and answered her, “There’s nothin’ to be ashamed

of, if I be a married man. I’ve been through the mill and know all about

it and I am glad for ’em. When is it to be?”

“Some time in May,” Craig said, “and you and Mrs. Taylor are to attend

the wedding.”

This diverted Zacheus’s thoughts into another channel, and after Craig

left the next morning he began to wonder if he ought not to have a dress

coat for the occasion and if the tailor in town could make it, or should

he buy it in Worcester. He finally decided upon the tailor in town and

drove him wild with his directions and suggestions and fears that it

would not be right.

“I want it O. K., the finest of broadcloth and made up to snuff,” he

said, and he went every day to see how it was progressing.

Uncle Zacheus in a dress suit was something of a novelty and the tailor

could not repress a smile when it was finished and tried on for the last

time, with a cutaway vest to show the shirt front in which there was to

be a breast pin at the wedding.

“I look kinder droll and I don’t feel nateral,” Uncle Zacheus said,

examining himself in the long glass. “Why, I ain’t much bigger than Tom

Thumb. Funny that a swaller tail makes you look so little. I wonder what

Dot will think. She’s havin’ a gown made in Worcester,—plum colored

satin, with lace.”

Dot, who had never taken kindly to the dress suit, told him he looked

like a fool and advised him to wear the coat he was accustomed to wear

to church.

“Not by a long shot. I guess I know what is what, and I ain’t goin’ to

mortify Craig and Miss Alice,” he said, and his suit was put carefully

away in a dressing case, ready for the wedding, which occurred the first

of May.

Craig would not wait any longer, and when Alice urged her lack of outfit

as one reason for delay he argued that a dress to be married in was all

she needed. They were going directly to Paris, where she could shop to

her heart’s content with his mother to assist her. No day in early

spring could be finer than the day when Craig and Alice were married

very quietly, with only a few of the neighbors present. Mrs. Mason and

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had come the day before, as the wedding was to take

place at 12 o’clock. Mrs. Mason stopped at the hotel with Craig, while

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were entertained at the farm house, where Uncle Zach

made himself perfectly at home and almost master of ceremonies. He had

brought his dress suit and long before the hour for the ceremony

appeared in it, greatly to the amusement of Craig and Alice, who were

glad he wore it he was so proud and so happy that he had beaten the

crowd in their Prince Alberts and cutaways. There were a few presents

from some of Alice’s scholars and immediate friends; a costly bracelet

from Helen, whose letter of congratulations rang true and hearty, and

from Mrs. Tracy the diamond pin which had belonged with the ear-rings

and which Helen had left at home, as she did not care for it.

“I am pleased to be rid of it,” Mrs. Tracy wrote. “It is a constant

reminder of my disgrace, from which I have not recovered and never

shall. I am glad for you to have it and glad for you to have Craig,

too.”

She had invited the party to stop with her during the few days they were

to stay in the city before the Celtic sailed, and had urged her

invitation so warmly that they accepted and left for New York on the

afternoon train. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor spent another night in Rocky Point

and then returned to the Prospect House, where Uncle Zach was never

tired talking of the wedding and showing his dress suit,——“the only one

there, if you’ll believe it; even Craig wore a common coat. Curis,

wasn’t it,” he said to an acquaintance, who prided himself on being

frank and outspoken, no matter how much the frankness hurt.

“Not curious at all,” he said. “People don’t wear swallow tails to

morning weddings. They are reserved for evening. You were quite out of

style.”

“You don’t say so,” Uncle Zach replied, his countenance falling as it

began to dawn upon him that he might have made a mistake, “Dot will

know,” he thought, and after a while he went to her and said, “John

Dickson says they don’t wear swallers to mornin’ weddin’s. Did I make a

fool of myself?”

Mrs. Taylor was out of sorts with some kitchen trouble and answered

sharply: “Of course you did. I knew it all the time, when nobody else,

not even Craig, wore one.”

This hurt worse than John Dickson’s words had done.

“I felt so fine and looked so foolish. What must Craig and Alice and

Miss Mason have thought of me?” he said to himself. “Yes, I was a

fool,—a dum fool, and I looked like a fool in ’em. Dot said so, she

knows, and I’ll never wear ’em again. I’ll put ’em out of sight, where

nobody can see the old man’s folly, and mabby, bimeby, when they send a

box to the heathen, I’ll put ’em in. Pity to have ’em et with moths when

they cost so much, and only wore once.”

He carried them to the attic,—gave one long regretful look at them and

packed them away in the hair trunk with Taylor’s Tavern and Johnny’s

blanket.

A few days later there came a line from Alice written on board the ship.

The next day there was a letter from Helen, telling of her house and the

dinners and lunches and receptions she was attending and giving. She

spoke also of Jeff, who was doing well in school, and of Mark, the best

husband in the world.

“I’m glad on’t,” Uncle Zach said, as Dot read the letter to him. “It

seems as if they was my children, Alice and Craig, Mark and Helen, and

Jeff. I’m glad they are so happy.”

Mrs. Taylor had not her husband’s hopeful nature. If the sun shone

bright in the morning she wanted to see what the weather was at noon

before admitting that it was fine, and now she answered, “Wait a few

years and see what happens.”

“I shan’t wait. I’m glad they are happy now,” Uncle Zach replied,

resolutely keeping his eyes on the present, and never dreaming of the

drama which the future was to unroll and in which his so called children

were to take an active part.

END OF PART I.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

FANNY AND ROY.

The October sun was shining brightly into the windows of a handsome

drawing room in New York, where two young people were talking earnestly

together. The girl was scarcely twenty and looked younger. She was short

and slight and dainty and sweet, with beautiful blue eyes which laughed

when she laughed and gave a wonderful brightness to her face. There was

something peculiar in their expression which was rapid and searching and

made the young man beside her wonder if what they saw in him boded good

or ill to his suit. He was twenty-two, tall and straight and broad

shouldered, with something in his voice and features and manner which

reminded one of the July morning twenty-three years before when Craig

Mason sat on the north piazza of the Prospect House and talked to Alice

Tracy. To one who had been in Ridgefield that summer there would have

come back the scent of the new mown hay and the perfume of the white

pond lilies Alice wore in her belt, and in the young man’s eyes he would

have seen a likeness to Alice’s eyes, with thicker lashes and heavier

brows.

After this the reader scarcely need be told that the young man was the

son of Craig and Alice, born abroad where his parents had spent much of

their time since their marriage, with occasional visits to America.

Alice had been delighted with the old world, and as Craig’s health was

better there they had staid on and on,—sometimes in Paris where their

son Roy was born, sometimes in Switzerland, sometimes in Italy, and once

for a winter in Cairo, and again in London, where Craig’s mother died.

They had brought her back to Boston, and tired of wandering with no

particular home, had decided to settle down quietly for a time at least.

But not in the house Craig had looked at for himself and Helen. Nothing

could have induced him to take that at any price. He preferred his

mother’s old home, which, if not in so fashionable a part of the city,

was dear to him for its associations with his boyhood and manhood and

mother. Here they had lived for three years, two of which Roy had spent

at Harvard, where he had entered as a Junior, studying hard in order to

be graduated with honor, and still managing to join in a good many

athletic sports and to fall in love with his pretty half cousin, Fanny

Prescott, a pupil in a private school. She had thought him a boy at

first and played with and teased him unmercifully, now sending him from

her in a rage and then luring him back with a trick of her eyes which we

have seen before. She had not inherited all her mother’s dazzling beauty

and but little of her nature. In her frankness and perfect truthfulness

she resembled Alice. Her Sundays when at school had been spent with the

Masons, and thus Roy had every facility for falling in love with her.

But while she kept him at fever heat with her innocent coquetries she

gave him no encouragement. Once, when he said, “I must and will speak

seriously to you,” she called him a big boy and told him to wait till he

had his diploma and a mustache. He had them both now; the mustache was a

very small one, which some might think did not add to his face. The

diploma, received in June, was _en regle_, and he had come for the

serious talk.

He had not seen her since May, at which time she had been called home by

the sudden illness and death of her father, Judge Prescott. As it was so

near the close of the term she had not returned to school, but had spent

the summer with her mother at a quiet place among the Adirondacks. She

did not know that he was coming but was glad to see him, and led him to

a sofa on which they both sat down. Then her manner changed suddenly to

one of shyness and almost shamefacedness as she moved away from him and

put a sofa cushion between them. She was in mourning for her father and

the black brought out the purity of her complexion and the brightness of

her eyes which filled with tears when Roy spoke of her father and his

grief when he heard he was dead.

“Don’t talk of him. I can’t bear it yet. Talk of something else,

please,” she said, and Roy plunged at once into the object of his visit,

reminding her that he had his diploma and his mustache, and now he

wanted her love.

“Oh, Roy, it’s too bad in you to spoil our good times as friends. As

lovers we might quarrel, and then we are cousins,” she said.

“Only seconds, which does not count,” Roy answered, moving nearer to

her, while she put another cushion between them so that only her

shoulders and head were visible.

Roy was of a more ardent nature than his father, and there was no

stiffness or hesitancy in his wooing when once he was fairly under way.

“You can pile up the cushions till I can’t see you at all,” he said,

“but it will not prevent you from hearing me tell you that I love you

and have ever since I saw you in short dresses, with your hair down your

back.”

For a time Fanny listened with her face bent down, and when she turned

it to him there was a troubled look upon it and her lips quivered as she

said, “I do care for you, Roy, and always have; but I must not any more.

You will not want me to either when you know what I do.”

“What do you know?” he asked, beginning to slide his hand under the

cushions.

“Have you never heard anything bad about me or mother?” she asked, and

Roy answered, with so sudden a movement that one of the cushions fell to

the floor.

“Bad about you, or your mother? Never. I would have thrashed any one who

insinuated anything against you. What do you mean?”

“I am not Fanny Prescott,” the girl said with a sob in her voice.

“The deuce you are not! Who are you, then, if you are not your father’s

daughter?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “I am my father’s daughter, but

my father was not Judge Prescott, as I thought. I never knew it till he

died last May. Mother had to tell me then on account of some business

matters and it almost broke my heart, I was so fond of him and so proud

of being his daughter and he was so kind to me. I held his hand when he

died and kissed him and called him father and didn’t suspect the truth.

I don’t think you will care for me when you know all. I have always

heard the Masons were very proud.”

“And I have always heard the Tracys were very proud. Greek meeting

Greek, you see,” Roy rejoined. “But go ahead. Let’s hear the story.

Nothing can ever change my love for you. Who are you? Who was your

father?”

“Have you ever heard of the Prospect House in Ridgefield, Mass.?” Fanny

asked, and Roy answered briskly, “I guess I have. It was there father

met my mother, twenty-three years ago. I had heard piles about it and

the funny little landlord before I went there this last summer with

father and mother. We had a fancy to drive through the country, stopping

where night overtook us, and the second day we reached the Prospect

House, which looks rather old fashioned beside the fine hotel which has

been built on the Common. I wanted to stop there but nothing could keep

father from the Prospect House, and I was glad we went there. I wish you

could see the landlord, Uncle Zach they call him. He is an old man with

such a fat body and short legs and round good natured face, and what do

you think he called his wife?”

Fanny could not guess, and Roy continued, “Dot, and Dotty, and I’ll bet

she weighs two hundred, and is nearer eighty than seventy. Think of

calling her Dotty! There is love of the right sort, isn’t it? But I

shall love you just as well when you weigh three hundred and are ninety,

as I do now.”

His hand had gotten quite under the cushion and had one of Fanny’s.

“You hurt,” she said, as he gave it a hard squeeze. “And you must not

hold it either. You don’t know at all who I am. Did they mention Mark

Hilton at the Prospect House?”

“Why, yes, I think they did,” Roy said slowly, as if trying to recall

something which had slipped his memory. “Father and mother and Mr. and

Mrs. Taylor were talking and I heard that name I am sure. When I joined

them they stopped suddenly, as if they did not care to continue the

conversation. Who was he, anyway? Some scamp?”

“He was my father,” Fanny said defiantly.

“Your father! Great Scott, why didn’t you say so?” Roy exclaimed.

“You needn’t swear if he was my father,” Fanny answered, beginning to

cry.

The second cushion had followed the first to the floor by this time and

Roy had his arm around Fanny, to whom he said, “Don’t cry. Great Scott

isn’t a swear. I only said it because I must say something. What of Mark

Hilton?”

“He was clerk at the Prospect House, and none the worse for that. The

Vanderbilts and Astors and a lot more people did not have as good a

beginning,” Fanny said, and Roy replied, “Of course not. Very few of us

can boast of high-toned beginnings. My great-grandfather was a

carpenter.”

“Pho!” Fanny said, with a laugh which had not much mirth in it. “I can

beat that on a grandmother when I get to her. I don’t think a carpenter

at all bad.”

“Neither do I,” Roy said, “and I don’t care if your father was a tinker.

Tell me about him.”

“You see, it was this way,” Fanny began. “My mother was at the hotel the

same summer with your father and mother. Mr. Hilton was very handsome

and very tall and very nice. I know he was nice,” and she emphasized her

words with sundry nods of her head as a warning that she was not to be

disputed.

“Of course he was nice, or he couldn’t have been your father,” Roy said,

and Fanny continued, “Mother, you know, is very handsome now. She was

beautiful then,—a belle and an heiress and a great catch. She’d had I

don’t know how many offers, fifty maybe, and she has a book with all

their names in it. I tried to have her show it to me once and she

wouldn’t. She keeps it to remind her of other days when she feels

depressed. Grandma Tracy thought she ought to marry the President, or

somebody like him, but she loved my father and the same as eloped with

him. She came to New York in the morning on an errand. He came in the

evening and they were married the next day. Grandma wouldn’t forgive

them, or see my mother until after she was divorced. I think that word

has a bad sound, and I am ashamed of it, but I am telling you everything

just as I made mother tell me. I was ill for weeks after it, and thought

everybody who looked at me was thinking about it.”

“What a foolish little girl,” Roy said, trying to pull her head down

upon his shoulder. “Lots of people are divorced and nothing is thought

of it. It is quite the fashion.”

“I don’t care if they are,” Fanny replied. “I think it is wicked, and

told mother so. Don’t hold my head down. I am going to keep it up as

long as I can. By and by I shall want to hang it so low,—oh, so low!”

“Not on account of a divorce,” Roy said, and Fanny rejoined, “That isn’t

all; there is something a great deal worse. Father and mother went to

Chicago and were very happy for a while,—then not so happy, and then not

happy at all. Mother says she was more to blame than he. She liked

attention and had it, and that made him jealous, and she used to tell

him that she stooped when she married him, and taunted him with what I’m

going to tell you about by and by. I was six months old and don’t

remember it of course,—their quarrelling. I mean. He loved me, I know.”

“I am sure he did,” Roy interrupted her, giving her at the same time a

squeeze which she did not seem to notice, she was so absorbed in her

story.

“Once mother told him she wished he would go away and never come back,

and he did go, and never came back. There was a boy living with

them,—Jefferson Wilkes, in whom my father was interested and who had

come to them from the Prospect House. Jeff, they called him, and he went

with my father. After a while mother instituted proceedings for a

divorce on the ground of desertion and incompatibility and psychological

repulsion. Do you know what that is?”

“I know what it isn’t,” Roy said, kissing the face which began to look

very pitiful as the story progressed.

“Mother knew where father was for a time and sent him a copy of the

divorce. He replied, ‘I congratulate you on your freedom. You will not

have any trouble in filling my place. You are young enough and handsome

enough to have twenty-two more offers. Jeff and I are off for the mines

in Montana. Tell the baby, when she is old enough to understand, that,

bad as I was, I loved her. Mark Hilton.’

“I was ill with diphtheria when mother received the note,—so ill that

the papers, when commenting on the divorce, said that I was dead. Six

months later mother saw an account of a terrible accident in some mines

in Montana. In the list of killed was my father’s name, but there was no

mention of Jeff. Mother tried to learn the particulars, but could not,

and after a while she came back to New York deserted, divorced and

widowed, but still very beautiful. We lived with grandma, a proud old

lady, who had never received my father. She is dead now and I do not

remember her. Among mother’s friends was Judge Prescott, whom she used

to know, and who, I think, wanted her before she married my father. When

I was two and a half years old she married him and at his request I took

his name. I was christened Frances, but he did not like that name and I

was called Fanny to please him. I like it better than Frances, don’t

you?”

Roy would have liked any name which belonged to her and said so, while

she continued: “You were in Europe when all this happened and knew

nothing about it as you are not much older than I am.”

“Two years,” Roy said, kissing her again, while she tried to disengage

herself from him, but could not, for a lock of her hair had become

frightfully entangled in a button of his coat.

It took some time to disentangle it and Fanny was obliged to lie quietly

upon Roy’s arm, with her face upturned to him so temptingly that not to

kiss it occasionally was impossible for one of his temperament.

“Roy Mason!” she exclaimed, “You must not kiss and squeeze me the way

you are doing, and I not able to get away, with my hair all snarled up

in your buttons. It is mean in you, and I’ll call mother if you don’t

stop. I believe she is in the next room, listening, perhaps.”

“Let her listen. She was young once,” Roy said, going on very

deliberately, while Fanny, from necessity, lay passive on his arm.

When the hair business was settled she moved away from him, and picking

up a cushion put it between them again.

“I was telling you about Judge Prescott, whom I called my father,

although now I have a faint recollection of a time when there was no

gentleman in our house,” she said. “When he died mother told me

everything. I don’t think she meant to tell me the whole dreadful story,

but she gave some hints and I would not let her stop. I said I’d go to

Ridgefield and inquire, and so she had to tell me, and if there is more

to know I do not care to hear it. I feel now as if my life had been all

a lie. Fanny Prescott, indeed! When I am really Fanny Hilton, and that

is not the worst of it. Stop, Roy! You shall _not_ touch me again till

I’m through,” she said, as Roy’s arm came over the cushion toward her

hand.

“Did you ever hear of a haunted house in Ridgefield, where a woman in a

white gown and blue ribbons walks at night and a drowning man calls for

’Tina. That’s the woman’s name, and she sat still and let him drown, and

a baby cries at all hours for its mother? That is ’Tina,

too,—who—who—was hung!”

“By Jove, that’s a corker for a story!” Roy replied. “I never heard of

it before, but I like haunted houses, with women in white and blue

ribbons and cries for ’Tina, who was hung! Tell me about it, and what it

has to do with you.”

In as few words as possible Fanny told the story of the Dalton tragedy

as she had heard it from her mother, while Roy listened with absorbing

interest.

“What do you think now of the great-great-granddaughter of ’Tina?” Fanny

asked when the story was ended.

“I think her the sweetest, dearest little girl in all the world, and do

not care a continental for the woman in white and blue ribbons, or the

haunted house. You say there is only a cellar hole there now and that it

belongs to you or your mother,” Roy answered, throwing the cushion half

way across the room and putting both arms around Fanny, who was crying,

but who sat very still while he went on, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do

when we are married. We will build a pretty cottage there,—a real up to

date one, with bay windows and wide piazzas and give ’Tina a chance to

perambulate under cover rainy nights. You say she takes such times to

walk in preference to pleasant weather. I should think that white dress

would be rather frayed and draggled and the blue ribbons slimpsy by this

time.”

He was making light of the matter and a load was lifted from Fanny’s

heart, for she had dreaded telling him the story which had weighed so

heavily upon her since she heard it.

“It is so kind in you, Roy, not to care about that hanging,” she said.

“I have felt the rope around my neck so many times and have dreamed that

I was ’Tina. I must look like her. She was blue eyed and fair-haired and

small, just like me, who am not a bit like mother. Her grave is in the

Ridgefield cemetery, ’Tina’s I mean, and mother sat there on the wall

right by it when father told her the story. He didn’t keep anything

back, and held his head just as high when he said, ‘My great-grandmother

was hung.’ His grandfather was the baby who cried for its mother. I’ve

heard that, too, when I have been awake in the night and been so sorry

for it. Mother says my father was very tall and fine looking, and that I

have some of his ways with my eyes and hands. I have dreamed of him so

often since she told me, and sometimes it seems to me he is not dead.

There is no proof except that notice in the paper and a letter mother

had from the mines saying some of the bodies were so crushed they could

not be recognized, and as my father was known to be in the mine and

never seen again, it was highly probable he was dead. Oh, if I could

find him! I think you’d better hunt for him than to be building a

cottage to keep ’Tina from the rain!”

She spoke lightly now. Roy evidently didn’t care and the tragedy which

had cast so dark a shadow on her life when she heard of it began to

lessen in its proportions.

“I hear mother,” she said at last. “I thought she was in the next room,

but she is a little deaf. I don’t believe she has heard all the foolish

things you have said to me. Mother, here is Roy,” she continued, as the

heavy portieres parted and her mother stood before her.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. PRESCOTT.

Naturally twenty-three years had changed her somewhat. The freshness and

grace of youth were gone, with much of her brilliant complexion. Her

dark hair was sprinkled with grey, and her eyes had lost some of the

sparkle which had lured so many suitors to her side, but she was a very

beautiful woman still, whom strangers looked at a second time, inquiring

who she was. She had at first rebelled against wearing widow’s weeds,

but when she saw how becoming they were to her she became quite

reconciled to her mourning and was beginning to feel reconciled to her

widowhood, which gave her the freedom she had not enjoyed since her

second marriage. She had paid a full penalty for her heartless act and

had repented of her folly. There had been a year of so of perfect

happiness with Mark Hilton and then the restraints of married life began

to weary her. It had been her boast that because her husband knew her so

well he could never find fault with her, and there she was mistaken.

He was fond of her and proud of her and glad to see her admired as long

as the admiration was unsought, but when with the little arts she knew

so well she tried to attract attention his jealousy was aroused, and

gradually there came to be stormy scenes between them,—bitter quarrels

when things were said on both sides which it was hard to forget. Finding

that with all his apparent unconcern he was sore on the subject of his

antecedents Helen used that as a lash and often reminded him of the

difference in their social positions and the depth to which she stooped

when she married him. Then they quarreled more fiercely than ever and

the baby was made the instrument of goading Mark to madness. That it had

a drop of blood in its veins which could be traced back to a scaffold

was often a source of regret with Helen coupled with a wish that she had

married Craig Mason instead of throwing herself away on a hotel clerk,

with no family connections. Mark was not naturally bad-tempered; neither

was Helen. They were simply wholly unsuited to each other. They had

married in haste, trampling upon the rights and happiness of Craig Mason

without remorse, and as a natural sequence reaped the consequence of

their sin.

At last, after a sharp altercation in which Helen expressed a wish that

she had never seen her husband, he left her, taking Jeff with him and

leaving a note saying he should not return as he was tired of the life

he was living. Urged on by her mother, who had never accepted Mark as a

son-in-law, a divorce was easily obtained and Helen free from the tie

which had become so distasteful to her. Chancing to know that Mark was

in Denver she sent him a copy of the divorce and received in return the

note of which Fanny had told Roy. After that she knew no more of him

until she heard of a terrible explosion in some mine in Montana. Among

the killed was Mark Hilton’s name. Then in an agony of remorse she tried

to verify the report. What she learned was that none of the bodies could

be identified, they were so bruised and burned. Mark was known to have

been in the mine and never seen after. Of Jeff nothing was known. He

might, or might not, have been in the mine. In all human probability

Mark was dead, and the divorce, of which she did not like to think, need

not have been obtained. She was free without it and always spoke of

herself to her friends as a widow, although she wore no black. If any of

her old tenderness for Mark Hilton returned to her at times she gave no

sign and was outwardly unchanged, except that she was very quiet and

shunned society rather than courted it.

At her mother’s request she returned to her home in New York and there

at last met again the Walter Prescott whose name had been in her blue

book as her possible husband before she met Craig Mason. In some

respects he was like Craig, undemonstrative, caring little for society

and much for books. He had never forgotten Helen and soon fell again

under her spell. He knew of her divorce and would rather it had not

been, but her beauty conquered him and she became his wife and mistress

of one of the finest establishments in New York. With Judge Prescott,

whom she respected and feared, she lived very comfortably. He was not a

man to tolerate any nonsense. His wife, like Caesar’s, must be above

reproach, and from the first he was master of the situation.

Helen was very fond of Fanny, who was as unlike her as it was possible

for a child to be unlike its mother. “She has not a feature like me, nor

like her father, either, unless it is something in the expression of her

eyes and the gesture of her hands,” she often thought, as she studied

Fanny’s face and wondered where she got her blue eyes and fair hair and

the delicacy of her complexion and form. “I believe she gets it a

hundred years back from ’Tina,” she sometimes said, and then for a while

rebelled against the heritage she had given her lovely daughter. “She

shall never know of it,” she thought, and kept it to herself until Judge

Prescott’s death, when it seemed necessary to tell Fanny of her real

father.

Seizing upon something inadvertently spoken, Fanny, who was persistent

and determined, never rested until she knew the whole story as her

mother knew it. Over the father killed in the mines she wept bitterly,

while the tragedy filled her with horror and for a time she refused to

see anyone lest they should read in her face the secret which was making

her life miserable. She had been so proud of being a Prescott and proud

of her supposed father that it was hard to find herself suddenly

stranded with no father, no name of which to boast, and she had dreamed

many a night of the scaffold and of ’Tina, whom she was sure she

resembled. “What will Roy say when he knows,” had been in her thoughts

all the long summer while she was with her mother in the quiet mountain

resort. That Roy loved her she knew and that he would sometime tell her

so she was sure. “And when he does I must tell him everything and he

will not care for me any more,” she thought. He had declared his love.

She had told him everything, and he did not care; he could even jest

about ’Tina and talk of a cottage to shield her from the weather. The

revulsion of feeling was great, and Fanny’s face was radiant with

happiness, when Mrs. Prescott appeared suddenly in the door.

With a mother’s intuition Mrs. Prescott had foreseen the probable result

of Roy’s intimacy with her daughter, and nothing could please her more

than to see Fanny his wife and connected with the Mason family.

Consequently when she entered the room and saw Fanny’s confusion and

Roy’s exultation she guessed the truth and was prepared to hear all Roy

had to say, as in a straight-forward, manly way he told her what his

wishes were and asked her consent.

“Has she told you everything?” Mrs. Prescott said. “Your parents know it

all, of course. They were a part of the drama played that summer which

seems to me ages ago. Nor can I realize that I am the person who was

guilty of that heartless escapade.”

She was thinking of Craig Mason, while Fanny, who knew nothing of that

page in her mother’s life, thought only of her father, and said, “Oh,

mother, you are not sorry you married my father? You can’t be, if you

love me. Where would I have been if you hadn’t married him? He was nice,

I know he was.”

The brave little girl, who was fighting down all her pride of family and

birth, would be loyal to the father she had never known and it touched

her mother closely.

“I was thinking of the way I married him,” she said, sitting down by

Fanny and smoothing her hair, which was still a good deal disordered

from contact with Roy’s buttons and coatsleeves. “One always regrets the

foolishness of youth which might have been avoided.”

Turning now to Roy she continued, “When I married Judge Prescott it was

his wish that Fanny should take his name, and mine to forget the past so

far as possible. Your parents were abroad, but I wrote asking them to be

reticent on the matter.”

“And they have been,” Roy answered quickly. “I never heard of Mr. Hilton

until to-day; nor of his grandmother; nor do I care how many he had, nor

how they died. I dare say half of mine ought to have been hung, if the

truth were known. That has nothing to do with my love for Fanny. I want

her, and right off, too,—the sooner the better. Father and mother knew

my business here. I talked it all over with them and they would rather

have Fanny for a daughter than anyone they know. When can I take her?”

He was very impetuous, and Mrs. Prescott could not repress a sigh as she

looked at his flushed, eager face and remembered her own youth so far in

the past.

“You can have my daughter,” she said, “but not yet. She is not quite

twenty and you are only twenty-two, both children in experience. You

must wait a year at least; that will soon pass. I cannot spend another

winter in this climate. I have tried Florida and do not like it, and

have decided upon California, and Fanny will go with me. In June or July

we shall visit the Yosemite, and when we return home it will be time to

think of bridal festivities.”

She was very firm, as she usually was when her mind was made up. All

summer she had been planning this trip to California, intending, either

on her way there, or on her return, to visit the mines in Montana where

Mark had met his death. She would not like to admit to anyone the great

desire she had to see some of the people who had known him and, if

possible, to learn what had become of Jeff. For a brief space of time

she had loved Mark passionately, and she always thought of him now with

regret for the bitter things she had said to him. He had once told her

there was in him, about equally balanced, the making of an angel or a

devil, and a woman’s hand would turn the scale. She had turned it and

sent him to destruction, and the widow’s weeds she wore were almost as

much for Mark Hilton as for the courtly Judge Prescott. Sometimes in her

sleep she heard Mark’s voice calling to her from beyond the Rockies and

bidding her come to him with their child. Again she sat with him in the

ghost-haunted room in Ridgefield and promised to prove false to the vows

made to Craig only the night before. On such occasions she would wake

suddenly, bathed with perspiration and thank God it was all a dream. She

did not wish Mark back. Their paths diverged more widely now than when

they separated. It was her treatment of him which she regretted, and her

many sleepless nights and restless days had undermined her health, until

a change was necessary. She must go to California and Roy must wait for

his bride until another year.

“Why can’t I go with you? You need some man to take care of you,

especially in the Yosemite, where the brigands are so thick that the

stages are stopped every few days,” Roy said.

But Mrs. Prescott was not afraid of the brigands, and didn’t need a man

as an escort, and Roy was compelled to acquiesce in waiting a year,

which seemed to him as endless. Mrs. Prescott promised to bring Fanny to

Boston before leaving for California, and with this to comfort him he

left New York the following day, anxious to carry the glad news of his

engagement to his father and mother. He made very short work of it.

“I have asked Fanny to be my wife, and she has consented,” he said. “She

is not Fanny Prescott at all, but Fanny Hilton. I know all about it,

’Tina and all, and don’t care.”

Craig and Alice did not care, either. To them it was an old story nearly

forgotten, and they congratulated their son and at once forwarded a

letter to Helen inviting her and Fanny to spend Thanksgiving with them.

CHAPTER III.

ANCESTRY.

It was a large dinner party assembled on Thanksgiving day to do honor to

the little bride-elect, who bore herself with great dignity when the

engagement was announced and congratulations heaped upon her and Roy.

She would have liked to have been known by her real name, Hilton, but

her mother objected, and as neither Roy nor his parents saw the

necessity for the explanation it would involve she yielded to their

judgment and was Fanny Prescott, as she had always been. Her mother

could only stay for a few days in Boston, and on the morning of her

departure Fanny said to Roy, who was to accompany them, “Let’s stop at

Ridgefield over a train. I want to see where father used to live. Mother

can go on without us. Will you?”

Roy was willing, and when the village ’bus in Ridgefield went up the

hill from the 10 o’clock train it carried two young people who were

looking about them as curiously as people were looking at them.

Ridgefield had not grown much within twenty-three years, but there had

been some changes. An electric car now connected it with Worcester and

the intermediate towns and this gave it a thriftier appearance. A few

houses had been added in the side streets and a new and large hotel

built on the Common. In front of this the driver stopped, while a smart

clerk came hurrying out.

“Not here. Take us to the Prospect House,” Roy said.

The clerk looked surprised as he turned on his heel, while the driver

whipped up his horses, wondering why such swells, as his passengers

undoubtedly were, should prefer the Prospect House to the Tremont. But

it was none of his business, and he was soon at the Prospect House,

which looked rather shabby and uninviting, with an air of neglect

everywhere visible. The Tremont had killed it, and in his old age Uncle

Zacheus had little heart to compete with his rival. A few boarders still

clung to him, but transients were very rare, and when Roy and Fanny

alighted from the ’bus and came up the walk he was greatly excited and

called loudly to Dot to hurry up as somebody was coming. His welcome was

cheery, as of old, as he advanced to meet the young couple.

“Glad to see you; yes, I be. Want a room? For one, or two? just married,

ain’t you?” he said, not remembering Roy at all in his flurry.

“No, oh no!” Fanny exclaimed, blushing crimson. “We are not married, and

have only stopped over a train to see where father used to live. I am

Mark Hilton’s daughter, and I want you to show me his room and his

office and everything, and then we are going to the cellar hole and the

grave, and everywhere.”

Uncle Zacheus was at first too astonished to speak and stared

open-mouthed at the girl whose blue eyes fascinated and confused him,

they were so bright and large and clear, and seemed to take in

everything at once within their vision. His wife, who had stopped to

slip on a clean white apron and smooth her hair before going to receive

her guests, now appeared on the scene, and, at sight of her, Uncle Zach

recovered his speech so far as to give vent to his usual ejaculation.

“Wall, I’ll be dumbed! Yes, I will!” he said, advancing toward Fanny and

offering his hand.

For an instant she drew back. She had not expected what she found.

Everything was so different from her life that it was hard to associate

her father with this place and this queer little man making so free with

her. A look from Roy reassured her and she gave her hand to Mr. Taylor,

who nearly crushed it before he let go his hold. Roy was explaining now

and talking to Mrs. Taylor, who remembered him having been there with

his father and mother, and finally succeeded in conveying that fact to

her husband’s rather hazy mind.

“Don’t I remember them young folks who was here a few years ago? Wall, I

guess I do, and this is their boy and girl? I don’t understand it,” he

said; then, as it began to dawn upon him more clearly, he continued,

addressing himself to Fanny, “I know now; you are Mark’s girl, but you

don’t look like him, unless it’s some trick with your eyes,—nor like

your mother, neither. Who are you like, I wonder?”

He was scanning her very closely, and without at all considering what

she was saying, Fanny answered him: “Perhaps I am like father’s

great-grandmother, ’Tina. Did you ever see her?”

“Bless my soul, child; how old do you take me to be?” and Uncle Zach

burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m only eighty-three, and Miss

Dalton,—that’s ’Tina,—has been dead a hundred and twenty years; but I

believe you _are_ like her. They say she was han’som’ as a picter, with

blue eyes and yaller hair and clingin’ ways.”

Fanny was not particularly pleased to have her resemblance to ’Tina

discussed, and Roy, who wished to change the conversation, said

abruptly, “Can we go into the office where Mr. Hilton used to spend his

time?”

“Certainly, and all over the house, too,” Mr. Taylor replied, leading

the way to the office, where Fanny examined everything and sat in every

chair and looked over the register of years ago which was brought out

for her to see.

Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast

on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to

bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal

of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You

must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man

ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick.

Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead.

No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes,

marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but

’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house

so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the

office; here ’tis.”

He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at

which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her

mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and

stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to

keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what

her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother

had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her.

Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the

carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air

from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she

was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw

it on that November day, was not at all to her taste.

“Now, let’s go to the ruin and the grave,” she said to Roy, who shrugged

his shoulders, thinking he was bound on a rather gruesome business.

“I shall have to ask the way to both places, as I believe they lie in

different directions,” he said, and turning to Mr. Taylor he began to

make inquiries as to the best way of reaching the Dalton ruin and the

cemetery and where to find ’Tina’s grave.

“Want to see that suller?” Uncle Zacheus exclaimed. “Why, all the

timbers has fell in and there’s nothin’ left but a hole. I wonder it

hain’t been sold afore now, though nobody wants it, there’s so much

stuff told to this day about the ghost. They say she carries a candle

now. In my opinion she’s enough to do repentin’, without spookin’ round

where she used to live. I beg your pardon, Miss Hilton. I forgot I was

speakin’ of your grandmarm, who lived more than a hundred years before

you,” he said to Fanny, who was pale to her lips.

She knew he meant no harm and tried to smile, but it was a pitiful kind

of smile, which made Roy’s heart ache for her.

“Poor little Fan,” he said, when they were out in the street. “This is a

hard day for you. Hadn’t you better give up the ruin?”

“No;” she said resolutely. “I want to see what my father called his

ancestral hall. It was there he asked mother to marry him. I made her

tell me all about it. They sat on an old settee, and there were rats in

the room. Oh, this must be where we turn, and there is the curb to the

well they threw him in,” she added, as they reached the lane which led

to the ruin.

When walking through the village Fanny had kept apart from Roy, but now

she clung closely to him as they went down the road till they came to

what was once the front entrance to the house. Window frames, door

posts, heavy joists and portions of the roof lay piled together, with

the dried remnants of the last summer’s weeds showing among the debris.

The day was not cold for November, but the sky was leaden and there was

a feeling of rain in the air. The trees were bare and the dead leaves

lay in the path, or were piled against the fence and wall. There was no

place to sit down and Fanny would not have sat if there had been. She

was in a kind of dream, going over in imagination the events of more

than a century ago. At last Roy brought her back to reality by kicking

at a part of what might have been a pier to the wall and which, giving

way, went crashing down into the cellar.

“What a pile of rubbish and what a place for ’Tina to promenade! I don’t

wonder she brings a candle. She would certainly break her neck in the

dark if it had not already been broken,” he said, without a thought as

to how the last of his remark sounded.

But Fanny thought, and with a plaintive cry said to him, “Oh, Roy, how

can you joke about my grandmother? You’d feel differently if she were

yours.”

“She is mine,” Roy replied, “or is going to be, and what I said about

her neck was rather mean. Honestly, though, Fan, you are too morbid over

an affair which everybody has forgotten and for which you are in no way

responsible. Let’s get away from here.”

“Wait till I’ve looked in the well,” Fanny replied.

She went to the well and leaning over the curb looked down, shuddering

at the thought of a human body struggling there and calling for help.

“I am ready now for the grave,” she said, when her investigation of the

well was finished.

“Must we go there?” Roy asked, rather dubiously.

“Yes, we must. I owe it to father. They are his people and mine,” Fanny

answered, and the two retraced their steps through the village to the

Prospect House, where Uncle Zach stood on the piazza and said to them,

“Dotty’s getting dinner ready for you when you come back from the

cemetry. Turn to your right and foller close to the wall clear down to

the corner. They’re sunk in some, I guess.”

They found the graves without any difficulty, but, as Mr. Taylor had

said, they were sunken and neglected. No one had cared for them since

Mark went away. The grass around them was never cut and now lay in dry

clumps upon them. The rose bush Mark had planted was dead and a huge

burdock stood in its place. The headstones were weather-beaten and

discolored, and that of ’Tina had partially fallen over. Fanny went down

upon the ground and read the name “Christine Dalton.” There was nothing

to tell where she was born or where she died, and in her nervous, morbid

state Fanny found herself pitying the woman who had gone to her grave

dishonored and despised.

“Nobody ever shed a tear for you, I dare say, but I will,” she said, and

sitting upon the stone where her mother had sat with Mark Hilton when he

told her the story of ’Tina, she began to cry very low to herself, so

that Roy might not hear and laugh at her. “Where is he?” she said, when

she had paid sufficient respect to ’Tina, and looking up, missed him

from her side.

She saw him at last in the distance standing near the monument of Gen.

Allen, and his loud call came to her across the rows of graves which

intervened.

“I say, Fan, ar’n’t you some connection to Gen. George Allen, who served

in the Revolutionary War, was wounded at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, and

did a lot more things, and died regretted by friend and foe?”

She did not answer, and he continued, “Come away from that damp,

lonesome place. I got chilly there myself. Come up here and visit

another ancestor, who, perhaps, wasn’t any more respectable than those

you are mooning over, but he has a stunner for a monument and an

obituary as long as my arm.”

Fanny was getting tired and cold, and went up the slope to where Roy was

waiting for her.

“Yes, that is mother’s grandfather,” she said, rather cheerfully, as she

looked at the monument and read the inscription upon it.

There was some difference between this costly stone and well-kept

enclosure where a number of Allens were lying and the sunken, neglected

graves under the shadow of the wall, and Fanny felt the difference, and

her spirits began to rise in the vicinity of the Allens, who represented

the aristocracy of the cemetery. Both belonged to her, the grand

monument and the sunken graves, the Allens and the Daltons,—but the

Allens were the nearest of kin,—they were like what she was born to and

had been accustomed to all her life and she felt a thrill of pride on

reading the eulogy on her great-grandfather, who had rendered such

service to his country and been so highly esteemed by his

fellow-citizens.

“Good blood there, of the bluest kind,” Roy said, teasingly. “It ought

to make amends for forty ’Tinas.” Then, as the shrill whistle from the

shoe shop came echoing across the fields, he continued: “Twelve o’clock;

time we were going, if you have seen enough of your ancestors. I’m

getting hungry.”

He was very practical and led Fanny so adroitly from what he called “an

ancestral fit” that she was quite herself by the time they reached the

Prospect House. Mrs. Taylor had prepared a most appetizing dinner for

them, which she served upon a small round table placed near a window and

the stove, where they could have both warmth and light. All her best

things were on duty and Fanny, who found the dinner excellent, began to

change her mind with regard to the hotel. In the summer it must be very

pleasant, especially on the broad piazzas, and perhaps she should come

again, she said to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, as she bade them good bye.

“Bless you, child, I hope you will,” Uncle Zacheus replied, holding her

hand and trying to keep back his tears which his wife told him he

needn’t shed so often unless he had softening of the brain, of which

they were signs. “It is good for my old eyes to see young people. There

don’t many come since they built the big stone tavern on the Common. I

began to run down when Mark went away. A good feller, that, and I cry

when I think of him dead. I can’t help it if ’tis sign of soff’nin’. I

remember the old days when Mark and your mother and this young man’s

father and mother was here and the house was full of young voices and

courtin’ and love-makin’ from mornin’ till night. Your young man,—I know

he is yourn by the way he looks at you,—has a good face like his father

and mother. You’ll be happy with him, and he’ll be happy with you. Your

face ain’t like nobody’s, but makes me think of some flower that is ever

so sweet and lovely and modest,—I can’t remember the name. ’Tain’t a

rose, nor a pink, nor a piney.”

Roy laughed, and suggested, “Lily of the Valley.”

“I swan, that’s it. Lily of the Valley,” Uncle Zach returned, and

continued, “I s’pose I must say good bye and God bless you and make you

happy. Good bye.”

He turned to leave them, when Fanny took his hand again,—the one her

mother had kissed years ago—and pressed her lips upon it just as Helen

had done.

“I’ll surely come again,” she said, and then hurried away, for it was

getting near train time and they were going to walk.

That kiss was too much for Uncle Zach. Softening of the brain or no

softening of the brain he must cry, and he did, while his wife derided

him for his weakness.

“I shall cry if I want to,” he said, evincing considerable spirit for

him. “I never told you of it, but her mother kissed my hand three and

twenty years ago when she went away and I’ve never seen her since, and

never shall, nor this little girl, neither. She will come, maybe, but I

shan’t be here. I’m wearin’ out. There’s more ails me than sofnin’ of

the brain. I’m old,—most eighty-four. I’m slippin’ away from you, Dotty,

and from the places I love so well.”

Here his feelings so overcame him that he cried like a child, while his

wife, touched by the sight of his tears, tried to comfort him.

“No you ain’t slippin’ away,” she said. “You’ll see ’em again. You are

good for ten years more, and so am I, and I am seventy-eight. Wipe up,

there’s somebody comin’.”

He wiped up, and under the combined effects of a traveller who wanted

dinner and Dotty’s assurance of ten years longer lease of life he was

quite cheerful until he heard the rumble of the train which was to take

Roy and Fanny away. Then a sense of loneliness came over him again and

he kept whispering to himself, “Good bye, good bye, Mark’s gal and

Craig’s boy. I shall never see you again. Good bye.”

CHAPTER IV.

INEZ.

Mrs. Prescott had spent the winter in Southern California, and some time

in April was registered at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, with her

daughter and maid. As her meals were served in her private parlor and

she seldom stopped in the public reception room, she saw none of the

guests of the house, except a few New Yorkers who were stopping there.

Fanny, on the contrary, saw everybody, and flitted through the hotel

like a sunbeam, with a pleasant word for those she knew and a smile for

those she did not know. Her mother sometimes tried to restrain her from

being so free with people, telling her that since she had heard of the

circumstances of her birth she had developed a most plebeian taste.

“If I have it _tastes_ good,” Fanny would answer, laughingly, “and I am

a great deal happier in liking people and having them like me than I was

when I felt that the world was made for me and only a select few had a

right to share it with me.”

She was very happy and enjoyed everything thoroughly. Time was passing

and only a few months remained before her return to Roy, who wrote her

nearly every day. In his last letter he told her he had been to

Ridgefield.

“I was in Worcester,” he wrote, “and I took the electric, for I wanted

to see Uncle Zach again. He is a case, isn’t he? He had the rheumatism

and can scarcely walk. Poor old man! He cried when he spoke of the days

when our parents were there making love to each other. He was quite

poetic in his lamentations. ‘No more matin’ of birds, here,’ he said.

‘They’ve all flew off to the Tremont House, leavin’ me nothin’ but some

_dum_ English sparrers.’ He talked a great deal of your father and a boy

Jeff. Said he didn’t believe he was dead, and he should be perfectly

happy if he were with him again, turnin’ summersaults! That would be

funny, as Jeff, if living, must be over thirty. Of course I visited your

property, which, if possible, looks more dilapidated than when we were

there last November. It has quite a fascination for me, and I really

mean, with your permission, and your mother’s, to build a cottage there,

where we can spend a few weeks every summer.

“When do you go to the Yosemite? Do you know I have a queer feeling

about that trip and am half inclined to take it with you. I have just

seen a chap who two years ago last summer was waylaid by robbers. He

says it’s not an uncommon thing for the stage to be stopped. His

experience was a bad one. Two ladies fainted from sheer fright and one

of them was robbed while unconscious. A strange feature of this robbery

was that the watch taken from the fainting woman and which had her name

engraved upon it was sent to her by mail to the hotel where she was

stopping. Most of the money taken was also returned to the owners who

could least afford to lose it. A queer thing for marauders to do, and

shows that they are habitues of the neighborhood and have facilities for

learning the names and position of those whom they plunder. I hope you

will not meet with an adventure of this kind.”

On the morning when Fanny received this letter she was sitting by the

window of one of the parlors in the hotel, reading it a second time, and

feeling a little nervous with regard to the stage robberies of which she

had heard something in San Francisco. A Firemen’s Parade was passing,

with all the paraphernalia of bands and hose carts and boys and a crowd

generally, but she paid no attention to it until a clear, musical voice,

with a slight accent, said to her, “Pretty, isn’t it, Miss Prescott; and

isn’t father grand in his new suit? That’s he,—the tall man who bowed to

me when I kissed my hand to him. He is foreman of one of the companies.”

Surprised at being so familiarly addressed by a stranger, Fanny looked

up and saw standing by the next window a young girl whom she had seen

several times in the halls and corridors and wondered who she was. She

was tall and well proportioned. Her features were regular, her eyes dark

and lustrous and veiled under very long lashes and surmounted by heavy

brows which made them seem darker than they were. Her complexion was a

rich olive, telling of a southern sun which must have warmed the blood

of one or both of her parents. There was nothing impertinent in her

manner. It was simply friendly, and Fanny, who was longing for some

young person to speak to, answered pleasantly, “How did you know my

name?”

“Oh, everybody knows that,” the girl replied, “and if they didn’t they

have only to look on the register. I saw you the day you came and have

watched you ever since when I had a chance and I wanted to speak to you

so badly. I don’t know why, only I did. It seemed to me I should like

you, and I know so few young girls. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken

to you, but you don’t mind, do you?”

She was so frank and unsophisticated and her face was so pretty and

pleasant that Fanny had no thought of being offended. She had been told

by her mother never to talk with strangers and especially to the class

to which this girl belonged. But Fanny usually talked to whom she

pleased and as she attracted this strange girl so the girl attracted and

fascinated her.

“Sit down, please, and tell me your name, inasmuch as you know mine,”

she said.

The girl sat down and folded her hands just as Fanny had a trick of

folding hers. There was this difference, however,—the girl’s hands were

large and brown,—helpful hands, used to toil,—while Fanny’s were soft

and white and dimpled like a baby’s. The girl was not at all averse to

talking of herself and said, “I am Inez Rayborne. My father is an

American. My mother was half Mexican, half Spanish,—with a little Gypsy

blood in her. She used to call me Gypsy because I love the mountains and

rocks and woods so much. Father married her near Santa Barbara, and her

name was _Anita_. Isn’t that a pretty name?”

Fanny said it was, and Inez went on: “She was a little bit of a body

whom father could take up and set on his shoulder. He is big and tall,

and I am big, too. I wish I was small like mother and you. Mother is

dead, and I have been so lonely since she died.”

Her eyes filled with tears which hung on her lashes as she continued:

“Our home is in the Yosemite, not far from Inspiration Point, and

perched on the hillside above the stage road, with a lovely view of the

valley and the mountains. We call it Prospect Cottage and in winter we

shut it up and come to the city. Before mother died we went sometimes to

Santa Barbara, sometimes to Los Angeles. Now we come here and I help the

housekeeper in part payment for my board. Father helps round the hotel,

and Tom, too, when he is here.”

“Who is Tom?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Oh, he is Tom and has

lived with us since I can remember, and is like a son to father. In the

summer, when the hotels in the valley are full of visitors, they

sometimes go on trails as guides with the people. Again they are off on

some business, seeing to exchange of property, which keeps them away for

days. Then I am so lonesome and afraid, too, if there is a robbery on

the road. I have a splendid dog, Nero, to take care of me. He is young,

but very large. He is here with us. Maybe you have noticed him lying in

the office or the hall.”

Fanny had seen a big dog around the hotel and had patted his head, for

she was fond of dogs, but she was more interested now in what Inez said

of a robbery.

“Do you mean stage robberies, and are they of frequent occurrence?” she

asked.

“Sometimes, and sometimes not,” was Inez’s answer. “There was a dreadful

one just before mother died, and I think the fright killed her. She had

heart trouble and was here to-day, gone to-morrow. We were alone, and

when the stage passed in the afternoon a neighbor who was on it came and

told us how dreadful it was, with two ladies fainting and children

crying and the highwaymen taking the watch of the woman who lay like one

dead. He sent it back to her at the hotel, and the money to the others.

Wasn’t that queer?”

Fanny was thinking of what Roy had written her and exclaimed, “I have

heard of that.”

“You have!” Inez rejoined. “Well, the papers were full of it, and people

were determined to catch the men, if possible. Mother was very nervous

over it, but I never thought of her dying. We always said our prayers

together, and that night she prayed that the men might be caught and the

wicked work stopped. She seemed the same when she kissed me good night,

but when I went into her room in the morning she could not speak. Father

had come home late and was caring for her, rubbing her hands and arms,

which had in them no power to move. ‘Was it the fright of the robbery?’

I said to father, who nodded, while she tried to speak and her eyes

followed him in such a beseeching way. ‘Do you want to tell us

something?’ I said. She nodded and made a motion to write. I brought her

pencil and paper, but her nerveless hands could not hold the pencil and

she died looking up at father so pitifully. He was so tender and kind to

her, and cried over her like a baby, and himself put her in the coffin.

It was such a little coffin I didn’t realize till I saw it how small she

was. We buried her on the hill back of our house where the light from

our windows can shine upon her grave when we are there in the summer. In

the winter it must be awful with the snow piled so high and all of us

gone. Father was almost crazy for a while and walked the floor and sat

by her grave and wouldn’t eat. He staid home the rest of the season and

Tom staid, too, most of the time. There were no more stages robbed that

summer, and not many last summer; three or four at the most, and it so

happens that I am always alone with Nero. Of course no harm can come to

me but I feel nervous just the same.”

Inez was talking very earnestly and rapidly, and her language was so

good that Fanny felt sure she must have had better advantages than were

to be had among the mountains and asked her at last where she was

educated.

“I am not educated as you are,” Inez replied. “I was at school in

Stockton two years and have been to school winters in Santa Barbara and

here. The rest I learned from father and mother. She had been in a

convent and taught me Spanish;—that was her language. She spoke English

brokenly, but so prettily. Tom brings me books to read and I know all

about the east where father is to take me some day when we are able to

stop at first-class hotels as guests. I am afraid, though, it will be a

long time before we go. Father’s business is not always very good.”

“What did you say it was?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Exchange of

property. I don’t know what that means, exactly, and when I asked Tom he

said I hadn’t brain enough to understand it, if he explained. He likes

to tease me.”

There was beginning to dawn upon Fanny a suspicion of the relation in

which Tom stood to Inez, but she made no comment, and Inez continued: “I

wish you knew father, he is so handsome for a man nearly fifty, and so

kind to everybody. They worship him in the Yosemite and depend upon him

a great deal. When a stage has been robbed he always gives his services

to find the robbers. They have caught one or two who are in prison now,

but they can get no clew to the men who have been such a terror to the

neighborhood.”

“Oh,” Fanny gasped, “you frighten me so. Mother and I are going to the

Yosemite in June and I should die if the stage I was in was stopped.”

“I shouldn’t,” Inez replied. “I have been on the road with father a good

many times and nothing happened, but if there did I shouldn’t be afraid.

I’d fly at the robber and try to kill him. Father laughs when I talk

that way and says there is murder in my Gypsy blood. Perhaps there is.

Any way I would not hesitate to kill a man who was robbing a coach. I’d

shoot him like a dog.”

Her mood had changed as she talked. The softness had left her eyes which

blazed and flashed defiantly, and she took a turn or two across the room

as if she were in fancy battling with some desperado.

“Don’t look so fierce. You scare me,” Fanny said, when Inez came back

and resumed her chair.

“Do I? I cannot tell you how I feel when I think of the bandits who make

our beautiful valley a dread to tourists who visit it. But they may not

be there at all this summer. Don’t worry about them. Leave your

valuables here, especially your diamonds, if you have any. Then, if you

are held up you have not so much to lose. If I knew when you were coming

I believe I’d meet you in Milton, where you take the stage, or have

father do it. He isn’t afraid. He goes home to-morrow or next day. Tom

has already gone. I go in two or three weeks. You must come to our

cottage. It is lovely.”

Inez’s face was a very changeable one, now grave and serious and sad,

then sunny and sweet, with a smile which changed its whole expression.

Like most communicative people she was very inquisitive, and having told

all there was to tell about herself she asked Fanny about herself, her

home in New York, and how old she was. “I am seventeen,” she said.

“And I am twenty. I thought you older,” Fanny replied, in some surprise.

“So does every one, because I am so tall and big, like my father. Where

is _your_ father?” Inez asked.

“He is dead,” Fanny replied, thinking of both Mark Hilton and Judge

Prescott.

“Oh, I am so sorry for you; but you have a mother, and mine is lying

among the hills,” Inez said, beginning to talk again of her home and her

hope that Fanny would visit her when she came to the valley. “You

_must_,” she continued. “I want you to see our cottage and mother’s

grave, and father and Nero and everything. If you will let me see your

mother I will ask her for you. People nearly always do what I wish them

to.”

Fanny could not promise for her mother. To her Inez was a frank,

simple-hearted girl, a little too forward, perhaps, but this came of her

surrounding circumstances and not from any innate ill-breeding. Mrs.

Prescott would probably think differently.

“Mother is something of an invalid and does not usually see strangers,

but I will tell her of you,” Fanny said, and as a maid just then came to

say lunch was ready she bade her good morning and left the parlor.

The acquaintance thus begun ripened into intimacy as the days went by,

and the two girls saw each other often. Mistress and maid, a casual

observer might have thought them, they were so unlike; the one, slight

and fair as a lily and clad in garments of the latest style, with every

mark of culture and refinement; the other, tall and strongly built, with

a freedom of manner which betokened a child of the mountains rather than

of the city, and a face singular in its beauty, and eyes wonderful in

their varying expression, from a softness under their veiled lids,

amounting almost to sleepiness, to gleams of passion which told of a

strong nature which, when aroused, was equal to acts of daring from

which Fanny in her timidity would have shrunk appalled. Inez took Fanny

on frequent walks through the city which she knew so well and where so

many seemed to know her. At first Mrs. Prescott objected to her

daughter’s intimacy with one who, in her estimation, was little more

than a peasant girl. But Fanny was not to be shaken from her allegiance,

and after some inquiries of the housekeeper with regard to Inez Mrs.

Prescott ceased to object to Fanny’s being so much with her.

“But don’t bring her in here. Why should I see her?” she said, when

Fanny asked that Inez might be presented.

“Because I want you know her, and see if you can tell what makes me feel

so when I am with her.”

“Bring her, then,” Mrs. Prescott said, one day, “but don’t let her stay

long. My head aches and I am tired.”

That afternoon Fanny went out with her maid on an errand, saying to Inez

as she left the hotel, “When I come back I am going to take you to

mother.”

For a while Inez waited patiently, watching for Fanny’s return. To call

upon Mrs. Prescott was a great event in her life and something of which

to tell her father and Tom when she got home. In the housekeeper’s room

and from the servants and some of the guests whom she knew, she had

heard a great deal of Mrs. Prescott, who was said to be fabulously

wealthy, and had such costly diamonds and wore such pretty negligées in

the morning and such beautiful dresses to dinner, although there was no

one but her daughter at table with her. Occasionally she had caught a

glimpse of the lady on the rare occasions when she went to drive, but

she was always so closely veiled that it was impossible to tell how she

looked. Now, however, Inez was to see her, and she grew very impatient

at Fanny’s protracted absence.

“Maybe she has come and I didn’t know it. I mean to go up and see,” she

thought, as the clock struck four and there was no sign of Fanny.

Going up to Mrs. Prescott’s rooms she stole softly to the door, which

was partly open. Fanny was not there, but she heard a sound as of some

one in pain. Mrs. Prescott had complained of a headache all day and

after Fanny and her maid went out it grew so much worse that she dropped

the shades and lay down upon the couch, hoping to sleep. But the pain

which was of a neuralgic nature increased so fast that she at last

uttered the moan which Inez heard. Her first impulse was to go in at

once; then, knowing this was not the thing to do, she knocked twice and

receiving no answer ventured in. Mrs. Prescott, who was lying with her

eyes closed, did not know she was there until she said, “Are you sick,

and can I do anything for you?”

The voice was singularly sweet, with a tone in it which brought to Mrs.

Prescott’s mind vague memories of woods and hills and sunshine on a

river and pond where the white lilies grew and where in her giddiness

and pain she seemed for a moment to be sailing away into the shadow of

the willows which drooped over the water. Just where the woods and hills

and river were was not clear to her, and the picture passed as soon as

it came. Looking up she saw a young girl standing by her couch, plainly

attired in a gingham dress and white apron, with a fancy silk

handkerchief knotted around her neck.

“One of the chambermaids,” she thought and answered “There’s nothing you

can do unless you rub my head. It aches very hard. Are you on this

floor?”

Inez looked a little puzzled and replied, “On this floor? No; I room

with the housekeeper. I am Inez,—Miss Prescott’s friend.”

“Oh!” and Mrs. Prescott’s eyes opened wide and a slight frown contracted

her brow at what she thought an undue familiarity.

But something in Inez’s face disarmed her and brought back the picture

of the woods and hills and river, with herself younger and happier than

she was now. Before she could reply, Inez continued: “I used to rub

mother’s head when it ached and she said it helped her. Father says I

have a great deal of magnetism in my hands. I take it from him. Let me

try.”

She knelt on the floor as she talked and began to manipulate Mrs.

Prescott’s temples, which thrilled at once to the touch of her fingers.

“You are doing me good,” Mrs. Prescott said, lying very still while Inez

smoothed her hair and rubbed her forehead and talked in her low, musical

voice of her dead mother and what she used to do for her.

Mrs. Prescott listened until she had a pretty accurate knowledge of

_Anita_ and her grave among the hills and the cottage among the rocks

and Inez’s handsome father. Then, as the pain in her head grew less,

there came over her a feeling of restfulness and quiet. Inez’s voice was

like the murmur of a brook she had heard somewhere. The leafy woods and

hills and river were all blended together. Inez’s face, like something

she had seen before, looked at her through the mist which was stealing

over her senses and when Fanny came in she found her mother sleeping

quietly, with Inez sitting by her and fanning her. After that Mrs.

Prescott made no objection to her daughter’s intimacy with Inez.

“Yes, she is very nice, with something charming in her voice and manner.

It is her Spanish blood, I think,” she said to Fanny, “but, of course,

she is wholly untrained and knows nothing of the world. You could not

have her for an associate in New York, but here it does not matter. Mrs.

Ward, the housekeeper, tells me she is perfectly correct in her morals,

and her father is highly respectable,—rather superior to his class which

accounts for some things in Inez. I do not know that I shall object to

your spending a day or so with her when we are in the Yosemite. I shall

try and secure the services of her father as guide, if I go on any of

the trails. They say he is exceptionally good.”

This was said a few days after Inez had left for her mountain home and

Fanny was expressing a wish to visit her. The trip was planned for the

middle of June, and Fanny, who had become greatly attached to Inez, was

looking forward to meeting her again with nearly as much pleasure as to

the Yosemite itself.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE YOSEMITE.

The Yosemite stage which left the Milton station on the afternoon of

June 15, 18—, was full of passengers, all eagerly discussing an attempt

made the day before to rob the coach between China Camp and Priest’s. A

tall, powerfully built fellow had sprung out from behind a clump of

trees as the stage was slowly ascending a long hill, and ordered the

frightened inmates to hold up their hands. This they did at once, with

no thought of resistance, and he was about to relieve them of whatever

valuables they had on their persons, when a young man who was sitting on

the box with the driver, sprang to the ground and confronting the

ruffian with a revolver compelled him to retreat and sent after him a

shot or two, which, however, went wide of the mark. Mr. Hardy, the hero

of the exploit, was well known in Stockton and the country generally and

was among the passengers that afternoon. Naturally he was plied with

questions with regard to the incident and asked how he dared attack the

desperado.

“I don’t know myself how I dared,” he replied. “It was so sudden that at

first I whispered to the driver, ‘Go on; lick the horses, go on!’ He was

shaking like a leaf,—teeth actually chattered. Then it came to me what

muffs we were to sit there quietly and be robbed, and without another

thought I sprang at the man, almost landing on his head. Of the rest I

remember nothing until my hands were being shaken and women were crying

and thanking me as their deliverer. I only wish my shot had brought him

down. It was Long John, no doubt, and his companion is pretty sure to

turn up soon. I’d like to meet him.”

He did not seem at all averse to talking, and the passengers listened

breathlessly, conscious of a feeling of security as long as he was with

them. Among those who seemed the most interested and anxious was Fanny

Prescott, who sat on the same seat with the hero, and had grown very

pale as his story progressed.

“Oh, mother,” she said at last, “what if that dreadful man should attack

us! What should we do? I wish we had left our diamonds in San Francisco.

I don’t believe, though, he could find them. They are—”

A touch on the elbow from her mother kept her from finishing a remark

which elicited a smile from her companions. For a moment Mr. Hardy

looked at her and then said, “If your diamonds are very valuable it

would have been wise to have left them in safe keeping, but I do not

anticipate any danger on this trip. The attempt of yesterday is too

recent to be repeated so soon. The whole neighborhood is looking for the

robbers, who are probably hiding in the woods.”

For the rest of the afternoon the conversation was of the men who were

the terror of the road between Milton and the valley. The older of the

two was said to be tall, the other short, and as they had been heard to

address each other as John and Dick, they were usually spoken of as Long

John and Little Dick, and so daring and sudden were their movements and

so seldom did they fail to execute their purpose that the mention of

their names was sufficient to fill the stoutest heart with fear. Of the

two Dick was the one most dreaded. He was so rapid in his movements,

sometimes seeming to spring from the ground, again to drop from the

trees and leap in the air like an athlete and doing his work so swiftly

that the people scarcely knew what was happening until it was over and

he was leaving them. Two or three times efforts had been made to rob the

express box, but either the robbers were in too great a hurry, or the

box had baffled their efforts, for the attempt had been abandoned and

the attention of the bandits given to the passengers. No bodily injury

had ever been done to any one, and in a few instances when some woman or

old man had complained that all they had was taken from them, their

purses had been tossed back to them by Dick, who would lift his hat

gracefully and with a bound leave as quickly and mysteriously as he

came. Long John was more deliberate, but stronger, and that Mr. Hardy

single handed had put him to flight seemed incredible, and he was

lionized and made much of, and the wish expressed by the passengers that

he should go on to the valley, as with him they felt secure. At Chinese

Camp, where they were to pass the night, he left them, with the

assurance that, judging from the past they had nothing to fear from the

marauders.

“I wish you were going with us. I feel so safe with you,” Fanny said to

him when she stood for a moment alone with him in the narrow, dimly

lighted hall.

She was standing directly under the hanging lamp, which showed her face

pale with anxiety and fear.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, in a tone such as he would use to soothe a

frightened child. “I know the habits of the wretches, and would almost

stake my life against their molesting you on the trip to the valley.

There may be more danger when you leave it. Better take the other road

to Clarke’s. It is safer and pleasanter, and, one word of caution, don’t

talk about your diamonds and where you keep them. You came near telling

in the coach.”

“I know I did,” Fanny replied, “but I will remember in the future and I

thank you so much for your advice. Good bye.”

She saw he was anxious to leave her and offered him her hand, which

looked very small and white as it lay in his broad palm. For an instant

his fingers closed over it with something like a slight pressure and his

face was a study, as if two sets of feelings were contending in his mind

with an equal chance for the mastery.

Dropping her hand he said, “Are your diamonds very valuable?”

“Yes,” Fanny answered quickly. “They are worth thousands of dollars and

are sewed up in the ribbon bows of my hat. I don’t believe they would

think of looking there. Do you?”

He laughed a hearty, ringing laugh, and when Fanny looked inquiringly at

him he said, “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t help it. I thought you were

not to tell where your diamonds were, and you have told _me_! But, never

mind, you are safe. Good bye. I think we may meet again.”

He bowed and left the hotel, while Fanny joined her mother in the small

room allotted them. There had been a long discussion between them as to

the disposition of the diamonds during their absence from San Francisco.

Remembering what Inez had said Fanny wished to put them in a safe

deposit company’s vault while her mother insisted upon taking them with

her. She didn’t know about San Francisco. If it were New York it would

be different, and she wanted them with her. She was one of those nervous

women who feel that nothing is safe unless they can see it. Her baggage

was always taken to the hotel and to her room, if she was only to pass

the night. She knew then where it was, and the diamonds must go with her

to the Yosemite. She had left most of them in New York at Tiffany’s, and

only had with her a small cluster pin, her rings and Fanny’s, and her

large pear-shaped ear-rings,—the heirlooms which Mark Hilton had taken

with him when he left Ridgefield and which were to be Fanny’s on her

wedding day. After devising various places of concealment, Fanny finally

decided to sew the diamonds in the knots of heavy ribbon on her hat,

where their safety could be ascertained at any moment. This done, Mrs.

Prescott felt quite secure and listened composedly to all that was said

of the robbers. She had only brought money enough for the trip, and

unknown to any one a part of that was twisted up in her back hair. She

had nothing to lose or fear, and she slept soundly in her small quarters

at Chinese Camp. Fanny, on the contrary, could not sleep and sat by the

open window looking out into the night starting at every sound and

wishing Mr. Hardy had not left them. She was not superstitious, but felt

oppressed with a feeling of impending danger and wished many times that

she was safely back in San Francisco.

At a very early hour in the morning the stage started, for there was

many a mile of rocks and hills between the Camp and the valley, and the

sleepy passengers shivering in the cool morning air took their seats,

wondering what would befall them before the day was over. Nor were they

in any degree reassured when, as they were ascending a long hill the

driver suddenly stopped and announced to them, “This is where they had

the hold-up and that the clump of trees the robber was behind.”

Involuntarily Fanny’s hand went up to her hat while the passengers

shrank into their seats as if to escape a danger. Then, remembering

there was none they looked curiously at the spot and two or three

alighted and walked around the trees trying to conjecture just where the

brigand stood before he made his appearance at the horses’ heads.

“If it had been the little one instead of the big one he wouldn’t have

been drove off so easy. I tell you Dick is a terror. Why, they say he

can jump straight up and land in the coach, or the box, either. Must

have been a circus rider,” the driver said, while every passenger

breathed a prayer to be delivered from the terrible Dick.

As long as they were in the open country they felt safe, but the moment

they came near to ledges and woods they fancied a robber behind every

tree and rock and were glad when as night was closing in they began to

descend into the valley under the shadow of old Capitan and into a

region of fertility and civilization. As soon as Mrs. Prescott was

settled in her small room, which had once been a bathroom, and in which

she declared she could neither breathe nor sleep, she made inquiries for

Mr. Rayborne, the guide, as she wished to secure his services for

herself and daughter whenever they went on trails:

“That is, if he is really as good as I heard he was in San Francisco,”

she said to the landlord, who replied, “There’s none better in the

valley. No, nor so good either. You see he’s a gentleman, and people

like that, but I doubt if he is home. He has not been round the hotel

for a week. His cottage is two or three miles from here. I’ll send and

inquire.”

“And please,” Fanny began, “will your messenger take a note for me to

Miss Rayborne. Do you know her?”

“Know Inez! I rather think we do,” the landlord replied. “Everybody

knows Inez; the wild rose of the valley, we call her. I knew her mother,

too,—a pretty little woman,—went off like a flash. Heart trouble they

said. The whole neighborhood turned out to her funeral, visitors and

all. The hill was black with ’em. John,—that is Mr. Rayborne,—has never

been quite the same man since.”

He was inclined to be very talkative, but Fanny was in a hurry to write

to Inez and finally left him in the middle of a sentence. When the

messenger returned he brought a note for her from Inez, who wrote: “I am

delighted to know you are in the valley, and sorry father is not here to

guide you on the trails. Perhaps he will come before you leave. I am so

lonely with only Nero for company. I thought of you when that robbery

occurred and was glad you were not on the road. I have something to tell

you about it when I see you. Father came home that night, but Tom has

not been here since. I expect him in a few days. Write me when to come

for you. Inez.”

Mrs. Prescott was a good deal disappointed that she could not have Mr.

Rayborne for a guide, and because she could not she did not go on a

single trail. As she cared little for scenery and there were but few

people at the hotel of what she called her set she was ready to leave at

any time.

“Not till I have made my visit to Inez,” Fanny said, and after they had

been at the hotel a week it was arranged that she should spend a day

with her friend and be taken up the next morning by the stage which was

to pass the cottage and leave the valley by way of Inspiration Point.

CHAPTER VI.

AT PROSPECT COTTAGE.

It was one of the loveliest of all the summer days in the Yosemite when

Inez drove up to the hotel in a buggy which had seen a good deal of

service and was not like anything Fanny had ever ridden in. But she did

not care. She was delighted to see Inez, who appeared at her best on her

native heath and received the warm greetings of those who knew her with

the grace and dignity of a young queen. Mrs. Prescott was invited to

accompany Fanny, but declined, and the two girls set off alone for

Prospect Cottage. Inez was very happy.

“I am so glad to have this little bit of you,” she said, giving a

squeeze to Fanny’s hand and then dropping it again. “And we will have

such a good time to-day all by ourselves. I haven’t much to do. I was up

at four o’clock to get my work done, baking and all, and have made a lot

of things I think you will like. One is huckleberry pie.”

Fanny had never seen one, but was sure she should like it, and anything

else Inez chose to give her.

“It won’t be like the hotel, nor your New York home,” Inez said, “I do

everything myself and oh, isn’t it lovely here among the mountains with

this pure air which makes me feel so strong as if I should live

forever.”

She was very enthusiastic and Fanny, who also felt the invigorating

effects of the atmosphere, entered into her enthusiasm and enjoyed

everything, from the wild flowers they stopped to gather, to the musical

brook, which went singing along in its rocky bed beside the carriage

road.

“This is our house,” Inez said at last, pointing to a cottage in a niche

of the hills behind some trees which partially hid it from the highway

which was below it at a little distance.

An immense dog came out to meet them, frisking about the buggy and

barking his welcome.

“That’s Nero. You saw him at the hotel,” Inez said. “I leave him at home

to watch the house when I go away. Good Nero, down, down,” she

continued, as she alighted from the buggy and the dog sprang upon her,

trying to lick her face.

“Please go right in; the door is open. I leave it so, with Nero. I must

unharness my pony. I’m my own chore boy as well as maid,” she said to

Fanny, who went into the cottage, followed by Nero, who, stretching

himself upon the floor, whacked his big tail approvingly, as Fanny

looked curiously around the room.

It was a model of neatness and order and showed many touches of a

woman’s dainty hand and, what surprised her a little, had in it some

articles of furniture more expensive than she expected to find among the

mountains. The wide door opened upon a piazza which commanded a

magnificent view of the mountains and the valley below. A honeysuckle

was trained upon the rustic pillars and a bowl of roses and ferns was

standing upon a round table near which were two or three chairs. This

was evidently the living place of the family and Fanny sat down in one

of the chairs to wait for Inez who soon came in flushed and bright and

eager to talk.

“Yes, we sit here a great deal,” she said, in answer to a question from

Fanny. “Father likes a piazza; it reminds him of his youth, he says, but

he looks so sorry when I ask him about his youth that I don’t often do

it, and I know very little of his boyhood. I asked him once if I had any

relatives. ‘No’ he said, so short that I have never referred to them

again. You must have a great many.”

“Very few,” Fanny said, and Inez continued: “Has your father been dead

long?”

There was a moment’s hesitancy before Fanny replied: “Judge Prescott,

who died last year, was my step-father, whose name I took when mother

married him. She was a Miss Tracy, and my own father was Mr. Mark

Hilton. He died in the mines of Montana when I was a baby. I do not

remember him.”

“I am so sorry for you,” Inez said. “I wish you could remember him a

little. You must resemble him, as you do not look like your mother.”

Fanny drew a long breath, and, with a thought of ’Tina, answered, “I am

like one of my grandmothers.”

Slight as was her knowledge of the world Inez’s womanly instinct told

her that Fanny did not care to discuss her family and she changed the

conversation.

“I am going to get dinner now,” she said. “Would you like to see me? I

don’t suppose you ever did a stroke of work in your life?”

“I never have,—more’s the pity,” Fanny said, as she followed Inez to the

kitchen and watched her with the greatest interest, offering to help

her.

“Not now,” Inez said. “You may wipe the dishes when dinner is over, and

then we can have more time to visit.”

Fanny wiped the dishes after the dinner, in which the huckleberry pie

had a conspicuous place, and left its marks on her mouth and teeth. When

the work was done there was a ramble among the hills, a visit to Anita’s

grave, which was covered with flowers and then, as the afternoon began

to wane, the two girls sat down upon the piazza and watched the shadows

deepening in the valley and the colors changing on the mountains from

rosy tints to violet hues, while the sound of the waterfalls in the

distance became more distinct as night drew on.

“Isn’t the world beautiful?” Inez said, “and isn’t it a joy to live. And

yet I have a presentiment that I shall die young, like mother. She had

heart trouble, you know, and I inherit it from her. A great shock of joy

or pain might kill me. Then what would father do,—and Tom.”

This was the first time she had mentioned Tom, and after a moment Fanny

said affirmatively: “You love Tom?” and into Inez’s eyes there came a

bright, happy look as she replied, “I don’t mind telling you that I am

going to marry him sometime when he gets a little more ahead and can

leave his present business. It was settled last winter. He is a good

deal older than I am, but looks younger than he is and I look older.

Strangers take me for twenty at least. I have always known Tom and

always loved him, I think. I have sometimes fancied that father was not

quite pleased. He has never said anything except that Tom was too old

for me and that I ought to see more of the world before marrying. Tom is

my world. There is a pretty house in Stockton which he is going to buy,

when he is able, where we can live in the winter, but we shall come back

here in the summer.”

“What is his other name? I’ve never heard. You have always called him

Tom,” Fanny said, and Inez replied, “Why, Tom Hardy. Funny you didn’t

know, and he is the one who kept Long John from robbing the coach the

other day. That is what I was going to tell you. I am so proud of him.

The papers are full of his praises. Father says there is not another man

in the valley who would dare attack that giant of a fellow. Tom hasn’t

been home since, and I’m dying to see him. I have felt nervous every

time I have thought of the risk he ran. What if he had been shot!”

Inez’s cheek grew pale as she thought of the danger her lover had

escaped, and before she could say any more Fanny exclaimed, “Is that Mr.

Hardy _your_ Tom? I know him. He was on the coach with us from Milton to

Chinese camp and told us all about it. I’m glad he is your Tom.”

Inez’s confidence with regard to Tom reminded Fanny of Roy, and in a few

minutes Inez had heard all about him and the wedding which was to take

place during the holidays.