Читать книгу: «Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation», страница 6

“Hold on!” said a dozen voices. A dozen hands were thrust into a dozen pockets; I grieve to say some were regretfully withdrawn empty, for it was a hard season in Rough and Ready. But the expressman stepped before them, with warning, uplifted hand.

“Not a cent, boys,—not a cent! Wells, Fargo’s Express Company don’t undertake to carry bullion with those kids, at least on the same contract!” He laughed, and then looking around him, said confidentially in a lower voice, which, however, was quite audible to the children, “There’s as much as three bags of silver in quarter and half dollars in my treasure box in the coach that has been poured, yes, just showered upon them, ever since they started, and have been passed over from agent to agent and messenger to messenger,—enough to pay their passage from here to China! It’s time to say quits now. But bet your life, they are not going to that Christmas party poor!”

He caught up the boy, as Yuba Bill lifted the little girl to his shoulder, and both passed out. Then one by one the loungers in the bar-room silently and awkwardly followed, and when the barkeeper turned back from putting away his decanters and glasses, to his astonishment the room was empty.

Spindler’s house, or “Spindler’s Splurge,” as Rough and Ready chose to call it, stood above the settlement, on a deforested hillside, which, however, revenged itself by producing not enough vegetation to cover even the few stumps that were ineradicable. A large wooden structure in the pseudo-classic style affected by Westerners, with an incongruous cupola, it was oddly enough relieved by a still more incongruous veranda extending around its four sides, upheld by wooden Doric columns, which were already picturesquely covered with flowering vines and sun-loving roses. Mr. Spindler had trusted the furnishing of its interior to the same contractor who had upholstered the gilded bar-room of the Eureka Saloon, and who had apparently bestowed the same design and material, impartially, on each. There were gilded mirrors all over the house and chilly marble-topped tables, gilt plaster Cupids in the corners, and stuccoed lions “in the way” everywhere. The tactful hands of Mrs. Price had screened some of these with seasonable laurels, fir boughs, and berries, and had imparted a slight Christmas flavor to the house. But the greater part of her time had been employed in trying to subdue the eccentricities of Spindler’s amazing relations; in tranquilizing Mrs. “Aunt” Martha Spindler,—the elderly cook before alluded to,—who was inclined to regard the gilded splendors of the house as indicative of dangerous immorality; in restraining “Cousin” Morley Hewlett from considering the dining-room buffet as a bar for “intermittent refreshment;” and in keeping the weak-minded nephew, Phinney Spindler, from shooting at bottles from the veranda, wearing his uncle’s clothes, or running up an account in his uncle’s name for various articles at the general stores. Yet the unlooked-for arrival of the two children had been the one great compensation and diversion for her. She wrote at once to her nieces a brief account of her miraculous deliverance. “I think these poor children dropped from the skies here to make our Christmas party possible, to say nothing of the sympathy they have created in Rough and Ready for Spindler. He is going to keep them as long as he can, and is writing to the father. Think of the poor little tots traveling a thousand miles to ‘Krissmass,’ as they call it!—though they were so well cared for by the messengers that their little bodies were positively stuffed like quails. So, you see, dear, we will be able to get along without airing your famous idea. I’m sorry, for I know you’re just dying to see it all.”

Whatever Kate’s “idea” might have been, there certainly seemed now no need of any extraneous aid to Mrs. Price’s management. Christmas came at last, and the dinner passed off without serious disaster. But the ordeal of the reception of Rough and Ready was still to come. For Mrs. Price well knew that although “the boys” were more subdued, and, indeed, inclined to sympathize with their host’s uncouth endeavor, there was still much in the aspect of Spindler’s relations to excite their sense of the ludicrous.

But here Fortune again favored the house of Spindler with a dramatic surprise, even greater than the advent of the children had been. In the change that had come over Rough and Ready, “the boys” had decided, out of deference to the women and children, to omit the first part of their programme, and had approached and entered the house as soberly and quietly as ordinary guests. But before they had shaken hands with the host and hostess, and seen the relations, the clatter of wheels was heard before the open door, and its lights flashed upon a carriage and pair,—an actual private carriage,—the like of which had not been seen since the governor of the State had come down to open the new ditch! Then there was a pause, the flash of the carriage lamps upon white silk, the light tread of a satin foot on the veranda and in the hall, and the entrance of a vision of loveliness! Middle-aged men and old dwellers of cities remembered their youth; younger men bethought themselves of Cinderella and the Prince! There was a thrill and a hush as this last guest—a beautiful girl, radiant with youth and adornment—put a dainty glass to her sparkling eye and advanced familiarly, with outstretched hand, to Dick Spindler. Mrs. Price gave a single gasp, and drew back speechless.

“Uncle Dick,” said a laughing contralto voice, which, indeed, somewhat recalled Mrs. Price’s own, in its courageous frankness, “I am so delighted to come, even if a little late, and so sorry that Mr. M’Kenna could not come on account of business.”

Everybody listened eagerly, but none more eagerly and surprisingly than the host himself. M’Kenna! The rich cousin who had never answered the invitation! And Uncle Dick! This, then, was his divorced niece! Yet even in his astonishment he remembered that of course no one but himself and Mrs. Price knew it,—and that lady had glanced discreetly away.

“Yes,” continued the half-niece brightly. “I came from Sacramento with some friends to Shootersville, and from thence I drove here; and though I must return to-night, I could not forego the pleasure of coming, if it was only for an hour or two, to answer the invitation of the uncle I have not seen for years.” She paused, and, raising her glasses, turned a politely questioning eye towards Mrs. Price. “One of our relations?” she said smilingly to Spindler.

“No,” said Spindler, with some embarrassment, “a—a friend!”

The half-niece extended her hand. Mrs. Price took it.

But the fair stranger,—what she did and said were the only things remembered in Rough and Ready on that festive occasion; no one thought of the other relations; no one recalled them nor their eccentricities; Spindler himself was forgotten. People only recollected how Spindler’s lovely niece lavished her smiles and courtesies on every one, and brought to her feet particularly the misogynist Starbuck and the sarcastic Cooledge, oblivious of his previous speech; how she sat at the piano and sang like an angel, hushing the most hilarious and excited into sentimental and even maudlin silence; how, graceful as a nymph, she led with “Uncle Dick” a Virginia reel until the whole assembly joined, eager for a passing touch of her dainty hand in its changes; how, when two hours had passed,—all too swiftly for the guests,—they stood with bared heads and glistening eyes on the veranda to see the fairy coach whirl the fairy princess away! How—but this incident was never known to Rough and Ready.

It happened in the sacred dressing-room, where Mrs. Price was cloaking with her own hands the departing half-niece of Mr. Spindler. Taking that opportunity to seize the lovely relative by the shoulders and shake her violently, she said: “Oh, yes, and it’s all very well for you, Kate, you limb! For you’re going away, and will never see Rough and Ready and poor Spindler again. But what am I to do, miss? How am I to face it out? For you know I’ve got to tell him at least that you’re no half-niece of his!”

“Have you?” said the young lady.

“Have I?” repeated the widow impatiently. “Have I? Of course I have! What are you thinking of?”

“I was thinking, aunty,” said the girl audaciously, “that from what I’ve seen and heard to-night, if I’m not his half-niece now, it’s only a question of time! So you’d better wait. Good-night, dear.”

And, really,—it turned out that she was right!

WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT “JULES’”

When the waters were up at “Jules’” there was little else up on that monotonous level. For the few inhabitants who calmly and methodically moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the flood had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them. A dozen half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the waters, without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight more like the ruins of centuries than of a few days. There was no current to sap their slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing stirred that silent lake but the occasional shot-like indentations of a passing raindrop, or, still more rarely, a raft, made of a single log, propelled by some citizen on a tour of inspection of his cabin roof-tree, where some of his goods were still stored. There was no sense of terror in this bland obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element. People took it naturally; the water went as it had come,—slowly, impassively, noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins, and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their doors as the winter mud had lain. The waters of Rattlesnake Creek dropped below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made a detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation to this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those breaches in the banks made by the overflow. To wait for the “old Rattlesnake sluicing” was a vernal hope of the trusting miner.

The history of “Jules’,” however, was once destined to offer a singular interruption of this peaceful and methodical process. The winter of 1859-60 was an exceptional one. But little rain had fallen in the valleys, although the snow lay deep in the high Sierras. Passes were choked, ravines filled, and glaciers found on their slopes. And when the tardy rains came with the withheld southwesterly “trades,” the regular phenomenon recurred; Jules’ Flat silently, noiselessly, and peacefully went under water; the inhabitants moved to the higher ground, perhaps a little more expeditiously from an impatience born of the delay. The stagecoach from Marysville made its usual detour and stopped before the temporary hotel, express offices, and general store of “Jules’,” under canvas, bark, and the limp leaves of a spreading alder. It deposited a single passenger,—Miles Hemmingway, of San Francisco, but originally of Boston,—the young secretary of a mining company, dispatched to report upon the alleged auriferous value of “Jules’.” Of this he had been by no means impressed as he looked down upon the submerged cabins from the box-seat of the coach and listened to the driver’s lazy recital of the flood, and of the singularly patient acceptance of it by the inhabitants.

It was the old story of the southwestern miner’s indolence and incompetency,—utterly distasteful to his northern habits of thought and education. Here was their old fatuous endurance of Nature’s wild caprices, without that struggle against them which brought others strength and success; here was the old philosophy which accepted the prairie fire and cyclone, and survived them without advancement, yet without repining. Perhaps in different places and surroundings a submission so stoic might have impressed him; in gentlemen who tucked their dirty trousers in their muddy boots and lived only for the gold they dug, it did not seem to him heroic. Nor was he mollified as he stood beside the rude refreshment bar—a few planks laid on trestles—and drank his coffee beneath the dripping canvas roof, with an odd recollection of his boyhood and an inclement Sunday-school picnic. Yet these men had been living in this shiftless fashion for three weeks! It exasperated him still more to think that he might have to wait there a few days longer for the water to subside sufficiently for him to make his examination and report. As he took a proffered seat on a candle-box, which tilted under him, and another survey of the feeble makeshifts around him, his irascibility found vent.

“Why, in the name of God, didn’t you, after you had been flooded out ONCE, build your cabins PERMANENTLY on higher ground?”

Although the tone of his voice was more disturbing than his question, it pleased one of the loungers to affect to take it literally.

“Well, ez you’ve put it that way,—‘in the name of God!’”—returned the man lazily, “it mout hev struck us that ez HE was bossin’ the job, so to speak, and handlin’ things round here generally, we might leave it to Him. It wasn’t OUR flood to monkey with.”

“And as He didn’t coven-ant, so to speak, to look arter this higher ground ‘speshally, and make an Ararat of it for us, ez far ez we could see, we didn’t see any reason for SETTLIN’ yer,” put in a second speaker, with equal laziness.

The secretary saw his mistake instantly, and had experience enough of Western humor not to prolong the disadvantage of his unfortunate adjuration. He colored slightly and said, with a smile, “You know what I mean; you could have protected yourselves better. A levee on the bank would have kept you clear of the highest watermark.”

“Hey you ever heard WHAT the highest watermark was?” said the first speaker, turning to another of the loungers without looking at the secretary.

“Never heard it,—didn’t know there was a limit before,” responded the man.

The first speaker turned back to the secretary. “Did you ever know what happened at ‘Bulger’s,’ on the North Fork? They had one o’ them levees.”

“No. What happened?” asked the secretary impatiently.

“They was fixed suthin’ like us,” returned the first speaker. “THEY allowed they’d build a levee above THEIR highest watermark, and did. It worked like a charm at first; but the water hed to go somewhere, and it kinder collected at the first bend. Then it sorter raised itself on its elbows one day, and looked over the levee down upon whar some of the boys was washin’ quite comf’ble. Then it paid no sorter attention to the limit o’ that high watermark, but went six inches better! Not slow and quiet like ez it useter to, ez it does HERE, kinder fillin’ up from below, but went over with a rush and a current, hevin’ of course the whole height of the levee to fall on t’other side where the boys were sluicing.” He paused, and amidst a profound silence added, “They say that ‘Bulger’s’ was scattered promiscuous-like all along the fort for five miles. I only know that one of his mules and a section of sluicing was picked up at Red Flat, eight miles away!”

Mr. Hemmingway felt that there WAS an answer to this, but, being wise, also felt that it would be unavailing. He smiled politely and said nothing, at which the first speaker turned to him:—

“Thar ain’t anything to see to-day, but to-morrow, ez things go, the water oughter be droppin’. Mebbe you’d like to wash up now and clean yourself,” he added, with a glance at Hemmingway’s small portmanteau. “Ez we thought you’d likely be crowded here, we’ve rigged up a corner for you at Stanton’s shanty with the women.”

The young man’s cheek flushed slightly at some possible irony in this, and he protested with considerable stress that he was quite ready “to rough it” where he was.

“I reckon it’s already fixed,” returned the man decisively, “so you’d better come and I’ll show you the way.”

“One moment,” said Hemmingway, with a smile; “my credentials are addressed to the manager of the Boone Ditch Company at ‘Jules’.’ Perhaps I ought to see him first.”

“All right; he’s Stanton.”

“And”—hesitated the secretary, “YOU, who appear to understand the locality so well,—I trust I may have the pleasure”—

“Oh, I’m Jules.”

The secretary was a little startled and amused. So “Jules” was a person, and not a place!

“Then you’re a pioneer?” asked Hemmingway, a little less dictatorially, as they passed out under the dripping trees.

“I struck this creek in the fall of ‘49, comin’ over Livermore’s Pass with Stanton,” returned Jules, with great brevity of speech and deliberate tardiness of delivery. “Sent for my wife and two children the next year; wife died same winter, change bein’ too sudden for her, and contractin’ chills and fever at Sweetwater. When I kem here first thar wasn’t six inches o’ water in the creek; out there was a heap of it over there where you see them yallowish-green patches and strips o’ brush and grass; all that war water then, and all that growth hez sprung up since.”

Hemmingway looked around him. The “higher ground” where they stood was in reality only a mound-like elevation above the dead level of the flat, and the few trees were merely recent young willows and alders. The area of actual depression was much greater than he had imagined, and its resemblance to the bed of some prehistoric inland sea struck him forcibly. A previous larger inundation than Jules’ brief experience had ever known had been by no means improbable. His cheek reddened at his previous hasty indictment of the settlers’ ignorance and shiftlessness, and the thought that he had probably committed his employers to his own rash confidence and superiority of judgment. However, there was no evidence that this diluvial record was not of the remote past. He smiled again with greater security as he thought of the geological changes that had since tempered these cataclysms, and the amelioration brought by settlement and cultivation. Nevertheless, he would make a thorough examination to-morrow.

Stanton’s cabin was the furthest of these temporary habitations, and was partly on the declivity which began to slope to the river’s bank. It was, like the others, a rough shanty of unplaned boards, but, unlike the others, it had a base of logs laid lengthwise on the ground and parallel with each other, on which the flooring and structure were securely fastened. This gave it the appearance of a box slid on runners, or a Noah’s Ark whose bulk had been reduced. Jules explained that the logs, laid in that manner, kept the shanty warmer and free from damp. In reply to Hemmingway’s suggestion that it was a great waste of material, Jules simply replied that the logs were the “flotsam and jetsam” of the creek from the overflowed mills below.

Hemmingway again smiled. It was again the old story of Western waste and prodigality. Accompanied by Jules, however, he climbed up the huge, slippery logs which made a platform before the door, and entered.

The single room was unequally divided; the larger part containing three beds, by day rolled in a single pile in one corner to make room for a table and chairs. A few dresses hanging from nails on the wall showed that it was the women’s room. The smaller compartment was again subdivided by a hanging blanket, behind which was a rude bunk or berth against the wall, a table made of a packing-box, containing a tin basin and a can of water. This was his apartment.

“The women-folks are down the creek, bakin’, to-day,” said Jules explanatorily; “but I reckon that one of ‘em will be up here in a jiffy to make supper, so you just take it easy till they come. I’ve got to meander over to the claim afore I turn in, but you just lie by to-night and take a rest.”

He turned away, leaving Hemmingway standing in the doorway still distraught and hesitating. Nor did the young man recognize the delicacy of Jules’ leave-taking until he had unstrapped his portmanteau and found himself alone, free to make his toilet, unembarrassed by company. But even then he would have preferred the rough companionship of the miners in the common dormitory of the general store to this intrusion upon the half-civilization of the women, their pitiable little comforts and secret makeshifts. His disgust of his own indecision which brought him there naturally recoiled in the direction of his host and hostesses, and after a hurried ablution, a change of linen, and an attempt to remove the stains of travel from his clothes, he strode out impatiently into the open air again.

It was singularly mild even for the season. The southwest trades blew softly, and whispered to him of San Francisco and the distant Pacific, with its long, steady swell. He turned again to the overflowed Flat beneath him, and the sluggish yellow water that scarcely broke a ripple against the walls of the half-submerged cabins. And this was the water for whose going down they were waiting with an immobility as tranquil as the waters themselves! What marvelous incompetency,—or what infinite patience! He knew, of course, their expected compensation in this “ground sluicing” at Nature’s own hand; the long rifts in the banks of the creek which so often showed “the color” in the sparkling scales of river gold disclosed by the action of the water; the heaps of reddish mud left after its subsidence around the walls of the cabins,—a deposit that often contained a treasure a dozen times more valuable than the cabin itself! And then he heard behind him a laugh, a short and panting breath, and turning, beheld a young woman running towards him.

In his first astounded sight of her, in her limp nankeen sunbonnet, thrown back from her head by the impetus of her flight, he saw only too much hair, two much white teeth, too much eye-flash, and, above all,—as it appeared to him,—too much confidence in the power of these qualities. Even as she ran, it seemed to him that she was pulling down ostentatiously the rolled-up sleeves of her pink calico gown over her shapely arms. I am inclined to think that the young gentleman’s temper was at fault, and his conclusion hasty; a calmer observer would have detected nothing of this in her frankly cheerful voice. Nevertheless, her evident pleasure in the meeting seemed to him only obtrusive coquetry.

“Lordy! I reckoned to git here afore you’d get through fixin’ up, and in time to do a little prinkin’ myself, and here you’re out already.” She laughed, glancing at his clean shirt and damp hair. “But all the same, we kin have a talk, and you kin tell me all the news afore the other wimmen get up here. It’s a coon’s age since I was at Sacramento and saw anybody or anything.” She stopped and, instinctively detecting some vague reticence in the man before her, said, still laughing, “You’re Mr. Hemmingway, ain’t you?”

Hemmingway took off his hat quickly, with a slight start at his forgetfulness. “I beg your pardon; yes, certainly.”

“Aunty Stanton thought it was ‘Hummingbird,’” said the girl, with a laugh, “but I reckoned not. I’m Jinney Jules, you know; folks call me ‘J. J.’ It wouldn’t do for a Hummingbird and a Jay Jay to be in the same camp, would it? It would be just TOO funny!”

Hemmingway did not find the humor of this so singularly exhaustive, but he was already beginning to be ashamed of his attitude towards her. “I’m very sorry to be giving you all this trouble by my intrusion, for I was quite willing to stay at the store yonder. Indeed,” he added, with a burst of frankness quite as sincere as her own, “if you think your father will not be offended, I would gladly go there now.”

If he still believed in her coquetry and vanity, he would have been undeceived and crushed by the equal and sincere frankness with which she met this ungallant speech.

“No! I reckon he wouldn’t care, if you’d be as comf’ble and fit for to-morrow. But ye WOULDN’T,” she said reflectively. “The boys thar sit up late over euchre, and swear a heap, and Simpson, who’d sleep alongside of ye, snores pow’ful, I’ve heard. Aunty Stanton kin do her level at that, too, and they say”—with a laugh—“that I kin, too, but you’re away off in that corner, and it won’t reach you. So, takin’ it all, by the large, you’d better stay whar ye are. We wimmen, that is, the most of us, will be off and away down to Rattlesnake Bar shoppin’ afore sun up, so ye’ll sleep ez long ez ye want to, and find yer breakfast ready when ye wake. So I’ll jest set to and get ye some supper, and ye kin tell me all the doin’s in Sacramento and ‘Frisco while I’m workin’.”

In spite of her unconscious rebuff to his own vanity, Hemmingway felt a sense of relief and less constraint in his relations to this decidedly provincial hostess.

“Can I help you in any way?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, ye MIGHT bring me an armful o’ wood from the pile under the alders, ef ye ain’t afraid o’ dirtyin’ your coat,” she said tentatively.

Mr. Hemmingway was not afraid; he declared himself delighted. He brought a generous armful of small cut willow boughs, and deposited them before a small stove, which seemed a temporary substitute for the usual large adobe chimney that generally occupied the entire gable of a miner’s cabin. An elbow and short length of stovepipe carried the smoke through the cabin side. But he also noticed that his fair companion had used the interval to put on a pair of white cuffs and a collar. However, she brushed the green moss from his sleeve with some toweling, and although this operation brought her so near to him that her breath—as soft and warm as the southwest trades—stirred his hair, it was evident that this contiguity was only frontier familiarity, as far removed from conscious coquetry as it was, perhaps, from educated delicacy.

“The boys gin’rally kem to take up enough wood for me to begin with,” she said, “but I reckon they didn’t know I was comin’ up so soon.”

Hemmingway’s distrust returned a little at this obvious suggestion that he was only a substitute for their general gallantry, but he smiled and said somewhat bluntly, “I don’t suppose you lack for admirers here.”

The girl, however, took him literally. “Lordy, no! Me and Mamie Robinson are the only girls for fifteen miles along the creek. ADMIRIN’! I call it jest PESTERIN’ sometimes! I reckon I’ll hev to keep a dog!”

Hemmingway shivered. Yes, she was not only conscious, but spoilt already. He pictured to himself the uncouth gallantries of the settlement, the provincial badinage, the feeble rivalries of the young men whom he had seen at the general store. Undoubtedly this was what she was expecting in HIM!

“Well,” she said, turning from the fire she had kindled, “while I’m settin’ the table, tell me what’s a-doin’ in Sacramento! I reckon you’ve got heaps of lady friends thar,—I’m told there’s lots of fashions just from the States.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know enough of them to interest you,” he said dryly.

“Go on and talk,” she replied. “Why, when Tom Flynn kem back from Sacramento, and he warn’t thar more nor a week, he jest slung yarns about his doin’s thar to last the hull rainy season.”

Half amused and half annoyed, Hemmingway seated himself on the little platform beside the open door, and began a conscientious description of the progress of Sacramento, its new buildings, hotels, and theatres, as it had struck him on his last visit. For a while he was somewhat entertained by the girl’s vivacity and eager questioning, but presently it began to pall. He continued, however, with a grim sense of duty, and partly as a reason for watching her in her household duties. Certainly she was graceful! Her tall, lithe, but beautifully moulded figure, even in its characteristic southwestern indolence, fell into poses as picturesque as they were unconscious. She lifted the big molasses-can from its shelf on the rafters with the attitude of a Greek water-bearer. She upheaved the heavy flour-sack to the same secure shelf with the upraised palms of an Egyptian caryatid. Suddenly she interrupted Hemmingway’s perfunctory talk with a hearty laugh. He started, looked up from his seat on the platform, and saw that she was standing over him and regarding him with a kind of mischievous pity.

“Look here,” she said, “I reckon that’ll do! You kin pull up short! I kin see what’s the matter with you; you’re jest plumb tired, tuckered out, and want to turn in! So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper ready and never mind me.” In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising color. The girl only shook her head. “Don’t tell me! You ain’t keering to talk, and you’re only playin’ Sacramento statistics on me,” she retorted, with unfeigned cheerfulness. “Anyhow, here’s the wimmen comin’, and supper is ready.”

There was a sound of weary, resigned ejaculations and pantings, and three gaunt women in lustreless alpaca gowns appeared before the cabin. They seemed prematurely aged and worn with labor, anxiety, and ill nourishment. Doubtless somewhere in these ruins a flower like Jay Jules had once flourished; doubtless somewhere in that graceful nymph herself the germ of this dreary maturity was hidden. Hemmingway welcomed them with a seriousness equal to their own. The supper was partaken with the kind of joyless formality which in the southwest is supposed to indicate deep respect, even the cheerful Jay falling under the influence, and it was with a feeling of relief that at last the young man retired to his fenced-off corner for solitude and repose. He gathered, however, that before “sun up” the next morning the elder women were going to Rattlesnake Bar for the weekly shopping, leaving Jay as before to prepare his breakfast and then join them later. It was already a change in his sentiments to find himself looking forward to that tete-a-tete with the young girl, as a chance of redeeming his character in her eyes. He was beginning to feel he had been stupid, unready, and withal prejudiced. He undressed himself in his seclusion, broken only by the monotonous voices in the adjoining apartment. From time to time he heard fragments and scraps of their conversation, always in reference to affairs of the household and settlement, but never of himself,—not even the suggestion of a prudent lowering of their voices,—and fell asleep. He woke up twice in the night with a sensation of cold so marked and distinct from his experience of the early evening, that he was fain to pile his clothes over his blankets to keep warm. He fell asleep again, coming once more to consciousness with a sense of a slight jar, but relapsing again into slumber for he knew not how long. Then he was fully awakened by a voice calling him, and, opening his eyes, beheld the blanket partition put aside, and the face of Jay thrust forward. To his surprise it wore a look of excited astonishment dominated by irrepressible laughter.