Colonel Starbottle’s Client by Bret Harte (page 3)

“Not a bit of it. He’s got a letter from Sam for one of ye. Yere, Charley–what’s your name! Com yere. Yere’s all yer three bosses waiting for ye.”

And the supposed expressman and late narrator of amusing stories came forward and presented his credentials as the assistant teacher of Pine Clearing.

CHAPTER II.

Even the practical Mr. Sperry was taken aback. The young man before him was squarely built, with broad shoulders, and a certain air of muscular activity. But his face, although good-humored, was remarkable for offering not the slightest indication of studious preoccupation or mental training. A large mouth, light blue eyes, a square jaw, the other features being indistinctive–were immobile as a mask–except that, unlike a mask, they seemed to actually reflect the vacuity of the mood within, instead of concealing it. But as he saluted the trustees they each had the same feeling that even this expression was imported and not instinctive. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair cut so short as to suggest that a wig of some kind was necessary to give it characteristic or even ordinary human semblance. His manner, self-assured yet lacking reality, and his dress of respectable cut and material, yet worn as if it did not belong to him, completed a picture as unlike a student or schoolmaster as could be possibly conceived.

Yet there was the letter in Mr. Peaseley’s hands from Barstow, introducing Mr. Charles Twing as the first assistant teacher in the Pine Clearing Free Academy!

The three men looked hopelessly at each other. An air of fatigued righteousness and a desire to be spiritually at rest from other trials pervaded Mr. Peaseley. Whether or not the young man felt the evident objection he had raised, he assumed a careless position, with his back and elbows against the bar; but even the attitude was clearly not his own.

“Are you personally known to Mr. Barstow?” asked Sperry, with a slight business asperity.

“Yes.”

“That is–you are quite well acquainted with him?”

“If you’d heard me gag his style a minute ago, so that everybody here knew who it was, you’d say so.”

Mr. Peaseley’s eyes sought the ceiling, and rested on the hanging lamp, as if nothing short of direct providential interference could meet the occasion. Yet, as the eyes of his brother trustees were bent on him expectantly, he nerved himself to say something.

“I suppose, Mr.–Mr. Twing, you have properly understood the great– I may say, very grave, intellectual, and moral responsibilities of the work you seek to undertake–and the necessity of supporting it by EXAMPLE, by practice, by personal influence both in the school and OUT OF IT. Sir, I presume, sir, you feel that you are fully competent to undertake this?”

“I reckon HE does!”

“WHO does?”

“Sam Barstow, or he wouldn’t have selected me. I presume” (with the slightest possible and almost instinctive imitation of the reverend gentleman’s manner) “his head is considered level.”

Mr. Peaseley withdrew his eyes from the ceiling. “I have,” he said to his companions, with a pained smile, “an important choir meeting to attend this afternoon. I fear I must be excused.” As he moved towards the door, the others formally following him, until out of the stranger’s hearing, he added: “I wash my hands of this. After so wanton and unseemly an exhibition of utter incompetency, and even of understanding of the trust imposed upon him–upon US–MY conscience forbids me to interfere further. But the real arbiter in this matter will be–thank Heaven!–the mistress herself. You have only to confront her at once with this man. HER decision will be speedy and final. For even Mr. Barstow will not dare to force so outrageous a character upon a delicate, refined woman, in a familiar and confidential capacity.”

“That’s so,” said Sperry eagerly; “she’ll settle it. And, of course,” added the mill-owner, “that will leave us out of any difficulty with Sam.”

The two men returned to the hapless stranger, relieved, yet constrained by the sacrifice to which they felt they were leading him. It would be necessary, they said, to introduce him to his principal, Mrs. Martin, at once. They might still find her at the schoolhouse, distant but a few steps. They said little else, the stranger keeping up an ostentatious whistling, and becoming more and more incongruous, they thought, as they neared the pretty schoolhouse. Here they DID find Mrs. Martin, who had, naturally, lingered after the interview with Sperry.

She came forward to meet them, with the nervous shyness and slightly fastidious hesitation that was her nature. They saw, or fancied they saw, the same surprise and disappointment they had themselves experienced pass over her sensitive face, as she looked at him; they felt that their vulgar charge appeared still more outrageous by contrast with this delicate woman and her pretty, refined surroundings; but they saw that HE enjoyed it, and was even–if such a word could be applied to so self-conscious a man– more at ease in her presence!

“I reckon you and me will pull together very well, ma’am,” he said confidently.

They looked to see her turn her back upon him; faint, or burst out crying; but she did neither, and only gazed at him quietly.

“It’s a mighty pretty place you’ve got here–and I like it, and if WE can’t run it, I don’t know who can. Only just let me know WHAT you want, ma’am, and you can count on me every time.”

To their profound consternation Mrs. Martin smiled faintly.

“It rests with YOU only, Mrs. Martin,” said Sperry quickly and significantly. “It’s YOUR say, you know; you’re the only one to be considered or consulted here.”

“Only just say what you want me to do,” continued Twing, apparently ignoring the trustees; “pick out the style of job; give me a hint or two how to work it, or what you’d think would be the proper gag to fetch ’em, and I’m there, ma’am. It may be new at first, but I’ll get at the business of it quick enough.”

Mrs. Martin smiled–this time quite perceptibly–with the least little color in her cheeks and eyes. “Then you’ve had no experience in teaching?” she said.

“Well no.”

“You are not a graduate of any college?”

“Not much.”

The two trustees looked at each other. Even Mr. Peaseley had not conceived such a damning revelation.

“Well,” said Mrs. Martin slowly, “perhaps Mr. Twing had better COME EARLY TOMORROW MORNING AND BEGIN.”

“Begin?” gasped Mr. Sperry in breathless astonishment.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Martin in timid explanation. “If he is new to the work the sooner the better.”

Mr. Sperry could only gaze blankly at his brother official. Had they heard aright? Was this the recklessness of nervous excitement in a woman of delicate health, or had the impostor cast some glamour upon her? Or was she frightened of Sam Barstow and afraid to reject his candidate? The last thought was an inspiration. He drew her quickly aside. “One moment, Mrs. Martin! You said to me an hour ago that you didn’t intend to have asked Mr. Barstow to send you an assistant. I hope that, merely because he HAS done so, you don’t feel obliged to accept this man against your better judgment?”

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Martin quietly.

The case seemed hopeless. And Sperry had the miserable conviction that by having insisted upon Mrs. Martin’s judgment being final they had estopped their own right to object. But how could they have foreseen her extraordinary taste? He, however, roused himself for a last appeal.

“Mrs. Martin,” he said in a lower voice, “I ought to tell you that the Reverend Mr. Peaseley strongly doubts the competency of that young man.”

“Didn’t Mr. Barstow make a selection at your request?” asked Mrs. Martin, with a faint little nervous cough.

“Yes–but”–

“Then his competency only concerns ME–and I don’t see what Mr. Peaseley has to say about it.”

Could he believe his senses? There was a decided flush in the woman’s pale face, and the first note of independence and asperity in her voice.

That night, in the privacy of his conjugal chamber, Mr. Sperry relieved his mind to another of the enigmatical sex,–the stout Southwestern partner of his joys and troubles. But the result was equally unsatisfactory. “Well, Abner,” said the lady, “I never could see, for all your men’s praises of Mrs. Martin, what that feller can see in HER to like!”

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Martin was early at the schoolhouse the next morning, yet not so early but that she discovered that the new assistant had been there before her. This was shown in some rearrangement of the school seats and benches. They were placed so as to form a horseshoe before her desk, and at the further extremity of this semicircle was a chair evidently for himself. She was a little nettled at his premature action, although admitting the utility of the change, but she was still more annoyed at his absence at such a moment. It was nearly the school hour when he appeared, to her surprise, marshaling a file of some of the smaller children whom he had evidently picked up en route, and who were, to her greater surprise, apparently on the best of terms with him. “Thought I’d better rake ’em in, introduce myself to ’em, and get ’em to know me before school begins. Excuse me,” he went on hastily, “but I’ve a lot more coming up, and I’d better make myself square with them OUTSIDE.” But Mrs. Martin had apparently developed a certain degree of stiffness since their evening’s interview.

“It seems to me quite as important, Mr. Twing,” she said drily, “that you should first learn some of your own duties, which I came here early to teach you.”

“Not at all,” he said cheerfully. “Today I take my seat, as I’ve arranged it, you see, over there with them, and watch ’em go through the motions. One rehearsal’s enough for ME. At the same time, I can chip in if necessary.” And before she could reply he was out of the schoolhouse again, hailing the new-comers. This was done with apparently such delight to the children and with some evidently imported expression into his smooth mask-like face, that Mrs. Martin had to content herself with watching him with equal curiosity. She was turning away with a sudden sense of forgotten dignity, when a shout of joyous, childish laughter attracted her attention to the window. The new assistant, with half a dozen small children on his square shoulders, walking with bent back and every simulation of advanced senility, was evidently personating, with the assistance of astonishingly distorted features, the ogre of a Christmas pantomime. As his eye caught hers the expression vanished, the mask-like face returned; he set the children down, and moved away. And when school began, although he marshaled them triumphantly to the very door,–with what contortion of face or simulation of character she was unable to guess,–after he had entered the schoolroom and taken his seat every vestige of his previous facial aberration was gone, and only his usual stolidity remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, the hundred delighted little eyes before her dwelt at first eagerly and hopefully upon his face, but, as she HAD NOT expected, recognizing from the blankness of his demeanor that the previous performance was intended for them exclusively, the same eager eyes were presently dropped again upon their books in simple imitation, as if he were one of themselves. Mrs. Martin breathed freely, and lessons began.

Yet she was nervously conscious, meanwhile, of a more ill-omened occurrence. This was the non-arrival of several of her oldest pupils, notably, the refractory and incorrigible Pike County contingent to whom Sperry had alluded. For the past few days they had hovered on the verge of active insubordination, and had indulged in vague mutterings which she had resolutely determined not to hear. It was, therefore, with some inward trepidations, not entirely relieved by Twing’s presence, that she saw the three Mackinnons and the two Hardees slouch into the school a full hour after the lessons had begun. They did not even excuse themselves, but were proceeding with a surly and ostentatious defiance to their seats, when Mrs. Martin was obliged to look up, and–as the eldest Hardee filed before her–to demand an explanation. The culprit addressed–a dull, heavy-looking youth of nineteen–hesitated with an air of mingled doggedness and sheepishness, and then, without replying, nudged his companion. It was evidently a preconcerted signal of rebellion, for the boy nudged stopped, and, turning a more intelligent, but equally dissatisfied, face upon the schoolmistress, began determinedly:–

“Wot’s our excuse for coming an hour late? Well, we ain’t got none. WE don’t call it an hour late–WE don’t. We call it the right time. We call it the right time for OUR lessons, for we don’t allow to come here to sing hymns with babbies. We don’t want to know ‘where, oh where, are the Hebrew children?’ They ain’t nothin’ to us Americans. And we don’t want any more Daniels in the Lions’ Den played off on us. We have enough of ’em in Sunday- school. We ain’t hankerin’ much for grammar and dictionary hogwash, and we don’t want no Boston parts o’ speech rung in on us the first thing in the mo’nin’. We ain’t Boston–we’re Pike County–WE are. We reckon to do our sums, and our figgerin’, and our sale and barter, and our interest tables and weights and measures when the time comes, and our geograffy when it’s on, and our readin’ and writin’ and the American Constitution in reg’lar hours, and then we calkilate to git up and git afore the po’try and the Boston airs and graces come round. That’s our rights and what our fathers pay school taxes for, and we want ’em.”

He stopped, looking less towards the schoolmistress than to his companions, for whom perhaps, after the schoolboy fashion, this attitude was taken. Mrs. Martin sat, quite white and self- contained, with her eyes fixed on the frayed rim of the rebel’s straw hat which he still kept on his head. Then she said quietly:–

“Take off your hat, sir.”

The boy did not move.

“He can’t,” said a voice cheerfully.

It was the new assistant. The whole school faced rapidly towards him. The rebel leader and his followers, who had not noticed him before, stared at the interrupter, who did not, however, seem to exhibit any of the authority of office, but rather the comment and criticism of one of themselves. “Wot you mean?” asked the boy indignantly.

“I mean you can’t take off your hat because you’ve got some things stowed away in it you don’t want seen,” said Twing, with an immovable face.

“Wot things?” exclaimed the boy angrily. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he added, “Go along! You can’t fool me! Think you’ll make me take off my hat–don’t you?”

“Well,” said Twing, advancing to the side of the rebel, “look here then!” With a dexterous movement and a slight struggle from the boy, he lifted the hat. A half-dozen apples, a bird’s nest, two birds’ eggs, and a fluttering half-fledged bird fell from it. A wave of delight and astonishment ran along the benches, a blank look of hopeless bewilderment settled upon the boy’s face, and the gravity of the situation disappeared forever in the irrepressible burst of laughter, in which even his brother rebels joined. The smallest child who had been half-frightened, half-fascinated by the bold, bad, heroic attitude of the mutineer, was quick to see the ridiculousness of that figure crowned with cheap schoolboy plunder. The eloquent protest of his wrongs was lost in the ludicrous appearance of the protester. Even Mrs. Martin felt that nothing she could say at that moment could lift the rebellion into seriousness again. But Twing was evidently not satisfied.

“Beg Mrs. Martin’s pardon, and say you were foolin’ with the boys,” he said in a low voice.

The discomfited rebel hesitated.

“Say it, or I’ll SHOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT IN YOUR POCKETS!” said Twing in a terribly significant aside.

The boy mumbled an apology to Mrs. Martin, scrambled in a blank, hopeless way to his seat, and the brief rebellion ignominiously ended. But two things struck Mrs. Martin as peculiar. She overheard the culprit say, with bated breath and evident sincerity, to his comrades: “Hadn’t nothing in my hat, anyway!” and one of the infant class was heard to complain, in a deeply-injured way, that the bird’s nest was HIS, and had been “stoled” from his desk. And there still remained the fact for which Twing’s undoubted fascination over the children had somewhat prepared her–that at recess the malcontents–one and all–seemed to have forgiven the man who had overcome them, and gathered round him with unmistakable interest. All this, however, did not blind her to the serious intent of the rebellion, or of Twing’s unaccountable assumption of her prerogative. While he was still romping with the children she called him in.

“I must remind you,” she said, with a slight nervous asperity, “that this outrageous conduct of Tom Hardee was evidently deliberated and prepared by the others, and cannot end in this way.”

He looked at her with a face so exasperatingly expressionless that she could have slapped it as if it had belonged to one of the older scholars, and said,–“But it HAS ended. It’s a dead frost.”

“I don’t know what you mean; and I must remind you also that in this school we neither teach nor learn slang.”

His immobile face changed for an instant to a look of such decided admiration that she felt her color rise; but he wiped his expression away with his hand as if it had been some artificial make-up, and said awkwardly, but earnestly:–

“Excuse me–won’t you? But, look here, Mrs. Martin, I found out early this morning, when I was squaring myself with the other children, that there was this row hangin’ on–in fact, that there was a sort of idea that Pike County wasn’t having a fair show– excuse me–in the running of the school, and that Peaseley and Barstow were a little too much on in every scene. In fact, you see, it was just what Tom said.”

“This is insufferable,” said Mrs. Martin, her eyes growing darker as her cheeks grew red. “They shall go home to their parents, and tell them from me”–

“That they’re all mistaken–excuse me–but that’s just what THEY’RE GOIN’ TO DO. I tell you, Mrs. Martin, their little game’s busted–I beg pardon–but it’s all over. You’ll have no more trouble with them.”

“And you think that just because you found Tom had something in his hat, and exposed him?” said Mrs. Martin scornfully.

“Tom HADN’T anything in his hat,” said Twing, wiping his mouth slowly.

“Nothing?” repeated Mrs. Martin.

“No.”

“But I SAW you take the things out.”

“That was only a TRICK! He had nothing except what I had up my sleeve, and forced on him. He knew it, and that frightened him, and made him look like a fool, and so bursted up his conspiracy. There’s nothin’ boys are more afraid of than ridicule, or the man or boy that make ’em ridiculous.”

“I won’t ask you if you call this FAIR to the boy, Mr. Twing?” said Mrs. Martin hotly; “but is this your idea of discipline?”

“I call it fair, because Tom knew it was some kind of a trick, and wasn’t deceived. I call it discipline if it made him do what was right afterwards, and makes him afraid or unwilling to do anything to offend me or you again. He likes me none the worse for giving him a chance of being laughed out of a thing instead of being DRIVEN out of it. And,” he added, with awkward earnestness, “if you’ll just leave all this to ME, and only consider me here to take this sort of work which ain’t a lady’s–off your hands, we’ll just strike our own line between the Peaseleys and Pike County–and run this school in spite of both.”

A little mollified, a good deal puzzled, and perhaps more influenced by the man’s manner than she had imagined, Mrs. Martin said nothing, but let the day pass without dismissing the offenders. And on returning home that evening she was considerably surprised to receive her landlady’s extravagant congratulations on the advent of her new assistant. “And they do say, Mrs. Martin,” continued that lady enthusiastically, “that your just setting your foot down square on that Peaseley and that Barstow, BOTH OF ‘EM–and choosing your own assistant yourself–a plain young fellow with no frills and fancies, but one that you could set about making all the changes you like, was just the biggest thing you ever did for Pine Clearing.”

“And–they–consider him quite–competent?” said Mrs. Martin, with timid color and hesitating audacity.

“Competent! You ask my Johnny.”

Nevertheless, Mrs. Martin was somewhat formally early at the schoolhouse the next morning. “Perhaps,” she said, with an odd mixture of dignity and timidity, “we’d better, before school commences, go over the lessons for the day.”

“I HAVE,” he said quickly. “I told you ONE rehearsal was enough for me.”

“You mean you have looked over them?”

“Got ’em by heart. Letter perfect. Want to hear me? Listen.”

She did. He had actually committed to memory, and without a lapse, the entire text of rules, questions, answers, and examples of the lessons for the day.

CHAPTER IV.

Before a month had passed, Mr. Twing’s success was secure and established. So were a few of the changes he had quietly instituted. The devotional singing and Scripture reading which had excited the discontent of the Pike County children and their parents was not discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under Twing’s really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to promotion to the devotional exercises, where it eventually ousted the objectionable “Hebrew children” on the question of melody alone. Grammar was still taught at Pine Clearing School in spite of the Hardees and Mackinnons, but Twing had managed to import into the cognate exercises of recitation a wonderful degree of enthusiasm and excellence. Dialectical Pike County, that had refused to recognize the governing powers of the nominative case, nevertheless came out strong in classical elocution, and Tom Hardee, who had delivered his ungrammatical protest on behalf of Pike County, was no less strong, if more elegant, in his impeachment of Warren Hastings as Edmund Burke, with the equal sanction of his parents. The trustees, Sperry and Jackson, had marveled, but were glad enough to accept the popular verdict–only Mr. Peaseley still retained an attitude of martyr- like forbearance and fatigued toleration towards the new assistant and his changes. As to Mrs. Martin, she seemed to accept the work of Mr. Twing after his own definition of it–as of a masculine quality ill-suited to a lady’s tastes and inclinations; but it was noticeable that while she had at first repelled any criticism of him whatever, she had lately been given to explaining his position to her friends, and had spoken of him with somewhat labored and ostentatious patronage. Yet when they were alone together she frankly found him very amusing, and his presumption and vulgarity so clearly unintentional that it no longer offended her. They were good friends without having any confidences beyond the duties of the school; she had asked no further explanation of the fact that he had been selected by Mr. Barstow without reference to any special antecedent training. What his actual antecedents were she had never cared to know, nor he apparently to reveal; that he had been engaged in some other occupations of superior or inferior quality would not have been remarkable in a community where the principal lawyer had been a soldier, and the miller a doctor. The fact that he admired her was plain enough to HER; that it pleased her, but carried with it no ulterior thought or responsibility, might have been equally clear to others. Perhaps it was so to HIM.

Howbeit, this easy mutual intercourse was one day interrupted by what seemed a trifling incident. The piano, which Mr. Barstow had promised, duly made its appearance in the schoolhouse, to the delight of the scholars and the gentle satisfaction of Mrs. Martin, who, in addition to the rudimentary musical instruction of the younger girls, occasionally played upon it herself in a prim, refined, and conscientious fashion. To this, when she was alone after school hours, she sometimes added a faint, colorless voice of limited range and gentlewomanly expression. It was on one of these occasions that Twing, becoming an accidental auditor of this chaste, sad piping, was not only permitted to remain to hear the end of a love song of strictly guarded passion in the subjunctive mood, but at the close was invited to try his hand–a quick, if not a cultivated one–at the instrument. He did so. Like her, he added his voice. Like hers, it was a love song. But there the similitude ended. Negro in dialect, illiterate in construction, idiotic in passion, and presumably addressed to the “Rose of Alabama,” in the very extravagance of its childish infatuation it might have been a mockery of the schoolmistress’s song but for one tremendous fact! In unrestrained feeling, pathetic yearning, and exquisite tenderness of expression, it was unmistakably and appallingly personal and sincere. It was true the lips spoken of were “lubly,” the eyes alluded to were like “lightenin’ bugs,” but from the voice and gestures of the singer Mrs. Martin confusedly felt that they were intended for HERS, and even the refrain that “she dressed so neat and looked so sweet” was glaringly allusive to her own modish mourning. Alternately flushing and paling, with a hysteric smile hovering round her small reserved mouth, the unfortunate gentlewoman was fain to turn to the window to keep her countenance until it was concluded. She did not ask him to repeat it, nor did she again subject herself to this palpable serenade, but a few days afterwards, as she was idly striking the keys in the interval of a music lesson, one of her little pupils broke out, “Why, Mrs. Martin, if yo ain’t a pickin’ out that pow’ful pretty tune that Mr. Twing sings!”

Nevertheless, when Twing, a week or two later, suggested that he might sing the same song as a solo at a certain performance to be given by the school children in aid of a local charity, she drily intimated that it was hardly of a character to suit the entertainment. “But,” she added, more gently, “you recite so well; why not give a recitation?”

He looked at her with questioning and troubled eyes,–the one expression he seemed to have lately acquired. “But that would be IN PUBLIC! There’ll be a lot of people there,” he said doubtfully.

A little amused at this first apparent sign of a want of confidence in himself, she said, with a reassuring smile, “So much the better,–you do it really too well to have it thrown away entirely on children.”

“Do YOU wish it?” he said suddenly.

Somewhat confused, but more irritated by his abruptness, she replied, “Why not?” But when the day came, and before a crowded audience, in which there was a fair sprinkling of strangers, she regretted her rash suggestion. For when the pupils had gone through certain calisthenic exercises–admirably taught and arranged by him–and “spoken their pieces,” he arose, and, fixing his eyes on her, began Othello’s defense before the Duke and Council. Here, as on the previous occasion, she felt herself personally alluded to in his account of his wooing. Desdemona, for some occult reason, vicariously appeared for her in the unwarrantable picture of his passion, and to this was added the absurd consciousness which she could not put aside that the audience, following with enthusiasm his really strong declamation, was also following his suggestion and adopting it. Yet she was also conscious, and, as she thought, as inconsistently, of being pleased and even proud of his success. At the conclusion the applause was general, and a voice added with husky admiration and familiarity:–

“Brayvo, Johnny Walker!”

Twing’s face became suddenly white as a Pierrot mask. There was a dead silence, in which the voice continued, “Give us ‘Sugar in the Gourd,’ Johnny.”

A few hisses, and cries of “Hush!” “Put him out!” followed. Mrs. Martin raised her eyes quickly to where her assistant had stood bowing his thanks a moment before. He was gone!

More concerned than she cared to confess, vaguely fearful that she was in some way connected with his abrupt withdrawal, and perhaps a little remorseful that she had allowed her personal feelings to interfere with her frank recognition of his triumph, she turned back to the schoolroom, after the little performers and their audience had departed, in the hope that he might return. It was getting late, the nearly level rays of the sun were lying on the empty benches at the lower end of the room, but the desk where she sat with its lid raised was in deep shadow. Suddenly she heard his voice in a rear hall, but it was accompanied by another’s,–the same voice which had interrupted the applause. Before she could either withdraw, or make herself known, the two men had entered the room, and were passing slowly through it. She understood at once that Twing had slipped out into a janitor’s room in the rear, where he had evidently forced an interview and explanation from his interrupter, and now had been waiting for the audience to disperse before emerging by the front door. They had evidently overlooked her in the shadow.

“But,” said the stranger, as if following an aggrieved line of apology, “if Barstow knew who you were, and what you’d done, and still thought you good enough to rastle round here and square up them Pike County fellers and them kids–what in thunder do you care if the others DO find you out, as long as Barstow sticks to you?”

“I’ve told you why, Dick,” returned Twing gloomily.

“Oh, the schoolma’am!”

“Yes, she’s a saint, an angel. More than that–she’s a lady, Dick, to the tip of her fingers, who knows nothing of the world outside a parson’s study. She took me on trust–without a word–when the trustees hung back and stared. She’s never asked me about myself, and now when she knows who and what I have been–she’ll loathe me!”

“But look here, Jim,” said the stranger anxiously. “I’ll say it’s all a lie. I’ll come here and apologize to you afore HER, and say I took you for somebody else. I’ll”–

“It’s too late,” said Twing moodily.

“And what’ll you do?”

“Leave here.”

They had reached the door together. To Mrs. Martin’s terror, as the stranger passed out, Twing, instead of following him as she expected, said “Good-night,” and gloomily re-entered the schoolroom. Here he paused a moment, and then throwing himself on one of the benches, dropped his head upon a desk with his face buried in his hands–like a very schoolboy.

What passed through Mrs. Martin’s mind I know not. For a moment she sat erect and rigid at her desk. Then she slipped quietly down, and, softly as one of the last shadows cast by the dying sun, glided across the floor to where he sat.

“Mrs. Martin,” he said, starting to his feet.

“I have heard all,” she said faintly. “I couldn’t help it. I was here when you came in. But I want to tell you that I am content to know you only as you seem to be,–as I have always found you here,– strong and loyal to a duty laid upon you by those who had a full knowledge of all you had been.”

“Did you? Do you know what I have been?”

Mrs. Martin looked frightened, trembled a moment, and, recovering herself with an effort, said gently, “I know nothing of your past.”

“Nothing?” he repeated, with a mirthless attempt at laughter, and a quick breath. “Not that I’ve been a–a–mountebank, a variety actor–a clown, you know, for the amusement of the lowest, at twenty-five cents a ticket. That I’m ‘Johnny Walker,’ the song and dance man–the all-round man–selected by Mr. Barstow to teach these boors a lesson as to what they wanted!”

She looked at him a moment–timidly, yet thoughtfully. “Then you are an actor–a person who simulates what he does not feel?”

“Yes.”

“And all the time you have been here you have been acting the schoolmaster–playing a part–for–for Mr. Barstow?”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

The color came softly to her face again, and her voice was very low. “And when you sang to me that day, and when you looked at me– as you did–an hour or two ago–while you were entertaining–you were–only–acting?”

Mr. Twing’s answer was not known, but it must have been a full and complete one, for it was quite dark when he left the schoolroom– NOT for the last time–with its mistress on his arm.

IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT.

CHAPTER I.

There was probably no earthly reason why the “Poco Mas o Menos” Club of San Francisco should have ever existed, or why its five harmless, indistinctive members should not have met and dined together as ordinary individuals. Still less was there any justification for the gratuitous opinion which obtained, that it was bold, bad, and brilliant. Looking back upon it over a quarter of a century and half a globe, I confess I cannot recall a single witticism, audacity, or humorous characteristic that belonged to it. Yet there was no doubt that we were thought to be extremely critical and satirical, and I am inclined to think we honestly believed it. To take our seats on Wednesdays and Saturdays at a specially reserved table at the restaurant we patronized, to be conscious of being observed by the other guests, and of our waiter confidentially imparting our fame to strangers behind the shaken- out folds of a napkin, and of knowing that the faintest indication of merriment from our table thrilled the other guests with anticipatory smiles, was, I am firmly convinced, all that we ever did to justify our reputations. Nor, strictly speaking, were we remarkable as individuals; an assistant editor, a lawyer, a young army quartermaster, a bank clerk and a mining secretary–we could not separately challenge any special social or literary distinction. Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our Club–a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning “a little more or less,” and adopted in Californian slang to express an unknown quantity–was supposed to be replete with deep and convulsing humor.

My impression is that our extravagant reputation, and, indeed, our continued existence as a Club, was due solely to the proprietor of the restaurant and two of his waiters, and that we were actually “run” by them. When the suggestion of our meeting regularly there was first broached to the proprietor–a German of slow but deep emotions–he received it with a “So” of such impressive satisfaction that it might have been the beginning of our vainglory. From that moment he became at once our patron and our devoted slave. To linger near our table once or twice during dinner with an air of respectful vacuity,–as of one who knew himself too well to be guilty of the presumption of attempting to understand our brilliancy,–to wear a certain parental pride and unconsciousness in our fame, and yet to never go further in seeming to comprehend it than to obligingly translate the name of the Club as “a leedle more and nod quide so much”–was to him sufficient happiness. That he ever experienced any business profit from the custom of the Club, or its advertisement, may be greatly doubted; on the contrary, that a few plain customers, nettled at our self-satisfaction, might have resented his favoritism seemed more probable. Equally vague, disinterested, and loyal was the attachment of the two waiters,–one an Italian, faintly reminiscent of better days and possibly superior extraction; the other a rough but kindly Western man, who might have taken this menial position from temporary stress of circumstances, yet who continued in it from sheer dominance of habit and some feebleness of will. They both vied with each other to please us. It may have been they considered their attendance upon a reputed intellectual company less degrading than ministering to the purely animal and silent wants of the average customers. It may have been that they were attracted by our general youthfulness. Indeed, I am inclined to think that they themselves were much more distinctive and interesting than any members of the Club, and it is to introduce THEM that I venture to recall so much of its history.

A few months after our advent at the restaurant, one evening, Joe Tallant, the mining secretary, one of our liveliest members, was observed to be awkward and distrait during dinner, forgetting even to offer the usual gratuity to the Italian waiter who handed him his hat, although he stared at him with an imbecile smile. As we chanced to leave the restaurant together, I was rallying him upon his abstraction, when to my surprise he said gravely: “Look here, one of two things has got to happen: either we must change our restaurant or I’m going to resign.”

“Why?”

“Well, to make matters clear, I’m obliged to tell you something that in our business we usually keep a secret. About three weeks ago I had a notice to transfer twenty feet of Gold Hill to a fellow named ‘Tournelli.’ Well, Tournelli happened to call for it himself, and who the devil do you suppose Tournelli was? Why our Italian waiter. I was regularly startled, and so was he. But business is business; so I passed him over the stock and said nothing–nor did he–neither there nor here. Day before yesterday he had thirty feet more transferred to him, and sold out.”

“Well?” I said impatiently.

“Well,” repeated Tallant indignantly. “Gold Hill’s worth six hundred dollars a foot. That’s eighteen thousand dollars cash. And a man who’s good enough for that much money is too good to wait upon me. Fancy a man who could pay my whole year’s salary with five feet of stock slinging hash to ME. Fancy YOU tipping him with a quarter!”

“But if HE don’t mind it–and prefers to continue a waiter–why should YOU care? And WE’RE not supposed to know.”

“That’s just it,” groaned Tallant. “That’s just where the sell comes in. Think how he must chuckle over us! No, sir! There’s nothing aristocratic about me; but, by thunder, if I can’t eat my dinner, and feel I am as good as the man who waits on me, I’ll resign from the Club.”

After endeavoring to point out to him the folly of such a proceeding, I finally suggested that we should take the other members of our Club into our confidence, and abide by their decision; to which he agreed. But, to his chagrin, the others, far from participating in his delicacy, seemed to enjoy Tournelli’s unexpected wealth with a vicarious satisfaction and increase of dignity as if we were personally responsible for it. Although it had been unanimously agreed that we should make no allusions, jocose or serious, to him, nor betray any knowledge of it before him, I am afraid our attitude at the next dinner was singularly artificial. A nervous expectancy when he approached us, and a certain restraint during his presence, a disposition to check any discussion of shares or “strikes” in mining lest he should think it personal, an avoidance of unnecessary or trifling “orders,” and a singular patience in awaiting their execution when given; a vague hovering between sympathetic respect and the other extreme of indifferent bluntness in our requests, tended, I think, to make that meal far from exhilarating. Indeed, the unusual depression affected the unfortunate cause of it, who added to our confusion by increased solicitude of service and–as if fearful of some fault, or having incurred our disfavor–by a deprecatory and exaggerated humility that in our sensitive state seemed like the keenest irony. At last, evidently interpreting our constraint before him into a desire to be alone, he retired to the door of a distant pantry, whence he surveyed us with dark and sorrowful Southern eyes. Tallant, who in this general embarrassment had been imperfectly served, and had eaten nothing, here felt his grievance reach its climax, and in a sudden outbreak of recklessness he roared out, “Hi, waiter–you, Tournelli. He may,” he added, turning darkly to us, “buy up enough stock to control the board and dismiss ME; but, by thunder, if it costs me my place, I’m going to have some more chicken!”

It was probably this sensitiveness that kept us from questioning him, even indirectly, and perhaps led us into the wildest surmises. He was acting secretly for a brotherhood or society of waiters; he was a silent partner of his German employer; he was a disguised Italian stockbroker, gaining “points” from the unguarded conversation of “operating” customers; he was a political refugee with capital; he was a fugitive Sicilian bandit, investing his ill- gotten gains in California; he was a dissipated young nobleman, following some amorous intrigue across the ocean, and acting as his own Figaro or Leporello. I think a majority of us favored the latter hypothesis, possibly because we were young, and his appearance gave it color. His thin black mustaches and dark eyes, we felt, were Tuscan and aristocratic; at least, they were like the baritone who played those parts, and HE ought to know. Yet nothing could be more exemplary and fastidious than his conduct towards the few lady frequenters of the “Poodle Dog” restaurant, who, I regret to say, were not puritanically reserved or conventual in manner.

But an unexpected circumstance presently changed and divided our interest. It was alleged by Clay, the assistant editor, that entering the restaurant one evening he saw the back and tails of a coat that seemed familiar to him half-filling a doorway leading to the restaurant kitchen. It was unmistakably the figure of one of our Club members,–the young lawyer,–Jack Manners. But what was he doing there? While the Editor was still gazing after him, he suddenly disappeared, as if some one had warned him that he was observed. As he did not reappear, when Tournelli entered from the kitchen a few moments later, the Editor called him and asked for his fellow-member. To his surprise the Italian answered, with every appearance of truthfulness, that he had not seen Mr. Manners at all! The Editor was staggered; but as he chanced, some hours later, to meet Manners, he playfully rallied him on his mysterious conference with the Italian. Manners replied briefly that he had had no interview whatever with Tournelli, and changed the subject quickly. The mystery–as we persisted in believing it–was heightened when another member deposed that he had seen “Tom,” the Western waiter, coming from Manners’s office. As Manners had volunteered no information of this, we felt that we could not without indelicacy ask him if Tom was a client, or a messenger from Tournelli. The only result was that our Club dinner was even more constrained than before. Not only was “Tom” now invested with a dark importance, but it was evident that the harmony of the Club was destroyed by these singular secret relations of two of its members with their employes.

It chanced that one morning, arriving from a delayed journey, I dropped into the restaurant. It was that slack hour between the lingering breakfast and coming luncheon when the tables are partly stripped and unknown doors, opened for ventilation, reveal the distant kitchen, and a mingled flavor of cold coffee-grounds and lukewarm soups hangs heavy on the air. To this cheerlessness was added a gusty rain without, that filmed the panes of the windows and doors, and veiled from the passer-by the usual tempting display of snowy cloths and china.

As I seemed to be the only customer at that hour, I selected a table by the window for distraction. Tom had taken my order; the other waiters, including Tournelli, were absent, with the exception of a solitary German, who, in the interlude of perfunctory trifling with the casters, gazed at me with that abstracted irresponsibility which one waiter assumes towards another’s customer. Even the proprietor had deserted his desk at the counter. It seemed to be a favorable opportunity to get some information from Tom.

But he anticipated me. When he had dealt a certain number of dishes around me, as if they were cards and he was telling my fortune, he leaned over the table and said, with interrogating confidence:–

“I reckon you call that Mr. Manners of yours a good lawyer?”

We were very loyal to each other in the Club, and I replied with youthful enthusiasm that he was considered one of the most promising at the bar. And, remembering Tournelli, I added confidently that whoever engaged him to look after their property interests had secured a treasure.

“But is he good in criminal cases–before a police court, for instance?” continued Tom.

I believed–I don’t know on what grounds–that Manners was good in insurance and admiralty law, and that he looked upon criminal practice as low; but I answered briskly–though a trifle startled– that as a criminal lawyer he was perfect.

“He could advise a man, who had a row hanging on, how to steer clear of being up for murder–eh?”

I trusted, with a desperate attempt at jocosity, that neither he nor Tournelli had been doing anything to require Manners’s services in that way.

“It would be too late, THEN,” said Tom, coolly, “and ANYBODY could tell a man what he ought to have done, or how to make the best of what he had done; but the smart thing in a lawyer would be to give a chap points BEFOREHAND, and sorter tell him how far he could go, and yet keep inside the law. How he might goad a fellow to draw on him, and then plug him–eh?”

I looked up quickly. There was nothing in his ordinary, good- humored, but not very strong face to suggest that he himself was the subject of this hypothetical case. If he were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian certainly was not to be congratulated on his ambassador’s prudence; and, above all, Manners was to be warned of the interpretation which might be put upon his counsels, and disseminated thus publicly. As I was thinking what to say, he moved away, but suddenly returned again.

“What made you think Tournelli had been up to anything?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing,” I answered; “I only thought you and he, being friends”–

“You mean we’re both waiters in the same restaurant. Well, I don’t know him any better than I know that chap over there,” pointing to the other waiter. “He’s a Greaser or an Italian, and, I reckon, goes with his kind.”

Why had we not thought of this before? Nothing would be more natural than that the rich and imperious Tournelli should be exclusive, and have no confidences with his enforced associates. And it was evident that Tom had noticed it and was jealous.

“I suppose he’s rather a swell, isn’t he?” I suggested tentatively.

A faint smile passed over Tom’s face. It was partly cynical and partly suggestive of that amused toleration of our youthful credulity which seemed to be a part of that discomposing patronage that everybody extended to the Club. As he said nothing, I continued encouragingly:–

“Because a man’s a waiter, it doesn’t follow that he’s always been one, or always will be.”

“No,” said Tom, abstractedly; “but it’s about as good as anything else to lie low and wait on.” But here two customers entered, and he turned to them, leaving me in doubt whether to accept this as a verbal pleasantry or an admission. Only one thing seemed plain: I had certainly gained no information, and only added a darker mystery to his conference with Manners, which I determined I should ask Manners to explain.

I finished my meal in solitude. The rain was still beating drearily against the windows with an occasional accession of impulse that seemed like human impatience. Vague figures under dripping umbrellas, that hid their faces as if in premeditated disguise, hurried from the main thoroughfare. A woman in a hooded waterproof like a domino, a Mexican in a black serape, might have been stage conspirators hastening to a rendezvous. The cavernous chill and odor which I had before noted as coming from some sarcophagus of larder or oven, where “funeral baked meats” might have been kept in stock, began to oppress me. The hollow and fictitious domesticity of this common board had never before seemed so hopelessly displayed. And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in his hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction towards the window, appeared to be really “lying low,” and waiting for something outside his avocation.

CHAPTER II.

The fact that Tom did not happen to be on duty at the next Club dinner gave me an opportunity to repeat his mysterious remark to Manners, and to jokingly warn that rising young lawyer against the indiscretion of vague counsel. Manners, however, only shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what he meant,” he said carelessly; “but since he chooses to talk of his own affairs publicly, I don’t mind saying that they are neither very weighty nor very dangerous. It’s only the old story: the usual matrimonial infidelities that are mixed up with the Californian emigration. He leaves the regular wife behind,–fairly or unfairly, I can’t say. She gets tired waiting, after the usual style, and elopes with somebody else. The Western Penelope isn’t built for waiting. But she seems to have converted some of his property into cash when she skipped from St. Louis, and that’s where his chief concern comes in. That’s what he wanted to see me for; that’s why he inveigled me into that infernal pantry of his one day to show me a plan of his property, as if that was any good.”

He paused disgustedly. We all felt, I think, that Tom was some kind of an impostor, claiming the sympathies of the Club on false pretenses. Nevertheless, the Quartermaster said, “Then you didn’t do anything for him–give him any advice, eh?”

“No; for the property’s as much hers as his, and he hasn’t got a divorce; and, as it’s doubtful whether he didn’t desert her first, he can’t get one. He was surprised,” he added, with a grim smile, “when I told him that he was obliged to support her, and was even liable for her debts. But people who are always talking of invoking the law know nothing about it.” We were surprised too, although Manners was always convincing us, in some cheerful but discomposing way, that we were all daily and hourly, in our simplest acts, making ourself responsible for all sorts of liabilities and actions, and even generally preparing ourselves for arrest and imprisonment. The Quartermaster continued lazily:–

“Then you didn’t give him any points about shooting?”

“No; he doesn’t even know the man she went off with. It was eighteen months ago, and I don’t believe he’d even know her again if he met her. But, if he isn’t much of a client, we shall miss him to-night as a waiter, for the place is getting full, and there are not enough to serve.”

The restaurant was, indeed, unusually crowded that evening; the more so that, the private rooms above being early occupied, some dinner parties and exclusive couples had been obliged to content themselves with the public dining saloon. A small table nearest us, usually left vacant to insure a certain seclusion to the Club, was arranged, with a deprecatory apology from the proprietor, for one of those couples, a man and woman. The man was a well-known speculator,–cool, yet reckless and pleasure-loving; the woman, good-looking, picturesquely attractive, self-conscious, and self- possessed. Our propinquity was evidently neither novel nor discomposing. As she settled her skirts in her place, her bright, dark eyes swept our table with a frank, almost childish, familiarity. The younger members of the Club quite unconsciously pulled up their collars and settled their neckties; the elders as unconsciously raised their voices slightly, and somewhat arranged their sentences. Alas! the simplicity and unaffectedness of the Club were again invaded.

Suddenly there was a crash, the breaking of glass, and an exclamation. Tournelli, no doubt disorganized by the unusual hurry, on his way to our table had dropped his tray, impartially distributed a plate of asparagus over an adjoining table, and, flushed and nervous, yet with an affectation of studied calmness, was pouring the sauce into the young Quartermaster’s plate, in spite of his languid protests. At any other time we would have laughed, but there was something in the exaggerated agitation of the Italian that checked our mirth. Why should he be so upset by a trifling accident? He could afford to pay for the breakage; he would laugh at dismissal. Was it the sensitiveness of a refined nature, or–he was young and good-looking–was he disconcerted by the fact that our handsome neighbor had witnessed his awkwardness? But she was not laughing, and, as far as I could see, was intently regarding the bill of fare.

“Waiter!” called her companion, hailing Tournelli. “Here!” The Italian, with a face now distinctly white, leaned over the table, adjusting the glasses, but did not reply.

“Waiter!” repeated the stranger, sharply. Tournelli’s face twitched, then became set as a mask; but he did not move. The stranger leaned forward and pulled his apron from behind. Tournelli started with flashing eyes, and turned swiftly round. But the Quartermaster’s hand had closed on his wrist.

“That’s my knife, Tournelli.”

The knife dropped from the Italian’s fingers.

“Better see WHAT he wants. It may not be THAT,” said the young officer, coolly but kindly.

Tournelli turned impatiently towards the stranger. We alone had witnessed this incident, and were watching him breathlessly. Yet what bade fair a moment ago to be a tragedy, seemed now to halt grotesquely. For Tournelli, throwing open his linen jacket with a melodramatic gesture, tapped his breast, and with flashing eyes and suppressed accents said, “Sare; you wantah me? Look–I am herre!”

The speculator leaned back in his chair in good-humored astonishment. The lady’s black eyes, without looking at Tournelli, glanced backward round the room, and slipped along our table, with half-defiant unconcern; and then she uttered a short hysterical laugh.

“Ah! ze lady–madame–ze signora–eh–she wantah me?” continued Tournelli, leaning on the table with compressed fingers, and glaring at her. “Perhaps SHE wantah Tournelli–eh?”

“Well, you might bring some with the soup,” blandly replied her escort, who seemed to enjoy the Italian’s excitement as a national eccentricity; “but hurry up and set the table, will you?”

Then followed, on the authority of the Editor, who understood Italian, a singular scene. Secure, apparently, in his belief that his language was generally uncomprehended, Tournelli brought a decanter, and, setting it on the table, said, “Traitress!” in an intense whisper. This was followed by the cruets, which he put down with the exclamation, “Perjured fiend!” Two glasses, placed on either side of her, carried the word “Apostate!” to her ear; and three knives and forks, rattling more than was necessary, and laid crosswise before her plate, were accompanied with “Tremble, wanton!” Then, as he pulled the tablecloth straight, and ostentatiously concealed a wine-stain with a clean napkin, scarcely whiter than his lips, he articulated under his breath: “Let him beware! he goes not hence alive! I will slice his craven heart– thus–and thou shalt see it.” He turned quickly to a side table and brought back a spoon. “And THIS is why I have not found you;” another spoon, “For THIS you have disappeared;” a purely perfunctory polishing of her fork, “For HIM, bah!” an equally unnecessary wiping of her glass, “Blood of God!”–more wiping–“It will end! Yes”–general wiping and a final flourish over the whole table with a napkin–“I go, but at the door I shall await you both.”

She had not spoken yet, nor even lifted her eyes. When she did so, however, she raised them level with his, showed all her white teeth–they were small and cruel-looking–and said smilingly in his own dialect:–

“Thief!”

Tournelli halted, rigid.

“You’re talking his lingo, eh?” said her escort good-humoredly.

“Yes.”

“Well–tell him to bustle around and be a little livelier with the dinner, won’t you? This is only skirmishing.”

“You hear,” she continued to Tournelli in a perfectly even voice; “or shall it be a policeman, and a charge of stealing?”

“Stealing!” gasped Tournelli. “YOU say stealing!”

“Yes–ten thousand dollars. You are well disguised here, my little fellow; it is a good business–yours. Keep it while you can.”

I think he would have sprung upon her there and then, but that the Quartermaster, who was nearest him, and had been intently watching his face, made a scarcely perceptible movement as if ready to anticipate him. He caught the officer’s eye; caught, I think, in ours the revelation that he had been understood, drew back with a sidelong, sinuous movement, and disappeared in the passage to the kitchen.

I believe we all breathed more freely, although the situation was still full enough of impending possibilities to prevent peaceful enjoyment of our dinner. As the Editor finished his hurried translation, it was suggested that we ought to warn the unsuspecting escort of Tournelli’s threats. But it was pointed out that this would be betraying the woman, and that Jo Hays (her companion) was fully able to take care of himself. “Besides,” said the Editor, aggrievedly, “you fellows only think of YOURSELVES, and you don’t understand the first principles of journalism. Do you suppose I’m going to do anything to spoil a half-column of leaded brevier copy–from an eye-witness, too? No; it’s a square enough fight as it stands. We must look out for the woman, and not let Tournelli get an unfair drop on Hays. That is, if the whole thing isn’t a bluff.”

But the Italian did not return. Whether he had incontinently fled, or was nursing his wrath in the kitchen, or already fulfilling his threat of waiting on the pavement outside the restaurant, we could not guess. Another waiter appeared with the dinners they had ordered. A momentary thrill of excitement passed over us at the possibility that Tournelli had poisoned their soup; but it presently lapsed, as we saw the couple partaking of it comfortably, and chatting with apparent unconcern. Was the scene we had just witnessed only a piece of Southern exaggeration? Was the woman a creature devoid of nerves or feeling of any kind; or was she simply a consummate actress? Yet she was clearly not acting, for in the intervals of conversation, and even while talking, her dark eyes wandered carelessly around the room, with the easy self-confidence of a pretty woman. We were beginning to talk of something else, when the Editor said suddenly, in a suppressed voice:

“Hullo! What’s the matter now?”

The woman had risen, and was hurriedly throwing her cloak over her shoulders. But it was HER face that was now ashen and agitated, and we could see that her hands were trembling. Her escort was assisting her, but was evidently as astonished as ourselves. “Perhaps,” he suggested hopefully, “if you wait a minute it will pass off.”

“No, no,” she gasped, still hurriedly wrestling with her cloak. “Don’t you see I’m suffocating here–I want air. You can follow!” She began to move off, her face turned fixedly in the direction of the door. We instinctively looked there–perhaps for Tournelli. There was no one. Nevertheless, the Editor and Quartermaster had half-risen from their seats.

“Helloo!” said Manners suddenly. “There’s Tom just come in. Call him!”

Tom, evidently recalled from his brief furlough by the proprietor on account of the press of custom, had just made his appearance from the kitchen.

“Tom, where’s Tournelli?” asked the Lawyer hurriedly, but following the retreating woman with his eyes.

“Skipped, they say. Somebody insulted him,” said Tom curtly.

“You didn’t see him hanging round outside, eh? Swearing vengeance?” asked the Editor.

“No,” said Tom scornfully.

The woman had reached the door, and darted out of it as her escort paused a moment at the counter to throw down a coin. Yet in that moment she had hurried before him through the passage into the street. I turned breathlessly to the window. For an instant her face, white as a phantom’s, appeared pressed rigidly against the heavy plate-glass, her eyes staring with a horrible fascination back into the room–I even imagined at us. Perhaps, as it was evident that Tournelli was not with her, she fancied he was still here; perhaps she had mistaken Tom for him! However, her escort quickly rejoined her; their shadows passed the window together– they were gone.

Then a pistol-shot broke the quiet of the street.

The Editor and Quartermaster rose and ran to the door. Manners rose also, but lingered long enough to whisper to me, “Don’t lose sight of Tom,” and followed them. But to my momentary surprise no one else moved. I had forgotten, in the previous excitement, that in those days a pistol-shot was not unusual enough to attract attention. A few raised their heads at the sound of running feet on the pavement, and the flitting of black shadows past the windows. Tom had not stirred, but, napkin in hand, and eyes fixed on vacancy, was standing, as I had seen him once before, in an attitude of listless expectation.

In a few minutes Manners returned. I thought he glanced oddly at Tom, who was still lingering in attendance, and I even fancied he talked to us ostentatiously for his benefit. “Yes, it was a row of Tournelli’s. He was waiting at the corner; had rushed at Hays with a knife, but had been met with a derringer-shot through his hat. The lady, who, it seems, was only a chance steamer acquaintance of Hays’, thought the attack must have been meant for HER, as she had recognized in the Italian a man who had stolen from her divorced husband in the States, two years ago, and was a fugitive from justice. At least that was the explanation given by Hays, for the woman had fainted and been driven off to her hotel by the Quartermaster, and Tournelli had escaped. But the Editor was on his track. “You didn’t notice that lady, Tom, did you?”

Tom came out of an abstracted study, and said: “No, she had her back to me all the time.”

Manners regarded him steadily for a moment without speaking, but in a way that I could not help thinking was much more embarrassing to the bystanders than to him. When we rose to leave, as he placed his usual gratuity into Tom’s hand, he said carelessly, “You might drop into my office to-morrow if you have anything to tell ME.”

“I haven’t,” said Tom quietly.

“Then I may have something to tell YOU.”

Tom nodded, and turned away to his duties. The Mining Secretary and myself could scarcely wait to reach the street before we turned eagerly on Manners.

“Well?”

“Well; the woman you saw was Tom’s runaway wife, and Tournelli the man she ran away with.”

“And Tom knew it?”

“Can’t say.”

“And you mean to say that all this while Tom never suspected HIM, and even did not recognize HER just now?”

Manners lifted his hat and passed his fingers through his hair meditatively. “Ask me something easier, gentlemen.”

A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON.

Her father’s house was nearly a mile from the sea, but the breath of it was always strong at the windows and doors in the early morning, and when there were heavy “southwesters” blowing in the winter, the wind brought the sharp sting of sand to her cheek, and the rain an odd taste of salt to her lips. On this particular December afternoon, however, as she stood in the doorway, it seemed to be singularly calm; the southwest trades blew but faintly, and scarcely broke the crests of the long Pacific swell that lazily rose and fell on the beach, which only a slanting copse of scrub- oak and willow hid from the cottage. Nevertheless, she knew this league-long strip of shining sand much better, it is to be feared, than the scanty flower-garden, arid and stunted by its contiguity. It had been her playground when she first came there, a motherless girl of twelve, and she had helped her father gather its scattered driftwood–as the fortunes of the Millers were not above accepting these occasional offerings of their lordly neighbor.

“I wouldn’t go far to-day, Jenny,” said her father, as the girl stepped from the threshold. “I don’t trust the weather at this season; and besides you had better be looking over your wardrobe for the Christmas Eve party at Sol. Catlin’s.”

“Why, father, you don’t intend to go to that man’s?” said the girl, looking up with a troubled face.

“Lawyer Miller,” as he was called by his few neighbors, looked slightly embarrassed. “Why not?” he asked in a faintly irritated tone.

“Why not? Why, father, you know how vulgar and conceited he is,– how everybody here truckles to him!”

“Very likely; he’s a very superior man of his kind,–a kind they understand here, too,–a great trapper, hunter, and pioneer.”

“But I don’t believe in his trapping, hunting, and pioneering,” said the girl, petulantly. “I believe it’s all as hollow and boisterous as himself. It’s no more real, or what one thinks it should be, than he is. And he dares to patronize you–you, father, an educated man and a gentleman!”

“Say rather an unsuccessful lawyer who was fool enough to believe that buying a ranch could make him a farmer,” returned her father, but half jestingly. “I only wish I was as good at my trade as he is.”

“But you never liked him,–you always used to ignore him; you’ve changed, father”– She stopped suddenly, for her recollection of her father’s quiet superiority and easy independence when he first came there was in such marked contrast to his late careless and weak concession to the rude life around them, that she felt a pang of vague degradation, which she feared her voice might betray.

“Very well! Do as you like,” he replied, with affected carelessness; “only I thought, as we cannot afford to go elsewhere this Christmas, it might be well for us to take what we could find here.”

“Take what we could find here!” It was so unlike him–he who had always been so strong in preserving their little domestic refinements in their rude surroundings, that their poverty had never seemed mean, nor their seclusion ignoble. She turned away to conceal her indignant color. She could share the household work with a squaw and Chinaman, she could fetch wood and water. Catlin had patronizingly seen her doing it, but to dance to his vulgar piping–never!

She was not long in reaching the sands that now lay before her, warm, sweet-scented from short beach grass, stretching to a dim rocky promontory, and absolutely untrod by any foot but her own. It was this virginity of seclusion that had been charming to her girlhood; fenced in between the impenetrable hedge of scrub-oaks on the one side, and the lifting green walls of breakers tipped with chevaux de frise of white foam on the other, she had known a perfect security for her sports and fancies that had captivated her town-bred instincts and native fastidiousness. A few white-winged sea-birds, as proud, reserved, and maiden-like as herself, had been her only companions. And it was now the custodian of her secret,– a secret as innocent and childlike as her previous youthful fancies,–but still a secret known only to herself.

One day she had come upon the rotting ribs of a wreck on the beach. Its distance from the tide line, its position, and its deep imbedding of sand, showed that it was of ancient origin. An omnivorous reader of all that pertained to the history of California, Jenny had in fancy often sailed the seas in one of those mysterious treasure-ships that had skirted the coast in bygone days, and she at once settled in her mind that her discovery was none other than a castaway Philippine galleon. Partly from her reserve, and partly from a suddenly conceived plan, she determined to keep its existence unknown to her father, as careful inquiry on her part had found it was equally unknown to the neighbors. For this shy, imaginative young girl of eighteen had convinced herself that it might still contain a part of its old treasure. She would dig for it herself, without telling anybody. If she failed, no one would know it; if she were successful, she would surprise her father and perhaps retrieve their fortune by less vulgar means than their present toil. Thanks to the secluded locality and the fact that she was known to spend her leisure moments in wandering there, she could work without suspicion. Secretly conveying a shovel and a few tools to the spot the next day, she set about her prodigious task. As the upper works were gone, and the galleon not large, in three weeks, working an hour or two each day, she had made a deep excavation in the stern. She had found many curious things,–the flotsam and jetsam of previous storms,–but as yet, it is perhaps needless to say, not the treasure.

To-day she was filled with the vague hope of making her discovery before Christmas Day. To have been able to take her father something on that day–if only a few old coins–the fruit of her own unsuspected labor and intuition–not the result of vulgar barter or menial wage–would have been complete happiness. It was perhaps a somewhat visionary expectation for an educated girl of eighteen, but I am writing of a young Californian girl, who had lived in the fierce glamour of treasure-hunting, and in whose sensitive individuality some of its subtle poison had been instilled. Howbeit, to-day she found nothing. She was sadly hiding her pick and shovel, as was her custom, when she discovered the fresh track of an alien foot in the sand. Robinson Crusoe was not more astounded at the savage footprint than Jenny Miller at this damning proof of the invasion of her sacred territory. The footprints came from and returned to the copse of shrubs. Some one might have seen her at work!

But a singular change in the weather, overlooked in her excitement, here forced itself upon her. A light film over sea and sky, lifted only by fitful gusts of wind, seemed to have suddenly thickened until it became an opaque vault, narrowing in circumference as the wind increased. The promontory behind her disappeared, as if swallowed up, the distance before her seemed to contract; the ocean at her side, the color of dull pewter, vanished in a sheet of slanting rain, and by the time she reached the house, half running, half carried along by the quartering force of the wind, a full gale was blowing.

It blew all the evening, reaching a climax and fury at past midnight that was remembered for many years along that coast. In the midst of it they heard the booming of cannon, and then the voices of neighbors in the road. “There was,” said the voices, “a big steamer ashore just afore the house.” They dressed quickly and ran out.

Hugging the edge of the copse to breathe and evade the fury of the wind, they struggled to the sands. At first, looking out to sea, the girl saw nothing but foam. But, following the direction of a neighbor’s arm, for in that wild tumult man alone seemed speechless, she saw directly before her, so close upon her that she could have thrown a pebble on board, the high bows of a ship. Indeed, its very nearness gave her the feeling that it was already saved, and its occasional heavy roll to leeward, drunken, helpless, ludicrous, but never awful, brought a hysteric laugh to her lips. But when a livid blue light, lit in the swinging top, showed a number of black objects clinging to bulwarks and rigging, and the sea, with languid, heavy cruelty, pushing rather than beating them away, one by one, she knew that Death was there.

The neighbors, her father with the others, had been running hopelessly to and fro, or cowering in groups against the copse, when suddenly they uttered a cry–their first–of joyful welcome. And with that shout, the man she most despised and hated, Sol. Catlin, mounted on a “calico” mustang, as outrageous and bizarre as himself, dashed among them.

In another moment, what had been fear, bewilderment, and hesitation was changed to courage, confidence, and action. The men pressed eagerly around him, and as eagerly dispersed under his quick command. Galloping at his heels was a team with the whale-boat, brought from the river, miles away. He was here, there, and everywhere; catching the line thrown by the rocket from the ship, marshaling the men to haul it in, answering the hail from those on board above the tempest, pervading everything and everybody with the fury of the storm; loud, imperious, domineering, self-asserting, all-sufficient, and successful! And when the boat was launched, the last mighty impulse came from his shoulder. He rode at the helm into the first hanging wall of foam, erect and triumphant! Dazzled, bewildered, crying and laughing, she hated him more than ever.

The boat made three trips, bringing off, with the aid of the hawser, all but the sailors she had seen perish before her own eyes. The passengers,–they were few,–the captain and officers, found refuge in her father’s house, and were loud in their praises of Sol. Catlin. But in that grateful chorus a single gloomy voice arose, the voice of a wealthy and troubled passenger. “I will give,” he said, “five thousand dollars to the man who brings me a box of securities I left in my stateroom.” Every eye turned instinctively to Sol.; he answered only those of Jenny’s. “Say ten thousand, and if the dod-blasted hulk holds together two hours longer I’ll do it, d–n me! You hear me! My name’s Sol. Catlin, and when I say a thing, by G-d, I do it.” Jenny’s disgust here reached its climax. The hero of a night of undoubted energy and courage had blotted it out in a single moment of native vanity and vulgar avarice.

He was gone; not only two hours, but daylight had come and they were eagerly seeking him, when he returned among them, dripping and–empty-handed. He had reached the ship, he said, with another; found the box, and trusted himself alone with it to the sea. But in the surf he had to abandon it to save himself. It had perhaps drifted ashore, and might be found; for himself, he abandoned his claim to the reward. Had he looked abashed or mortified, Jenny felt that she might have relented, but the braggart was as all- satisfied, as confident and boastful as ever. Nevertheless, as his eye seemed to seek hers, she was constrained, in mere politeness, to add her own to her father’s condolences. “I suppose,” she hesitated, in passing him, “that this is a mere nothing to you after all that you did last night that was really great and unselfish.”

“Were you never disappointed, Miss?” he said, with exasperating abruptness.

A quick consciousness of her own thankless labor on the galleon, and a terrible idea that he might have some suspicion of, and perhaps the least suggestion that she might have been disappointed in him, brought a faint color to her cheek. But she replied with dignity:–

“I really couldn’t say. But certainly,” she added, with a new- found pertness, “you don’t look it.”

“Nor do you, Miss,” was his idiotic answer.

A few hours later, alarmed at what she had heard of the inroads of the sea, which had risen higher than ever known to the oldest settler, and perhaps mindful of yesterday’s footprints, she sought her old secluded haunt. The wreck was still there, but the sea had reached it. The excavation between its gaunt ribs was filled with drift and the seaweed carried there by the surges and entrapped in its meshes. And there, too, caught as in a net, lay the wooden box of securities Sol. Catlin had abandoned to the sea.

This is the story as it was told to me. The singularity of coincidences has challenged some speculation. Jenny insisted at the time upon sharing the full reward with Catlin, but local critics have pointed out that from subsequent events this proved nothing. For she had married him!

OUT OF A PIONEER’S TRUNK.

It was a slightly cynical, but fairly good-humored crowd that had gathered before a warehouse on Long Wharf in San Francisco one afternoon in the summer of ’51. Although the occasion was an auction, the bidders’ chances more than usually hazardous, and the season and locality famous for reckless speculation, there was scarcely any excitement among the bystanders, and a lazy, half- humorous curiosity seemed to have taken the place of any zeal for gain.

It was an auction of unclaimed trunks and boxes–the personal luggage of early emigrants–which had been left on storage in hulk or warehouse at San Francisco, while the owner was seeking his fortune in the mines. The difficulty and expense of transport, often obliging the gold-seeker to make part of his journey on foot, restricted him to the smallest impedimenta, and that of a kind not often found in the luggage of ordinary civilization. As a consequence, during the emigration of ’49, he was apt on landing to avail himself of the invitation usually displayed on some of the doors of the rude hostelries on the shore: “Rest for the Weary and Storage for Trunks.” In a majority of cases he never returned to claim his stored property. Enforced absence, protracted equally by good or evil fortune, accumulated the high storage charges until they usually far exceeded the actual value of the goods; sickness, further emigration, or death also reduced the number of possible claimants, and that more wonderful human frailty–absolute forgetfulness of deposited possessions–combined together to leave the bulk of the property in the custodian’s hands. Under an understood agreement they were always sold at public auction after a given time. Although the contents of some of the trunks were exposed, it was found more in keeping with the public sentiment to sell the trunks LOCKED and UNOPENED. The element of curiosity was kept up from time to time by the incautious disclosures of the lucky or unlucky purchaser, and general bidding thus encouraged– except when the speculator, with the true gambling instinct, gave no indication in his face of what was drawn in this lottery. Generally, however, some suggestion in the exterior of the trunk, a label or initials; some conjectural knowledge of its former owner, or the idea that he might be secretly present in the hope of getting his property back for less than the accumulated dues, kept up the bidding and interest.

A modest-looking, well-worn portmanteau had been just put up at a small opening bid, when Harry Flint joined the crowd. The young man had arrived a week before at San Francisco friendless and penniless, and had been forced to part with his own effects to procure necessary food and lodging while looking for an employment. In the irony of fate that morning the proprietors of a dry-goods store, struck with his good looks and manners, had offered him a situation, if he could make himself more presentable to their fair clients. Harry Flint was gazing half abstractedly, half hopelessly, at the portmanteau without noticing the auctioneer’s persuasive challenge. In his abstraction he was not aware that the auctioneer’s assistant was also looking at him curiously, and that possibly his dejected and half-clad appearance had excited the attention of one of the cynical bystanders, who was exchanging a few words with the assistant. He was, however, recalled to himself a moment later when the portmanteau was knocked down at fifteen dollars, and considerably startled when the assistant placed it at his feet with a grim smile. “That’s your property, Fowler, and I reckon you look as if you wanted it back bad.”

“But–there’s some mistake,” stammered Flint. “I didn’t bid.”

“No, but Tom Flynn did for you. You see, I spotted you from the first, and told Flynn I reckoned you were one of those chaps who came back from the mines dead broke. And he up and bought your things for you–like a square man. That’s Flynn’s style, if he is a gambler.”

“But,” persisted Flint, “this never was my property. My name isn’t Fowler, and I never left anything here.”

The assistant looked at him with a grim, half-credulous, half- scornful smile. “Have it your own way,” he said, “but I oughter tell ye, old man, that I’m the warehouse clerk, and I remember YOU. I’m here for that purpose. But as that thar valise is bought and paid for by somebody else and given to you, it’s nothing more to me. Take it or leave it.”

The ridiculousness of quarreling over the mere form of his good fortune here struck Flint, and, as his abrupt benefactor had as abruptly disappeared, he hurried off with his prize. Reaching his cheap lodging-house, he examined its contents. As he had surmised, it contained a full suit of clothing of the better sort, and suitable to his urban needs. There were a few articles of jewelry, which he put religiously aside. There were some letters, which seemed to be of a purely business character. There were a few daguerreotypes of pretty faces, one of which was singularly fascinating to him. But there was another, of a young man, which startled him with its marvelous resemblance to HIMSELF! In a flash of intelligence he understood it all now. It was the likeness of the former owner of the trunk, for whom the assistant had actually mistaken him! He glanced hurriedly at the envelopes of the letters. They were addressed to Shelby Fowler, the name by which the assistant had just called him. The mystery was plain now. And for the present he could fairly accept his good luck, and trust to later fortune to justify himself.

Transformed in his new garb, he left his lodgings to present himself once more to his possible employer. His way led past one of the large gambling saloons. It was yet too early to find the dry-goods trader disengaged; perhaps the consciousness of more decent, civilized garb emboldened him to mingle more freely with strangers, and he entered the saloon. He was scarcely abreast of one of the faro tables when a man suddenly leaped up with an oath and discharged a revolver full in his face. The shot missed. Before his unknown assailant could fire again the astonished Flint had closed with him, and instinctively clutched the weapon. A brief but violent struggle ensued. Flint felt his strength failing him, when suddenly a look of astonishment came into the furious eyes of his adversary, and the man’s grasp mechanically relaxed. The half-freed pistol, thrown upwards by this movement, was accidentally discharged point blank into his temples, and he fell dead. No one in the crowd had stirred or interfered.

“You’ve done for Australian Pete this time, Mr. Fowler,” said a voice at his elbow. He turned gaspingly and recognized his strange benefactor, Flynn. “I call you all to witness, gentlemen,” continued the gambler, turning dictatorially to the crowd, “that this man was FIRST attacked and was UNARMED.” He lifted Flint’s limp and empty hands and then pointed to the dead man, who was still grasping the weapon. “Come!” He caught the half-paralyzed arm of Flint and dragged him into the street.

“But,” stammered the horrified Flint, as he was borne along, “what does it all mean? What made that man attack me?”

“I reckon it was a case of shooting on sight, Mr. Fowler; but he missed it by not waiting to see if you were armed. It wasn’t the square thing, and you’re all right with the crowd now, whatever he might have had agin’ you.”

“But,” protested the unhappy Flint, “I never laid eyes on the man before, and my name isn’t Fowler.”

Flynn halted, and dragged him in a door way. “Who the devil are you?” he asked roughly.

Briefly, passionately, almost hysterically, Flint told him his scant story. An odd expression came over the gambler’s face.

“Look here,” he said abruptly, “I have passed my word to the crowd yonder that you are a dead-broke miner called Fowler. I allowed that you might have had some row with that Sydney duck, Australian Pete, in the mines. That satisfied them. If I go back now, and say it’s a lie, that your name ain’t Fowler, and you never knew who Pete was, they’ll jest pass you over to the police to deal with you, and wash their hands of it altogether. You may prove to the police who you are, and how that d— clerk mistook you, but it will give you trouble. And who is there here who knows who you really are?”

“No one,” said Flint, with sudden hopelessness.

“And you say you’re an orphan, and ain’t got any relations livin’ that you’re beholden to?”

“No one.”

“Then, take my advice, and BE Fowler, and stick to it! Be Fowler until Fowler turns up, and thanks you for it; for you’ve saved Fowler’s life, as Pete would never have funked and lost his grit over Fowler as he did with you; and you’ve a right to his name.”

He stopped, and the same odd, superstitious look came into his dark eyes.

“Don’t you see what all that means? Well, I’ll tell you. You’re in the biggest streak of luck a man ever had. You’ve got the cards in your own hand! They spell “Fowler”! Play Fowler first, last, and all the time. Good-night, and good luck, MR. FOWLER.”

The next morning’s journal contained an account of the justifiable killing of the notorious desperado and ex-convict, Australian Pete, by a courageous young miner by the name of Fowler. “An act of firmness and daring,” said the “Pioneer,” “which will go far to counteract the terrorism produced by those lawless ruffians.”

In his new suit of clothes, and with this paper in his hand, Flint sought the dry-goods proprietor–the latter was satisfied and convinced. That morning Harry Flint began his career as salesman and as “Shelby Fowler.”

From that day Shelby Fowler’s career was one of uninterrupted prosperity. Within the year he became a partner. The same miraculous fortune followed other ventures later. He was mill owner, mine owner, bank director–a millionaire! He was popular, the reputation of his brief achievement over the desperado kept him secure from the attack of envy and rivalry. He never was confronted by the real Fowler. There was no danger of exposure by others–the one custodian of his secret, Tom Flynn, died in Nevada the year following. He had quite forgotten his youthful past, and even the more recent lucky portmanteau; remembered nothing, perhaps, but the pretty face of the daguerreotype that had fascinated him. There seemed to be no reason why he should not live and die as Shelby Fowler.

His business a year later took him to Europe. He was entering a train at one of the great railway stations of London, when the porter, who had just deposited his portmanteau in a compartment, reappeared at the window followed by a young lady in mourning.

“Beg pardon, sir, but I handed you the wrong portmanteau. That belongs to this young lady. This is yours.”

Flint glanced at the portmanteau on the seat before him. It certainly was not his, although it bore the initials “S. F.” He was mechanically handing it back to the porter, when his eyes fell on the young lady’s face. For an instant he stood petrified. It was the face of the daguerreotype. “I beg pardon,” he stammered, “but are these your initials?” She hesitated, perhaps it was the abruptness of the question, but he saw she looked confused.

“No. A friend’s.”

She disappeared into another carriage, but from that moment Harry Flint knew that he had no other aim in life but to follow this clue and the beautiful girl who had dropped it. He bribed the guard at the next station, and discovered that she was going to York. On their arrival, he was ready on the platform to respectfully assist her. A few words disclosed the fact that she was a fellow- countrywoman, although residing in England, and at present on her way to join some friends at Harrogate. Her name was West. At the mention of his, he again fancied she looked disturbed.

They met again and again; the informality of his introduction was overlooked by her friends, as his assumed name was already respectably and responsibly known beyond California. He thought no more of his future. He was in love. He even dared to think it might be returned; but he felt he had no right to seek that knowledge until he had told her his real name and how he came to assume another’s. He did so alone–scarcely a month after their first meeting. To his alarm, she burst into a flood of tears, and showed an agitation that seemed far beyond any apparent cause. When she had partly recovered, she said, in a low, frightened voice:–

“You are bearing MY BROTHER’S name. But it was a name that the unhappy boy had so shamefully disgraced in Australia that he abandoned it, and, as he lay upon his death-bed, the last act of his wasted life was to write an imploring letter begging me to change mine too. For the infamous companion of his crime who had first tempted, then betrayed him, had possession of all his papers and letters, many of them from ME, and was threatening to bring them to our Virginia home and expose him to our neighbors. Maddened by desperation, the miserable boy twice attempted the life of the scoundrel, and might have added that blood guiltiness to his other sins had he lived. I DID change my name to my mother’s maiden one, left the country, and have lived here to escape the revelations of that desperado, should he fulfill his threat.”

In a flash of recollection Flint remembered the startled look that had come into his assailant’s eye after they had clinched. It was the same man who had too late realized that his antagonist was not Fowler. “Thank God! you are forever safe from any exposure from that man,” he said, gravely, “and the name of Fowler has never been known in San Francisco save in all respect and honor. It is for you to take back–fearlessly and alone!

She did–but not alone, for she shared it with her husband.

THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE.

There should have been snow on the ground to make the picture seasonable and complete, but the Western Barbarian had lived long enough in England to know that, except in the pages of a holiday supplement, this was rarely the accompaniment of a Christmas landscape, and he cheerfully accepted, on the 24th of December, the background of a low, brooding sky, on which the delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker chevaux de frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle. Yet, even in this disastrous eclipse of color and distance, the harmonious outlines of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to him as wonderful as ever. It still dominated the whole landscape, and, as he had often fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had created it, lived in it, but which it seemed to have in some dull, senile way dozed over and forgotten. He vividly recalled the previous sunshine of an autumnal house party within its walls, where some descendants of its old castellans, encountered in long galleries or at the very door of their bedrooms, looked as alien to the house as the Barbarian himself.

For the rest it may be found described in the local guide-books, with a view of its “South Front,” “West Front,” and “Great Quadrangle.” It was alleged to be based on an encampment of the Romans–that highly apocryphal race who seemed to have spent their time in getting up picnics on tessellated pavements, where, after hilariously emptying their pockets of their loose coin and throwing round their dishes, they instantly built a road to escape by, leaving no other record of their existence. Stow and Dugdale had recorded the date when a Norman favorite obtained the royal license to “embattle it;” it had done duty on Christmas cards with the questionable snow already referred to laid on thickly in crystal; it had been lovingly portrayed by a fair countrywoman–the vivacious correspondent of the “East Machias Sentinel”–in a combination of the most delightful feminine disregard of facts with the highest feminine respect for titles. It was rich in a real and spiritual estate of tapestries, paintings, armor, legends, and ghosts. Everything the poet could wish for, and indeed some things that decent prose might have possibly wished out of it, were there.

Yet, from the day that it had been forcibly seized by a Parliamentary General, until more recently, when it had passed by the no less desperate conveyance of marriage into the hands of a Friendly Nobleman known to the Western Barbarian, it had been supposed to suggest something or other more remarkable than itself. “Few spectators,” said the guide-book, “even the most unimpassioned, can stand in the courtyard and gaze upon those historic walls without feeling a thrill of awe,” etc. The Western Barbarian had stood there, gazed, and felt no thrill. “The privileged guest,” said the grave historian, “passing in review the lineaments of the illustrious owners of Stukeley, as he slowly paces the sombre gallery, must be conscious of emotions of no ordinary character,” etc., etc. The Barbarian had been conscious of no such emotions. And it was for this reason, and believing he MIGHT experience them if left there in solitude, with no distracting or extraneous humanity around him, it had been agreed between him and the Friendly Nobleman, who had fine Barbarian instincts, that as he–the Friendly Nobleman–and his family were to spend their holidays abroad, the Barbarian should be allowed, on the eve and day of Christmas, to stay at Stukeley alone. “But,” added his host, “you’ll find it beastly lonely, and although I’ve told the housekeeper to look after you–you’d better go over to dine at Audley Friars, where there’s a big party, and they know you, and it will be a deuced deal more amusing. And–er–I say–you know–you’re really NOT looking out for ghosts, and that sort of thing, are you? You know you fellows don’t believe in them–over there.” And the Barbarian, assuring him that this was a part of his deficient emotions, it was settled then and there that he should come. And that was why, on the 24th of December, the Barbarian found himself gazing hopefully on the landscape with his portmanteau at his feet, as he drove up the avenue.

The ravens did NOT croak ominously from the battlements as he entered. And the housekeeper, although neither “stately” nor “tall,” nor full of reminiscences of “his late lordship, the present Earl’s father,” was very sensible and practical. The Barbarian could, of course, have his choice of rooms–but–she had thought–remembering his tastes the last time, that the long blue room? Exactly! The long, low-arched room, with the faded blue tapestry, looking upon the gallery–capital! He had always liked that room. From purely negative evidence he had every reason to believe that it was the one formidable-looking room in England that Queen Elizabeth had not slept in.

When the footman had laid out his clothes, and his step grew fainter along the passage, until it was suddenly swallowed up with the closing of a red baize door in the turret staircase, like a trap in an oubliette, the whole building seemed to sink back into repose. Quiet it certainly was, but not more so, he remembered, than when the chambers on either side were filled with guests, and floating voices in the corridor were lost in those all-absorbing walls. So far, certainly, this was no new experience. It was past four. He waited for the shadows to gather. Light thickened beyond his windows; gradually the outflanking wall and part of a projecting terrace crumbled away in the darkness, as if Night were slowly reducing the castle. The figures on the tapestry in his room stood out faintly. The gallery, seen through his open door, barred with black spaces between the mullioned windows, presently became obliterated, as if invaded by a dull smoke from without. But nothing moved, nothing glimmered. Really this might become in time very stupid.

He was startled, however, while dressing, to see from his windows that the great banqueting hall was illuminated, but on coming down was amused to find his dinner served on a small table in its oaken solitude lit by the large electric chandelier–for Stukeley Castle under its present lord had all the modern improvements–shining on the tattered banners and glancing mail above him. It was evidently the housekeeper’s reading of some written suggestion of her noble master. The Barbarian, in a flash of instinct, imagined the passage:–

“Humor him as a harmless lunatic; the plate is quite safe.”

Declining the further offer of an illumination of the picture gallery, grand drawing-room, ball-room, and chapel, a few hours later he found himself wandering in the corridor with a single candle and a growing conviction of the hopelessness of his experiment. The castle had as yet yielded to him nothing that he had not seen before in the distraction of company and the garishness of day. It was becoming a trifle monotonous. Yet fine– exceedingly; and now that a change of wind had lifted the fog, and the full moon shone on the lower half of the pictures of the gallery, starting into the most artificial simulation of life a number of Van Dyke legs, farthingales, and fingers that would have deceived nobody, it seemed gracious, gentle, and innocent beyond expression. Wandering down the gallery, conscious of being more like a ghost than any of the painted figures, and that they might reasonably object to him, he wished he could meet the original of one of those pictured gallants and secretly compare his fingers with the copy. He remembered an embroidered pair of gloves in a cabinet and a suit of armor on the wall that, in measurement, did not seem to bear out the delicacy of the one nor the majesty of the other. It occurred to him also to satisfy a yearning he had once felt to try on a certain breastplate and steel cap that hung over an oaken settle. It will be perceived that he was getting a good deal bored. For thus caparisoned he listlessly, and, as will be seen, imprudently, allowed himself to sink back into a very modern chair, and give way to a dreamy cogitation.

What possible interest could the dead have in anything that was here? Admitting that they had any, and that it was not the LIVING, whom the Barbarian had always found most inclined to haunt the past, would not a ghost of any decided convictions object to such a collection as his descendant had gathered in this gallery? Yonder idiot in silk and steel had blunderingly and cruelly persecuted his kinsman in leather and steel only a few panels distant. Would they care to meet here? And if their human weaknesses had died with them, what would bring them here at all? And if not THEM–who then? He stopped short. The door at the lower end of the gallery had opened! Not stealthily, not noiselessly, but in an ordinary fashion, and a number of figures, dressed in the habiliments of a bygone age, came trooping in. They did not glide in nor float in, but trampled in awkwardly, clumsily, and unfamiliarly, gaping about them as they walked. At the head was apparently a steward in a kind of livery, who stopped once or twice and seemed to be pointing out and explaining certain objects in the room. A flash of indignant intelligence filled the brain of the Barbarian! It seemed absurd!–impossible!–but it was true! It was a holiday excursion party of ghosts, being shown over Stukeley Castle by a ghostly Cicerone! And as his measured, monotonous voice rose on the Christmas morning air, it could be heard that he was actually showing off, not the antiquities of the Castle, but the MODERN IMPROVEMENTS!

“This ‘ere, gossips,”–the Barbarian instantly detected the fallacy of all the so-called mediaeval jargon he had read,–“is the Helectric Bell, which does away with our hold, hordinary ‘orn blowin’, and the hattendant waitin’ in the ‘all for the usual ‘Without there, who waits?’ which all of us was accustomed to in mortal flesh. You hobserve this button. I press it so, and it instantly rings a bell in the kitchen ‘all, and shows in fair letters the name of this ‘ere gallery–as we will see later. Will hany good dame or gaffer press the button? Will YOU, mistress?” said the Cicerone to a giggling, kerchief-coifed lass.

“Oi soy, Maudlin!–look out–will yer!–It’s the soime old gag as them bloomin’ knobs you ketched hold of when yer was ‘ere las’ Whitsuntide,” called out the mediaeval ‘Arry of the party.

“It is NOT the Galvanic-Magnetic machine in ‘is lordship’s library,” said the Cicerone, severely, “which is a mere toy for infants, and hold-fashioned. And we have ‘ere a much later invention. I open this little door, I turn this ‘andle–called a switch–and, has you perceive, the gallery is hinstantly hilluminated.”

There was a hoarse cry of astonishment from the assemblage. The Barbarian felt an awful thrill as this searching, insufferable light of the nineteenth century streamed suddenly upon the up- turned, vacant-eyed, and dull faces of those sightseers of the past. But there was no responsive gleam in their eyes.

“It be the sun,” gasped an old woman in a gray cloak.