“Yes, miss.”

“My father is a friend of Mr. Briggs, and knows something of his affairs. There was a debt to a Mr. Parker” (here Miss Mayfield apparently consulted an entry in her tablets) “of one hundred and twelve dollars and seventy-five cents—am I right?”

The deputy, with great respect: “That is the figgers.”

“Which he wished to pay without the knowledge of Mr. Briggs, who would not have consented to it.”

The official opened his eyes. “Yes, miss.”

“Well, as Mr. Mayfield is NOT here, I am here to pay it for him. You can take a check on Wells, Fargo & Co., I suppose?”

“Certainly, miss.”

She took a check-book and pen and ink from her reticule, and filled up a check. She handed it to him, and the pen and ink. “You are to give me a receipt.”

The deputy looked at the matter-of-fact little figure, and signed and handed over the receipted bill.

“My father said Mr. Briggs was not to know this.”

“Certainly not, miss.”

“It was Mr. Briggs's intention to let the judgment take its course, and give up the house. You are a man of business, Mr. Dodd, and know that this is ridiculous!”

The deputy laughed. “In course, miss.”

“And whatever Mr. Briggs may have proposed to you to do, when you go back to the Forks, you are to write him a letter, and say that you will simply hold the judgment without levy.”

“All right, miss,” said the deputy, not ill-pleased to hold himself in this superior attitude to Jeff.

“And—”

“Yes, miss?”

She looked steadily at him. “Mr. Briggs told my father that he would pay you ten dollars for the privilege of staying here.”

“Yes, miss.”

“And, of course, THAT'S not necessary now.”

“No-o, miss.”

A very small white hand—a mere child's hand—was here extended, palm uppermost.

The official, demoralized completely, looked at it a moment, then went into his pockets and counted out into the palm the coins given by Jeff; they completely filled the tiny receptacle.

Miss Mayfield counted the money gravely, and placed it in her portemonnaie with a snap.

Certain qualities affect certain natures. This practical business act of the diminutive beauty before him—albeit he was just ten dollars out of pocket by it—struck the official into helpless admiration. He hesitated.

“That's all,” said Miss Mayfield coolly; “you need not wait. The letter was only an excuse to get Mr. Briggs out of the way.”

“I understand ye, miss.” He hesitated still. “Do you reckon to stop in these parts long?”

“I don't know.”

“'Cause ye ought to come down some day to the Forks.”

“Yes.”

“Good morning, miss.”

“Good morning.”

Yet at the corner of the house the rascal turned and looked back at the little figure in the sunlight. He had just been physically overcome by a younger man—he had lost ten dollars—he had a wife and three children. He forgot all this. He had been captivated by Miss Mayfield!

That practical heroine sat there five minutes. At the end of that time Jeff came bounding down the hill, his curls damp with perspiration; his fresh, honest face the picture of woe, HER woe, for the letter could not be found!

“Never mind, Mr. Jeff. I wrote another and gave it to him.”

Two tears were standing on her cheeks. Jeff turned white.

“Good God, miss!”

“It's nothing. You were right, Mr. Jeff! I ought not to have walked down here alone. I'm very, very tired, and—so—so miserable.”

What woman could withstand the anguish of that honest boyish face? I fear Miss Mayfield could, for she looked at him over her handkerchief, and said: “Perhaps you had something to say to your friend, and I've sent him off.”

“Nothing,” said Jeff hurriedly; and she saw that all his other troubles had vanished at the sight of her weakness. She rose tremblingly from her seat. “I think I will go in now, but I think—I think—I must ask you to—to—carry me!”

Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!

The next moment, Jeff, pale, strong, passionate, but tender as a mother, lifted her in his arms and brought her into the sitting-room. A simultaneous ejaculation broke from Aunt Sally and Mrs. Mayfield—the possible comment of posterity on the whole episode.

“Well, Jeff, I reckoned you'd be up to suthin' like that!”

“Well, Jessie! I knew you couldn't be trusted.”

Mr. James Dodd did not return from the Forks that afternoon, to Jeff's vague uneasiness. Towards evening a messenger brought a note from him, written on the back of a printed legal form, to this effect:

DEAR SIR—Seeing as you Intend to act on the Square in regard to that little Mater I have aranged Things so that I ant got to stop with you but I'll drop in onct in a wile to keep up a show for a Drink—respy yours, J. DODD.

In this latter suggestion our legal Cerberus exhibited all three of his heads at once. One could keep faith with Miss Mayfield, one could see her “onct in a wile,” and one could drink at Jeff's expense. Innocent Jeff saw only generosity and kindness in the man he had half-choked, and a sense of remorse and shame almost outweighed the relief of his absence. “He might hev been ugly,” said Jeff. He did not know how, in this selfish world, there is very little room for gratuitous, active ugliness.

Miss Mayfield did not leave her room that afternoon. The wind was getting up, and it was growing dark when Jeff, idly sitting on his porch, hoping for her appearance, was quite astounded at the apparition of Yuba Bill as a pedestrian, dusty and thirsty, making for his usual refreshment. Jeff brought out the bottle, but could not refrain from mixing his verbal astonishment with the conventional cocktail. Bill, partaking of his liquor and becoming once more a speaking animal, slowly drew off his heavy, baggy driving gloves. No one had ever seen Bill without them—he was currently believed to sleep in them—and when he laid them on the counter they still retained the grip of his hand, which gave them an entertaining likeness to two plethoric and overfed spiders.

“Ef I concluded to pass over my lines to a friend and take a pasear up yer this evening,” said Bill, eying Jeff sharply, “I don't know ez thar's any law agin it! Onless yer keepin' a private branch o' the Occidental Ho-tel, and on'y take in fash'n'ble fammerlies!”

Jeff, with a rising color, protested against such a supposition.

“Because ef ye ARE,” said Bill, lifting his voice, and crushing one of the overgrown spiders with his fist, “I've got a word or two to say to the son of Joe Briggs of Tuolumne. Yes, sir! Joe Briggs—yer father—ez blew his brains out for want of a man ez could stand up and say a word to him at the right time.”

“Bill,” said Jeff, in a low, resolute tone—that tone yielded up only from the smitten chords of despair and desperation—“thar's a sick woman in the house. I'll listen to anything you've got to say if you'll say it quietly. But you must and SHALL speak low.”

Real men quickly recognize real men the world over; it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker more than his words, dropped his own.

“I said I had a kepple of words to say to ye. Thar isn't any time in the last fower months—ever since ye took stock in this old shanty, for the matter o' that—that I couldn't hev said them to ye. I've knowed all your doin's. I've knowed all your debts, 'spesh'ly that ye owe that sneakin' hound Parker; and thar isn't a time that I couldn't and wouldn't hev chipped in and paid 'em for ye—for your father's sake—ef I'd allowed it to be the square thing for ye. But I know ye, Jeff. I know what's in your BLOOD. I knew your father—allus dreamin', hopin,' waitin'; I know YOU, Jeff, dreamin', hopin', waitin' till the end. And I stood by, givin' you a free rein, and let it come!”

Jeff buried his face in his hands.

“It ain't your blame—it's blood! It ain't a week ago ez the kimpany passes me over a hoss. 'Three-quarters Morgan,' sez they. Sez I: 'Wot's the other quarter?' Sez they: 'A Mexican half-breed.' Well, she was a fair sort of hoss. Comin' down Heavytree Hill last trip, we meets a drove o' Spanish steers. In course she goes wild directly. Blood!”

Bill raised his glass, softly swirled its contents round and round, tasted it, and set it down.

“The kepple o' words I had to say to ye was this: Git up and git!”

Something like this had passed through Jeff's mind the day before the Mayfields came. Something like it had haunted him once or twice since. He turned quickly upon the speaker.

“Ez how? you sez,” said Bill, catching at the hook. “I drives up yer some night, and you sez to me, 'Bill, hev you got two seats over to the Divide for me and aunty—out on a pasear.' And I sez, 'I happen to hev one inside and one on the box with me.' And you hands out yer traps and any vallybles ye don't want ter leave, and you puts your aunt inside, and gets up on the box with me. And you sez to me, ez man to man, 'Bill,' sez you, 'might you hev a kepple o' hundred dollars about ye that ye could lend a man ez was leaving the county, dead broke?' and I sez, 'I've got it, and I know of an op'nin' for such a man in the next county.' And you steps into THAT op'nin', and your creditors—'spesh'ly Parker—slips into THIS, and in a week they offers to settle with ye ten cents on the dollar.”

Jeff started, flushed, trembled, recovered himself, and after a moment said, doggedly: “I can't do it, Bill; I couldn't.”

“In course,” said Bill, putting his hands slowly into his pockets, and stretching his legs out—“in course ye can't because of a woman!”

Jeff turned upon him like a hunted bear. Both men rose, but Bill already had his hand on Jeff's shoulder.

“I reckoned a minute ago there was a sick gal in the house! Who's going to make a row now! Who's going to stamp and tear round, eh?”

Jeff sank back on his chair.

“I said thar was a woman,” continued Bill; “thar allus is one! Let a man be hell-bent or heaven-bent, somewhere in his track is a woman's feet. I don't say anythin' agin this gal, ez a gal. The best of 'em, Jeff, is only guide-posts to p'int a fellow on his right road, and only a fool or a drunken man holds on to 'em or leans agin em. Allowin' this gal is all you think she is, how far is your guide-post goin' with ye, eh? Is she goin' to leave her father and mother for ye? Is she goin' to give up herself and her easy ways and her sicknesses for ye? Is she willin' to take ye for a perpetooal landlord the rest of her life? And if she is, Jeff, are ye the man to let her? Are ye willin' to run on her errants, to fetch her dinners ez ye do? Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in Californy, but over in the States thar's fellows is willing to take that situation. I've heard,” continued Bill, in a low, mysterious voice, as of one describing the habits of the Anthropophagi—“I've heard o' fellows ez call themselves men, sellin' of themselves to rich women in that way. I've heard o' rich gals buyin' of men for their shape; sometimes—but thet's in furrin' kintries—for their pedigree! I've heard o' fellows bein' in that business, and callin' themselves men instead o' hosses! Ye ain't that kind o' man, Jeff. 'Tain't in yer blood. Yer father was a fool about women, and in course they ruined him, as they allus do the best men. It's on'y the fools and sneaks ez a woman ever makes anythin' out of. When ye hear of a man a woman hez made, ye hears of a nincompoop. And when they does produce 'em in the way o' nater, they ain't responsible for 'em, and sez they're the image o' their fathers! Ye ain't a man ez is goin' to trust yer fate to a woman!”

“No,” said Jeff darkly.

“I reckoned not,” said Bill, putting his hands in his pockets again. “Ye might if ye was one o' them kind o' fellows as kem up from 'Frisco with her to Sacramento. One o' them kind o' fellows ez could sling poetry and French and Latin to her—one of HER kind—but ye ain't! No, sir!”

Unwise William of Yuba! In any other breast but Jeff's that random shot would have awakened the irregular auxiliary of love—jealousy! But Jeff, being at once proud and humble, had neither vanity nor conceit, without which jealousy is impossible. Yet he winced a little, for he had feeling, and then said earnestly:

“Do you think that opening you spoke of would hold for a day or two longer?”

“I reckon.”

“Well, then, I think I can settle up matters here my own way, and go with you, Bill.”

He had risen, and yet hesitatingly kept his hand on the back of his chair. “Bill!”

“Jeff!”

“I want to ask you a question; speak up, and don't mind me, but say the truth.”

Our crafty Ulysses, believing that he was about to be entrapped, ensconced himself in his pockets, cocked one eye, and said: “Go on, Jeff.”

“Was my father VERY bad?”

Bill took his hands from his pockets. “Thar isn't a man ez crawls above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same ground with him!”

“Thank you, Bill. Good night; I'm going to turn in!”

“Look yar, boy! G-d d—n it all, Jeff! what do ye mean?”

There were two tears—twin sisters of those in his sweetheart's eyes that afternoon—now standing in Jeff's!

Bill caught both his hands in his own. Had they been of the Latin race they would have, right honestly, taken each other in their arms, and perhaps kissed! Being Anglo-Saxons, they gripped each other's hands hard, and one, as above stated, swore!

When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went directly to his trunk and took out Miss Mayfield's slipper. Alack! during the day Aunt Sally had “put things to rights” in his room, and the trunk had been moved. This had somewhat disordered its contents, and Miss Mayfield's slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley's cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a coral earring which Jeff—on the most apocryphal authority—fondly believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for “good conduct,” much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously kept as evidence of former conventional character. He colored a little, rubbed the medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, replaced them in his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of the slipper's contents on the floor. This done, he drew off his boots, and, gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on the knob of Miss Mayfield's door, and glided back again without detection.

Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his bed. But not to sleep! Staringly wide awake, he at last felt the lulling of the wind that nightly shook his casement, and listened while the great, rambling, creaking, disjointed “Half-way House” slowly settled itself to repose. He thought of many things; of himself, of his past, of his future, but chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face now sleeping contentedly in the chamber below him. He tossed with many plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then began to doze. Whereat the moon, creeping in the window, laid a cold white arm across him, and eventually dried a few foolish tears upon his sleeping lashes.

IV.

Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next morning when Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her. The moment was not a felicitous one. Pie-making was usually an aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, entered into severely, and prosecuted unto the bitter end. After watching her a few moments Jeff came up and placed his arms tenderly around her. People very much in love find relief, I am told, in this vicarious expression.

“Aunty.”

“Well, Jeff! Thar, now—yer gittin' all dough!” Nevertheless, the hard face relaxed a little. Something of a smile stole round her mouth, showing what she might have been before theology and bitters had supplied the natural feminine longings.

“Aunty dear!”

“You—boy!”

It WAS a boy's face—albeit bearded like the pard, with an extra fierceness in the mustaches—that looked upon hers. She could not help bestowing a grim floury kiss upon it.

“Well, what is it now?”

“I'm thinking, aunty, it's high time you and me packed up our traps and 'shook' this yar shanty, and located somewhere else.” Jeff's voice was ostentatiously cheerful, but his eyes were a little anxious.

“What for NOW?”

Jeff hastily recounted his ill luck, and the various reasons—excepting of course the dominant one—for his resolution.

“And when do you kalkilate to go?”

“If you'll look arter things here,” hesitated Jeff, “I reckon I'll go up along with Bill to-morrow, and look round a bit.”

“And how long do you reckon that gal would stay here after yar gone?”

This was a new and startling idea to Jeff. But in his humility he saw nothing in it to flatter his conceit. Rather the reverse. He colored, and then said apologetically,—

“I thought that you and Jinny could get along without me. The butcher will pack the provisions over from the Fork.”

Laying down her rolling-pin, Aunt Sally turned upon Jeff with ostentatious deliberation. “Ye ain't,” she began slowly, “ez taking a man with wimmen ez your father was—that's a fact, Jeff Briggs! They used to say that no woman as he went for could get away from him. But ye don't mean to say yer think yer not good enough—such as ye are—for this snip of an old maid, ez big as a gold dollar, and as yaller?”

“Aunty,” said Jeff, dropping his boyish manner, and his color as suddenly, “I'd rather ye wouldn't talk that way of Miss Mayfield. Ye don't know her; and there's times,” he added, with a sigh, “ez I reckon ye don't quite know ME either. That young lady, bein' sick, likes to be looked after. Any one can do that for her. She don't mind who it is. She don't care for me except for that, and,” added Jeff humbly, “it's quite natural.”

“I didn't say she did,” returned Aunt Sally viciously; “but seeing ez you've got an empty house yer on yer hands, and me a-slavin' here on jist nothin', if this gal, for the sake o' gallivantin' with ye for a spell, chooses to stay here and keep her family here, and pay high for it, I don't see why it ain't yer duty to Providence and me to take advantage of it.”

Jeff raised his eyes to his aunt's face. For the first time it struck him that she might be his father's sister and yet have no blood in her veins that answered to his. There are few shocks more startling and overpowering to original natures than this sudden sense of loneliness. Jeff could not speak, but remained looking fiercely at her.

Aunt Sally misinterpreted his silence, and returned to her work on the pies. “The gal ain't no fool,” she continued, rolling out the crust as if she were laying down broad propositions. “SHE reckons on it too, ez if it was charged in the bill with the board and lodging. Why, didn't she say to me, last night, that she kalkilated afore she went away to bring up some friends from 'Frisco for a few days' visit? and didn't she say, in that pipin', affected voice o' hers, 'I oughter make some return for yer kindness and yer nephew's kindness, Aunt Sally, by showing people that can help you, and keep your house full, how pleasant it is up here.' She ain't no fool, with all her faintin's and dyin's away! No, Jeff Briggs. And if she wants to show ye off agin them city fellows ez she knows, and ye ain't got spunk enough to stand up and show off with her—why”—she turned her head impatiently, but he was gone.

If Jeff had ever wavered in his resolution he would have been steady enough NOW. But he had never wavered; the convictions and resolutions of suddenly awakened character are seldom moved by expediency. He was eager to taste the bitter dregs of his cup at once. He began to pack his trunk, and make his preparations for departure. Without avoiding Miss Mayfield in this new excitement, he no longer felt the need of her presence. He had satisfied his feverish anxieties by placing his trunk in the hall beside his open door, and was sitting on his bed, wrestling with a faded and overtasked carpet-bag that would not close and accept his hard conditions, when a small voice from the staircase thrilled him. He walked to the corridor, and, looking down, beheld Miss Mayfield midway on the steps of the staircase.

She had never looked so beautiful before! Jeff had only seen her in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille that belong to invalid femininity. Always refined and modest thus, in her present walking-costume there was added a slight touch of coquettish adornment. There was a brightness of color in her cheek and eye, partly the result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of that audacious impulse that had led her—a modest virgin—to seek a gentleman in this personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the threshold of Propriety.

“The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed must come to the mountain,” said Miss Mayfield. “Mother is asleep, Aunt Sally is at work in the kitchen, and here am I, already dressed for a ramble in this bright afternoon sunshine, and no one to go with me. But, perhaps, you, too, are busy?”

“No, miss. I will be with you in a moment.”

I wish I could say that he went back to calm his pulses, which the dangerous music of Miss Mayfield's voice had set to throbbing, by a few moments' calm and dispassionate reflection. But he only returned to brush his curls out of his eyes and ears, and to button over his blue flannel shirt a white linen collar, which he thought might better harmonize with Miss Mayfield's attire.

She was sitting on the staircase, poking her parasol through the balusters. “You need not have taken that trouble, Mr. Jeff,” she said pleasantly. “YOU are a part of this mountain picture at all times; but I am obliged to think of dress.”

“It was no trouble, miss.”

Something in the tone of his voice made her look in his face as she rose. It was a trifle paler, and a little older. The result, doubtless, thought Miss Mayfield, of his yesterday's experience with the deputy-sheriff.

Such was her rapid deduction. Nevertheless, after the fashion of her sex, she immediately began to argue from quite another hypothesis.

“You are angry with me, Mr. Jeff.”

“What, I—Miss Mayfield?”

“Yes, you!”

“Miss Mayfield!”

“Oh yes, you are. Don't deny it?”

“Upon my soul—”

“Yes! You give me punishments and—penances!”

Jeff opened his blue eyes on his tormentor. Could Aunt Sally have been saying anything?

“If anybody, Miss Mayfield—” he began.

“Nobody but you. Look here!”

She extended her little hand with a smile. In the centre of her palm lay four shining double B SHOT.

“There! I found those in my slipper this morning!” Jeff was speechless.

“Of course YOU did it! Of course it was YOU who found my slipper!” said Miss Mayfield, laughing. “But why did you put shot in it, Mr. Jeff? In some Catholic countries, when people have done wrong, the priests make them do penance by walking with peas in their shoes! What have I ever done to you? And why SHOT? They're ever so much harder than peas.”

Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before him, and the open palm containing the damning evidence of the broken Eley's cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.

“I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield. I put it in my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn't miss it, and it's being a kind of remembrance after you're gone away—of—of the night you came here. Somebody moved the trunk in my room,” and he hung his head here. “The things inside all got mixed up.”

“And that made you change your mind about keeping it?” said Miss Mayfield, still smiling.

“No, miss.”

“What was it, then?”

“I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was going away.”

“Indeed! Where?”

“I'm going to find another location. Maybe you've noticed,” he continued, falling back into his old apologetic manner in spite of his pride of resolution—“maybe you've noticed that this place here has no advantages for a hotel.”

“I had not, indeed. I have been very comfortable.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“When do you go?”

“To-night.”

For all his pride and fixed purpose he could not help looking eagerly in her face. Miss Mayfield's eyes met his pleasantly and quietly.

“I'm sorry to part with you so soon,” she said, as she stepped back a pace or two with folded hands. “Of course every moment of your time now is occupied. You must not think of wasting it on me.”

But Jeff had recovered his sad composure. “I'd like to go with you, Miss Mayfield. It's the last time, you know,” he added simply.

Miss Mayfield did not reply. It was a tacit assent, however, although she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as they walked towards the door. Quite convinced that Jeff's resolution came from his pecuniary troubles, Miss Mayfield was wondering if she had not better assure him of his security from further annoyance from Dodd. Wonderful complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at his ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have known. Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly treated. How many of our miserable sex, incapable of divination, have been crushed under that unreasonable feminine reproof, “You ought to have known!”

The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as they stepped out before the bleak angle of the “Half-way House”; but it failed to mitigate the habitually practical austerity of the mountain breeze—a fact which Miss Mayfield had never before noticed. The house was certainly bleak and exposed; the site by no means a poetical one. She wondered if she had not put a romance into it, and perhaps even into the man beside her, which did not belong to either. It was a moment of dangerous doubt.

“I don't know but that you're right, Mr. Jeff,” she said finally, as they faced the hill, and began the ascent together. “This place is a little queer, and bleak, and—unattractive.”

“Yes, miss,” said Jeff, with direct simplicity, “I've always wondered what you saw in it to make you content to stay, when it would be so much prettier, and more suitable for you at the 'Summit.'”

Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent. After a few moments' climbing she said, almost pettishly, “Where is this famous 'Summit'?”

Jeff stopped. They had reached the top of the hill. He pointed across an olive-green chasm to a higher level, where, basking in the declining sun, clustered the long rambling outbuildings around the white blinking facade of the “Summit House.” Framed in pines and hemlocks, tender with soft gray shadows, and nestling beyond a foreground of cultivated slope, it was a charming rustic picture.

Miss Mayfield's quick eye took in its details. Her quick intellect took in something else. She had seated herself on the road-bank, and, clasping her knees between her locked fingers, she suddenly looked up at Jeff. “What possessed you to come half-way up a mountain, instead of going on to the top?”

“Poverty, miss!”

Miss Mayfield flushed a little at this practical direct answer to her half-figurative question. However, she began to think that moral Alpine-climbing youth might have pecuniary restrictions in their high ambitions, and that the hero of “Excelsior” might have succumbed to more powerful opposition than the wisdom of Age or the blandishments of Beauty.

“You mean that poverty up there is more expensive?”

“Yes, miss.”

“But you would like to live there?”

“Yes.”

They were both silent. Miss Mayfield glanced at Jeff under the corners of her lashes. He was leaning against a tree, absorbed in thought. Accustomed to look upon him as a pleasing picturesque object, quite fresh, original, and characteristic, she was somewhat disturbed to find that to-day he presented certain other qualities which clearly did not agree with her preconceived ideas of his condition. He had abandoned his usual large top-boots for low shoes, and she could not help noticing that his feet were small and slender as were his hands, albeit browned by exposure. His ruddy color was gone too, and his face, pale with sorrow and experience, had a new expression. His buttoned-up coat and white collar, so unlike his usual self, also had its suggestions—which Miss Mayfield was at first inclined to resent. Women are quick to notice and augur more or less wisely from these small details. Nevertheless, she began in quite another tone.

“Do you remember your mother—MR.—MR.—BRIGGS?”

Jeff noticed the new epithet. “No, miss; she died when I was quite young.”

“Your father, then?”

Jeff's eye kindled a little, aggressively. “I remember HIM.”

“What was he?”

“Miss Mayfield!”

“What was his business or profession?”

“He—hadn't—any!”

“Oh, I see—a gentleman of property.”

Jeff hesitated, looked at Miss Mayfield hurriedly, colored, and did not reply.

“And lost his property, Mr. Briggs?” With one of those rare impulses of an overtasked gentle nature, Jeff turned upon her almost savagely. “My father was a gambler, and shot himself at a gambling table.”

Miss Mayfield rose hurriedly. “I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Jeff.”

Jeff was silent.

“You know—you MUST know—I did not mean—”

No reply.

“Mr. Jeff!”

Her little hand fluttered toward him, and lit upon his sleeve, where it was suddenly captured and pressed passionately to his lips.

“I did not mean to be thoughtless or unkind,” said Miss Mayfield, discreetly keeping to the point, and trying weakly to disengage her hand. “You know I wouldn't hurt your feelings.”

“I know, Miss Mayfield.” (Another kiss.)

“I was ignorant of your history.”

“Yes, miss.” (A kiss.)

“And if I could do anything for you, Mr. Jeff—” She stopped.

It was a very trying position. Being small, she was drawn after her hand quite up to Jeff's shoulder, while he, assenting in monosyllables, was parting the fingers, and kissing them separately. Reasonable discourse in this attitude was out of the question. She had recourse to strategy.

“Oh!”

“Miss Mayfield!”

“You hurt my hand.”

Jeff dropped it instantly. Miss Mayfield put it in the pocket of her sacque for security. Besides, it had been so bekissed that it seemed unpleasantly conscious.

“I wish you would tell me all about yourself,” she went on, with a certain charming feminine submission of manner quite unlike her ordinary speech; “I should like to help you. Perhaps I can. You know I am quite independent; I mean—”

She paused, for Jeff's face betrayed no signs of sympathetic following.

“I mean I am what people call rich in my own right. I can do as I please with my own. If any of your trouble, Mr. Jeff, arises from want of money, or capital; if any consideration of that kind takes you away from your home; if I could save you THAT TROUBLE, and find for you—perhaps a little nearer—that which you are seeking, I would be so glad to do it. You will find the world very wide, and very cold, Mr. Jeff,” she continued, with a certain air of practical superiority quite natural to her, but explicable to her friends and acquaintances only as the consciousness of pecuniary independence; “and I wish you would be frank with me. Although I am a woman, I know something of business.”

“I will be frank with you, miss,” said Jeff, turning a colorless face upon her. “If you was ez rich as the Bank of California, and could throw your money on any fancy or whim that struck you at the moment; if you felt you could buy up any man and woman in California that was willing to be bought up; and if me and my aunt were starving in the road, we wouldn't touch the money that we hadn't earned fairly, and didn't belong to us. No, miss, I ain't that sort o' man!”

How much of this speech, in its brusqueness and slang, was an echo of Yuba Bill's teaching, how much of it was a part of Jeff's inward weakness, I cannot say. He saw Miss Mayfield recoil from him. It added to his bitterness that his thought, for the first time voiced, appeared to him by no means as effective or powerful as he had imagined it would be, but he could not recede from it; and there was the relief that the worst had come, and was over now.

Miss Mayfield took her hand out of her pocket. “I don't think you quite understand me, Mr. Jeff,” she said quietly; “and I HOPE I don't understand you.” She walked stiffly at his side for a few moments, but finally took the other side of the road. They had both turned, half unconsciously, back again to the “Half-way House.”

Jeff felt, like all quarrel-seekers, righteous or unrighteous, the full burden of the fight. If he could have relieved his mind, and at the next moment leaped upon Yuba Bill's coach, and so passed away—without a further word of explanation—all would have been well. But to walk back with this girl, whom he had just shaken off, and who must now thoroughly hate him, was something he had not preconceived, in that delightful forecast of the imagination, when we determine what WE shall say and do without the least consideration of what may be said or done to us in return. No quarrel proceeds exactly as we expect; people have such a way of behaving illogically! And here was Miss Mayfield, who was clearly derelict, and who should have acted under that conviction, walking along on the other side of the road, trailing the splendor of her parasol in the dust like an offended goddess.

They had almost reached the house. “At what time do you go, Mr. Briggs?” asked the young lady quietly.

“At eleven to-night, by the up stage.”

“I expect some friends by that stage—coming with my father.”

“My aunt will take good care of them,” said Jeff, a little bitterly.

“I have no doubt,” responded Miss Mayfield gravely; “but I was not thinking of that. I had hoped to introduce them to you to-morrow. But I shall not be up so late to-night. And I had better say good-by to you now.”

She extended the unkissed hand. Jeff took it, but presently let the limp fingers fall through his own.

“I wish you good fortune, Mr. Briggs.”

She made a grave little bow, and vanished into the house. But here, I regret to say, her lady-like calm also vanished. She upbraided her mother peevishly for obliging her to seek the escort of Mr. Briggs in her necessary exercise, and flung herself with an injured air upon the sofa.

“But I thought you liked this Mr. Briggs. He seems an accommodating sort of person.”

“Very accommodating. Going away just as we are expecting company!”

“Going away?” said Mrs. Mayfield in alarm. “Surely he must be told that we expect some preparation for our friends?”

“Oh,” said Miss Mayfield quickly, “his aunt will arrange THAT.”

Mrs. Mayfield, habitually mystified at her daughter's moods, said no more. She, however, fulfilled her duty conscientiously by rising, throwing a wrap over the young girl, tucking it in at her feet, and having, as it were, drawn a charitable veil over her peculiarities, left her alone.

At half past ten the coach dashed up to the “Half-way House,” with a flash of lights and a burst of cheery voices. Jeff, coming upon the porch, was met by Mr. Mayfield, accompanying a lady and two gentlemen,—evidently the guests alluded to by his daughter. Accustomed as Jeff had become to Mr. Mayfield's patronizing superiority, it seemed unbearable now, and the easy indifference of the guests to his own presence touched him with a new bitterness. Here were HER friends, who were to take his place. It was a relief to grasp Yuba Bill's large hand and stand with him alone beside the bar.

“I'm ready to go with you to-night, Bill,” said Jeff, after a pause.

Bill put down his glass—a sign of absorbing interest.

“And these yar strangers I fetched?”

“Aunty will take care of them. I've fixed everything.”

Bill laid both his powerful hands on Jeff's shoulders, backed him against the wall, and surveyed him with great gravity.

“Briggs's son clar through! A little off color, but the grit all thar! Bully for you, Jeff.” He wrung Jeff's hand between his own.

“Bill!” said Jeff hesitatingly.

“Jeff!”

“You wouldn't mind my getting up on the box NOW, before all the folks get round?”

“I reckon not. Thar's the box-seat all ready for ye.”

Climbing to his high perch, Jeff, indistinguishable in the darkness, looked out upon the porch and the moving figures of the passengers, on Bill growling out his orders to his active hostler, and on the twinkling lights of the hotel windows. In the mystery of the night and the bitterness of his heart, everything looked strange. There was a light in Miss Mayfield's room, but the curtains were drawn. Once he thought they moved, but then, fearful of the fascination of watching them, he turned his face resolutely away.

Then, to his relief, the hour came; the passengers re-entered the coach; Bill had mounted the box, and was slowly gathering his reins, when a shrill voice rose from the porch.

“Oh, Jeff!”

Jeff leaned an anxious face out over the coach lamps.

It was Aunt Sally, breathless and on tiptoe, reaching with a letter. “Suthin' you forgot!” Then, in a hoarse stage whisper, perfectly audible to every one: “From HER!”

Jeff seized the letter with a burning face. The whip snapped, and the stage plunged forward into the darkness. Presently Yuba Bill reached down, coolly detached one of the coach lamps, and handed it to Jeff without a word.

Jeff tore open the envelope. It contained Cyrus Parker's bill receipted, and the writ. Another small inclosure contained ten dollars, and a few lines written in pencil in a large masculine business hand. By the light of the lamp Jeff read as follows:—

“I hope you will forgive me for having tried to help you even in this accidental way, before I knew how strong were your objections to help from me. Nobody knows this but myself. Even Mr. Dodd thinks my father advanced the money. The ten dollars the rascal would have kept, but I made him disgorge it. I did it all while you were looking for the letter in the woods. Pray forget all about it, and any pain you may have had from J. M.”

Frank and practical as this letter appeared to be, and, doubtless, as it was intended to be by its writer, the reader will not fail to notice that Miss Mayfield said nothing of having overheard Jeff's quarrel with the deputy, and left him to infer that that functionary had betrayed him. It was simply one of those unpleasant details not affecting the result, usually overlooked in feminine ethics.

For a moment Jeff sat pale and dumb, crushed under the ruins of his pride and self-love. For a moment he hated Miss Mayfield, small and triumphant! How she must have inwardly laughed at his speech that morning! With what refined cruelty she had saved this evidence of his humiliation, to work her vengeance on him now. He could not stand it! He could not live under it! He would go back and sell the house—his clothes—everything—to pay this wicked, heartless, cruel girl, that was killing—yes, killing—

A strong hand took the swinging-lantern from his unsteady fingers, a strong hand possessed itself of the papers and Miss Mayfield's note, a strong arm was drawn around him,—for his figure was swaying to and fro, his head was giddy, and his hat had fallen off,—and a strong voice, albeit a little husky, whispered in his ear,—

“Easy, boy! easy on the down grade. It'll be all one in a minit.”

Jeff tried to comprehend him, but his brain was whirling.

“Pull yourself together, Jeff!” said Bill, after a pause. “Thar! Look yar!” he said suddenly. “Do you think you can drive SIX?”

The words recalled Jeff to his senses. Bill laid the six reins in his hands. A sense of life, of activity, of POWER, came back to the young man, as his fingers closed deliciously on the far-reaching, thrilling, living leathern sinews that controlled the six horses, and seemed to be instinct and magnetic with their bounding life. Jeff, leaning back against them, felt the strong youthful tide rush back to his heart, and was himself again. Bill, meantime, took the lamp, examined the papers, and read Miss Mayfield's note. A grim smile stole over his face. After a pause, he said again, “Give Blue Grass her head, Jeff. D—n it, she ain't Miss Mayfield!”

Jeff relaxed the muscles of his wrists, so as to throw the thumb and forefingers a trifle forward. This simple action relieved Blue Grass, alias Miss Mayfield, and made the coach steadier and less jerky. Wonderful co-relation of forces.

“Thar!” said Yuba Bill, quietly putting the coach lamp back in its place; “you're better already. Thar's nothing like six horses to draw a woman out of a man. I've knowed a case where it took eight mustangs, but it was a mulatter from New Orleans, and they are pizen! Ye might hit up a little on the Pinto hoss—he ain't harmin' ye. So! Now, Jeff, take your time, and take it easy, and what's all this yer about?”

To control six fiery mustangs, and at the same time give picturesque and affecting exposition of the subtle struggles of Love and Pride, was a performance beyond Jeff's powers. He had recourse to an angry staccato, which somehow seemed to him as ineffective as his previous discourse to Miss Mayfield; he was a little incoherent, and perhaps mixed his impressions with his facts, but he nevertheless managed to convey to Bill some general idea of the events of the past three days.

“And she sent ye off after that letter, that wasn't thar, while she fixed things up with Dodd?”

“Yes,” said Jeff furiously.

“Ye needn't bully the Pinto colt, Jeff; he is doin' his level best. And she snaked that ar ten dollars outer Dodd?”

“Yes; and sent it back to ME. To ME, Bill! At such a time as this! As if I was dead broke!—a mere tramp. As if—”

“In course! in course!” said Bill soothingly, yet turning his head aside to bestow a deceitful smile upon the trees that whirled beside them. “And ye told her ye didn't want her money?”

“Yes, Bill—but it—it—it was AFTER she had done this!”

“Surely! I'll take the lines now, Jeff.”

He took them. Jeff relapsed into gloomy silence. The starlight of that dewless Sierran night was bright and cold and passionless. There was no moon to lead the fancy astray with its faint mysteries and suggestions; nothing but a clear, grayish-blue twilight, with sharply silhouetted shadows, pointed here and there with bright large-spaced constant stars. The deep breath of the pine-woods, the faint, cool resinous spices of bay and laurel, at last brought surcease to his wounded spirit. The blessed weariness of exhausted youth stole tenderly on him. His head nodded, dropped. Yuba Bill, with a grim smile, drew him to his side, enveloped him in his blanket, and felt his head at last sink upon his own broad shoulder.

A few minutes later the coach drew up at the “Summit House.” Yuba Bill did not dismount, an unusual and disturbing circumstance that brought the bar-keeper to the veranda.

“What's up, old man?”

“I am.”

“Sworn off your reg'lar pizen?”

“My physician,” said Bill gravely, “hez ordered me dry champagne every three hours.”

Nevertheless, the bar-keeper lingered.

“Who's that you're dry-nussin' up there?”

I regret that I may not give Yuba Bill's literal reply. It suggested a form of inquiry at once distant, indirect, outrageous, and impossible.

The bar-keeper flashed a lantern upon Jeff's curls and his drooping eyelashes and mustaches.

“It's that son o' Briggs o' Tuolumne—pooty boy, ain't he?”

Bill disdained a reply.

“Played himself out down there, I reckon. Left his rifle here in pawn.”

“Young man,” said Bill gravely.

“Old man.”

“Ef you're looking for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar rifle. It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard's grave.” With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again upon the road. The lights of the “Summit House” presently dropped here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees. Another stretch through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash through the opening, another whirl and rattle by overhanging rocks, and the vehicle was swiftly descending. Bill put his foot on the brake, threw his reins loosely on the necks of his cattle, and looked leisurely back. The great mountain was slowly and steadily rising between them and the valley they quitted.

And at that same moment Miss Mayfield had crept from her bed, and, with a shawl around her pretty little figure, was pressing her eyes against a blank window of the “Half-way House,” and wondering where HE was now.

V.

The “opening” suggested by Bill was not a fortunate one. Possibly views of business openings in the public-house line taken from the tops of stage-coaches are not as judicious as those taken from less exalted levels. Certain it is that the “goodwill” of the “Lone Star House” promised little more pecuniary value than a conventional blessing. It was in an older and more thickly settled locality than the “Half-way House;” indeed, it was but half a mile away from Campville, famous in '49—a place with a history and a disaster. But young communities are impatient of settlements that through any accident fail to fulfil the extravagant promise of their youth, and the wounded hamlet of Campville had crept into the woods and died. The “Lone Star House” was an attempt to woo the passing travelers from another point; but its road led to Campville, and was already touched by its dry-rot. Bill, who honestly conceived that the infusion of fresh young blood like Jeff's into the stagnant current would quicken it, had to confess his disappointment. “I thought ye could put some go into the shanty, Jeff,” said Bill, “and make it lively and invitin'!” But the lack of vitality was not in the landlord, but in the guests. The regular customers were disappointed, vacant, hopeless men, who gathered listlessly on the veranda, and talked vaguely of the past. Their hollow-eyed, feeble impotency affected the stranger, even as it checked all ambition among themselves. Do what Jeff might, the habits of the locality were stronger than his individuality; the dead ghosts of the past Campville held their property by invisible mortmain.

In the midst of this struggle the “Half-way House” was sold. Spite of Bill's prediction, the proceeds barely paid Jeff's debts. Aunt Sally prevented any troublesome consideration of HER future, by applying a small surplus of profit to the expenses of a journey back to her relatives in Kentucky. She wrote Jeff a letter of cheerless instruction, reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst prophecies regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely solely upon the “Word.” “For the sperrit killeth,” she added vaguely. Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff's business, he did not stop to consider. He was more interested in the information that the Mayfields had removed to the “Summit Hotel” two days after he had left. “She allowed it was for her health's sake,” continued Aunt Sally, “but I reckon it's another name for one of them city fellers who j'ined their party and is keepin' company with her now. They talk o' property and stocks and sich worldly trifles all the time, and it's easy to see their idees is set together. It's allowed at the Forks that Mr. Mayfield paid Parker's bill for you. I said it wasn't so, fur ye'd hev told me; but if it is so, Jeff, and ye didn't tell me, it was for only one puppos, and that wos that Mayfield bribed ye to break off with his darter! That was WHY you went off so suddent, 'like a thief in the night,' and why Miss Mayfield never let on a word about you after you left—not even your name!”

Jeff crushed the letter between his fingers, and, going behind the bar, poured out half a glass of stimulant and drank it. It was not the first time since he came to the “Lone Star House” that he had found this easy relief from his present thought; it was not the first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn drunkard's taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill drew up. “You must take me from this place to-night,” he said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. “When we're on the road we can arrange matters, but I must go to-night.”

“But where?” asked Bill.

“Anywhere! Only I must go from here. I shall go if I have to walk.”

Bill looked hard at the young man. His face was flushed, his eyes blood-shot, and his hands trembled, not with excitement, but with a vacant, purposeless impotence. Bill looked a little relieved. “You've been drinking too hard. Jeff, I thought better of ye than that!”

“I think better of MYSELF than that,” said Jeff, with a certain wild, half-hysterical laugh, “and that is why I want to go. Don't be alarmed, Bill,” he added; “I have strength enough to save myself, and I shall! But it isn't worth the struggle HERE.”

He left the “Lone Star House” that night. He would, he said to Bill, go on to Sacramento, and try to get a situation as clerk or porter there; he was too old to learn a trade. He said little more. When, after forty-eight hours' inability to eat, drink, or sleep, Bill, looking at his haggard face and staring eyes, pressed him to partake, medicinally, from a certain black bottle, Jeff gently put it aside, and saying, with a sad smile, “I can get along without it; I've gone through more than this,” left his mentor in a state of mingled admiration and perplexity.

At Sacramento he found a commercial “opening.” But certain habits of personal independence, combined with a direct truthfulness and simplicity, were not conducive to business advancement. He was frank, and in his habits impulsive and selfishly outspoken. His employer, a good-natured man, successful in his way, anxious to serve his own interest and Jeff's equally, strove and labored with him, but in vain. His employer's wife, a still more good-natured woman, successful in her way, and equally anxious to serve Jeff's interests and her own, also strove with him as unsuccessfully. At the end of a month he discharged his employer, after a simple, boyish, utterly unbusiness-like interview, and secretly tore up his wife's letter. “I don't know what to make of that chap,” said the husband to his wife; “he's about as civilized as an Injun.” “And as conceited,” added the lady.

Howbeit he took his conceit, his sorrows, his curls, mustaches, broad shoulders, and fifty dollars into humble lodgings in a back street. The days succeeding this were the most restful he had passed since he left the “Half-way House.” To wander through the town, half conscious of its strangeness and novel bustling life, and to dream of a higher and nobler future with Miss Mayfield—to feel no responsibility but that of waiting—was, I regret to say, a pleasure to him. He made no acquaintances except among the poorer people and the children. He was sometimes hungry, he was always poorly clad, but these facts carried no degradation with them now. He read much, and in his way—Jeff's way—tried to improve his mind; his recent commercial experience had shown him various infelicities in his speech and accent. He learned to correct certain provincialisms. He was conscious that Miss Mayfield must have noticed them, yet his odd irrational pride kept him from ever regretting them, if they had offered a possible excuse for her treatment of him.

On one of these nights his steps chanced to lead him into a gambling-saloon. The place had offered no temptation to him; his dealings with the goddess Chance had been of less active nature. Nevertheless he placed his last five dollars on the turn of a card. He won. He won repeatedly; his gains had reached a considerable sum when, flushed, excited, and absorbed, he was suddenly conscious that he had become the centre of observation at the table. Looking up, he saw that the dealer had paused, and, with the cards in his motionless fingers, was gazing at him with fixed eyes and a white face.

Jeff rose and passed hurriedly to his side. “What's the matter?”

The gambler shrunk slightly as he approached. “What's your name?”

“Briggs.”

“God! I knew it! How much have you got there?” he continued, in a quick whisper, pointing to Jeff's winnings.

“Five hundred dollars.”

“I'll give you double if you'll get up and quit the board!”

“Why?” asked Jeff haughtily.

“Why?” repeated the man fiercely; “why? Well, your father shot himself thar, where you're sittin', at this table;” and he added, with a half-forced, half-hysterical laugh, “HE'S PLAYIN' AT ME OVER YOUR SHOULDERS!”

Jeff lifted a face as colorless as the gambler's own, went back to his seat, and placed his entire gains on a single card. The gambler looked at him nervously, but dealt. There was a pause, a slight movement where Jeff stood, and then a simultaneous cry from the players as they turned towards him. But his seat was vacant. “Run after him! Call him back! HE'S WON AGAIN!” But he had vanished utterly.

HOW he left, or what indeed followed, he never clearly remembered. His movements must have been automatic, for when, two hours later, he found himself at the “Pioneer” coach office, with his carpet-bag and blankets by his side, he could not recall how or why he had come! He had a dumb impression that he had barely escaped some dire calamity,—rather that he had only temporarily averted it,—and that he was still in the shadow of some impending catastrophe of destiny. He must go somewhere, he must do something to be saved! He had no money, he had no friends; even Yuba Bill had been transferred to another route, miles away. Yet, in the midst of this stupefaction, it was a part of his strange mental condition that trivial details of Miss Mayfield's face and figure, and even apparel, were constantly before him, to the exclusion of consecutive thought. A collar she used to wear, a ribbon she had once tied around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step in her small boots—all these were plainer to him than the future, or even the present. But a voice in his ear, a figure before his abstracted eyes, at last broke upon his reverie.

“Jeff Briggs!”

Jeff mechanically took the outstretched hand of a young clerk of the Pioneer Coach Company, who had once accompanied Yuba Bill and stopped at the “Half-way House.” He endeavored to collect his thoughts; here seemed to be an opportunity to go somewhere!

“What are you doing now?” said the young man briskly.

“Nothing,” said Jeff simply.

“Oh, I see—going home!”

Home! the word stung sharply through Jeff's benumbed consciousness.

“No,” he stammered, “that is—”

“Look here, Jeff,” broke in the young man, “I've got a chance for you that don't fall in a man's way every day. Wells, Fargo & Co.'s treasure messenger from Robinson's Ferry to Mempheys has slipped out. The place is vacant. I reckon I can get it for you.”

“When?”

“Now—to-night.”

“I'm ready.”

“Come, then.”

In ten minutes they were in the company's office, where its manager, a man famous in those days for his boldness and shrewdness, still lingered in the dispatch of business.

The young clerk briefly but deferentially stated certain facts. A few questions and answers followed, of which Jeff heard only the words “Tuolumne” and “Yuba Bill.”

“Sit down, Mr. Briggs. Good-night, Roberts.”

The young clerk, with an encouraging smile at Jeff, bowed himself out as the manager seated himself at his desk and began to write.

“You know the country pretty well between the Fork and the Summit, Mr. Briggs?” he said, without looking up.

“I lived there,” said Jeff.

“That was some months ago, wasn't it?”

“Six months,” said Jeff, with a sigh.

“It's changed for the worse since your house was shut up. There's a long stretch of unsettled country infested by bad characters.”

Jeff sat silent. “Briggs.”

“Sir?”

“The last man but one who preceded you was shot by road agents.” *