CHAPTER XI.

THE CAPTAIN FOLLOWS HIS SHIP.

When Padre Esteban had finished reading the document he laid it down and

fixed his eyes on the young man. Hurlstone met his look with a glance of

impatient disdain.

"What have you to say to this?" asked the ecclesiastic, a little

impressed by his manner.

"That as far as it concerns myself it is a farrago of absurdity. If I

were the person described there, why should I have sought you with

what you call a lie of 'sentimental passion,' when I could have claimed

protection openly with my SISTER PATRIOT," he added, with a bitter

laugh.

"Because you did not know THEN the sympathy of the people nor the

decision of the Council," said the priest.

"But I know it NOW, and I refuse to accept it."

"You refuse--to--to accept it?" echoed the priest.

"I do." He walked towards the door. "Before I go, let me thank you for

the few hours' rest and security that you have given to one who may be a

cursed man, yet is no impostor. But I do not blame you for doubting one

who talks like a desperate man, yet lacks the courage of desperation.

Good-by!"

"Where are you going?"

"What matters? There is a safer protection and security to be found than

even that offered by the Council of Todos Santos."

His eyes were averted, but not before the priest had seen them glaze

again with the same gloomy absorption that had horrified him in the

church the evening before. Father Esteban stepped forward and placed his

soft hand on Hurlstone's shoulder.

"Look at me. Don't turn your face aside, but hear me; for I believe your

story."

Without raising his eyes, the young man lifted Father Esteban's hand

from his shoulder, pressed it lightly, and put it quietly aside.

"I thank you," he said, "for keeping at least that unstained memory of

me. But it matters little now. Good-by!"

He had his hand upon the door, but the priest again withheld him.

"When I tell you I believe your story, it is only to tell you more. I

believe that God has directed your wayward, wandering feet here to

His house, that you may lay down the burden of your weak and suffering

manhood before His altar, and become once more a child of His. I stand

here to offer you, not a refuge of a day or a night, but for all

time; not a hiding-place from man or woman, but from yourself, my

son--yourself, your weak and mortal self, more fatal to you than all.

I stand here to open for you not only the door of this humble cell, but

that of His yonder blessed mansion. You shall share my life with me; you

shall be one of my disciples; you shall help me strive for other souls

as I have striven for yours; the protection of the Church, which is

all-powerful, shall be around you if you wish to be known; you shall

hide yourself in its mysteries if you wish to be forgotten. You shall be

my child, my companion, my friend; all that my age can give you shall

be yours while I live, and it shall be your place one day to take up my

unfinished work when it falls from these palsied hands forever."

"You are mistaken," said the young man coldly. "I came to you for

human aid, and thank you for what you have granted me: I have not been

presumptuous enough to ask more, nor to believe myself a fitting subject

for conversion. I am weak, but not weak enough to take advantage of the

mistaken kindness of either the temporal Council of Todos Santos or its

spiritual head." He opened the door leading into the garden. "Forget and

forgive me, Father Esteban, and let me say farewell."

"Stop!" said the ecclesiastic, raising himself to his full height and

stepping before Hurlstone. "Then if you will not hear me in the name of

your Father who lives, in the name of your father who is dead I command

you to stay! I stand here to-day in the place of that man I never

knew--to hold back his son from madness and crime. Think of me as of him

whom you loved, and grant to an old man who might have had a son as old

as you the right of throwing a father's protecting arm around you."

There was a moment's silence.

"What do you want me to do?" said Hurlstone, suddenly lifting his now

moist and glistening eyes upon the old man.

"Give me your word of honor that for twenty-four hours you will remain

as you are--pledging yourself to nothing--only promising to commit no

act, take no step, without consulting me. You will not be sought here,

nor yet need you keep yourself a prisoner in these gloomy walls--except

that, by exposing yourself to the people now, you might be compromised

to some course that you are not ready to take."

"I promise," said Hurlstone.

He turned and held out both his hands; but Father Esteban anticipated

him with a paternal gesture of uplifted and opened arms, and for an

instant the young man's forehead was bowed on the priest's shoulder.

Father Esteban gently raised the young man's head.

"You will take a pasear in the garden until the Angelus rings, my son,

while the air is sweet and wholesome, and think this over. Remember that

you may accept the hospitality of the Council without sin of deception.

You were not in sympathy with either the captors of the Excelsior or

their defeated party; for you would have flown from both. You, of all

your party now in Todos Santos, are most in sympathy with us. You have

no cause to love your own people; you have abandoned them for us. Go, my

son; and meditate upon my words. I will fetch you from yonder slope in

time for the evening refection."

Hurlstone bowed his head and turned his irresolute feet towards the

upper extremity of the garden, indicated by the priest, which seemed to

offer more seclusion and security than the avenue of pear-trees. He was

dazed and benumbed. The old dogged impulses of self-destruction--revived

by the priest's reproaches, but checked by the vision of his dead and

forgotten father, which the priest's words had called up--gave way, in

turn, to his former despair. With it came a craving for peace and rest

so insidious that in some vague fear of yielding to it he quickened his

pace, as if to increase his distance from the church and its apostle. He

was almost out of breath when he reached the summit, and turned to look

back upon the Mission buildings and the straggling street of the pueblo,

which now for the first time he saw skirted the wall of the garden in

its descent towards the sea. He had not known the full extent of Todos

Santos before; when he swam ashore he had landed under a crumbling

outwork of the fort; he gazed now with curious interest over the hamlet

that might have been his home. He looked over the red-tiled roofs, and

further on to the shining bay, shut in by the impenetrable rampart of

fog. He might have found rest and oblivion here but for the intrusion of

those fellow-passengers to share his exile and make it intolerable.

How he hated and loathed them all! Yet the next moment he found himself

scrutinizing the street and plaza below him for a glimpse of his

countrywomen, whom he knew were still in the town or vainly endeavoring

to locate their habitation among the red-tiled roofs. And that frank,

clear-eyed girl--Miss Keene!--she who had seemed to vaguely pity

him--she was somewhere here too--selected by the irony of fate to be his

confederate! He could not help thinking of her beauty and kindness now,

with a vague curiosity that was half an uneasiness. It had not struck

him before, but if he were to accept the ridiculous attitude forced upon

him by Todos Santos, its absurdity, as well as its responsibility, would

become less odious by sharing it with another. Perhaps it might be

to HER advantage--and if so, would he be justified in exposing its

absurdity? He would have to see her first--and if he did, how would he

explain his real position? A returning wave of bitterness threw him back

into his old despair.

The twilight had slowly gathered over the view as he gazed--or, rather

a luminous concentration above the pueblo and bay had left the outer

circle of fog denser and darker. Emboldened by the apparent desertion of

the Embarcadero, he began to retrace his steps down the slope, keeping

close to the wall so as to avoid passing before the church again, or a

closer contact with the gardener among the vines. In this way he reached

the path he had skirted the night before, and stopped almost under

the shadow of the Alcalde's house. It was here he had rested and

hidden,--here he had tasted the first sweets of isolation and oblivion

in the dreamy garden,--here he had looked forward to peace with the

passing of the ship,--and now? The sound of voices and laughter

suddenly grated upon his ear. He had heard those voices before. Their

distinctness startled him until he became aware that he was standing

before a broken, half-rotting door that permitted a glimpse of the

courtyard of the neighboring house. He glided quickly past it without

pausing, but in that glimpse beheld Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb half

reclining in the corridor--in the attitude he had often seen them on the

deck of the ship--talking and laughing with a group of Mexican gallants.

A feeling of inconceivable loathing and aversion took possession of

him. Was it to THIS he was returning after his despairing search for

oblivion? Their empty, idle laughter seemed to ring mockingly in his

ears as he hurried on, scarce knowing whither, until he paused before

the broken cactus hedge and crumbling wall that faced the Embarcadero.

A glance over the hedge showed him that the strip of beach was deserted.

He looked up the narrow street; it was empty. A few rapid strides across

it gained him the shadow of the sea-wall of the Presidio, unchecked and

unhindered. The ebbing tide had left a foot or two of narrow shingle

between the sea and the wall. He crept along this until, a hundred yards

distant, the sea-wall reentered inland around a bastion at the entrance

of a moat half filled at high tide by the waters of the bay, but now a

ditch of shallow pools, sand, and debris. He leaned against the bastion,

and looked over the softly darkening water.

How quiet it looked, and, under that vaporous veil, how profound and

inscrutable! How easy to slip into its all-embracing arms, and sink into

its yielding bosom, leaving behind no stain, trace, or record! A

surer oblivion than the Church, which could not absolve memory, grant

forgetfulness, nor even hide the ghastly footprints of its occupants.

Here was obliteration. But was he sure of that? He thought of the body

of the murdered Peruvian, laid out at the feet of the Council by this

same fickle and uncertain sea; he thought of his own distorted face

subjected to the cold curiosity of these aliens or the contemptuous pity

of his countrymen. But that could be avoided. It was easy for him--a

good swimmer--to reach a point far enough out in the channel for the

ebbing tides to carry him past that barrier of fog into the open and

obliterating ocean. And then, at least, it might seem as if he had

attempted to ESCAPE--indeed, if he cared, he might be able to keep

afloat until he was picked up by some passing vessel, bound to a distant

land! The self-delusion pleased him, and seemed to add the clinching

argument to his resolution. It was not suicide; it was escape--certainly

no more than escape--he intended! And this miserable sophism of

self-apology, the last flashes of expiring conscience, helped to light

up his pale, determined face with satisfaction. He began coolly to

divest himself of his coat.

What was that?--the sound of some dislodged stones splashing in one

of the pools further up! He glanced hurriedly round the wall of the

bastion. A figure crouching against the side of the ditch, as if

concealing itself from observation on the glacis above, was slowly

approaching the sea. Suddenly, when within a hundred yards of Hurlstone,

it turned, crossed the ditch, rapidly mounted its crumbling sides,

and disappeared over the crest. But in that hurried glimpse he had

recognized Captain Bunker!

The sudden and mysterious apparition of this man produced on Hurlstone

an effect that the most violent opposition could not have created.

Without a thought of the terrible purpose it had interrupted, and

obeying some stronger instinct that had seized him, he dashed down into

the ditch and up to the crest again after Captain Bunker. But he had

completely disappeared. A little lagoon, making in from the bay, on

which a small fishing-boat was riding, and a solitary fisherman mending

his nets on the muddy shore a few feet from it, were all that was to be

seen.

He was turning back, when he saw the object of his search creeping from

some reeds, on all fours, with a stealthy, panther-like movement towards

the unconscious fisherman. Before Hurlstone could utter a cry, Bunker

had sprung upon the unfortunate man, thrown him to the earth, rapidly

rolled him over and over, enwrapping him hand and foot in his own

net, and involving him hopelessly in its meshes. Tossing the helpless

victim--who was apparently too stupefied to call out--to one side,

he was rushing towards the boat when, with a single bound, Hurlstone

reached his side and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

"Captain Bunker, for God's sake! what are you doing?"

Captain Bunker turned slowly and without apparent concern towards his

captor. Hurlstone fell back before the vacant, lack-lustre eyes that

were fixed upon him.

"Captain Bunker's my name," said the madman, in a whisper. "Lemuel

Bunker, of Nantucket! Hush! don't waken him," pointing to the prostrate

fisherman; "I've put him to sleep. I'm Captain Bunker--old drunken

Bunker--who stole one ship from her owners, and disgraced himself, and

now is going to steal another--ha, ha! Let me go."

"Captain Bunker," said Hurlstone, recovering himself in time to prevent

the maniac from dashing into the water. "Look at me. Don't you know me?"

"Yes, yes; you're one of old Bunker's dogs kicked overboard by Perkins.

I'm one of Perkins' dogs gone mad, and locked up by Perkins! Ha, ha! But

I got out! Hush! SHE let me out. SHE thought I was going to see the boys

at San Antonio. But I'm going off to see the old barque out there in the

fog. I'm going to chuck Perkins overboard and the two mates. Let me go."

He struggled violently. Hurlstone, fearful of quitting his hold to

release the fisherman, whom Captain Bunker no longer noticed, and not

daring to increase the Captain's fury by openly calling to him, beckoned

the pinioned man to make an effort. But, paralyzed by fear, the wretched

captive remained immovable, staring at the struggling men. With the

strength of desperation Hurlstone at last forced the Captain down upon

his knees.

"Listen, Captain! We'll go together--you understand. I'll help you--but

we must get a larger boat first--you know."

"But they won't give it," said Captain Bunker mysteriously. "Didn't you

hear the Council--the owners--the underwriters say: 'He lost his ship,

he's ruined and disgraced, for rum, all for rum!' And we want rum, you

know, and it's all over there, in the Excelsior's locker!"

"Yes, yes," said Hurlstone soothingly; "but there's more in the bigger

boat. Come with me. We'll let the man loose, and we'll make him show us

his bigger boat."

It was an unfortunate suggestion; for the Captain, who had listened with

an insane chuckle, and allowed himself to be taken lightly by the

hand, again caught sight of the prostrate fisherman. A yell broke from

him--his former frenzy returned. With a cry of "Treachery! all hands on

deck!" he threw off Hurlstone and rushed into the water.

"Help!" cried the young man, springing after him, "It is madness. He

will kill himself!"

The water was shallow, they were both wading, they both reached the boat

at the same time; but the Captain had scrambled into the stern-sheets,

and cast loose the painter, as Hurlstone once more threw his arms about

him.

"Hear me, Captain. I'll go with you. Listen! I know the way through the

fog. You understand: I'll pilot you!" He was desperate, but no longer

from despair of himself, but of another; he was reckless, but only to

save a madman from the fate that but a moment before he had chosen for

himself.

Captain Bunker seemed to soften. "Get in for'ard," he said, in a lower

voice. Hurlstone released his grasp, but still clinging to the boat,

which had now drifted into deeper water, made his way to the bow. He was

climbing over the thwarts when a horrified cry from the fisherman ashore

and a jarring laugh in his ear caused him to look up. But not in time to

save himself! The treacherous maniac had suddenly launched a blow from

an oar at the unsuspecting man as he was rising to his knees. It

missed his head, but fell upon his arm and shoulder, precipitating him

violently into the sea.

Stunned by the shock, he sank at first like lead to the bottom. When he

rose again, with his returning consciousness, he could see that Captain

Bunker had already hoisted sail, and, with the assistance of his oars,

was rapidly increasing his distance from the shore. With his returning

desperation he turned to strike out after him, but groaned as his one

arm sank powerless to his side. A few strokes showed him the madness

of the attempt; a few more convinced him that he himself could barely

return to the shore. A sudden torpor had taken possession of him--he was

sinking!

With this thought, a struggle for life began; and this man who had just

now sought death so eagerly--with no feeling of inconsistency, with

no physical fear of dissolution, with only a vague, blind, dogged

determination to live for some unknown purpose--a determination as vague

and dogged as his former ideas of self-destruction--summoned all his

energies to reach the shore. He struck out wildly, desperately; once or

twice he thought he felt his feet touch the bottom, only to find himself

powerlessly dragged back towards the sea. With a final superhuman effort

he gained at last a foothold on the muddy strand, and, half scrambling,

half crawling, sank exhaustedly beside the fisherman's net. But the

fisherman was gone! He attempted again to rise to his feet, but a

strange dizziness attacked him. The darkening landscape, with its

contracting wall of fog; the gloomy flat; the still, pale sea, as yet

unruffled by the faint land breeze that was slowly wafting the escaping

boat into the shadowy offing--all swam round him! Through the roaring

in his ears he thought he heard drumbeats, and the fanfare of a trumpet,

and voices. The next moment he had lost all consciousness.

When he came to, he was lying in the guard-room of the Presidio. Among

the group of people who surrounded him he recognized the gaunt features

of the Commander, the sympathetic eyes of Father Esteban, and the

fisherman who had disappeared. When he rose on his elbow, and attempted

to lift himself feebly, the fisherman, with a cry of gratitude, threw

himself on his knees, and kissed his helpless hand.

"He lives, he lives! your Excellencies! Saints be praised, he lives! The

hero--the brave Americano--the noble caballero who delivered me from the

madman."

"Who are you? and whence come you?" demanded the Commander of Hurlstone,

with grave austerity.

Hurlstone hesitated; the priest leaned forward with a half anxious, half

warning gesture. There was a sudden rustle in the passage; the crowd

gave way as Miss Keene, followed by Mrs. Markham, entered. The young

girl's eyes caught those of the prostrate man. With an impulsive cry she

ran towards him.

"Mr. Hurlstone!"

"Hurlstone," echoed the group, pressing nearer the astonished man.

The Comandante lifted his hand gravely with a gesture of silence, and

then slowly removed his plumed hat. Every head was instantly uncovered.

"Long live our brave and noble ally, Don Diego! Long live the beautiful

Dona Leonor!"

A faint shade of sadness passed over the priest's face. He glanced from

Hurlstone to Miss Keene.

"Then you have consented?" he whispered.

Hurlstone cast a rapid glance at Eleanor Keene.

"I consent!"

PART II. FREED.

CHAPTER I.

THE MOURNERS AT SAN FRANCISCO.

The telegraph operator at the Golden Gate of San Francisco had long

since given up hope of the Excelsior. During the months of September

and October, 1854, stimulated by the promised reward, and often by

the actual presence of her owners, he had shown zeal and hope in his

scrutiny of the incoming ships. The gaunt arms of the semaphore at

Fort Point, turned against the sunset sky, had regularly recorded the

smallest vessel of the white-winged fleet which sought the portal of the

bay during that eventful year of immigration; but the Excelsior was not

amongst them. At the close of the year 1854 she was a tradition; by the

end of January, 1855, she was forgotten. Had she been engulfed in her

own element she could not have been more completely swallowed up than in

the changes of that shore she never reached. Whatever interest or hope

was still kept alive in solitary breasts the world never knew. By the

significant irony of Fate, even the old-time semaphore that should have

signaled her was abandoned and forgotten.

The mention of her name--albeit in a quiet, unconcerned voice--in the

dress-circle of a San Francisco theatre, during the performance of a

popular female star, was therefore so peculiar that it could only have

come from the lips of some one personally interested in the lost vessel.

Yet the speaker was a youngish, feminine-looking man of about thirty,

notable for his beardlessness, in the crowded circle of bearded and

moustachioed Californians, and had been one of the most absorbed of

the enthusiastic audience. A weak smile of vacillating satisfaction

and uneasiness played on his face during the plaudits of his

fellow-admirers, as if he were alternately gratified and annoyed. It

might have passed for a discriminating and truthful criticism of the

performance, which was a classical burlesque, wherein the star displayed

an unconventional frankness of shapely limbs and unrestrained gestures

and glances; but he applauded the more dubious parts equally with the

audience. He was evidently familiar with the performance, for a look of

eager expectation greeted most of the "business." Either he had not come

for the entire evening, or he did not wish to appear as if he had, as he

sat on one of the back benches near the passage, and frequently changed

his place. He was well, even foppishly, dressed for the period, and

appeared to be familiarly known to the loungers in the passage as a man

of some social popularity.

He had just been recognized by a man of apparently equal importance and

distinction, who had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his

side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward.

The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added

formality of manner and self-assertion that did not, however, conceal

a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard,

but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and

rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less pronounced than his

companion's, but of a type of older and more established gentility.

"I was a little late coming from the office to-night," said the younger

man, with an embarrassed laugh, "and I thought I'd drop in here on my

way home. Pretty rough outside, ain't it?"

"Yes, it's raining and blowing; so I thought I wouldn't go up to the

plaza for a cab, but wait here for the first one that dropped a fare at

the door, and take it on to the hotel."

"Hold on, and I'll go with you," said the young man carelessly. "I say,

Brimmer," he added, after a pause, with a sudden assumption of larger

gayety, "there's nothing mean about Belle Montgomery, eh? She's a

whole team and the little dog under the wagon, ain't she? Deuced pretty

woman!--no make-up there, eh?"

"She certainly is a fine woman," said Brimmer gravely, borrowing his

companion's lorgnette. "By the way, Markham, do you usually keep an

opera-glass in your office in case of an emergency like this?"

"I reckon it was forgotten in my overcoat pocket," said Markham, with an

embarrassed smile.

"Left over from the last time," said Brimmer, rising from his seat.

"Well, I'm going now--I suppose I'll have to try the plaza."

"Hold on a moment. She's coming on now--there she is!" He stopped, his

anxious eyes fixed upon the stage. Brimmer turned at the same moment in

no less interested absorption. A quick hush ran through the theatre;

the men bent eagerly forward as the Queen of Olympus swept down to the

footlights, and, with a ravishing smile, seemed to envelop the whole

theatre in a gracious caress.

"You know, 'pon my word, Brimmer, she's a very superior woman," gasped

Markham excitedly, when the goddess had temporarily withdrawn. "These

fellows here," he said, indicating the audience contemptuously, "don't

know her,--think she's all that sort of thing, you know,--and come here

just to LOOK at her. But she's very accomplished--in fact, a kind of

literary woman. Writes devilish good poetry--only took up the stage

on account of domestic trouble: drunken husband that beat her--regular

affecting story, you know. These sap-headed fools don't, of course,

know THAT. No, sir; she's a remarkable woman! I say, Brimmer, look here!

I"--he hesitated, and then went on more boldly, as if he had formed a

sudden resolution. "What have you got to do to-night?"

Brimmer, who had been lost in abstraction, started slightly, and said,--

"I--oh! I've got an appointment with Keene. You know he's off by the

steamer--day after to-morrow?"

"What! He's not going off on that wild-goose chase, after all? Why, the

man's got Excelsior on the brain!" He stopped as he looked at Brimmer's

cold face, and suddenly colored. "I mean his plan--his idea's all

nonsense--you know that!"

"I certainly don't agree with him," began Brimmer gravely; "but"--

"The idea," interrupted Markham, encouraged by Brimmer's beginning, "of

his knocking around the Gulf of California, and getting up an expedition

to go inland, just because a mail-steamer saw a barque like the

Excelsior off Mazatlan last August. As if the Excelsior wouldn't have

gone into Mazatlan if it had been her! I tell you what it is, Brimmer:

it's mighty rough on you and me, and it ain't the square thing at

all--after all we've done, and the money we've spent, and the nights

we've sat up over the Excelsior--to have this young fellow Keene always

putting up the bluff of his lost sister on us! His lost sister, indeed!

as if WE hadn't any feelings."

The two men looked at each other, and each felt it incumbent to look

down and sigh deeply--not hypocritically, but perfunctorily, as over

a past grief, although anger had been the dominant expression of the

speaker.

"I was about to remark," said Brimmer practically, "that the insurance

on the Excelsior having been paid, her loss is a matter of commercial

record; and that, in a business point of view, this plan of Keene's

ain't worth looking at. As a private matter of our own feelings--purely

domestic--there's no question but that we must sympathize with him,

although he refuses to let us join in the expenses."

"Oh, as to that," said Markham hurriedly, "I told him to draw on me for

a thousand dollars last time I saw him. No, sir; it ain't that. What

gets me is this darned nagging and simpering around, and opening old

sores, and putting on sentimental style, and doing the bereaved

business generally. I reckon he'd be even horrified to see you and me

here--though it was just a chance with both of us."

"I think not," said Brimmer dryly. "He knows Miss Montgomery already.

They're going by the same steamer."

Markham looked up quickly.

"Impossible! She's going by the other line to Panama; that is"--he

hesitated--"I heard it from the agent."

"She's changed her mind, so Keene says," returned Brimmer. "She's going

by way of Nicaragua. He stops at San Juan to reconnoitre the coast up to

Mazatlan. Good-night. It's no use waiting here for a cab any longer, I'm

off."

"Hold on!" said Markham, struggling out of a sudden uneasy reflection.

"I say, Brimmer," he resumed, with an enforced smile, which he tried to

make playful, "your engagement with Keene won't keep you long. What do

you say to having a little supper with Miss Montgomery, eh?--perfectly

proper, you know--at our hotel? Just a few friends, eh?"

Brimmer's eyes and lips slightly contracted.

"I believe I am already invited," he said quietly. "Keene asked me. In

fact, that's the appointment. Strange he didn't speak of you," he added

dryly.

"I suppose it's some later arrangement," Markham replied, with feigned

carelessness. "Do you know her?"

"Slightly."

"You didn't say so!"

"You didn't ask me," said Brimmer. "She came to consult me about South

American affairs. It seems that filibuster General Leonidas, alias

Perkins, whose little game we stopped by that Peruvian contract,

actually landed in Quinquinambo and established a government. It seems

she knows him, has a great admiration for him as a Liberator, as she

calls him. I think they correspond!"

"She's a wonderful woman, by jingo, Brimmer! I'd like to hear whom she

don't know," said Markham, beaming with a patronizing vanity. "There's

you, and there's that filibuster, and old Governor Pico, that she's just

snatched bald-headed--I mean, you know, that he recognizes her worth,

don't you see? Not like this cattle you see here."

"Are you coming with me?" said Brimmer, gravely buttoning up his coat,

as if encasing himself in a panoply of impervious respectability.

"I'll join you at the hotel," said Markham hurriedly. "There's a man

over there in the parquet that I want to say a word to; don't wait for

me."

With a slight inclination of the head Mr. Brimmer passed out into

the lobby, erect, self-possessed, and impeccable. One or two of his

commercial colleagues of maturer age, who were loitering leisurely by

the wall, unwilling to compromise themselves by actually sitting down,

took heart of grace at this correct apparition. Brimmer nodded to them

coolly, as if on 'Change, and made his way out of the theatre. He had

scarcely taken a few steps before a furious onset of wind and rain drove

him into a doorway for shelter. At the same moment a slouching figure,

with a turned-up coat-collar, slipped past him and disappeared in a

passage at his right. Partly hidden by his lowered umbrella, Mr. Brimmer

himself escaped notice, but he instantly recognized his late companion,

Markham. As he resumed his way up the street he glanced into the

passage. Halfway down, a light flashed upon the legend "Stage Entrance."

Quincy Brimmer, with a faint smile, passed on to his hotel.

It was striking half-past eleven when Mr. Brimmer again issued from his

room in the Oriental and passed down a long corridor. Pausing a moment

before a side hall that opened from it, he cast a rapid look up and down

the corridor, and then knocked hastily at a door. It was opened sharply

by a lady's maid, who fell back respectfully before Mr. Brimmer's

all-correct presence.

Half reclining on a sofa in the parlor of an elaborate suite of

apartments was the woman whom Mr. Brimmer had a few hours before beheld

on the stage of the theatre. Lifting her eyes languidly from a book that

lay ostentatiously on her lap, she beckoned her visitor to approach.

She was a woman still young, whose statuesque beauty had but slightly

suffered from cosmetics, late hours, and the habitual indulgence of

certain hysterical emotions that were not only inconsistent with the

classical suggestions of her figure, but had left traces not unlike the

grosser excitement of alcoholic stimulation. She looked like a tinted

statue whose slight mutations through stress of time and weather had

been unwisely repaired by freshness of color.

"I am such a creature of nerves," she said, raising a superb neck and

extending a goddess-like arm, "that I am always perfectly exhausted

after the performance. I fly, as you see, to my first love--poetry--as

soon as Rosina has changed my dress. It is not generally known--but

I don't mind telling YOU--that I often nerve myself for the effort of

acting by reading some well-remembered passage from my favorite poets,

as I stand by the wings. I quaff, as one might say, a single draught of

the Pierian spring before I go on."

The exact relations between the humorous "walk round," in which Miss

Montgomery usually made her first entrance, and the volume of Byron she

held in her hand, did not trouble Mr. Brimmer so much as the beautiful

arm with which she emphasized it. Neither did it strike him that the

distinguishing indications of a poetic exaltation were at all unlike the

effects of a grosser stimulant known as "Champagne cocktail" on the less

sensitive organization of her colleagues. Touched by her melancholy but

fascinating smile, he said gallantly that he had observed no sign of

exhaustion, or want of power in her performance that evening.

"Then you were there!" she said, fixing her eyes upon him with an

expression of mournful gratitude. "You actually left your business and

the calls of public duty to see the poor mountebank perform her nightly

task."

"I was there with a friend of yours," answered Brimmer soberly, "who

actually asked me to the supper to which Mr. Keene had already invited

me, and which YOU had been kind enough to suggest to me a week ago."

"True, I had forgotten," said Miss Montgomery, with a large goddess-like

indifference that was more effective with the man before her than the

most elaborate explanation. "You don't mind them--do you?--for we are

all friends together. My position, you know," she added sadly, "prevents

my always following my own inclinations or preferences. Poor Markham, I

fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature.

I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have

both--lost. Good heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated

start of horror, "what have I done? Forgive my want of tact, dear

friend; I had forgotten, wretched being that I am, that YOU, too"--

She caught his hand in both hers, and bowed her head over it as if

unable to finish her sentence.

Brimmer, who had been utterly mystified and amazed at this picture of

Markham's disconsolate attitude to the world, and particularly to the

woman before him, was completely finished by this later tribute to his

own affliction. His usually composed features, however, easily took upon

themselves a graver cast as he kept, and pressed, the warm hands in his

own.

"Fool that I was," continued Miss Montgomery; "in thinking of poor

Markham's childlike, open grief, I forgot the deeper sorrow that the

more manly heart experiences under an exterior that seems cold and

impassible. Yes," she said, raising her languid eyes to Brimmer, "I

ought to have felt the throb of that volcano under its mask of snow. You

have taught me a lesson."

Withdrawing her hands hastily, as if the volcano had shown some signs of

activity, she leaned back on the sofa again.

"You are not yet reconciled to Mr. Keene's expedition, then?" she asked

languidly.

"I believe that everything has been already done," said Brimmer,

somewhat stiffly; "all sources of sensible inquiry have been exhausted

by me. But I envy Keene the eminently practical advantages his

impractical journey gives him," he added, arresting himself, gallantly;

"he goes with you."

"Truly!" said Miss Montgomery, with the melancholy abstraction of

a stage soliloquy. "Beyond obeying the dictates of his brotherly

affection, he gains no real advantage in learning whether his sister is

alive or dead. The surety of her death would not make him freer than he

is now--freer to absolutely follow the dictates of a new affection; free

to make his own life again. It is a sister, not a wife, he seeks."

Mr. Brimmer's forehead slightly contracted. He leaned back a little more

rigidly in his chair, and fixed a critical, half supercilious look upon

her. She did not seem to notice his almost impertinent scrutiny, but sat

silent, with her eyes bent on the carpet, in gloomy abstraction.

"Can you keep a secret?" she said, as if with a sudden resolution.

"Yes," said Brimmer briefly, without changing his look.

"You know I am a married woman. You have heard the story of my wrongs?"

"I have heard them," said Brimmer dryly.

"Well, the husband who abused and deserted me was, I have reason to

believe, a passenger on the Excelsior."

"M'Corkle!--impossible. There was no such name on the passenger list."

"M'Corkle!" repeated Miss Montgomery, with a dissonant tone in her voice

and a slight flash in her eyes. "What are you thinking of? There never

was a Mr. M'Corkle; it was one of my noms de plume. And where did YOU

hear it?"

"I beg your pardon, I must have got it from the press notices of your

book of poetry. I knew that Montgomery was only a stage name, and as

it was necessary that I should have another in making the business

investments you were good enough to charge me with, I used what

I thought was your real name. It can be changed, or you can sign

M'Corkle."

"Let it go," said Miss Montgomery, resuming her former manner. "What

matters? I wish there was no such thing as business. Well," she resumed,

after a pause, "my husband's name is Hurlstone."

"But there was no Hurlstone on the passenger list either," said Brimmer.

"I knew them all, and their friends."

"Not in the list from the States; but if he came on board at Callao, you

wouldn't have known it. I knew that he arrived there on the Osprey a few

days before the Excelsior sailed."

Mr. Brimmer's eyes changed their expression.

"And you want to find him?"

"No," she said, with an actress's gesture. "I want to know the truth. I

want to know if I am still tied to this man, or if I am free to

follow the dictates of my own conscience,--to make my life anew,--to

become--you see I am not ashamed to say it--to become the honest wife of

some honest man."

"A divorce would suit your purpose equally," said Brimmer coldly. "It

can be easily obtained."

"A divorce! Do you know what that means to a woman in my profession? It

is a badge of shame,--a certificate of disgrace,--an advertisement to

every miserable wretch who follows me with his advances that I have no

longer the sanctity of girlhood, nor the protection of a wife."

There was tragic emotion in her voice, there were tears in her eyes. Mr.

Brimmer, gazing at her with what he firmly thought to be absolute and

incisive penetration, did not believe either. But like most practical

analysts of the half-motived sex, he was only half right. The emotion

and the tears were as real as anything else in the woman under

criticism, notwithstanding that they were not as real as they would have

been in the man who criticised. He, however, did her full justice on

a point where most men and all women misjudged her: he believed that,

through instinct and calculation, she had been materially faithful

to her husband; that this large goddess-like physique had all the

impeccability of a goddess; that the hysterical dissipation in which

she indulged herself was purely mental, and usurped and preoccupied all

other emotions. In this public exposition of her beauty there was no

sense of shame, for there was no sense of the passion it evoked. And

he was right. But there he should have stopped. Unfortunately, his

masculine logic forced him to supply a reason for her coldness in the

existence of some more absorbing passion. He believed her ambitious and

calculating: she was neither. He believed she might have made him an

admirable copartner and practical helpmeet: he was wrong.

"You know my secret now," she continued. "You know why I am anxious to

know my fate. You understand now why I sympathize with"--she stopped,

and made a half contemptuous gesture--"with these men Markham and

Keene. THEY do not know it; perhaps they prefer to listen to their own

vanity--that's the way of most men; but you do know it, and you have no

excuse for misjudging me, or undeceiving them." She stopped and looked

at the clock. "They will be here in five minutes; do you wish them to

find you already here?"

"It is as YOU wish," stammered Brimmer, completely losing his

self-possession.

"I have no wish," she said, with a sublime gesture of indifference. "If

you wait you can entertain them here, while Rosina is dressing me in the

next room. We sup in the larger room across the hall."

As she disappeared, Quincy Brimmer rose irresolutely from his seat and

checked a half uttered exclamation. Then he turned nervously to the

parlor-door. What a senseless idiot he had become! He had never for an

instant conceived the idea of making this preliminary confidential visit

known to the others; he had no wish to suggest the appearance of an

assignation with the woman, who, rightly or wrongly, was notorious;

he had nothing to gain by this voluntary assumption of a compromising

attitude; yet here he was, he--Mr. Brimmer--with the appearance of being

installed in her parlor, receiving her visitors, and dispensing her

courtesies. Only a man recklessly in love would be guilty of such

an indiscretion--even Markham's feebleness had never reached this

absurdity. In the midst of his uneasiness there was a knock at the door;

he opened it himself nervously and sharply. Markham's self-satisfied

face drew back in alarm and embarrassment at the unexpected apparition.

The sight restored Brimmer's coolness and satirical self-possession.

"I--I--didn't know you were here," stammered Markham. "I left Keene in

your room."

"Then why didn't you bring him along with you?" said Brimmer

maliciously. "Go and fetch him."

"Yes; but he said you were to meet him there," continued Markham,

glancing around the empty room with a slight expression of relief.

"My watch was twenty minutes fast, and I had given him up," said

Brimmer, with mendacious effrontery. "Miss Montgomery is dressing. You

can bring him here before she returns."

Markham flew uneasily down the corridor and quickly returned with a

handsome young fellow of five-and-twenty, whose frank face was beaming

with excitement and youthful energy. The two elder men could not help

regarding him with a mingled feeling of envy and compassion.

"Did you tell Brimmer yet?" said Keene, with animation.

"I haven't had time," hesitated Markham. "The fact is, Brimmer, I think

of going with Keene on this expedition."

"Indeed!" said Brimmer superciliously.

"Yes," said Markham, coloring slightly. "You see, we've got news. Tell

him, Dick."

"The Storm Cloud got in yesterday from Valparaiso and Central American

ports," said Keene, with glowing cheeks. "I boarded her, as usual, last

night, for information. The mate says there is a story of a man picked

up crazy, in an open fishing-boat, somewhere off the peninsula, and

brought into hospital at San Juan last August. He recovered enough

lately to tell his story and claim to be Captain Bunker of the

Excelsior, whose crew mutinied and ran her ashore in a fog. But the

boat in which he was picked up was a Mexican fishing-boat, and there

was something revolutionary and political about the story, so that

the authorities detained him. The consul has just been informed of the

circumstances, and has taken the matter in hand."

"It's a queer story," said Brimmer, gazing from the one to the other,

"and I will look into it also to-morrow. If it is true," he added

slowly, "I will go with you."

Richard Keene extended his hand impulsively to his two elders.

"You'll excuse me for saying it, Brimmer--and you, too, Markham--but

this is just what I've been looking forward to. Not but what I'd have

found Nell without your assistance; but you see, boys, it DID look

mighty mean in me to make more fuss about a sister than you would for

your wives! But now that it's all settled"--

"We'll go to supper," said Miss Montgomery theatrically, appearing at

the door. "Dick will give me his arm."

CHAPTER II.

THE MOURNERS AT TODOS SANTOS.

There was a breath of spring in the soft morning air of Todos Santos--a

breath so subtle and odorous that it penetrated the veil of fog beyond

the bay, and for a moment lingered on the deck of a passing steamer like

an arresting memory. But only for an instant; the Ometepe, bound from

San Francisco to San Juan del Norte, with its four seekers of the

Excelsior, rolled and plunged on its way unconsciously.

Within the bay and over the restful pueblo still dwelt the golden haze

of its perpetual summer; the two towers of the old Mission church seemed

to dissolve softly into the mellow upper twilight, and the undulating

valleys rolled their green waves up to the wooded heights of San

Antonio, that still smiled down upon the arid, pallid desert. But

although Nature had not changed in the months that had passed since the

advent of the Excelsior, there appeared some strange mutations in

the town and its inhabitants. On the beach below the Presidio was the

unfinished skeleton of a small sea-going vessel on rude stocks; on the

plaza rose the framed walls and roofless rafters of a wooden building;

near the Embarcadero was the tall adobe chimney of some inchoate

manufactory whose walls had half risen from their foundations; but all

of these objects had evidently succumbed to the drowsy influence of

the climate, and already had taken the appearances of later and less

picturesque ruins of the past. There were singular innovations in the

costumes: one or two umbrellas, used as sunshades, were seen upon

the square; a few small chip hats had taken the place of the stiff

sombreros, with an occasional tall white beaver; while linen coat and

nankeen trousers had, at times, usurped the short velvet jacket and

loose calzas of the national costume.

At San Antonio the change was still more perceptible. Beside the yawning

pit of the abandoned silver mine a straggling building arose, filled

with rude machinery, bearing the legend, painted in glowing letters,

"Excelsior Silver Mining Co., J. Crosby, Superintendent;" and in the

midst of certain excavations assailing the integrity of the cliff itself

was another small building, scarcely larger than a sentry-box, with the

inscription, "Office: Eleanor Quicksilver Smelting Works."

Basking in that yellow morning sunlight, with his back against his

office, Mr. Brace was seated on the ground, rolling a cigarette. A few

feet from him Crosby, extended on his back on the ground, was lazily

puffing rings of smoke into the still air. Both of these young gentlemen

were dressed in exaggerated Mexican costumes; the silver buttons

fringing the edge of Crosby's calza, open from the knee down to show a

glimpse of the snowy under-trouser, were richer and heavier than those

usually worn; while Brace, in addition to the crimson silk sash round

his waist, wore a crimson handkerchief around his head, under his

sombrero.

"Pepe's falling off in his tobacco," said Brace. "I think I'll have to

try some other Fonda."

"How's Banks getting on with his crop?" asked Crosby. "You know he was

going to revolutionize the business, and cut out Cuba on that hillside."

"Oh, the usual luck! He couldn't get proper cultivators, and the

Injins wouldn't work regular. I must try and get hold of some of the

Comandante's stock; but I'm out of favor with the old man since Winslow

and I wrecked that fishing-boat on the rocks off yonder. He always

believed we were trying to run off, like Captain Bunker. That's why he

stopped our shipbuilding, I really believe."

"All the same, we might have had it built and ready now but for our

laziness. We might have worked on it nights without their knowing it,

and slipped off some morning in the fog."

"And we wouldn't have got one of the women to go with us! If we are

getting shiftless here--and I don't say we're not--these women have just

planted themselves and have taken root. But that ain't all: there's

the influence of that infernal sneak Hurlstone! He's set the Comandante

against us, you know; he, and the priest, the Comandante, and Nelly

Keene make up the real Council of Todos Santos. Between them they've

shoved out the poor little Alcalde, who's ready to give up everything to

dance attendance on Mrs. Brimmer. They run the whole concern, and they

give out that it's owing to them that we're given parole of the town,

and the privilege of spending our money and working these mines. Who'd

have thought that sneak Hurlstone would have played his cards so well?

It makes me regularly sick to hear him called 'Don Diego.'"

"Yet you're mightily tickled when that black-eyed sister of the Alcalde

calls you 'Don Carlos,'" said Crosby, yawning.

"Dona Isabel," said Brace, with some empressement, "is a lady of

position, and these are only her national courtesies."

"She just worships Miss Keene, and I reckon she knows by this time

all about your old attentions to her friend," said Crosby, with lazy

mischief.

"My attentions to Miss Keene were simply those of an ordinary

acquaintance, and were never as strongly marked as yours to Mrs.

Brimmer."

"Who has deserted ME as Miss Keene did YOU," rejoined Crosby.

Brace's quick color had risen again, and he would have made some sharp

retort, but the jingling of spurs caught his ear. They both turned

quickly, and saw Banks approaching. He was dressed as a vaquero, but

with his companions' like exaggeration of detail; yet, while his spurs

were enormous, and his sombrero unusually expansive, he still clung to

his high shirt-collars and accurately tied check cravat.

"Well?" he said, approaching them.

"Well?" said Crosby.

"Well?" repeated Brace.

After this national salutation, the three Americans regarded each other

silently.

"Knocked off cultivating to-day?" queried Crosby, lighting a fresh

cigarette.

"The peons have," said Banks; "it's another saint's day. That's the

fourth in two weeks. Leaves about two clear working days in each week,

counting for the days off, when they're getting over the effects of the

others. I tell you what, sir, the Catholic religion is not suited to a

working civilization, or else the calendar ought to be overhauled and

a lot of these saints put on the retired list. It's hard enough to have

all the Apostles on your pay-roll, so to speak, but to have a lot of

fellows run in on you as saints, and some of them not even men or women,

but IDEAS, is piling up the agony! I don't wonder they call the place

'All Saints.' The only thing to do," continued Banks severely, "is

to open communication with the desert, and run in some of the heathen

tribes outside. I've made a proposition to the Council offering to take

five hundred of them in the raw, unregenerate state, and turn 'em

over after a year to the Church. If I could get Hurlstone to do some

log-rolling with that Padre, his friend, I might get the bill through.

But I'm always put off till to-morrow. Everything here is 'Hasta manana;

hasta manana,' always. I believe when the last trump is sounded, they'll

say, 'Hasta manana.' What are YOU doing?" he said, after a pause.

"Waiting for your ship," answered Crosby sarcastically.

"Well, you can laugh, gentlemen--but you won't have to wait long.

According to my calculations that Mexican ship is about due now. And I

ain't basing my figures on anything the Mexican Government is going

to do, or any commercial speculation. I'm reckoning on the Catholic

Church."

The two men languidly looked towards him. Banks continued gravely,--

"I made the proper inquiries, and I find that the stock of rosaries,

scapularies, blessed candles, and other ecclesiastical goods, is running

low. I find that just at the nick of time a fresh supply always comes

from the Bishop of Guadalajara, with instructions from the Church. Now,

gentlemen, my opinion is that the Church, and the Church only, knows the

secret of the passage through the foggy channel, and keeps it to itself.

I look at this commercially, as a question of demand and supply. Well,

sir; the only real trader here at Todos Santos is the Church."

"Then you don't take in account the interests of Brimmer, Markham, and

Keene," said Brace. "Do you suppose they're doing nothing?"

"I don't say they're not; but you're confounding interests with

INSTINCTS. They haven't got the instinct to find this place, and all

that they've done and are doing is blind calculation. Just look at the

facts. As the filibuster who captured the Excelsior of course changed

her name, her rig-out, and her flag, and even got up a false register

for her, she's as good as lost, as far as the world knows, until she

lands at Quinquinambo. Then supposing she's found out, and the whole

story is known--although everything's against such a proposition--the

news has got to go back to San Francisco before the real search will be

begun. As to any clue that might come from Captain Bunker, that's still

more remote. Allowing he crossed the bar and got out of the channel,

he wasn't at the right time for meeting a passing steamer; and the only

coasters are Mexican. If he didn't die of delirium tremens or exposure,

and was really picked up in his senses by some other means, he would

have been back with succor before this, if only to get our evidence to

prove the loss of the vessel. No, sir sooner or later, of course, the

San Francisco crowd are bound to find us here. And if it wasn't for my

crops and our mine, I wouldn't be in a hurry for them; but our FIRST

hold is the Church."

He stopped. Crosby was asleep. Brace arose lazily, lounged into his

office, and closed his desk.

"Going to shut for the day?" said Banks, yawning.

"I reckon," said Brace dubiously; "I don't know but I'd take a little

pasear into the town if I had my horse ready."

"Take mine, and I'll trapse over on foot to the Ranche with

Crosby--after a spell. You'll find him under that big madrono, if he has

not already wound himself up with his lariat by walking round it. Those

Mexican horses can't go straight even when they graze--they must feed in

a circle. He's a little fresh, so look out for him!"

"All the better. I'd like to get into town just after the siesta."

"Siesta!" echoed Banks, lying comfortably down in the shade just vacated

by Brace; "that's another of their shiftless practices. Two hours out of

every day--that's a day out of the week--spent in a hammock; and during

business hours too! It's disgraceful, sir, simply disgraceful."

He turned over and closed his eyes, as if to reflect on its enormity.

Brace had no difficulty in finding the mare, although some trouble

in mounting her. But, like his companions, having quickly adopted

the habits of the country, he had become a skillful and experienced

horseman, and the mustang, after a few springless jumps, which failed

to unseat him, submitted to his rider. The young man galloped rapidly

towards Todos Santos; but when within a few miles of the pueblo he

slackened his pace. From the smiles and greetings of wayfarers--among

whom were some pretty Indian girls and mestizas--it was evident that

the handsome young foreigner, who had paid them the compliment of

extravagantly adopting their national costume, was neither an unfamiliar

nor an unpleasing spectacle. When he reached the posada at the top of

the hilly street, he even carried his simulation of the local customs to

the point of charging the veranda at full speed, and pulling up suddenly

at the threshold, after the usual fashion of vaqueros. The impetuous

apparition brought a short stout man to the door, who, welcoming him

with effusive politeness, conducted him to an inner room that gave

upon a green grass courtyard. Seated before a rude table, sipping

aguardiente, was his countryman Winslow and two traders of the pueblo.

They were evidently of the number already indicated who had adopted

the American fashions. Senor Ruiz wore a linen "duster" in place of

his embroidered jacket, and Senor Martinez had an American beard, or

"goatee," in imitation of Mr. Banks. The air was yellow with the fumes

of tobacco, through which the shrewd eyes of Winslow gleamed murkily.

"This," he said to his countryman, in fluent if not elegant Spanish,

indicating the gentleman who had imitated Banks, "is a man of ideas, and

a power in Todos Santos. He would control all the votes in his district

if there were anything like popular suffrage here, and he understands

the American policy."

Senor Martinez here hastened to inform Mr. Brace that he had long

cherished a secret and enthusiastic admiration for that grand and

magnanimous nation of which his friend was such a noble representative;

that, indeed, he might say it was an inherited taste, for had not his

grandfather once talked with the American whaling Capitano Coffino and

partaken of a subtle spirit known as "er-r-rum" on his ship at Acapulco?

"There's nothing mean about Martinez," said Winslow to Brace

confidentially, in English. "He's up to anything, and ready from the

word 'Go.' Don't you think he's a little like Banks, you know--a sort of

Mexican edition. And there is Ruiz, he's a cattle dealer; he'd be a good

friend of Banks if Banks wasn't so infernally self-opinionated. But Ruiz

ain't a fool, either. He's picked up a little English--good American, I

mean--from me already."

Senor Ruiz here smiled affably, to show his comprehension; and added

slowly, with great gravity,--

"It is of twenty-four year I have first time the Amencano of your

beautiful country known. He have buy the hides and horns of the

cattle--for his ship--here."

"Here?" echoed Brace. "I thought no American ship--no ship at all--had

been in here for fifty years."

Ruiz shrugged his shoulders, and cast a glance at his friend Martinez,

lowered his voice and lifted his eyelashes at the same moment, and,

jerking his yellow, tobacco-stained thumb over his arm, said,--

"Ah--of a verity--on the beach--two leagues away."

"Do you hear that?" said Winslow, turning complacently to Brace and

rising to his feet. "Don't you see now what hogwash the Commander,

Alcalde, and the priest have been cramming down our throats about this

place being sealed up for fifty years. What he says is all Gospel truth.

That's what I wanted you fellows to hear, and you might have heard

before, only you were afraid of compromising yourselves by talking with

the people. You get it into your heads--and the Comandante helped you to

get it there--that Todos Santos was a sort of Sleepy Hollow, and that

no one knew anything of the political changes for the last fifty years.

Well, what's the fact? Ask Ruiz there, and Martinez, and they'll both

tell you they know that Mexico got her independence in 1826, and that

the Council keep it dark that they may perpetuate themselves. They

know," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Commander's

commission from the old Viceroy isn't worth the paper it is stamped

upon."

"But what about the Church?" asked Brace hesitatingly, remembering

Banks' theory.

"The Church--caramba! the priests were ever with the Escossas, the

aristocrats, and against the Yorkenos, the men of the Republic--the

people," interrupted Martinez vehemently; "they will not accept, they

will not proclaim the Republic to the people. They shut their eyes,

so--. They fold their hands, so--. They say, 'Sicut era principio et

nunc et semper in secula seculorum!' Look you, Senor, I am not of the

Church--no, caramba! I snap my fingers at the priests. Ah! what

they give one is food for the bull's horns, believe me--I have read

'Tompano,' the American 'Tompano.'"

"Who's he?" asked Brace.

"He means Tom Paine! 'The Age of Reason'--you know," said Winslow,

gazing with a mixture of delight and patronizing pride at the Radicals

of Todos Santos. "Oh! he's no fool--is Martinez, nor Ruiz either! And

while you've been flirting with Dona Isabel, and Banks has been trying

to log-roll the Padre, and Crosby going in for siestas, I'VE found them

out. And there are a few more--aren't there, Ruiz?"

Ruiz darted a mysterious glance at Brace, and apparently not trusting

himself to speak, checked off his ten fingers dramatically in the air

thrice.

"As many of a surety! God and liberty!"

"But, if this is so, why haven't they DONE something?"

Senor Martinez glanced at Senor Ruiz.

"Hasta manana!" he said slowly.

"Oh, this is a case of 'Hasta manana!'" said Brace, somewhat relieved.

"They can wait," returned Winslow hurriedly. "It's too big a thing to

rush into without looking round. You know what it means? Either Todos

Santos is in rebellion against the present Government of Mexico, or

she is independent of any. Her present Government, in any event,

don't represent either the Republic of Mexico or the people of Todos

Santos--don't you see? And in that case WE'VE got as good a right here

as any one."

"He speaks the truth," said Ruiz, grasping a hand of Brace and Winslow

each; "in this we are--as brothers."

"God and liberty!" ejaculated Martinez, in turn seizing the other

disengaged hands of the Americans, and completing the mystic circle.

"God and liberty!" echoed a thin chorus from their host and a few

loungers who had entered unperceived.

Brace felt uneasy. He was not wanting in the courage or daring of youth,

but it struck him that his attitude was by no means consistent with his

attentions to Dona Isabel. He managed to get Winslow aside.

"This is all very well as a 'free lunch' conspiracy; but you're

forgetting your parole," he said, in a low voice.

"We gave our parole to the present Government. When it no longer exists,

there will be no parole--don't you see?"

"Then these fellows prefer waiting"--

"Until we can get OUTSIDE help, you understand. The first American ship

that comes in here--eh?"

Brace felt relieved. After all, his position in regard to the Alcalde's

sister would not be compromised; he might even be able to extend some

protection over her; and it would be a magnanimous revenge if he could

even offer it to Miss Keene.

"I see you don't swear anybody to secrecy," he said, with a laugh;

"shall I speak to Crosby, or will you?"

"Not yet; he'll only see something to laugh at. And Banks and Martinez

would quarrel at once, and go back on each other. No; my idea is to let

some outsider do for Todos Santos what Perkins did for Quinquinambo. Do

you take?"

His long, thin, dyspeptic face lit up with a certain small political

cunning and shrewdness that struck Brace with a half-respect.

"I say, Winslow; you'd have made a first-class caucus leader in San

Francisco."

Winslow smiled complacently. "There's something better to play on here

than ward politics," he replied. "There's a material here that--like

the mine and the soil--ain't half developed. I reckon I can show Banks

something that beats lobbying and log-rolling for contracts. I've let

you into this thing to show you a sample of my prospecting. Keep it to

yourself if you want it to pay. Dat's me, George! Good-by! I'll be out

to the office to-morrow!"

He turned back towards his brother politicians with an expression

of satisfied conceit that Brace for a moment envied. The latter even

lingered on the veranda, as if he would have asked Winslow another

question; but, looking at his watch, he suddenly recollected himself,

and, mounting his horse, cantered down towards the plaza.

The hour of siesta was not yet over, and the streets were still

deserted--probably the reason why the politicians of Todos Santos had

chosen that hour for their half secret meeting. At the corner of the

plaza he dismounted and led his horse to the public hitching-post--gnawn

and nibbled by the teeth of generations of mustangs--and turned into the

narrow lane flanked by the walls of the Alcalde's garden. Halfway

down he stopped before a slight breach in the upper part of the adobe

barrier, and looked cautiously around. The long, shadowed vista of the

lane was unobstructed by any moving figure as far as the yellow light of

the empty square beyond. With a quick leap he gained the top of the wall

and disappeared on the other aide.

CHAPTER III.

INTERNATIONAL COURTESIES.

The garden over whose wall Brace had mysteriously vanished was

apparently as deserted as the lane and plaza without. But its

solitude was one of graceful shadow and restful loveliness. A tropical

luxuriance, that had perpetuated itself year after year, until it was

half suffocated in its own overgrowth and strangled with its own beauty,

spread over a variegated expanse of starry flowers, shimmering leaves,

and slender inextricable branches, pierced here and there by towering

rigid cactus spikes or the curved plumes of palms. The repose of ages

lay in its hushed groves, its drooping vines, its lifeless creepers;

the dry dust of its decaying leaves and branches mingled with the living

perfumes like the spiced embalmings of a forgotten past.

Nevertheless, this tranquillity, after a few moments, was singularly

disturbed. There was no breeze stirring, and yet the long fronds of a

large fan palm, that stood near the breach in the wall, began to move

gently from right to left, like the arms of some graceful semaphore,

and then as suddenly stopped. Almost at the same moment a white curtain,

listlessly hanging from a canopied balcony of the Alcalde's house, began

to exhibit a like rhythmical and regular agitation. Then everything was

motionless again; an interval of perfect peace settled upon the garden.

It was broken by the apparition of Brace under the balcony, and the

black-veiled and flowered head of Dona Isabel from the curtain above.

"Crazy boy!"

"Senorita!"

"Hush! I am coming down!"

"You? But Dona Ursula!"

"There is no more Dona Ursula!"

"Well--your duenna, whoever she is!"

"There is no duenna!"

"What?"

"Hush up your tongue, idiot boy!" (this in English.)

The little black head and the rose on top of it disappeared. Brace drew

himself up against the wall and waited. The time seemed interminable.

Impatiently looking up and down, he at last saw Dona Isabel at a

distance, quietly and unconcernedly moving among the roses, and

occasionally stooping as if to pick them. In an instant he was at her

side.

"Let me help you," he said.

She opened her little brownish palm,--

"Look!" In her hand were a few leaves of some herb. "It is for you."

Brace seized and kissed the hand.

"Is it some love-test?"

"It is for what you call a julep-cocktail," she replied gravely. "He

will remain in a glass with aguardiente; you shall drink him with a

straw. My sister has said that ever where the Americans go they expect

him to arrive."

"I prefer to take him straight," said Brace, laughing, as he nibbled a

limp leaf bruised by the hand of the young girl. "He's pleasanter, and,

on the whole, more wildly intoxicating this way! But what about your

duenna? and how comes this blessed privilege of seeing you alone?"

Dona Isabel lifted her black eyes suddenly to Brace.

"You do not comprehend, then? Is it not, then, the custom of the

Americans? Is it not, then, that there is no duenna in your country?"

"There are certainly no duennas in my country. But who has changed the

custom here?"

"Is it not true that in your country any married woman shall duenna

the young senorita?" continued Dona Isabel, without replying; "that any

caballero and senorita shall see each other in the patio, and not under

a balcony?--that they may speak with the lips, and not the fan?"

"Well--yes," said Brace.

"Then my brother has arranged it as so. He have much hear the Dona

Barbara Brimmer when she make talk of these things frequently, and he

is informed and impressed much. He will truly have that you will come

of the corridor, and not the garden, for me, and that I shall have no

duenna but the Dona Barbara. This does not make you happy, you American

idiot boy!"

It did not. The thought of carrying on a flirtation under the

fastidious Boston eye of Mrs. Brimmer, instead of under the discreet

and mercenarily averted orbs of Dona Ursula, did not commend itself

pleasantly to Brace.

"Oh, yes," he returned quickly. "We will go into the corridor, in the

fashion of my country"--

"Yes," said Dona Isabel dubiously.

"AFTER we have walked in the garden in the fashion of YOURS. That's only

fair, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Dona Isabel gravely; "that's what the Comandante will call

'internation-al courtesy.'"

The young man slipped his arm around the young diplomatist's waist, and

they walked on in decorous silence under the orange-trees.

"It seems to me," said Brace presently, "that Mrs. Brimmer has a good

deal to say up your way?"

"Ah, yes; but what will you? It is my brother who has love for her."

"But," said Brace, stopping suddenly, "doesn't he know that she has a

husband living?"

Dona Isabel lifted her lashes in childlike wonder.

"Always! you idiot American boy. That is why. Ah, Mother of God! my

brother is discreet. He is not a maniac, like you, to come after a silly

muchacha like me."

The response which Brace saw fit to make to this statement elicited a

sharp tap upon the knuckles from Dona Isabel.

"Tell to me," she said suddenly, "is not that a custom of your country?"

"What? THAT?"

"No, insensate. To attend a married senora?"

"Not openly."

"Ah, that is wrong," said Dona Isabel meditatively, moving the point of

her tiny slipper on the gravel. "Then it is the young girl that shall

come in the corridor and the married lady on the balcony?"

"Well, yes."

"Good-by, ape!"

She ran swiftly down the avenue of palms to a small door at the back of

the house, turned, blew a kiss over the edge of her fan to Brace, and

disappeared. He hesitated a moment or two, then quickly rescaling the

wall, dropped into the lane outside, followed it to the gateway of the

casa, and entered the patio as Dona Isabel decorously advanced from

a darkened passage to the corridor. Although the hour of siesta had

passed, her sister, Miss Chubb, the Alcalde, and Mrs. Brimmer were still

lounging here on sofas and hammocks.

It would have been difficult for a stranger at a first glance to

discover the nationality of the ladies. Mrs. Brimmer and her friend Miss

Chubb had entirely succumbed to the extreme dishabille of the Spanish

toilet--not without a certain languid grace on the part of Mrs. Brimmer,

whose easy contour lent itself to the stayless bodice; or a certain

bashful, youthful naivete on the part of Miss Chubb, the rounded

dazzling whiteness of whose neck and shoulders half pleased and half

frightened her in her low, white, plain camisa--under the lace mantilla.

"It is SUCH a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Brace," said Mrs. Brimmer,

languidly observing the young man through the sticks of her fan; "I was

telling Don Ramon that I feared Dona Ursula had frightened you away. I

told him that your experience of American society might have caused you

to misinterpret the habitual reserve of the Castilian," she continued

with the air of being already an alien of her own country, "and I should

be only too happy to undertake the chaperoning of both these young

ladies in their social relations with our friends. And how is dear Mr.

Banks? and Mr. Crosby? whom I so seldom see now. I suppose, however,

business has its superior attractions."

But Don Ramon, with impulsive gallantry, would not--nay, COULD not--for

a moment tolerate a heresy so alarming. It was simply wildly impossible.

For why? In the presence of Dona Barbara--it exists not in the heart of

man!

"YOU cannot, of course, conceive it, Don Ramon," said Mrs. Brimmer, with

an air of gentle suffering; "but I fear it is sadly true of the American

gentlemen. They become too absorbed in their business. They forget their

duty to our sex in their selfish devotion to affairs in which we are

debarred from joining them, and yet they wonder that we prefer the

society of men who are removed by birth, tradition, and position from

this degrading kind of selfishness."

"But that was scarcely true of your own husband. HE was not only

a successful man in business, but we can see that he was equally

successful in his relations to at least one of the fastidious sex," said

Brace, maliciously glancing at Don Ramon.

Mrs. Brimmer received the innuendo with invulnerable simplicity.

"Mr. Brimmer is, I am happy to say, NOT a business man. He entered into

certain contracts having more or less of a political complexion, and

carrying with them the genius but not the material results of trade.

That he is not a business man--and a successful one--my position here at

the present time is a sufficient proof," she said triumphantly. "And I

must also protest," she added, with a faint sigh, "against Mr. Brimmer

being spoken of in the past tense by anybody. It is painfully premature

and ominous!"

She drew her mantilla across her shoulders with an expression of

shocked sensitiveness which completed the humiliation of Brace and the

subjugation of Don Ramon. But, unlike most of her sex, she was wise

in the moment of victory. She cast a glance over her fan at Brace, and

turned languidly to Dona Isabel.

"Mr. Brace must surely want some refreshment after his long ride. Why

don't you seize this opportunity to show him the garden and let him

select for himself the herbs he requires for that dreadful American

drink; Miss Chubb and your sister will remain with me to receive the

Comandante's secretary and the Doctor when they come."

"She's more than my match," whispered Brace to Dona Isabel, as they left

the corridor together. "I give in. I don't understand her: she frightens

me."

"That is of your conscience! It is that you would understand the Dona

Leonor--your dear Miss Keene--better! Ah! silence, imbecile! this Dona

Barbara is even as thou art--a talking parrot. She will have that the

Comandante's secretary, Manuel, shall marry Mees Chubb, and that the

Doctor shall marry my sister. But she knows not that Manuel--listen so

that you shall get sick at your heart and swallow your moustachio!--that

Manuel loves the beautiful Leonor, and that Leonor loves not him, but

Don Diego; and that my sister loathes the little Doctor. And this Dona

Barbara, that makes your liver white, would be a feeder of chickens with

such barley as this! Ah! come along!"

The arrival of the Doctor and the Comandante's secretary created another

diversion, and the pairing off of the two couples indicated by Dona

Isabel for a stroll in the garden, which was now beginning to recover

from the still heat of mid-day. This left Don Ramon and Mrs. Brimmer

alone in the corridor; Mrs. Brimmer's indefinite languor, generally

accepted as some vague aristocratic condition of mind and body, not

permitting her to join them.

There was a moment of dangerous silence; the voices of the young people

were growing fainter in the distance. Mrs. Brimmer's eyes, in the shadow

of her fan, were becoming faintly phosphorescent. Don Ramon's melancholy

face, which had grown graver in the last few moments, approached nearer

to her own.

"You are unhappy, Dona Barbara. The coming of this young cavalier, your

countryman, revives your anxiety for your home. You are thinking of this

husband who comes not. Is it not so?"

"I am thinking," said Mrs. Brimmer, with a sudden revulsion of solid

Boston middle-class propriety, shown as much in the dry New England

asperity of voice that stung even through her drawling of the Castilian

speech, as in anything she said,--"I am thinking that, unless Mr.

Brimmer comes soon, I and Miss Chubb shall have to abandon the

hospitality of your house, Don Ramon. Without looking upon myself as a

widow, or as indefinitely separated from Mr. Brimmer, the few words let

fall by Mr. Brace show me what might be the feelings of my countrymen

on the subject. However charming and considerate your hospitality has

been--and I do not deny that it has been MOST grateful to ME--I feel

I cannot continue to accept it in those equivocal circumstances. I

am speaking to a gentleman who, with the instincts and chivalrous

obligations of his order, must sympathize with my own delicacy in coming

to this conclusion, and who will not take advantage of my confession

that I do it with pain."

She spoke with a dry alacrity and precision so unlike her usual languor

and the suggestions of the costume, and even the fan she still kept

shading her faintly glowing eyes, that the man before her was more

troubled by her manner than her words, which he had but imperfectly

understood.

"You will leave here--this house?" he stammered.

"It is necessary," she returned.

"But you shall listen to me first!" he said hurriedly. "Hear me, Dona

Barbara--I have a secret--I will to you confess"--

"You must confess nothing," said Mrs. Brimmer, dropping her feet from

the hammock, and sitting up primly, "I mean--nothing I may not hear."

The Alcalde cast a look upon her at once blank and imploring.

"Ah, but you will hear," he said, after a pause. "There is a ship

coming here. In two weeks she will arrive. None know it but myself, the

Comandante, and the Padre. It is a secret of the Government. She will

come at night; she will depart in the morning, and no one else shall

know. It has ever been that she brings no one to Todos Santos, that she

takes no one from Todos Santos. That is the law. But I swear to you

that she shall take you, your children, and your friend to Acapulco in

secret, where you will be free. You will join your husband; you will be

happy. I will remain, and I will die."

It would have been impossible for any woman but Mrs. Brimmer to have

regarded the childlike earnestness and melancholy simplicity of this

grown-up man without a pang. Even this superior woman experienced a

sensible awkwardness as she slipped from the hammock and regained an

upright position.

"Of course," she, began, "your offer is exceedingly generous; and

although I should not, perhaps, take a step of this kind without the

sanction of Mr. Brimmer, and am not sure that he would not regard it as

rash and premature, I will talk it over with Miss Chubb, for whom I am

partially responsible. Nothing," she continued, with a sudden access of

feeling, "would induce me, for any selfish consideration, to take any

step that would imperil the future of that child, towards whom I feel as

a sister." A slight suffusion glistened under her pretty brown lashes.

"If anything should happen to her, I would never forgive myself; if I

should be the unfortunate means of severing any ties that SHE may have

formed, I could never look her in the face again. Of course, I can well

understand that our presence here must be onerous to you, and that you

naturally look forward to any sacrifice--even that of the interests

of your country, and the defiance of its laws--to relieve you from a

position so embarrassing as yours has become. I only trust, however,

that the ill effects you allude to as likely to occur to yourself after

our departure may be exaggerated by your sensitive nature. It would be

an obligation added to the many that we owe you, which Mr. Brimmer would

naturally find he could not return--and that, I can safely say, he would

not hear of for a single moment."

While speaking, she had unconsciously laid aside her fan, lifted her

mantilla from her head with both hands, and, drawing it around her

shoulders and under her lifted chin, had crossed it over her bosom

with a certain prim, automatic gesture, as if it had been the starched

kerchief of some remote Puritan ancestress. With her arms still

unconsciously crossed, she stooped rigidly, picked up her fan with three

fingers, as if it had been a prayer-book, and, with a slight inclination

of her bared head, with its accurately parted brown hair, passed slowly

out of the corridor.

Astounded, bewildered, yet conscious of some vague wound, Don Ramon

remained motionless, staring after her straight, retreating figure.

Unable to follow closely either the meaning of her words or the logic

of her reasoning, he nevertheless comprehended the sudden change in

her manner, her voice, and the frigid resurrection of a nature he had

neither known nor suspected. He looked blankly at the collapsed hammock,

as if he expected to find in its depths those sinuous graces, languid

fascinations, and the soft, half sensuous contour cast off by this

vanishing figure of propriety.

In the eight months of their enforced intimacy and platonic seclusion

he had learned to love this naive, insinuating woman, whose frank

simplicity seemed equal to his own, without thought of reserve, secrecy,

or deceit. He had gradually been led to think of the absent husband

with what he believed to be her own feelings--as of some impalpable,

fleshless ancestor from whose remote presence she derived power,

wealth, and importance, but to whom she owed only respect and certain

obligations of honor equal to his own. He had never heard her speak of

her husband with love, with sympathy, with fellowship, with regret. She

had barely spoken of him at all, and then rather as an attractive factor

in her own fascinations than a bar to a free indulgence in them. He was

as little in her way as--his children. With what grace she had adapted

herself to his--Don Ramon's--life--she who frankly confessed she had no

sympathy with her husband's! With what languid enthusiasm she had taken

up the customs of HIS country, while deploring the habits of her own!

With what goddess-like indifference she had borne this interval

of waiting! And yet this woman--who had seemed the embodiment of

romance--had received the announcement of his sacrifice--the only

revelation he allowed himself to make of his hopeless passion--with the

frigidity of a duenna! Had he wounded her in some other unknown way?

Was she mortified that he had not first declared his passion--he who had

never dared to speak to her of love before? Perhaps she even doubted

it! In his ignorance of the world he had, perhaps, committed some grave

offense! He should not have let her go! He should have questioned,

implored her--thrown himself at her feet! Was it too late yet?

He passed hurriedly into the formal little drawing-room, whose bizarre

coloring was still darkened by the closed blinds and dropped awnings

that had shut out the heat of day. She was not there. He passed the open

door of her room; it was empty. At the end of the passage a faint light

stole from a door opening into the garden that was still ajar. She must

have passed out that way. He opened it, and stepped out into the garden.

The sound of voices beside a ruined fountain a hundred yards away

indicated the vicinity of the party; but a single glance showed him that

she was not among them. So much the better--he would find her alone.

Cautiously slipping beside the wall of the house, under the shadow of a

creeper, he gained the long avenue without attracting attention. She was

not there. Had she effectively evaded contact with the others by leaving

the garden through the little gate in the wall that entered the Mission

enclosure? It was partly open, as if some one had just passed through.

He followed, took a few steps, and stopped abruptly. In the shadow of

one of the old pear-trees a man and woman were standing. An impulse of

wild jealousy seized him; he was about to leap forward, but the next

moment the measured voice of the Comandante, addressing Mrs. Markham,

fell upon his ear. He drew back with a sudden flush upon his face. The

Comandante of Todos Santos, in grave, earnest accents, was actually

offering to Mrs. Markham the same proposal that he, Don Ramon, had made

to Mrs. Brimmer but a moment ago!

"No one," said the Comandante sententiously, "will know it but myself.

You will leave the ship at Acapulco; you will rejoin your husband in

good time; you will be happy, my child; you will forget the old man

who drags out the few years of loneliness still left to him in Todos

Santos."

Forgetting himself, Don Ramon leaned breathlessly forward to hear Mrs.

Markham's reply. Would she answer the Comandante as Dona Barbara had

answered HIM? Her words rose distinctly in the evening air.

"You're a gentleman, Don Miguel Briones; and the least respect I can

show a man of your kind is not to pretend that I don't understand the

sacrifice you're making. I shall always remember it as about the biggest

compliment I ever received, and the biggest risk that any man--except

one--ever ran for me. But as the man who ran that bigger risk isn't here

to speak for himself, and generally trusts his wife, Susan Markham, to

speak for him--it's all the same as if HE thanked you. There's my hand,

Don Miguel: shake it. Well--if you prefer it--kiss it then. There--don't

be a fool--but let's go back to Miss Keene."

CHAPTER IV.

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.

While these various passions had been kindled by her compatriots in

the peaceful ashes of Todos Santos, Eleanor Keene had moved among them

indifferently and, at times, unconsciously. The stranding of her young

life on that unknown shore had not drawn her towards her fellow-exiles,

and the circumstances which afterwards separated her from daily contact

with them completed the social estrangement. She found herself more in

sympathy with the natives, to whom she had shown no familiarity,

than with her own people, who had mixed with them more or less

contemptuously. She found the naivete of Dona Isabel more amusing than

the doubtful simplicity of that married ingenue Mrs. Brimmer, although

she still met the young girl's advances with a certain reserve. She

found herself often pained by the practical brusqueness with which Mrs.

Markham put aside the Comandante's delicate attentions, and she was

moved with a strange pity for his childlike trustfulness, which she knew

was hopeless. As the months passed, on the few occasions that she still

met the Excelsior's passengers she was surprised to find how they

had faded from her memory, and to discover in them the existence of

qualities that made her wonder how she could have ever been familiar

with them. She reproached herself with this fickleness; she wondered

if she would have felt thus if they had completed their voyage to San

Francisco together; and she recalled, with a sad smile, the enthusiastic

plans they had formed during the passage to perpetuate their fellowship

by anniversaries and festivals. But she, at last, succumbed, and finally

accepted their open alienation as preferable to the growing awkwardness

of their chance encounters.

For a few weeks following the flight of Captain Bunker and her

acceptance of the hospitality and protection of the Council, she became

despondent. The courage that had sustained her, and the energy she had

shown in the first days of their abandonment, suddenly gave way, for no

apparent reason. She bitterly regretted the brother whom she scarcely

remembered; she imagined his suspense and anguish on her account, and

suffered for both; she felt the dumb pain of homesickness for a home

she had never known. Her loneliness became intolerable. Her condition

at last affected Mrs. Markham, whose own idleness had been beguiled by

writing to her husband an exhaustive account of her captivity, which had

finally swelled to a volume on Todos Santos, its resources, inhabitants,

and customs. "Good heavens!" she said, "you must do something, child,

to occupy your mind--if it is only a flirtation with that conceited

Secretary." But this terrible alternative was happily not required. The

Comandante had still retained as part of the old patriarchal government

of the Mission the Presidio school, for the primary instruction of

the children of the soldiers,--dependants of the garrison. Miss Keene,

fascinated by several little pairs of beady black eyes that had looked

up trustingly to hers from the playground on the glacis, offered to

teach English to the Comandante's flock. The offer was submitted to

the spiritual head of Todos Santos, and full permission given by Padre

Esteban to the fair heretic. Singing was added to the Instruction, and

in a few months the fame of the gracious Dona Leonor's pupils stirred to

emulation even the boy choristers of the Mission.

Her relations with James Hurlstone during this interval were at first

marked by a strange and unreasoning reserve. Whether she resented

the singular coalition forced upon them by the Council and felt the

awkwardness of their unintentional imposture when they met, she did not

know, but she generally avoided his society. This was not difficult, as

he himself had shown no desire to intrude his confidences upon her; and

even in her shyness she could not help thinking that if he had treated

the situation lightly or humorously--as she felt sure Mr. Brace or Mr.

Crosby would have done--it would have been less awkward and unpleasant.

But his gloomy reserve seemed to the high-spirited girl to color their

innocent partnership with the darkness of conspiracy.

"If your conscience troubles you, Mr. Hurlstone, in regard to the

wretched infatuation of those people," she had once said, "undeceive

them, if you can, and I will assist you. And don't let that affair

of Captain Bunker worry you either. I have already confessed to the

Comandante that he escaped through my carelessness."

"You could not have done otherwise without sacrificing the poor

Secretary, who must have helped you," Hurlstone returned quietly.

Miss Keene bit her lip and dropped the subject. At their next meeting

Hurlstone himself resumed it.

"I hope you don't allow that absurd decree of the Council to disturb

you; I imagine they're quite convinced of their folly. I know that

the Padre is; and I know that he thinks you've earned a right to the

gratitude of the Council in your gracious task at the Presidio school

that is far beyond any fancied political service."

"I really haven't thought about it at all," said Miss Keene coolly. "I

thought it was YOU who were annoyed."

"I? not at all," returned Hurlstone quickly. "I have been able to assist

the Padre in arranging the ecclesiastical archives of the church, and

in suggesting some improvement in codifying the ordinances of the last

forty years. No; I believe I'm earning my living here, and I fancy they

think so."

"Then it isn't THAT that troubles you?" said Miss Keene carelessly, but

glancing at him under the shade of her lashes.

"No," he said coldly, turning away.

Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss

Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for

this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the

beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of him

more during the interval when they seldom saw each other, and apparently

had few interests in common, than when they were together on the

Excelsior. Gradually she slipped into three successive phases of feeling

towards him, each of them marked with an equal degree of peril to her

peace of mind. She began with a profound interest in the mystery of

his secluded habits, his strange abstraction, and a recognition of

the evident superiority of a nature capable of such deep

feeling--uninfluenced by those baser distractions which occupied Brace,

Crosby, and Winslow. This phase passed into a settled conviction that

some woman was at the root of his trouble, and responsible for it. With

an instinctive distrust of her own sex, she was satisfied that it must

be either a misplaced or unworthy attachment, and that the unknown woman

was to blame. This second phase--which hovered between compassion and

resentment--suddenly changed to the latter--the third phase of her

feelings. Miss Keene became convinced that Mr. Hurlstone had a settled

aversion to HERSELF. Why and wherefore, she did not attempt to reason,

yet she was satisfied that from the first he disliked her. His studious

reserve on the Excelsior, compared with the attentions of the others,

ought then to have convinced her of the fact; and there was no doubt

now that his present discontent could be traced to the unfortunate

circumstances that brought them together. Having given herself up to

that idea, she vacillated between a strong impulse to inform him that

she knew his real feelings and an equally strong instinct to avoid him

hereafter entirely. The result was a feeble compromise. On the ground

that Mr. Hurlstone could "scarcely be expected to admire her inferior

performances," she declined to invite him with Father Esteban to listen

to her pupils. Father Esteban took a huge pinch of snuff, examined

Miss Keene attentively, and smiled a sad smile. The next day he

begged Hurlstone to take a volume of old music to Miss Keene with his

compliments. Hurlstone did so, and for some reason exerted himself to be

agreeable. As he made no allusion to her rudeness, she presumed he did

not know of it, and speedily forgot it herself. When he suggested a

return visit to the boy choir, with whom he occasionally practiced, she

blushed and feared she had scarcely the time. But she came with Mrs.

Markham, some consciousness, and a visible color!

And then, almost without her knowing how or why, and entirely unexpected

and unheralded, came a day so strangely and unconsciously happy, so

innocently sweet and joyous, that it seemed as if all the other days

of her exile had only gone before to create it, and as if it--and it

alone--were a sufficient reason for her being there. A day full of

gentle intimations, laughing suggestions, childlike surprises and

awakenings; a day delicious for the very incompleteness of its vague

happiness. And this remarkable day was simply marked in Mrs. Markham's

diary as follows:--"Went with E. to Indian village; met Padre and J. H.

J. H. actually left shell and crawled on beach with E. E. chatty."

The day itself had been singularly quiet and gracious, even for that

rare climate of balmy days and recuperating nights. At times the slight

breath of the sea which usually stirred the morning air of Todos Santos

was suspended, and a hush of expectation seemed to arrest land and

water. When Miss Keene and Mrs. Markham left the Presidio, the tide was

low, and their way lay along the beach past the Mission walls. A walk

of two or three miles brought them to the Indian village--properly a

suburban quarter of Todos Santos--a collection of adobe huts and rudely

cultivated fields. Padre Esteban and Mr. Hurlstone were awaiting them in

the palm-thatched veranda of a more pretentious cabin, that served as a

school-room. "This is Don Diego's design," said the Padre, beaming with

a certain paternal pride on Hurlstone, "built by himself and helped by

the heathen; but look you: my gentleman is not satisfied with it, and

wishes now to bring his flock to the Mission school, and have them

mingle with the pure-blooded races on an equality. That is the

revolutionary idea of this sans culotte reformer," continued the good

Father, shaking his yellow finger with gentle archness at the young man.

"Ah, we shall yet have a revolution in Todos Santos unless you ladies

take him in hand. He has already brought the half-breeds over to his

side, and those heathens follow him like dumb cattle anywhere. There,

take him away and scold him, Dona Leonor, while I speak to the Senora

Markham of the work that her good heart and skillful fingers may do for

my poor muchachos."

Eleanor Keene lifted her beautiful eyes to Hurlstone with an artless

tribute in their depths that brought the blood faintly into his cheek.

She was not thinking of the priest's admonishing words; she was thinking

of the quiet, unselfish work that this gloomy misanthrope had been

doing while his companions had been engaged in lower aims and listless

pleasures, and while she herself had been aimlessly fretting and

diverting herself. What were her few hours of applauded instruction with

the pretty Murillo-like children of the Fort compared to his silent and

unrecognized labor! Yet even at this moment an uneasy doubt crossed her

mind.

"I suppose Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb interest themselves greatly in

your--in the Padre's charities?"

The first playful smile she had seen on Hurlstone's face lightened in

his eyes and lips, and was becoming.

"I am afraid my barbarians are too low and too near home for Mrs.

Brimmer's missionary zeal. She and Miss Chubb patronize the Mexican

school with cast-off dresses, old bonnets retrimmed, flannel petticoats,

some old novels and books of poetry--of which the Padre makes an

auto-da-fe--and their own patronizing presence on fete days. Providence

has given them the vague impression that leprosy and contagious

skin-disease are a peculiarity of the southern aborigine, and they have

left me severely alone."

"I wish you would prevail upon the Padre to let ME help you," said Miss

Keene, looking down.

"But you already have the Commander's chickens--which you are bringing

up as swans, by the way," said Hurlstone mischievously. "You wouldn't

surely abandon the nest again?"

"You are laughing at me," said Miss Keene, putting on a slight pout to

hide the vague pleasure that Hurlstone's gayer manner was giving

her. "But, really, I've been thinking that the Presidio children are

altogether too pretty and picturesque for me, and that I enjoy them too

much to do them any good. It's like playing with them, you know!"

Hurlstone laughed, but suddenly looking down upon her face he was struck

with its youthfulness. She had always impressed him before--through her

reserve and independence--as older, and more matured in character. He

did not know how lately she was finding her lost youth as he asked her,

quite abruptly, if she ever had any little brothers and sisters.

The answer to this question involved the simple story of Miss Keene's

life, which she gave with naive detail. She told him of her early

childhood, and the brother who was only an indistinct memory; of her

school days, and her friendships up to the moment of her first step into

the great world that was so strangely arrested at Todos Santos. He

was touched with the almost pathetic blankness of this virgin page.

Encouraged by his attention, and perhaps feeling a sympathy she had

lately been longing for, she confessed to him the thousand little things

which she had reserved from even Mrs. Markham during her first apathetic

weeks at Todos Santos.

"I'm sure I should have been much happier if I had had any one to

talk to," she added, looking up into his face with a naivete of faint

reproach; "it's very different for men, you know. They can always

distract themselves with something. Although," she continued

hesitatingly, "I've sometimes thought YOU would have been happier if you

had had somebody to tell your troubles to--I don't mean the Padre;

for, good as he is, he is a foreigner, you know, and wouldn't look upon

things as WE do--but some one in sympathy with you."

She stopped, alarmed at the change of expression in his face. A quick

flush had crossed his cheek; for an instant he had looked suspiciously

into her questioning eyes. But the next moment the idea of his quietly

selecting this simple, unsophisticated girl as the confidant of his

miserable marriage, and the desperation that had brought him there,

struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was the

first time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on that

one subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the first

time that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he had

enwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then they

smiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspoken

confidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, that smile had

completed his emancipation and triumph. The next moment, when he sought

with a conscientious sigh to reenter his old mood, he was half shocked

to find it gone. Whatever gradual influence--the outcome of these few

months of rest and repose--may have already been at work to dissipate

his clouded fancy, he was only vaguely conscious that the laughing

breath of the young girl had blown it away forever.

The perilous point passed, unconsciously to both of them, they fell into

freer conversation, tacitly avoiding the subject of Mr. Hurlstone's past

reserve only as being less interesting. Hurlstone did not return Miss

Keene's confidences--not because he wished to deceive her, but that he

preferred to entertain her; while she did not care to know his secret

now that it no longer affected their sympathy in other things. It was a

pleasant, innocent selfishness, that, however, led them along, step by

step, to more uncertain and difficult ground.

In their idle, happy walk they had strayed towards the beach, and had

come upon a large stone cross with its base half hidden in sand, and

covered with small tenacious, sweet-scented creepers, bearing a pale

lilac blossom that exhaled a mingled odor of sea and shore. Hurlstone

pointed out the cross as one of the earliest outposts of the Church on

the edge of the unclaimed heathen wilderness. It was hung with strings

of gaudy shells and feathers, which Hurlstone explained were votive

offerings in which their pagan superstitions still mingled with their

new faith.

"I don't like to worry that good old Padre," he continued, with a light

smile, "but I'm afraid that they prefer this cross to the chapel for

certain heathenish reasons of their own. I am quite sure that they still

hold some obscure rites here under the good Father's very nose, and

that, in the guise of this emblem of our universal faith, they worship

some deity we have no knowledge of."

"It's a shame," said Miss Keene quickly.

To her surprise, Hurlstone did not appear so shocked as she, in her

belief of his religious sympathy with the Padre, had imagined.

"They're a harmless race," he said carelessly. "The place is much

frequented by the children--especially the young girls; a good many of

these offerings came from them."

The better to examine these quaint tributes, Miss Keene had thrown

herself, with an impulsive, girlish abandonment, on the mound by the

cross, and Hurlstone sat down beside her. Their eyes met in an innocent

pleasure of each other's company. She thought him very handsome in the

dark, half official Mexican dress that necessity alone had obliged him

to assume, and much more distinguished-looking than his companions

in their extravagant foppery; he thought her beauty more youthful and

artless than he had imagined it to be, and with his older and graver

experiences felt a certain protecting superiority that was pleasant and

reassuring.

Nevertheless, seated so near each other, they were very quiet. Hurlstone

could not tell whether it was the sea or the flowers, but the dress of

the young girl seemed to exhale some subtle perfume of her own freshness

that half took away his breath. She had scraped up a handful of sand,

and was allowing it to escape through her slim fingers in a slender rain

on the ground. He was watching the operation with what he began to fear

was fatuous imbecility.

"Miss Keene?--I beg your pardon"--

"Mr. Hurlstone?--Excuse me, you were saying"--

They had both spoken at the same moment, and smiled forgivingly at

each other. Hurlstone gallantly insisted upon the precedence of her

thought--the scamp had doubted the coherency of his own.

"I used to think," she began--"you won't be angry, will you?"

"Decidedly not."

"I used to think you had an idea of becoming a priest."

"Why?"

"Because--you are sure you won't be angry--because I thought you hated

women!"

"Father Esteban is a priest," said Hurlstone, with a faint smile, "and

you know he thinks kindly of your sex."

"Yes; but perhaps HIS life was never spoiled by some wicked woman

like--like yours."

For an instant he gazed intently into her eyes.

"Who told you that?"

"No one."