The master then, leaning over her, told her, as well as he could, what

you or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories from

childish lips, only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I

the unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the

omnipresent shadow of her drunken father. Then raising her to her feet,

he wrapped his shawl around her, and bidding her come early in the

morning he walked with her down the road. Then he bade her “good-night.”

The moon shone brightly on the narrow path before them. He stood and

watched the bent little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited

until it had passed the little graveyard and reached the curve of the

hill, where it turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering

outlined against the far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his

work. But the lines of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels

of never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass sobbing

and crying to the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier

than before, he shut the door and went home.

The next morning M’liss came to school. Her face had been washed, and

her coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the

comb, in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone

occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.

Then began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices in which master

and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence and

sympathy between them. Although obedient under the master’s eye, at

times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, M’liss

would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,

finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek

the master with torn jacket and scratched face, and complaints of the

dreadful M’liss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on

the subject; some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil

companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the master

in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that

seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back afterward, the Master

drew M’liss gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it

were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had set

her feet the moonlight night of their first meeting. Remembering the

experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock

of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.

But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those

few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older,

the wiser, and the more prudent,—if she learned something of a faith

that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes,

it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had

made up a little sum by which the ragged M’liss was enabled to assume

the garments of respect and civilization, and often a rough shake of the

hand and words of commendation from a red-shirted and burly figure, sent

a glow to the cheek of the young master and set him to thinking if it

was altogether deserved.

Three months had passed, from the time of their first meeting, and

the master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious

copies, when there came a tap at the door, and again M’liss stood before

him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps

but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his

former apparition. “Are you busy?” she asked; “can you come with me?”

and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she said,

“Come, then, quick!”

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they

entered the town, the master asked her whither she was going. She

replied, “to see her father.”

It was the first time he had heard her use that filial expression, or,

indeed, allude to him in any other way than “Old Smith” or the “Old

Man.” It was the first time in many weeks that she had spoken of him at

all. He had been missed from the settlement for the past fortnight,

and the master had credited the rumors of the townsfolk that Smith had

“struck something rich” on the “North Fork,” about ten miles from the

village. As they neared the settlement, the master gathered from M’liss

that the rumor was untrue, and that she had seen her father that day.

As she grew reticent to further questioning, and as the master was

satisfied from her manner that she had some definite purpose beyond her

usual willfulness, he passively resigned himself and followed her.

Through remote groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in gambling-hells

and dance-houses, the master, preceded by M’liss, passed and repassed.

In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of noisome dens, the

child, holding the master’s hand, pursued her search with a strange

familiarity, perfect self-possession, and implied protection of himself,

that even in his anxiety seemed ludicrous. Some of the revelers,

recognizing M’liss, called to her to sing and dance for them, and would

have forced liquor upon her but for the master’s interference. Others

mutely made way for them. So an hour slipped by, and as yet their search

was fruitless. The master had yawned once or twice and whistled,—two

fatal signs of failing interest,—and finally came to a full stop.

“It’s half past eleven, Melissa,” said he, consulting his watch by a

broad pencil of light from an open shutter,—“half past eleven; and it

strikes me that our old friends, the woodpeckers, must have gone to bed

some hours ago, unless they are waiting up for us. I’m much obliged

to you for the evening’s entertainment, but I’m afraid that even the

pretext of looking for a parent won’t excuse further dissipation. We’d

better put this off till to-morrow. What do you say, Melissa? Why! what

ails the child? What’s that noise? Why, a pistol!—You’re not afraid of

that?”

Few children brought up in the primeval seclusion of Smith’s Pocket were

unfamiliar with those quick and sharp notes which usually rendered the

evening zephyrs of that locality vocal; certainly not M’liss, to have

started when that report rang on the clear night air. The echoes caught

it as usual, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the

dogs to barking all along the streams. The lights seemed to dance and

move quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few moments afterward,

the stream suddenly rippled quite audibly behind them, a few stones

loosened themselves from the hillside and splashed into the stream, a

heavy wind seemed to suage the branches of the funereal pines, and then

the silence fell again, heavier, deadlier than ever.

When the last echo had died away, the master felt his companion’s

hand relax its grasp. Taking advantage of this outward expression of

tractability, he drew her gently with him until they reached the

hotel, which—in her newer aspect of a guest whose board was secured by

responsible parties—had forgivingly opened its hospitable doors to the

vagrant child. Here the master lingered a moment to assure her that

she might count upon his assistance to-morrow; and having satisfied

his conscience by this anticipated duty, bade her good-night. In the

darkness of the road—going astray several times on his way home, and

narrowly escaping the yawning ditches in the trail—he had reason to

commend his foresight in dissuading M’liss from a further search that

night, and in this pleasant reflection went to hed and slept soundly.

For some hours after a darkness thick and heavy brooded over the

settlement. The sombre pines encompassing the village seemed to close

threateningly about it as if to reclaim the wilderness that had been

wrested from them. A low rustling as of dead leaves, and the damp breath

of forest odors filled the lonely street. Emboldened by the darkness

other shadows slipped by, leaving strange footprints in the moist

ditches for people to point at next day, until the moon, round and full,

was lifted above the crest of the opposite hill, and all was magically

changed.

The shadows shrank away, leaving the straggling street sleeping in a

beauty it never knew by day. All that was unlovely, harsh, and repulsive

in its jagged outlines was subdued and softened by that uncertain light.

It smoothed the rough furrows and unsightly chasms of the mountain with

an ineffable love and tenderness. It fell upon the face of the sleeping

M’liss, and left a tear glittering on her black lashes and a smile on

her lip, which would have been rare to her at any other time; and fell

also on the white upturned face of “Old Smith,” with a pistol in his

hand and a bullet in his heart, lying dead beside his empty pocket.

CHAPTER II

WHICH CONTAINS A DREAM OF THE JUST ARISTIDES

The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a “change of

heart,” as experienced by M’liss, was more forcibly described in the

gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that M’liss had struck a “good

lead.” And when there was a new grave added to the little inclosure,

and—at the expense of the master—a little board and inscription put

above it, the “Red Mountain Banner” came out quite handsomely and

did the correct thing for the memory of one of “our oldest pioneers,”

alluding gracefully to that “bane of noble intellects,” touching

slightly on the “vicissitudes of fortune,” and otherwise assisting our

dear brother into genteel obscurity. “He leaves an only child to mourn

his loss,” said the “Banner,” “who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks

to the efforts of the Rev. J. McSnagley.” That reverend gentleman,

in fact, made a strong point of M’liss’s conversion, and, indirectly

attributing to her former bad conduct the suicide of her father, made

affecting allusions in Sunday-school to the beneficial effects of the

“silent tomb,” and in that cheerful contemplation froze most of the

children into speechless horror, and caused the fair-complexioned scions

of the first families to howl dismally and refuse to be comforted.

Of the homes that were offered to M’liss when her conversion became

known, the master had preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and

kind-hearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her

maidenhood as the “Per-ra-rie Rose.” By a steady system of struggle

and self-sacrifice, she had at last subjugated her naturally careless

disposition to principles of “order,” which as a pious woman she

considered, with Pope, as “Heaven’s first law.” But she could not

entirely govern the orbits of her satellites, however regular her own

movements, and her old nature asserted itself in her children. Lycurgus

dipped in the cupboard “between meals,” and Aristides came home from

school without shoes, leaving those important articles at the threshold,

for the delights of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia and

Cassandra were “keerless” of their clothes. So that with but one

exception, however the “Prairie Rose” might have trimmed, pruned, and

trained her own natural luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly

wild and straggling. That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged

fifteen. She was the realization of her mother’s most extravagant dream.

I stay my hand with difficulty at this moment, for I long to describe

this model of deportment; but the progress of my story just at present

supplants Clytemnestra in the larger prominence it gives to another

member of the family,—the just Aristides.

The long dry summer had come. As each fierce day seemed to burn itself

out in little whiffs of pearl gray smoke on the mountain summits, and

as the upspringing breeze scattered what might have been its red embers

over the landscape, the green wave which, in early spring, had upheaved

above Smith’s grave grew sere and dry and hard. In those days, the

master, strolling in the little churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was

sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers, plucked from the damp

pine forest, scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the

little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented

grass which the children loved to keep in their desks, entwined with

the pompon-like plumes of the buckeye and syringa, the wood anemone, and

here and there the master noticed the dark blue cowl of the monk’s-hood

or deadly aconite. One day, during a walk, in crossing a wooded ridge,

he came upon M’liss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate

pine, on a fantastic throne, formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless

branches, her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to the

just Aristides, who sat humbly at her feet, one of the negro melodies

of her younger life. It was perhaps the influence of the season, or the

memory of this sylvan enjoyment, which caused Aristides, one midsummer

day, to have a singular vision.

The just Aristides had begun that morning with a serious error.

Loitering on his way to school, occasionally stopping to inspect the

footprints of probable bears, or indulging in cheerful badinage with the

tunnel men,—to whom the apparition of a short-legged boy weighed

down by a preternaturally large satchel was an object of boisterous

solicitude,—Aristides suddenly found that he was an hour and a half too

late for school. Whether this circumstance was purely accidental or not

is a question of some uncertainty, for Aristides, on finding himself

occupying this criminal position, at once resolved to play truant. I

shall not stop to inquire by what system of logic this result presented

itself to that just youth as a consistent deduction, or whether some

indistinct apprehension of another and a better world beyond the

settlement, where there were no schools and blackberries were plenty,

had not influenced him in taking this fatal step. Enough that he entered

on his rash career by instantly eating the dinner which he carried with

him, and having propitiated that terrible god whose seat is every small

boy’s stomach, with a feeling of inexpressible guiltiness creeping over

him, he turned his back upon the schoolhouse and ran into the woods.

Away from the glare of the red road, how deliciously cool was the damp

breath and twilight dimness of the stately pines. How they seemed to

welcome him in their deepest recesses, ranging themselves silently

around him as he ran, shutting out the world and its schoolhouses, and

the pursuit of indignant parents and vindictive teachers. How in the

forest depths the blue jay called to him mockingly, and the kingbird,

spreading his tail like a crimson pennant, beckoned him onward. How

there was recognition and greeting even in the squirrel that scampered

past him, mischievously whisking his ridiculous tail within an inch of

his outstretched fingers. And how Aristides, at last flinging away hat,

shoes, and satchel, uttered a shrill whoop and dashed forward like a

youthful savage. But are not these things written in the dog’s-eared

pages of every boy’s memory, even though they seemed afterward to the

just Aristides a part and parcel of his own strange vision?

Yet even such delights had their hour of culmination, and Aristides

found himself at high noon back on the road again in a state of feverish

excitement, carrying a ravished jay’s nest, two pine cones, a dead hare,

and a plume of the white syringa. Somewhat overpowered by the weight

of these trophies, which he had collected in the vague belief that

they would be of future service to him, he began to look about for some

convenient place to bestow his booty. It was nearly time for the great

Wingdam stage to go by, and when it came at last with a sharp rattle of

wheels and prancing of horses, and a red pillar of dust hanging over it

that partook of both the fiery and cloudy attributes of the Israelitish

sign, Aristides exchanged epithets with the driver, and, although

standing knee-deep in red dust, felt a thrill of joy in the recognition

which no future honor or dignity might ever give him.

Retracing his steps, the truant presently came to a semicircular opening

in the side of Red Mountain, which inclosed, like the walls of some

vast amphitheatre, what had been the arena of the early struggles of

the gladiators of fortune. There were terrible traces of that struggle

still—in the rock blasted by fire—in the bank furrowed by water—and

in the debris of Red Mountain scattered along the gulch two miles

in extent. Their forgotten engines were lying half buried in

the ditches—the primeval structure which had served them for a

banking-house was roofless, and held the hoards of field-mice and

squirrels. The unshapely stumps of ancient pines dotted the ground, and

Aristides remembered that under the solitary redwood, which of all

its brothers remained still standing, one of those early pioneers lay

buried. No wonder that, as the gentle breeze of that summer day swept

through its branches, the just Aristides might have heard, as part

of his wonderful dream, some echo of its far off brothers of Lebanon,

saying, “Since thou art fallen, no feller has risen up against us!”

But the short legs of Aristides were aching, and he was getting thirsty.

There was a rough cavern close at hand; and as most of these openings

condensed their general dampness somewhere in quiet pools, Aristides

turned into the first one. When he had slaked his thirst, he looked

around him and recognized Smith’s Pocket.

It had undergone little change in the last two years. The winter

rains had detached those portions of the wall which were not upheld by

decaying timbers. It was certainly a dirty pocket—a pocket filled

with rubbish—a shabby pocket—a worn-out and ragged pocket. It was

so unpromising in its present exterior, so graphic in its story of

misfortune, and so terrible in its recent memories, that the most

sanguine prospector would have passed it by, as though the hopeless

sentence of Dante had been written over its ragged portal.

The active mind of Aristides, however, saw in the lurking shadows of

its arches much promise as a future play-room, to which he intended to

induct hereafter his classical brother Lycurgus. In this reflection he

threw himself on the ground, and luxuriously burying his bare feet in

the cool, loose soil, gave himself up to serene meditation. But the heat

and exertion were beginning to exert a certain influence over him,

and once or twice his eyes closed. The water rippled beside him with

a sleepy sound. The sunlight on the hill without made him wink. The

long-drawn cawing of a crow on the opposite hillside, and the buzzing

of a bluebottle fly who had sought retreat in the cavern, had a like

effect, and he felt himself falling asleep. How long he slept, or if

he slept at all, he could not remember, for he started suddenly, and,

listening a moment, sprang to his feet. The low, heavy blows of a pick

came deadened and muffled from the extremity of the cavern.

At first a terrible fear took possession of him; for an instant the

white, rigid face of Smith, as he had seen it on the day of the inquest,

when an irresistible curiosity led him to creep into the room where the

dead man was lying—for an instant only, this fearful remembrance seemed

to rise before him out of the gloom of the pit. The terror passed away.

Ghosts were historically unknown to Aristides, and even had his

imaginative faculty been more prominent, the education of Smith’s

Pocket was not of a kind to foster such weaknesses. Except a twinge of

conscience, a momentary recollection of the evil that comes to bad boys

through the severe pages of Sunday-school books—with this exception,

Aristides was not long in recovering his self-possession. He did not run

away, for his curiosity was excited. The same instinct which prompted

an examination of bear-tracks gave a fascination to the situation, and a

nervous energy to his frame.

The regular blows of the pick still resounded through the cavern. He

crept cautiously to the deepest recesses of the pocket, and held his

breath and listened. The sound seemed to come from the bowels of the

mountain. There was no sign of opening or ingress; an impenetrable veil

of quartz was between him and the mysterious laborer. He was creeping

back, between the displaced rafters, when a light glanced suddenly in

his face, and flashed on the wet roof above him. Looking fearfully down,

Aristides beheld between the interstices of the rafters, which formed

a temporary flooring, that there was another opening below, and in that

opening a man was working. In the queer fantasy of Aristides’s dream, it

took the aspect of a second pocket and a duplicate Smith!

He had no time to utter his astonishment, for at that moment an ominous

rattling of loose soil upon his back made him look up, and he had barely

time to spring away before a greater portion of the roof of Smith’s

Pocket, loosened by the displacement of its supports in his search, fell

heavily to the ground. But in the fall a long-handled shovel which had

been hidden somewhere in the crevices of the rock above came rattling

down with it, and, seizing this as a trophy, Aristides emerged

from Smith’s Pocket, at a rate of speed which seemed singularly

disproportionate with his short legs and round stomach.

When he reached the road the sun was setting. Inspecting his prize by

that poetic light, he found that the shovel was a new one, and bore

neither mark of use nor exposure. Shouldering it again, with the

intention of presenting it as a peace-offering to propitiate the

just wrath of his parents, Aristides had gone but a few rods when an

unexpected circumstance occurred which dashed his fond hope, and to the

conscientious child seemed the shadow of an inevitable Nemesis. At the

curve of the road, as the settlement of Smith’s Pocket came into view,

with its straggling street, and its church spire that seemed a tongue of

flame in the setting sun, a broad-shouldered figure sprang, apparently,

from out of the bank, and stood in the path of that infelix infant.

“Where are you going with that shovel, you young devil?”

Aristides looked up and saw that his interlocutor was a man of powerful

figure, whose face, though partially concealed by a red handkerchief,

even in that uncertain light was not prepossessing. Children are quick

physiognomists, and Aristides, feeling the presence of evil, from the

depths of his mighty little soul then and there took issue with the

giant.

“Where are you going with that shovel; d—n you, do you hear?” said he

of the red handkerchief impatiently.

“Home,” said Aristides stoutly.

“Home, eh!” said the stranger sneeringly. “And where did you steal it,

you young thief?”

The Morpher stock not being of a kind to receive opprobrious epithets

meekly, Aristides slowly, and with an evident effort, lifted the shovel

in a menacing attitude.

A single step was all that separated six feet of Strength from three

feet of Valor. The stranger eyed Aristides with an expression of surly

amazement, and hesitated. The elephant quailed before the gad-fly. As

that precocious infant waved the threatening shovel, his youthful lips

slowly fashioned this tremendous sentence:—

“_You let me pass and I won’t hit you!_”

And here I must pause. I would that for the sake of poetry I could leave

my hero, bathed in that heroic light, erect and menacing. But alas, in

this practical world of ours, the battle is too often to the strong. And

I hasten over the humiliating spectacle of Aristides, spanked, cuffed,

and kicked, and pick him from the ditch into which he was at last

ignominiously tossed, a defeated but still struggling warrior, and so

bring him, as the night closes charitably around him, in contrite tears

and muddy garments to his father’s door.

When the master stopped at Mrs. Morpher’s to inquire after his errant

pupil that night, he found Aristides in bed, smelling strongly of soap

and water, and sinking into a feverish sleep. As he muttered from time

to time some incoherent sentence, tossing restlessly in his cot, the

master turned to those about him and asked what it was he said.

It was nothing. Aristides had been dreaming, and that was his dream.

That was all. Yet a dream that foreshadowed a slow-coming but unerring

justice, that should give the little dreamer in after years some credit

to the title of Aristides the Just.

CHAPTER III

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that, of all her

classical progeny, Clytemnestra was particularly the model for M’liss.

Following this fallacy she threw “Clytie” at the head of M’liss when

she was “bad,” and set her up before the child for adoration in her

penitential moments. It was not therefore surprising to the master

to hear that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the

master and as an example for M’liss and others. For Clytie was quite

a young lady. Inheriting her mother’s physical peculiarities, and in

obedience to the climatic laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an

early bloomer. The youth of Smith’s Pocket, to whom this kind of flower

was rare, sighed for her in April and languished in May. Enamored swains

haunted the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal. A few were jealous of

the master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master’s eyes

to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that

in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were

uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the

request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat

disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that

she sometimes allowed the curves of a round plump white arm to rest on

his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung

back her blond curls when she did so. I don’t remember whether I have

stated that the master was a young man—it’s of little consequence,

however. He had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie was

taking her first lesson, and on the whole withstood the flexible curves

and facetious glance like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps

an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this asceticism.

He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening when she returned to the

schoolhouse after something she had forgotten,—and did not find it

until the master walked home with her,—I hear that he endeavored to

make himself particularly agreeable, partly from the fact, I imagine,

that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the already

overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra’s admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode, M’liss did not come to

school. Noon came, but not M’liss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it

appeared that they had left for school together, but the willful M’liss

had taken another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening

he called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr.

Morpher had spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace

that might lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable

accomplice, but that equitable infant succeeding in impressing

the household with his innocence, Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid

impression that the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch,

or—what was almost as terrible—mud-dyed and soiled beyond the

redemption of soap and water. Sick at heart, the master returned to the

schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he found

a note lying before him, addressed to himself in M’liss’s handwriting.

It seemed to be written on a leaf torn from some old memorandum-book,

and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been sealed with six broken

wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the master read as follows:—

RESPECTED SIR: When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.

Never _Never_ NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my

Amerika’s Pride [a, highly colored lithograph from a tobacco box] to

Sally Flanders. But don’t you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don’t

you dair to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she

is perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present from MELISSA

SMITH.

The master mused for some time over this characteristic epistle. As he

was mechanically refolding it his eye caught a sentence written on the

back in pencil, in another handwriting, somewhat blurred and indistinct

from the heavy incisive strokes of M’liss’s pen on the other side. It

seemed to be a memorandum belonging to the book from which the leaf was

originally torn:—

July 17th. 5 hours in drift—dipping west—took out 20 oz.; cleaned up

40 oz. Mem.—saw M. S.

“July 17th,” said the master, opening his desk and taking out a file of

the “Red Mountain Banner.” “July 17th,” he repeated, running over the

pages till he came to a paragraph headed “DISTRESSING SUICIDE.” “July

17th—why, that’s the day Smith killed himself. That’s funny!”

In a strict etymological sense there was nothing so very ludicrous in

this coincidence, nor did the master’s face betray any expression of

the kind. Perhaps the epithet was chosen to conceal the vague uneasiness

which it produced in his mind. We are all of us more affected by

these coincidences than we care to confess to one another. If the most

matter-of-fact reader of these pages were to find a hearse standing

in front of his door for three consecutive mornings, although the

circumstance might be satisfactorily explained,—shall I go further and

say, _because_ the circumstance might be satisfactorily explained,—he

would vaguely wish it hadn’t happened. Philosophize as we may, the

simple fact of two remote lines crossing each other always seems to us

of tremendous significance, and quite overshadows the more important

truth that the real parallels of life’s journey are the lines that never

meet. It will do us good to remember these things, and look more kindly

on our brothers of Borrioboola-Gha and their fetich superstitions, when

we drop our silver in the missionary box next Sabbath.

“I wonder where that memorandum came from,” said the master, as he rose

at last and buttoned up his coat. “Who is ‘M. S.’? M. S. stands for

manuscript and Melissa Smith. Why don’t”—But checking an impulsive

query as to why people don’t make their private memoranda generally

intelligible, the master put the letter in his pocket and went home.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palm-like

fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its

form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who

had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge

where he had once found M’liss. There he found the prostrate pine and

tessellated branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what

might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling

limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch, and sheltered

itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,

found the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches,

he met the black eyes of the errant M’liss. They gazed at each other

without speaking. She was first to break the silence.

“What do you want?” she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action. “I want some crab apples,”

he said humbly.

“Shan’t have ’em! go away! Why don’t you get ’em of Clytemnerestera?”

It seemed to be a relief to M’liss to express her contempt in additional

syllables to that classical young woman’s already long-drawn title. “Oh,

you wicked thing!”

“I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I

am famished!” and the young man, in a state of remarkable exhaustion,

leaned against the tree.

Melissa’s heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life

she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his

heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:—

“Dig under the tree near the roots, and you’ll find lots: but mind

you don’t tell,” for M’liss had _her_ hoards as well as the rats and

squirrels.

But the master of course was unable to find them, the effects of hunger

probably blinding his senses. M’liss grew uneasy. At length she peered

at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:—

“If I come down and give you some, you’ll promise you won’t touch me?”

The master promised.

“Hope you’ll die if you do?”

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. M’liss slid down

the tree. The duties of hospitality fulfilled, she seated herself at a

little distance and eyed the master with extreme caution.

“Why didn’t you eat your breakfast, you bad man?”

“Because I’ve run away.”

“Where to?” said M’liss, her eyes twinkling.

“Anywhere—anywhere, away from here!” responded that deceitful wretch

with tragic wildness of demeanor.

“What made you?—bad boy!” said M’liss, with a sudden respect of

conventionalities, and a rare touch of tenderness in her tones. “You’d

better go back where your vittals are.”

“What are victuals to a wounded spirit?” asked the young man

dramatically. He had reached the side of M’liss during this dialogue,

and had taken her unresisting hand. He was too wise to notice his

victory, however; and drawing Melissa’s note from his pocket, opened it

before her.

“Couldn’t you find any paper in the schoolhouse without tearing a leaf

out of my memorandum book, Melissa?” he asked.

“It ain’t out of your memorandum book,” responded M’liss fiercely.

“Indeed,” said the master, turning to the lines in pencil; “I thought it

was my handwriting.”

M’liss, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly seized the

paper and snatched it out of his hand.

“It’s father’s writing!” she said, after a pause, in a softer tone.

“Where did you get it, M’liss?”

“Aristides gave it to me.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Don’t know. He had the book in his pocket when I told him I was going

to write to you, and he tore the leaf out. There now—don’t bother me

any more.” M’liss had turned her face away, and the black hair had hid

her downcast eyes.

Something in her gesture and expression reminded him of her father.

Something, and more that was characteristic to her at such moments, made

him fancy another resemblance, and caused him to ask impulsively, and

less cautiously than was his wont:—

“Do you remember your mother, M’liss?”

“No.”

“Did you never see her?”

“No—didn’t I tell you not to bother, and you’re a-goin’ and doin’ it,”

said M’liss savagely.

The master was silent a moment. “Did you ever think you would like to

have a mother, M’liss?” he asked again.

“No-o-o-o!”

The master rose; M’liss looked up.

“Does Aristides come to school to-day?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going back? You’d better,” she said.

“Well!—perhaps I may. Good-by!”

He had proceeded a few steps when, as he expected, she called him back.

He turned. She was standing by the tree, with tears glistening in her

eyes. The master felt the right moment had come. Going up to her,

he took both her hands in his, and looking in her tearful eyes, said

gravely:—

“M’liss, do you remember the first evening you came to see me?”

M’liss remembered.

“You asked me if you might come to school, and I said—”

“Come!” responded the child softly.

“If I told you I was lonely without my little scholar, and that I wanted

her to come, what would you say?”

The child hung her head in silence. The master waited patiently. Tempted

by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and raising her bright

eyes and velvet fore paws, gazed at them fearlessly. A squirrel ran

halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there stopped.

“_We_ are waiting, Lissy,” said the master in a whisper, and the child

smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a slanting

sunbeam stole through their interlaced boughs and fell on the doubting

face and irresolute little figure. But a step in the dry branches and a

rustling in the underbrush broke the spell.

A man dressed as a miner, carrying a long-handled shovel, came slowly

through the woods. A red handkerchief tied around his head under his

hat, with the loose ends hanging from beneath, did not add much favor

to his unprepossessing face. He did not perceive the master and M’liss

until he was close upon them. When he did, he stopped suddenly and gazed

at them with an expression of lowering distrust. M’liss drew nearer to

the master.

“Good-mornin’—picknickin’, eh?” he asked, with an attempt at geniality

that was more repulsive than his natural manner.

“How are you—prospecting, eh?” said the master quietly, after the

established colloquial formula of Red Mountain.

“Yes—a little in that way.”

The stranger still hesitated, apparently waiting for them to go first, a

matter which M’liss decided by suddenly taking the master’s hand in her

quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but the master, parting

her hair over her forehead, kissed her, and so, hand in hand, they

passed out of the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit

road. But M’liss, looking back, saw that her old seat was occupied by

the hopeful prospector, and fancied that in the shadows of her former

throne something of a gratified leer overspread his face. “He’ll have to

dig deep to find the crab apples,” said the child to the master, as they

came to the Red Mountain road.

When Aristides came to school that day he was confronted by M’liss. But

neither threats nor entreaties could extract from that reticent youth

the whereabout of the memorandum book nor where he got it. Two or three

days afterward, during recess, he approached M’liss, and beckoned her

one side.

“Well,” said M’liss impatiently.

“Did you ever read the story of ‘Ali Baba’?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No.”

“Well,” said that sage infant, wheeling around on his stout legs, “_it’s

true!_”

CHAPTER IV

WHICH HAS A GOOD MORAL TENDENCY

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with the other scholars,

M’liss still retained an offensive attitude toward Clytemnestra. Perhaps

the jealous element was not entirely stilled in her passionate little

breast. Perhaps it was that Clytemnestra’s round curves and plump

outlines afforded an extensive pinching surface. But while these

ebullitions were under the master’s control, her enmity occasionally

took a new and irresponsible form.

In his first estimate of the child’s character he could not conceive

that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many other

professed readers of character, was safer in _a posteriori_ than _a

priori_ reasoning, for M’liss had a doll. But then it was a peculiar

doll,—a frightful perversion of wax and sawdust,—a doll fearfully and

wonderfully made,—a smaller edition of M’liss. Its unhappy existence

had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been

the oldtime companion of M’liss’s wanderings, and bore evident marks

of suffering. Its original complexion was long since washed away by the

weather, and anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much

as M’liss had in days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and

ragged as hers had been. M’liss had never been known to apply to it any

childish term of endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of

other children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near

the schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during M’liss’s rambles.

Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll—as she would to herself—it knew no

luxuries.

Now, Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll

and gave it to M’liss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The

master, on looking at it one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance

in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became

evident before long that M’liss had also noticed the same resemblance.

Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was

alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from

school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion

of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge

of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie’s

excellencies upon her; or whether she had an intuitive appreciation

of the rites of certain other heathens, and indulging in that “fetich”

ceremony imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away and

finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing

in her different tasks the workings of a quick, restless, and vigorous

perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.

Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of

course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in venturing

beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around

her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are

no better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the

little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,

and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own

experience and judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained

his fancy began to affect him with grave doubts. He could not but see

that M’liss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. But there was

one better quality which pertained to her semi-savage disposition—the

faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another—though

not always an attribute of the noble savage—truth. M’liss was both

fearless and sincere—perhaps in such a character the adjectives were

synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had

arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that

he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined to

call on the Rev. Mr. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat

humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he

thought of M’liss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps

with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that

had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a

complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked

back his dislike and went to McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed

that the master was looking “peartish” and hoped he had got over the

“neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb

“ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write this certain method

of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain,

Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an

adornment to Chris_tew_anity, and has a likely, growin’ young family,”

added Mr. McSnagley; “and there is that mannerly young gal—so well

behaved—Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie’s perfections seemed to affect

him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The

master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced

contrast with poor M’liss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there

was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of

Morpher’s earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile

efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another

engagement and left without asking the information required, but in his

after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the

full benefit of having refused it.

But the master obtained the advice in another and unexpected direction.

The resident physician of Smith’s Pocket was a Dr. Duchesne, or as

he was better known to the locality, “Dr. Doochesny.” Of a naturally

refined nature and liberal education, he had steadily resisted the

aggressions and temptations of Smith’s Pocket, and represented to the

master a kind of connecting link between his present life and the past.

So that an intimacy sprang up between the two men, involving prolonged

interviews in the doctor’s little back shop, often to the exclusion of

other suffering humanity and their physical ailments. It was in one of

these interviews that the master mentioned the coincidence of the date

of the memoranda on the back of M’liss’s letter and the day of Smith’s

suicide.

“If it were Smith’s own handwriting, as the child says it is,” said the

master, “it shows a queer state of mind that could contemplate suicide

and indite private memoranda within the same twenty-four hours.”

Dr. Duchesne removed his cigar from his lips and looked attentively at

his friend.

“The only hypothesis,” continued the master, “is that Smith was either

drunk or crazy, and the fatal act was in a measure unpremeditated.”

“Every man who commits suicide,” returned the doctor gravely, “is in

my opinion insane, or, what is nearly the same thing, becomes through

suffering an irresponsible agent. In my professional experience I have

seen most of the forms of mental and physical agony, and know what

sacrifices men will make to preserve even an existence that to me seemed

little better than death, so long as their intellect remained unclouded.

When you come to reflect on the state of mind that chooses death as a

preferable alternative, you generally find an exaltation and enthusiasm

that differs very little from the ordinary diagnosis of delirium. Smith

was not drunk,” added the doctor in his usual careless tone; “I saw his

body.”

The master remained buried in reflection. Presently the doctor removed

his cigar.

“Perhaps I might help you to explain the coincidence you speak of.”

“How?”

“Very easily. But this is a professional secret, you understand.”

“Yes, I understand,” said the master hastily, with an ill-defined

uneasiness creeping over him.

“Do you know anything of the phenomena of death by gunshot wounds?”

“No!”

“Then you must take certain facts as granted. Smith, you remember, was

killed _instantly!_ The nature of his wound and the manner of his death

were such as would have caused an instantaneous and complete relaxation

of _all_ the muscles. Rigidity and contraction would have supervened

of course, but only after life was extinct and consciousness fled. Now

Smith was found with his hand tightly grasping a pistol.”

“Well?”

“Well, my dear boy, he must have grasped it after he was dead, or have

prevailed on some friend to stiffen his fingers round it.”

“Do you mean that he was murdered?”

Dr. Duchesne rose and closed the door. “We have different names for

these things in Smith’s Pocket. I mean to say that he didn’t kill

himself—that’s all.”

“But, doctor,” said the master earnestly; “do you think you have

done right in concealing this fact? Do you think it just—do you

think it consistent with your duty to his orphan child?”

“That’s why I have said nothing about it,” replied the doctor

coolly,—“because of my consideration for his orphan child.”

The master breathed quickly, and stared at the doctor.

“Doctor! you don’t think that M’liss”—

“Hush!—don’t get excited, my young friend. Remember I am not a

lawyer—only a doctor.”

“But M’liss was with me the very night he must have been killed. We were

walking together when we heard the report—that is—a report—which must

have been the one”—stammered the master.

“When was that?”

“At half past eleven. I remember looking at my watch.”

“Humph!—when did you meet her first?”

“At half past eight. Come, doctor, you have made a mistake here at

least,” said the young man with an assumption of ease he was far from

feeling. “Give M’liss the benefit of the doubt.”

Dr. Duchesne replied by opening a drawer of his desk. After rummaging

among the powders and mysterious looking instruments with which it was

stored, he finally brought forth a longitudinal slip of folded white

paper. It was appropriately labeled “_Poison._”

“Look here,” said the doctor, opening the paper. It contained two or

three black coarse hairs. “Do you know them?”

“No.”

“Look again!”

“It looks something like Melissa’s hair,” said the master, with a

fathomless sinking of the heart.

“When I was called to look at the body,” continued the doctor with the

deliberate cautiousness of a professional diagnosis, “my suspicions were

aroused by the circumstance I told you of. I managed to get possession

of the pistol, and found these hairs twisted around the lock as though

they had been accidentally caught and violently disentangled. I don’t

think that any one else saw them. I removed them without observation,

and—they are at your service.”

The master sank back in his seat and pressed his hand to his forehead.

The image of M’liss rose before him with flashing eye and long black

hair, and seemed to beat down and resist defiantly the suspicion that

crept slowly over his heart.

“I forbore to tell you this, my friend,” continued the doctor slowly and

gravely, “because when I learned that you had taken this strange child

under your protection I did not wish to tell you that which—though I

contend does not alter her claims to man’s sympathy and kindness—still

might have prejudiced her in your eyes. Her improvement under your care

has proven my position correct. I have, as you know, peculiar ideas of

the extent to which humanity is responsible. I find in my heart—looking

back over that child’s career—no sentiment but pity. I am mistaken in

you if I thought this circumstance aroused any other feeling in yours.”

Still the figure of M’liss stood before the master as he bent before the

doctor’s words, in the same defiant attitude, with something of scorn

in the great dark eyes, that made the blood tingle in his cheeks, and

seemed to make the reasoning of the speaker but meaningless and empty

words. At length he rose. As he stood with his hand on the latch he

turned to Dr. Duchesne, who was watching him with careful solicitude.

“I don’t know but that you have done well to keep this from me. At

all events it has not—cannot, and should not alter my opinion toward

M’liss. You will of course keep it a secret. In the mean time you must

not blame me if I cling to my instincts in preference to your judgment.

I still believe that you are mistaken in regard to her.”

“Stay, one moment,” said the doctor; “promise me you will not say

anything of this, nor attempt to prosecute the matter further till you

have consulted with me.”

“I promise. Good-night.”

“Good-night;” and so they parted.

True to that promise and his own instinctive promptings the master

endeavored to atone for his momentary disloyalty by greater solicitude

for M’liss. But the child had noticed some change in the master’s

thoughtful manner, and in one of their long post-prandial walks she

stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked full in his face with big

searching eyes.

“You ain’t mad?” said she, with an interrogative shake of the black

braids.

“No.”

“Nor bothered?”

“No.”

“Nor hungry?” (Hunger was to M’liss a sickness that might attack a

person at any moment.)

“No.”

“Nor thinking of her?”

“Of whom, Lissy?”

“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet invented by M’liss, who

was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)

“No.”

“Upon your word?” (A substitute for “Hope you’ll die!” proposed by the

master.)

“Yes.”

“And sacred honor?”

“Yes.”

Then M’liss gave him a fierce little kiss, and hopping down, fluttered

off. For two or three days after that she condescended to appear like

other children and be, as she expressed it, “good.”

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered

in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few

ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or

Examination. So the savans and professionals of Smith’s Pocket were

gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children

in a constrained position, and bullying them as in a witness-box. As

usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the

lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the

present instance M’liss and Clytie were preeminent and divided public

attention: M’liss with her clearness of material perception and

self-reliance, and Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike

correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and

blundering. M’liss’s readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated

the greatest number, and provoked the greatest applause, and M’liss’s

antecedents had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of the

miners, whose athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose

handsome bearded faces looked in at the window. But M’liss’s popularity

was overthrown by an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing

entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and

most ambiguous questions, delivered in an impressive, funereal tone;

and M’liss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our

“spotted ball” through space, and defining the “tethered orbits” of the

planets, when McSnagley deliberately arose.

“Meelissy, ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yer yearth, and

its movements with regard to the sun, and I think you said it had been

a-doin’ of it since the creation, eh?”

M’liss nodded a scornful affirmative.

“Well, was that the truth?” said McSnagley, folding his arms.

“Yes,” said M’liss, shutting up her little red lips tightly.

The handsome outlines at the windows peered further into the schoolroom,

and a saintly, Raphael-like face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes,

belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child

and whispered:—

“Stick to it, M’liss! It’s only a big bluff of the parson.”

The reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate

glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his eye on

Clytemnestra. That young woman softly elevated her round, white arm.

Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive specimen

bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn in honor of

the occasion. There was a momentary pause. Clytie’s round cheeks

were very pink and soft. Clytie’s big eyes were very bright and blue.

Clytie’s low-necked white book-muslin rested softly on Clytie’s white,

plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the master, and the master nodded.

Then Clytie spoke softly:

“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him.”

There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant

expression on McSnagley’s face, a grave shadow on the master’s, and

a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows. M’liss

skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud

snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from

the schoolroom, and a yell from the windows, as M’liss brought her red

fist down on the desk, with the emphatic declaration:—

“It’s a d—n lie. I don’t believe it!”

CHAPTER V

“OPEN SESAME”

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were

visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests

exhaled a fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding; the

ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland

which climbed the Red Mountain at its southern aspect, the long spike of

the monk’s-hood shot up from its broad-leaved stool and once more shook

its dark blue bells. Again the billow above Smith’s grave was soft and

green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.

The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,

and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until

they reached Smith’s grave, and there, there was but one. General

superstition had shunned the enforced companionship. The plot beside

Smith was vacant.

It was the custom of the driver of the great Wingdam stage to whip up

his horses at the foot of the hill, and soenter Smith’s Pocket at that

remarkable pace which the woodcuts in the hotel bar-room represented

to credulous humanity as the usual rate of speed of that conveyance. At

least, Aristides Morpher thought so as he stood one Sunday afternoon,

uneasily conscious of his best jacket and collar, waiting its approach.

Nor could anything shake his belief that regularly on that occasion the

horses ran away with the driver, and that that individual from motives

of deep policy pretended not to notice it until they were stopped.

“Anybody up from below, Bill?” said the landlord as the driver slowly

descended from his perch.

“Nobody for you,” responded Bill shortly. “Dusenberry kem up as usual,

and got off at the old place. You can’t make a livin’ off him, I

reckon.”

“Have you found out what his name is yet?” continued the landlord,

implying that “Dusenberry” was simply a playful epithet of the driver.

“He says his name is Waters,” returned Bill. “Jake said he saw him at

the North Fork in ’50—called himself Moore then. Guess he ain’t no

good, nowhow. What’s he doin’ round here?”

“Says he’s prospectin’,” replied the landlord. “He has a claim somewhere

in the woods. Gambles a little too, I reckon. He don’t travel on his

beauty anyhow.”

“If you had seen him makin’ up to a piece of calico inside, last trip,

and she a-makin’ up to him quite confidential-like, I guess you’d think

he was a lady-killer. My eye, but wasn’t she a stunner! Clytie Morpher

wasn’t nowhere to begin with her.”

“Who was she, Bill?” asked half a dozen masculine voices.

“Don’t know. We picked her up this side of ‘Coyote.’ Fancy? I tell

you!—pretty little hat and pink ribbings—eyes that ud bore you through

at a hundred yards—white teeth—brown gaiters, and such an ankle! She

didn’t want to show it,—oh, no!” added the sarcastic Bill with deep

significance.

“Where did you leave her, Bill?” asked a gentle village swain who had

been fired by the glowing picture of the fair unknown.

“That’s what’s the matter. You see after we picked her up, she said she

was goin’ through to Wingdam. Of course there wasn’t anything in the

stage or on the road too good to offer her. Old Major Spaffler wanted

to treat her to lemonade at every station. Judge Plunkett kep’ a-pullin’

down the blinds and a-h’istin’ of them up to keep out the sun and let in

the air. Blest if old McSnagley didn’t want to carry her travelin’-bag.

There wasn’t any attention, boys, she didn’t get—but it wasn’t no

use—bless you! She never so much as passed the time of day with them.”

“But where did she go?” inquired another anxious auditor.

“Keep your foot off the drag, and I’ll tell you. Arter we left Ring

Tail Canon, Dusenberry, as usual, got on. Presently one of the outsides

turned round to me, and says he, ‘D—d if Ugly Mug ain’t got the inside

track of all of you this time!’ I looked down, and dern my skin if there

wasn’t Dusenberry a-sittin’ up alongside of the lady, quite comfortable,

as if they had ben children together. At the next station Dusenberry

gets off. So does the lady. ‘Ain’t you goin’ on to Wingdam,’ says I.

‘No,’ says she. ‘Mayn’t we have the pleasure of your kempany further?’

says the judge, taking off his hat. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind,’ says

she, and off she got, and off she walked arm in arm with him as cool as

you please.”

“Wonder if that wa’n’t the party that passed through here last July?”

asked the blacksmith, joining the loungers in front of the stage-office.

“Waters brought up a buggy to get the axle bolted. There was a woman

setting in the buggy, but the hood was drawn down, and I didn’t get

to see her face.” During this conversation Aristides, after a long,

lingering glance at the stage, had at last torn himself away from its

fascinations, and was now lounging down the long straggling street in

a peculiarly dissipated manner, with his hat pushed on the back part of

his head, his right hand and a greater portion of his right arm buried

in his trousers pocket. This might have been partly owing to the

shortness of his legs and the comparative amplitude of his trousers,

which to the casual observer seemed to obviate the necessity of any

other garment. But when he reached the bottom of the street, and further

enlivened his progress by whistling shrilly between his fingers, and

finally drew a fragment of a cigar from his pocket and placed it between

his teeth, it was evident that there was a moral as well as physical

laxity in his conduct. The near fact was that Aristides had that

afternoon evaded the Sunday-school, and was open to any kind of infant

iniquity.

The main street of Smith’s Pocket gradually lost its civilized

character, and after one or two futile attempts at improvement at its

lower extremity, terminated impotently in a chaos of ditches, races, and

trailings. Out of this again a narrow trail started along the mountain

side, and communicated with that vast amphitheatre which still exhibited

the pioneer efforts of the early settlers. It was this trail that

Aristides took that Sunday afternoon, and which he followed until he

reached the hillside a few rods below the yawning fissure of Smith’s

Pocket. After a careful examination of the vicinity, he cleared away

the underbrush beside a fallen pine that lay near, and sat down in the

attitude of patient and deliberate expectancy.

Five minutes passed—ten, twenty—and finally a half-hour was gone.

Aristides threw away his cigar, which he had lacked determination to

light, and peeled small slips from the inner bark of the pine-tree, and

munched them gravely. Another five, ten, and twenty minutes passed, and

the sun began to drop below the opposite hillside. Another ten minutes,

and the whole of the amphitheatre above was in heavy shadow. Ten minutes

more, and the distant windows in the settlement flamed redly. Five

minutes, and the spire of the Methodist church caught the glow—and then

the underbrush crackled.

Aristides, looking up, saw the trunk of the prostrate pine slowly

lifting itself before him.

A second glance showed the fearless and self-possessed boy that the

apparent phenomenon was simply and easily explained. The tree had

fallen midway and at right angles across the trunk of another prostrate

monarch. So accurately and evenly was it balanced that the child

was satisfied, from a liberal experience of the application of these

principles to the game of “seesaw,” that a very slight impulse to either

end was sufficient to destroy the equilibrium. That impulse proceeded

from his end of the tree, as he saw when the uplifted trunk disclosed

an opening in the ground beneath it, and the head and shoulders of a man

emerging therefrom.

Aristides threw himself noiselessly on his stomach. The thick clump of

an azalea hid him from view, though it did not obstruct his survey of

the stranger, whom he at once recognized as his former enemy,—the man

with the red handkerchief,—the hopeful prospector of Red Mountain, and

the hypothetical “Dusenberry” of the stage-driver.

The stranger looked cautiously round, and Aristides shrank close behind

the friendly azalea.

Satisfied that he was unobserved, the subterranean proprietor returned

to the opening and descended, reappearing with a worn black enameled

traveling-bag which he carried with difficulty. This he again enveloped

in a blanket and strapped tightly on his back, and a long-handled

shovel, brought up from the same mysterious storehouse, completed his

outfit. As he stood for a moment leaning on the shovel, it was the

figure of the hopeful prospector in the heart of the forest. A very

slight effort was sufficient to replace the fallen tree in its former

position. Raising the shovel to his shoulder, he moved away, brushing

against the azalea bush which hid the breathless Aristides. The sound of

his footsteps retreating through the crackling brush presently died out,

and a drowsy Sabbath stillness succeeded.

Aristides rose. There was a wonderful brightness in his gray eyes, and

a flush on his sunburned cheek. Seizing a root of the fallen pine he

essayed to move it. But it defied his endeavors. Aristides looked round.

“There’s some trick about it, but I’ll find it yet,” said that astute

child. Breaking off the limb of a buckeye, he extemporized a lever. The

first attempt failed. The second succeeded, and the long roots of the

tree again, ascended. But as it required prolonged effort to keep the

tree up, before the impetus was lost Aristides seized the opportunity

to jump into the opening. At the same moment the tree slowly returned to

its former position.

In the sudden change from the waning light to complete darkness,

Aristides was for a moment confounded. Recovering himself, he drew a

match from his capacious pocket, and striking it against the sole of his

shoe, by the upspringing flash perceived a candle stuck in the crevices

of the rock beside him. Lighting it, he glanced curiously around him. He

was at the entrance of a long gallery at the further extremity of which

he could faintly see the glimmering of the outer daylight. Following

this gallery cautiously he presently came to an antechamber, and by the

glimmering of the light above him at once saw that it was the same he

had seen in his wonderful dream.

The antechamber was about fourteen feet square, with walls of decomposed

quartz, mingling with flaky mica that reflected here and there the gleam

of Aristides’s candle with a singular brilliancy. It did not need much

observation on his part to determine the reason of the stranger’s lonely

labors. On a rough rocker beside him were two fragments of ore taken

from the adjacent wall, the smallest of which the two arms of Aristides

could barely clasp. To his dazzled eyes they seemed to be almost

entirely of pure gold. The great strike of ’56 at Ring Tail Canon had

brought to the wonderful vision of Smith’s Pocket no such nuggets as

were here.

Aristides turned to the wall again, which had been apparently the last

scene of the stranger’s labors, and from which the two masses of ore

were taken. Even to his inexperienced eye it represented a wealth almost

incalculable. Through the loose, red soil everywhere glittering

star points of the precious metal threw back the rays of his candle.

Aristides turned pale and trembled.

Here was the realization of his most extravagant fancy. Ever since

his strange dream and encounter with the stranger, he had felt an

irresistible desire to follow up his adventure, and discover the secrets

of the second cavern. But when he had returned to Smith’s Pocket, a few

days after, the wreck of the fallen roof had blocked up that part of

the opening from which he had caught sight of the hidden workman below.

During his visit he had picked up from among the rubbish the memorandum

book which had supplied M’liss with letter paper. Still haunting the

locality after school hours, he had noticed that regularly at sunset the

man with the red handkerchief appeared in some mysterious way from the

hillside below Smith’s Pocket, and went away in the direction of the

settlement. By careful watching, Aristides had fixed the location of his

mysterious appearance to a point a few rods below the opening of Smith’s

Pocket. Flushed by this discovery, he had been betrayed from his

usual discretion so far as to intimate a hinting of the suspicion that

possessed him in the few mysterious words he had whispered to M’liss

at school. The accident we have described above determined the complete

discovery of the secret.

Who was the stranger, and why did he keep the fact of this immense

wealth hidden from the world? Suppose he, Aristides, were to tell?

Wouldn’t the schoolboys look up at him with interest as the hero and

discoverer of this wonderful cavern, and wouldn’t the stage-driver feel

proud of his acquaintance and offer him rides for nothing?

Why hadn’t Smith discovered it—who was poor and wanted money, whom

Aristides had liked, who was the father of M’liss, for whom Aristides

confessed a secret passion, who belonged to the settlement and helped to

build it up—instead of the stranger? Had Smith never a suspicion that

gold was so near him, and if so, why had he killed himself? But did

Smith kill himself? And at this thought and its correlative fancy, again

the cheek of Aristides blanched, and the candle shook in his nerveless

fingers.

Apart and distinct from these passing conjectures one idea remained firm

and dominant in his mind: the man with the red handkerchief had no right

to this treasure! The mysterious instinct which directed this judicial

ruling of Aristides had settled this fact as indubitably as though

proven by the weight of the strongest testimony. For an instant a wild

thought sprang up in his heart, and he seized the nearest mass of ore

with the half-formed intention of bearing it directly to the feet of

M’liss as her just and due inheritance. But Aristides could not lift it,

and the idea passed out of his mind with the frustrated action.

At the further end of the gallery a few blankets were lying, and with

some mining implements, a kettle of water, a few worn flannel shirts,

were the only articles which this subterranean habitation possessed. In

turning over one of the blankets Aristides picked up a woman’s comb.

It was a tortoise-shell, and bright with some fanciful ornamentation.

Without a moment’s hesitation Aristides pocketed it as the natural

property of M’liss. A pocketbook containing a few old letters in the

breast pocket of one of the blue shirts was transferred to that of

Aristides with the same coolness and sentiment of instinctive justice.

Aristides wisely reflected that these unimportant articles would excite

no suspicion if found in his possession. A fragment of the rock, which,

if he had taken it as he felt impelled, would have precipitated the

discovery that Aristides had decided to put off until he had perfected a

certain plan. The light from the opening above had gradually faded,

and Aristides knew that night had fallen. To prevent suspicion he must

return home. He reentered the gallery and reached the opening of the

egress. One of the roots of the tree projected into the opening.

He seized it and endeavored to lift it, but in vain. Panting with

exertion, he again and again exerted the fullest power of his active

sinews, but the tree remained immovable—the opening remained sealed

as firmly as with Solomon’s signet. Raising his candle towards it,

Aristides saw the reason of its resistance. In his hurried ingress he

had allowed the tree to revolve sufficiently to permit one of its roots

to project into the opening, which held it firmly down. In the shock of

the discovery the excitement which had sustained him gave way, and with

a hopeless cry the just Aristides fell senseless on the floor of the

gallery.

CHAPTER VI

THE TRIALS OF MRS. MORPHER

“Now, where on earth can that child be?” said Mrs. Morpher, shading her

eyes with her hand, as she stood at the door of the “Mountain Ranch,”

looking down the Wingdam road at sunset. “With his best things on; too.

Goodness!—what _were_ boys made for?”

Mr. Morpher, without replying to this question, apparently addressed to

himself as an adult representative of the wayward species, appeared at

the door, and endeavored to pour oil on the troubled waters.

“Oh, _he’s_ all right, Sue! Don’t fuss about _him_,” said Mr. Morpher

with an imbecile sense of conveying comfort in the emphasized pronoun.

“He’s down the gulch, or in the tunnel, or over to the claim. He’ll

turn up by bedtime. Don’t you worry about _him._ I’ll look him up in a

minit,” and Mr. Morpher, taking his hat, sauntered down the road in the

direction of the National Hotel.

Mrs. Morpher gazed doubtfully after her liege. “Looking up” Aristides, in

her domestic experience, implied a prolonged absence in the bar-room of

the hotel, the tedium whereof was beguiled by seven-up or euchre. But

she only said: “Don’t be long, James,” and sighed hopelessly as she

turned back into the house.

Once again within her own castle walls Mrs. Morpher dropped her look of

patient suffering and glanced defiantly around for a fresh grievance.

The decorous little parlor offered nothing to provoke the hostility of

her peculiar instincts. Spotless were the white curtains; the bright

carpet guiltless of stain or dust. The chairs were placed arithmetically

in twos, and added up evenly on the four sides with nothing to carry

over. Two bunches of lavender and fennel breathed an odor of sanctified

cleanliness through the room. Five daguerreotypes on the mantelpiece

represented the Morpher family in the progressive stages of

petrifaction, and had the Medusa-like effect of freezing visitors into

similar attitudes in their chairs. The walls were further enlivened

with two colored engravings of scenes in the domestic history of George

Washington, in which the Father of his Country seemed to look blandly

from his own correct family circle into Morpher’s, and to breathe quite

audibly from his gilt frame a dignified blessing.

Lingering a moment in this sacred inclosure to readjust the tablecloth,

Mrs. Morpher passed into the dining-room, where the correct Clytie

presided at the supper-table, at which the rest of the family were

seated. Mrs. Morpher’s quick eyes caught the spectacle of M’liss with

her chin resting on her hands, and her elbows on the table, sardonically

surveying the model of deportment opposite to her.

“M’liss!”

“Well?”

“Where’s your elbows?”

“Here’s one and there’s the other,” said M’liss quietly, indicating

their respective localities by smartly tapping them with the palm of her

hand.

“Take them off the table, instantly, you bold, forward girl—and you,

sir, quit that giggling and eat your supper, if you don’t want to be

put to bed without it!” added Mrs. Morpher to Lycurgus, to whom M’liss’s

answer had afforded boundless satisfaction. “You’re getting to be just

as bad as her, and mercy knows you never were a seraphim!”

“What’s a seraphim, mother, and what do they do?” asked Lycurgus, with

growing interest.

“They don’t ask questions when they should be eating their supper, and

thankful for it,” interposed Clytie, authoritatively, as one to whom

the genteel attributes and social habits of the seraphim had been a

privileged revelation.

“But, mother”—

“Hush—and don’t be a heathen—run and see who is coming in,” said Mrs.

Morpher, as the sound of footsteps was heard in the passage.

The door opened and McSnagley entered.

“Why, bless my soul—how do you do?” said Mrs. Morpher, with genteel

astonishment. “Quite a stranger, I declare.”

This was a polite fiction. M’liss knew the fact to be that Mrs. Morpher

was reputed to “set the best table” in Smith’s Pocket, and McSnagley

always called in on Sunday evenings at supper to discuss the current

gossip, and “nag” M’liss with selected texts. The verbal McSnagley as

usual couldn’t stop a moment—and just dropped in “in passin’.” The

actual McSnagley deposited his hat in the corner, and placed himself, in

the flesh, on a chair by the table.

“And how’s Brother James, and the fammerly?”

“They’re all well—except ‘Risty;’ he’s off again,—as if my life

weren’t already pestered out with one child,” and Mrs. Morpher glanced

significantly at M’liss.

“Ah, well, we all of us have our trials,” said McSnagley. “I’ve been

ailin’ again. That ager must be in my bones still. I’ve been rather

onsettled myself to-day.”

There was the appearance of truth in this statement; Mr. McSnagley’s

voice had a hollow resonant sound, and his eyes were nervous and

fidgety. He had an odd trick, too, of occasionally stopping in the

middle of a sentence, and listening as though he heard some distant

sound. These things, which Mrs. Morpher recalled afterwards, did not, in

the undercurrent of uneasiness about Aristides which she felt the whole

of that evening, so particularly attract her notice.

“I know something,” said Lycurgus, during one of these pauses, from the

retirement of his corner.

“If you dare to—Kerg!” said M’liss.

“M’liss says she knows where Risty is, but she won’t tell,” said the

lawgiver, not heeding the warning. The words were scarcely uttered

before M’liss’s red hand flashed in the air and descended with a

sounding box on the traitor’s ear. Lycurgus howled, Mrs. Morpher darted

into the corner, and M’liss was dragged defiant and struggling to the

light.

“Oh, you wicked, wicked child—why don’t you say where, if you know?”

said Mrs. Morpher, shaking her, as if the information were to be

dislodged from some concealed part of her clothing.

“I didn’t say I knew for sure,” at last responded M’liss. “I said I

thought I knew.”

“Well, where do you think he is?”

But M’liss was firm. Even the gloomy picture of the future state devised

by McSnagley could not alter her determination. Mrs. Morpher, who had a

wholesome awe for this strange child, at last had recourse to entreaty.

Finally M’liss offered a compromise.

“I’ll tell the master, but I won’t tell you—partikerly him,” said

M’liss, indicating the parson with a bodkin-like dart of her forefinger.

Mrs. Morpher hesitated. Her maternal anxiety at length overcame her

sense of dignity and discipline.

“Who knows where the master is, or where he is to be found to-night?”

she asked hastily.

“He’s over to Dr. Duchesne’s,” said Clytie eagerly; “that is,” she

stammered, a rich color suddenly flushing from her temples to her round

shoulders, “he’s usually there in the evenings, I mean.”

“Run over, there’s a dear, and ask him to come here,” said Mrs. Morpher,

without noticing a sudden irregularity of conduct in her firstborn. “Run

quick!”

Clytie did not wait for a second command. Without availing herself of

the proffered company of McSnagley she hastily tied the strings of her

school hat under her plump chin, and slipped out of the house. It was

not far to the doctor’s office, and Clytie walked quickly, overlooking

in her haste and preoccupation the admiring glances which several of the

swains of Smith’s Pocket cast after her as she passed. But on arriving

at the doctor’s door, so out of breath and excited was this usual model

of deportment that, on finding herself in the presence of the master and

his friend, she only stood in embarrassed silence, and made up for her

lack of verbal expression by a succession of eloquent blushes.

Let us look at her for a moment as she stands there. Her little straw

hat, trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons, rests on the waves of her

blonde hair. There are other gay ribbons on her light summer dress,

clasping her round waist, girdling her wrist, and fastening her collar

about her white throat. Her large blue eyes are very dark and moist—it

may be with excitement or a tearful thought of the lost Aristides—or

the tobacco smoke, with which I regret to say the room is highly

charged. But certainly as she stands leaning against the doorway, biting

her moist scarlet lip, and trying to pull down the broad brim of her hat

over the surging waves of color that _will_ beat rhythmically up to her

cheeks and temples, she is so dangerously pretty that I am glad for the

masters sake he is the philosopher he has just described himself to his

friend the doctor, and that he prefers to study human physiology from

the inner surfaces.

When Clytie had recovered herself sufficiently to state her message, the

master offered to accompany her back. As Clytie took his arm with some

slight trepidation Dr. Duchesne, who had taken sharp notes of

these “febrile” symptoms, uttered a prolonged whistle and returned

thoughtfully to his office.

Although Clytie found the distance returning no further than the

distance going, with the exhaustion of her first journey it was natural

that her homeward steps should be slower, and that the master should

regulate his pace to accommodate her. It was natural, too, that her

voice should be quite low and indistinct, so that the master was obliged

to bring his hat nearer the cherry-colored ribbons in the course of

conversation. It was also natural that he should offer the sensitive

young girl such comfort as lay in tenderly modulated tones and playful

epithets. And if in the irregularities of the main street it was

necessary to take Clytie’s hand or to put his arm around her waist in

helping her up declivities, that the master saw no impropriety in the

act was evident from the fact that he did not remove his arm when the

difficulty was surmounted. In this way Clytie’s return occupied some

moments more than her going, and Mrs. Morpher was waiting anxiously at

the door when the young people arrived. As the master entered the room,

M’liss called him to her. “Bend down your head” she said, “and I’ll

whisper. But mind, now, I don’t say I know for truth where Risty is, I

only reckon.”

The master bent down his head. As usual in such cases, everybody else

felt constrained to listen, and McSnagley’s curiosity was awakened

to its fullest extent. When the master had received the required

information, he said quietly:—

“I think I’ll go myself to this place which M’liss wishes to make a

secret of and see if the boy is there. It will save trouble to any one

else, if she should be mistaken.”

“Hadn’t you better take some one with you?” said Mrs. Morpher.

“By all means. I’ll go!” said Mr. McSnagley, with feverish alacrity.

The master looked inquiringly at M’liss.

“He can go if he wants to, but he’d better not,” said M’liss, looking

directly into McSnagley’s eyes.

“What do you mean by that, you little savage?” said McSnagley quickly.

M’liss turned scornfully away. “Go,” she said,—“go if you want to,” and

resumed her seat in the corner.

The master hesitated. But he could not withstand the appeal in the eyes

of the mother and daughter, and after a short inward struggle he turned

to McSnagley and bade him briefly “Come.”

When they had left the house and stood in the road together, McSnagley

stopped.

“Where are you goin’?”

“To Smith’s Pocket.”

McSnagley still lingered. “Do you ever carry any weppings?” he at

length asked.

“Weapons? No. What do you want with weapons to go a mile on a starlit

road to a deserted claim. Nonsense, man, what are you thinking of? We’re

hunting a lost child, not a runaway felon. Come along,” and the master

dragged him away.

Mrs. Morpher watched them from the door until their figures were lost in

the darkness. When she returned to the dining-room, Clytie had already

retired to her room, and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M’liss’s desire to

sit up until the master returned, bade her follow that correct example.

“There’s Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and do you do like

her,” and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop of balm in the midst of

her trials, trimmed the light and sat down in patience to wait

for Aristides, and console herself with the reflection of Clytie’s

excellence. “Poor Clytie!” mused that motherly woman; “how excited and

worried she looks about her brother. I hope she’ll be able to get to

sleep.”

It did not occur to Mrs. Morpher that there were seasons in the life of

young girls when younger brothers ceased to become objects of extreme

solicitude. It did not occur to her to go upstairs and see how her wish

was likely to be gratified. It was well in her anxiety that she did not,

and that the crowning trial of the day’s troubles was spared her then.

For at that moment Clytie was lying on the bed where she had flung

herself without undressing, the heavy masses of her blond hair tumbled

about her neck, and her hot face buried in her hands.

Of what was the correct Clytie thinking?

She was thinking, lying there with her burning cheeks pressed against

the pillow, that she loved the master! She was recalling step by step

every incident that had occurred in their lonely walk. She was repeating

to herself his facile sentences, wringing and twisting them to extract

one drop to assuage the strange thirst that was growing up in her soul.

She was thinking—silly Clytie!—that he had never appeared so kind

before, and she was thinking—sillier Clytie!—that no one had ever

before felt as she did then.

How soft and white his hands were! How sweet and gentle were the tones

of his voice! How easily he spoke—so unlike her father, McSnagley,

or the young men whom she met at church or on picnics! How tall and

handsome he looked as he pressed her hand at the door! Did he press her

hand, or was it a mistake? Yes, he must have pressed her hand, for she

remembers now to have pressed his in return. And he put his arm around

her waist once, and she feels it yet, and the strange perfume as he drew

her closer to him. (Mem.—The master had been smoking. Poor Clytie!)

When she had reached this point she raised herself and sat up, and began

the process of undressing, mechanically putting each article away in the

precise, methodical habit of her former life. But she found herself soon

sitting again on the bed, twisting her hair, which fell over her plump

white shoulders, idly between her fingers, and patting the carpet with

her small white foot. She had been sitting thus some minutes when she

heard the sound of voices without, the trampling of many feet, and a

loud rapping at the door below. She sprang to the door and looked out

in the passage. Something white passed by her like a flash and crouched

down at the head of the stairs. It was M’liss.

Mrs. Morpher opened the door.

“Is Mr. Morpher in?” said a half dozen strange, hoarse voices.

“No!”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at some of the saloons. Oh, tell me, has anything happened?

Is it about Aristides? Where is he—is he safe?” said Mrs. Morpher,

wringing her hands in agony.

“He’s all right,” said one of the men, with Mr. Morpher’s old emphasis;

“but”—

“But what?”

M’liss moved slowly down the staircase, and Clytie from the passage

above held her breath.

“There’s been a row down to Smith’s old Pocket—a fight—a man killed.”

“Who?” shouted M’liss from the stairs.

“McSnagley—shot dead.”

CHAPTER VII

THE PEOPLE vs. JOHN DOE WATERS. Before Chief Justice LYNCH.

The hurried statement of the messenger was corroborated in the streets

that night. It was certain that McSnagley was killed. Smith’s Pocket,

excited but skeptical, had seen the body, had put its fingers in the

bullethole, and was satisfied. Smith’s Pocket, albeit hoarse with

shouting and excitement, still discussed details with infinite relish in

bar-rooms and saloons, and in the main street in clamorous knots that in

front of the jail where the prisoner was confined seemed to swell into

a mob. Smith’s Pocket, bearded, blue-shirted, and belligerent, crowding

about this locality, from time to time uttered appeals to justice that

swelled on the night wind, not unfrequently coupling these invocations

with the name of that eminent jurist—Lynch.

Let not the simple reader suppose that the mere taking off of a fellow

mortal had created this uproar. The tenure of life in Smith’s Pocket was

vain and uncertain at the best, and as such philosophically accepted,

and the blowing out of a brief candle here and there seldom left a

permanent shadow with the survivors. In such instances, too, the victims

had received their quietus from the hands of brother townsmen,

socially, as it were, in broad day, in the open streets, and under other

mitigating circumstances. Thus, when Judge Starbottle of Virginia and

“French Pete” exchanged shots with each other across the plaza until

their revolvers were exhausted, and the luckless Pete received a bullet

through the lungs, half the town witnessed it, and were struck with the

gallant and chivalrous bearing of these gentlemen, and to this day point

with feelings of pride and admiration to the bulletholes in the door

of the National Hotel, as they explain how narrow was the escape of the

women in the parlor. But here was a man murdered at night, in a lonely

place, and by a stranger—a man unknown to the saloons of Smith’s

Pocket—a wretch who could not plead the excitement of monte or the

delirium of whiskey as an excuse. No wonder that Smith’s Pocket surged

with virtuous indignation beneath the windows of his prison, and

clamored for his blood.

And as the crowd thickened and swayed to and fro, the story of his

crime grew exaggerated by hurried and frequent repetition. Half a dozen

speakers volunteered to give the details with an added horror to every

sentence. How one of Morpher’s children had been missing for a week

or more. How the schoolmaster and the parson were taking a walk that

evening, and coming to Smith’s Pocket heard a faint voice from its

depths which they recognized as belonging to the missing child. How they

had succeeded in dragging him out and gathered from his infant lips the

story of his incarceration by the murderer, Waters, and his enforced

labors in the mine. How they were interrupted by the appearance of

Waters, followed by a highly colored and epithet-illustrated account

of the interview and quarrel. How Waters struck the schoolmaster, who

returned the blow with a pick. How Waters thereupon drew a derringer and

fired, missing the schoolmaster, but killing McSnagley behind him.

How it was believed that Waters was one of Joaquin’s gang, that he had

killed Smith, etc., etc. At each pause the crowd pushed and panted,

stealthily creeping around the doors and windows of the jail like some

strange beast of prey, until the climax was reached, and a hush

fell, and two men were silently dispatched for a rope, and a critical

examination was made of the limbs of a pine-tree in the vicinity.

The man to whom these incidents had the most terrible significance might

have seemed the least concerned as he sat that night but a few feet

removed from the eager crowd without, his hands lightly clasped together

between his knees, and the expression on his face of one whose thoughts

were far away. A candle stuck in a tin sconce on the wall flickered as

the night wind blew freshly through a broken pane of the window. Its

uncertain light revealed a low room whose cloth ceiling was stained and

ragged, and from whose boarded walls the torn paper hung in strips; a

lumber-room partitioned from the front office, which was occupied by

a justice of the peace. If this temporary dungeon had an appearance of

insecurity, there was some compensation in the spectacle of an armed

sentinel who sat upon a straw mattress in the doorway, and another who

patrolled the narrow hall which led to the street. That the prisoner was

not placed in one of the cells in the floor below may have been owing

to the fact that the law recognized his detention as only temporary,

and while providing the two guards as a preventive against the egress of

crime within, discreetly removed all unnecessary and provoking obstacles

to the ingress of justice from without.

Since the prisoner’s arrest he had refused to answer any

interrogatories. Since he had been placed in confinement he had not

moved from his present attitude. The guard, finding all attempts at

conversation fruitless, had fallen into a reverie, and regaled himself

with pieces of straw plucked from the mattress. A mouse ran across the

floor. The silence contrasted strangely with the hum of voices in the

street.

The candle-light, falling across the prisoner’s forehead, showed the

features which Smith’s Pocket knew and recognized as Waters, the strange

prospector. Had M’liss or Aristides seen him then they would have missed

that sinister expression which was part of their fearful remembrance.

The hard, grim outlines of his mouth were relaxed, the broad shoulders

were bent and contracted, the quick, searching eyes were fixed on

vacancy. The strong man—physically strong only—was breaking up. The

fist that might have felled an ox could do nothing more than separate

its idle fingers with childishness of power and purpose. An hour longer

in this condition, and the gallows would have claimed a figure scarcely

less limp and impotent than that it was destined to ultimately reject.

He had been trying to collect his thoughts. Would they hang him?

No, they must try him first, legally, and he could prove—he could

prove—But what could he prove? For whenever he attempted to consider

the uncertain chances of his escape, he found his thoughts straying wide

of the question. It was of no use for him to clasp his fingers or knit

his brows. Why did the recollection of a school-fellow, long since

forgotten, blot out all the fierce and feverish memories of the night

and the terrible certainty of the future? Why did the strips of paper

hanging from the wall recall to him the pattern of a kite he had flown

forty years ago. In a moment like this, when all his energies were

required and all his cunning and tact would be called into service,

could he think of nothing better than trying to match the torn paper on

the wall, or to count the cracks in the floor? And an oath rose to his

lips, but from very feebleness died away without expression.

Why had he ever come to Smith’s Pocket? If he had not been guided by

that hell-cat, this would not have happened. What if he were to tell

_all_ he knew? What if he should accuse _her_? But would they be willing

to give up the bird they had already caught? Yet he again found himself

cursing his own treachery and cowardice, and this time an exclamation

burst from his lips and attracted the attention of the guard.

“Hello, there! easy, old fellow; thar ain’t any good in that,” said the

sentinel, looking up. “It’s a bad fix you’re in, _sure_, but rarin’ and

pitchin’ won’t help things. ’T ain’t no use cussin’—leastways, ’t ain’t

that kind o’ swearing that gets a chap out o’ here”, he added, with

a conscientious reservation. “Now, ef I was in your place, I’d kinder

reflect on my sins, and make my peace with God Almighty, for I tell you

the looks o’ them people outside ain’t pleasant. You’re in the hands of

the law, and the law will protect you as far as it can,—as far as two

men can stand agin a hundred; sabe? That’s what’s the matter; and it’s

as well that you knowed that now as any time.”

But the prisoner had relapsed into his old attitude, and was surveying

the jailor with the same abstracted air as before. That individual

resumed his seat on the mattress, and now lent his ear to a colloquy

which seemed to be progressing at the foot of the stairs. Presently he

was bailed by his brother turnkey from below.

“Oh, Bill,” said fidus Achates from the passage, with the usual

Californian prefatory ejaculation.

“Well?”

“Here’s M’liss! Says she wants to come up. Shall I let her in?”

The subject of inquiry, however, settled the question of admission

by darting past the guard below in this moment of preoccupation, and

bounded up the stairs like a young fawn. The guards laughed.

“Now, then, my infant phenomenon,” said the one called Bill, as M’liss

stood panting before him, “wot ’s up? and nextly, wot’s in that bottle?”

M’liss whisked the bottle which she held in her hand smartly under her

apron, and said curtly, “Where’s him that killed the parson?”

“Yonder,” replied the man, indicating the abstracted figure with his

hand. “Wot do _you_ want with him? None o’ your tricks here, now,” he

added threateningly.

“I want to see him!”

“Well, look! make the most of your time, and _his_ too, for the matter

of that; but mind, now, no nonsense, M’liss, he won’t stand it!”

repeated the guard with an emphasis in the caution.

M’liss crossed the room, until opposite the prisoner. “Are you the chap

that killed the parson?” she said, addressing the motionless figure.

Something in the tone of her voice startled the prisoner from the

reverie. He raised his head and glanced quickly, and with his old

sinister expression, at the child.

“What’s that to you?” he asked, with the grim lines setting about his

mouth again, and the old harshness of his voice.

“Didn’t I tell you he wouldn’t stand any of your nonsense, M’liss?” said

the guard testily.

M’liss only repeated her question.

“And what if I did kill him?” said the prisoner savagely; “what’s that

to you, you young hell-cat? Guard!—damnation!—what do you let her come

here for? Do you hear? Guard!” he screamed, rising in a transport of

passion, “take her away! fling her downstairs! What the h—ll is she

doing here?”

“If you was the man that killed McSnagley,” said M’liss, without heeding

the interruption, “I’ve brought you something;” and she drew the

bottle from under her apron and extended it to Waters, adding, “It’s

brandy—Cognac—A1.”

“Take it away, and take yourself with it,” returned Waters, without

abating his angry accents. “Take it away! do you hear?”

“Well, that’s what I call ongrateful, dog-gone my skin if it ain’t,”

said the guard, who had been evidently struck with M’liss’s generosity.

“Pass the licker this way, my beauty, and I’ll keep it till he changes

his mind. He’s naturally a little flustered just now, but he’ll come

round after you go.”

But M’liss didn’t accede to this change in the disposition of the gift,

and was evidently taken aback by her reception and the refusal of the

proffered comfort.

“Come, hand the bottle here!” repeated the guard. “It’s agin rules to

bring the pris’ner anything, anyway, and it’s confiscated to the

law. It’s agin the rules, too, to ask a pris’ner any question that’ll

criminate him, and on the whole you’d better go, M’liss,” added the

guard, to whom the appearance of the bottle had been the means of

provoking a spasm of discipline.

But M’liss refused to make over the coveted treasure. Bill arose half

jestingly and endeavored to get possession of the bottle. A struggle

ensued, good-naturedly on the part of the guard, but characterized on

the part of M’liss by that half-savage passion which any thwarted whim

or instinct was sure to provoke in her nature. At last with a curse she

freed herself from his grasp, and seizing the bottle by the neck aimed

it with the full strength of her little arm fairly at his head. But he

was quick enough to avert that important object, if not quick enough

to save his shoulder from receiving the strength of the blow, which

shattered the thin glass and poured the fiery contents of the bottle

over his shirt and breast, saturating his clothes, and diffusing a sharp

alcoholic odor through the room.

A forced laugh broke from his lips, as he sank back on the mattress, not

without an underlying sense of awe at this savage girl who stood panting

before him, and from whom he had just escaped a blow which might have

been fatal. “It’s a pity to waste so much good licker,” he added, with

affected carelessness, narrowly watching each movement of the young

pythoness, whose rage was not yet abated.

“Come, M’liss,” he said at last, “we’ll say quits. You’ve lost your

brandy, and I’ve got some of the pieces of yonder bottle sticking in my

shoulder yet. I suppose brandy is good for bruises, though. Hand me the

light!”

M’liss reached the candle from the sconce and held it by the guard as he

turned back the collar of his shirt to lay bare his shoulder. “So,” he

muttered, “black and blue; no bones broken, though no fault of yours,

eh? my young cherub, if it wasn’t. There—why, what are you looking at

in that way, M’liss, are you crazy?—Hell’s furies, don’t hold the light

so near! What are you doing; Hell—ho, there! Help!”

Too late, for in an instant he was a sheet of living flame. When or

how the candle had touched his garments, saturated with the inflammable

fluid, Waters, the only inactive spectator in the room, could never

afterward tell. He only knew that the combustion was instantaneous and

complete, and before the cry had died from his lips, not only the guard,

but the straw mattress on which he had been sitting, and the loose

strips of paper hanging from the walls, and the torn cloth ceiling above

were in flames.

“Help! Help! Fire! Fire!”

With a superhuman effort, M’liss dragged the prisoner past the blazing

mattress, through the doorway into the passage, and drew the door, which

opened outwardly, against him. The unhappy guard, still blazing like

a funeral pyre, after wildly beating the air with his arms for a few

seconds, dashed at the broken window, which gave way with his weight,

and precipitated him, still flaming, into the yard below. A column of

smoke and a licking tongue of flame leaped from the open window at the

same moment, and the cry of fire was reechoed from a hundred voices in

the street. But scarcely had M’liss closed the open door against Waters,

when the guard from the doorway mounted the stairs in time to see a

flaming figure leap from the window. The room was filled with smoke and

fire. With an instinct of genius, M’liss, pointing to the open window,

shouted hoarsely in his ear:—

“Waters has escaped!”

A cry of fury from the guard was echoed from the stairs, even now

crowded by the excited mob, who feared the devastating element might

still cheat them of their intended victim. In another moment the house

was emptied, and the front street deserted, as the people rushed to the

rear of the jail—climbing fences and stumbling over ditches in pursuit

of the imagined runaway. M’liss seized the hat and coat of the luckless

“Bill,” and dragging the prisoner from his place of concealment

hurriedly equipped him, and hastened through the blinding smoke of

the staircase boldly on the heels of the retiring crowd. Once in the

friendly darkness of the street, it was easy to mingle with the pushing

throng until an alley crossing at right angles enabled them to leave the

main thoroughfare. A few moments’ rapid flight, and the outskirts of

the town were reached, the tall pines opened their abysmal aisles to

the fugitives, and M’liss paused with her companion. Until daybreak, at

least, here they were safe!

From the time they had quitted the burning room to that moment, Waters

had passed into his listless, abstracted condition, so helpless and

feeble that he retained the grasp of M’liss’s hand more through some

instinctive prompting rather than the dictates of reason. M’liss had

found it necessary to almost drag him from the main street and the

hurrying crowd, which seemed to exercise a strange fascination over his

bewildered senses. And now he sat down passively beside her, and seemed

to submit to the guidance of her superior nature.

“You’re safe enough now till daylight,” said M’liss, when she had

recovered her breath, “but you must make the best time you can through

these woods to-night, keeping the wind to your back, until you come to

the Wingdam road. There! do you hear?” said M’liss, a little vexed at

her companion’s apathy.

Waters released the hand of M’liss, and commenced mechanically to button

his coat around his chest with fumbling, purposeless fingers. He then

passed his hand across his forehead as if to clear his confused and

bewildered brain; all this, however, to no better result than to

apparently root his feet to the soil and to intensify the stupefaction

which seemed to be creeping over him.

“Be quick, now! You’ve no time to lose! Keep straight on through the

woods until you see the stars again before you, and you’re on the other

side of the ridge. What are you waiting for?” And M’liss stamped her

little foot impatiently.

An idea which had been struggling for expression at last seemed to dawn

in his eyes. Something like a simpering blush crept over his face as he

fumbled in his pocket. At last, drawing forth a twenty-dollar piece,

he bashfully offered it to M’liss. In a twinkling the extended arm was

stricken up, and the bright coin flew high in the air, and disappeared

in the darkness.

“Keep your money! I don’t want it. Don’t do that again!” said M’liss,

highly excited, “or I’ll—I’ll—bite you!”

Her wicked little white teeth flashed ominously as she said it.

“Get off while you can. Look!” she added, pointing to a column of flame

shooting up above the straggling mass of buildings in the village, “the

jail is burning; and if that goes, the block will go with it. Before

morning these woods will be filled with people. Save yourself while you

can!”

Waters turned and moved away in the darkness. “Keep straight on, and

don’t waste a moment,” urged the child, as the man seemed still disposed

to linger. “Trot now!” and in another moment he seemed to melt into the

forest depths.

M’liss threw her apron around her head, and coiled herself up at the

root of a tree in something of her old fashion. She had prophesied truly

of the probable extent of the fire. The fresh wind, whirling the sparks

over the little settlement, had already fanned the single flame into the

broad sheet which now glowed fiercely, defining the main street along

its entire length. The breeze which fanned her cheek bore the crash of

falling timbers and the shouts of terrified and anxious men. There were

no engines in Smith’s Pocket, and the contest was unequal. Nothing but a

change of wind could save the doomed settlement.

The red glow lit up the dark cheek of M’liss and kindled a savage light

in her black eyes. Relieved by the background of the sombre woods, she

might have been a red-handed Nemesis looking over the city of Vengeance.

As the long tongues of flame licked the broad colonnade of the National

Hotel, and shot a wreathing pillar of fire and smoke high into the air,

M’liss extended her tiny fist and shook it at the burning building with

an inspiration that at the moment seemed to transfigure her.

So the night wore away until the first red bars of morning light

gleamed beyond the hill, and seemed to emulate the dying embers of the

devastated settlement. M’liss for the first time began to think of the

home she had quitted the night before, and looked with some anxiety in

the direction of “Mountain Ranch.” Its white walls and little orchard

were untouched, and looked peacefully over the blackened and deserted

village. M’liss rose, and, stretching her cramped limbs, walked briskly

toward the town. She had proceeded but a short distance when she heard

the sound of cautious and hesitating footsteps behind her, and, facing

quickly about, encountered the figure of Waters.

“Are you drunk?” said M’liss passionately, “or what do you mean by this

nonsense?”

The man approached her with a strange smile on his face, rubbing his

hands together, and shivering as with cold. When he had reached her

side he attempted to take her hand. M’liss shrank away from him with an

expression of disgust.

“What are you doing here again?” she demanded.

“I want to go with you. It’s dark in there,” he said, motioning to the

wood he had just quitted, “and I don’t like to be alone. You’ll let

me be with you, won’t you? I won’t be any trouble;” and a feeble smile

flickered on his lips.

M’liss darted a quick look into his face. The grim outlines of his mouth

were relaxed, and his lips moved again impotently. But his eyes were

bright and open,—bright with a look that was new to M’liss—that

imparted a strange softness and melancholy to his features,—the

incipient gleam of insanity!

CHAPTER VIII

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER—EXPLANATORY

If I remember rightly, in one of the admirable tragedies of Tsien Tsiang

at a certain culminating point of interest an innocent person is about

to be sacrificed. The knife is raised and the victim meekly awaits the

stroke. At this moment the author of the play appears on the stage, and,

delivering an excellent philosophical dissertation on the merits of the

“situation,” shows that by the purest principles of art the sacrifice is

necessary, but at the same time offers to the audience the privilege of

changing the denouement. Such, however, is the nice aesthetic sense of

a Chinese auditory, and so universal the desire of bloodshed in

the heathen breast, that invariably at each representation of this

remarkable tragedy the cause of humanity gives way to the principles of

art.

I offer this precedent as an excuse for digressing at a moment when I

have burned down a small settlement, dispatched a fellow being, and

left my heroine alone in the company of an escaped convict who has just

developed insanity as a new social quality. My object in thus digressing

is to confer with the reader in regard to the evolution of this

story,—a familiarity not without precedent, as I might prove from most

of the old Greek comedies, whose _parabasis_ permits the poet to mingle

freely with the _dramatis personae_, to address the audience and descant

at length in regard to himself, his play, and his own merits.

The fact is that, during the progress of this story, I have received

many suggestions from intimate friends in regard to its incidents and

construction. I have also been in the receipt of correspondence from

distant readers, one letter of which I recall signed by an “Honest

Miner,” who advises me to “do the right thing by M’liss,” or intimates

somewhat obscurely that he will “bust my crust for me,” which, though

complimentary in its abstract expression of interest, and implying a

taste for euphonism, evinces an innate coarseness which I fear may blunt

his perceptions of delicate shades and Greek outlines.

Again, the practical nature of Californians and their familiarity

with scenes and incidents which would be novel to other people have

occasioned me great uneasiness. In the course of the last three chapters

of M’liss I have received some twenty or thirty communications from

different parts of the State corroborating incidents of my story, which

I solemnly assure the reader is purely fictitious. Some one has lately

sent me a copy of an interior paper containing an old obituary of

Smith of Smith’s Pocket. Another correspondent writes to me that he

was acquainted with the schoolmaster in the fall of ’49, and that

they “grubbed together.” The editors of the serial in which this story

appears assure me that they have received an advertisement from the

landlord of the “National Hotel” contingent upon an editorial notice of

its having been at one time the abode of M’liss; while an aunt of the

heroine, alluding in excellent terms to the reformed character of her

niece M’liss, clenches her sincerity by requesting the loan of twenty

dollars to buy clothes for the desolate orphan.

Under these circumstances I have hesitated to go on. What were the

bodiless creatures of my fancy—the pale phantoms of thought, evoked

in the solitude of my chamber, and sometimes even midst the hum of

busy streets—have suddenly grown into flesh and blood, living people,

protected by the laws of society, and having their legal right to

actions for slander in any court. Worse than that, I have sometimes

thought with terror of the new responsibility which might attach to my

development of their characters. What if I were obliged to support

and protect these Frankenstein monsters? What if the original of the

principal villain of my story should feel impelled through aesthetic

principles of art to work out in real life the supposititious denouement

I have sketched for him?

I have therefore concluded to lay aside my pen for this week,

leaving the catastrophe impending, and await the suggestion of my

correspondents. I do so the more cheerfully as it enables the editors

of this weekly to publish twenty-seven more columns of Miss Braddon’s

“Outcasts of Society” and the remainder of the “Duke’s Motto,”—two

works which in the quiet simplicity of their home-like pictures and

household incidents are attended with none of the difficulties which

beset my unhappy story.

CHAPTER IX

CLEANING UP

As the master, wan-eyed and unrefreshed by slumber, strayed the next

morning among the blackened ruins of the fire, he was conscious of

having undergone some strange revulsion of sentiment. What he remembered

of the last evening’s events, though feverish and indistinct as a dream,

and though, like a dream, without coherency or connected outline, had

nevertheless seriously impressed him. How frivolous and trifling his

past life and its pursuits looked through the lightning vista opened to

his eyes by the flash of Waters’s pistol! “Suppose I had been killed,”

ruminated the master, “what then? A paragraph in the ‘Banner,’ headed

‘Fatal Affray,’ and my name added to the already swollen list of victims

to lawless violence and crime! Humph! A pretty scrape, truly!” And the

master ground his teeth with vexation.

Let not the reader judge him too hastily. In the best regulated mind,

thankfulness for deliverance from danger is apt to be mingled with some

doubts as to the necessity of the trial.

In this frame of mind the last person he would have cared to meet was

Clytie. That young woman’s evil genius, however, led her to pass the

burnt district that morning. Perhaps she had anticipated the meeting. At

all events, he had proceeded but a few steps before he was confronted by

the identical round hat and cherry colored ribbons. But in his present

humor the cheerful color somehow reminded him of the fire and of a ruddy

stain over McSnagley’s heart, and invested the innocent Clytie with

a figurative significance. Now Clytie’s reveries at that moment were

pleasant, if the brightness of her eyes and the freshened color on her

cheeks were any sign, and, as she had not seen the master since then,

she naturally expected to take up the thread of romance where it had

been dropped. But it required all her feminine tact to conceal her

embarrassment at his formal greeting and constrained manner.

“He is bashful,” reasoned Clytie to herself.

“This girl is a tremendous fool,” growled the master inwardly.

An awkward pause ensued. Finally, Clytie _loquitur_:—

“M’liss has been missing since the fire!”

“Missing?” echoed the master in his natural tone.

Clytie bit her lip with vexation. “Yes, she’s always running away.

She’ll be back again. But you look interested. Do you know,” she

continued with exceeding archness, “I sometimes think, Mr. Gray, if

M’liss were a little older”—

“Well?”

“Well, putting this and that together, you know!”

“Well?”

“People will talk, you know,” continued Clytie, with that excessive

fondness weak people exhibit in enveloping in mystery the commonest

affairs of life.

“People are d——d fools!” roared the master.

The correct Clytie was a little shocked. Perhaps underneath it was a

secret admiration of the transgressor. Force even of this cheap quality

goes a good way with some natures.

“That is,” continued the master, with an increase of dignity in inverse

proportion to the lapse he had made, “people are apt to be mistaken,

Miss Morpher, and without meaning it, to do infinite injustice to

their fellow mortals. But I see I am detaining you. I will try and find

Melissa. I wish you good-morning.” And Don Whiskerandos stalked solemnly

away.