Inez’s attitude towards Tom had troubled Fanny from the first. She never

asked for him, and if he came into her room and spoke to her, his visit

was sure to be followed by a chill, or headache. At last Fanny spoke of

it to Mr. Rayborne, who replied, “Inez is rather fanciful. It is part of

the disease to turn against your best friend. Perhaps Tom had better

stay away.” After that he staid away, but Fanny frequently found him

near the door when she went out and in.

“I am here to see if there is anything I can do,” he said in

explanation, offering to go for whatever she wanted and saving her many

steps up and down the stairs.

Towards her father Inez’s manner was different. She seldom spoke to him,

but she allowed him to sit by her and once she took his hand with a look

in her eyes which he could not misunderstand, and he said to her, “Yes,

daughter, I promise before Heaven _that work_ is finished for me and

Tom, too. I can answer for him.”

Fanny’s step was heard outside and he stopped abruptly, but Inez seemed

brighter and better for what he had said. He was constantly in the sick

room, frequently sitting in the shadow where he could see not only the

fever stained face with the sunken eyes in which the shadow of a great

horror was still visible, but the fair, blue eyed girl who filled him

with pride and an intense desire to take her in his arms and call her

his daughter.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SISTERS.

Ten days passed and there was no real improvement in Inez. Occasionally

she would rally and inquire about the household matters, showing that

she had some interest in them, but these moments were always followed by

sinking spells when life seemed nearly extinct. The doctor was greatly

perplexed.

“A strong girl like her ought not to be so affected by a scare,” he

said. “I don’t understand it. She seems to have lost her grip and makes

no effort to get hold of it, and then the weather is against her.”

It was very hot those July days, hotter and dryer than it had been in

the valley for years, and Fanny began at last to droop in the heat and

confinement. They sent to Stockton for a nurse and this relieved Fanny

from her constant watch in the sick room, where Inez lay a part of the

time half unconscious of what was passing around her and talking very

low to herself. Once Fanny thought she caught the word _Ridgefield_ and

wondered how Inez knew anything of that place.

“I mean to ask Mr. Rayborne,” she thought, and went to find him.

The sun was setting and a cool breeze was blowing down from the

mountains and she stepped out upon the piazza for a moment to enjoy it.

While there she heard Mr. Rayborne and Tom enter the sitting room from

the kitchen. They were talking of her, and Tom’s voice was rather loud

as he said, “I think it a shame that for the whim of a proud woman you

cannot tell her that you are her father and Inez her half sister! Do you

think she would be ashamed of you? She is not that kind.”

For a moment Fanny felt as if she, too, had heart disease. She could not

move and there was a prickly sensation in her hands and feet. Then she

recovered herself, and in a moment was confronting Mr. Rayborne with the

question, “Are you Mark Hilton, and is Inez my half sister?”

Mark could not reply, but Tom did it for him. “I am bound by no

promise,” he said, “and will tell you the truth. He _is_ Mark Hilton,

your father, if Helen Tracy is your mother. He was not killed in the

mines, and Inez is your half sister. She knows it and your mother knows

it, but would only permit you to come here on the condition that you

were kept in ignorance of the relationship. I am hampered by no

conditions. I have told you and it may save Inez’s life.”

Tom had freed his mind and walked from the room, leaving father and

daughter alone. Mark waited for Fanny to speak first, but she could not.

The prickly sensation had returned. Her tongue felt thick and her hands

cold and stiff. She had thought so much of her own father since she

heard of him, and had pictured him often in her mind as the Apollo her

mother had described. She had regretted that she could not remember him,

and now he was here before her, and was not at all like her idea of him,

nor at all like Judge Prescott, nor Roy, nor any man she had ever known

socially. He was still fine looking, with the manners of a gentleman,

but he was a miner,—a stage driver,—a guide,—with another name than his

own. All this passed through her mind, and with it a thought of ’Tina.

There was some proud blood of the Tracys in her veins, and for a second

it asserted itself strongly. Then, with a long breath, like one shaking

off a nightmare, she went forward and said, “If you are my father,—kiss

me!”

Mark felt as if all his life which he would forget were slipping from

him and leaving him the man he used to be, while he held his daughter to

him and cried over her as if his heart were breaking. When he grew calm

he told her all he wished her to know of himself since he parted from

her mother, whom he screened as far as possible from blame. After her

father left her Fanny returned to the piazza and sat down alone to think

and try to realize what she had heard and the new position in which it

had placed her. One fact stood out vividly before her. _Inez_ was her

sister, and she was glad, and began to build castles of the future when

Inez would be able to go to New York. No thought of separation occurred

to her. Inez was hers to care for. With the advantages of a city she

would make a brilliant and beautiful woman. She was much younger than

she looked. A year or two at school would be desirable and then she

would live with Fanny and Roy, “and marry Tom?” Fanny whispered

interrogatively.

There was no one to hear,—no one to answer,—except Fanny herself, who

began to rebel against a marriage which before had seemed suitable

enough, if the parties were satisfied. She had admired Tom for his

apparent bravery, his pleasant face and genial manner, but as a

brother-in-law he was not so desirable. She could mould and cultivate

Inez, but not Tom. He was too old. She must take him as he was, if she

took him at all; not as Tom Hardy either, but as Jeff Wilkes, who, her

mother had told her, was a strange boy with strange ways, whom she had

never liked. That her father had changed his name displeased her, but

she did not resent it in him as much as she did in Tom, who she felt

nearly sure had suggested it. But he was Inez’s _fiancé_. She must

accept him and make Roy accept him, too. She did not anticipate much

trouble there. Roy would think what she wished him to think, and Tom was

really better looking than half the men of her acquaintance if they were

shorn of their city dress. This comforted her, and when at last Tom came

out and talked to her as he could talk when he chose, she began to feel

quite reconciled to him as a prospective brother-in-law.

It was too late for her to see Inez that night, but very early in the

morning she was at her bedside, calling her sister and telling her how

glad she was and that now she must get well fast so as to go to New York

in September, when she and her mother went home.

“No, Fanny,” Inez said. “I shall never go to New York. It is lovely in

you to suggest it and to be glad I am your sister. You don’t know what

joy it is to have you call me so, and to believe you love me. In some

circumstances I might have gone with you for a while, for I should like

to see the eastern world where father and Tom were born. He must be Tom

to me always, and it will not be long. I am going as mother did, only

not so sudden. I am younger and stronger, but I know I am dying. I feel

as if part of me were dead already and there is nothing to rally from.

The tree struck with lightning twice does not recover. I have been

struck twice, once in the stage when——oh, Fanny, I can’t talk of that

without my heart standing still. The second shock was different and came

when I heard that father and Tom were somebody else, and you my sister.

I was so weak that it was like another blow. For your sake I’d like to

live, although our paths would be apart. Yours in the great, busy world,

and mine here with father. I wish I could see your Roy, but it is too

much to think he would come across a continent.”

Inez had thought all this out the previous night after her father told

her that Fanny knew of the relationship, and now that she had said it

she sank into a state of great exhaustion, during which Fanny staid by

her and every time she put her hand on Inez’s head, or spoke her name,

the sick girl’s eyes opened with an expression of unutterable joy, and

the pale lips whispered “My sister!”

That night Fanny wrote to her mother: “I know everything from ’Tina to

the present time. Tom has told me that Mr. Rayborne was Mark Hilton, my

father, and Inez my sister. _My father_ told me the rest, and I do not

believe there is anything more for me to learn about myself. At first I

prickled all over and could scarcely speak. Now I am very calm and glad

and should be happy if Inez were not so low. I think she is going to

die, and I cannot leave her. I shall write to Roy to-morrow and tell him

everything. I hope he will come. I want him to see Inez.”

After this Fanny devoted herself entirely to Inez, taking quite as much

care of her as the hired nurse. But it was of no avail. Inez grew weaker

every day and baffled both the physician from Stockton and the

specialist from San Francisco, who had been called to see her. That

there was serious heart trouble, complicated with slight paralysis, both

agreed, but neither could understand why the stage fright alone should

have affected her so strangely. If love and care and tenderness could

have given her back her life she would have had it, but nothing could

save her. Every night she seemed weaker, and every morning her face

looked thinner and her hands more transparent as they lay just where

they were put, for she had but little power to move them now.

“They are almost as white as yours, but not so small,” she said one

afternoon to Fanny, who was rubbing and bathing them. “They have been

strong hands and done a heap of work, but will never do any more, and it

is better so. I’ve thought it all over and do not want to live. I’d

rather go to mother, who is waiting for me. She’ll be glad to see me. I

know what you want to say,” she went on as Fanny tried to interrupt her.

“You would take me to New York and try to make a lady of me like

yourself. But I am not like your people. I could never be like them and

they would wonder how you came to have a sister like me, and tongues

would be busy and you would feel hurt, and Roy, too. I should like to

see him before I die. Do you think he will come?”

Fanny had not heard from him since she wrote and told him of Inez and

her father and it was time she received a letter. She was quite sure,

however, that he would come, “and take me by surprise, most likely,” she

said to Inez, who was exhausted and disposed to sleep. Fanny, too, felt

the need of rest and air and went out upon the piazza to enjoy the

sunset. She was very tired and a little homesick, with a great longing

for Roy. “If he would only come,” she was thinking, when in answer to

her thought Roy came rapidly up the walk and stood at her side.

CHAPTER XIV.

ROY.

Fanny’s letter had reached him in Ridgefield, where, with his father and

mother, he was spending a few days at the Prospect House. Its contents

electrified them all and no one more than Uncle Zach.

“Mark and Jeff both alive!” he said. “I never b’lieved Jeff was dead. He

ain’t the kind, but for Mark, that I sot such store by not to be killed

is queer and I’ve mourned for him as I would for Johnny. And he took

another name, and married another woman and had another girl! I didn’t

think that of Mark! No, marm, I didn’t. And he is Fanny’s father? I’ll

be dumbed! I’d like to see him, though, and Jeff, too. Like fust rate to

see him turn a summerset on the grass again. Give ’em my respects and

tell ’em to come home and bring that girl if they want to. Ridgefield

air and Dot will soon bring her round. She must be a clipper to spring

at a robber like that. No wonder she’s got heart disease. It makes mine

wobble round to think of it.”

Uncle Zach had his remarks mostly to himself, as Roy was talking

excitedly to his father and mother of the journey he was going to take

at once.

“Fanny needs me, and I am going,” he said, and he started that night,

and several days later reached Clark’s very hot, very tired, very dusty,

and very impatient to see Fanny. “You say she is still in the mountains.

How long does it take to get there?” he asked Mrs. Prescott, whom he had

surprised as she was taking her lunch in her room.

She was very glad to see him, for she was getting tired of waiting for

Fanny and anxious as to what the result of the waiting might be. She was

not hard enough to hope Inez would die, but could not help thinking that

if she did one possible annoyance would be removed, and this thought was

in her mind when Roy came suddenly upon her, overwhelming her with so

many questions that for a few minutes she could only listen without

replying. When at last she had a chance she repeated all that had

happened since she came into the valley, dwelling most upon the loss of

her diamonds for which Roy did not particularly care. He was more

interested in Fanny. Once or twice during his rapid journey it had

occurred to him that his newly found relatives might prove awkward

appendages if Fanny insisted upon having them near her. But he put the

feeling aside as unworthy of him.

“If she can stand it, I can,” he thought, and began to wonder what

manner of people his father-in-law elect and sister-in-law might be.

Craig and Alice had both said that Mark was a gentleman and Roy accepted

that so far as it went. He might have been a gentleman when they knew

him, but he had passed through many phases since and there was no

guessing what he was now, except that he was Fanny’s father, and as such

must be respected. Mrs. Prescott did not help to reassure him and in all

she said he detected a keen regret for what had happened, and that it

was Inez who troubled her most. Mark would never intrude himself upon

her, but Fanny would insist upon taking Inez to New York, if she lived,

as she probably would.

“And if she does, oppose it with all your strength. We cannot have it.

And bring Fanny away at once,” she said to Roy, when he left her for his

drive to the cottage.

The sun was down when he reached it, but there was still light enough

for him to see the gleam of a white dress upon the piazza. Something

told him it was Fanny, and quickening his step he soon had her in his

arms, smothering her with kisses, while she cried for joy. He did not at

first notice how worn and pale she was, he was so glad to see her and so

struck with her surroundings.

“By Jove, isn’t it queer to find you here? and how white you are,” he

said at last. “This will never do. I must get you away at once.”

“Not while Inez lives,” Fanny answered, in a tone Roy knew it was

useless to combat.

“Is she so very low?” he asked. “Tell me all about it. You have written

a good deal, and your mother told me a lot, but I want to hear it from

you. It’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”

Fanny told him everything from the day she first saw Inez up to the

present time. When she described the hold-up she was very earnest and

dramatic, and Roy’s blood tingled with admiration for the heroic girl

who had braved a masked robber and was perhaps paying for it with her

life. Two or three times he asked questions which Fanny thought

irrelevant to the subject, but for the most part he listened quietly

till she was through.

“You are glad you have found your father?” he said, during a pause in

the conversation.

“Glad? Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?” Fanny replied. “I once told you I

believed I should find him. He is not like you, nor Judge Prescott, nor

anybody I ever knew, but he is _mine_, and you must like him.”

“I intend to,” Roy said, “and now fire away at Tom. What is he like?”

If there was sarcasm intended Fanny did not know it, and answered

readily, “He is nice, too,—though not like father. I don’t quite know

what I mean, only he is different. I am sorry for him. He was to marry

Inez, you know, and now that can never be, and what I don’t understand

is that he seldom comes into her room, and when he does she is sure to

have a chill. She used to ask me often where he was and when I said, ‘Do

you want to see him?’ she’d say, ‘No, I only want to know if he has gone

out.’ I told him of it and he said, a little irritably, ‘Tell her I’m

always in the house.’ That seemed to quiet her. Strange, isn’t it?”

Before Roy could answer, Fanny exclaimed, “There’s father,” and Mark

Hilton appeared, looking surprised at the sight of a young man, with his

arm around his daughter.

“Father, this is Roy,—come all the way from Boston,” Fanny said, and the

two men were soon shaking hands and looking keenly at each other in the

moonlight which fell upon them.

Roy saw a tall man, with a slight stoop, who must have been handsome

once and was good looking still, with something in his language and

manners indicative of education and a knowledge of good society. Mark

saw a boyish young fellow, with innocence and purity written on his

face, and thanked God that Fanny’s choice had fallen upon him. At first

he was a little reserved, for he never grasped the hand of an honest man

that he did not experience a twinge of shame, and this was very strong

in the presence of Roy, who, as Craig Mason’s son, was allied with the

past, and whose frank, honest eyes were studying him so closely.

If Mark felt any trepidation in meeting Roy, Tom felt it in a greater

degree. He guessed who the young man was on the piazza with Mark, for he

knew Fanny had written him to come, and for a minute he shook like a

leaf. Then steadying himself with the thought that he had nothing to

fear from Roy, he went forward to meet him as he came in, greeting him

cordially and seeming wholly at his ease. When supper was over the three

men began chatting together as familiarly as if they had known each

other all their lives. Roy casually mentioned Ridgefield to Fanny,

saying he had left his father and mother there, and both Mark and Tom

began to ply him with questions concerning the town and Uncle Zacheus

and Dotty.

“You know we lived there years ago and are interested in the place,”

Mark said, and Roy told them all he knew, and then at the first

opportunity plunged into the subject uppermost in his mind—the robbers

and the hold up on the road.

This was something of which neither Mark nor Tom cared to talk. But they

could not help themselves. No matter how adroitly they tried to turn it

aside Roy brought it up again, with all the eagerness of youth, to whom

such things are interesting.

“I wonder the robbers have never been caught,” he said. “We do things

better in Boston. Why don’t you get a detective from the east? There’s

Converse,—nearly equal to Sherlock Holmes. He only needs the slightest

clew,—sometimes a word, a look,—to follow to the end. He’d unearth them

quick. I believe I could run them down myself, give me time.”

“Why don’t you try and get the reward? It is a big one,” Fanny asked.

“People think they live here.”

“Here!” Roy repeated, glancing around the room, as if in quest of a

robber in some of the shadowy corners.

“Not in this house, you stupid,” Fanny said, laughingly, “but in the

neighborhood,—among the mountains,—and that we possibly meet them every

day. The very idea gives me the shivers, and I never see a strange man

that I do not think, perhaps you are one of them. It would be dreadful

if I had ever been near them, or spoken to them.”

“Is there nothing in their appearance to mark them?” Roy asked, and

Fanny replied, “Nothing but their size. One is very tall; that is Long

John. The other is short; they call him Little Dick. He attacked us. You

know I told you that before.”

There was a lamp in the room and Tom and Mark were sitting where its

light fell upon them. Roy had not noticed them particularly until Fanny

spoke of the size of the robbers. Happening then to glance that way he

was struck with the expression of Mark’s face and saw the look which

passed between him and Tom.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath.

Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by

fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot

and close.

“Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said.

Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid

for a while of their inquisitive guest.

“How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face

was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting

rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the

woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to

make himself so agreeable to Roy that he would forget the detective

Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.”

Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight,

Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was

putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought

she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny

questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did

the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”

“Tall as I am?” he asked, and Fanny replied, “Oh, no; he was about as

tall as Tom, and slimmer. He wore a sweater which made him look small.”

“How did Tom look when he came up?” was Roy’s next question.

Fanny couldn’t enlighten him much there. She didn’t think of Tom, she

was so absorbed with Inez. She knew he picked up her hat, which was

frightfully jammed, and straightened it, and put it on her head. Then

she spoke of her diamonds, wondering how they could have gotten loose

and if she would ever find them.

“Tom is still hopeful that after a heavy rain they may come to light and

has promised to look for them.”

“I hope he’ll find them,” Roy said, and continued: “By the way, what am

I to call him and your father? Do the people know he isn’t Tom, and that

your father is not Mr. Rayborne?”

“No,” Fanny said. “Inez wanted them to stay as they were, Mr. Rayborne

and Mr. Hardy. They know father was divorced and that I am the daughter

of his first marriage and took my step-father’s name at his request;

that is all they know, and they wouldn’t care, if they knew the whole. I

think divorces are wrong, but they are common, and a lot of people left

their real names east when they came here.”

“Queer set Fanny has fallen among. I wonder what father would say,” Roy

thought, as they walked back to the house, where only Tom was waiting to

say good night.

Alone in his room Roy thought over all he had heard and seen and drew

his own conclusions.

“I may be wrong,” he said. “I hope I am. Mr. Rayborne does not look like

a highwayman. Fanny’s father, too. It can’t be, but I don’t quite like

Tom’s face, it is too cunning and that look he gave Mr. Rayborne meant

something. I wish Converse was here. No, I don’t. There’s Fanny! It

would kill her, as it is killing Inez, if I am correct in my surmise.

I’ll get her away from here as soon as I can, but while she stays _I_

stay and watch! There will be a kind of excitement about it.”

For one so young Roy was a shrewd observer and was seldom wrong in his

estimation of people. He was fond of detective stories, and often

thought how he would act in such and such circumstances. A suspicion, of

which he did not like to think, had fastened itself upon his mind, and

in trying to combat it he at last fell asleep.

The next morning, when he met Mark and Tom by daylight, they both looked

better to him and were so genial and gentlemanly and kind that he

mentally asked pardon for having harbored an evil thought against them.

Tom was particularly friendly and proposed a drive through the valley,

as the day was fine. To this Roy acceded readily, saying he would be

ready as soon as he had seen Inez. At the mention of her name Tom’s face

grew so sad that Roy said to him, “Fanny has told me of your engagement

to her and I sincerely hope Inez will live to keep it.”

“Never,” Tom answered, and turned away, while Roy followed Fanny up to

Inez’s room.

Inez had passed a fairly good night, and was very anxious to see Roy.

Fanny had brushed her hair and put on her one of her own pink and white

dressing jackets, which brought out the beauty of her face,

notwithstanding her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks.

“She looks like a picture,” Fanny thought, as she led Roy to the side of

the bed.

No introduction was needed and none was given. Inez’s hand was lifted

slowly to Roy, who took and held it in both his own. He knew the great

black eyes, which looked blacker from contrast with the pallor of her

face, were studying him closely, but he had nothing to conceal and met

her scrutiny unflinchingly.

“Roy,” she said. “I am so glad for Fanny that you are her Roy, and glad

you are here.”

He could not say he was altogether glad to be there except to be with

Fanny, but he told her how sorry he was to find her so ill and that he

hoped she would soon be better. He knew they were idle words, for death

was written on every lineament of her face, but he must say something.

Inez shook her head, but did not reply, and Roy, thinking to please and

interest her, said, “I am going to drive with Mr. Hardy, who has kindly

offered to show me the beauties of the valley.”

At the mention of Tom Inez closed her eyes as if to shut out a painful

sight.

“Tired? Ar’n’t you?” Fanny said, motioning Roy to leave, which he did,

willingly.

Sick rooms were not to his taste; he was happier with Tom, who proved a

most agreeable companion, and talked so well and so intelligently on

every subject and seemed imbued with so good principles that Roy

mentally asked pardon again for having distrusted him. Of the hold-ups

Tom did not like to talk, and said so.

“The last was fraught with so much disaster to Inez that I never think

of it without a shudder,” he said, while of the first, in which he had

been the hero, he made light, saying people had magnified what he did,

and praised him too much. “I don’t believe it was courage. I was mad,”

he said, “and flew at the man without thinking what the consequence

might be to me. I hope we are done with the rascals and tourists can

hereafter visit the valley in peace.”

Then he began to talk of the east and of Ridgefield and to relate

anecdotes of his boyhood and his experience with Uncle Zach and Dotty.

Mark, too, came in for a share in the conversation. And here Tom was

very eloquent.

“Seeing him now, broken with hard work and crushed with anxiety for

Inez, you can have no idea of the grand man he was when he lived in

Ridgefield. Everybody respected him, and under right influences he would

have staid what he was. No man will stand being nagged continually and

twitted with his birth and poverty. I beg your pardon,” he added, as he

saw Roy scowl, and remembered that he had been making insinuations

against his mother-in-law elect; “I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Prescott.

She was proud and beautiful, and greatly admired, and not always on the

square. Her daughter is not at all like her.”

“I should think not,” Roy answered, dryly, and then Tom spoke of Roy’s

mother and the good she had done him as a boy.

“If I had followed her advice I should have been a better man, but what

is done is done and cannot be changed. Do you believe a bad man can

become a thoroughly good one?”

The question startled Roy, who felt unequal to meet it, but who answered

with a gravity beyond his years, “It depends upon what he has done. If

reparation can be made he should make it, and—. Yes, it seems to me a

bad man may become a good one. Of course the memory of the bad would

always cling to him, making him sorry for the past and most sorry when

the world was praising him.”

Roy had no idea how his words were stinging Tom, who answered quickly,

“That’s just it. Memory! If we could kill that; but we can’t. Hell must

be made up of memories.”

Again the suspicion of the previous night began to creep into Roy’s

mind, but he cast it aside, while Tom roused himself from his melancholy

mood and began to point out the lights and shadows on the mountains and

asked if Roy would like to try a trail on the morrow. Nothing could suit

Roy better, and for the next two or three days Tom went with him from

mountain to mountain and was as gay as if no harrowing memory were

intruding itself upon his mind. At last Roy suggested that they go to

the scene of the last hold-up and look again for the missing diamonds.

At first Tom hesitated. That spot was like a haunted spot to him, but

there was no good reason for refusing, and they set off together for the

scene of the attempted robbery. Once there Tom grew very communicative,

rehearsing the proceedings even more dramatically than Fanny had done

when describing them to Roy. Here was the stage. Here the robber stood

waiting for it, and commanding the driver to halt and the passengers to

hold up their hands. Here Inez sat and sprang over the wheel with a

shriek which must have frightened the brigand quite as much as the

revolver which proved not to be loaded, and here she lay fainting with

her head in Fanny’s lap when all was over.

“Were you here through it all? I thought you came later,” Roy said, and

Tom, who saw he had made a mistake, colored and stammered, “Sounds as if

I was here, don’t it? You know, I happened along after the rascal had

left, and a more frightened lot of people you never saw. I have heard

Inez describe the scene so graphically that I feel as if I were a part

of it.”

“I do believe you were,” Roy thought.

“Where was Fanny’s hat when you picked it up? We will look for the

diamonds there, first,” he said.

Tom’s face was flushed, but his manner was composed and natural as he

pointed out the spot where he had rescued the crushed hat from the mud.

The grass was growing there now, and there was not a spot within a

radius of many yards where the diamonds could have dropped and lain

hidden.

“Some one of the crowd must have taken them,” Roy said, with conviction,

when they ended their search and sat down upon a fallen tree to rest.

“Yes, somebody took them here, and I will not leave California till I

know who the thief is. I believe I’ll send for Converse. I suppose he

could visit the valley like any ordinary person, and keep his eyes open.

The diamonds were to have been Fanny’s on her wedding day.”

“And when is that to be?” Tom asked.

Roy was not sure, but some time between Christmas and New Years.

“I hope she will have them by that time,” Tom said, throwing down the

stick with which he had been poking in the grass and bushes, and going

back to the buggy preparatory to returning home.

It was rather a silent drive, for they were both tired and a shadow had

come over both, distrust on Roy’s side, and on Tom’s a dread of what the

hot-headed young man might do. It was the second time he had mentioned

Converse, the Boston detective, and Tom felt that his sin might be

finding him out, and saw no escape from it except by suicide, of which

he had thought more than once, but had always put the tempter behind

him, with a vehemence which kept him at bay. His Ridgefield training had

not wholly lost its effect, nor the advice Alice Tracy had given him

when she gathered lilies with him on the river or tramped through the

woods to visit the hornet’s nest and the turtle bed in the pond. Those

days were very vivid to him now with Alice’s son beside him and a look

like her in his face and blue eyes. He liked the boy, as he designated

him, and was still a little afraid of him or what he might do. Roy, on

his part, was thinking, “A first-rate fellow whom I can’t help liking,

any more than I can help putting things together, but if he is bad so is

Mr. Hilton, and on Fanny’s account I’d better keep quiet.”

In this state of mind they reached the cottage where they found Fanny

waiting for them on the piazza, greatly excited and alarmed.

“Inez is much worse,” she said, “and wants to see Roy alone.”

CHAPTER XV.

AT THE LAST.

Inez had been better that morning and had asked to sit in her chair near

the window where she could look out upon the mountains and the valley.

Fanny was brushing her hair and talking to her, when she asked, as she

often did, “Where is Tom?”

“Gone to drive with Roy,” Fanny said. “I believe they were going as far

as the scene of the hold-up. Roy is anxious to see the place, and look

for my diamonds. But it is of no use. If Tom can’t find them, he can’t.”

“The diamonds? What diamonds?” Inez asked quickly.

Fanny had been warned not to talk to Inez of the hold up. Consequently,

with the exception of the day when the watch came, she had never

mentioned it until now when she spoke of it in connection with her

diamonds. It was of no use for her to try and waive the subject. Inez

could not be put off, and she finally explained that when she reached

Clark’s the diamonds were missing. The stitches in the ribbon bow of her

hat had been broken and the linen bag had slipped out somewhere on the

road.

“I have given them up,” she said, “and now only care to have the robbers

caught. Roy talks of sending for a famous detective from Boston, but I

hardly think he will. He is a rash boy any way and would like nothing

better than such an adventure as we had.”

As she talked Fanny was admiring the gloss and texture of Inez’s hair,

and wondering how it would look twisted on the top of her head after the

fashion then beginning to prevail.

“I am going to do your hair in the latest style, if it will not tire you

too much,” she said, going for some hair pins.

There was no answer and when she came back with the pins she saw that

Inez’s head was turned to one side and lay motionless against the chair.

She had not heard of the loss of the diamonds until now, when in an

instant she saw the whole scene again, and knew where the diamonds were.

The thought of the detective Roy was to send for added to her

excitement. Tom was worse than she had supposed him to be, but she could

not have him arrested. His downfall would implicate her father and Fanny

would be involved in the disgrace. All this went rapidly through her

mind until unconsciousness came and she knew no more until she was in

bed, with her father and Fanny and the nurse bending over her with

restoratives.

“Was she excited in any way?” Mr. Hilton asked, and Fanny replied, “I

think not. I was brushing her hair and telling her that Roy had gone

with Mr. Hardy to look for the diamonds. I had forgotten that she didn’t

know they were lost. It might have been that, but I think it was the

fatigue of sitting up too long.”

Mr. Hilton made no reply, but he knew what caused the faint which lasted

so long and left Inez with no power to move except her head and one hand

which from the wrist beat the air constantly. It was still moving feebly

up and down, when Roy went to her and asked what he could do for her.

Fanny had come up with him and with a motion of her head Inez dismissed

her; then said in a whisper, with long, painful breaths between each

word, “Don’t try to find the robbers, nor send for a detective. I shall

be gone, but Fanny will be here. Don’t do it for her sake. _My_ father

is _her_ father. She will have the diamonds back.”

Roy looked surprised. His talk of a detective had been mostly talk, and

he told Inez so, assuring her that nothing should ever be done which

could hurt Fanny, or compromise her father or Tom. She knew he

understood her and that she was giving away those whom she loved better

than her life, but she was giving them to Roy, who loved Fanny.

“Thanks,” she said faintly. “You will keep what I have said to yourself,

and never let Fanny, nor any one, know. I can trust you?”

“To the death,” he answered, taking her shaking hand, which was as cold

as if the shadow stealing into the room had touched that first and

turned it into ice.

“I knew Tom was a rascal all the time, and Mr. Hilton, too, but my word

is pledged and I shall keep it. Think of Fanny here in a den of robbers.

It can’t be long, though. The poor girl is about done for,” Roy thought,

as he tried to soothe and quiet Inez.

“Go now, and send Tom,” she said at last, and, glad to escape, Roy went

quickly down the stairs and delivered the message to Tom.

It was the first time she had asked for him, and he felt much as a

criminal feels when going to execution. He had no idea what she wanted

and was rather relieved when she said to him, “Do you love me still?”

“More than I can tell you. Oh, Inez, I am so sorry for it all, and have

nothing to offer in excuse,” he replied, bending over her until his face

touched the hand which was still moving very slowly, and whose fingers

stirred his hair as they moved.

“Don’t try to excuse, or explain,” she said. “Bury the past in my grave,

and begin a new life. Make restitution as far as possible. Give Fanny

her diamonds!”

Tom started violently. “How did you know she lost them?” he asked, and

Inez replied, “I do know, and it has put out the little flickering flame

there was left of my life. Get them to her somehow.”

“I have intended to do this all the time, and I assure you she shall

have them,” Tom said.

“And the others,” she continued; “If you know who they are and where

they are, send them what belongs to them, or its equivalent. You and

father, both; I cannot talk to him. I leave it with you.”

She was asking impossibilities and Tom knew it, but he promised that so

far as he could he would do all she wished.

“Tom,” she whispered, after a moment’s silence, “Come closer; it is hard

for me to talk; the lump in my throat chokes me so.”

Tom bent closer to her, while she went on: “I have loved you so much and

thought you so good and never suspected the truth. Tom, oh, Tom, kiss me

for the sake of what we have been to each other, and when I am gone, be

the good man I used to think you were. Stay with father and take care of

him. He needs you. Good bye. Go now. I am so tired.”

In an agony of remorse Tom kissed the face where the moisture of death

was gathering fast. Then he left her, and when he saw her again she was

like a beautiful piece of marble, with a smile on her lips which told of

perfect peace. Mark and Fanny watched by her until the great change

came, and the hand which had beaten the air constantly was stilled

forever, its last stroke falling on the head of her father who knelt

beside her. In his heart was anguish such as few men have ever known.

Not once had she reproached him. If she had he could have borne better

than he could the look in her eyes and the way she shrank from him at

times. Once when Fanny was absent from the room for a moment she said to

him, “Poor father, I know you are sorry, and I have loved you through it

all, but I can’t bear it. I must die. It is better so, for things could

never be again as they have been. I couldn’t be happy here, nor

anywhere. I want to go to mother and to God. Stay with Tom; he will be

kind to you. Don’t go with Fanny, if she urges it,—with her and Roy, I

mean. You could not go to her mother.”

She had done what she could for all of them, and felt that her work was

finished. For an hour or more she lay with her eyes closed and with no

perceptible motion in her body except the slow beating of her fingers,

and when they stopped she was dead. When sure she was gone Mark broke

down entirely, while Fanny and Tom tried in vain to quiet him.

“Let me alone,” he said. “I must have it out by myself. Nothing can help

me but time.”

Leaving the house he spent hours among the hills, walking up and down

while the rain, which had begun to fall, beat upon him unnoticed. He did

not think of the storm, or the darkness, and stumbled over rocks and

bushes until benumbed with cold and wet with the rain he returned to the

house, an old man, so broken that he would never be himself again. He

let Tom and Roy and Fanny make the arrangements for the funeral, while

he sat in the room with Inez, sometimes talking to her, sometimes to

himself, and sometimes to Anita, by whom Inez was buried on one of the

loveliest mornings of the late summer. There were few visitors in the

valley, but all the people in the sparsely settled neighborhood turned

out to the funeral, as they had done to her mother’s. The house was

filled with the flowers they brought, some from the woods and some from

the gardens which were stripped to honor the dead. Early in the morning

on the day of the funeral there came from Stockton a box of exquisite

roses and a pillow of flowers, with Inez’s name in the centre. The

moment she heard of Inez’s death Mrs. Prescott had telegraphed for the

flowers, urging haste and fearing lest her gift should not be in time.

As the funeral did not take place until the third day after Inez’s

death, they were in time, and neither Fanny nor Mark would have had any

doubt as to the sender, if her card, “Mrs. Helen Tracy Prescott,” had

not accompanied them.

“Look, father,” Fanny said. “See what mother has sent.”

She put the roses upon the table and left the room for vases in which to

arrange them. When she returned one was gone, but there were so many she

did not miss it, or suspect that it was between the lids of the family

Bible which Mark had not opened before since he recorded Anita’s death.

Helen’s thoughtfulness had touched him closely and the rose he took was

for her sake and the old time when he had nearly ruined himself with the

roses bought for her in Ridgefield. When the short service was over Roy,

who longed to get away, suggested to Fanny that they should leave that

afternoon, as her mother was anxious for her return. There was no good

reason for her staying longer, except to be with her father, who,

putting his own grief aside, said to her, “Much as I want you to stay I

think you should go to your mother. It was kind in her to let me have

you so long. Tell her so, and thank her for the flowers she sent to

Inez.”

Fanny would like to have asked him to come to New York, but she knew

this could not be. Her father and mother had separated themselves from

each other, and the gulf between them could never be recrossed. But she

could have him in her own home, when she had one, and she urged his

coming to Boston and felt piqued that Roy did not second her invitation.

He was busy strapping his satchel and pretended not to hear. Mark

understood perfectly, and while thanking Fanny for her kindness, knew he

should never trouble Roy, and knew, too, when he said good bye to Fanny

that in all human probability he should never see her again. For hours

after Tom, who took Roy and Fanny to Clark’s, was gone, he lay on Inez’s

bed, wishing he, too, were dead and lying by the new-made grave from

which a faint odor of roses occasionally reached him. It was like a

breath of Helen,—a perfume from the years of long ago, and he could have

shrieked as he recalled those days, remembering what he was then and

what he was now. It was dark when Tom returned, and not finding Mark in

the house he went to the grave where he was standing with folded arms

and his frame convulsed with sobs.

“Mark,” Tom said, stretching his hand across Inez’s grave, “Mark, it is

we two alone forever.”

“Yes, we two alone forever,” Mark answered, grasping Tom’s hand, and

holding fast to it as a drowning man holds to a spar. “Alone forever,

with our secret to keep, and here by Anita’s grave and Inez’s, both of

whom I killed, let us swear that henceforth we will be honest men and

try in some small measure to redeem the past.”

“I swear it! I promised Inez that whatever restitution could be made we

would make,” Tom said, and for a few moments the clasped hands were held

above the grave, while the heads of the two men were bowed low as if

each were ratifying the solemn vow.

CHAPTER XVI.

MARK AND TOM.

It was the morning of Fanny’s wedding day and the house in Madison

Avenue was a scene of great excitement. Flowers and ferns and palms, and

florists arranging them, were everywhere. Presents were constantly

arriving until the room set apart for them could scarcely hold any more.

Cards had been sent to Fanny’s father and Tom, who were in San

Francisco, Mark at the Palace Hotel and Tom in a wholesale grocery. A

pretty remembrance had come from each, with a letter from Mark wishing

his daughter every possible happiness. So far as practicable Tom’s

promise to Inez had been kept. Only a few of the people robbed were

known to him or Mark by name. To these at intervals money had been sent,

which produced nearly as great a sensation as the hold-ups had done.

That the brigands had reformed or left the country was evident and Mark

and Tom often heard the subject discussed, but Mark never joined in the

discussion, or in any other. He was a silent, broken man, doing his work

faithfully, but keeping apart by himself, with a sad, far-away look on

his face, as if his thoughts were always with the two graves on the

mountain side of the Yosemite.

Tom, whose temperament was different, was more social. It was seldom,

however, that anything called a smile to his face, for he, too, was

nearly always thinking—not so much of Inez’s grave as of the scene on

the road and her face as it looked at him when bidding him go before she

shot him, as she would shoot a dog. Just before Christmas he asked leave

of his employer to go for a day to Salt Lake City. On his return he said

to Mark, “It is all right. They are on the way.”

A few days later, and on the morning of the wedding day, Fanny and Roy

were sitting together behind a forest of palms and azaleas, when the

door bell rang for the twentieth time within an hour.

“Another present, I’ll bet you,” Roy said. “We shall have enough to set

up a bazaar.”

“I hope it isn’t a clock. I have four already,” Fanny rejoined, going

forward to take the carefully sealed package sent by express from Salt

Lake City.

“Salt Lake City!” Fanny repeated, examining the package curiously. “Do

we know anybody there? What do you suppose it is?”

Roy could not explain the presentiment he had as to what it was. He had

expected something of the kind long before this, for he remembered that

Inez had said, “Fanny will have her diamonds.”

“Open the package and see what it is,” he said.

The seals of wax were broken, the box opened, and Fanny gave a start of

surprise as she saw the linen bag she had sewed with so much care into

the ribbons on her hat.

“Mother! Look here! The diamonds!” she cried, laying them one by one on

her mother’s lap.

They were all there and unharmed except as they were a little dim for

want of cleaning.

“Who could have found them and sent them?” Fanny kept saying.

Roy felt sure he knew, but said nothing, while Mrs. Prescott suggested

that the person who found them intended at first to keep them,—then,

failing to dispose of them, decided to send them to New York.

“Yes, but how did he know where I lived, or that I was to be married

to-day?” Fanny asked.

Roy tided over that difficulty by saying, “Easy enough, your mother

advertised for them to be sent here if they were found, and the man or

woman, whoever it is, happened to forward them in the nick of time.

Providential dispensation, don’t you see?”

He was decking Fanny with the jewels as he talked, and she accepted his

theory as she accepted everything from him.

“I shall write to father this very day that I have them. He will be so

glad, and Tom, too. I dare say the poor fellow has hunted over every

foot of ground between that place and Clark’s several times.”

Roy’s shoulders always gave a little shrug when Fanny talked in this

strain, and he now left her while she wrote a few hurried lines to her

father telling him her diamonds had come and asking if he had any idea

who sent them.

“I am so happy,” she wrote, “for in a few hours I shall be Roy’s wife. I

wish you could be here, and Inez. Oh, if she were only alive she would

be my maid of honor and eclipse me with her beauty. Dear Inez. It makes

me cry every time I think of her up among the mountains with the snow

piled over her grave, and I so happy here with Roy. Think of me to-night

and bless me, dear father. Mother is to give me away, but I shall fancy

it is you. Good bye. Your loving daughter, Fanny Hilton, soon to be

Fanny Mason.”

Mark read this letter to Tom, who said after a moment, “She is a

splendid girl. I don’t think she takes after her mother.”

“Or her father, either,” Mark rejoined.

“Where does she get her lovely traits of character?” was Tom’s next

remark, and for the first time since Inez died a smile broke over Mark’s

face, as he replied, “It must be from ’Tina. From all descriptions I

have had of that unfortunate lady Fanny looks like her.”

“I guess she does,” Tom said, then added, “I am glad the diamonds

reached her safely. That chapter is closed and a great weight off my

mind. I wonder if Inez knows?”

“Of course she does, and is glad as we are,” was Mark’s reply, and the

diamonds were never mentioned again between them.

Mark was failing, and after he knew the diamonds were safe with Fanny,

he began to go down rapidly.

“I feel as if I had been broken on the rack until every joint was

loosened and every nerve crushed,” he said to Tom. “There is nothing to

live for. Inez is dead; I shall never see Fanny again, and it is better

so. But I do long for the hills and ponds of Ridgefield and Uncle Zach

and Dotty. Do you think they’d be glad to see me? They don’t know what I

am. Nobody knows but you and me.”

Tom wasn’t so sure about Roy. He believed that young man had his

suspicions, and was equally sure he would keep them to himself.

“I know Uncle Zach and Dotty would be glad to see you, and in the spring

we will go there,” he said to Mark, who, buoyed up with this hope,

counted the weeks as they passed away, knowing the while that his

strength was slipping from him and leaving him so weak that he staid all

day in his room where Tom came every night to see him, and Mark, who had

forgotten all the blame he had ever attributed to him, clung to him, as

if he had been his son.

“I shan’t go to Ridgefield. I’ve given that up,” he said to Tom one day

in March. “It’s the cottage now in the valley I want to see. How soon do

you think we can go there?”

Tom didn’t know, and his face was very grave as he looked at his old

comrade, who was so surely dying. Spring came early that year and as

soon as it was at all practicable Tom took Mark by easy stages to the

cottage. He had been there himself to see that it was made ready for the

sick man and had passed a most uncomfortable time. He was neither a

coward, nor superstitious, but during the three days and nights he spent

alone in the cottage he suffered what he called the tortures of the

damned. He heard or saw Inez everywhere. Saw her flitting in and out

from room to room; heard her singing as she used to sing in her glad

girlhood, and felt her kisses on his cheeks just as he felt them on the

night of their betrothal. They were real kisses then which made his

pulse beat with ecstasy; they were shadowy kisses now, which burned

where they touched him, while his lips were purple with cold. Once he

called to her, “Inez, Inez, do you know I am here?”

Then in his disordered imagination he fancied he heard again the shriek

which had curdled his blood when she sprang over the wheel and

confronted him.

“I am not afraid,” he said to himself, “but I wish Mark was here, or

even Nero. I ought to have brought the dog, although he does not take to

me as he used to do. I believe he knows something. Lucky he can’t talk.”

A week later Mark was there in the old familiar place, where everything

spoke to him of Inez. He had no such fancies as Tom, and took Inez’s

room for his own, sleeping in her bed, sitting in her chair by the

window watching the light of the first summer days as it crept over the

mountains, and knowing it was for the last time. Once he went to the

closet where Inez’s dresses were hung, and taking them down looked at

them with eyes, which could not shed a tear. On the one she wore on the

day of the hold-up he gazed the longest. It was the last in which he had

ever seen her and he recalled just how she looked in it when he helped

her to a seat by the driver and remembered with a pang her soiled,

crumpled condition when she came back with a look on her face he would

never forget. There was a bit of dry mud still clinging to the skirt and

he brushed it off carefully and shook from the dress every particle of

soil and dirt and hung it away with the other gowns, leaving the closet

door open so that from his bed where he lay a good part of the time he

could see them and feel through them a nearness to Inez.

Everything he could do for him Tom did, and the two men lived alone

through the months of May and June, when the tourist season commenced

and the valley was again full of life and stir, and pilgrimages were

made to Inez’s grave as to the grave of a saint. It was covered with

flowers and some of these Mark pressed and sent to Fanny, who wrote to

him every week and whose letters helped to prolong his life. But like

Inez, he had lost his grip, and early in July he died quietly, like

going to sleep, and there were three graves on the hill behind the

cottage.

Tom was alone, with only Nero for company. Since the hold-up he had

fancied that the dog avoided him. He had been much in Inez’s room during

her illness and constantly with Mark until he died. He had stood by

Inez’s grave when she was lowered into it and had lain by it for days

after as if watching for her reappearance. And now he and Tom stood by

Mark’s grave, the only mourners there, and Tom’s hand rested on Nero’s

head as if asking for sympathy, which the sagacious animal gave. He

seemed to know they were alone, and when the burial, which took place at

sunset, was over and the people gone and Tom sat in the gathering

twilight with his head upon a table and his hand hanging at his side,

Nero crept to his feet, licking his hand and rubbing against him as he

had not done in a year. Then Tom cried, as he said, “Bless you, Nero; if

you have forgiven me I am not quite alone in the world. We will stick

together, old fellow, but not here. You may like to sit by their graves,

wondering why they don’t come back, but I can’t endure it. I am going

away and you are going with me,—miles and miles away, old chap, where it

will not be as lonesome as it is here, and where one at least will be

glad to see me.”

A letter received by Mark from Fanny a few days before he died had

decided Tom upon his future, and three weeks later, when a carriage full

of tourists came from a hotel to see the grave of the girl who was

always spoken of as “the heroine of the valley,” the cottage was closed

and Tom was gone.

CHAPTER XVII.

IN RIDGEFIELD.

Fanny and Roy had been married amid flowers and music and crowds of

people and the grand event chronicled in the Boston and New York papers.

That the bride’s own father was living was not mentioned. The reporters

had not gotten upon that item of gossip and Helen did not enlighten

them. Fanny was the only daughter of Judge and Mrs. Prescott, and when

she read one of the lengthy articles describing the wedding and her

dress and her mother’s dress and dwelling at length upon the position

and wealth of the Tracys and Prescotts and Masons she rebelled against

it almost as hotly as years before Uncle Zach had rebelled against the

advertisement her father had written of the Prospect House.

“I wish I had kept my own name, or taken it when I knew who I was. I am

not Fanny Prescott,” she said, hotly, while Roy rejoined, “Of course

not. You are Fanny Mason, my wife.”

They went to Florida where they spent the winter and Roy grew brown as a

berry with being so much on the lakes and rivers and Fanny grew bilious

eating too many oranges, and both were perfectly happy. Early in the

spring they returned to Boston, where they staid with Roy’s father until

June, when Fanny suggested that, instead of going to some fashionable

watering place, they spend the summer in Ridgefield. Her father had sent

her a deed of his Dalton property, and now that she owned it she began

to have an affection for the old ruin and wanted to see it, she said to

Roy, who answered, “All right. I’d rather go where I can have you to

myself than to a hundred watering places where everybody will be

admiring the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Roy Mason; that’s what the

reporters would call you.”

“Horrid!” Fanny said. “I’m not beautiful, and I haven’t a single

accomplishment. I am just Fanny,—your wife,” and she nestled close to

him, with a look in her blue eyes which told Roy how much he was to her.

They stopped at the Prospect House more for the sake of its association

with their parents than for the real comfort there was there now. The

ruling spirit, Dotty, had been stricken with paralysis, and was more

helpless than Uncle Zach, who, a martyr to rheumatism, sat in his wheel

chair all day, unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, with the

help of two canes. He had received cards to their wedding, and had sent

his regrets in a long letter in which he deplored the fact that he could

not get some good out of his “swaller tail, which he wore to Craig’s

weddin’ when he didn’t or’to wear it, and which was as good as new.”

Mention, too, was made of Dot’s plum-colored satin, which was now too

small for her, especially the sleeves. He was glad they remembered him.

An _invite_ was good to stay home on, and he was their respectful and

venerable friend to command. Zacheus Taylor, Esquire, and poor Dotty’s X

mark, “for she can’t use her hands to write more than that.”

Uncle Zach had grown childishly weak with his trouble and his years, and

received Roy and Fanny with floods of tears, lamenting Dotty’s inability

to serve them.

“I never expected to see you both agin, and when you was here together I

told Dot so,” he said; “but here you be, and I’m mighty glad. I’m havin’

hard sleddin’. Old age ain’t a pleasant thing, with rheumatiz’ and

paralysis, and maybe soffnin’ of the brain, and the tarvern all run

down,—and Dotty played out.”

The best the house afforded was theirs, he said, and he insisted upon

their taking the saloon, as he still called the parlor Mrs. Tracy had

occupied.

“You’ll be better off there by yourselves,” he said. “The boarders ain’t

what they used to be. The Tremont has got the big bugs.”

Poor Dotty couldn’t talk much or move, and Fanny spent hours with her,

anticipating her wishes by her looks and greatly smoothing her path to

the grave. Roy staid a good deal with Uncle Zach, who asked numberless

questions about Mark and Jeff.

“I wish they was here. I want to see ’em, and so does Dot, though she

can’t say so. Strange how I miss her talk and blowin’ me when I deserved

it. I’m like a ship without a captain, but my laigs trouble me the most.

Feel like sticks when I try to walk, and Sam Baily don’t push me even,

at all,—jolts awfully over the stones. Yes, I wish they was here. Mabby

they’d come, if they knew how used up Dotty and I be. Jeff could lift

her and wheel me. Write and tell ’em I want ’em.”

Roy was not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he made no objection

when Fanny wrote what Uncle Zach had said and added her own entreaties

for her father to come.

“I don’t suppose you will care to see mother often,” she said, “but you

can see _me_. I shall have a home of my own in Boston and we are going

to build a cottage near the old ruin,—Roy and I,—and shall spend a part

of each summer here.”

It was two weeks before an answer came, not in Mark’s handwriting, but

in Tom’s.

“Oh, Roy. Father is dead. Read what Tom has written. I can’t,” Fanny

said, as she glanced at the letter and then passed it to Roy, who read:

“Stockton, June — 18— Mrs. Mason, Dear Madam:

“It is my painful duty to inform you that your father is dead. He has

been failing ever since Inez died, but did not wish you to know it, as

it might mar the pleasure of your wedding trip. He was always thinking

of you and Inez. He was very ill when your last letter came, but it

pleased him to know that you wanted him, and Mr. Taylor, too. If he had

lived and been able, I think he would have gone to Ridgefield and taken

care of the poor old couple. His death occurred three days after the

receipt of your letter, which he kept under his pillow with Inez’s

watch, which you are to have.

“I know he died a good man. I wish I were half as good. He talked a

great deal of you, and once or twice spoke of your mother. He said,

‘Tell Helen I am sorry for any pain I caused her, and that I always

think of her as she was that summer at the Prospect House.’

“We buried him by the side of Inez and Anita, and crowds attended his

funeral. Now, I am alone, with only Nero left of all which once made my

life so happy.”

Uncle Zach shed floods of tears when Fanny read this letter to him.

“Mark dead and lyin’ away off there among the mountains and the

robbers,” he said. “They or’to have brought him here and buried him with

his kin. I’d of given him a big monument. Yes, marm, I would. I liked

Mark, if he did alter his name, and I feel as if I had lost a son, don’t

you?”

He was looking at Roy, who did not feel as if bereft of a son, and not

much as if he had lost a father, but he was very sorry for Fanny. Her

grief was genuine. She had built many castles in the future when her

father would come to her and these were all swept away.

“Do you think I should wear black?” she asked, “and that father ought to

be brought east and buried here? Inez and Anita must come if he does.”

Roy shivered, as he thought of the three coffins landed at the station

and himself superintending their interment in the angle of the wall near

’Tina.

“No, darling,” he said, kissing Fanny’s tear stained face. “I do not

want you to wear black, nor is it necessary, and it is much better for

your father and Inez to be among the hills of the Yosemite where they

lived than to be brought here. Sometime we will go and see the graves

and I will have a suitable monument erected to their memory.

“By their loving daughter and sister,” Fanny rejoined, drying the tears

which were like April showers, she was so sunny and sweet.

Tom’s letter was sent to Helen, who was about starting for Narragansett

Pier with a party of friends. Just how it affected her it was hard to

tell. She gave up the trip to Narragansett, saying she was not feeling

well and preferred to remain at home. If she cried, no one saw her. If

she were sorry, no one knew it. She was too proud to show her real

feelings, or talk of a past which was buried, but her eyes were very

heavy and her face very pale as she sat behind the closed blinds of her

house, at home to no one, and supposed by most of her friends to be out

of town, as she usually was at that season. Fanny urged her coming to

Ridgefield, and she replied, “Not yet. It would bring back a past I wish

to forget. Your father is dead, and I have no hard feeling towards him.

We were both in fault. I was self willed, and thought because I had

money I must not be crossed. He was a man who could not yield quietly to

be governed in every particular by a woman. But let that pass. I am glad

you knew him and glad you revere his memory.”

This was quite a concession for Helen, and showed that much of her proud

spirit was broken. When she heard how fast Mrs. Taylor was failing as

the summer wore on she sent her little notes of remembrance, with boxes

of flowers and delicacies of various kinds. These pleased Uncle Zach,

but it was difficult to know whether his wife realized the attention.

She always seemed glad when Fanny was with her, but nothing brought so

happy a look to her face as the appearance of Uncle Zach in his wheel

chair, and her eyes rested constantly upon him when he was with her, but

she couldn’t speak to him or return the pressure of his hand when he

laid it on hers.

“She can’t do nothin’ she wants to,” Uncle Zach said pathetically. “I’d

like to kiss her, but I can’t stand alone and should tumble on to her,

if I tried.”

“I’ll help you,” Fanny said, and passing her arms around him she held

him, while he bent down and kissed the old wife whose quivering lips

returned the kiss and tried so hard to speak.

That night she died, and no young husband ever made a bitterer moan for

his bride of a few months than did Zacheus over his Dotty. “The greatest

woman in the world for runnin’ a tarvern and keepin’ a feller straight,”

he said amidst his tears, which fell continually, sleeping or waking. He

did not think of her as old and wrinkled and grey haired, but as she had

been in their early married life, when she was slight and fair, with

long curls in her neck and around her face. “The prettiest girl in town

as she is now the most remarkable woman. I shall get along somehow, I

s’pose,” he said to Fanny, “but it is very dark with Dotty gone, and

Mark, too, and Jeff, and Johnny in the cemetry goin’ on sixty year. If

he had lived he might have had boys to stay with me. As ’tis, I am all

alone. It isn’t pleasant to be old and helpless and all alone and cold

as I am most of the time with this pesky rheumatis’.”

To this Fanny could offer no consolation. She couldn’t stay with him

always, nor could she take him with her when she left Ridgefield. He was

indeed alone in his old age, dependent upon hired help, who might not

always be kind to him. And this he seemed to feel nearly as much as

Dotty’s death.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DOTTY’S FUNERAL.

“Alone and cold, with no one to care for me,” was Uncle Zach’s constant

lament, as he sat shivering by Dotty’s coffin during the days which

preceded her funeral.

Craig and Alice were both with him and this was some comfort, while the

flowers sent in great profusion made him feel, he said, as if he was

somebody, and he wished Dotty knew. Greatly to Fanny’s surprise and

delight her mother came in the morning train, and the honor of having

her there with Craig and Alice partly compensated Mr. Taylor for his

loss. It was the first time Helen had been in Ridgefield since she left

it twenty-four years ago, and naturally her presence aroused much

interest and curiosity in those who remembered her. When she heard of

Mrs. Taylor’s death a sudden impulse seized her to go to the funeral.

Almost anything was better than staying at home alone as she was doing.

If Roy built that cottage she must of course go there some time, and she

might as well make this her opportunity. So she went and in her crape,

still worn for Judge Prescott, she looked grand and handsome and

dignified, and cried a little over Dotty and more over Uncle Zach in his

wheel chair. He persisted in calling her Miss Hilton and talking to her

of Mark, until Alice suggested to him that it might be better to give

her her real name and to say nothing of Mark, as it could only bring up

unpleasant memories.

“Jess so,—jess so. Yes, marm. You are right, and it shows how I am

missin’ Dotty to tell me what is what,” Uncle Zach replied.

After that he laid great stress on Miss Prescott when he spoke to her,

as she was brushing his hair and arranging his necktie for the funeral.

She had asked to do this for him and as he felt her fingers on his

forehead and about his neck, he burst out suddenly, “It brings it all

back, when you was a young gal makin’ the house so bright. You ain’t a

widder, nor Miss Prescott to me, and I won’t call you so.”

“Call me Helen, please. I feel more like her here than I have in years,”

she replied.

She was very kind to him and arranged that he should go to the grave in

the carriage with Roy and Fanny and herself. “The very best and easiest

there is in town,” she said to the undertaker.

“But, but,” Uncle Zach interposed, “I could no more git into a kerridge

than I could fly. I must be wheeled. Dot won’t mind. She knows how stiff

I am.”

It was in vain that they urged upon him that he could be lifted into a

carriage. He insisted that he couldn’t.

“If I go at all, it must be in my chair, with Sam to push me,” he said,

and that settled it, and his chair was wheeled into its place in the

long procession which followed Dotty to the grave.

It took some time to get all the carriages into line and ready, and

while they were waiting a stranger came rapidly across the street and

joined the crowd in front of the Prospect House. He was dusty and travel

stained and no one recognized him but Roy and Fanny, who, with Helen,

were in the carriage next to Uncle Zach’s chair.

“Oh, Roy,—there’s Tom!” Fanny cried, as he passed them without looking

up, so intent was he upon the forlorn old man sitting alone with his

attendant behind him.

“If you please, this is my place,” he said in a low tone to Sam, waving

him aside so peremptorily that Sam had nothing to do but submit, which

he did willingly, wondering who the stranger was and why he was so

anxious for a job he did not fancy.

Uncle Zach was rather hard of hearing, and in the confusion of starting

did not hear Sam’s instructions, “Go easy over the stones; he’s awful

lame.”

Tom nodded that he understood, and the funeral cortege started.

“Careful, now, Sam. There’s a rut full of stones!” Uncle Zach said once,

surprised at the deftness and ease with which the supposed Sam avoided

the stones, almost lifting the chair over the worst of them, and showing

a thoughtfulness he had never shown before. “It’s because it’s Dotty’s

funeral, he’s so keerful,” Uncle Zach thought, resolving to give him

something extra when he paid him his next month’s wages. “Get me as

close to the grave as you can. I want to see her up to the last minute,”

he said, when they were in the cemetery.

Without a word Jeff wheeled the chair as near the grave as possible,

every one making way for him and all wondering who he could be, except

Roy and Fanny. Once during the committal he looked at them and in

response to their greeting touched his hand to his uncovered head with a

motion so natural that Alice, who was watching him, started with a

conviction that she had seen him before, and when the next moment their

eyes met and he smiled upon her she was sure that it was the boy Jeff.

She could not speak to him then and when the ceremony was over and the

people began to disperse there was a new diversion in the scene in the

shape of a huge dog who came bounding over the grass and leaping upon

Jeff nearly knocked him down. It was Nero escaped from the freight house

at the station where his master had left him for a time in charge of a

boy. Jeff’s longing to see Ridgefield had grown in intensity until at

last without any warning of his coming, he started east with his dog and

travelled night and day until Ridgefield was reached. Hearing in the car

of the funeral and fearing Nero might be in the way he had him shut up

and went rapidly up the street he remembered so well to the Prospect

House, reaching it in time to take Sam’s place and wheel Uncle Zacheus

to the cemetery. After many fruitless efforts to escape by the door Nero

squeezed through a half open window and following his master’s trail

came upon him in the graveyard and in his joy at finding him caused a

lurch to the chair which elicited a groan from Uncle Zach.

“Oh, Sam, are you in a hole, or what? You’ve nearly broke my back,” he

said; “and whose great dog is that cantering ’round as if he was goin’

to jump on me. Go ’way, doggie, doggie; go ’way. Shoo! Shoo! Take him

off!” he continued, as Nero showed signs of making his acquaintance, or

at least finding out what manner of being it was wrapped in a shawl and

looking so small and helpless.

Jeff did not reply till he got the chair away from the grave to a side

path where they were comparatively alone.

“Where be you takin’ me? I or’to go back with the procession. Folks’ll

think it queer,” Uncle Zach said, as he found himself at some distance

from the main road of the cemetery.

Stepping in front of him Jeff took off his hat and said, “Don’t you know

me?”

Uncle Zach’s sight was dim and his eyes weak with the tears he had shed,

but something in Jeff’s voice and manner seemed natural. He, however,

had no suspicion of the truth, and replied, “I or’to know you, of

course, but I’m kind of blind, and my spe’tacles is at home. Who be you,

and where is Sam?”

“If I were to turn a somerset or two, and stand on my head, do you think

you would know me then?” Jeff asked, with his old merry laugh.

The effect was wonderful. Uncle Zach had not risen alone from his chair

in months, but he sprang up now and stood firm upon his feet, with his

arms outstretched.

“Jeff! Jeff! my boy!” he cried, “It’s you, yourself, come back to me!

Thank God!”

He could say no more, and sank back in his chair, shaking like a leaf,

while Jeff said to him, “Yes, it’s Jeff, come back, and sorry to find

Mrs. Taylor dead, and you so helpless. Shall I take you home?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m all of a tremble, and so glad you’ve come, and

so would Dotty be, if she knew,” Uncle Zach replied; “and this is your

critter?” motioning towards Nero, who, with sundry sharp woofs, was

signifying his approval of affairs.

“Yes, this is Nero. He belonged to Mark, and I could not leave him in

the mountains alone. He is a friendly, faithful fellow, and will guard

you, or your property, with his life,” Jeff said, caressing the dog, in

whose eyes there was a human look as if he understood what was being

said.

As a rule Mr. Taylor did not care much for dogs. Dotty had disliked

them, and would never have one on the premises. They tracked her clean

piazza and floor and trampled down her flower beds, she said. But Dotty

was gone. Nero had belonged to Mark, and when he put his nose on

Zacheus’s knee and looked up in his face, the old man’s heart was won

and Nero adopted with Jeff.

“Doggie, doggie, Mark’s doggie, you are welcome,” he said, patting Nero

whose bushy tail was in full swing and who, with the sagacity of his

race, had seen that Uncle Zach needed care and had constituted himself

his body guard.

Meanwhile Craig and Alice, and Helen and Roy and Fanny had been watching

the scene at a distance. They were yet to be met and it was hard meeting

them all. Jeff had seen Helen at Clark’s when he took Fanny and Roy

there after Inez’s funeral. She had been rather reserved towards him

then and said very little, but now her manner changed, and she was the

first to go forward and meet him as he came near to them. Inez was dead

and he could never claim any connection with Fanny. He would stay with

Uncle Zach as his proper place, and she was very cordial in her

greeting. Alice and Craig came next, the former doing most of the

talking and both seeming so pleased to see him that he felt his spirits

rising and had not been as happy in years as he was when at last he

stood again in the house where he had spent his boyhood.

Roy was cordial, but could not forget Inez’s dying words, which had

betrayed so much, and every time he looked at Jeff he recalled the scene

of the hold up which he had heard described so vividly that he sometimes

felt that he had been an actor in it. Fanny was unfeignedly glad to see

Jeff and kept him by her a long time while she questioned him of her

father’s sickness and death and burial. Helen, who sat near, made no

comments, but she did not lose a word, and occasionally, when Fanny

cried the hardest, her bit of linen and lace which passed for a

handkerchief, went up to her eyes and came away with several wet spots

upon it. With his friends around him, treating him as if he had always

been an honest man, Jeff began to feel like one. He was glad Alice did

not refer to the pickpocket business, for he could not tell her that he

had kept his promise to the letter. He had followed no one on the

street, or in a crowd, but he could recall pockets in which his hands

had been while the owners were pale as death and almost as still. That

was buried in the Yosemite and here in Ridgefield, where every one was

pleased to see him, the dreadful past was slipping away from him, and

with a rebound his old life was returning. Nero, too, came in for a

share of notice and petting. Craig, who was fond of dogs, offered to buy

him, but Jeff said, “No, he is the only relative I have left in the

world. I have brought him from beyond the Rockies and if Mr. Taylor does

not object, I shall keep him.”

“Object to the critter! Of course not. He was Mark’s, and Dotty isn’t

here to care about his feet. They are pretty big. _Shoo, shoo_, doggie;

not quite so friendly,” Uncle Zach replied, shaking his fingers at the

dog, who had taken a great fancy to him and persisted in laying his head

in his lap and occasionally putting his paws on the wheel of his chair.

The next day Craig and Alice and Helen went home, but Roy and Fanny

staid on to see to the new cottage. The ground for it had been broken a

little distance from the old ruin, “but not so far away that ’Tina can’t

come across the grass to visit us if she wants to,” Roy said to Fanny,

who had no fear of ’Tina so long as Roy was with her. They staid in

Ridgefield the rest of the summer with an occasional trip to New York,

where Helen kept herself secluded until it was time for the fashionable

world to come home and open their doors. Then she gradually made her way

again into the society which she enjoyed. Sometime in September Roy and

Fanny returned to Boston, leaving the cottage so nearly completed that

it would be ready for them in June of the next summer, if they wished to

occupy it so early.

CHAPTER XIX.

ODDS AND ENDS.

Six years later and it is summer again in Ridgefield. Uncle Zach has

celebrated his ninetieth birthday, and except for his lameness is nearly

as hale and hearty as he was when he first welcomed the Masons and the

Tracys to his home. Jeff’s presence has worked wonders in him and in the

house as well. In a quiet way he assumed the role of master while

nominally acting under Mr. Taylor’s orders. The servants, who had become

lax and worthless, have been dismissed, and others more competent hired

in their place. The house has been thoroughly renovated and refurnished.

Many of the former boarders, who had gone to the Tremont, have come

back, and a few people from Boston spend the summers there.

“If Dot was only here, and I had my laigs it would seem like old times,”

Uncle Zach often says to Jeff, who is his right hand and left hand and

feet and brains.

If kindness to an old man can atone for the past Jeff is atoning for it.

He puts his master to bed at night as if he were a child and dresses him

in the morning. Every pleasant day he takes him for what he calls a

drive through the town, stopping wherever the querulous old man wishes

to stop and wheeling him so carefully that his rheumatic limbs seldom

receive a jolt. Nero is always in attendance and is as much a part of

the turnout as Jeff himself. Uncle Zach no longer _shoos_ him when he

puts his head on his knees, but he sometimes has pricks of conscience as

to what Dotty would say if she could see the big dog stretched on the

floor of the piazza or wherever he chose to lie. Dotty’s habits are

deferred to by both Uncle Zach and Jeff, except the quarterly house

cleanings. At these Jeff has drawn the line. Twice a year was

sufficient, he said, for any house, and Uncle Zach agreed with him.

Every three months, however, a dress coat and vest and little yellow

blanket are brought out to air, the blanket so tender with age that Jeff

scarcely dares touch it. “Johnny’s blanket,” Uncle Zach always says,

with a tone very different from that in which he speaks of his swallow

tail.

“Fool and his money soon parted,” he said when telling Jeff what it had

cost. “I never wore it but once and never shall again. The missionaries

don’t want it, nor the heathen. If you had any use for it I’d give it to

you. It seems a pity for it to lay there year in and year out smellin’

like fury with that moth stuff you put in it.”

Jeff laughed and thanked him as he folded up the garments and laid them

away with Taylor’s Tavern in the hair trunk. Once he brought the sign

down for Uncle Zach to see.

“I can’t git up them stairs and I’d like to look at it agin,” he said,

and when Jeff brought it and stood it before him tears ran down his

cheeks like rain. “It makes me think of the time when I was young, and

Dotty, too. The lalocks in the garden was blowin’ and the apple trees

was blossomin’ the day it was sot up. I can smell the lalocks yet,

though the bush has been dead many a year just as Dotty is. Take it

away, Jeff, and you needn’t bring it agin. I’m done with Taylor’s

Tarvern, and with everything else but you!”

Jeff took it back and felt the moisture in his own eyes at his master’s

reminiscences of a past which could never return. To the villagers Jeff

was very reticent with regard to his western life. Of his change of name

he made light. It was a fashion with some of the miners and he foolishly

followed it, he said, but of what befel Tom Hardy he said very little.

He was, however, paying so heavy a penalty for his misdeeds that he

sometimes felt as if he must hide where no one had ever heard of him in

connection with Long John and Little Dick. Fanny had told of the hold up

of which he had been the hero, and of the other where he had been an

actor, and it seemed to him people would never stop questioning him as

to the most minute details. If he repeated the story once in the office

he repeated it a hundred times to a breathless audience which never grew

tired of listening and were always ready to hear it again.

“And they never got a clew to them, you say?”

“Never,” was the question and answer, with which the evening usually

closed, the people dispersing to their rooms or homes, while Jeff rushed

out into the night overwhelmed with remorse.

“I believe State’s Prison would be better than this,” he sometimes

thought when Uncle Zacheus had him on the rack.

He was inexorable and made Jeff tell the story over and over again until

he ought to have known it by heart. Once when he was out for his airing

he asked, speaking of the robbers, “Be they gone, root and branch?”

“Yes, root and branch. Neither Long John nor Little Dick have been seen

since Inez died,” Jeff replied.

It was not often that he spoke of Inez, and now at the mention of her

name Uncle Zach rejoined, “Poor girl, and you was to have married her. I

am sorry for you. And she was Miss Mason’s sister and Mark was her

father. Mark was a likely chap. I’ve nothing agin him except that he run

away and let ’em think he was dead and changed his name. I s’pose he put

you up to change yours, too.”

“No, he didn’t,” Jeff answered quickly. “It was right the other way. I

put him up to every bad thing he ever did.”

Jeff was a little heated in his defense of Mark and pushed the chair

over a rough place with less care than usual.

“Soffly, soffly, Jeff. My bones is older than they was once,” Uncle Zach

said.

This recalled Jeff to himself, and the rest of the journey was made with

comparative comfort to the old man’s bones. They were on their way to

the Queen Anne cottage which had been built near the site of the old

ruin and between it and the road. It was a very pretty and artistic

affair, with bay windows and projections and wide halls and piazza,

where Roy said ’Tina could sit and rest if she wanted to, when she made

her nocturnal visits. The cellar was filled up and made into a terrace,

or plateau, which was ablaze with flowers from June to September. A part

of the orchard had been cut down and with the lane converted into a

small park of green sward, flowering shrubs and shade trees. Here Roy

and Fanny spent a part of every summer and were often joined by Craig

and Alice, and occasionally by Helen, whose beauty was not greatly

marred by the lapse of years and who was sometimes told that she looked

nearly as young as her daughter. She was a grandmother now and two

children played on the grass and picked flowers from the spot where

’Tina once had lived and loved and sinned. They were a sturdy boy of

five years old and a little girl of three. The only real disagreement

Fanny and Roy ever had was on the subject of the boy’s name. Fanny

wished to call him Mark Hilton, while Helen favored the idea. Roy could

not tell Fanny that his son must not be named for one who he believed

had been a highwayman, but he objected to the name and held his ground

against Fanny’s entreaties and the advice of Craig and Alice.

“Perhaps as you won’t call him for my father you’d like to call him for

yours,” Fanny said, with as much spirit as she ever opposed to Roy.

“No,” he answered, “not for my father either, but I’ll tell you what

we’ll do. We’ll call him for your adopted father, Walter Prescott. How

will that suit you?”

“Not as well as Mark Hilton,” Fanny replied, but she gave up the point

and the boy was christened Walter Prescott.

When two years later a girl was born there was no question as to her

name from the moment Roy said to Fanny, “Would you like to see our

little daughter _Inez_?”

They were bright, active children and Jeff was their slave. They were

never happier than when with him, and always hailed with delight the

sight of the wheel chair coming down the road, for that meant a ride

after Uncle Zach was safely deposited upon the piazza with their father

and mother.

On the morning when Jeff came near upsetting the chair in his defense of

Mark they were on the lookout for him. They had come from Boston the

night before and were watching eagerly for their _horse_, as they called

him, while Nero was a _colt_. Craig and Alice were there and with Roy

and Fanny were enjoying the freshness and fragrance of the June morning.

“There they come; there’s Jeff and Nero,” Walter cried, running to meet

him, and “Dere’s Deff and Nero,” Inez repeated, toddling after her

brother.

Both Fanny and Roy hurried to meet Uncle Zach, who was soon helped to a

seat on the piazza, and his chair was at liberty and at once

appropriated by the children.

“Where shall we go?” Jeff asked, and Walter answered, “To the woods.”

He always wanted to go there, hoping to find a bumble-bee’s nest, if not

the hornet’s his grandmother had told him about. Inez was satisfied to

go anywhere with Jeff, whose face always brightened at sight of her and

then grew sad as he remembered another Inez in her mountain grave. They

found the spot where a hornet’s nest had been, and saw a rabbit steal

cautiously out from her hole and then in again as Nero started for her.

They picked some wild flowers and ferns and then Inez grew tired of

walking about and wanted Jeff to sit down and take her. When, as a baby

of a year old, Inez had first held up her arms to him, he had shrunk

from her with a feeling that he was unworthy to touch her. Roy, who was

present, had something of the same feeling, for he never saw Jeff

without a thought of the hold up. But the child’s persistence had

conquered his prejudice and subjugated Jeff, who loved the little girl

better than any living being. Indeed, there was no one else for him to

love. He respected Uncle Zacheus and admired Fanny and reverenced Alice

as one of the noblest of women, but his affection was given to the baby

Inez.

“Taky me; I’se tired,” she kept saying in the woods until he sat down

upon a log and took her in his lap.

“Now, tell us a story about Aunt Inez and the robbers,” Walter said,

coming up with the dog, who stretched himself at Jeff’s feet while

Walter lay down at his side.

The previous summer Jeff had told Walter of his home among the mountains

and his life there with the other Inez, and his grandfather and Nero,

and once Walter had heard his mother tell some one of the hold up and

the robber, and boy-like this pleased him more than the cottage and the

mountains. He had made Jeff tell him about it two or three times the

year before and now insisted that he should tell it again, and begin

where his Aunt Inez jumped over the wheel and Nero ran after the robber.

Very unwillingly Jeff told the story, adapting it to Walter, who

listened intently and did not allow him to omit any part of it which he

knew.

“I wish I’d been there with mamma. Where was I?” he asked.

Jeff did not know, and with his respect for Jeff’s knowledge

considerably lessened, he continued, “I’d have shot the robber.”

Inez, whose arms were about Jeff’s neck and who generally said what

Walter did, replied, “I’d sot the yobber,” and her arms tightened their

hold, giving Jeff a feeling of suffocation and helping to smother the

groan he could not entirely repress.

“Now, tell about Aunt Inez and where she lived,” Walter said, and Jeff

told him of the grand mountains and the waterfalls in the beautiful

valley far away and the grave among the hills where his Aunt Inez was

buried.

“Was she as pretty as mamma?” Walter asked, and Jeff replied, “_I_ think

she was prettier.”

“I don’t believe it. Do you, Nero?” Walter said, with a kick of his foot

against the side of the dog, who answered by springing up and hurrying

after the rabbit which had ventured from its hole a second time.

Walter followed the dog, and Jeff was left alone with Inez, who

whispered drowsily, “Tell more of the bufiful valley far away.”

Then she fell asleep, and bending over her Jeff whispered, “Oh, God, in

this world my sin will always follow and torture me, but grant that in

the next I may be pure and innocent as this child.”

Something roused the little girl and opening her eyes, so like the eyes

Jeff remembered so well, she lisped, “Ess, he will.”

Then she fell asleep again, and with a feeling that he had received a

benediction, Jeff, who had never kissed her before, kissed her now for

the sake of the dead Inez, whose grave was in the beautiful valley far

away.

THE END.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

POPULAR NOVELS

BY

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.

ENGLISH ORPHANS.

HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.

’LENA RIVERS.

MEADOW BROOK.

DORA DEANE.

COUSIN MAUDE.

MARIAN GREY.

EDITH LYLE.

DAISY THORNTON.

CHATEAU D’OR.

QUEENIE HETHERTON.

BESSIE’S FORTUNE.

MARGUERITE.

MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.

DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.

HUGH WORTHINGTON.

CAMERON PRIDE.

ROSE MATHER.

ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.

MILBANK.

EDNA BROWNING.

WEST LAWN.

MILDRED.

FORREST HOUSE.

MADELINE.

CHRISTMAS STORIES.

GRETCHEN.

DR. HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS.

PAUL RALSTON.

THE TRACY DIAMONDS. (_New._)

“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books

are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the

sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention

to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”

Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sent _free_ by mail on

receipt of price,

G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers

NEW YORK.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Moved ad to the end.

2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in

spelling.

3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.